Letters to Mr. Harper March 10, 2010
Posted by Ray Argyle in Authors, Books.Tags: Letters, Letters of Van Gogh, The Railroader's Wife, What is Stephen Harper Reading
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Who writes letters anymore? Today’s tweets, Facebook postings and abbreviated emails are as far as most people get in putting words to “paper” — or to cyberspace.
Thinking about all the great books made up of letters written by great men and women — actors, artists, authors, politicians — makes me wonder whether we’ll enjoy such literary pearls in the future.
So it’s reassuring to see we still have letter writers among us.
Yann Martel, the Canadian author of Life of Pi and other marvellous books, set out in 2007 to send a book to Prime Minister Harper every two weeks. With each book (used, by the way) he sent a warm and chatty letter discussing its ideas, or reflecting on thoughts it brought to mind. The letters are a delight to read, and point us to a title that if one hasn’t read, one certainly should.
He’s published the letters in What is Stephen Harper Reading ? (Vintage Canada). A small trade paperback, it’s filled with delightful observations and ironic comments.
In his first letter to Mr. Harper, discussing Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych, Yann points out the continuing relevance and enduring quality of great literature. Of this book, he says
That is the greatness of literature, and its paradox, that in reading about fictional others we end up reading about ourselves.
Martel has wisely made no assumptions about Mr. Harper’s reading habits. He concedes the PM is a busy man. It would be nice, he thinks, if he could find a little space “for a few minutes, a few pages, before we fall asleep.”
But he’s never had any indication whether Mr. Harper has even seen any of the 55 books he’s sent, let alone read any. He’s had two responses from officials in the PM’s Office, to his first and fifty-fourth books. Bare bureaucratic thank-you notes, no suggestion as to what’s become of them.
Martel admits to a political motive in sending the books. He got the idea when he was among a group of artists and writers at a 50th anniversary event for the Canada Council. They all trooped over to the House of Commons where the Heritage minister of the day acknowledged their presence. Mr. Harper didn’t even look up to the Speaker’s gallery when Martel and the others stood to receive the respect of Parliament.
So he decided to send books to the Prime Minister. “As a citizen of the arts, I have a right to know what my elected leader thinks about reading.”
Meanwhile, books of letters continue to come to market. Over a million letters were sent to Jackie Kennedy following the assassination of the President. Letters to Jackie: Condolences From a Grieving Nation (HarperCollins) contains 240 of the most touching of these notes.
Another book of Van Gogh letters will be in book stores next month. The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters (Royal Academy Publications), offers fresh insights into our understanding of this troubled figure. It’s in books like this that we gain a fuller understanding of the society in which these memorable charactersa lived and worked.
Closer to home, British Columbia’s Caitlin press has published The Railroader’s Wife. It’s a collection of letters written between 1912 and 1914 by Bernice Martin to her family back in Wisconsin. She wrote of her husband’s work in the building of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway through central B.C.
Then, there’s David Staines’ charming work, The Letters of Stephen Leacock (Oxford University Press). He talks about the book here:
Letters like these always make good reading, especially when they’re meant for someone else. In Leacock’s case, Staines says, his letters were mostly to his publishers, his “real family” and his “life line to the real world.”
So write a letter today. It might end up in a book!
Stand on guard for O Canada! March 5, 2010
Posted by Ray Argyle in Books, Culture, History.Tags: 'In all thy sons' command", national anthems, O Canada, Throne Speech
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UIPDATE: Prime Minister’s Office announces no change in O Canada — “Public has spoken loud and clear.”
Have a heart for poor old Robert Stanley Weir. How would you feel if your words were rewritten every generation or so — simply because some people thought they could improve on the original?
The fuss-up over the Harper government’s proposal to change Canada’s national anthem, O Canada, is generally being panned across the country. (The official story of the anthem is here).
For anyone who hasn’t heard, the subject came up in the Throne Speech at the opening of Parliament this week. The line that supposedly needs changing:
“True patriot love in all thy son’s commands.”
