Local Mega-Bookstore

"The Local Authors" table at the Square One Mississauga Chapters/Indgo Mega-Bookstore
[Photo By: KPA]

My neighborhood mega-bookstore, the Square One Chapters/Indigo, is now displaying the beginnings of its Fall collection. It has various tables set up with specialized themes. One that intrigued me was the "Local Authors" table, and after I did a brief tour of the store, I settled down to studying the table's displays. Perhaps I can find something to buy toward my collection of fast-growing books, to which I add every couple of months.

The running theme in all these "Local Authors" (seven of whom I have profiled below) is that they are all "from somewhere else," literally, psychologically, psychically, or in any other way to enhance their stories. And each uses Mississauga, or a nearby suburb, as a springboard to accentuate this "somewhere elseness." Most of these "somewhere elses" are Third World countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. But some are right here in Canada, in ethnic ghettos from Toronto to Mississauga to Montreal.

Camilla Gibb, one of two white writers in the list that I've put together below (two out of seven is a very low odd, for a country which is still majority white), may not have been born in the Third World, but she is certainly "foreign-born" and her "somewhere else" is England. As she states in the interview below, "I find resonance in stories of upheaval and dislocation. I find myself in them." Even though she came as a young girl from England, and even though Canada has strong cultural and historical affiliation with Britain, and even though there is a large body of Britons in Canada, especially in Toronto where she settled, she still managed to find "upheaval and dislocation" with this move.

The fascinating information I found about her is that she is a lesbian, whose "wife" (yes, they were "married") left her while Gibb was ten months "pregnant." So, her "somewhere else" is truly a psychic displacement, where she doesn't belong anywhere, even in those African villages where she briefly lived as an anthropology doctoral student, villages who would have no sympathy at all for her lesbianism, and about which she wrote her first book Sweetness in the Belly.

Her book Sweetness in the Belly is set in the Muslim region of Ethiopia, a country which is predominantly Christian. Why did she chose this outpost as the center of her tale? She has a spiritually rebellious reason for this choice. The novel's main character Lilly, who is clearly some form of autobiographical representation of Gibb

...has anything but a stable childhood. The daughter of English/Irish hippies, she was "born in Yugoslavia, breast-fed in the Ukraine, weaned in Corsica, freed from nappies in Sicily and walking by the time [they] got to the Algarve..." The family's nomadic adventure ends in Tangier when Lilly's parents are killed in a drug deal gone awry. Orphaned at eight, Lilly is left in the care of a Sufi sheikh, who shows her the way of Islam through the Qur'an. When political turmoil erupts, Lilly, now sixteen, is sent to the ancient walled city of Harar, Ethiopia, where she stays in a dirt-floored compound with an impoverished widow named Nouria and her four children.

In Harar, Lilly earns her keep by helping with the household chores and teaching local children the Qur'an. Ignoring the cries of "farenji" (foreigner), she slowly begins to put down roots, learning the language and immersing herself in a culture rich in customs and rituals and lush with glittering bright headscarves, the chorus of muezzins and the scent of incense and coffee[Source].

Was it the glittering headscarves the women in Harar wore which tugged at Gibb's/Lilly's heart? Was it the exotic of scent of incense and coffee? It is more basic, more fundamental, than that. "I was not always a Muslim," says Lilly, "but once I was led into the absorption of prayer and the mysteries of the Qur’an, something troubled in me became still [Source]."

Gibb/Lilly is no different from the hundreds of white European Western women who find this stillness through Islam. Their own cultures had failed them spiritually, destroying or demeaning Christianity. Lilly filled this abyss with Allah.

Gibb never defines her religious affiliations, despite her overt sympathy for Islam. Rather, she seems to fill her spiritual void, as this Toronto Star article states, "by the mentally salubrious effects of companionship." Hence her incessant search for "community."

Although Sweetness in the Belly is not a particularly outstanding book (I have read several of the beginning chapters), I'm sure Gibb's personal story is much more interesting. It would provide an intriguing lens into the lives of modern (postmodern) white women who hate their own cultures and try to find salvation in other remote and exotic ones.

For that reason alone, Gibb's book and background is the most interesting of the lot, which induced my long analysis of her and her world.

