Chasing the Equinox

The Exterior of the Hayden Planetarium
American Museum of Natural History, New York
[Photo By: KPA]

Below is John Coltrane's saxophone piece Chasing the Equinox.

From my Camera Musica blog.

Non

Mmmm, Non.

Minimalist Art and the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial: Reclaming Our Monuments

Minimalist Art and the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial
Elaboration on the unpublished article
Article posted on Reclaiming Beauty Articles: June 7. 2011

War memorials are an integral part of civilizations and their histories. One just has to look at the resplendent and grandiose Arc de Triomphe standing tall, at the center of a star-shaped street structure in Paris, to see how it affects the city and the people around it. The more dignified Trafalgar Square holds its distinction with lions, fountains and Nelson on the pedestal, and its vast public esplanade.

War memorials have always been about honoring their dead. And it isn’t false honor, since the mere dedication of a sculpture or a square is indicative of some outstanding effort that was made, whether it be winning a battle, holding a front, or just staying the course for so long.

This is why the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is such a disappointment. History is slowly exposing the real costs and gains behind that war, including the ultimate winners and losers. And the balance lies more on the American side. Yet, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is all about expiation and loss.

on a college project for a funerary design when she submitted her winning entry,

There was fierce opposition to the memorial from the start, where statesmen, veterans and the general public demanded that a more heroic symbol be built. One of the most poignant outrages was that nowhere on the monument is the word Vietnam carved, as though the place never existed, and the soldiers fought a non-existent war.

This controversy precipitated the erection of another monument. Sculptor Frederick Hart, whose base-reliefs adorn the great Washington National Cathedral, constructed a three-man composition which he called The Three Soldiers, clearly Vietnam soldiers standing in their combat gear and rifles. Lin was displeased by this new addition, and demanded that it be placed as far away from her contribution as possible. And no flag to render her area like a golf course, she declared. A flagpole was nonetheless placed near the The Three Soldiers with the fitting inscription: “This flag represents the services rendered to our country by the veterans of the Vietnam War.”



What eventually happened was that the memorial garnered popularity as a focus for grief. Even Lin acknowledges her subtle coercion when she says: “I actually feel like I controlled it a little too much… I knew that one's first immediate reaction… could very well be that you were going to cry.” Her design was to create a repository for unappeasable mourning, and in the end, that is what became of the granite wall.

Lin continues in the art world with sporadic contributions as an abstract, minimalist sculptor, and architect of a few lackluster buildings. She was one of the jury for the 911 memorial competition, and a strong promoter for the design that won. Once again, the winning design was a commemoration to insatiable grief as symbolized by two 30-feet deep holes at the spots where the towers stood. The contending design was more serene and spiritual, evoking enveloping clouds and sparkling lights. It is still hard for Lin to leave the black wall of death. Her original idea describing the wall: “I had a general idea that I wanted to describe a journey...a journey that would make you experience death…” holds to this day.


Maya Lin's collaboration with fashion designer Phillip Lim, in 2016.
The event took place in a pier warehouse-e where Lin's mounds of dirt fit well with Lim's postmodern androgyny

“I needed a raw, large venue to create this work...the Pier was the first place we saw, and the scale and rawness of the space was perfect,” Ms. Lin told the Observer.

But, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, or the wall, as the case may be. More recent memorials are giving credence to their lost heroes. The Korean War Veterans Memorial, unveiled in 1995, is a triangular field of 19 stone soldiers with a clear dedication to the veterans. And the National World War II Memorial, which opened in 2004, also includes a wall with symbolic stars representing the fallen soldiers.

Frederick Hart, on meeting Lin, confidently told her, “My statue is going to improve your memorial.“ Time has already proven him correct. The collection of photographs at the veteran-ran The Wall USA website emphasizes the Three Soldiers statue more than the wall, and uses the granite wall many times as a backdrop to reflect this.

The original memorial celebrated its 25th anniversary this November, and it already looks quite different from its initial granite wall concept. Lin’s minimalist abstraction, which only succeeded in making the wall an empty repository for grief, is slowly being improved by more concrete and tangible elements. A Women’s Memorial was added, and a new plaque commemorating the veterans who died after the war lies near the Three Soldiers. There is not much to be proud about war, but there is pride and honor due to the soldiers who fight in them.


Iwo Jima Memorial, Arlington Virgina

Be Still

Riverside Drive New York
[Photo By: KPA]

Psalm 46:10

Be still, and know that I am God

Exclusive Christianity

Arthur Rimbaud's House in Harar, Ethiopia

(A post from 2005 at Camera Lucida)

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Arthur Rimbaud has his own house/museum in the city of Harar. Perhaps it is in the name of literary tradition that Canadian novelist Camilla Gibb has made a special ode to this walled, Southern Islamic city in Ethiopia in her new book Sweetness in the Belly.

It is always curious why writers pay such high praises to this city. Although Rimbaud initially said he was living in boredom, he stayed in Harar on-and-off for ten years.

Sir Richard Burton preferred to investigate Harar in his First Footsteps in East Africa rather than travel to the northern Christian Highlands of the Amhara people. And even Evelyn Waugh couldn’t see the ancient strength of this Christian civilization, and in his journalistic travelogues Waugh in Abyssinia and Remote People at times appeared much more complimentary toward the Southern Harare/Somali Muslims. His novel Scoop, based on his journalistic experience of the fascist invasion of Ethiopia, is centered around the fictional "East Africa" country of…Ishmaelia. This is all the more surprising in light of Waugh’s recent conversion to Catholicism. But it could just be that he was temporarily side-tracked by the Catholic (yet fascist) Italians. And such a basic Christianity may have been too much to handle.

I suspect that it is mostly atheist/pantheist/agnostic writers who are lured into the facile spirituality (sensuality) of places like Harar. As always with exotic works, the subject rings of the writer/traveler himself, in his spiritual (or similar) quest to find some meaning in his life. Usually, the farther away from home, the better.

The disciplined, ancient and exclusive Christianity of the highlander Amhara is too difficult and too demanding, and too close to home. I think this Biblical fear drives these writers away. It is easier to wallow in the accessible sensuality of a Southern Muslim city, in search of a generalized spirituality.

The Islam of Harar may be beguiling, and easier to enter. But it is far less forgiving and far less compassionate than the Christianity of the austere Highlanders.

Icarus and the Modern Fallen Man

Daedalus and Icarus

Meanwhile Daedalus, hating Crete, and his long exile, and filled with a desire to stand on his native soil, was imprisoned by the waves. ‘He may thwart our escape by land or sea’ he said ‘but the sky is surely open to us: we will go that way: Minos rules everything but he does not rule the heavens’. So saying he applied his thought to new invention and altered the natural order of things. He laid down lines of feathers, beginning with the smallest, following the shorter with longer ones, so that you might think they had grown like that, on a slant. In that way, long ago, the rustic pan-pipes were graduated, with lengthening reeds. Then he fastened them together with thread at the middle, and bees’-wax at the base, and, when he had arranged them, he flexed each one into a gentle curve, so that they imitated real bird’s wings. His son, Icarus, stood next to him, and, not realising that he was handling things that would endanger him, caught laughingly at the down that blew in the passing breeze, and softened the yellow bees’-wax with his thumb, and, in his play, hindered his father’s marvellous work.