It’s suggested we revert to Mr. Weir’s original words, which were changed when O Canada was officially adopted in 1980. They read:
“True patriot love thou dost in us command.”
Before we go any further, give a listen to O Canada as it should be sung:
Stirring, isn’t it?
The reaction to taking what some see as gender bias out of the anthem falls into three camps:
- There’s far more important things — such as jobs and climate change — for Parliament to consider than this non-issue
- Good idea – daughters as well as sons stand on guard for O Canada
- Leave well enough alone – the anthem speaks to our history as well as our present-day attitudes
As a guy with three daughters, I’m all for gender equality. But I’m in Camp No. 3. A national anthem must express the heritage of a nation. The Star Spangled Banner, for example, speaks of “bombs bursting in air.” I don’t think any Americans want to see bombs over their cities, but it is worthwhile to remember their country was born in revolution and strife.
So it is with the line in our anthem about our “home and native land.” Some are saying this needs to be dropped because Canada is not the native land of our new citizens. My response is that Canada will become the native land of their children. For them, our anthem stands as an ode to the future as well as to the past.
Few stories have touched off more comments on the news sites of the web. I liked this reaction from a reader of The National Post:
If anything should be changed in O Canada, it should be the deletion of the reference to God. Not all of us believe in a god and as such any type of religious reference should be kept out of the public domain.
Finally, there are the cynical among us who see the anthem dust-up as a clever move by the Harperites to divert public attention. More likely, it’s another attempt to carry political correctness to the extreme — while picking up a few votes along the way.
So as a public service (and because many of us aren’t sure of the words of the current version), I’ve checked out the words and history of O Canada in Scholastic Canada’s beautifully illustrated book on the anthem. Here’s the refrain. Memorize it!
O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
Our Games, their headlines March 1, 2010
Posted by Ray Argyle in media.Tags: Front pages, Winter Olympics
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The Winter Olympics have been the big story in Canada the past two weeks. Today’s papers are filled with it. How about the rest of the world? A sampling of front pages I collected from The Newseum:
Fairbanks, Alaska, News-Miner. No surprise here.
Phoeniz, Arizona, Republic. Must be Wayne Gretzky’s influence:
Los Angeles Daily News. All eyes north!
Danbury, Conn., News-Times – Loser’s View:
Washington Post: What else from the U.S. capital?
And the New York Times. The story leads with an anecdote about a Catholic priest senhding people home early from Mass so they can watch the game.
The New York Daily News. (No. 1 in circulation.) They still love hockey:
Ben McNally owns the podium February 28, 2010
Posted by Ray Argyle in Authors, Books.Tags: Author Brunch, Ben McNally Books, Citizens of London, Lynne Olson
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It’s the final day of the Olympics and I’m looking for a respite in the run-up to the Gold Medal hockey match. If you’re in Toronto, there’s no better place to be than Ben McNally’s Author Brunch at the old lady of King Street, the King Edward Hotel.
I admire Ben for a bunch of reasons, not the least being the bold statement made by his pony tail, worn by a guy who hasn’t fortgotten the joys of his youth but has obviously found new joys in the world of books. He opened Ben McNally Books on Bay Street at a time when independent booksellers had become an endangered species.
By virtue of a lot of sweat and clever ideas, one of which was the Author Brunch which he brought over from his prior employment at Nichollas Hoar, Ben has succeeded in keeping his doors open.
The Author Bunch is an astonishing tribute to one man’s entrepreneurial skill. It’s also a credit to the two hundred or so book lovers who turn up on winter Sunday mornings — some from pretty distant points — to listen to a quartet of writers talk up their books. This morning, I had school teacher Nancy Gilbert from Tottingham on one side and Dawn, a lady from Rockwood, on the other. Both had gotten up early to drive toToronto, as do dozens of others for each of these affairs.
