The Lady was A Liberal And A Feminist Too: Part One
She grew up on Vancouver's west side in a modest small home, the second daughter of a Canadian couple who spent the 1920's in the United States. Her father was a talented gifted man who wrote in the local papers and drew political cartoons. Her mother was a cheerful short woman with a sense of humour. Then when Linda Northland was only six years old her father died.She felt that a great hole had swallowed up her father, a man that she'd loved.
"I never recovered from his death," she said many years later. "I often think of my father."
Then the now family of three had to adjust to a newer financial reality. Linda's mother Nancy sold their house and moved the family into a two storey apartment building in Kitsilano. The apartment building allowed Linda, her much older sister Lilian and her mother to survive for many years.
Linda grew up in the 1950's and 1960's, living the usual Canadian teenage life. She became a brown haired attractive youth who as a child may have danced to the music of Chuck Berry and later watched entranced when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan t.v. show in 1964. Then one day in the mid-1960's, she came across 'The Feminine Mystique' by Betty Friedan and read it from cover to cover. "It changed my life," she said about Friedan's book. "Suddenly I realized that men ran just about everything and that this was wrong. Women should have a chance of having power too."
Friedan's book, in fact, wasn't that radical and didn't really denounce men who held power. Yet soon other feminists came along to attack what they called 'sexism' and 'patriarchy'. Northland had political connections and came from a federal Liberal family. She was turned on by Pierre Elliot Trudeau who won in a landslide the federal election of 1968. In that election, she was part of what was called 'Basford's Belles'. They were a group of attractive young woman who played a supporting role in the campaign of Ron Basford, a powerful Liberal Member of Parliament in Vancouver. Most women unlike Linda weren't feminists back then and were quite content to hand out leaflets when Basford made his campaign speeches.
Basford always shaved his head bald, reminding people of movie star Yul Brynner. Skinheads were to appear some years in the future. Basford was also a tough competitor. "I'll crush that Deverell," he just about shouted at an N.D.P. supporter outside a Vancouver West End supermarket during the 1968 federal campaign. "I'll crush him, you hear me." True to his word, Basford did indeed finish ahead of the N.D.P. candidate William Deverell and the Conservative candidate too. By now, in 1968 Linda's sister Lillian had married a world war veteran who was also a strong Liberal supporter. So the three Northland women got to know many Liberals including James Sinclair, the father-in-law of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and the father of Trudeau's wife Margaret. Sinclair was therefore the grandfather of another Prime Minister, namely Justin Trudeau. Linda did never drift entirely away from the Liberal party even when she got to know many New Democrats.
Monday 27 March 2017
Thursday 23 March 2017
Right, Left and Centre: The Politics of Some Canadians: by Dave Jaffe. Chapter 27, Part Four of 'This Man Is A Communist'
This Man Is A Communist'. Part Four.
Abe Heller had a left-wing explanation of the collapse of the Soviet Union. "Gorbachev," Heller insists , "was an agent of the CIA. He deliberately destroyed the Soviet Union. Now there's no one around to confront the U.S. of A. It can do what it wants." Whatever the truth about Mikhail Gorbachev, Heller remained a communist, while hundreds of other former communists streamed out of the Canadian Communist party.
Today in 2017, Heller is his late eighties. He continues to attend political meetings, see progressive political films, reads books by progressive authors and hands out leaflets urging people to attend protests. He has left the communist party but essentially he remains a committed socialist. Of course, Heller seems to have forgotten what happened at first when communists took power in a number of countries. Mao Tse Tung's government launched a Great Leap Forward in the late 1950's that left 27 million Chinese to starve to death. Another 1 and a half million Chinese died in Mao's Cultural Revolution of the late 1960's. Josef Stalin was responsible for the deaths of somewhere between 8 and 20 million people between the 1920's and his death in 1953.
Then there were other communist rulers who killed many other people. Still, Heller believes that communism was overall a good thing for the world. "I wasn't born a communist," he said. "But without communists there wouldn't have been any unions, old age pensions or medicare. We communists helped create those things. I'm not ashamed for having been a communist. No sir."
Abe Heller had a left-wing explanation of the collapse of the Soviet Union. "Gorbachev," Heller insists , "was an agent of the CIA. He deliberately destroyed the Soviet Union. Now there's no one around to confront the U.S. of A. It can do what it wants." Whatever the truth about Mikhail Gorbachev, Heller remained a communist, while hundreds of other former communists streamed out of the Canadian Communist party.
Today in 2017, Heller is his late eighties. He continues to attend political meetings, see progressive political films, reads books by progressive authors and hands out leaflets urging people to attend protests. He has left the communist party but essentially he remains a committed socialist. Of course, Heller seems to have forgotten what happened at first when communists took power in a number of countries. Mao Tse Tung's government launched a Great Leap Forward in the late 1950's that left 27 million Chinese to starve to death. Another 1 and a half million Chinese died in Mao's Cultural Revolution of the late 1960's. Josef Stalin was responsible for the deaths of somewhere between 8 and 20 million people between the 1920's and his death in 1953.
Then there were other communist rulers who killed many other people. Still, Heller believes that communism was overall a good thing for the world. "I wasn't born a communist," he said. "But without communists there wouldn't have been any unions, old age pensions or medicare. We communists helped create those things. I'm not ashamed for having been a communist. No sir."
Wednesday 22 March 2017
Right, Left and Centre: The Politics of Some Canadians; Chapter 27, Part Three by Dave Jaffe
This Man Was A Communist; Part Three
All across Canada in the 1940's and 1950's, the iron hand of the state came down hard on left wing groups. Abe Heller got away from Canada. He became a sailor. He sailed on ships that carried goods across the Pacific Ocean to NATO forces fighting communists in the Korean War. "It was the only job I could find," Heller said later, because he didn't agree with the NATO forces being used in the Korean War. The ships which were often small boats would travel north following the Canadian coastline then turn south to get across the Pacific Ocean. "We couldn't sail straight across the Pacific," Heller points out. "We'd never have made it."
