Time for another entry in my 'Six Favorite Songs' series.


She Loves You - The Beatles

“I distinctly remember walking down the road with a transistor radio. Then I heard ‘She Loves You.’ That turned me on. It took me to another place - and I’m still there now. If there wasn’t The Beatles, I don’t think I’d have got involved with music with such a passion.”

-Ozzy Osbourne.

Same here, Ozzy. And, you know, I’ve occasionally been told by people that they don’t like early Beatles; that it’s the ‘more serious’ music of the Fab Four’s later Sixties output that they prefer.

This sort of thing leaves me puzzled, even peeved. I figure this type of sentiment is the result of a couple of things.

First of all, the sound is of a different era. Author Ian MacDonald, in his superb book ‘Revolution in Your Head,’ notes the difference between ‘Pop’ and ‘Rock.’ The Beatles started as a pop band, more concerned with melodies, and the chords that supported them, than with grooves or riffs.

Perhaps this gives their early sound a more quaint dimeanor. A bit like an old movie, with a slightly antique intonation and less familiar styling.

And just as old films feature more careful, less natural dialoge, the lyrical themes of early Beatles tunes are more polite, and less vulgar. But does that make them less accomplished?

‘She Loves You’ is a prime example of early Beatledom. It’s got a catchy melody and an innocent theme. And yet there’s more to it, and to the early Beatle sound in general. Underlying the pretty harmonies and sweet melodies, there is a raw masculinity.

Starting with Ringo Starr’s thundering tom-tom doublets, the drums pound throughout the song, and are made all the more raucous by Starr’s patented open high hat. And the guitars dominate the sound of ‘She Loves You,’ giving it a rawness that early Sixties pop songs often lacked.

Add to all that McCartney’s typically pulsing (and underrated) bass playing, and the ‘yeah yeah yeah’ gang vocal chorus, and you have a song with plenty of moxy.

I don’t think the Beatles are ever given credit for the masculinity in their sound; they always seemed to be held up against the likes of the Stones and The Who and, though respected for their talent, are seen as not quite as swaggering. And yet they were veterans of hundreds of gigs in some of the toughest clubs in Hamburg and Liverpool, far more schooled in hard knocks and rock debauchery than any of their London contemporaries.

To use a hockey metaphor, they seem to be viewed as a great finesse player that stays away from the rough going, whereas in truth they had both skill and toughness.

As for the lyrics, the third party perspective of ‘She Loves You’ remains fairly unique. I think it’s cool. In reality, the first hints of romance or attraction are often passed on through a third party. The message of ‘She Loves You’ rings true, and the excited urgency of the song’s delivery makes it more resonant than most of the ‘mature’ rock songs that are often held up as lyrical classics.

As you may have heard, Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe has an idea.

He wants Quebec to have its own 'national' hockey team. From CTV...

"I would like to see the same rules as those applying to Scotland or Wales or Northern Ireland,'' Duceppe said during a news conference.

"They have their own players in the soccer World Cup or the rugby World Cup. If it's possible in Great Britain, it could be possible in Canada.''

Let me say, even as someone with a slew of Scottish Nationalist relatives back in the old country, the British way is a dumb way.

Take soccer, their equivalent to hockey, obsession-wise. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all field separate teams. How many World Cups do they have between them?

One.

England in 1966 (and that was decided by a disputed goal).

Scotland has never made it past the first round of a World Cup tournament.

Wales and Northern Ireland have four World Cup appearances between them in total. Neither team has ever appeared in a European Cup tournament.

As it happens, one of soccer's great stars, George Best, died last week. Best was from Belfast, and never saw much in the way of international play, except at the club level. Imagine a talent like Best shoring up a combined British team. Best played in the 1960s and 1970s, but the same holds for any era. A British team would be a contender in a way that England seldom is, and Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland never are.

One of the great moments in Canadian sporting history took place in 1987, in game three of the Canada Cup tournament. With just over a minute left in the game, Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux break out of their own end. Anglophone Canada's greatest player, Gretzky, passes to Francophone Canada's greatest player, Lemieux, who scores a winning goal on one of the great Soviet teams.

Duceppe would have taken these two great players and ripped a line between them. How would a Team Quebec, or a Team English Canada, have fared against that Soviet squad? How would they fare against any current U.S., Czech, Russian or Swedish team?

Would they win? Sure. Sometimes. But I imagine Duceppe would rather watch a Team Quebec that loses than a Team Canada, even one with its share of Quebecois players, that wins.

Care less, or just careless?