Ben’s a funny guy at the podium but it was from Nicholas Ruddock, author of The Parabolist (Doubleday Canada) who drew the most chuckles. His best line was about how Ben sang in a rock and roll band, one critic likening his voice to that of a “sick crow.”
We also learned what a parabolist is — one who speaks in parables.
The author who interested me most was Lynne Olson, the English historian who has written Citizens of London: How Britain Was Rescued in its Darkest Hour (Bond Street Books).
I learned a lot from an earlier Olson book, Troublesome Young Men, an account of the men around Winston Churchil during his rise to power.
Olson’s new work focuses on three men she credits with shaping the Anglo-American alliance that saved Britain in World War II. Incidentally, it also saved the world from a new dark age of Nazis despotism.
- Edward R. Murrow, the CBS radio commentator, broadcast night after night from “the rooftops of London” and built immense empathy for Britiain among his American listening audience.
- Averill Harriman, whose long and distinguished career ended sadly when he was caught up in a Middle East banking fiasco in the 1990s, engineered the details of the Lend Lease deal that enabled President Roosevelt to beef up Britain’s armed forces in the days before the Americans were in the war.
- John Wynant, the American ambassador to Britain, roamed the streets of London during the worst nights of the blitz. He left everyone he encountered knowing that America really cared about what happened to England.
But Olson tells the human, personal story of these and others who figure in her book. She reveals Wynant had a love affair with Pamela Churchill, the PM’s daughter-in-law (married to the drunken Randolph). When Wynant was moved to Moscow, his place was taken by Ed Murrow.
“London,” she says, “ was the most exciting and vibrant city in the world during the darkest days of the war.” She adds that her book is a tribute to the people who really saved London — the ordinary Londoner who struggled amid death, destruction and rationing, but never gave up.
Thanks Ben McNally for bringing us authors like Ms. Olson and Nick Ruddock, as well as today’s two other authors, Elizabeth Abbott (A History of Marriage) and S.M. Plokhy (Yalta: The Price of Peace). You’ve won Gold.
Lucien Bouchard – “closet fedaralist” February 21, 2010
Posted by Ray Argyle in Books, Politics.Tags: Bloc Quebecois, Le Devoir, Lucien Bouchard, Parti Quebecois, Quebec sovereignty, reasonable accommodation
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Lucien Bouchard, the former Premier of Quebec and founder of the separatist Bloc Quebecois in the federal Parliament, is beginning to sound like the “closest federalist” I’ve always thought he was destined to become.
Bouchard’s image in English Canada has ricocheted from something not much above a snake in the grass to a guy for whom we all felt deep sympathy when he lost a leg to flesh eating disease.
But like Pierre Trudeau in his lifetime, Bouchard keeps coming back. Now he’s given the boot to sovereignty as a likely prospect for the current generation. Most Quebecers agree — a new poll has 56 per cent believing sovereignty is “not achievable.”
He’s also come out swinging against his old party for its “radical” resistance to cultural tolerance.
It’s been a dozen years since Lawrence Martin published his magisterial biography of Bouchard, The Antagonist: Lucien Bouchard and the Politics of Delusion (Penguin, 1998).
The political environment has turned 180 degrees since the book came out. Bouchard resigned in frustration, equally fed up with the radical fringe of the PQ and his own failure – despite his charisma — to woo Quebec to separatism. Lawrence Martin’s book remains a timely read in light of Bouchard’s latest intervention.
He set off a grand kafuffle last week with his declaration that Quebec sovereignty is nothing more than a dream that won’t be achieved any time soon. A “hypothesis,” he called it.
More damning was the dart he aimed at his old party. He said the PQ, desperate for electoral relevancy, is becoming a breeding ground for radicalism, especially on cultural and religious issues.
Bouchard was speaking at a 100th anniversary event honoring Le Devoir, a newspaper long considered the conscience of French Canada.