When he had put the last touches to what he had begun, the artificer balanced his own body between the two wings and hovered in the moving air. He instructed the boy as well, saying ‘Let me warn you, Icarus, to take the middle way, in case the moisture weighs down your wings, if you fly too low, or if you go too high, the sun scorches them. Travel between the extremes. And I order you not to aim towards Bootes, the Herdsman, or Helice, the Great Bear, or towards the drawn sword of Orion: take the course I show you!’ At the same time as he laid down the rules of flight, he fitted the newly created wings on the boy’s shoulders. While he worked and issued his warnings the ageing man’s cheeks were wet with tears: the father’s hands trembled.

He gave a never to be repeated kiss to his son, and lifting upwards on his wings, flew ahead, anxious for his companion, like a bird, leading her fledglings out of a nest above, into the empty air. He urged the boy to follow, and showed him the dangerous art of flying, moving his own wings, and then looking back at his son. Some angler catching fish with a quivering rod, or a shepherd leaning on his crook, or a ploughman resting on the handles of his plough, saw them, perhaps, and stood there amazed, believing them to be gods able to travel the sky.

And now Samos, sacred to Juno, lay ahead to the left (Delos and Paros were behind them), Lebinthos, and Calymne, rich in honey, to the right, when the boy began to delight in his daring flight, and abandoning his guide, drawn by desire for the heavens, soared higher. His nearness to the devouring sun softened the fragrant wax that held the wings: and the wax melted: he flailed with bare arms, but losing his oar-like wings, could not ride the air. Even as his mouth was crying his father’s name, it vanished into the dark blue sea, the Icarian Sea, called after him. The unhappy father, now no longer a father, shouted ‘Icarus, Icarus where are you? Which way should I be looking, to see you?’ ‘Icarus’ he called again. Then he caught sight of the feathers on the waves, and cursed his inventions. He laid the body to rest, in a tomb, and the island was named Icaria after his buried child.

RUBENS: FALL OF ICARUS, 1637. 'The Fall of Icarus.' Oil sketch on wood by Peter Paul Rubens, c1637.

How to Acquire Style and Substance

Cary Grant, 1957

Below is a correspondence I posted on my style blog in 2013.

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A young man recently wrote to me and asked:

Your posts are great and so pertinent to the madhouse we currently live in. I was wondering if you think the slovenly dress habits will be discarded within the next 10 years or so as people get fed up with the general ugliness. Or are they too far gone?

I generally gird myself mentally before I enter the public square these days. I expect to see slobs, hear rude language, be tailgated, walk away from cell phone conversations etc. I'm praying that network news goes the way of dvds.

And the way people let their kids scream and screech!

I think Lawrence Auster called it the age of the "totally liberated self".

Is this anti-culture too far gone? Should we traditionalists run for the hills and try to carve out a little patch of sanity?

George Orwell (a weird kind of socialist) wrote an essay called "Some thoughts on the common toad" and concluded it saying that in spite of the lies spewing out into the world Spring is Spring and they can't stop you enjoying it. A little comfort I guess.

I answered him with what I thought would be a practical guideline on how to maneuver the non-aesthetic mentality of our age:

I don’t know. Beauty, beautiful things, like a culture and a country, take years, centuries, generations to build and solidify. Ugliness and destruction occur in very little time. Even consider dressing: It is easier to slap on anything as opposed to wearing clothes that have an aesthetic sense.

I think our era hasn’t constructed, or built, its aesthetic sense. Other eras built theirs, out of what came from their past. Ours hasn’t bothered with that. I think it stopped soon after the late sixties and early seventies. I cannot think of a definitive eighties, nineties or “new millennium” style, but I can immediately recognize sixties, fifties, forties, thirties, twenties, styles, and further into the past.

I’m still trying to figure out why that is, but I think it happened when beauty was “downsized” as I call it, and when people thought it was too elitist. It probably has to do with equality, as I write here. But the problem with “equality” is that it courts the lowest denominator, so everyone becomes equally ugly.

But, the interesting thing about aesthetics is that it doesn’t require “equality” to function in any and all levels of life. The young shop girl can look beautiful (or at least aesthetically pleasing) and can borrow her ideas form the wealthy socialite to form her own pleasant look. Also, when beauty is around, even in limited quantities, everyone benefits. A beautiful statue in park is for everyone to appreciate. A beautiful lady glimpsed at in her car (in a store, a restaurant, etc.) makes people happy, including the lowly shop girl. Beauty does make the world a better place, I’m convinced.

Anyway, back to your question:

I think it is possible to discard slovenly dress habits, and even sooner than within the next 10 years.

1. You can start right away. For example:

A. Rather than wearing sneakers, always wear good shoes.

B. Dress well when going out, even to the corner store.

C. Of course, over-dressing to the corner store can look odd, so try to fit your dress to the occasion. There are great casual clothes around, and you don’t have to slip on a silly t-shirt or a worn out sweat shirt to go out and buy your milk.

D. Have a good hair cut, perhaps copying a style from another period, or using a men’s magazine for ideas (some have surprisingly well-groomed men models).

E. Try to get things to match, in style, color, design etc.

F. Find good accessories like ties, hats, belts, handkerchiefs, jackets. The whole look matters.

G. Avoid jeans at all costs. They look sloppy, and they are boring and unattractive.

H. And behave well, gentlemanly and chivalrously.

2. Avoid these items:

- Sweat shirts or t-shirts
- Sneakers
- Jeans
- Shorts
- Thematic prints like a shirt you bought at your last rock concert, or the tie with Disney motifs.
- Dramatic prints. Stripes and small circles or diamonds on shirts is as far as you should go.
- Baseball hats
- Odd jewelry, or pierced ear/nose
- Tattoos
- Hoodies

3. Try to find different styles for different occasion

A. Office wear

This is still generally more formal. Even if you work in a casual office environment, dress as if you might meet your next new boss, or your big client.

B. “Street” wear

Street wear is less formal. But you are out showing yourself to the whole world. Do you want to be seen in sloppy t-shirt and jeans, or look nice, presentable and attractive? You can add the thematic printed shirt here, perhaps a Hawaiian shirt for summer, and penny loafers are a good substitute for sneakers. As a hat, a panama hat might be a nice touch rather than that ubiquitous, ugly baseball cap.