Liz Worth is another such prime example in my list of a white woman who once again uses a counter (or anti) cultural affiliation to guide her story-telling style, and whose book (this time a non-fiction book about punk rock) tells us more about her inner workings than would have a straight autobiography. Worth's punk rock cultural focus is a masochistic, sadistic, misogynistic culture, and was no haven for women. When asked why she chose Treat me Like Dirt as the main title for her book she gave a roundabout answer with nothing left for us but to psychoanalyze:

I was thinking ‘yeah, treat me like dirt - what a great title.’It's provocative and defiant, and captures a lot of the sentiment in the book. [Source]

But is it provocative and defiant to say over and over again, as do the lyrics to the song Bullet Proof Nothing by the Toronto "proto-punk" band Simply Saucer?

Treat me like dirt, drive me insane,
Treat me like dirt now, tear out my brain,
Treat me like dirt, I'm losin' my mind,
I said treat me like dirt now, cause you're so fine.

Simply Saucer
"Bullet Proof Nothing"

Perhaps Worth also likes this song (these lyrics) because of the mild pleasant melody that connects the words to song. They don't mean "treat me like dirt, surely. They mean "love me!!!" Simply Saucer is a male group (at least the singer is male). It is a woman he is singing to, which in the world of competitive men, the worse a woman treats a man (in the dance of courtship) the more interested in her the man gets. But how badly can she treat him, other than to ignore him or not answer his text messages? And how seriously will she take his treatment with that bouncy melody?

But men treat women differently than do women men. Treating a woman like dirt is a serious activity. It could lead to physical or verbal, injuries, or even death.

And such is the thought process of women who think abuse (physical injury?) has something to do with love.

Treat Me Like Dirt is about the ultimate fringe of society: The violent, abrasive, loud subculture which deliberately aims to be on the outside of white civilized society, forever with a chip on its shoulder. Anything that would find fault with (or even hate) this white civilized society is welcomed.

All these writers have no desire, interest, or a sense of obligation to make Canada the main "character" in their books, using it merely as a springboard to travel back into their psyches and memories to those lands they abandoned in search of greener pastures. They rushed eagerly into the haven of Canada's towns and cities, escaping whatever financial, political or psychological woes they have suffered. But, once safely here, they show no (or little) thanks for the country that opened its hands out and helped them at their time of trouble. In fact, they persistently and continuously demonize it, as though it should have given them more, and more and more. Their dissatisfaction becomes a raging anger (however quietly some may express it), which is woven into their stories.
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List of books



List of books from the image above:

1 Could You Please, Please Stop Singing
By: Sabyasachi Nag

In Could You Please, Please Stop Singing?, Sabyasachi (Sachi) Nag takes a step away from skepticism, blending humour with shock and surprise, seeking a return to childhood in “Mamuda’s Fries,” innocence in “Conversations with the Country Activist” and fractals for the future in the yet to be invented “Seedless Avocado.” In attempting what Tomas Transromer calls “walking through walls,” Nag hurts and sickens himself with awe and rage. The title poem “Could You Please, Please Stop Singing?” purposely evokes the famous Hemingway line from Men Without Women and is central to the overall tonality of this collection, that straddles a path alternately mocking and dead serious, and that occasionally yields to contrary pulls between the banal and the sublime.

Sabyasachi Nag...lives in Mississauga with his wife and son. Nag immigrated to Canada from Calcutta, where he was born, and many of the poems in this collection are about this city.[Source]

2 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl
By: Mona Awad

Born to an Egyptian father and French-Canadian mother, Awad grew up in Montreal with a high school stint in Mississauga (or as dubbed in 13, “Misery Saga”). In a predominantly white, protestant school, being an Arab was rare enough. Yet with her mixed heritage, ambiguity made her “an outsider even to outsiders”. Neither fully here nor there, Awad finds respite in the broader identification of ‘Canadian’. Awad affirms that this does not erase the influence of her parents’ culture upon her own identity, but rather allows for its greater complexity.

