A forgotten Canadian

         "Lord Beaverbrook" by David Adams Richards with an introduction by John Ralston Saul
    
         David   Adams Richards is a well-known novelist from New Brunswick. In this "Extraordinary Series"  book, he gives us a brisk outline of Max Aitken, later Lord BEaverbrook. Aitken was New Brunswick lad who went on to fame anf fortune in Canada and then Great Britain.
       Some of Aiken's triumphs in the business world were full of tricks and sleaze. Still by 1910 before he was even 30, he was a multimillionaire, owner of the massive Canada Cement Company and husband to a lovely woman named Gladys Drury. Alas, Aitken cheated on her many times.
      Then having outraged business classes  in the Maritimes, Aitken fled to Montreal. Then after having put together the Canada Cement Company, he took off to Great Britain. It was about l910 and Britain still ruled the waves. Aitken became a member of the Conservative Party. He befriended prominent Liberals like Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George. He helped make Lloyd George Prime Minister in the midst of world War One. Then six years later he did the same thing for Bonar Law.
      But Aitken, a small man with a big mouth received no thanks for this. The English elite looked down on him as a crude low class colonial. They took his money but never liked him. To them, Aitken was trash.
      "He was a financial genius," writes Richards of Aitken who was now Lord Beaverbrook, "and a brilliant revolutionary newspaperman. He hated to be outmanoeuvred. It made for many bad days."
      It did indeed. As a newspaper owner, Beaverbrook made even more money owning newspapers like the very popular "Daily Express". Then came World War Two. Winston Churchill, now Britain's Prime Minister, made Beaverbrook Minister of War Production. Beaverbrook did a great job. He turned British industry into a war making machine that saved Britain from a Nazi  invasion.
      But once again he fought with so many people that Churchill tired of his friend. He sent him travelling to Russia where he got on well with Josef Stalin, and the U.S, where he befriended its president F.D.R.
    "He never could  sit still," writes Richards. This intense energy lay behind Aitken's fortune-making, womanizing, and his failed push for free trade within the then-British Empire.
    In 172 pages, Richards brings back to life, a man now long forgotten, except for his home province of New Brunswick.
    Reviewed by Dave Jaffe
    
   

Animal Liberation

  'Animal Liberation' a book by Peter Singer. Avon Book, l975. Revised version l990.
     
         "this book is not about pets," writes Australian-born philosopher Peter Singer in the preface to his book 'Animal Liberation'. What the book is about, is how we people mistreat and torture animals of all kinds.
    Singer attacks what he calls 'speciesm' or the belief that we humans see ourselves as better than animals and can do with them what we want. When the book came out about 40 years ago, some people thought it was a joke. Others dismissed it as an extremist tract. But the book that mixes philosophy with horrific tales of animal torture in the end won a  wide audience.
     The philosophy and the torture scenes makes the book hard to read at times. Still, quite a few people, including the author, became vegans. Some did it after reading the book.
     For a more up-to-date pitch for veganism, check out 'Diet For A New America' by John Robbins. But Singer's book did revive the debate about how we hurt animals. Journalists dubbed the book "The Bible of Animal Liberation". Forty years on, it still is.


 

sisters and brothers - a film review

  Sisters and Brothers  - a film by Carl Bessau. Starring Cory Monteith, Amanda Crew, Dustin Mulligan and Camille Sullivan.
     
       The Metro Vancouver rain-soaked landscape  may just  spawn dysfunctional families. After all, Douglas Coupland, I think, wrote a book called 'All Families Are Dysfunctional'. Now along comes director Carl Bessau with his third film on dysfunctional and angry twosomes.
      In  'Sisters and Brothers' three-and-a-half twosomes slug it out on screen or just put angry vibes out there. Nikki played by Amanda Crew is an actor who hopes to be a star. While her half sister, played by Camille Sullivan, just came out of rehab to stay with Nikki. What do you expect? After all, this is Vancouver, the drug-plaged city by the sea.
 