C. Week-end and home wear

You’d be surprised at how people dress at home, when they think that “no one” is looking. Of course, their own families are looking, observing and often mimicking. If you have young children, they will be influenced at how you present yourself even at home. Get out of the pajamas and dressing gown mode, and actually wear some real clothes that are not for sleeping in. “Pajama mode” dressing includes baggy sweat shirts and sweat pants, and t-shirts, sloppy slippers/flip flops, etc. Leave the t-shirts and sweat shirts for the garden or yard work. You can be comfortable in a loose shirt and pants. Try a Hawaiian shirt, a short-sleeved golf shirt, sweaters, penny loafers, Dockers once in a while.

D. Visitors/Visiting wear

Dress up when visiting friends, and when friends come to visit. Don’t overdue it, of course, if the event is casual, but look good. Rather than a sweat shirt, put on a dress shirt, or a short-sleeved golf shirt. Try different, subdued colors for a change, like pastel lilac or light blue. Don’t pull out the Hawaii shirt for this one. No jeans, of course, and no sweat pants. But tan Dockers are a good, neutral choice. Penny loafers, and more formal shoes like Oxfords, can substitute for sneakers.

E. Visitors and week-end and home wear are somewhat similar

In a way, you should be ready for some event, even if at home. Some-one may decide to pop in for a visit. Mix your “visitors wear” with your casual home wear when you’re at home.

4. Look for good examples and guides

A. Magazines

Look up GQ magazine and other men’s magazines. Many have surprisingly good selections of men’s clothes. But pay more attention to the ads. The articles are often featuring the next “avant-gard” designer, whereas the ads are more conservative.

B. Tailors

Go to a tailor. Try to find a small, modest, old-fashioned one, who has had some formal or “old world” training. Such tailors are often a wealth of information. Ask for their advice. Have a suit custom made.

C. Formal Occasions

Look around during formal occasions. See what people are wearing for weddings, engagement parties, christenings, office formal parties, etc. Formal wear has been downgraded so much that wedding suits might actually fit your every-day life style.

D. Public Figures

Watch what public figures – news anchors, presidential candidates, Donald Trump, etc. - are wearing. Study how they accessorize with their ties, handkerchiefs, shoes, hats, and even their hair styles. We are still a some-what conservative culture when it comes to how our leaders are dressed.

E. Fashion History

Look up the history of fashion. How did people dress ten years ago, fifteen years ago? In the fifties, or forties? In the 19th century? During Medieval times? You’d be surprised to find that men took what they wore very seriously. A knight is identified partly by what he wears. So is a king. As is an early twentieth century gentleman.

F. Fashion Statements and Items

Find distinguishing items of different eras, periods and styles. It could be the walking stick/umbrella of the English Gentleman. Or the colors of a sixteenth century costume which you can incorporate into the colors of your tie and lapel handkerchief. Or the hats worn in the 1950s.

G. Different Cultures

Look at different cultures around the world and study how they differentiate between formal wear and casual wear (e.g is “casual wear” universal?). Did they have specific, attractive wear for men? Were men and women equally well-dressed?

H. Different Classes

How do the rich and the poor dress? You might think that only the wealthy are concerned with looking good. But, all walks of people dress cleanly, respectably, and with some flair. Poor people in Africa, for example, the poorest of the poor in the world, managed to develop a bright and cheerful style, with imaginative tie-dye, block print and batik fabrics, which million-dollar designers copy as their latest runway creations. Even cheap Walmart clothes are often colorful and attractive.

I. T.V. Shows and Movies

If you watch T.V., try to find shows that can give you good style examples. Subscribe to a “Hollywood movies” channel and watch shows and movies from the forties and fifties. We can still relate to those styles, and in fact they’re making a come-back. Study the suit cuts, the colors men wore, the shoes and ties, the hair cuts. Find what you like, and what can fit into your lifestyle, and just copy it!

Cary Grant shows true style and substance with a simple, relaxed pose (see above image). No aggressive expression, no slovenly style. Here is male aesthetics at its best.

J. Vintage Styles

Look for vintage style magazines (including women’s magazines), style history books, etc., and read about the dress and style expectations of those eras. Go to antique and vintage clothing stores and search their racks. As the shop owners for information. Many of them have a fountain of knowledge about style and design.

5. Ignore those who call you "old fashioned"

The MTV DJs or the slovenly week-end sweat shirt wearers have become standard bearers of our contemporary style. They are NOT experts. If your children or younger acquaintances tease you about your style, ignore them, and continue with what you’re doing. They will come around if they see you’re serious. Young people are susceptible to beauty, both boys and girls. We just need to show and teach them. Adults who tease you with subtle jibes are not worth paying attention to, especially if they are the types that wear the droopy sweat shirts and old t-shirts. They might come around, but don’t be too concerned about that.

6. How to approach those annoying loud cell-phone monologues, and jeans hanging down to the knees

Find it in yourself to “confront” slobs, bad language, loud cell phone conversations disclosing intimate details, etc. Don't do this every day, though, and don't stress yourself out. But, try it once in a while to show such people that they’ve passed beyond norms of decorum. This might get risky since people can get really angry, but assess who you can do it to. People need to know that such behavior is unacceptable.

7. How to personally make a difference

I think revolutionary things start with leaders, or those who take a bold step ahead of others, and who are not afraid of confrontations and negativity. But, prepare yourself mentally, intellectually and personally before you embark on your “making a difference” mission. Here are some things you can start with:

A. Start a blog.

B. Write letters to the editor.

C. Find a magazine, a newsletter, a community paper etc. which will accept your articles.

D. Talk to family and friends about your observations, especially if it concerns them.

E. Make suggestions to your retail stores about clothing items to bring into the store.

F. Form a society like "The Society of Sartorially Conscious People," or "The Well Dressed Group" as you develop ideas and plans on how to make the differences you wish to see around you. Many changes in the past occurred because people formed groups of some kind for support and for strength. Fashion is no less serious, and requires as much energy as any other movement.

8. Change your manners and style to fit your message

A. Please, thank you and excuse me go a long way.

B. Decent and polite behavior attracts people to you and your style.

C. Don’t shirk from full-on arguments, and don’t get bullied by bullies. But choose your place and your manner carefully when interacting with such people. Often, abrasive behavior will only alienate you from others, and prevent you from making your influence. Everyone can a potentially be on your boat, but some more than others.

9. Running to the Hills

I haven’t thought about this. I think it is an option, or could be an option. But this place, this whole place and not some cave in the hills, is our world. I think we need to defend it where we are. We can metaphorically run to the hills by building our own community as I have described above. But that should (could?) be the start of us building our defensive/offensive strategies, when we can begin more concrete changes. I think some inevitable confrontation is looming in the future, so we better get ready now.

10. "Spring is Spring and they can't stop you enjoying it."

And yes, you are right (or George Orwell is right). There are still many beautiful things around us, natural, cultural, familial, and so on. Enjoy the lovely spring that is already here, and the warm summer months just ahead of us. Read good books, look at good art, take care of yourself physically and spiritually. Start a hobby such as photography, woodwork, marathon running, etc., to enjoy life and to keep you in good spirits. We are not here to destroy, but to create.