I was looking at some of the online coverage of the Gomery report. There was a piece written by a guy named Jack Aubrey, regarding Jean Chretien's former Chief of Staff, Jean Pelletier. The piece was published in both the Ottawa Citizen and the National Post, both of which are owned by the Asper family's CanWest corporation.

Here's one exerpt from the Citizen (my emphasis added):


"Mr. Pelletier was visibly angry during one interview, saying he had no idea if Prime Minister Paul Martin, who was exonerated by Judge Gomery, knew about the sponsorship program, adding in exasperation that he 'COULDN'T CARE LESS.'"


Here's the same passage, but this time taken from the National Post:


"Mr. Pelletier, who was visibly angry during one interview, said he had no idea if Prime Minister Paul Martin, who was exonerated by Judge Gomery, knew about the sponsorship program, adding he COULD 'CARE LESS.'"



Hmmm. I'm wondering which it is; could M. Pelletier care less, or could he not care less?

Perhaps the Post has hired Jacques Demers as a copy editor.

I've mused about this for a few years now, and I may as well put it on the record...

The Vancouver Canucks always go to the Stanley Cup finals in the Chinese Year of the Dog.

1982, 1994...the next one is 2006.

Every dog has his day.

The name Willingdon Black stems from a ‘band’ I helped devise at the behest of my childhood cohort, Mule Hughes. It was called Huxley, and was meant to bemusedly re-create the glory days of the ‘New Wave of British Heavy Metal,’ which peaked during the early 1980’s.

‘Willingdon’ has the benifit of sounding distinctly British, as well as being the name of that great strech of bland ashpalt that cuts across Burnaby. I grew up a block away from Willingdon Avenue, so that explains that part of the name.

I don’t know where I got the ‘Black’ from, but it’s not exactly original. Paired up with Willingdon it has a certain elegance, but as a rock and roll moniker it’s become much overused.

I’ve often tended to imagine Willingdon Black as a shade of black, like gloss black or flat black. Willindgon Black is a faded sort of black, like the kind you see on an old black t-shirt that has been worn and drained of its pitch. I’d say that suits me, but I still recoil at the rock 'n' roll universality of any name with ‘Black’ in it.

And it’s not just the banality of ‘black’ that irks me. My name is Alexander, but I’ve always been called ‘Alec’ by my parents. When I was very small, I was taught to spell my name ‘A-L-E-X,’ which I like. I’d spell it ‘Alex’ and was called ‘Alec.’

Make sense? Well, maybe not unless you’re Scottish. Once I got to school, my teachers and classmates took my spelling at face value and called me ‘Alecs.’ A lenthy identity crisis ensued, wherein I was often called ‘Alecs’ at school and ‘Alec’ at home.

“You know what I think would be good?” mused my mother when I was still quite young, and after she had just returned from a trip to Britain.

“You should spell your name ‘Alick.’ That’s the Gaelic spelling.”

I tried that for awhile, but the whole thing was starting to get out of control. Now I had three different names. I was a seven year-old kid with a string of aliases.

I ultimately took matters into my own hands and started using ‘A-L-E-C’ as the spelling. “There,” I figured. “That’ll take care of that problem.”

Not.

It seems a lot of people simply won’t recognize ‘Alec.’ It’s the Taiwan of names. When set against the all-powerful and ancient ‘Alex,’ it struggles to hold its own.

“How can that be,” I’ve thought to myself. “Haven’t people heard of the famous Alecs of history? Alec Guiness...Alec Douglas-Home, a.k.a. Lord Home, Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1963-1964...or what about Alec Baldwin, surely these louts have heard of him?”

Just yesterday I got an email from a co-worker. In the email address, which she must have typed in order to send the thing in the first place, my name was listed as ‘Alec.’ Then she goes and starts the message with ‘Hi Alex...’

A girlfriend from a few years back explained things to me.

“I’ll let you in on something, Alechggghhh,” she said, pronouncing my name with a throatful of Gaelic-inspired mucous that mocked the Celtic purist-ness of my position..

“People. Are. STUPID!!!!”

But I hung in there. And I began to see that there were others like me.

Have you ever driven over the Alec Fraser Bridge? Oh I know, it’s officially called the Alex Fraser Bridge. It’s named after a former provincial cabinet minister. I saw an interview with his widow on television once, and she referred to him as ‘Alec.’ Not only that, but so did his colleague, the former Premier Bill Bennett.

‘An Alex who pronounces his name Alec,’ I thought to myself. ‘I’m not alone.’