     Justin played by Cory Monteith is the big star in L.A. His brother Rusty played by Dustin Mulligan
goes nowhere trying to help poor black people somewhere. Then there's Louise played by Gabrielle Miller who tries to help her schizophrenic brother played by Ben Ratner simply survive. Jay Brazeau plays an aging flake, who Jerry thinks may be or not be a lawyer. In fact, he isn't.
     Last but not least a calm, non-abusive Gabrielle Rose plays a single, middle-aged mother. Her young daughter just abuses her mom every chance she gets. Things get worse when Rose's other forgotten daughter, played by Leena Munro shows up from India.
    In interviews, or false ones, the main characters explain themselves or their siblings. There's comic style pictures too that link one episode to anothetr.
     "I f-----d that guy," Magge tells Nikki as they see the chunky balding sleaze, played by Tom Scholte, on t.v. And they both giggle. For  Scholte tries to lue Nikki to a supposed starring role in Los Angeles. But the journey ends with Nikki throwing Scholte out of her car, leaving him to hitchhike alone to Hollywood.. In the end, love or at least co-existence, wins the day.
     So is 'Sisters and Brothers' worth coughing up $12.50 to see. I think so. But only if you're prepared for nearly 90 minutes of anger and lots of Vancouver's rain-drenched scenery in the background.

movie review of Jeff Who Lives T Home

Jeff Who Lives At Home' starringJason Segel, Ed Helms, Judy Greer and Susan Sarandon.
Directed  by Maurice and Jay Duplass
 
     Do you like slacker films about 20 or 30 something people that are going nowhere? If you do you'll
love Jeff Who Lives At Home. Jeff, played by Jason Segel is a 30-year old pot smoker living in the basement of his mother's house. His mother is played by Susan Sarandon a widow now for many years. [ In real life Sarandon  is a veteran movie star who's got one hell of a social consciene - but not in the film].
      "I can't help but wander about my destiny," says Jeff, as he sits on the basement couch, smoking the weed at the movie's start.
     Mom and Jeff's older brother Pat, played by Ed Helms, see Jeff as a complete failed flake. But soon the film shows Pat as a man with problems to, especially with his wife played by Judy Greer.
     Jeff is haunted or obsessed with what he calls 'destiny'. This leads Jeff to screw up a simple task that his mother asks him to do, namely buy some glue at the local Home Depot and fix a broken shutter.
   For the next  80 minutes or so, Jeff, Pat and the female leads travel across  Baton Rouge Louisiana. The film unrolls in just one day that,s full of fun, sadness, interacial violence, interracial same sex romance, near tragedy and just plain silliness.
    "You and mom will never understand me," Jeff cries out to Pat from the cemetary where their father is buried. But at film's end perhaps Jeff's mother and brother do understand him. In any case, this is a movie about a slacker who finally does something worthy in his life. Brothers Maurice and Jay Duplass have co-wrote and directed  one fine film.

I'm an old man.

      Two of the 20th century's most famous feminist writers wrote books about being old. Simone de Beauvoir, France's gift to feminism wrote The Second Sex  about women's second class status. Then as she got old, this long time unmarried partner of Jean Paul Sartre, wrote another path breaking book called Old Age. When it appeared in North America it was titled'The Coming of Age.' which shows you how Americans and Canadians fear getting old.
      Betty Friedan was no slouch as an author either. The Peoria  Illinois born  Friedan went to Smith College in the l940's. Then in the early 1960's she wrote a book that literally changed the world. It was called 'The Feminine Mystique' and helped give birth to the second wave of feminism.  Friedan too wrote a book about being old. Hers was called 'The Fountain of Age'. (At least that's how I recall the title.)
      For De Beauvoir old age was a hell. For Friedan it was heaven. Who was right? I give the edge to De Beauvoir. But I'm an anxiety-ridden pessimist  who as one woman once told me, "always see the worst side of things." So de Beauvoir's view of old people as mostly poor, ugly useless things struck the right chord when    I read  'Old Age' way back in l974 or so.
         I  read both books again a few years ago. Friedan's book was a happy book. In some ways it was abreathless journey to some of the most high achieving old people I've ever heard of. "Where are the now retired cashiers, carpenters, middle school teachers?" I asked the woman who recommended the book to me. "All I see here are Nobel Prize winners and formerly high level scientists, doctors and company executives."
    But now I can give a definitive answer to my questions of the past, because now I'm an old man. And as de Beauvoir predicted my teeth are crumbling, the hair on the top of my head has long vanished, arthritis racks my arms and fingers and I'm gulping down at least five pills a day. Medical expenses are eating away my meagre savings and like most old people I spend too much time looking backward and not too much time looking forward. Because not too far ahead- say four or five years or less- lies the dreaded  spectre
of death. Okay maybe I've overdone it a bit but that's how I feel some days.
      But then there's days when I feel great. There's no more big struggles that lie ahead except extinction. I've got enough money for now which certainly wasn't true until I turned 40. The wonderful Internet has opened a whole new world to me and billions of others. Then too I'm a watercolorist and finally I've found a subject to paint, namely trees. "My work is competent," I tell anybody who asks about my paintings. "They're no more than that. " 
      But I do enjoy painting.It's added a whole new dimension to my life that gives me joy as I watch some of my friends pass away. So both de Beauvoir and Friedan, who are now dead, got part of the truth about old age. They were both great writers who helped changed the world for the better. And I'll remember them both, until dementia or Alzheimer's diseases overwhelms my mind.