And be good to people, even the slothful ones.

I have been cited in three books...

Nicole Kidman, as Lady Ashley in Australia
Arriving in Darwin

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I have been cited in three books:

1. Little Mosque on the Prairie and the Paradoxes of Cultural Translation
By: Kyle Conway
University of Toronto Press, Feb 10, 2017

(From my article in American Thinker: How Canada's Little Mosque on the Prairie is Aiming for our Souls)

In Chapter 1 : Sitcoms, Cultural Translation and the Paradox of Saleable Diversity

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2. Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice
Ed. Peter Dickinson et al.
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Mar 27, 2014

I am referenced in Chapter 16 in an essay by Regina Barreca: Layla Siddiqui as Holy Fool in Little Mosque on the Prairie:

Baber and his continual critique of Canadian morality no doubt inspired the claim of columnist Kidist Paulos Asrat that the show's intention is to convert North Americans to Islam.

This is once again based on my article How Canada's Little Mosque on the Prairie is Aiming for our Souls, but it is an incorrect interpretation of what I wrote. This is the usual hyperbole of multiculturalists who wish to find a demon in any critic of multiculturalism.

What I wished to communicate was that the show's intent was to make North Americans sympathetic towards Islam, and not to convert them. Little Mosque on the Prairie was still an exotic sitcom then. The show came out in January 2007 as Canadians were learning about it, and was cancelled in April 2012 as the novelty wore off, and not because of "Islamophobia."

Barreca is a feminist academician (no oxymoron there) who also wants to be funny. She quips:

“I used to assume my students were feminists,” she says. “It seemed like everyone got my jokes and laughed. Now I have to explain myself.”

For more on Baber (and his daughter Layla) see their character descriptions on Wikipedia

Layla Siddiqui (Aliza Vellani) is... a portrait of an average teenage Muslim girl struggling to find the right balance between her desire to be a good Muslim and her desire for the lifestyle of a regular Canadian teenager who's into music, clothes and boys. She can be rebellious and sarcastic, especially at her father's foibles (she refers to their home as "Baberistan"), but is also very perceptive and insightful. [

The book is a compilation of lectures at symposium at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia in 2011. The essays collected in Women and Comedy: History, Theory, and Practice, originally presented and discussed at a 2011 symposium held at Simon Fraser University.

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3. Baz Luhrmann
By: Pam Cook
British Film Institute; 2010 edition (July 6 2010)

I am cited in the end notes (104) of Baz Luhrmann, which I presume is in reference to my article: Australia: Whose Land is it Anyway, by Austral filmmaker Baz Luhrmann, in American Thinker. I write about the difficult integration of aboriginal mysticism with British pragmatic colonialism. I come in favor of Nicole Kidman's austere but brave femininity, and her kindly adoption of an aboriginal orphan, rescuing him from being interned in a mission school.

Pam Cook tells us in her "welcome page":

I have been thinking, writing and teaching about moving image culture since the 1970s, and these pages are a record of my work up to the present. Since 2006 I’ve been Professor Emerita in Film at the University of Southampton [UK].

Forest Heritage: Stewards of the Land

Image Source: Ontario Forest Industries Association

The Ontario Forest Industries Association asks this on its website:

When will Ontario harvest its last tree?

And answers:

Never.

More from the website:

As stewards of Ontario’s forests, OFIA’s members are committed to the sustainable, responsible use of this amazing resource. Close to 90% of Ontario’s forests are publicly owned and known as Crown lands. 44% of these Crown lands are managed forests. By sustainably using less than one percent of our Crown trees annually, Ontario’s forest sector is able to generate real prosperity and support over 170,000 families across the province. That is a very awesome return on a renewable crop.

Sustainable forest management is a way of using and caring for forests in order to maintain environmental, social and economic values over time. According to the Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNRF), sustainable forest management helps Ontario’s forests:

Remain healthy and productive.
Support a strong forest industry and provide people with jobs and forest products.
Conserve biodiversity, enhance or protect wildlife habitat, watersheds, and other values, and help adapt and mitigate to climate change.
Support Ontario communities, provide recreational opportunities, and provide a healthy living environment.

Steve Paiken of Television Ontario had a panel on "The North" last night, where the main topic of the agenda was the forestry legacy of northern Ontario.

The panelists all agreed that the Ontario forests were abundant and healthy for the most part. But "stewardship" is necessary to maintain these forests.

TVO says this about the topic:

The people who cut down trees and turn that wood into the items we use every day have an expression: "forestry builds communities." The Agenda discusses Ontario's forest industry with panel representing Ontario's 170,000 people whose livelihoods depend on a thriving forestry sector.

Marking shows location of McRae Lumber Company, near Algonquin Provincial Park


Jamie McRae (Left) and his uncle John McCrae

In the early 1900s, John Duncan McRae, the son of Scottish immigrants, was the first family member to be involved in the forest industry. Today, one of his great, great grandsons is following in his footsteps and the footsteps of three other generations of McRaes that have made their living from the forest. Jamie McRae, who is in his early 30s, says he basically “grew up in the business” with his father Robert and his uncle, another John McRae, passing on the 30 years of knowledge and experience they have each acquired during their shared leadership role at McRae Lumber.

“It all started when my great, great grandfather operated a sawmill, a grist mill, and a power utility on the Bonnechere River in Eganville, Ontario,” Jamie says. “He used the river water for power until a major fire in 1911 destroyed half the town, including the power utility.”

It was John Duncan’s son and Jamie’s great grandfather, John Stanley Lothian (JSL) McRae, who continued the family tradition, making the 80-kilometre trek west from Eganville to the southern reaches of Algonquin Park, near Whitney. He started out as a jobber, cutting pine for the Mickle & Dyment Lumber Co., but when the pine started to run short, he bought the Mickle & Dyment mill and began to cut and saw hardwood. [Source: Family Ties, Wood Business, 2009]

Steve Paiken asks Jamie Mcrae on the panel, who is fifth generation in his family forestry business, McRae Lumber Company near Algonquin Park:

Paiken: What's a change in policy that you would love to see?

MCrae: What we're hopping for in forestry is that we see a general shift n the way that policy is applied to the industry...Maybe we're not known as widely as some of the sectors in southern Ontario. There's a chance that we're not as top of mind.

Paiken: Can you give me an example of one regulation that you think is ridiculous and they ought to cut it out.

MCrae: Well there s a lot of talk with harmonizing different..Endangered Species Act with the Crown force its Sustainability Act...

Paiken: Can I cut to the chase on that? That means that the folks at Queens Park are more worried about baby elk than about your livelihood.