13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, in the simplest of terms, is about a woman’s body and self. Awad traverses into a thorny landscape of weight anxiety and desire, illustrating it through the particular nature of key relationships - to other bodies, to female friends, to mothers, lovers, clothing, and food. [Source]

3 Weather Permitting and Other Stories
By: Pratap Reddy

Indian-born author Pratap Reddy captures the immigrant experience, highlighting all the rewards and frustrations facing a newly arrived immigrant to Canada, in his new book entitled Weather Permitting and Other Stories.

According to Mississauga-based Reddy, “It was all the new and unexpected challenges I had to face as an immigrant, which both stimulated and inspired me to write these stories. The publication of the book is truly a dream come true, however clichéd as it may sound. Im happy and excited about my first book, a collection of stories woven around fictional characters who are new to Canada[Source].

4 Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond, 1977–1981
By: Liz Worth

Full of chaos, betrayal, failure, success, and pure rock 'n' roll energy, this layered history is assembled from interviews with those now recognized as innovators, pioneers, and outright legends in their genre. Their accounts go beyond run-of-the-mill anecdotes, venturing into the uncharted territory of sex, drugs, murder, conspiracy, violence, criminals, and biker gangs. Bold and brazen, this compilation also includes a wealth of previously unpublished photographs as well as one of the last interviews with the late Frankie Venom, lead singer of Teenage Head [Source].

Worth herself has contributed to this "noise art" as a performance artist with the duo Salt Circle:
Her website describes Salt Circle:

Salt Circle (feat. Sam Cooper/Liz Worth) is an experiment in frenetic spoken word and haunted, broken sound. Channelling dreams and ethereal invocations, this Toronto duo creates occultish noise and approachable weirdo art that connects poetry, rituals, and hypnotic structures.

Vulgar Ritual
By: Salt Circle

5 Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac
By: Anna Yin

In her newest poetry collection, Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac, Yin brilliantly takes the reader through the seasons of the zodiac year by intertwining Eastern and Western images. She alludes to Sylvia Plath, Margaret Atwood, and Dante—Western poets that influenced her own work—and incorporates them into pieces inspired by traditional Chinese poetry. The blending of the two worlds is congruent with the immigrant identity she explores in “Accent,” where the negotiation of two cultures should not result in one overtaking the other—like yin and yang, both exist in harmony[Source].

Anna Yin was born in China and immigrated to Canada in 1999. She has authored five poetry books, including Wings Toward Sunlight (2011) and Inhaling the Silence (2013) and Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac (2015). Anna has won a number of poetry awards, including the 2005 Ted Plantos Memorial Award, the 2010/2014 MARTY Literary Arts Awards and a 2013 CPAC Professional Achievement Award. Her poems in English & Chinese and ten translations by her were in a Canadian Studies textbook used by Humber College. Anna has been interviewed by CBC Radio, Rogers TV , CCTV and TalentVisionTV etc . Her poem “Still Life” was displayed across Canada for the Poetry In Transit project in 2013/2014. Anna was a “Living book” for the Living Library at the Mississauga Campus of University of Toronto. Anna is Mississauga’s First Poet Laureate (2015-2017) and Ontario representative to the League of Canadian Poets (2013-2016). Her “Poetry Alive” events and workshops are welcomed at schools, colleges and libraries, especially for the Poets in Schools Program. Anna holds a B.Sc. degree from Nanjing University and a Creative Writing Certificate from the University of Toronto. She lives and works in Mississauga, Ontario [Source]

I recently posted (or re-posted) on Anna Yin's accent and my take on her "immigrant" experience here, but I don't think she will be ready any time soon to loose her accent, or her immigrant experience.

I wrote about Yin's accent and her migrant experience here and here.

6 This is Happy
By: Camilla Gibb

In 2012, while eight weeks pregnant with her first child, Camilla Gibb was faced with devastating news: her spouse of more than 10 years announced she had fallen out of love and was leaving their relationship. In her new memoir, This Is Happy, Gibb reflects on rebuilding her life as a single mother and creating a new ad-hoc family for herself and her baby. Gibb, who holds a PhD in social anthropology from Oxford, and is author of the novels The Beauty of Humanity Movement and Sweetness in the Belly, says her unexpected situation made her realize her life had become “unrecognizable,” and forced her to face “urgent and imperative” questions about herself.