In winter especially, huge winds blew across the Pacific. The sea seethed with massive waves and swells. Many ships went down in this dangerous environment and many people died in the Pacific. To compound the problems in the sailors' lives, many of the ships' captains were pure tyrants.
After his stint on the Pacific Ocean, Heller came back to Canada and stayed for a while in Quebec. Yet the Quebec government of Union Nationale premier Maurice Duplessis loathed communists. His government passed the Padlock Law that allowed the authorities to padlock any residence that was occupied by communists. Often many communists and others couldn't get into their own houses.
Once again Heller was on the move. He sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and ended up in Australia where men who'd promised to help him gave him nothing. It was on this journey that he ended up on the Horn of Africa. After leaving Australia by boat, he travelled to Britain and worked for a time in the British movie industry in Ellestree near London. Then he came back to Canada in the early 1960's. He refused to take any welfare. "There's no way I'd do that," he said. "It's too demeaning."
For the next 40 years Heller lived and worked in and around Vancouver. He worked as a sailor going up and down the Pacific Coast and then got a job in a power plant. He remained a devoted communist and joined rent strikes, anti-war protests and progressive political rallies. He got a Bachelor of Arts degree but failed to get an M.A. in political science, perhaps because his efforts were sabotaged by an unsympathetic professor.
In the early 1990's disaster struck the communist parties all over the world. Mikhail Gorbachev took over the leadership of the Soviet Union in the 1980's and ruled the union for a short time. Gorbachev tried to reform the Soviet Union but he failed. As a result, the union split into 15 separate countries and the formerly communist ruled lands of Eastern Europe threw off their communist rulers and allied themselves to the western NATO countries. It seemed that communism was history. Yet Heller stayed with a now very shrunken Canadian communist party. He did not give up his politics.
All across Canada in the 1940's and 1950's, the iron hand of the state came down hard on left wing groups. Abe Heller got away from Canada. He became a sailor. He sailed on ships that carried goods across the Pacific Ocean to NATO forces fighting communists in the Korean War. "It was the only job I could find," Heller said later, because he didn't agree with the NATO forces being used in the Korean War. The ships which were often small boats would travel north following the Canadian coastline then turn south to get across the Pacific Ocean. "We couldn't sail straight across the Pacific," Heller points out. "We'd never have made it."
In winter especially, huge winds blew across the Pacific. The sea seethed with massive waves and swells. Many ships went down in this dangerous environment and many people died in the Pacific. To compound the problems in the sailors' lives, many of the ships' captains were pure tyrants.
After his stint on the Pacific Ocean, Heller came back to Canada and stayed for a while in Quebec. Yet the Quebec government of Union Nationale premier Maurice Duplessis loathed communists. His government passed the Padlock Law that allowed the authorities to padlock any residence that was occupied by communists. Often many communists and others couldn't get into their own houses.
Once again Heller was on the move. He sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and ended up in Australia where men who'd promised to help him gave him nothing. It was on this journey that he ended up on the Horn of Africa. After leaving Australia by boat, he travelled to Britain and worked for a time in the British movie industry in Ellestree near London. Then he came back to Canada in the early 1960's. He refused to take any welfare. "There's no way I'd do that," he said. "It's too demeaning."
For the next 40 years Heller lived and worked in and around Vancouver. He worked as a sailor going up and down the Pacific Coast and then got a job in a power plant. He remained a devoted communist and joined rent strikes, anti-war protests and progressive political rallies. He got a Bachelor of Arts degree but failed to get an M.A. in political science, perhaps because his efforts were sabotaged by an unsympathetic professor.
In the early 1990's disaster struck the communist parties all over the world. Mikhail Gorbachev took over the leadership of the Soviet Union in the 1980's and ruled the union for a short time. Gorbachev tried to reform the Soviet Union but he failed. As a result, the union split into 15 separate countries and the formerly communist ruled lands of Eastern Europe threw off their communist rulers and allied themselves to the western NATO countries. It seemed that communism was history. Yet Heller stayed with a now very shrunken Canadian communist party. He did not give up his politics.
Tuesday 21 March 2017
Right, Left and Centre: The Politcs of Some Canadians: Chapter 27, Part Two, by Dave Jaffe: This Man Was A Communist.
This man Was A Communist: Chapter 27, Part Two. by Dave Jaffe
"Social programs?" Abraham Heller once said. "They didn't exist when I was growing up. There was very little unemployment insurance, tiny amounts of welfare, no medicare and minute pensions for the aged." At one time in the 1930's, the country's jobless rate stood at near 20 percent. Many jobless young men were herded into work camps where they toiled all day and got tiny amounts of money in return. Right wing governments across Canada, crushed any attempt to form unions. And landlords threw into the street tenants who couldn't afford to pay their rent.
When he was in his mid-20's, as mentioned, Abe Heller had already seen more conflict than most people to-day see in a lifetime. Yet one group of people fought for the right of tenants, workers and the poor. This group was the Communist Party of Canada. For instance the first elected Canadian to call for a universal medical insurance scheme in Canada was Derise Nielsen who represented the then impoverished area of North Battleford Saskatchewan in the 1930's. She was a communist.
Communists led marches and demonstrations for social justice. Communist organizers tried to form trade unions. In the beginning they failed in many of their attempts. Yet in the end they succeeded. Abe Heller was of course a Jew who faced daily discrimination. As a young man, he was too poor to go to university. He worked in dress factories owned by his rich relatives who paid him pitifully low wages.
When he was 16, Heller joined the youth section of sthe Communist Party. Of course he had to do this secretly because Canada in the 1940's was not friendly to Communists. In the 1930's, the Conservative Prime Minister of Canada, millionaire Richard Bedford Bennett promised to crush communist with what he called 'An iron heel." The Liberal Party of Canada didn't sound as repressive as the Conservatives but they were just as ruthless.
In joining the Communist Party Heller was now launched into a life of conflict and turmoil. He then joined the communist-led Canadian Seaman's Union that organized sailors on the Great Lakes. The Liberal governments of Prime Ministers Mackenzie King and then Louis Saint Laurent brought in an American gangster Hal Banks to smash the Seaman's Union. Aided by the Liberal government and the police forces, Banks succeeded in his task.