why crime rates go down,

    "Everyone talks about the weather," goes one old saying. But everyone talks about crime also. Now along come two books that gives us a new view on crime. Steve Levitt is a   journalist . Stephen J Dubner is an economist at the University of Chicago. Or mabe it's the reverse. But in any case they've co-authored two very interesting books.Both     
One's called Freakonomics. The other that came out in 2009 is called Superfreakonomics.Both talk about crime. First off why did crime rates start to skyrocket in the early l960' and keep on rising until the l990's when crime rates started to fall.?
     Crime rates, the authors say, shot up because of television. They started to fall and kept on falling because of abortion. "This is simply not true," said one police spokesperson when asked about Dubner and Leavittt's theory. The reason crime rates fell, he insisted, is because new policing methods drove crime rates down. Well okay, both theories may be true. But Dubner and Leavitt's theories are well worth looking at.
       These two men's theories don't give any comfort to right or left wingers on why crime rates go up or down. As far as televisiob goes, the authors point out that it doesn't matter what young peo[ple watch or watched from the l960's to the l990's.They could watch Happy Days,Mr. Rogers or Kojak. If they watched t.v. period they, or mostly young males became more criminally minded. So nearly all the talk about how bad t.v. was right. Television was bad for the very young.
    But the right wingers like present day Republicans or Stephen Harper's Conservatives loathe abortion. And they're dead wrong. Henry Morgenthaler, and his allies like Judy Rebick may be Canada's most effective crime fighters. But the left  or rather bleeding heart liberals, like yours truly, were wrong too.
    If we have better social programs they'll be less poverty,' I used to say. "And therefore there'll be less crime." Wrong, wrong,  and simply wrong. In the l960's and l970's all levels of government spent far far more money on welfare, unemployment insurance and social housing than they'd ever spent before - or since. Yet crimes like murder, robberies and homicide just kept rising. In the l990's all levels of government slasheAd many social programs to the bone and beyond. But starting in about 2000 crime rates started to fall. And they're still falling .
      So Vancouver used to have 30 or so murders a year. Now that number has fallen to 15 or 16. "Abortion  is the reason " Dubner and Leavitt would say, I think.Now I'll continue to support more generous social programs. As I've said I'm a bleeding heart liberal. But after reading Dubner and Leavitt's books I won't say anymore "better social programs will bring down crime." Now I know that that statement just isn't necessarily sio. 
     