And then I became aware of Sir Alex Ferguson, the legendary manager of the Manchester United soccer team. I’d be watching Man U. on television, and the announcer would offer up some comment like “...and what must Sir Alec be thinking at this turn of events...”

‘Ha!’ I thought. ‘Another one.’

I became a follower of Man U., monitoring every mention of Sir Alec’s name by the various commentators. Some got it right, some didn’t. Tosome he was ‘Alec,’ to others he was ‘Alecs.’ It was all nicely summed up in a ‘Guardian’ article I read only a few months ago. The headline of the article referred to him as ‘Sir Alec,’ yet in the body of the piece he was labelled ‘Sir Alex.’ Just like an e-mail at work.

What’s all this got to do with ‘Willingdon Black?’ Well, I feel like I’ve had to struggle to get people to get my real name right, so I’ve disinclined to abandon the struggle in favour of a nickname.

Lately, though, I’ve begun to see WB not as a nickname but as a title, kind of like ‘George Gordon, Lord Byron.’ Or perhaps like the Pope, who has a real name, but then adopts a Papal name once ensconced in the Papacy.

Anyway, it’s all going to be a mute point before too long.

Just in case those of you who happen upon this site occasionally may doubt the value of my insight, please note that yesterday (Sept. 30, 2005) the National Post published a lengthy article by heavyweight columnist Andrew Coyne on the state of conservatism in Canada.

You may recall that I touched on the same topic in a piece I posted on June 28th of this year.

Here's what I said:

"To the right in this country we are a nation of defeatist underachievers, unambitious losers and envious sneerers. The thing is, if this is true, no one epitomizes it better than they do."

Here's what Coyne wrote yesterday:

"The right may have little use for self-pity in others, but if there's a culture of defeatism in this country, they've got it in spades."

Here's another point I made:

"I think a key problem is that conservatives in this country have made no effort to capture the patriotic voter market...

"Compare the Canadian right to that in the United States. Republicans are bullishly pro-America. You will never see Democrats outflank Republicans on the matter of patriotism."

...and here's Coyne:

"By leaving open the inevitable question -- who will speak for Canada? -- they have handed the patriot card to the Liberals. As the Democrats' experience south of the border shows, this is fatal to a party's prospects."

Maybe I should send a resume to the Aspers.

I commented a few weeks ago about how I figured the federal Conservatives could benifit from trying to outflank the Liberals when it came to playing the nationalist card and standing up for Canada. Maybe the Tories have been reaching the same conclusion. Stephen Harper's recent comments in Halifax--that we should re-consider our position in the Free Trade Agreement if we could not get the U.S. to abide by its provisions--were a departure from the 'we're always wrong and they're always right' tune we usually get from Conservatives in this country.

Is he just blowing smoke? Maybe. But it's good politics, and likely to prove no more insincere than any position taken by the Liberals, who first denounced the trade deal (John Turner), and then vowed to renegotiate it (Jean Chretien). Instead they've given us what amounts to a Gumby foreign policy; hold your middle finger in Uncle Sam's face while simultaneously bending round to kiss his ass.

__________________

Harper said something else interesting this week in response to a poll showing him trailing Paul Martin in popularity:

"Look, polls will always reflect the views of papers that sponsor them."

Really? I'll keep that in mind next time I see a National Post poll claiming growing support for privatizing health care, or a CanWest poll showing broad public support for Gordon Campbell.

Okay, now for the second in the fancylady.diaryland.com six favorite songs series...

Girls Got Rhythm - AC/DC

I can distinctly remember the first time I heard of AC/DC. It was way back when I was in my teens. I was hanging around with some friends one day, and they told me about some band they had seen on a late night show the previous evening. The band was called AC/DC, and they had this lead guitar player who dressed like an English schoolboy and gyrated like a madman.

“How was the music?” I asked one of my friends.

“It was not bad at all,” he replied.

The idea thrilled me. I was a kid who fell in love with music retroactively; it was not the contemporary music of my youth that first moved me, but the music of the mid 1960s.

I think the rock music of that era remains unsurpassed, but what I also liked about many of the mid-Sixties acts was what they did on stage.

Whether it was The Who’s gear demolition, a dishevelled Rolling Stones grooving behind the the prototypical frontman Jagger, Hendrix’s guitar burning or behind-the-back picking...I loved it all. I even remember seeing an old clip of Paul Revere and the Raiders, those guys who dressed up in Revolutionary War attire and jumped around in military unison, and thinking their act was ingenious (their music was somewhat less inspiring).