Despite his headline-grabbing remarks about the failure of sovereignty, he’s clearly more concerned about the PQ stance on what’s become known as “reasonable accommodation.”
This is a complex, many-layered issue. Quebec Premier John Charest appointed Bouchard’s brother as one of two commissioners to look into how far Quebec should go in tolerating public expressions of other cultures and religions.
In essence, the commission looked at how to deal with Muslim immigrants on such matters as allowing the burka in the voting booth while Christian symbols are being removed from all public spaces.
Bouchard’s argument is that French culture and language are safe in Quebec and there’s no need to fear newly-arrived ethnic groups. As he put it:
There is a cultural majority in Quebec and that is us. But there are other people around us, about 10 or 11 per cent that have different religions and we need to make the necessary accommodations when it is needed.
Pauline Marois, the PQ leader, doesn’t see it that way. She thinks Jean Charest is “too busy defending Canadian multiculturalism … to stand up to defend the values of the Quebec identity.”
She points to the fact that polls show 75 per cent of Quebecers agree the Charest government has been “too accommodating” to the demands of religious groups. The latest evidence of this, she says, is the decision to allow core curriculum subjects to be taught on Sundays. Jewish schools need the concession to make up for time devoted to religious instruction during regular school hours.
Lucien Bouchard has always been acutely conscious of the fact that Quebec society harbours a strong streak of racism. Past generations have been fearful of Protestants, Jews, and the English. Now it’s Muslim immigrants who raise apprehensions about the future “purity” of Quebec.
The only threat that religious fundamentalism poses to Quebec, Bouchard wisely observes, is when it jeopardizes equal rights between men and women.
It’s tempting but foolish to declare separatism in Quebec dead. Pierre Trudeau did so after the 1980 referendum. It was a reckless statement and he never lived it down.
There’ll always be a good chunk of Quebecers — just as there is a good chunk of Newfoundlanders, and perhaps also Albertans — who think they’d be better off free of Ottawa’s grasp.
And the issue of “reasonable accommodation” is one that warrants debate. But it needs to be debated rationally, free of the kind of racist hysteria which Bouchard has spoken out against so forcefully. Good on him.
The last veteran – closing the book February 19, 2010
Posted by Ray Argyle in History.Tags: Edward Rutherland, John Babcock, Last Canadian First War vet, Novel New York, Scott Joplin
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The death of John Babcock, the last surviving Canadian veteran of the First World War, has a special meaning for those who have family links to the men and women whose lives were tied up in that great struggle. The news report is here.
For me, it “closes the book” on my father’s era. He served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force from 1915 to 1919. Percy Argyle, #198747, joined the 94th “New Ontario” Battalion in Rainy River. He went overseas almost immediately and later was transferred to the 1st Battalion, Canadian Mounted Rifles.
Dad was there when the Canadian troops followed a “creeping barrage” of shelling to conquer Vimy Ridge on Easter Monday, 1917. He was seriously wounded a few days later and shipped out to a hospital in England. In a letter he wrote me in 1960, Dad had this to say about Vimy:
Age has a habit of dimming names and places and names of people but it can never dim the sights and sounds of what we experienced. The shelling, the mud, the apparent confusion out of which grew a single purpose, take the Ridge or else.
The courtship of my parents qualifies as a romantic tale. My father had met my mother in Canada. Both were immigrants from England – my mother was Irish and Dad descended (we believe) from a Scottish family.
“She must have loved me a lot,” he told me, recounting how she had followed him overseas. He applied for permission to marry in December 1916 and they were wed in Dad’s hometown of Ilkeston. Their first-born, Percy Edward, came into the world on November 22, 1918. I was a much delayed arrival.
After the war, my parents went to St. Louis, Missouri, to live with my mother’s sister.
Dad told me an interesting story of their border crossing at Niagara Falls. He was asked whether he had a job to go to. He had been tipped off that he should answer No. “If you said Yes, they wouldn’t let you across,” Dad recalled.