Heller also took part in anti-unemployment demonstrations, and he and other communists forced the federal government to extend and beef up unemployment insurance. Yet by the late 1940's, the Cold War had come to Canada. "Any talk of class conflict or the rights of workers was not encouraged," another former communist party member recalled. Led by the United States of America, the western world confronted communists and the Soviet Union in a relentless struggle for world domination. Right wing trade unionists, led by United Steelworkers like Bill Mahoney, travelled across Canada ousting Communists from the unions that they'd help form. Progressive teachers and professors were sometimes fired if they spoke up about left wing causes. A great painter like Jack Shadbolt, for instance, quickly put a distance between himself and the communist party which he'd once supported. Dissent was not encouraged.
"Social programs?" Abraham Heller once said. "They didn't exist when I was growing up. There was very little unemployment insurance, tiny amounts of welfare, no medicare and minute pensions for the aged." At one time in the 1930's, the country's jobless rate stood at near 20 percent. Many jobless young men were herded into work camps where they toiled all day and got tiny amounts of money in return. Right wing governments across Canada, crushed any attempt to form unions. And landlords threw into the street tenants who couldn't afford to pay their rent.
When he was in his mid-20's, as mentioned, Abe Heller had already seen more conflict than most people to-day see in a lifetime. Yet one group of people fought for the right of tenants, workers and the poor. This group was the Communist Party of Canada. For instance the first elected Canadian to call for a universal medical insurance scheme in Canada was Derise Nielsen who represented the then impoverished area of North Battleford Saskatchewan in the 1930's. She was a communist.
Communists led marches and demonstrations for social justice. Communist organizers tried to form trade unions. In the beginning they failed in many of their attempts. Yet in the end they succeeded. Abe Heller was of course a Jew who faced daily discrimination. As a young man, he was too poor to go to university. He worked in dress factories owned by his rich relatives who paid him pitifully low wages.
When he was 16, Heller joined the youth section of sthe Communist Party. Of course he had to do this secretly because Canada in the 1940's was not friendly to Communists. In the 1930's, the Conservative Prime Minister of Canada, millionaire Richard Bedford Bennett promised to crush communist with what he called 'An iron heel." The Liberal Party of Canada didn't sound as repressive as the Conservatives but they were just as ruthless.
In joining the Communist Party Heller was now launched into a life of conflict and turmoil. He then joined the communist-led Canadian Seaman's Union that organized sailors on the Great Lakes. The Liberal governments of Prime Ministers Mackenzie King and then Louis Saint Laurent brought in an American gangster Hal Banks to smash the Seaman's Union. Aided by the Liberal government and the police forces, Banks succeeded in his task.
Heller also took part in anti-unemployment demonstrations, and he and other communists forced the federal government to extend and beef up unemployment insurance. Yet by the late 1940's, the Cold War had come to Canada. "Any talk of class conflict or the rights of workers was not encouraged," another former communist party member recalled. Led by the United States of America, the western world confronted communists and the Soviet Union in a relentless struggle for world domination. Right wing trade unionists, led by United Steelworkers like Bill Mahoney, travelled across Canada ousting Communists from the unions that they'd help form. Progressive teachers and professors were sometimes fired if they spoke up about left wing causes. A great painter like Jack Shadbolt, for instance, quickly put a distance between himself and the communist party which he'd once supported. Dissent was not encouraged.
Monday 20 March 2017
Right, Left and Centre: The Politics of Some Canadians; by Dave Jaffe. Chapter 27, Part One. This Man Was A Communist.
This Man Was A Communist - Part One
Sometime in the mid-1950's a short, dark haired Canadian ended up on the shores of the Horn of Africa. He was young, broke and needed a place to stay. He went to the office of the government back then which happened to be a British outpost. For in those days part of the Horn of Africa was a British colony.
"Oh no we don't take in people from other countries," an aloof British official told him. "You're a Canadian? No, we don't deal with colonials here. You'll have to leave here and go elsewhere." Abe Heller who was the Canadian, had a problem. Where was he going to go to? Yet he soon solved his problem by going to another part of the Horn of Africa that was under Italian control. In this place he found help.
Heller was ill and the Italians welcomed him and gave him medical care. He needed food and they served him meals. He didn't have too many clothes and the Italians gave him some money to buy clothing. Many years later Heller fondly remembered the Italians on the Horn of Africa. He had no time for the British officials. "They were just arrogant horrible people," he said.
Heller had really ended up in the Horn of Africa because he was a communist back . He'd been working as a sailor on a ship that was bringing goods to east Africa from Britain. in the 1950's, the British ruled large swathes of Africa. Heller and other members of the crew had rebelled against the captain who ran the ship with an iron hand. As a result of the crew's rebellion, the captain threw the crew off his boat. So Heller ended up marooned on land. Finally Heller and the other members of the crew got out of their situation.
Now in his mid-20's, Abraham Heller had already seen more conflict than most people see in a lifetime. He grew up in Toronto in the 1930's and 40's. As a child he saw his family and his parents struggling to survive in the midst of the Great Depression. His parents had to beg to get welfare. Every month harsh welfare officials would come around to the small apartment where Abraham, his sister and his parents lived. It was smack dab in the middle of the Jewish area of Spadina.
The officials would scour the apartment, looking into cupboards and rooms. Only when they were satisfied that the Hellers were completely broke, did they give them a measly welfare cheque for a month. The Hellers were not alone in their plight. All across Canada in the 1930's, poor people literally starved. As Pierre Berton points out in his book 'The Great Depression' the federal government spent more money in the 1930's, paying down the debt of the government-owned Canadian National Railway, than it did on social programs.
Sometime in the mid-1950's a short, dark haired Canadian ended up on the shores of the Horn of Africa. He was young, broke and needed a place to stay. He went to the office of the government back then which happened to be a British outpost. For in those days part of the Horn of Africa was a British colony.