There’s something very rock ‘n’ roll about guys who are their own stage shows. It goes right back to the early days, with Chuck Berry’s one-legged jumps across the stage, or Jerry Lee Lewis’ elbow piano playing, or Elvis’ hip swing.

And it didn’t have to be too self-aggrandizng or excessive. In those days, a stage move that was measured, but original, could speak volumes. The Beatles, when performing ‘She Loves You,’ would shake their mop-tops during the falsetto ‘oooo’ parts.

“When The Beatles first showed this to their colleagues on tour,” writes Beatle scholar Ian MacDonald, “it was greeted with hilarity. (John) Lennon, though, insisted that it would work, and was proved correct. Whenever the head-shaking ‘ooo’s came round, the level of the audiences’ delerium would leap.”

I grew up in the era of the light show and the flashpot. But in a way these things let the band off the hook. When you don’t rely on technology, your act works as well in front of 20 people as it does in front of 20 000. To me, AC/DC, centred as they were around Angus Young’s schoolboy character, seemed to be reclaiming an early rock ‘n’ roll legacy.

The first song of theirs that I heard was ‘Highway to Hell.’ It was okay--it’s now an anthem to some--but it didn’t move me as I had hoped. Nonetheless, a local radio station decided to preview the entire ‘Highway to Hell’ album, and I listened in, wondering if I’d like the rest of the record any better.

My question was answered when the disk’s second track came on.

The addictive riff, the infectious drum groove, the British Invasion-style call/answer choruses, the lead vocals that emphasized mid-Sixties, bluesy phrasing over melody, all AC/DC hallmarks, were all vividly on display in ‘Girls Got Rhythm.’

You can easily imagine this song being screamed out by Eric Burdon and the Animals, or Van Morrison and Them, sometime around 1965. The amps would be Vox instead of Marshall, the sound a little rawer and more reverb-soaked, but it’s fundamentally a mid-Sixties kind of tune.

Was it a couple of years ago already that they held that SARS concert in Toronto...to revive tourism there? I remember the CBC’s Jian Ghomeshi admitting, almost as a reluctant revelation, that AC/DC’s performance was awesome.

Well, duh. In a sense, AC/DC are everything that the hipster crowd wants; a stripped down, unpretentious, self-deprecating outfit that draws its inspiration from the unsullied, early days of rock ‘n’ roll. That it has taken the alt-rock intelligensia so long to figure this out says something in itself.

AC/DC followed ‘Highway to Hell’ with the monster ‘Back in Black.’

"It's time to recognize," said columnist and blogger Colby Cosh recently, "that 'Back in Black' has transcended its genre and time."

By genre I assume he means heavy metal, but that’s a pretty unsuitable and shallow label for AC/DC’s sound. As for transcending their time, I’d say their music does so inherently (not to mention their attire; Young’s schoolboy suit never goes out of fashion, nor does the jeans/t-shirt combo favoured by the rest of the band. Gilligan and the Skipper change their look more often).

I think all the ingredients that keep the band from falling into some ghetto of genre or era are nicely summed up in ‘Girls Got Rhythm.’ As they once put it themselves:

“Rock ‘n’ Roll is just Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

I’ve noticed that there's a marked intolerance among the right-wing punditry of any criticism aimed at the Bush administration regarding its handling of the relief effort for Hurricane Katrina.

Criticism of Bush is instantly labelled as ‘politicizing’ a tragic situation; anyone voicing such criticism is denounced as a crass opportunist.

This rule applies only to a degree, however. If there’s a chance to score points in favour of the right, then the aftermath of Katrina is fair game.

Even then, some of the points being scored strike me as a bit dubious.

Check out, for example, Canadian conservative pundit Mark Steyn’s analysis of one of the factors contributing to the worsening of Katrina’s impact, courtesy of radioblogger.com...

“The people who had reviled SUV's, that the environmental (movement) want to get rid of and want to ban, they were able to drive away from the city. The people who were dependent on public transit, and did what the government did, and went into this appalling situation in the Superdome, they're the ones that have been failed by their governments.”

Ah, so that’s whose to blame. All those damned environmentalists.

Did it not even occur to Steyn that the people left in New Orleans immediately following the hurricane's landfall were there because they can't afford an SUV, or any other type of vehicle for that matter? Or does being an apologist for Bush mean adopting a Soviet-like denial of any reality that doesn't square with the party line?

Of course Steyn is the same guy who used the murder of Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh in a Stockholm department store a couple of years ago--specifically the failure of bystanders to apprehend her murderer--as an opportunity to conclude that socialistic policies had led to a ‘culture of passivity’ in Sweden.

