Parks Canada privately complained of “persistent emails” from activists seeking to rewrite commemoration of the Canadian Pacific Railway from a racial perspective, Access To Information records show. Calls for revision followed a 2019 cabinet directive that Canadian history reflect “colonialism, patriarchy and racism.”
The next federal Census for the first time will ask Canadians if they had to sleep in their car. It follows complaints of inadequate estimates of Canada’s homeless population: “Over the past 12 months has this person stayed in a shelter, on the street or in parks, in a makeshift shelter, in a vehicle or in an abandoned building?”
Cabinet will not publicly discuss industrial projects for fast-tracked approval until they’re finalized, says Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson. “I never did a deal with the press,” he told reporters.
The Canada Revenue Agency in a legal notice Saturday quietly marked the end of a sports era with the wind-up of the Bobby Hull Foundation for Children in Winnipeg. Completion of the Foundation’s work came two years after the Hockey Hall of Famer died at 84: “I miss Bobby.”
It’s election time.
Posters of candidates
along the road,
under the bridge,
across from the gas station.
I see them
perfectly nestled
among the dandelions,
the clover,
the wild mustard,
the daisies,
the brome grass,
the chicory,
and half a dozen other weeds
I am unable to name.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
From 1949 to 1955 cabinet created two Royal Commissions on culture, one on arts and literature, the other on broadcasting. After beating Hitler and mastering hydro dams, the country for the first time was affluent enough to ask what it meant to be Canadian. Ordinary people subscribed to the Book Of The Month Club and their children read W.O. Mitchell at school. Canadian writers – Morley Callaghan, Mordecai Richler, Farley Mowat, Al Purdy – were genuine celebrities and dailies like the Winnipeg Free Press ran a weekly Young Authors contest.
The University of Alberta Press documents the era through the warm, nostalgic filter of private letters between one of the country’s most acclaimed novelists and her publisher. It is a sweet book, funny and angry by turn, and a delight to read.
Margaret Laurence was a writer from Neepawa, Man. whose early novels were an unvarnished depiction of life in a small town. Her publisher Jack McClelland was a chain-smoking cultural nationalist who drove himself to an ulcer. Letters follows their intimate correspondence from 1959 to Laurence’s death. It was a time of “cultural awakening,” editors note. “Moments in their letters are reminders of the humanity of these figures.”
As Laurence wrote in a “Dear Jack” letter in 1963, “If it is true (as I once heard Farley Mowat say in a radio talk) that in Canada people buy fewer books per year than in any other country except Siam, then one does not expect miracles.”
Laurence was a giant. Her novels including The Stone Angel and A Jest Of God were genuine bestsellers. One was sold as a screenplay for the 1968 Paul Newman film Rachel, Rachel. The other was famous enough to make it into Coles Notes. “If you haven’t seen it, don’t,” wrote Laurence. “It is vile. Chapter summaries, for God’s sake – no need to read the book! To see a novel mushed down into miniature, in somebody’s crass prose – it nearly made me throw up.”
Canadian publishing, then and now, was a hardscrabble business. Laurence was giddy on receiving a $5,000 grant from the Canada Council in 1966, the modern equivalent of $38,000. “Domestic life has been rather distracting lately as our water pipes froze,” she wrote McClelland. Her publisher remarked, “The strain of this idiotic business never seems to ease. In fact, it gets worse.”
Editors Laura K. Davis of Red Deer College and Linda M. Morra of Bishop’s University compiled Letters from archival records deposited by the authors’ estates, including correspondence only recently opened to scholars. The result is a treasure, tender and cynical.
“I am mad as hell about the fact you didn’t receive the Governor-General’s Award for Fiction,” McClelland wrote in 1965; “It’s a goddamn disgrace.”
From Laurence: “Roses are red/violets are blue/Be heartened old buddy/I’m betting on you.” From McClelland: “My dear, we have had our best years. If we don’t have too many more, that may not be all bad.”
Laurence died in 1987 at 61. McClelland died in 2004 at 81. Their correspondence is gold.
By Holly Doan
Margaret Laurence and Jack McClelland, Letters; edited by Laura K. Davis and Linda M. Morra; University of Alberta Press; 680 pages; ISBN 9781-77212-3357; $39.95
Housing in Canada is so unaffordable CMHC yesterday changed its definition of affordability. Canadians realistically should not expect a return to market conditions of 20 years ago, said the federal mortgage insurer: “Restoring affordability to levels last seen two decades ago is not realistic.”
Parks Canada in confidential staff emails as early as 2023 questioned First Nation claims that 215 children were buried on the grounds of an Indian Residential School in Kamloops, B.C. No public statement was made since then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had visited the site to “pay my respects to the graves.”
A federal agency boasts in a briefing note its jobs program cost taxpayers the equivalent of more than $13,000 per employee on average. Individual grants approved by the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario ranged as high as $62,500 per job: “We would have liked more money of course.”
The labour department says it is finalizing new climate change regulations for 1.3 million workers in the federally regulated private sector. New rules would protect workers “affected by very hot or very cold temperatures” on the job: “How are you preparing for this?”
The Department of Foreign Affairs in a 2024 briefing note expressed unease with war protestors who likened Israel to Russia or condemned every Israeli military strike as a breach of international law. “Alleged double standards likening Israel-Gaza to Russia-Ukraine” were disingenuous, wrote diplomats.
Managers of a federal Covid vaccine compensation fund are concealing the number of injury and death claims paid at taxpayers’ expense. It follow a 2021 Privy Council memo that urged staff to downplay vaccine-related impacts: “News reports of adverse events following immunization and the government’s response to them have strong potential to influence public confidence in vaccines.”
A federal board in a closed-door ruling vetoed any new historic plaques honouring John A. Macdonald as too “polarizing and controversial.” The Historic Sites and Monuments Board noted in part that Macdonald opposed Chinese immigration: ‘The Board recommended no plaque.’
Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday spoke privately with auto executives and lobbyists to “make Canada’s auto sector more sustainable,” he said. Carney made no mention of an appeal by the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association to repeal electric car mandates that take effect in six months: “Scrap the mandates.”
Canadians still remember Beaver Lumber though the hardware chain disappeared 25 years ago, federal research shows. In-house polling by Parks Canada that asked the public what entity they associated with the beaver logo found respondents still recalled the all-Canadian Beaver Lumber Company Ltd. that vanished in 2000: “To which Canadian organization does this corporate logo belong to?”