The Other America - Fifty Years Later

 In the fall of 1964 I walked into a Classic bookstore on Saint Catherine Street- now Rue Sainte Catherine in downtown Montreal . I had graduated  from McGill University the previous June with a degree in English but this wasn't helping me find a job. Meanwhile my parents bickered and argued over the lack of money in the apartment I shared with them and my younger sister.
     I spent part of my days reading works of literary criticism that left  me disappointed and cheated. "what am I doing with my life?" I asked myself with all the anger that any disappointed 22 year old could muster. "I need a change."
     And then I found what I needed. It was a read covered paperback with a poor child looking out of a very rundown building. The book was called "The Other America" and was by the American author Michael Harrington. "There is a familiar America," wrote Harrington in the book's opening sentence about his country's affluence. But hen he went to point out that there were 50 to 40 million  Americans who were poor and needed help - desperately.
      For thenext 170 pages or so, Harrington sketched out in east-to-read Jounalistic prose the main groups who were poor in the U.S. of A. Many poor Americans were black. Others were the aged, the alcoholic residents of Skid Rows. Then there were the beatniks, the heroin addicted and many working people.
      I was fascinated with Harrington's book. I read it then bought it. I couldn't find my family in the book but I knew we were poor. Harrington's book was and is a masterpiece of muckraking that even t-day is well worth reading. A former neighbour of mine once asked me "What were the 1950's like?" I should have told him "Read Harrington's book." Alas, I never did.
      Things changed rapidly after 1964. The Liberal government of Lester Pearson in Canada, brought in  Medicare that covered everybody. It also enacted the Canada Assistance Plan that granted five basic welfare rights to all Canadians. It rejigged the unemployment insurance system. Then it  beefed up the pension system for the aged  by setting up the Canada Pension Plan.
       In the United States president Lyndon Johnson  had economic advisers like Walter Heller who had read Harrington's book  and brought Harrington to the White House to help draft  what was called 'The War on Poverty'. Johnson in 1965 passes 86 bills that included a civil rights bill, a voting rights act, and medical care for the aged and the poor.     
       So much has changed since Harrington's book came out in l962. But who knows what lies ahead. A Mitt Romney presidency in November could wipe out lots of what a Lyndon Johnson and an Obama presidency brought in. In Canada, a new budget by the now majority Tory government of Stephen  Harper may scrap many social programs.
   Time will tell. But 'The Other America' is still worth reading. It's a message from a time capsul but a very infomative one.

jody picoult, novelist

 I'm not finished withreading Canadian literature or Canlit as it used to be called. But these days when I turn to read a novel, I turn to the works of Jody Picoult, or Jody Picoo as her name is pronounced.    
     And there's dozens or nearly a dozen of her books to read.      
     Everyone of her books I've read so far are full of dysfunctional characters and dysfunctional families. One novel whose name I've forgot has one sister feeding off her younger sister's blood to go on living. The mother of these two daughters is a for now retired lawyer. The fatgher whose name I remember called Brian, is a firefighter in a small Rhode Island town. But his son Jeff  sets fires allover the place.
      The novel in fact all of the novels I've read by Picoult so far are told in the first person. Each main c haracter  then stops telling us the story while another character  weighs in. Not everybody likes Picoult's stories. "This is just soap operas for television," someone I recommended Picoult  to, said after leafing through the first thirty pages of a Picoult novel.                  
      It's probably true. Which maybe it's a good idea not to read too many  Picoult novels in a row. But for an old man who's waded through many of the so-called 'great novels' of the past by Thoman Mann, Leo Tolstoy and Doesteovsky, Jody Picoult's work will be just fine for me now.

Iron Lady review

     If you liked Margaret Thatcher"s time as prime minister of Great Britain,roughly 1979 to 1990, you'll like the movie "The Iron Lady"  starriung Meryl Streep as Thatcher. But suppose you didn't like the things that her Conservative government did. Then you might not like the movie at all. To recap part of her record.as prime minister, Thatcher slahed many government services, sometimes to the bone. It doled out big tax breaks to the rich. It downsized other services and closed down whole parts of the coal mining industry, which involved smashing the coalminers union. It abolished the government of the London because it defied the conservative government. Then with her popularity falling in the early days of her rule, Thatcher declared war on the Argentine government when it invaded the Falklands Islands of the Argentinian coast. The British won the war, albeit at the cost of many dead, but this boosted Thatcher's popuklarity and enabled her to win the national election in l983."There is no alternative", Thatcher declared to those who objected to her tough rule. In any cae, in l990 the Iron lady as the Soviets named her went too far. She brought in a poll tax that fell as heavily on the poor as the rich. Riots and protests ensued and the Tories threw their leader out and went on to win the next election. "where there is despair may we bring hope," Thatcher said at the beginning of her time in power.
     But Thatcher brought despair to the poorest third of Britain. She also in the end angered the middle class with her proposed  polltax. In the end protests threw her out of power.
      All of this or some of it is shown in the film.But the movie makes caricatures of the opposition Labour Party and  often only shows the working people as wild protestors. Meryl Streep is a great actor, and she does play a creditable  Margaret Tahtcher. I would give the makeup people in the background as great craftspeople
     But I didn't like the film. But if you enjoyed  the right wing agenda that she and Ronald Reagan's government carried out, then you'll like the film. I didn't like it but it does have power, no  question about that.

tThatcher, a movie review

Did you like Margaret Thatcher whgen she was Prime Ministwer of Great Britain ? Then you'll like the movie Iron Lady.