Such is the life of the polemicist. It must be a pretty tedious business trying to wring whatever drops of dogma you can out of every miserable event that unfolds.

Well, I managed to slip away on a hot summer weekend to my island retreat. I came home late on Sunday night, and as I drove past a ferry lineup that extended way outside the terminal, a good five or six blocks back toward Nanaimo from Departure Bay, I was congratulating myself on having the wisdom to have booked a scarce reservation on the last ferry home.

Or was it the last ferry? I have little doubt that the Ferry Corp. added an unscheduled sailing or two in order to avoid a mass riot.

On the supper hour news today, the Vancouver Island channel made the ferry lineups its lead story. Noting that ferries on the Horseshoe Bay/Departure Bay route run about every two hours, the reporter made some pointed comments about lengthy wait times for passengers without reservations at these terminals.

BC Ferry President David Hahn was interviewed in the piece, and he contrasted the wait times on the up-island route to the Victoria/Tsawassen trip, where the ferries run every hour. The result was that travellers on the southern route had a better, "more predictable" travel experience. The reason for this was simply that more ferries were placed on the Victoria run.

"If you have no spare ships," Mr. Hahn said, "I don't see how you can solve the problems at Horseshoe Bay or Departure Bay."

Good point. If only they had a couple of spare ships.

Look. This is getting ridiculous. The guy hand-picked by the provincial government to run its ferry fleet gets on T.V. and admits he could use a couple of extra boats. He had them; the government sold them for peanuts about two years ago. We all know the Fast Cats were a bad idea, but surely we can all acknowledge by now that selling them for a song at a time when the fleet is stretched thin was an utterly idiotic move. Would they have fetched that much less in a few years time, once a couple of more conventional replacements had arrived?

Try asking some guy sitting five blocks outside of Departure Bay at 10:00 on a Sunday night whether he'd rather have his share of $3 million (ie. 75 cents), or a ride home.

I'd like to see a local reporter ask that question. I know I never will.

I was tagged by Fancylady (fancylady.diaryland.com) a couple of months ago as part of a web-wide declare-your-top-six-favorite-songs-campaign (why six?).

I’m going with six tunes that I think are especially cool. They’re not necessarily songs that I think are emprically excellent, just songs that have continued to strike a chord with me over a long period of time.

The problem is, I decided to write little blurbs about each tune. And of course the blurbs turned into essays. I realize this is absurd, but some guy recently released an acclaimed and lengthy book about the writing and recording of Dylan’s ‘Like a Rolling Stone,’ so I don’t think I’m going too far overboard.

Anyway, here’s my list, to be posted of the next few weeks in serial format. The songs are in no particular order of preference.

----------------------------------------------------------

Under My Thumb - The Rolling Stones

“A work of art...with regrettably mysoginist lyrics.” - Camille Paglia

Let’s start with the music. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are generally seen as the core of the Stones, yet at their best the band got a lot of input from what was sometimes a fairly large inner circle of musicians. This is a Jagger/Richards song, and a solid one, but the unsung heroes of the tune are Stones’ bassist Bill Wyman and rhythm guitarist/jack-of-all-instruments Brian Jones.

‘Under My Thumb’ uses a descending chord progression that has become fairly stock in rock music. You hear it, for example, backing the guitar solo in Stairway to Heaven, and the Stones themselves used a variation of in ‘Gimme Shelter.’ But in 1966, it was fresh.

What puts the number over the top is the ascending marimba riff that Jones lays down over the progression, and which is nicely countered by a groovy, curling bass riff by Wyman. It’s a neat song, resolving itself effectively in the chorus, but without these flourishes it would likely be a little more dated, a little less transcendent.

It’s notable that neither Jones nor Wyman got any writing credits for the tune. Today the contributions of the various members would be neatly documented, according to percentage of input, and royalties would be doled out accordingly. At the time, though, it was Jagger/Richards (just like Lennon/McCartney), and that was that.

Given how such songwriting contributions went unrewarded and unacknowledged in the Stones, one can perhaps see a potential partial explanation as to why the self-destructive Jones ended up going off the edge, and why the more stolid Wyman opted to become a time-card punching pseudo-employee, hanging in with the firm until the huge payoffs of the 1980’s and 1990’s tours set him up well enough to retire.