MCrae: Well, don't forget we're worried about the species too. Because, as one of the things I always to point out is the fact that we've been in forestry for a long time, we all have. We've been here for generations all of us, and we're still dong a good job on the landscape. We're stewards of the land, that's what we like to say. We're the people you want looking out for the species. We live n the forest. We live right beside where we harvest. We live there full-time. So I think that we're generally pretty good stewards of the land. And I think that sometimes that's a little bit forgotten at Queen's Park.

Below is the video of the 1/2 hour panel discussion:






Riverwood Conservancy, with the Credit River, June 2016
Photo By: [KPA]

Victoria Day

What does Victoria Day mean anymore in Canada?

The Government of Canada website explains thus:

Sovereign's birthday

The Sovereign's birthday has been celebrated in Canada since the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901).

May 24, Queen Victoria's birthday, was declared a holiday by the Legislature of the Province of Canada in 1845.

After Confederation, the Queen's birthday was celebrated every year on May 24 unless that date was a Sunday, in which case a proclamation was issued providing for the celebration on May 25.

After the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, an Act was passed by the Parliament of Canada establishing a legal holiday on May 24 in each year (or May 25 if May 24 fell on a Sunday) under the name Victoria Day.

The birthday of King Edward VII, who was born on November 9, was by yearly proclamation during his reign (1901-1910) celebrated on Victoria Day.

It was not an innovation to celebrate the birthday of the reigning sovereign on the anniversary of the birth of a predecessor. In Great Britain, the birthdays of George IV (1820-1830) and William IV (1830-1837) were celebrated on June 4, birthday of George III (1760-1820).

The birthday of King George V, who reigned from 1910 to 1935, was celebrated on the actual date, June 3 or, when that was a Sunday, by proclamation on June 4.

The one birthday of King Edward VIII, who reigned in 1936, was also celebrated on the actual date, June 23.

King George VI's birthday, which fell on December 14, was officially celebrated in the United Kingdom on a Thursday early in June. Up to 1947 Canada proclaimed the same day but in 1948 and further years settled on the Monday of the week in which the United Kingdom celebration took place. George VI reigned from 1936 to 1952.

The first birthday of Queen Elizabeth II, in 1952, was also celebrated in June.

Meanwhile, Canada continued to observe Victoria Day. An amendment to the Statutes of Canada in 1952 established the celebration of Victoria Day on the Monday preceding May 25.

From 1953 to 1956, the Queen's birthday was celebrated in Canada on Victoria Day, by proclamation of the Governor General, with Her Majesty's approval. In 1957, Victoria Day was permanently appointed as the Queen's birthday in Canada. In the United Kingdom, the Queen's birthday is celebrated in June.

The Royal Union Flag, commonly known as the "Union Jack" where physical arrangements allow, is flown along with the National Flag at federal buildings, airports, military bases and other federal buildings and establishments within Canada, from sunrise to sunset, to mark this day.

Physical arrangements means the existence of at least two flag poles; the Canadian flag always takes precedence and is never replaced by the Union Jack. Where only one pole exists, no special steps should be taken to erect an additional pole to fly the Union Jack for this special day.

Attached is a list giving the dates of the observance in Canada of the Sovereign's birthday since Queen Victoria.

Almost all other official websites (commercial or governmental) tell us what shops are closed or open, and some inform us of fireworks locations.

This formidable queen is fighting for her memory in absentia. But it is a battle she will not win. Soon, there will no longer be a Victoria Day, being deemed "too British" for this multicultural land.

The Fear of the Lord

Barrie Lake Simcoe
Photo By: KPA

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge
Proverbs 1:7

Richard Florida: The Failure Who Wont Admit His Errors

Richard Florida: Posing by a Hip, Diverse, Creative Space of a Graffiti Wall Somewhere in a Creative City

Florida is out promoting his new book:
The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation,
and Failing the Middle Class - and What We Can Do About It.

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Richard Florida came on the scene about ten years ago. I caught on the falseness of his ideas and wrote about them then. Here are some quotes from posts I did on him following interviews he had on Television Ontario with Steve Paiken on The Agenda.

Florida, who declared half way that he was more of an NDPer then a Liberal, making him in the far left sliding scale of Canadian politics, mentioned the word "equity" several times. (Also on a Charlie Rose interview in 2004). His future village is global, where everyone works in harmony - the lion next to the lamb, as imagery goes - and where everyone is creative. In fact, his most successful book is called: The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. The equity of creativity.

A whole city full of experimental visible minority immigrants, where his mantra - we are all equal, we all do things equally, we are all creators - can play itself out. Florida is creating his own heaven on earth, and found just the right petri dish in Toronto...

Maybe in the future he might consider an office in one of those shiny buildings rising up on the Ryerson Campus. After all, it is the same population group that attracted him to Toronto in the first place that's driving the Ryerson growth.[Camera Lucida, April 28, 2008]

And here:

[Floridas'] convoluted, unproven, idea, on which the [University of Toronto] has spent millions already, is that immigrants, especially the current type, will be part of the creative class now so necessary in the economies of countries - at least according to Florida.

The fact is that there is absolutely no empirical evidence to prove this. Toronto's high-immigrant economy has actually been on a decline, including the much touted "Hollywood North" film industry - that most creative of professions - which is losing to Vancouver, and back to the US via Detroit and Boston.

Florida talks about "20 years down the road", which is just fine with him since he is only proposing a theoretical hypothesis. After all he doesn't lose either way - right or wrong. He's just a researcher.

But, the great influx of immigrants to whom he has such an affinity - the Indians and the Chinese - started almost 15 years ago here in Toronto. So where is the data to prove, after fifteen years, that they are truly part of the "creative class"? Here is actual data from Center for Immigration Studies in the US which indicates that Asians are not the creative types Florida is banking on:

[T]he East-vs.-West pattern observed earlier for the TM* data also holds for levels of expertise, with Asians typically being hired into non-innovative jobs while more Europeans are in the types of positions that could involve innovation.
*TM stands for Talent Measure

[Camera Lucida: April 29, 2008]

About a year later, an article in The American Prospect, The Ruse of the Creative Class, echoed those sentiments, but added explicitly that such cities are failing, and that Florida's arguments didn't hold: the "Creative Class"attracting a "vibrant" city and economy was bunk.

Inspired [by Florida's message], Elmira's newly elected mayor, John Tonello, hung artwork on City Hall's walls, installed "poetry posts" around town featuring verses by local writers, and oversaw the redevelopment of several buildings downtown. "The grand hope was to create retail spaces that would enable people to make money and serve the creative class Florida talks about," Tonello says. The new market-rate apartments filled up quickly, but the bohemian coffee shops the mayor fantasizes about have yet to materialize.
[ Source: The American Prospect: The Ruse of the Creative Class, December 18, 2009]

Instead what people were doing was to set up enclaves within enclaves. Neighborhoods, and even whole cities, started to become exclusive to the wealthy or reasonably moneyed. The low-income neighbors never materialized. And immigrants were hard to find shopping in the local grocery stores and eating in the restaurants, where they were more often than not working in low-level jobs often as janitors or bus-boys. They lived way out in the suburbs in high-density high rises.

