Thoughts on culture, education, and having been a Canadian in the US

I’m so busy here keeping my head down and trying to get this book finished that I’ve avoided blogging for weeks. There are lots of things I’ve been dying to write about, including healthcare, the border, the end of the semester, and the graduation of some of my favourite students here at UVM. After reading the following article, though, I knew I had to break my silence.

I’m all for trying to put more hybrid and electric vehicles on the road and, more importantly, trying to cut down on our use of vehicles altogether. These days, I bike to work most days and try to take the bus during the winter. We’ve deliberately avoided buying a second car for our family to try to be more environmentally conscious. Despite all that, I’ve been laughing all morning at this piece from this weekend’s Sunday Times.

This review of the new Honda Insight may be one of the best car reviews ever written. That’s not to say that Jeremy Clarkson liked the Insight. Indeed, he seems to loathe everything about it.

Here’s an excerpt, but make sure to read the whole thing here:

Much has been written about the Insight, Honda’s new low-priced hybrid. We’ve been told how much carbon dioxide it produces, how its dashboard encourages frugal driving by glowing green when you’re easy on the throttle and how it is the dawn of all things. The beginning of days.

So far, though, you have not been told what it’s like as a car; as a tool for moving you, your friends and your things from place to place.

So here goes. It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more.

The biggest problem, and it’s taken me a while to work this out, because all the other problems are so vast and so cancerous, is the gearbox. For reasons known only to itself, Honda has fitted the Insight with something called constantly variable transmission (CVT).

It doesn’t work. Put your foot down in a normal car and the revs climb in tandem with the speed. In a CVT car, the revs spool up quickly and then the speed rises to match them. It feels like the clutch is slipping. It feels horrid.

And the sound is worse. The Honda’s petrol engine is a much-shaved, built-for-economy, low-friction 1.3 that, at full chat, makes a noise worse than someone else’s crying baby on an airliner. It’s worse than the sound of your parachute failing to open. Really, to get an idea of how awful it is, you’d have to sit a dog on a ham slicer.

So you’re sitting there with the engine screaming its head off, and your ears bleeding, and you’re doing only 23mph because that’s about the top speed, and you’re thinking things can’t get any worse, and then they do because you run over a small piece of grit.

If I were a journalism prof, this might well be required reading….

Wednesday, April 22

DONALD R. BROWN MEMORIAL LECTURE IN POLITICAL THEORY: “THE ESSENTIALIST CRITIQUE OF MULTICULTURALISM.” Will Kymlicka, Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy, Queen’s University, Canada and senior research fellow, Nuffield College, Oxford.

Memorial Lounge, Waterman Building. 3:30 p.m.

A BECKONING COUNTRY OPENING RECEPTION

5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. — Marble Court at the Fleming Museum

Hosted by President Daniel Mark Fogel and Rachel Kahn-Fogel. In celebration of the quadricentennial anniversary of French explorer and cartographer Samuel de Champlains travels to the lake that bears his name, this exhibit examines the features of the Champlain Valley landscape through the objects and art created from and inspired by them. University Concert Choir performs. Exhibit continues through Sept. 20.

Admission Fee: Regular Admission at the door. Free to UVM.

Thursday, April 23

“Reforming Health Care: A Single Payer or Consumer Driven Solution,” a debate featuring Arnold Kling, Cato Institute, and Robert Kuttner, editor of The American Prospect. Moderated by Emerson Lynn, editor of the St. Albans Messenger. A reception follows immediately. ADA accommodations: 656-5665.

4:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. — Davis Student Center – The Grand Maple Ballroom

Friday, April 24

k.d. lang, “The Watershed Tour”Flynn TheatreFriday, April 24 at 8 pm
Tickets still available

Fall registration begins for Seniors on Tuesday, April 14 at 7:00 AM, and opens up for everyone else gradually over that week. Make sure to check the UVM Registration schedule to see when you may begin registering for Spring classes.

I’m setting aside enough 15 minute appointments over the next week or so to meet with all 40 of my advisees. I’ll be available to answer any advising questions and to help review your choice of courses for the fall semester. If you’ll be a senior planning on graduating in spring 2010, you should definitely come to see me before registering so that we can make sure you’ll be set to graduate. At the very least, you should carefully review your CATS report to see if you’re on track to graduate.

Keep reading after the break for further details and to choose your appointment time.

[Read more →]

Thanks to Mark for sending this my way.

Had a wonderful few days in Edmonton where I was giving a paper at the “Transplanting Canada” colloquium put on by the Canadian Literature Centre at the University of Alberta. Click here for a PDF of the conference program if you’re interested to learn more about what went on there.

It was really great to see such exciting things happening at the U of A these days. There are many new young faculty there and a herd of super-smart graduate students (they travel in herds on the prairies). Meeting many old and new friends from across the country and hearing some really interesting talks made this one of the best conference experiences I have had.

The folks at the CLC who planned the conference thought of everything, by the way, including hiring this guy to greet potential conference goers as they drove in to Canada.

(okay, everything I said above was true except for this last part)

Although we don’t know for sure what kinds of cuts we’ll be seeing at CBC over the next few months, it sounds like cuts are imminent. The mere mention of the potential elimination of CBC Radio 3 by one of the heads of the CBC sent shockwaves through Canada’s music scene this past week.