It’s also worth noting, in an age when a song is simply disregarded by industry gatekeepers unless it is hammered into a smooth piece of digitalia, that there are a number of flaws in the execution of the tune. For one thing, it speeds up noticeably at the end. This alone would be enough to get it banished from any radio airplay nowadays. There’s also a tuning problem in Keith Richards’ guitar solo. The song is a great document of a time when tunes were recorded quickly, almost as they were written, with any attendant flaws rendered insignificant next to the palpable vigour and freshness of the work.

As for the lyrics, sometimes some vitriol can give a piece of writing an added bit of fire. A case could be made that it’s because of the words, not in spite of them, that this song endures. I also think that the words to ‘Under My Thumb’ should be looked at within the context of Mick Jagger’s rise to fame.

In the mid-1960’s, the Stones went from a mid-level British Invasion act to the biggest badasses in rock in the span of about 18 months. In 1964, they were not only well back of the Beatles, but were also getting less chart notice than the likes of the Animals, the Kinks, Herman’s Hermits and the Dave Clark Five. But they struck big with 1965’s ‘Satisfaction,’ and from then on surged to the front of the pack on a string of hits.

During this time, Jagger was transformed from a rather odd-looking second fiddle to Brian Jones to a voice-of-a-generation prophet on parr with Bob Dylan and John Lennon.

Or go back a few years more. Try to image Jagger in his late teens. A goofy-looking young man from a bland English family, readying himself for some future white-collar position by enrolling in the London School of Economics. Not a particularly alluring prospect from a female perspective.

Five years on and he’s got the exquisite Marianne Faithfull at his side and all of groupiedom his feet. Brimming with bitterness and contempt, ‘Under My Thumb’ is a massive piece of hubris.

The ugly kid had triumphed.

"I have a short film I've been working on for five years, and if I rush I can have it done by Thursday night."

A quote that rings a bit close to home, from a character on 'Gilmore Girls.'

Jeez. Looks like the Queen of Oak Bay might be out of commission for a while. Too bad the BC Ferry Corp doesn't have a spare ship or two that they can throw into action in the meantime....

“You’ve got a problem. The problem is you.”

Johnny Rotton.


The failure of Stephen Harper to capitalize on the woes of the federal Liberal party seems to have conservatives in this country in a conniption fit. Their general consensus, based on perusing various opinion columns and websites, is ‘blame Canada.’

We live, apparently, in a ‘decayed’ ‘one-party state.’ To listen to the political right, the failure of Canadians to rise en masse against the Liberal party is a sign of some kind of collective character flaw, a symptom of a passive, sheep-like citizenry with a North Korean-style tolerance for subjection.

Well, first of all, the closest jurisdiction we have to a one party state in this country is Alberta. They last changed governing parties in 1969. And the last time before that was 1935. If seems that if we’re talking about a right-leaning one party state, there’s no problem.

But let’s put that aside. Why is it that Canada leans, at the federal level, to the Liberal Party? One thing that doesn’t seem to have occurred to the political right is that they are the problem; if there’s one bunch you can blame for Liberal supremacy in Canada, it’s our conservatives.

Look at the last 20 years. Brian Mulroney rose to power in 1984 by building an alliance between western conservatives, Ontario business types, and Ottawa-suspicious Quebeckers. As soon as he got into power, the sulking started, led by Preston Manning. You see the same thing on the political left as well. The hard-liners and interest groups don’t get a top-to-bottom transformation of society in six months so they go into a snit. Parties, or movements, that are interested in holding power generally exhibit some patience and discipline, and an ability to keep broad alliances intact.

No doubt the Progressive Conservatives would have been defeated in 1993 without Manning’s Reform splinter; a lot of pent-up animosity had developed, and Lucien Bouchard’s Nigel Tufnel act didn’t help. But Chretien’s rise to power was way easier than it should have been. He faced a fractured opponent for the duration of his Prime Ministership. (Mulroney, who hand-picked the betraying Bouchard, was also a key backer of Belinda Stronach. What a great judge of character. How did this guy, with his unerring ability to back the wrong horse, not end up scouting for the Vancouver Canucks in the 1970’s?)

Chretien was blessed with ten years of right-wing bitching and bickering. The PCs elected Joe Clark leader, a move similar to Harold Ballard bringing back the ancient Punch Imlach to shore up the Toronto Maple Leafs’ fortunes in the 1980s.

Except that Imlach had actually once been a winner.

The Reform Party, meanwhile, put jet-skier Stockwell Day at the helm, at which point a key segment of the Reform caucus bolted in exasperation.

And somehow the rest of us are to blame for this?