Florida is now promoting his new book: The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class - and What We Can Do About It..

The book could have well been called "The New Urban Disaster."

This was a guy who spent months promoting his "Creative Class/Cities" book with glib phrases and clever catchwords, who sat on endless urban symposia, who won accolades and prizes and book awards for his ideas, who became the uncontested expert on creatively creating creative cities. Now he's back to talk about his "failure."

Not quite. He's here to say "Well I'm only human. I missed some things. But! I have these solutions!"

So we are supposed to give him a pass? We know who he is and even where he lives. No immigrant janitor will be anywhere near his house, with the 1,945 surveillance cameras which surround his territory with direct links to the Ontario Provincial Police, the Fire Department, and the emergency Ambulance services.

You see, he now has a toddler daughter.

The "Let Them Eat Cake" French queen, which won her the guillotine, was young, naive, sheltered and possibly had limited linguistic ability (she was Austrian, after all!).


Richard Florida's Toronto home

What's Florida's excuse?

Here is an excerpt from The Houston Chronicle in The Re-education of Richard Florida:

Sixteen years after Florida published his first book, "The Rise of the Creative Class," that theory has proved half true. For many small, post-industrial cities without assets like big tech companies and universities, no amount of creative-class marketing would turn things around. Elmira, N.Y., for example, saw little return on its investment in the Florida program, as a 2009 story in the American Prospect detailed. [Source: The Houston Chronicle in The Re-education of Richard Florida]

More from The Houston Chronicle from an article in 2013:

...research revealed the conditions that create pockets of poverty, and found a downside to ethnically mixed cities: People in different groups tend to live apart. "Here's Mr. Diversity, extolling the virtues of diversity in large cities," Florida says. "And what comes back to smash you over the head is that large diverse cities also incubate a horrific level of sorting and segregation."

A pseudonymic commenter posted this comment following Charles Mudede's article The Twittering World.

Richard Florida is an interesting guy, but he's like a math equation that gets further and further away from the truth the closer he gets to it. He's smart, but he has the Futurist Disease (remember Alvin Toffler? Faith Popcorn?) of seeing patterns everywhere, even where (especially where?) no patterns exist, and he constantly mistakes slight movements among a tiny coterie of the ultra-rich for genuine social movements. Or rather, the IDEAS of a tiny coterie; his work would be a lot more valuable if he was capable of thinking about the lives of real people for even a second or two.

I agree.

Of course Florida, with false modesty, "accepts" the fallacies behind his "theories." But his solution?

Bring in more government money to let these "excluded" members of our society to enjoy the fruits of Canadian/American capitalism. Let them live alongside the wealthy but with their government subsidized condo-apartments. Anything else makes us a callous and exclusive (i.e. a racist) society.

This is what he says in his interview a week ago on at Television Ontario's The Agenda with Steve Paiken, and also what he writes in the Toronto Star (quotes proivded after the video).

Listen to the video below to the excellent (on Paiken's part) interview and Florida's convoluted efforts to regain his credibility as an "urbanist."

Paiken introduces the interview thus:

"It hasn't all been positive. I must confess this isn't the follow up to the last book that I thought we were going to read!...Things are just very very dark and gloomy here!"

What Paiken is talking about is Florida's latest book, fresh off the presses: The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class - and What We Can Do About It.



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The Toronto Star
By: Richard Florida
Tues., April 11, 2017

Toronto ranks as the ninth most expensive city in the world. Affordable housing is supposed to cost no more than three times a family’s income, yet a Toronto home now costs roughly eight times the average income.

Such rising housing prices and worsening affordability are a key indicator of what I call the “New Urban Crisis.” This is the dark-side of the sweeping back-to-the-city movement of the past decade or two, which has brought affluent, highly educated people back to the urban cores of superstar cities, such as Toronto, New York, London, Paris and others.

The New Urban Crisis is defined by a new model of winner-take-all urbanism. In a winner-take-all economy, talented superstars such as Beyoncé, Brad Pitt or LeBron James make outsized money. In winner-take-all urbanism, superstar cities house disproportionate concentrations of talent and leading edge industries.

Toronto is the 11th leading global city in the world according to my Superstar City Index. Toronto is even more dominant in Canada than New York is in the United States. Greater Toronto generates about 20 per cent of Canada’s economic output compared New York, which generates about 9 per cent of U.S. GDP. In fact, Greater Toronto’s share of Canadian GDP is equivalent to that generated by America’s five largest metros: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, and Boston.

Winner-take-all urbanism generates winners and losers within cities as well. While affluent knowledge, professional and creative workers have been squeezed, it is lower-paid blue-collar and service workers who bear the brunt of rising housing prices. Across Canada, the former have roughly $45,000 per year after paying for housing, but blue collar workers are left with $26,400 and service workers have just $11,500 to live on after paying for housing.

And here specifically:

It is imperative that the city and region act aggressively to address the New Urban Crisis across three related fronts:

-It must overcome NIMBYism by increasing density and building more housing, especially more affordable rental housing.
-It must engage the private sector in upgrading low-wage service jobs into family-supporting employment.
-It must invest in better transit infrastructure to connect more people and places to its centres of employment.

Would you Make this Recipe? And Other Asian Stories

Barbecued Steak with Blackberry Bourbon Sauce

Blackberry Bourbon Sauce (for barbecued steak):
1 tablespoon grapeseed or olive oil
½ small red onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, finely diced
1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and finely diced
¼ cup bourbon
3 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoon brown sugar
¼ cup ketchup
¼ cup water
1 cup fresh or frozen blackberries

Jalapeno peppers with bourbon with ketchup to add to the delicate taste of blackberries?

Theresa Visintin (formerly Wong) was on the Marilyn Dennis Show to prepare her steak with blackberry bourbon sauce, and I was curious. It is always nice to have a new take on a steak sauce.

But blueberries with jalapenos and ketchup?

I looked her up and she was booted off Master Chef twice!

The second time, her

...dessert was too sweet because she used too many cherries in her jam.

Her recipe is partly the "combining of strange ingredients" that has become the hallmark of Master Chef, which is why I no longer watch it.

But it is also about her background. Anyone who knows blackberries and has regularly eaten them realizes that the ketchup and the jalapenos wouldn't cut it. They would drown the taste of the berries. Maybe the bourbon or a light brandy, and even some bay leaves to add some herbal tang, but not ketchup! You would think that by the time she had made it to Marilyn Wong-Visitin would have figured all that out.

But her recipe is her business. What stuck out was the way she presented the experiences at meals with her Chinese family, who ran a restaurant while she was growing up. Running a restaurant is never easy on a family, but there is always a day in the week, a down time, usually a Sunday when people gather together and have a good meal, cooked by the restaurateur as a treat for the family.