I always wondered about this. I finally discovered, in a few sentences in Edward Rutherford’s new novel, New York, the reason for that seemingly unfathomable policy He depicts an Italian family at Ellis Island being asked the same question.
“There were two reasons for this strange rule. The first was that the United States wanted men who were anxious to take any job they could find. The second was to discourage an illicit trade. For there were padroni who promised jobs, paid people’s passage … He’d be waiting for them in the park near the docks, and take them into lodgings. And before long the new arrivals were in his power, trapped like slaves, and fleeced of all they had.”
I wish I’d known about this anecdote when I met Rutherford when he was in Toronto recently. As it was, we were able to discuss the Ragtime era in the context of both our books — mine being Scott Joplin and the Age of Ragtime.
Like many war veterans, my father was a troubled man much of his life, although I never realized it while I lived under his roof. My sharpest memory is of the damage that shrapnel had done to one leg. His calf oozed fluid the rest of his life.
Dad died in 1978. He was 87, and had lived a pretty full life having raised four sons and survived three wives.
The Historica-Dominion Institute has set up a Facebook page urging a National Day of Commemoration in honor of Mr. Babcock and our other veterans. You can see it here.
The boy, the man and the Last Spike February 17, 2010
Posted by Ray Argyle in Uncategorized.Tags: Barbara Kyle, Canadian Pacific Railway, Craigellachie, Edward Mallandaine, Last Spike, The Boy in the Picture, Young Adult book
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The novelist and creative writing teacher Barbara Kyle has reminded me of the theory of six degrees of separation. It holds that everyone on earth is linked to each of us by no more than six steps, through people we know, who know someone else, and so on. This is perhaps the basis for the old saying, “It’s a small world.”
The subject came up when I passed along the news that my new book The Boy in the Picture will come out in August 2010 from the Natural Heritage imprint of the leading Canadian book publisher, Dundurn Press.
It tells the story of young Edward Mallandaine, the “boy in the picture” of the driving of the Last Spike that marked completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway on November 7, 1885.
In this case, I’m only one degree of separation from that great historic event. When Edward was a very old man and I was a young boy, I knew him. He was the Reeve (Mayor) of my hometown of Creston, B.C.
It’s a little humbling when I think that the entire history of Canada since Confederation is wrapped up in the lives of just the two of us!
Edward was a lad in Victoria when the Northwest Rebellion broke out and he decided he wanted to “fight the Indians.” He headed to the prairies but the rebellion was put down before he got there.
Fate had a different destiny for him. He was hired to ride dispatches by horseback over the incomplete section of the railway in the Monashee mountain range. That put him in Craigellachie for the Last Spike ceremony. You can see him peering out from this picture.
I’ve written The Boy in the Picture as a Young Adult book. It includes about fifty historic pictures.
I see Edward as a great role model for today’s young people who live in a vastly different Canada, where we’re joined by the web and other technologies, instead of the railway. But Edward’s lust for adventure and his unflinching courage in tackling unknown dangers fit well with the challenges young people face today.
The Boy is based on historic records and stories I remember from Edward. It’s told through creative non-fiction and combines plot, setting and dialogue in a story-telling narrative of historic adventure. Maybe it’ll help to make Canadian history a little more exciting!
Edward went on to become a pioneer of British Columbia. He helped found the town of Creston where he was “the man” for many, many years.
I’ve been researching Edward’s life for the past three years, first for an article in The Beaver magazine, and now for this book. I’ve dug through files on Edward’s family in the B.C. Archives in Victoria, the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, and Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa.
I’ve also had great help from two museums in Revelstoke, B.C., the Revelstoke Railway Museum and the Revelstoke Museum. I’m excited that the book launch will be at the Railway Museum in August as part of their annual Railway Days Festival.
2010 will be a big year for the Railway Museum because it marks the 125th anniversary of the driving of the Last Spike. Maybe we’ll see you there!