"Oh no we don't take in people from other countries," an aloof British official told him. "You're a Canadian? No, we don't deal with colonials here. You'll have to leave here and go elsewhere." Abe Heller who was the Canadian, had a problem. Where was he going to go to? Yet he soon solved his problem by going to another part of the Horn of Africa that was under Italian control. In this place he found help.
Heller was ill and the Italians welcomed him and gave him medical care. He needed food and they served him meals. He didn't have too many clothes and the Italians gave him some money to buy clothing. Many years later Heller fondly remembered the Italians on the Horn of Africa. He had no time for the British officials. "They were just arrogant horrible people," he said.
Heller had really ended up in the Horn of Africa because he was a communist back . He'd been working as a sailor on a ship that was bringing goods to east Africa from Britain. in the 1950's, the British ruled large swathes of Africa. Heller and other members of the crew had rebelled against the captain who ran the ship with an iron hand. As a result of the crew's rebellion, the captain threw the crew off his boat. So Heller ended up marooned on land. Finally Heller and the other members of the crew got out of their situation.
Now in his mid-20's, Abraham Heller had already seen more conflict than most people see in a lifetime. He grew up in Toronto in the 1930's and 40's. As a child he saw his family and his parents struggling to survive in the midst of the Great Depression. His parents had to beg to get welfare. Every month harsh welfare officials would come around to the small apartment where Abraham, his sister and his parents lived. It was smack dab in the middle of the Jewish area of Spadina.
The officials would scour the apartment, looking into cupboards and rooms. Only when they were satisfied that the Hellers were completely broke, did they give them a measly welfare cheque for a month. The Hellers were not alone in their plight. All across Canada in the 1930's, poor people literally starved. As Pierre Berton points out in his book 'The Great Depression' the federal government spent more money in the 1930's, paying down the debt of the government-owned Canadian National Railway, than it did on social programs.
Friday 17 March 2017
Right, Left and Centre: The Politics of Some Canadians by Dave Jaffe: Chapter 26: Part Three - The Lady was a Lesbian - and a Feminist too.
The lady was a lesbian and a feminist too. Part Three.
By the time Trudy Maunders turned 30, she had turned away from men. She met an Asian Canadian woman and moved in with her. The two of them stayed together. Yet life wasn't all smooth sailing. In the mid-1990's, the federal government scrapped the department where Trudy worked. In one fell swoop, the government fired 45,000 workers of which Trudy was one.
Yet Trudy survived. She moved back to Ottawa and found another job with the federal government. It didn't pay as much as the job she'd lost but it didn't leave her or her partner below the poverty level either. Her partner was also able to find a job in Ottawa. So like thousands of other women in the 1970's and after, Trudy Maunders found love in the arms of a woman.
Some men trashed the feminist movement by saying things like "All feminist are lesbians." This wasn't true though some prominent feminists were lesbians. Yet this kind of criticism didn't disprove the feminists' main point that women lived in a world that was dominated by men. The feminists challenged this set up and were right to do so. Also as far as lesbianism went, some of the leaders of the second wave of feminism like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem were straight heterosexuals.
Other men like Betty Friedan's former husband said about feminists , "They all hate men." Even if this was true, which it wasn't, it still can't justify the domination of women by men. Also some men hate women. Often men who do hate women end up killing them. Women who don't like men, don't usually kill men. They just stay away from them. This is what Trudy Maunders and other women did.
She was a mainstream Canadian who became a lesbian and a feminist. "She was a switch hitter or a potential one when I knew her back in the 1970's," a man who hung out with Trudy back then said many years later. "She could have gone both ways. Yet finally she chose the right way for her her it did work out."
By the time Trudy Maunders turned 30, she had turned away from men. She met an Asian Canadian woman and moved in with her. The two of them stayed together. Yet life wasn't all smooth sailing. In the mid-1990's, the federal government scrapped the department where Trudy worked. In one fell swoop, the government fired 45,000 workers of which Trudy was one.
Yet Trudy survived. She moved back to Ottawa and found another job with the federal government. It didn't pay as much as the job she'd lost but it didn't leave her or her partner below the poverty level either. Her partner was also able to find a job in Ottawa. So like thousands of other women in the 1970's and after, Trudy Maunders found love in the arms of a woman.
Some men trashed the feminist movement by saying things like "All feminist are lesbians." This wasn't true though some prominent feminists were lesbians. Yet this kind of criticism didn't disprove the feminists' main point that women lived in a world that was dominated by men. The feminists challenged this set up and were right to do so. Also as far as lesbianism went, some of the leaders of the second wave of feminism like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem were straight heterosexuals.
Other men like Betty Friedan's former husband said about feminists , "They all hate men." Even if this was true, which it wasn't, it still can't justify the domination of women by men. Also some men hate women. Often men who do hate women end up killing them. Women who don't like men, don't usually kill men. They just stay away from them. This is what Trudy Maunders and other women did.
She was a mainstream Canadian who became a lesbian and a feminist. "She was a switch hitter or a potential one when I knew her back in the 1970's," a man who hung out with Trudy back then said many years later. "She could have gone both ways. Yet finally she chose the right way for her her it did work out."
Thursday 16 March 2017
Right, Left and Centre: The Politics of Some Canadians: The Lady was a Lesbian - and A Feminist Too by Dave Jaffe: Chapter 26, Part Two
The lady was a lesbian and a feminist too. Part Two.
Trudy Maunders left McGill University for Carleton University in Ottawa. It was jusr a few hours drive down the road from Montreal but it was a long enough distance to put between herself and her father. At Carleton Trudy studied English and French literature and began to seriously study the French language. She was on her way to becoming fluently bilingual. At Carleton she went out with quite a few men though she realized by now that women could turn her on too.
One man she really fell for was a francophone man from the Ottawa Valley. Yet he couldn't deal with Trudy's depression of the time. He cruelly discarded her and she felt hurt. Another man came from Saskatchewan and had a family of Ukrainian-Canadian parents. They clicked for a while and then split up.
After graduating from Carleton with high marks Maunders got a reasonably paid job with the federal government in Ottawa. Then she moved to Vancouver but kept her job. In Vancouver she skiied in the nearby mountains in the winter and danced in the summer in dance halls. She had fun but once she became pregnant and had to get an abortion. That wasn't fun.