This was not her experience. In fact, it sounds like she never had a pleasant meal with her parents at their home.

She met her husband in Sydney (Australia), who has an Italian background. And she realized what family meals meant when he invited her to his home. People enjoying each others' company as as much as the meal before them.

Her publicly undermining her parents was unpleasant to hear.

But she let us into Asian inter-family relations about which another public figure, the famous Amy Chua, has also disclosed. Chua was aggressively harsh on her daughters to prepare them for music and academic careers, and in the end they both bailed out.

Visitin is on yet another cooking show called on cable TV's Gusto where she hosts a program with two others (whom I've never heard of) called A Is For Apple, which is

a fun, fresh take on a food challenge show genre. In each episode, one of our three hip, young chefs randomly picks a letter of the alphabet and goes shopping for two very different ingredients that start with that letter. Then they come up with one crazy (but delicious) mash-up dish that features both ingredients. Kale and kumquats, anyone? Is For Apple is a fun, fresh take on a food challenge show genre. In each episode, one of our three hip, young chefs randomly picks a letter of the alphabet and goes shopping for two very different ingredients that start with that letter. Then they come up with one crazy (but delicious) mash-up dish that features both ingredients. Kale and kumquats, anyone?

Also, it is a threesome affair, the kind of group creativity which Martha Stewart (and Jamie Oliver) would never accept.

Taste is no longer the criteria, but rather "one crazy (but delicious) mash-up dish."

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

Chua's daughters were on the road toward being a musician and a scholar. Both veered away.

Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld manages a college tutoring business, which must be painfully ironic to everyone around her (including mother Chua) that it was that very institution Sophia rebelled against (although my theory is that she was never really quite that good). And like all things Asian, her loyalties go across the oceans and her website has a special section in Chinese for those overseas students.

She once performed at Carnegie Hall.

Lulu Chua-Rubenfeld stopped tennis with the original intention of going "professional"(after she dramatically stopped the violin lessons) and worked at a tutoring job at the New Haven Youth Tennis And Education - not in tennis but for "underprivileged elementary school students in math, reading, and writing." She is in an Art History undergrad at Harvard, I suppose with the intention of going into Law.

I wrote about Chua here, here and here.

Jed Rubenfeld, or Mr. Chua, took up soft porn/soft thriller authorship for a while but that doesn't seem to be on anymore.

Chua and Rubenfeld co-authored a book in 2014: The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America which The Atlantic described it as: "The holes in the Tiger Mom's theory that superiority, insecurity, and impulse control breed success."

He seems to be back at Yale Law, as does Mme. Chua.

Re-re-Appropriation

The title of my previous post "Native Son" is a play on words and meaning from the book Native Son by Black American (then referred to as American Negro) writer Richard Wright, who was no "son" and refused to be a "native."

Black Americans appear to be in perpetual anger against their white countrymen, towards whom they never feel convivial. Wright wrote his "Native Son," just before the tumultuous "sixties" to which he contributed nonetheless as a Communist, when white Americans were cornered into accepting the superiority of blacks, and not simply their equality.

Here is a quote from what he wrote:

The white folks like for us to be religious, then they can do what they want to with us.

This must be where former President Barrack Obama must have got his Whites, guns and religion reference from.

And here is the homosexual spokesman for Wright, James Baldwin, who fled America to France, not as some original form of protest, but to join other American expatriate writers and artists who preferred to criticize their country from a distance:

Out of this incredible brutality, we get the myth of the happy darky and Gone With the Wind. And the North Americans appear to believe these legends, which they have created and which absolutely nothing in reality corroborates, until today. And when these legends are attacked, as is happening now—all over a globe which has never been and never will be White—my countrymen become childishly vindictive and unutterably dangerous. The”
- James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

So I can re-re-appropriate "Native" whenever and wherever like. Here it is again:
Homer Watson: Native Son.

I've read Native Son. It s a lyrical book. But it is unforgiving and even petty:

Homer Watson: Native Son

On the Grand River at Doon, c. 1880
Homer Watson, Canadian, 1855 - 1936
Oil on canvas
24 x 36 in
Purchased 1952
National Gallery of Canada (no. 5900)

Last year, I attended a panel discussion on the exhibition Beyond the Pines: Homer Watson and the Contemporary Canadian Landscape at the Art Gallery Mississauga. I had visited the exhibition numerous times, going through Watson's work one by one, to study his technique, his evolution as an artist, his views, his concerns, and his Canada.

The exhibition also displayed works by contemporary Canadian artists to bring this pine "narrative" to the fore. Some were reasonably good, but none reached the overall skill and beauty of Watson's paintings.

Watson's talent as a painter was recognized by a friend who initially advised him:

...to quit the nonsense of going in for art in a country like Canada. "Quit it and come into the office and become a businessman.”

Watson continues with the story:

...on nearing home [some weeks after he had submitted the painting [The Pioneer Mill] to the Canadian Academy exhibition] I saw this gentleman on the road in front of his establishment reading the Toronto Globe. Seeing me he advanced waving the paper and putting out his hand he exclaimed, “I take it all back. Go ahead and paint. Look here,” and there it was in flaming headlines in the Globe, “Country boy paints picture bought by Princess Louise.” So that was that...

Homer Watson was born in 1855 in Doon, Ontario (now Kitchener). He started to paint as a young child encouraged by his father and his aunt. He never received any formal art training, but acquired his skill and artistic sense through various artist mentors he sought as he developed his talent.

Watson was called "the Canadian Constable," and “the man who first saw Canada as Canada, rather than as dreamy blurred pastiches of European painting.” While he holds this noble acclamation, he has nonetheless been overshadowed by the more forceful Group of Seven artists.

The AGM’s exhibition showed us Watson’s southern Canadian landscapes, amidst its farms and homesteads, as civilized and vibrant, and as separate from America. He is the first nationalist Canadian painter, earlier even than the much touted Group of Seven painters.

But the exhibitors of Beyond the Pines had a subtle agenda, which was was to place Watson in the background of Canadian art as an artist who no longer represents contemporary Canada, and reflects only the past, colonial English heritage which they believe has little relevance in current Canadian art.

The much described regions of impenetrable wilderness and inhospitable glaciers is not the Canada that most Canadians know and live in, including Homer Watson and the Group of Seven. Their Canada of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was already a nation of defined European, and mostly British, communities with houses, gardens, farmland, and forests.

And that is the other narrative the AGM curators were presenting: the pre-colonial Canada of the aboriginal tribes.

The AGM’s website tells us:

First. New. Next.

The AGM provides platforms for exhibitions, collections and experimentation in contemporary culture with a recent focus on artists and cultural producers from Indigenous, newcomer and youth communities. Through a broad range of educational programs, artist projects and other forms of critical dialogue, the AGM seeks to transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries, foster community, and provide spaces where alternative modes of thought are supported and activated in tangible ways.

