Wild About Writing

Stephen Leacock is one of the most enduring figures of Canadian literature. Some might regard that statement as faint praise. But he was a good choice for inclusion in John Ralston Saul’s series of Extraordinary Canadians for Penguin Canada.

Margaret MacMillan, a distinguished Canadian historian (Paris 1919, Nixon in China) admits her field is international history, not the history of this country. Yet she was a good choice to write the Leacock entry in the series.

In delivering the 2009 Leacock Lecture last night, MacMillan told us it was not easy “to get a sense of the full man.” She’s right. He is, I believe, the least understood of Canada’s literary figures.

Leacock worked as a university economics professor but is known for his humorous writings. His life, 1869 to 1944, covered the years of Canada’s existence as a loyal member of the British Empire. Canadianness was viewed with suspicion by an establishment that largely denigrated the few original expressions of character that were developing during his lifetime.

Most notably known for Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, Leacock , MacMillan writes, “lived through great changes in Canada and in the world, and his writings are part of the record we have of the past.”

MacMillan paid tribute to Leacock both as a humorist and a public intellectual — one of the very few that Canada had during his life. His speeches were reported on the front pages of the newspapers. His ideas were fodder for the editorial writers.

In the book, she reminds us of Leacock’s view that “the real virtue of a nation is bred in the country, that the city is an unnatural product.” Then she asks: “Don’t we still have that today with our enthusiasm for our cottages and for summer camps for our children?”

This makes me think that MacMillan is addressing the same comfortable upper middle class audience about whose foibles Leacock, wrote, made fun of, and otherwise demolished.

I asked MacMillan whether she thought there was still a market for Leacock’s work, and works about Leacock and others of his era, in today’s post-British, multi-ethnic society? Do Canadians whose recent roots lie in other lands give a damn?

She didn’t really answer my question, probably because there isn’t an easy answer. But she did make a good case as to why those Canadians should be interested in our past: The institutions and values of Leacock’s time are still largely our institutions and values, she said, and you can’t understand a country without knowing something of its past.

Other echoes of Canada’s past were heard at the Leacock Festival when authors Ted Barris and Tim Cook discussed their books: Juno by Barris and Shock Troops, by Cook.

The former deals, of course, with the Canadian landing in Europe on D-Day. The latter is the second volume of Cook’s history of Canada in the First World War.

Barris gave us illuminating anecdotes of Canadian achievements. Like the weather observer whose report after flying along the coast of Europe led to General Eisenhower’s decision to postpone the invasion by 24 hours. Or the cameraman who rode a Canadian landing craft onto the beach to record the first film of the Allied invasion.

Barris reminded us that soldiers don’t usually talk of their wartime experiences. He’s collected many such stories for his next book, Breaking the Silence, to be published in September by Thomas Allen.

Cook didn’t read, but he did sing. He sang a few ditties of World War I, such as Hit Me There Again (a satirical challenge to the Boche) and Mademoiselle from Armentieres, a bawdy ballad of the trenches.

I must break off my blogs on the Leacock Summer Festival to comment on the dreadful case of the three teenagers and their caregiver who died when their car plunged (was pushed?) into the Rideau Canal, near Kingston, Ont.

One must make no assumptions in a criminal case. But the fact their parents and an elder brother have been charged with first degree murder, has raised the question of whether this is an “honor” killing. 

It is interesting the extent to which apologists will go in rationalizing cultural practices like this. I heard a woman who is a sociologist at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) speak about this on The Current on CBC Radio this morning.

She seemed offended by the outrage being felt over this incident. Her line was that the issue is violence against women, not cultural practices, and that Canadians shouldn’t think they’re any better than people from other cultures because women are often violated in this country.

There are, unhappily, cases of women being murdered in Canada, as well as their children, by the woman’s mate.  But there’s no pattern of the type of murder of children by their parents like the estimated 5,000 “honor” killings per year that happen around the world in Muslim families.

It is an ironic coincidence that just this week, the United Nations issued its Arab Human Development Report, 2009. An account of the report is here.

Arab nations are part of the Muslim world. The report asks: Why have obstacles to human development in the region proved so stubborn.”

The report identifies several. Here’s one:

Many Arab women are still bound b y patriarchal patterns of kinship, legalized discrimination, social subordination and ingrained male dominance. Because women find themselves in a lowly position in relation to decision-making within the family, their situation continuously exposes them to forms of family and institutionalized violence. It is difficult to gauge the prevalence of violence against women in Arab societies. The subject is taboo in a male-oriented culture of denial.

What applies to the Arab countries in this respect also applies to other nations where Islam is the predominant (or only) religion.

All three monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianly and Islam, spring from cultures of male supremacy. Secular movements within the first two have brought about the development of human rights and personal freedoms.  Not so much within Islam.

I think this is yet another example of how religion poisons everything.  The full report is at this link.