Yet she kept meeting men. She went out for a while with a Chinese Canadian man. She also met in her office an abusive man who treated her horribly. "I have nothing against Jews," Trudy said about this man. "But this creep treated me so badly. I don't want to see him ever again. She told this abuser to get lost which he did. By now Maunders was in hr late 20's and she realized that she sought out ethnic males. Yet most of the men she hooked up with, whatever their ethnic origins wanted to remain in control of her. She started to get tired of men.
Meanwhile she moved through the federal bureaucracy with ease. She was intelligent, a hard worker and didn't cause any problems in the office where she worked. Yet she was still searching for an answer to some of the questions she had about the world and herself. She started to read feminist literature like Elaine Morgan's 'The Descent of Women', Betty Friedan's 'The Feminine Mystique and the path breaking book by a Boston women's collective called 'Our Bodies, Ourselves'.
Maunders met other men. She body danced in San Francisco and travelled to Mexico with another man called Bob. He was a tall man in his late 20's who was good looking. Yet the two of them were always arguing. He wanted them to do things his way and when Trudy objected he got very angry.
"You're just like my father," Maunders said at one point in their travels. Now she realized what her problem was: It was called 'men'. Maybe it was time to find a woman lover.
Trudy Maunders left McGill University for Carleton University in Ottawa. It was jusr a few hours drive down the road from Montreal but it was a long enough distance to put between herself and her father. At Carleton Trudy studied English and French literature and began to seriously study the French language. She was on her way to becoming fluently bilingual. At Carleton she went out with quite a few men though she realized by now that women could turn her on too.
One man she really fell for was a francophone man from the Ottawa Valley. Yet he couldn't deal with Trudy's depression of the time. He cruelly discarded her and she felt hurt. Another man came from Saskatchewan and had a family of Ukrainian-Canadian parents. They clicked for a while and then split up.
After graduating from Carleton with high marks Maunders got a reasonably paid job with the federal government in Ottawa. Then she moved to Vancouver but kept her job. In Vancouver she skiied in the nearby mountains in the winter and danced in the summer in dance halls. She had fun but once she became pregnant and had to get an abortion. That wasn't fun.
Yet she kept meeting men. She went out for a while with a Chinese Canadian man. She also met in her office an abusive man who treated her horribly. "I have nothing against Jews," Trudy said about this man. "But this creep treated me so badly. I don't want to see him ever again. She told this abuser to get lost which he did. By now Maunders was in hr late 20's and she realized that she sought out ethnic males. Yet most of the men she hooked up with, whatever their ethnic origins wanted to remain in control of her. She started to get tired of men.
Meanwhile she moved through the federal bureaucracy with ease. She was intelligent, a hard worker and didn't cause any problems in the office where she worked. Yet she was still searching for an answer to some of the questions she had about the world and herself. She started to read feminist literature like Elaine Morgan's 'The Descent of Women', Betty Friedan's 'The Feminine Mystique and the path breaking book by a Boston women's collective called 'Our Bodies, Ourselves'.
Maunders met other men. She body danced in San Francisco and travelled to Mexico with another man called Bob. He was a tall man in his late 20's who was good looking. Yet the two of them were always arguing. He wanted them to do things his way and when Trudy objected he got very angry.
"You're just like my father," Maunders said at one point in their travels. Now she realized what her problem was: It was called 'men'. Maybe it was time to find a woman lover.
Tuesday 14 March 2017
Right, Left and Centre: The Politics of Some Canadians. Chapter 26, Part One of "The Lady Was A Lesbian - and A Feminist.'. by Dave Jaffe
The Lady Was A Lesbian and A Feminist - Part One
Trudy Maunders grew up in middle class Canada. Her father worked for a large company with its head office in Montreal. her mother lived and died most of her adult life as a satisfied housewife. And her sister Sandi like Trudy never went without the good things of life. Yet Mauders rebelled against her parents or at least her father, but not in a political way. For she had no politics. She joined the N.D.P. for a year in the mid-1970's. But finally she said to the man who joined her up, "Thanks but no thanks. Politics isn't for me."
Trudy was 16 in the summer of 1970. She saw on television a demonstration in New York City of about 25,000 women. They were demonstrating for equality with men. Suddenly as she watched this demo, Trudy felt a wave of sympathy for these women. "These women are speaking for me," she later told a friend. "They are my sisters." From then on, Trudy called herself, "a feminist" though back then just like to-day, most women were scared of being called feminists.
Maunders' father, she later realized, made her a feminist. She grew up in a modest three bedroom house in suburban Montreal. From the outside, the house looked picture perfect. It had windows that were nearly always clean, the lawn was always neat, and the Maunders even had a terrier dog, not named Spot but Fido. Yet then there was Trudy's father.
He was called Ralph and he ruled the house sometimes with an iron hand. "Pick up that paper will you," he used to order Trudy when she let a newspaper slide onto the living room floor from a chair which she sat in. From time to time, this short grey haired man with a neat moustache would barge into her bedroom without knocking. "Why do you have those pictures on your wall?' he use to ask when he saw cutouts from magazines of pop stars like Aretha Franklin and Carole King pinned above her bed. Twice he tried to tear down some of the photos she had put up. "Take them down," he would order her. Trudy refused. The pictures stayed up.
Trudy's mother Grace was a short red head who stayed in the background. Her husband repeatedly issued her orders demanding for instance that she bring him his meals at the dining room table exactly at six o'clock in the evening. If the meal came just a little late, he would often vent his anger against his wife. Maunders sometimes escaped into neighbour's houses where mealtimes weren't tense and fathers didn't act like petty dictators.
In her teens Trudy grew into a tall brown haired woman who was intense and intelligent. She won a scholarship to McGill University but left there after her first year. She wanted to put a distance between her and her father.She stsill loved him but from a distance.
Trudy Maunders grew up in middle class Canada. Her father worked for a large company with its head office in Montreal. her mother lived and died most of her adult life as a satisfied housewife. And her sister Sandi like Trudy never went without the good things of life. Yet Mauders rebelled against her parents or at least her father, but not in a political way. For she had no politics. She joined the N.D.P. for a year in the mid-1970's. But finally she said to the man who joined her up, "Thanks but no thanks. Politics isn't for me."