Great magazine, wrong name January 12, 2010
Posted by Ray Argyle in media.Tags: History, magazines, The Beaver
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I’m a bit shocked to hear that The Beaver, my favorite magazine (and one for which I’ve written a few pieces over the years) is changing its name to Canada’s History.
It’s an accurate enough description of what this fine magazine cares about. And it’s understandable — altho regrettable — that they have to drop a name that’s been given a bad rep by people who apply a sexual meaning to the word.
But Canada’s History? Dull, dull, and for many, I’m sure a turn-off.
My concern is that the name change might turn out to be counter-productive. Instead of enticing more people to its lively, gotta read stories, it just might turn them away.
The National Post ran a full-out piece on the name change, along with a tongue-in-cheek sidebar suggesting alternate titles.
One of them, TRUE NORTH, really appeals to me.
As far as I know, none of the writers who contribute to The Beaver or any of its subscribers were ever consulted about the change. Touche, we feel it’s OUR magazine!
So here’s my appeal to Deborah Morrison and Mark Reid. Take some more time to think this through. Maybe someone with more energy than yours truly will get up a Facebook page or an online petition to try and influence their thinking.
The Globe and Mail also marks the passing of the name. James Adams, who I consider the most knowledegable media reporter in the country, says The Beaver did a lot of market research and found out that its present name was turning off potential readers.
That might be true, but there’s great danger when a company breaks links with its past. I’ve seen it happen a few times. Management decides what the company’s been doing isn’t all that smart, and a new face is needed. Remember New Coke?
I wish Canada’s History all the best, and I’ll be proud if they continue to let me write for it. But I wish they’d choose another name.
The Road and the Reader – life with ebooks January 4, 2010
Posted by Ray Argyle in Uncategorized.Tags: Cormac McCarthy, ebooks, Kindle, Sony Reader, The Road
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I’m back, and anxious to tell you about my introduction to the Sony Reader, the ebook device that along with Amazon’s Kindle is said to herald the next era in reading.
This little machine came to me as a Christmas present (my thanks to the giver) and as with all new technology toys, it takes a while to figure out how the gizmo works.
I can’t say the instructions in the little folder that came with my PRS-600 model are as explicit as I’d like. It doesn’t tell you right off, for instance, that you need to go to the Sony web site and download software. When I finally realized this is what I had to do, it took me three days to get into Sony’s Canadian site. There must have been a lot of Sony Readers in Christmas stockings this year!
So what has been my reading experience? My Reader came with a dozen books pre-loaded, none of which appealed to me. So after finally getting into the Sony e-store, I deleted these files and set out to find something I wanted to read.
I should explain at this point that I have about a dozen hard covers sitting on my book shelf that I’m keen to get into. I thought I’d use the Sony as my bedtime reader, reserving the others for easy chair consumption.
Because I’d noticed the best-seller by Cormac McCarthy, The Road, on several “books of the decade” list, I decided to go with it. I hit the shortcut button on my desktop, signed in, and there I was. Sony was plugging The Road as
A searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece.
The price was right – $9.95. I assume an author of the import of McCarthy got a fair cut of this. This is where the biggest battle of the ebook world will rage — the division of income between a publisher freed of printing costs, and a writer faced with the usual long odds that make literary life a doubtful economic proposition,
The Road may well be McCarthy’s masterpiece, but it didn’t do it for me. I found the story largely without plot and its protagonists, The Man and The Boy, cardboard cut-outs of real people. It put me in a time warp, back to the 50s and 60s when we all thought atomic annihilation would be our fate. But it fails to deliver the believability of On the Beach, an epic work of this genre.
By great coincidence, Lysine Gagnon has a piece in today’s Globe and Mail that makes pretty much this point. As she writes:
“”The two main characters, the Man and the Boy, have no identity. We know almost nothing about them. And apart from expressing fear or hunger, they have nothing to say. Most of their dialogue, while walking south in a country destroyed by some huge cataclysm, goes like this: “What did you dream about? Nothing. Are you okay? No. We’ll be okay. Okay.”