The federal Liberals are a tough team to beat. They’re like the Manchester United of Canadian politics. Meanwhile, our conservatives are like some banana republic national soccer team; gesticulating hysterically at each other every time they let in a goal, running out the bulk of their games in a dysfunctional funk.

I think a key problem is that conservatives in this country have made no effort to capture the patriotic voter market the way conservatives in other countries have. “Try looking, and acting, as if you like the place,” wrote former Chretien aid Warren Kinsella in a recent National Post column directed at Harper, “and Canadians will let you run it.”

Compare the Canadian right to that in the United States. Republicans are bullishly pro-America. You will never see Democrats outflank Republicans on the matter of patriotism. Whether it’s defending America from communists, terrorists, or Canadian pharmacists, the Republicans are the ones for the job.

American conservatives will tell you that Democrats are dragged down by the likes of allies like Michael Moore, who comes across to some as not liking his own country. I think they’re onto something; moreover, I’d say the same is true in Canada, where right-wing commentators constantly crap on their own nation.

This country essentially exists because British Loyalists came north rather than join the thirteen colonies in revolution. It was a conservative statement. Yet it’s also a rejection of the American path. Conservatives could accept this.

They could, in fact, claim it as a Conservative legacy, like John A. MacDonald’s railroad. After all MacDonald pushed the rairoad through because he was worried about the western territorial ambitions of America. Is it a coincidence that he remains, after some 120 years, the most successful Conservative politician the country has ever had?

This doesn’t mean the Canadian right needs to start striking anti-American poses. They like the U.S., and that’s fine. So do I. But don't you need to like your own country more? Otherwise, why stay? They could adopt that great line of my friend Smash: “we’re both right, just in different ways.” They could steal some Liberal thunder by playing the worn out Canadian identity card to their advantage.

But they don’t like the phrase...’Canadian identity.’ Too C.B.C....too Toronto Star....too Pierre Trudeau... And ‘Canadian values?’ The mere words will earn you a chorus of contempt from the National Post editorial board.

The conservative view of Canada seems one of embarrassment. To the right in this country we are a nation of defeatist underachievers, unambitious losers and envious sneerers.

The thing is, if this is true, no one epitomizes it better than they do.

I was coming back from Vancouver Island this weekend, expecting an easy trip, but was thrown a curve by the fact that BC Ferries had a couple of ships unexpectedly out of service.

I was able to minimize the hassle by racing from Departure Bay over to the unknown-to-ferry-neophytes terminal at Duke Point. Nonetheless, I can't help thinking that the Ferry Corp could have retained a few cards up it’s sleeve for these sorts of circumstances.

I'm referring specifically to the Fast Cat ferries.

Yes I know, they didn't work that well. They made big waves, they didn't carry large freight, and sometimes logs got stuck in their intake...whatever the hell it was. I've been on them a few times and was never a huge fan.

Nonetheless, considering the pittance they fetched when actioned off, would it not have made sense to keep one or two of them on hand as a backup, at least until the new wave of German uber-barges arrives?

In fact, for a time a few years ago the Ferry Corp was doing exactly that--quietly, of course--until the BC Liberals stopped them and hawked the ships.

Let me use an analogy.

I play the electric guitar. Let's say I'm looking for a new amplifier. I get one custom made. It's supposed to cost $2000, but ends up costing $4000. I'm steamed by this, but am looking forward to the amp nonetheless. It's powerful, but you can switch wattages between 12 different tube combinations. It's not hard to carry, as it floats above the ground like a hovercraft, controlled by a small remote that fits in the palm of your hand. And it has a built in wah-wah feature that alters the signal in accordance with your facial expression.

Finally I get the thing, and I'm disappointed. The tube combinations only work with hard-to-find Albanian valves, and the face-wah feature requires Jim Carrey-like contortions that my stoic visage is not capable of. Not only that, but the hovercraft component is useless on stairs, and I end up carrying it most of the time anyway.

"To hell with this," I think. I try to sell the amp, thinking I’ll just stick with my old one, but the best offer I get is $50.

What do I do? Sell it for $50, or keep it around as a spare? After all, it's not all it’s supposed to be, but it’s still useable. It amplifies sound. And my other amp is an ageing tube combo which, though it is a decent workhorse, could cause problems at any time.

Doesn't the same logic work with the Fast Cats?