Trudy was 16 in the summer of 1970. She saw on television a demonstration in New York City of about 25,000 women. They were demonstrating for equality with men. Suddenly as she watched this demo, Trudy felt a wave of sympathy for these women. "These women are speaking for me," she later told a friend. "They are my sisters." From then on, Trudy called herself, "a feminist" though back then just like to-day, most women were scared of being called feminists.
Maunders' father, she later realized, made her a feminist. She grew up in a modest three bedroom house in suburban Montreal. From the outside, the house looked picture perfect. It had windows that were nearly always clean, the lawn was always neat, and the Maunders even had a terrier dog, not named Spot but Fido. Yet then there was Trudy's father.
He was called Ralph and he ruled the house sometimes with an iron hand. "Pick up that paper will you," he used to order Trudy when she let a newspaper slide onto the living room floor from a chair which she sat in. From time to time, this short grey haired man with a neat moustache would barge into her bedroom without knocking. "Why do you have those pictures on your wall?' he use to ask when he saw cutouts from magazines of pop stars like Aretha Franklin and Carole King pinned above her bed. Twice he tried to tear down some of the photos she had put up. "Take them down," he would order her. Trudy refused. The pictures stayed up.
Trudy's mother Grace was a short red head who stayed in the background. Her husband repeatedly issued her orders demanding for instance that she bring him his meals at the dining room table exactly at six o'clock in the evening. If the meal came just a little late, he would often vent his anger against his wife. Maunders sometimes escaped into neighbour's houses where mealtimes weren't tense and fathers didn't act like petty dictators.
In her teens Trudy grew into a tall brown haired woman who was intense and intelligent. She won a scholarship to McGill University but left there after her first year. She wanted to put a distance between her and her father.She stsill loved him but from a distance.
Thursday 9 March 2017
Right, Left and Centre: The Politics of Some Canadians; Chapter 25, Part Four. by Dave Jaffe; A sOmetime Fighter for the Diabled.
A Sometime Fighter For The Disabled: Part Four.
When Ron Malevich became a racist he was unfortunately part of a Canadian tradition. Rulers in early Canada like our first prime minister John A. MacDonald had total contempt for First Nations people. Soldiers and police herded the First Nations people onto reserves. Young aboriginals lived and died in horrible residential schools from the late 1870's onto the next hundred years.
Black people faced outright racism in Nova Scotia and in other parts of Canada. White males reserved the best jobs for themselves and their sons. Canada's federal governments slapped a very heavy head tax on Chinese immigrants who tried to come to Canada in the 20th century. This made immigration into an "only whites are welcome" situation.
So it's really no surprise that racism reared its ugly head again when increasing numbers of Chinese immigrants and other Asians came to Metro Vancouver in the early 1970's. .Ron Malevich became a virulent anti-Chinese racist. He started a scene in one restaurant, telling a man who had a meal with him," I can't take these people. We've got to stop this immigration."
This ironically was the same kind of statement that Canadians from white European countries said about Malevich;'s parents about 50 years before. Malevich spoke kindly of Doug Collins, the Vancouver area journalist who became an outspoken anti-immigrant voice in the 1980"s. Malevich started hanging around with anti-Semites. Like them, he denied that the Holocaust had ever happened. When he voiced these racist ideas to people on the left, they said things like, "Sorry, I don't agree with you. See you around." But most of these people never came near Malevich again.
By the time a stroke felled Malevich in his late 70's, his progressive days were far behind him. He ended up in a long term care hospital. It was a sad end for a man who at one time had helped many people.
When Ron Malevich became a racist he was unfortunately part of a Canadian tradition. Rulers in early Canada like our first prime minister John A. MacDonald had total contempt for First Nations people. Soldiers and police herded the First Nations people onto reserves. Young aboriginals lived and died in horrible residential schools from the late 1870's onto the next hundred years.
Black people faced outright racism in Nova Scotia and in other parts of Canada. White males reserved the best jobs for themselves and their sons. Canada's federal governments slapped a very heavy head tax on Chinese immigrants who tried to come to Canada in the 20th century. This made immigration into an "only whites are welcome" situation.
So it's really no surprise that racism reared its ugly head again when increasing numbers of Chinese immigrants and other Asians came to Metro Vancouver in the early 1970's. .Ron Malevich became a virulent anti-Chinese racist. He started a scene in one restaurant, telling a man who had a meal with him," I can't take these people. We've got to stop this immigration."
This ironically was the same kind of statement that Canadians from white European countries said about Malevich;'s parents about 50 years before. Malevich spoke kindly of Doug Collins, the Vancouver area journalist who became an outspoken anti-immigrant voice in the 1980"s. Malevich started hanging around with anti-Semites. Like them, he denied that the Holocaust had ever happened. When he voiced these racist ideas to people on the left, they said things like, "Sorry, I don't agree with you. See you around." But most of these people never came near Malevich again.
By the time a stroke felled Malevich in his late 70's, his progressive days were far behind him. He ended up in a long term care hospital. It was a sad end for a man who at one time had helped many people.
Wednesday 8 March 2017
Right, Left and Centre: The Politics of Some Canadians: Chapter 24, Part Three by Dave Jaffe
A Sometime Fighter For The Disabled: Part Three
In the mid-1970's, Ron Malevich went back to reading books. Ye now he dipped into books that could help him in his quest for justice for disabled people. He read books by the 1960's yippies namely Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman,. He re-read 'Reveille For Radicals' by the Chicago-based organizer Saul Alinsky. He thought about what he'd read. Then he went to work.
Ron Malevich won some big victories. Using the media and sympathetic allies, he stopped the Canadian Institute for the Blind from evicting blind people from a building it owned and had rented out to visually impaired tenants. Malevich also halted the Social Credit government, which was now back in power, from limiting the use of the disability transit pass. In the Year of the Disabled in 1981 Malevich persuaded a blind man to print in Braille parts of the British North American Act, which was one of the founding documents of Canada.