The one piece by Natives ("Native" being the commonly used word for Aboriginal) artists in Beyond the Pines is a film (later transferred to video) by Brian Jungen and Duane Linklater titled Modest Livelihood, who document their hunting expedition and challenge Canadian gun laws and restrictions.

Here is Canadian Firearms Act as it pertains to Native Canadians:

Under Canada's Firearms Act, everyone who possesses or acquires a firearm must have a firearms licence, and all restricted and prohibited firearms must be registered. While the Firearms Act applies to everyone in Canada, some provisions of the Act and of the Firearms Licences Regulations have been adapted for Aboriginal people who meet all three of the following criteria:

1.They must be a member of one of the Aboriginal Peoples of Canada (Indian, Inuit and Métis) or a beneficiary under a treaty referred to in section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982.
2. They must be a member of an Aboriginal community.
3. They must engage in the traditional hunting practices of their community.

These adaptations facilitate the licensing process for Aboriginal people under unique circumstances while maintaining all the safety requirements of the Firearms Act.

We are hard pressed to believe that Brian Jungen and Duane Linklater are indeed hunting for their livelihood, in this age when hunting has become a sport and food for nourishment is abundant. But Jungen’s and Linklater’s purpose is to show us that they have a right to this land as had their aboriginal ancestors, with which the AGM curators fully agree.

A group of eight contemporary Canadian artists were also part of this exhibition. None made any explicit references to Watson or his era, rather focussing on the exhibition's general themes of the natural and the spiritual. But it was Jennifer Carvalho and Reinhard Reitzenstein who combined these natural and spiritual worlds most skillfully in their pieces.

Carvalho’s fir are impenetrable and dense, as though mysterious and macabre forces are hiding behind them. In Unexpected Connections, her trees spiral skyward to a grey zenith, reminiscent of Emily Carr’s west coast giant pines (Carvalho studied in Vancouver’s Emily Carr University of Art and Design), but without the hopeful sky blue of Carr’s heaven-reaching trees.

Reitzenstein reduces his pine sculptures to tiny spikes atop sinewy vines. In Thrust, the vine-like pine, rather than pull us upwards as the title would suggest, drags us down into the underworld of fungi, and we are forced to contemplate the dark and amorphous fungal netherworld of a place without God, without art and without beauty.

Reitzenstein may have obtained his training and perspective from the sculptural traditions of western art, but he has neglected the often hidden but important forces of religion and God present in most of non-modern western art. He desires, and creates with, beauty without the spiritual source of his sculptural discipline.

The AGM catalogue for Beyond the Pines informs us:

Contemporary Canadian artists looking at landscape must also find a way to access the ‘truth’ of a subject that is not only strongly represented in our national artistic history, but one that is both deeply political and personal. Placing contemporary work by emerging and established artists alongside that of Watson illustrates the universality of the quest to appreciate and capture the landscape in which we live.

Beyond the Pines was an ambitious project attempting to unite several themes of Canadian art. This was partly responsible for its failure: trying to be everything to everyone, from European-influenced landscape painting, to spirit-influenced Canadian art, to Native Canadians' grievances, and with an open ended question about contemporary Canadian identity, in which, of course the non-Western immigrant, the antithesis of Homer Watson's world, looms large.

But the deliberate ideological direction the curators took produced a collection of work which was not convincing in presenting its original idea of "moving forward" from the Watson narrative to a more inclusive multicultural art. Astute observers would instead realize that there was an undeclared intention of slowly and subtly removing the legacies of Homer Watson and his artistic heritage from the fore of Canadian fine art tradition to replace it with the contemporary landscape.

We were not told what this contemporary landscape could be other than a mishmash of disparate ideas and a desire for diversity that has become a cultish, spiritual quest oblivious of its fallacies. Whose diversity are we to take on? Will the Indian artist conform to the criteria of Chinese art? Will both accept, objectively and without prejudice, the artistic superiority of Homer Watson’s paintings? Would either attend, with curiosity and interest, the exhibitions of each other’s representative artists? And perhaps to settle this confusion, in December 2016 about a year after the Watson project, the AGM undertook another ambitious mandate, and led two full-day workshops titled: Collections through the Prism of Diversity, [Day 1, and Day 2].

We were informed that through these workshops:

The AGM is engaging in a forward thinking acquisition plan reflecting the cultural diversity of the city, region, as well as the historical diversity of Canada. Public art galleries and art museums are committed to acquiring works of art from culturally diverse and Indigenous communities, however this often requires considering how their acquisition plans are aligned with their missions and mandates.

There is a carefully guarded piece of information that is missing in the public announcements by the AGM. The museum was just approved to receive $325,000 for the 2017 fiscal year by the City of Mississauga's Art and Cultural Grant Program. This is a continuation of the prior seven years of six-digit grant money, starting with $271,000 in 2011, $316,000 in 2012, and $365,000 for the years thereafter upto and including 2017. This is an investment of $2412 million over a seven year period. [Grants and funding reports by the City of Mississauga for the following years: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017,]

The other missing information was that if indeed there are enough high calibre non-Western artists (museum worthy) living in the Mississauga region who could benefit from such large grant and sponsorship monies.

The question begs to be answered with a no. If indeed there were such artists, then neither the exorbitant public money nor the earnestly planned workshops would have been necessary.

I say “earnest” a little tongue in cheek since for these cultural reformists, western art should not be (and cannot be) the criteria with which to judge multi-ethnic cultural participants. Each community member, each ethnic identity, each hyphenated Canadian, brings unique with him unique abilities and talents. He should be judged by those equality-based criteria rather than the elitist standards of western art.

And without those standards, there would be no Art Gallery of Mississauga and no exhibitions worthy of the public’s visits. And that is the conundrum in which these art and culture leaders find themselves, and the reason why they have to demand, fascistic fashion, that there be some way to allow such art and culture to enter the doors of the gallery.

These workshops had as their primary objective to attract the multicultural, non-Western, non-white, and Native population of Mississauga, a city which, from data from the 2011 census report was 53.74% non-white (described as "visible minority" by the census report). The non-white population can only have increased by the 2016 census, which is not yet available. Yet the 2011 census visible minority report is not reflected in the museum's attendance numbers, even when "ethnic" oriented programs were scheduled. Two billion dollars is a lot of money to invest in satisfying a community's cultural biases. Minority non-white cultures are not interested in attending museums even when the exhibitions represent their ethnic and cultural identities.

The bold, unique and truthful suggestions by these government-funded exploration committees would have been to propose that art galleries continue with their exhibition of western art and culture, partly to continue with the historical role of such arts organizations as purveyors of western art, and also, more importantly, to show the excellent treasures of western art, whether archival or historical like Homer Watson, or current and waiting to be discovered artists in our contemporary society who are true disciples of Canadian artists such as Homer Watson.