Now, I realize that if you posited this query to the current government you'd get a response something like this:

"We feel the service-to-use ratio is such that any functionality derived from employing the Fast Cat ferries on an as-needed basis would be offset by demands on payroll, disproportionate activation costs, as well as the requisite imposition on available moorage facilities. Further, a study conducted for BC Ferries by the consulting firm of Sycophant and Suckage found that the average wait time for BC Ferry customers during periods of aggressive non-availabilty totals 5.2 hours per person per month when spread across the British Columbian population, which falls within acceptable parameters according to comparisons with similarly configured ferry fleets operating in Madagascar, New Guinea and Sri Lanka.”

Translation:

"We used this issue to hammer the crap out of the New Democratic Party in the last election, and we frankly feel that we'd like to keep it in reserve for use in future election rhetoric. In fact we intend to wring more mileage, politically speaking, out of the Fast Cat ferries than an impoverished WASP spinster gets out of a premium tea bag. As a result, any effort, no matter how modest, to rehabilitate the image of these vessels is contrary to our partisan agenda and thus completely unacceptable."

There are some payoffs to this situation. The more difficult it is to get to the island, the fewer miscreants I have to put up over in paradise. The problem is, this kind of disfunctionality may lead to the nightmare scenario, in which an engineering consortium with the inevitable close ties to the provincial government gets a contract to build a bridge.

I can see the future article in the Vancouver Sun:

“Although the fixed link to Vancouver Island has gone over budget by a mere 285 trillion dollars (USD), we feel that this will prove negligible when set against the stimilus it will provide to the provincial economy,” said Premier Carole Taylor, still looking lithe and sexy at age 97.

“We feel that this will usher in a new era of hope and prosperity for the Province of British Columbia.”



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About ten years ago, Vancouver civic planners decided to allow developers to turn a small, industrial sector of the city called 'Brewery Creek' into a enclave for artists. It would be similar to what had been started in a number of American cities. Down went the sheet metal shops and garages, and up went four and five story concrete apartments, full of open floor-plan lofts.

To ensure that artists lived there, a bylaw was passed. Seventy percent of the floor area in each unit had to be for work purposes. Only 30 percent could be used as living space. And by 'work,' the City meant something creative. A list of suitably artistic occupations was drawn up by City planners, and hammered Moses-like into the Zoning and Development By-law.

Now, the only artist I have ever know who had 70/30 work/live split in his pad was the drummer in a band I was in when I was a teenager. We used to practice in his bedroom. He had enough room for a bed and a dresser, the rest was full of amplifiers and drums.

Most of the time, though, it's a bit difficult to achieve that kind of neat demarcation in one room. Do you draw a line across the floor, splitting the 'live' from the 'work' area? Do you measure the cumulative total floor area of 'living' features, like televisions or kitchen tables, ensuring that they never exceed 30% of the total space?

And who enforces all of this anyway? Can you picture groups of inspectors bursting through the doors, demanding to see works of art? Demanding to know whether that kitschy coffee table is a product of your creative imagination, or merely something you picked up at a rummage sale to put beverages on?

So it didn't quite pan out. Brewery Creek today is certainly a funky little area, inhabited by people who (unlike many artists) are affluent enough to afford property, prefer a stylish and unique space, and who lean toward the creative side. People like the ones you'll find in most urban planning departments.

But is it any more artistic than any other neighbourhood? Generally artists come in all shapes and sizes, and don't necessarily confine themselves to chic enclaves.

The closest thing to an artsy neighbourhood that I've ever lived in was the suburban one I grew up in. With a ratio of about three wanna-be rock stars per block over about one square kilometer, it was like a punk/metal version of New Orleans' French Quarter circa 1900.

"Ah, but it's different," you say. "Artists need to be free of repression and confining norms. They need an environment that is open-minded and allows them to flourish. You didn't have that in suburbia."

Actually, I did. You could hear our band all the way up the block and no one complained once. New Year's Eve could be particularly raucous, but the folks in our neighbourhood took it in stride.

I was thinking of this just last New Year's Eve. I was at a party in a loft building in Brewery Creek. There was live music; jazzy, well-played, not especially loud, happening in the building's common room. Just after midnight, a guy called down and asked that the music stop. He was the strata president.

It was too late, he said, noting the time. We were in violation of strata bylaws.

I figure every neighbourhood is potentially full of artists, whether or not it’s
been designated as such by the trendy or the bureaucratic. And the artier neighbourhoods are not necessarily free of suburban-style constraints.

I think Bjork puts in nicely: 'In all the bedrooms all around the world, there are people so busy doing so many things...

‘I stopped walking past houses thinking, "Oh this is just a place where people are couch potatoes and lead mundane lives".'



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