Here Malevich was making an important point. "A lot of our laws aren't in Braille," he said to the assembled media. "So blind people can't read them." This has got to change, he continued. The federal government took note. Now all of the federal laws are made accessible to all visually impaired people and all other disabled citizens.
Of course, Malevich didn't win all the battles he took part in. He failed to prove that a housing co-op he applied to join was discriminating against people like him. Sometimes he used politically incorrect language. He called one of his campaigns against the aging female head of Human Resources 'Old Hag'. He picketted New Democratic Party offices when the N.D.P. squashed the 1983 Solidarity movement. The movement was born out of anger when Social Credit premier Bill Bennett scrapped many progressive laws in the late summer of 1983.
"We had to get rid of the Solidarity Movement," Tom Fawkes a trade union official and N.D.P. supporter said in effect to a meeting a few years later. "Bill Bennett would have called another election and would have won a far bigger majority than he'd won earlier in the year. So we closed it down." Malevich never forget or forgave the N.D.P.'s actions here. Yet from the mid-1970's to the late 1980's, he won some big victories. Yet then things changed. Many Chinese people mostly from Hing Kong started to arrive in Metro Vancouver.
Racism has run like an ugly thread through a large part of Canadian history. Some of this has been violent. White people rioted in Vancouver in the early 20th century several times against immigrants from China, Japan and India. French Canadian mobs attacked Jews in east end Montreal in the 1930's and 1940's. Japanese-Canadians were thrown into detention camps in the early 1940's, when Japan attacked the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbour. Nor was all racism targeted at Asians or Jews.
In the mid-1970's, Ron Malevich went back to reading books. Ye now he dipped into books that could help him in his quest for justice for disabled people. He read books by the 1960's yippies namely Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman,. He re-read 'Reveille For Radicals' by the Chicago-based organizer Saul Alinsky. He thought about what he'd read. Then he went to work.
Ron Malevich won some big victories. Using the media and sympathetic allies, he stopped the Canadian Institute for the Blind from evicting blind people from a building it owned and had rented out to visually impaired tenants. Malevich also halted the Social Credit government, which was now back in power, from limiting the use of the disability transit pass. In the Year of the Disabled in 1981 Malevich persuaded a blind man to print in Braille parts of the British North American Act, which was one of the founding documents of Canada.
Here Malevich was making an important point. "A lot of our laws aren't in Braille," he said to the assembled media. "So blind people can't read them." This has got to change, he continued. The federal government took note. Now all of the federal laws are made accessible to all visually impaired people and all other disabled citizens.
Of course, Malevich didn't win all the battles he took part in. He failed to prove that a housing co-op he applied to join was discriminating against people like him. Sometimes he used politically incorrect language. He called one of his campaigns against the aging female head of Human Resources 'Old Hag'. He picketted New Democratic Party offices when the N.D.P. squashed the 1983 Solidarity movement. The movement was born out of anger when Social Credit premier Bill Bennett scrapped many progressive laws in the late summer of 1983.
"We had to get rid of the Solidarity Movement," Tom Fawkes a trade union official and N.D.P. supporter said in effect to a meeting a few years later. "Bill Bennett would have called another election and would have won a far bigger majority than he'd won earlier in the year. So we closed it down." Malevich never forget or forgave the N.D.P.'s actions here. Yet from the mid-1970's to the late 1980's, he won some big victories. Yet then things changed. Many Chinese people mostly from Hing Kong started to arrive in Metro Vancouver.
Racism has run like an ugly thread through a large part of Canadian history. Some of this has been violent. White people rioted in Vancouver in the early 20th century several times against immigrants from China, Japan and India. French Canadian mobs attacked Jews in east end Montreal in the 1930's and 1940's. Japanese-Canadians were thrown into detention camps in the early 1940's, when Japan attacked the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbour. Nor was all racism targeted at Asians or Jews.
Tuesday 7 March 2017
Right, Left and Centre: The Politics of Some Canadians: by Dave Jaffe: Chapter 23. Part Two of 'A Sometime Fighter For The Disabled'.
A Sometime Fighter For The Disabled: Part Two.
By the time he was in his mid 20"s Ron Malevich was a progressive. He went to New Democratic meetings and listened to speeches by N.D.P. leaders like Tommy Douglas and David Lewis. Yet Toronto didn't turn him on. He still scuffled to survive and he tired of the summer heat and the snow in winter. Soon in the early 1970's he headed west to Vancouver and dropped in to see his family in what was now Thunder Bay.
His father was now dead and his mother was looking a lot older. In Thunder Bay Ron got into a big argument with a conservative man. "You're an asshole," Malevich told the man who was working in Thunder Bay and owned a house there. Ron hugged his aging mother and then left to go back on the road. She died a few years later. Ron rarely saw the rest of his family again.
In Vancouver, Ron met a man we'll call Derek who was drinking in a downtown tavern. Derek wore long hair, and was tall, thin and tough. "We're belong to a new group on the city's east side,"
Derek told Malevich. "It's called the Vancouver Revolutionary Front." There were six members of the VRF. They planned to go to a rock concert, start a riot there which would trigger an uprising in the city. This Derek pointed out, would be a big step toward a revolution in B.C.and then in the rest of Canada.
The riot started but the plan backfired. The harebrained scheme failed completely,
as rock concert goers who didn't belong to the VRF fled the scene. Most members of the VRF were arrested and then jailed. Yet Malevich wasn't nabbed by the police. He'd kept in the background and the police didn't touch him.
After this escapade, Malevich didn't want anything to do with revolutionary politics. He joined the New Democratic Party. It was 1971 and the N.D.P. was on its way to winning the next provincial election. Yet no one knew this at the time. Ron ended up on the N.D.P.'s provincial council which was made up of all the regional N.D.P. representatives across B.C. There were also N.D.P. Members of the Legislative Assembly and N.D.P. Members of Parliament on the council. Alas, Ron drove some council members up the wall by phoning them up and talking for far too long.