Interviewer: Your work has focused on the idea of the outsider, on belonging and identity. Why?
Gibb: I’ve thought a lot about this question over the years, and given myself, and others, various answers to it. But the truth is, I think it’s constitutional. I find resonance in stories of upheaval and dislocation. I find myself in them [Source].

7 Struggles of a Dreamer: The Battle Between a Dream and Tradition
By: Yahaya Baruwa

In Struggles of a Dreamer: The Battle between a Dream and Tradition, the stories of Tunde, a beggar on the streets of New York City, and Toku'te, the son of a farmer in a faraway land, are woven together in a charming tale full of intriguing characters and adventure. You will encounter the struggles of a dreamer as he faces the challenges of the limiting boundaries of his tradition. You will laugh, cry, experience romance, be frightened, and be held in suspense as you find out how Toku'te manages to remain afloat in a world that requires everyone to fit the same mold[Source].

Yahaya is a Nigerian-Canadian Author and Entrepreneur who was born and raised in Kano city, Nigeria till the age of 13. He migrated to Canada with his family of ten in March of 2001 to pursue greater academic and career opportunities. Upon arrival to Canada, Yahaya resided in both Flemingdon Park and Regent Park for the first three years in Canada; however he now lives in Scarborough, Ontario with his family [Source].

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Some of these books (or recordings) are online and here are excerpts from a couple:

13 Ways of Looking Fat
Mona Awad

Growing up in the suburban hell of Misery Saga (a.k.a. Mississauga), Lizzie has never liked the way she looks—even though her best friend Mel says she’s the pretty one. She starts dating guys online, but she’s afraid to send pictures, even when her skinny friend China does her makeup: she knows no one would want her if they could really see her. So she starts to lose. With punishing drive, she counts almonds consumed, miles logged, pounds dropped. She fights her way into coveted dresses. She grows up and gets thin, navigating double-edged validation from her mother, her friends, her husband, her reflection in the mirror. But no matter how much she loses, will she ever see herself as anything other than a fat girl?

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Liz Worth
Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond, 1977–1981
Sound recording of "performance art" by Worth

Vulgar Ritual Salt Circle

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Sweetness in the Belly
Camilla Gibb

Prologue
Harar, Ethiopia

The sun makes its orange way east from Arabia, over a Red Sea, across volcanic fields and desert and over the black hills to the qat- and coffee-shrubbed land of the fertile valley that surrounds our walled city. Night departs on the heels of the hyenas: they hear the sun’s approach as a hostile ringing, perceptible only to their ears, and it drives them back, bloody lipped and panic stricken, to their caves.

In darkness they have feasted on the city’s broken streets: devouring lame dogs in alleyways and licking eggshells and entrails off the ground. The people of the city cannot afford to waste their food, but nor can they neglect to feed the hyenas either. To let them go hungry is to forfeit their role as people on this wild earth, and strain the already tenuous ties that bind God’s creatures.

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Anna Yin reciting In Flanders Fields for Remembrance Day celebrations in Mississauga
November 16, 2015

[Photo By: KPA

Orthospherian Re-Welcome, the Austerian School, and a Website Meant to be Read

Jonah and the Whale
Image from the Touchstone 2017 Calendar

The writers and commentators at The Orthosphere have been giving us their unique and important views on the state of the world for a few years now. I have occasionally commented on their posts and they have a link to Reclaiming Beauty on their website.

I recently commented on their post: The Ultimate Target of Diversity In the latest issue of Touchstone, SM Hutchens identifies the ultimate target of the Social Justice Warriors

My comment was in response to Bruce's thoughts:

Bruce:

Hutchens is terrific (he was kind enough to correspond with me many years ago about an article he wrote on theology). Even so I don’t think your conclusion is correct. They hate us because in the current narrative we “victimized” them.

KPA:

Yes, of course, it is the “humiliation” of the “colonized.” The colonizer is evil. He showed them their weakness, and dared to find the solution by his way, his method, his culture his (the) civilization. It isn’t just the regular victimized (oppressed) who hate the White Man, it is everyone who isn’t white.These days, the Chinese – mainland and “westernized,” who one would have thought would be allies of this White Man – are viciously attacking this white man because he has shown them that he is better than them.