As a Canadian living outside of the country these days, CBC Radio 3 is a lifeline to Canada’s music scene. More importantly — and I speak as a music fan, a scholar and teacher of Canadian culture, and a former musician — Radio 3 has changed the face of the independent music scene in Canada, allowing people around the world to learn about great Canadian bands and artists to whom they would otherwise never be exposed. CBC Radio 3 makes a contribution to Canadian culture nationally and internationally that far exceeds the investment put in by CBC.

Radio 3 has also been at the cutting edge of podcasting and internet broadcasting for years now and really broke new ground for the CBC. The importance of this cannot be underestimated either. If CBC Radio wants to continue to be seen as current and cutting edge, eliminating CBC Radio 3 would almost guarantee that they would never be thought of in this way again for a long time. Radio 3 really is the success story that the CBC should be looking at as a model for other parts of their operations.

Whether you are a regular listener to Radio 3 or not (if you’re not, you should be!!), please take a minute and sign this petition.

It’s Freedom to Read Week in Canada this week. It’s interesting to take a look at their list of challenged books to see how many of Canadian literature’s most canonical texts are on that list, including Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners, Timothy Findley’s The Wars, and Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women. Censorship at all levels is an ongoing issue. Just this past year, as discussed on this blog, there was a challenge to the presence of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale on the high school curriculum in Ontario.

It’s important for us all to speak out against such challenges when they occur, but also to pay attention to the quieter forms of censorship such as when certain books are simply not ordered for school libraries (perhaps we should start protesting when certain books aren’t on the shelves!) or even when teachers avoid putting particular books on the syllabus because they don’t feel equipped (or paid enough) to handle the reactions that might ensue.

If you start to look through the documented cases of people trying to have particular books pulled from the shelves, you might find your anger and disbelief occasionally turn to laughter. As I was reading through a list of such cases that I found on the Freedom to Read website, I came across this entry:

Gill, John (ed.). New American and Canadian Poetry.

1994—The school board in Sechelt (BC), responding to a parental complaint, removed

this book from student use in Chatelech Secondary School.

Cause of objection—Anthology was said to present an anti-establishment view and to

present sex and four-letter words in a positive light.

Update—The school board decided, following a review, that the book should remain in

the library. The sole copy has since been stolen and not replaced.

These complaints all sound ridiculous to most people and it’s easy to dismiss them. But we also cannot be complacent. Our authors deserve to be defended from such actions by all of us. So, the next time you hear of a complaint like this in your town, make sure to call up the school board or library to voice your support for keeping those works on the shelves. And, maybe plan on stopping by the library at a later date just to make sure that book hasn’t mysteriously disappeared.

Here’s a list of 40 books or so that I mentioned in a talk given today on Canada’s Literary Landscape. This is anything but a complete list, but it’s not a bad start for anyone looking to learn more about Canadian literature.

Canada’s Literary Landscape:

A list of suggestions to help you read your way across Canada

Paul Martin, February 16, 2009

Paul.Martin@uvm.edu http://pwmartin.blog.uvm.edu

NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR

Donna Morrissey, Kit’s Law (2001)

Wayne Johnston, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams (1998)

Lisa Moore, Alligator (2005)

PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND

L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables (1908)

NOVA SCOTIA

Alistair MacLeod, No Great Mischief (1999)

Alistair Macleod, Island: collected stories

George Elliott Clarke, George and Rue (2005)

Lynn Coady, Strange Heaven (2002)

NEW BRUNSWICK

David Adams Richards, Mercy Among the Children (2000)

Antonine Maillet, Pélagie: The Return to Acadie

QUEBEC

Jacques Poulin, Volkswagen Blues (1983)

Mordecai Richler, Barney’s Version (1997)

Anne Hébert, Kamouraska (1970)

Marie-Claire Blais, A Season in the Life of Emmanuel (1964)

ONTARIO

Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace (1996), The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), The Blind Assassin (2001), Cat’s Eye (1988)

Dionne Brand, What We All Long For (2005)

Anything at all by Alice Munro

Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion (1983)

Timothy Findley, The Pianoman’s Daughter (1995)

Joseph Boyden, Three Day Road (1995)

MANITOBA

Margaret Laurence, The Diviners (1974)

Gabrielle Roy, Street of Riches (1957)

Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen (1998)

Miriam Toews, A Complicated Kindness (2005)

SASKATCHEWAN

Guy Vanderhaeghe, The Englishman’s Boy (1997); The Last Crossing (2004)

W.O. Mitchell, Who Has Seen the Wind (1947)

Sharon Butala, The Perfection of the Morning (1995)

Wallace Stegner, Wolf Willow (1955)

ALBERTA

Thomas Wharton, Icefields (1995)

Robert Kroetsch, The Studhorse Man (1970)

Rudy Wiebe, A Discovery of Strangers (1994)

Richard Harrison, Hero of the Play (1997)

BRITISH COLUMBIA

Eden Robinson, Monkey Beach (2000)

Joy Kogawa, Obasan (1981)

Ethel Wilson, Swamp Angel (1954)

Emily Carr, Klee Wyck (1941)

Douglas Coupland, The Gum Thief (2006)

Yukon, NWT, & Nunavut

Richard Van Camp, The Lesser Blessed (1996)

Robert Arthur Alexie, Pale Indian (2005)

Alootook Ipellie, Arctic Dreams and Nightmares (1993)

Speaking today on “Canada’s Literary Landscape” for the Elder Education Enrichment group in South Burlington today. Should be about 100-125 people there to listen. Looking forward to it.

Check out the new Pomegranate Phone!