All posts by Wayne K. Spear

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Of Christmas and the Parker 51

December 15, 2011 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

A LOVER OF languages and of literature — the name of this website is Owenna’shon:a, or words — as well as of all related matters, I’ve put together over the years a decent collection of the various tools of the trade. A recent move and downsizing compelled me to get rid of my 1952 Corona Silent typewriter, but I have kept (among other things) my writing papers and blank books and cards and my lap-desk. As I’ve noted elsewhere, I have a stationery fetish with an emphasis on the fountain pen. I don’t expect anyone not afflicted likewise to understand, and so what follows is less an attempt to bring you around to my view of things than a mere indulgence.

Religion

The Niqab in Living Colour

December 12, 2011 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

IN AZAR NAFISI’S book, “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” the act of removing the veil is a metaphor for transitioning from the world of black-and-white into colour, and of shedding the state-imposed self to be liberated into one’s authentic, willed identity. “Black and white” is itself a good description of the cruel and stupid absolutism imposed upon Iran by the Velayat-e faqih, its antithesis colour indicating the actual and liveable world of vibrant diversity: irony, dialectic, humour, uncertainty, skepticism and multiplicity — whether in literary, moral, or political matters. In the “clash of civilizations,” the West is on the polychromatic side of the ledger against the monochrome despotisms.

Personal Essay

In Defence of Complexity

December 8, 2011 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

THE CASE of “N.S. v. Her Majesty the Queen, et al” heard in Ottawa on December 8 concerns a woman who has charged an uncle and cousin of “historical sexual assaults” (I take that to mean it happened long ago), and who in the course of hearings has requested permission to testify while wearing her niqab, or face veil. The Supreme Court of Canada is now reviewing this request and its judicial deliberations at lower levels of jurisprudence.

History

Looking Back at Pearl Harbour

December 7, 2011 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

THE DECEMBER 7, 1941 Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbour swiftly entered the realm of national mythology and for many years subsequently abetted the work of war propaganda and, after 1945, the projection of American power abroad — on the conviction that American interests were at stake. Only September 11, 2001 rivals this date as a rude interruption of American exceptionalism, the idea that America is somehow exempt from the European business of invasion and attack.

First Nations

Onkwehonwe-Neha: A Guide to Integrating into Turtle Island

December 6, 2011 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

Editor’s Note: We have noticed a great deal of controversy following the release of “Énoncé de valeurs: Des clés pour mon intégration à Gatineau.” This strikes us as curious, since documents of this sort have existed for centuries, without causing similar uproar. To cite one well-known example, we present the following English-language translation of the pamphlet, “Onkwehonwe-Neha [Our Ways]: A Guide to Integrating into Turtle Island,” published in 1557 by the Haudenosaunee and given to each new immigrant on arrival to Haudenosaunee territory.

First Nations

Doing the Math in Attawapiskat

December 1, 2011 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

EARLY IN THE week, during an interview whose topic was the relationship in Canada between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people, I was asked what I would hope for “in an ideal world.” My answer was an alteration of political will, and more specific a beyond-mere-rhetoric commitment to a renewal of the relationship on the principle of mutual respect. I then felt it necessary to argue, along the lines of Theodor Herzl’s “If you will …” , that the only impediment to progress in Canada is the absence of political will.

Ontario

When Toddlers Save the World (or — It Was Dr. Mustard, in the Study, with a Lead Argument)

November 22, 2011 Wayne K. Spear 1 Comment

THOSE OF YOU who know me only through these sometimes-prickly writings of mine — which is to say you don’t know me at all — may be surprised by my claim that I’m as a rule a docile and muted and even agreeable fellow. I’m provoked now and again — and the yearly occurrence of Black Friday is one of those occasions. I don’t much care for this late, absurd, and phony non-event, which promotes the rotten and rot-inducing ideas that our highest calling subsists in being a consumer, and that everything depends upon one’s subservience to this duty.

First Nations

Following the Money: Why Are the Feds Spying on Cindy Blackstock?

November 19, 2011 Wayne K. Spear 3 Comments

A PASSIVE listener of CBC radio as I am (it is on when my partner is home, and off when she isn’t), I first heard of the Government’s surveillance of native youth advocate Cindy Blackstock via the program The Current.

Politics

Herman Cain and the Lessons of Bill Clinton

November 14, 2011 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

UPON FIRST encountering him in 1992, I detected on the Arkansas governor and would-be President an unpleasant aroma. Even now I am astonished by the high regard of the man’s verbal performances, which have always struck my ears as maudlin and second-rate. Before William Jefferson Clinton, in the parade of the over-rated and “charismatic,” we find that other infamous liberal womanizer, Mr. John Fitzgerald Camelot: and now it appears we have added to this gross patrilineage the former Mr. Godfather, Herman Cain.

World

Living in the Age of The Endless War

November 12, 2011 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

ON A WALL at the National Capital’s War Monument are inscribed these words, past which I walk each day and derived from the ninth book of Virgil’s Aeneid: “nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo.” Here I shall provide some context, deferring to Robert Fitzgerald’s 1983 translation for Random House:

Fortunate, both! If in the least my songs
Avail, no future day will ever take you
Out of the record of remembering Time,
While children of Aeneas make their home
Around the Capitol’s unshaken rock,
And still the Roman Father governs all.

World

As Tibet Burns

November 3, 2011 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

I‘LL WAGER that you weren’t informed of it by the media, but it happens that yesterday was the Global Day of Action undertaken by the International Campaign for Tibet. I was on Parliament Hill in Ottawa when a large crowd assembled and marched down Elgin Street in a desperate effort to raise awareness here in Canada of China’s official policy of slow-motion genocide.

First Nations

Canadians need to educate themselves about indigenous peoples

October 27, 2011 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

TOMORROW MORNING I will get on an airplane and fly to Halifax, where the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada is hosting its latest gathering. Already the event has produced headline material, derived from the statement yesterday of University of Manitoba President, David Barnard. Toronto Star Reporter Louise Brown characterizes this apology to Aboriginal people “an unusual move,” and so it is. Yet Canada’s universities, and indeed the entire education system, have good reason to feel the bite of conscience. Please allow me to expand upon that theme.

Canada

Watch Yourself, Canada

October 24, 2011 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

Spy ABOVE THE fold of October 4th’s Globe and Mail there was featured a piece by the fine journalist Steven Chase, “Military intelligence unit keeps watch on native groups.” A more candid and accurate phrasing (Chase, not a writer given to mealy-mouthing, is not responsible for the headline) would be “Canada is spying on indigenous people.”

Obituary, World

Gaddafi: The Last of the Longest Rule

October 20, 2011 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

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IF YOU are at or under the age of forty-two, Moammar Gaddafi has presided over Libya the full span of your life. This factoid must certainly describe the majority of Libyans, most of whom have never known of life under another dispensation, let alone had the opportunity to choose something or even just someone different. Now that is about to change.

World

Linda Sobeh Ali and the Mediocrity of Palestinian Leadership

October 18, 2011 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

IT HAPPENS that I today regard the sudden retraction from Canadian soil of Linda Sobeh Ali, the Palestinian chargé d’affaires, as someone who has spent a number of years working in communications and public relations. In my profession — which has among other things interpolated me between and among differing cultures — I’ve had to pay due attention to protocol. I like to think I’m reasonably good at this delicate work and that I can smell from a distance those who are not. And at this moment I rather detect the aroma of amateurism on the air.