Hutchens has beautifully, and with great insight, shown us the link between spirituality (Christianity) and hatred of any who follow or attempt to follow perfection through Jesus’ perfection. A perfect housewife is hated. Rather a woman leave her home and lives as a masculine in a masculine world. A perfect artist is hated (look at the abomination of perfection in art these days where artists have finally shown clearly that they are following the devil’s direction). A perfect man is hated where young boys and men are being pulled into homosexuality or effeminate ways and made to hate this man. And so on.

Our enemies have now been emboldened into telling us that truth that our battle is a spiritual one. That is because they appear to be winning. But who is more conceited than the devil? Of course it is still, and always, God’s world.

And a little further down.

Thomas F. Bertonneau:

Let me be the first to welcome Kidist to our conversation.

P.S. – Kidist is a kind of “neighbor” of mine, being a Torontonian, sight of whom the curvature of the Earth only just prevents an Oswegonian from seeing directly. But I sense her like-mindedness from across the lake…

Kristor:

And let me be the second. It’s good to have you here, Kidist.

Kidist Paulos Asrat:

Thank you, dear friends for your kind (re)welcome. I am still very active (whether online or off) as a champion of western civilization and “beauty” and just received a new role – promoter of the Austerian View [KPA - actually Kristor said The Auterian School] – as Kristor said in an email regarding my comment registration. What an honorable title!

Please visit my new website where I’ve now added “The Society for the Reclamation of Western Beauty.” It is still a work in progress but I hope to make it bigger than web musings, and into a full-fledged revolution!

http://societyforreclaimingwesternbeauty.blogspot.ca/p/a-beauty-movement.html

As I said to another friend in an email that I had originally re-named my website's address to make it less accessible on the web. But this is a website which I had always intended to be read by the public.

And there is always the "Society" which can hold closed discussions, where we can plan our revolution!

Prince Edward County, Ontario

Lavender Farm in Prince Edward County

Howard Sutherland sent this email (which I've slightly edited) regarding the posts Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town and Barrie for a Day:

My father, although a Texan, spent most of his career working for the now-gone International Nickel Company of Canada (INCO), and lived in Toronto from 1972 to 1983. I was a landed immigrant during those years, and spent a lot of time in Ontario, including odd jobs during my school and college years.

Even in the '70s, native Torontonians were calling their hometown the broken-English capital of the world. As I recall, though, immigrants were largely Eastern European and Portuguese, although the Indian fraction - both West and East - became more noticeable over those years. The Chinese I remember as a trace element only. Broken English or no, I thought Toronto was a great city.

I found Ontario's countryside and county towns very pleasant. I hope that's still true. My father bought a small farm to retreat to on weekends, in Prince Edward County (the hand-shaped peninsula that sticks down into Lake Ontario west of Kingston), near Trenton, Ont.

Those years in Canada were an interesting time - in the Chinese-curse sense. It was the reign of Trudeau-pere, who was busy destroying anything distinctive about Canada - especially any attachment to the Dominion's British heritage. They were also the years of the rise of the PQ in Quebec, with which Trudeau had a bizarre passive-aggressive relationship. On the surface Trudeau's Liberals opposed the PQ and sought to homogenise a (bogus) bilingual Canada a mari usque ad mare, while under the table inciting Québécois official mono-lingualism.

The result was effective affirmative action for French Canadians in government employment nation-wide. At the same time the PQ's antipathy to English drove the transfer from Montreal to Toronto of Montreal's traditional role as Canada's banking centre and leading city. One could almost see the national centre of gravity sliding west down the 401!

The results of all of it have been catastrophic for Canada, which is now a country (if it still is a country) that can choose Justin Trudeau as its prime minister. Pierre Trudeau was very bad indeed, but compared to Justin he was gravitas personified.

So What if I'm Racist?

View of North Vancouver with North Shore Mountains in the background
High rise developments
[Phto By: KPA]

So what if I am a Racist?
September 11, 2016
By Tim Murray
Council of European Canadians

There are many in the environmental movement who have chosen to take the coward’s way out. They know that population growth plays a crucial role in environmental degradation. And they know that in the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom it is immigration which drives population growth and that it will play an even more decisive role in the future.