I finished The Road in a few nights of bedtime reading. I found the Sony Reader, well, okay (sorry, gift giver!) but not an overwhelming experience. It’s easier to hold in bed than a hard cover, but the screen is a little dicey, despite the ability to enlarge the font. And when I tried it out in natural daylight abed one morning, reflections from a window made the screen difficult to read.
But it proved to me that, once again, the medium is NOT always the message.
The story’s the thing — whether consumed in the tactile experience of turning the page or the more remote (for now) scrolling of the electronic screen.
With Sony, you download your ebook first to your computer and then transfer it to your Reader. Not as clunky as it sounds — and you can also read your buy on your computer, if you wish. And the Reader also can store pictures and audio, neither of which I’ve yet tried.
I suspect I’ll make the biggest use of my Sony Reader to acquire of print Google books. I’ve started with Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, an 1838 classic by Anna Jameson. And it’s free!
Get into reading — and get a better life November 13, 2009
Posted by Ray Argyle in Books, Culture, Education.Tags: Literacy, Reading Promotion
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I’m at the TD National Reading Summit, an effort by publishing types, librarians and others involved in the written word to figure out new ways of promoting the joys and benefits of reading.
It’s billed as the first of three meetings with the ambitious goal of rolling out a Canada Reading Plan that would tackle the twin challenges of getting people to read more, and equipping them to make sense of what they read.
The keynote speaker, Brazilian author Ana Maria Machado, summed it up this way:
Reading is more than literacy. In print does not mean it is true. Reading well means being able to turn knowledge into wisdom, to be able to tell what is accurate, and to understand how to check things that aren’t.
Her comments sum up the scope of the issue, something of which the organizers are well aware. A closing session identified the obstacles, as well as the goals, of a national reading plan that would be funded by both governments and the private sector.
The goals: Books (and magazines) available everywhere and at anytime. Literacy beyond the basic level. All ages and cultures included. Increased support for writers and publishers.
The obstacles: A complex issue, little clarity or understanding of the problem. A long term horizon. Little public awareness of the social benefits of reading. No organization in place to plead the cause.
I’m at the Summit representing Periodical Marketers of Canada, the association of magazine and book distributors, and a co-sponsor of the event.
It’s my contention that the best way to promote reading is by promoting individual reading “products.” That means more advertising and PR by publishers of their books and magazines to stimulate more reading.
A book publisher at my table said she couldn’t afford to do any more advertising. And that’s the big problem facing Canadian publishers and authors. Books are dying on the shelves — and magazines are being returned to the wholesalers — because the public just isn’t being told about the great reading that’s out there for them.
The Reading Summit marks a serious attempt to face up to the issue of under-use of our reading skills — and its consequences for Canada in poor productivity (workers who can’t understand manuals) and low levels of social involvement (more voters staying away from the polls).
Other countries are taking steps to raise reading levels. We heard examples from the Netherlands, Mexico, China, among others. If we don’t do the same, we’ll end up lagging behind such countries.
As well as promoting individual titles, they’re promoting reading as a satisfying and rewarding experience. We saw a great Spanish language TV spot depicting a boy orating romantically as he read aloud from a book. Cut to an audience of little girls swooning at his performance. Cut back to the boy now with a smug, self-satisfied smile. A fun spot that might actually influence boys — the hardest audience to reach — to get into reading — and get a better life.
But I left the Summit with a harsh message ringing in my ears. Patsy Aldana, publisher of Groundwood Books, told the story of an Ontario school board that bans the reading of books for pleasure during the school day. Get caught with such a book, and if you can’t explain its purpose, it’s taken away from you. An isolated case, I’m sure, but a reminder that maybe we need to start from the inside and make sure people charged with educating our kids share a love for reading. A fitting goal for the National Reading Summit.