But they have chosen to take the Fifth Amendment. They have chosen to remain silent and look the other way, focusing instead on campaigns to reduce consumption, promote renewable technologies, greener lifestyles and sideshows to defend this or that threatened habitat, forest or species. By Mark Twain’s definition, they are liars of the silent kind. They know in their hearts that immigration-driven population growth has a profoundly negative ecological impact, but they say nothing. This is ethically equivalent to knowing that someone has planted a bomb in the subway and not saying anything to the police.

Then there are the environmentalists who not only tell the silent lie, but are determined to silence those brave enough to tell the truth. Many of them draw salaries from “green” NGOs whose primary goal is to maintain and grow their bureaucracy. Cynics can be forgiven for regarding them as essentially fund-raising tools which not only solicit donations from credulous innocents, but from corporations seeking ecological dispensation and good publicity. These organizations are case studies of Roberto Michels’ “Iron Law of Oligarchy”. Success transforms fledgling grass roots movements into organizations with salaried staff and directors with a vested interest in the financial viability of their employer. Consequently they will pursue goals to promote the maintenance and growth of the organization even when those goals run counter to the original aims of the movement. Green crusaders become money-grubbing corporate lackeys.

If this wasn’t morally reprehensible enough, some go further. They enlist the services of the Merchants of Smear, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, or the Center for New Community. Hired guns whose mission is to destroy reputations, especially the reputations of environmentalists who campaign for population stabilization.

And finally there is another category of population deniers — those who choose the path of least resistance. Those who are terrified of being found guilty of guilt-by-association. So they distance themselves from sustainable population campaigners to avoid being tarred with an ugly brush.

They do so for fear of the “R” word. Racism. A word that is seldom precisely defined, but always brandished as a weapon of fear and intimidation to shut down debate. It permanently marks the accused with a stain that can never be removed. Ask the widowed husband of the late June Callwood, a famous Canadian journalist who championed progressive causes. Unjustly smeared by an identity group, she spent the remainder of final years a broken woman. To be labeled “racist” and have it stick is professional suicide and the death knell of one’s credibility, no matter how broad and sound one’s perspective may be.

In Canada, more so than in America, Australia or Britain, such is the cult status of mass immigration that to challenge any facet of it is thought in most quarters to be intrinsically “racist”. Mass immigration and the deification of the immigrant is part of the national DNA. As we witnessed in the Republican Primary contest, political candidates love to trot out rags-to-riches, immigrant-makes good stories of how their father came to this country a humble, hard-working man of meagre means and saw his son rise to achieve the American dream. Democratic Presidential nominee candidate Bernie Sanders hit that key too. Many times.

Canadian politicians pull the same emotional string. And it works. It all lends credence to the false narrative that Canada is a nation of immigrants, that immigrants “built this country”, and must continue to build it. The idea that Canada is “over-built”, that we have exceeded our ecological carrying capacity, is inconceivable. It is not on the table — and the growth lobby, in collusion with the media cartel — is determined to keep it there. Obviously, the useful idiots of the Left are party to the plot. Conveniently forgotten is the fact that the working man or woman’s best friend is a tight labour market. But then the Left no longer is no longer the advocate of the working class, but the champion of identity groups and migrant rights. “No One is Illegal” is a slogan born to serve the corporate bottom line.

So how does racism come into the conversation? It’s like this. If you are drawing a third of a million people into your country every year and most of them are from “non-traditional” sources, then most of them — an overwhelming number of them — are going have a skin pigment other than white. Therefore, to propose any restriction, or God forbid, a moratorium on immigration for any reason, is “racist”, and the one making the proposal is a “racist” who automatically is beyond the pale of polite discussion and deserves to be consigned to oblivion. He certainly will never see the inside of a CBC studio.

Well, I’m an environmentalist and I have chosen to make a lot of noise about immigration. In doing so, as one could predict, I am just about as popular as flatulence in an elevator. I talk loudly about the ugly “I” word because I would rather be right than politically correct. I know that if we grow our population by 18% we can’t expect to cut our GHG emissions by 3%. It can’t be done. And I know that if we have covered 20% of our Class 1 farmland in sprawl with this kind of growth that we haven’t a hope of feeding ourselves if immigration rates persist and affordable oil runs out.

Greenfield acreage cannot be adequately preserved by land-use planning (ask Portland, Oregon). We have the highest growth of any G7 country and with Australia, the highest per capita immigration intake in the world. Biodiversity is on the ropes, especially in the killing zones on the perimeter of our bursting cities. It cannot coexist with the tens of millions of extra consumers that Ottawa plans to import in coming years.

In advocating an immigration moratorium, I find myself in the same predicament I did while working in a theatre in a largely Chinese Vancouver neighbourhood. The movies were often times so popular that there were more people waiting on the sidewalk to get in than there were seats available to sell to them. One of my unhappy duties was to close the door when the theatre was full.

Canada is such a theatre. It has a limited carrying capacity, not established by a fire marshal, but by ecologists and biologists who have offered educated guesses as what it might be. Now a theatre manager or owner might propose that more people be admitted off the street and be accommodated as standing-room patrons. He may even propose that newcomers sit on the laps of those already seated. Taking a cue from fake greens, he might even call it “smart growth” or “eco-density” — but.his motive would be purely mercenary.

Similarly, an economist from the Royal Bank would argue that Canada could admit millions, tens of millions more, and the Real Estate Industry would echo his sentiments. Again for commercial considerations. But neither the theatre owner or nor the economist is governed by the concept of limiting factors, of carrying capacity. Just as it takes a fire marshal to impose reality on the theatre owner, it would take an ecologist or a biologist to introduce the Canadian government to the reality of biophysical limits.

One might recall when, in the face of dwindling stocks, the politicians of Newfoundland protested that the cod fishery must continue because the “economy” of the province depended on it. So the boats went out until the cod ran out. Ultimately the issue was not about what the economy of Newfoundland required, but what the cod stocks could sustain — and in this case, they obviously couldn’t sustain any more fishing. That economist from the Royal Bank, and any number of federal politicians, will protest that our “economy” requires these massive annual injections of immigrants, but our environment will simply not continue to sustain it.

At some point, we will have to establish as a nation, a population plan, an optimum population for this country. When we do, someone will have to close the theatre door. Now, I would put it to my critics, when I closed that door was I “racist” in doing so because 75% of the people left standing outside were of Chinese ancestry?

Let me ask another question, suppose I was. Suppose I closed the door for two reasons. One, because the theatre had filled its seating (carrying) capacity and for safety reasons it would be dangerous to allow more people in. And two, because I didn’t like Chinese people. Would the second reason invalidate the first reason? Should the revelation that I am a mean-spirited, nasty, hateful guy who hates children, kittens and little old ladies discredit my argument that the theatre is full?

I want to see the development of a Sustainable Population Plan for Canada, one that would factor in the variables of net migration, births over deaths and refugee quotas. The imperative would be to stay faithful to the desired population target by adjusting any of those variables up or down.

The goal would be to stop biodiversity loss and save biodiversity services. Stop the diminution of farm acreage and wildlife habitat, and meet carbon-emission targets.

But there is another reason for my opposition to hyper-immigration. The one I keep in the closet. I hate right-handed people. I hate the way they have treated me and organized the world for their convenience. Right-handed people make up 90% of the global population. By cutting back on immigration by 90% I know that most of the excluded people will be right-handed. Does this hidden agenda invalidate my previous arguments?

In Canada of late there seems to be a great pre-occupation not with an idea or an action but the alleged motivation behind it. The hate-crimes laws are a case in point. Their logic confounds me. Someone hits me over the head and leaves me with a concussion because he thinks I have a wallet full of cash, and the judge gives him a year. If the same thug hits me over the head and leaves me with a concussion because he thinks I’m gay, the judge gives him a much heavier penalty. Whatever the moron’s motives, my medical condition is the same.

But such is the political culture of Canada. My “motive” for anti-immigration views warrants more scrutiny and attention than the views themselves. I could only wish that critics would take my arguments on their own merits rather than subjecting me to psychoanalysis. And I wish that the network that I pay for, the state broadcaster, the CBC, would entertain the possibility that today’s heresy might become tomorrow’s truth.