"Get rid of this guy," one of the N.D.P. Members of the Legislative Assembly demanded to several other council members. "He phones me up at all times and drives me crazy with his talking." Council members soon bounced Ron out of their meetings and the council. Still, after the N.D.P.'s victory in the 1972 provincial election, Ron got a disability allowance since his vision had worsened.
Yet he had time on his hands. What should he do? then the answer came to him in the mid-1970's. He would wage struggles on behalf of the handicapped. And this is what he did.
By the time he was in his mid 20"s Ron Malevich was a progressive. He went to New Democratic meetings and listened to speeches by N.D.P. leaders like Tommy Douglas and David Lewis. Yet Toronto didn't turn him on. He still scuffled to survive and he tired of the summer heat and the snow in winter. Soon in the early 1970's he headed west to Vancouver and dropped in to see his family in what was now Thunder Bay.
His father was now dead and his mother was looking a lot older. In Thunder Bay Ron got into a big argument with a conservative man. "You're an asshole," Malevich told the man who was working in Thunder Bay and owned a house there. Ron hugged his aging mother and then left to go back on the road. She died a few years later. Ron rarely saw the rest of his family again.
In Vancouver, Ron met a man we'll call Derek who was drinking in a downtown tavern. Derek wore long hair, and was tall, thin and tough. "We're belong to a new group on the city's east side,"
Derek told Malevich. "It's called the Vancouver Revolutionary Front." There were six members of the VRF. They planned to go to a rock concert, start a riot there which would trigger an uprising in the city. This Derek pointed out, would be a big step toward a revolution in B.C.and then in the rest of Canada.
The riot started but the plan backfired. The harebrained scheme failed completely,
as rock concert goers who didn't belong to the VRF fled the scene. Most members of the VRF were arrested and then jailed. Yet Malevich wasn't nabbed by the police. He'd kept in the background and the police didn't touch him.
After this escapade, Malevich didn't want anything to do with revolutionary politics. He joined the New Democratic Party. It was 1971 and the N.D.P. was on its way to winning the next provincial election. Yet no one knew this at the time. Ron ended up on the N.D.P.'s provincial council which was made up of all the regional N.D.P. representatives across B.C. There were also N.D.P. Members of the Legislative Assembly and N.D.P. Members of Parliament on the council. Alas, Ron drove some council members up the wall by phoning them up and talking for far too long.
"Get rid of this guy," one of the N.D.P. Members of the Legislative Assembly demanded to several other council members. "He phones me up at all times and drives me crazy with his talking." Council members soon bounced Ron out of their meetings and the council. Still, after the N.D.P.'s victory in the 1972 provincial election, Ron got a disability allowance since his vision had worsened.
Yet he had time on his hands. What should he do? then the answer came to him in the mid-1970's. He would wage struggles on behalf of the handicapped. And this is what he did.
Monday 6 March 2017
Right, Left and Centre: The Politics of Some Canadians by Dave Jaffe.Chapter 23. Part One: A Sometime Fighter for the Disabled.
A Sometime Fighter For The Disabled: Part One. by Dave Jaffe
People remembered Ronald Malevich for his low gravelly voice long after he'd left their lives. He would phone people up and talk to them for hours and hours. He'd tell them about his struggles on behalf of the handicapped and the issues he'd won. he'd stress his role and his intelligence. Some people were impressed. Yet others said after hanging up the phone,"I just wish this guy would leave me alone." Then some people told him that the next time he phoned them. Then he left their lives. Still, he kept on fighting for the disabled, until that is Chinese immigrants started to show up in Vancouver in the 1970's.
Ron Malevich grew up in Thunder Bay at Canada's western edge of Lake Superior. His parents were born in the Ukraine and came to Canada in the 1920's. They met in farming country and then married and moved to Thunder Bay. At this point it was two towns, one called Fort William and the other was known as Port Arthur.
Ron's father found a job in an industrial plant in Port Arthur where he and his wife also found a house to live in. His mother raised two boys and one girl. She spoke English but never achieved her husband's mastery of the language. She often cleaned houses to make money. Ron had his problems. He was the middle child but he had only some vision in one of his eyes. He graduated from high school. Yet at times he was hyperactive in the classroom and often argued with his teachers.
Unlike his father, mother and his siblings, Ron didn't likes to work too hard. "I left Port Arthur after I graduated from high school," he once said. "There was no work there." In fact there was lots of work to do in Port Arthur. Industrial plants back then dotted the city. To-day many of these plants are shuttered . Yet this wasn't true in the 1950's. In any case, in his late teens, Ron Malevich left Port Arthur and headed east. By now he was a short dark haired confirmed smoker who didn't like working in the factories of his native town.
In the late 1950's, he headed south-east to Toronto, a sober growing city that beckoned to many dissatisfied Canadian youngsters as well as many immigrants who were coming to Canada from Europe. In this city, which was now Canada's biggest metropolis, Ron survived but never made much money. He panhandled in the streets, worked in low paying dress factories and gambled some of his money at racetracks. He lived in low rent rooming houses,, meeting in these places, prostitutes, gamblers and other low paid workers like himself.
This was his life for a few years. "These people you were hanging out with were the underclass," a sociology student told him years later. "Karl Marx called them 'The lumpen proletariat'". All of this was true but Ron who knew little about Karl Marx back then. Still he benefited from coming to Toronto. He went to the Toronto office of the Canadian Institute for the Blind and got a better pair of glasses there. These glasses helped him read much more easily.
Soon he ended up in libraries reading left wing magazines like 'Canadian Forum' and 'Monthly Review'. Then he came across the works of the Chicago based organizer Saul Alinsky and read his books very carefully. Here was a man who knew how to change the world in a progressive direction. He became Ron's favourite author.
People remembered Ronald Malevich for his low gravelly voice long after he'd left their lives. He would phone people up and talk to them for hours and hours. He'd tell them about his struggles on behalf of the handicapped and the issues he'd won. he'd stress his role and his intelligence. Some people were impressed. Yet others said after hanging up the phone,"I just wish this guy would leave me alone." Then some people told him that the next time he phoned them. Then he left their lives. Still, he kept on fighting for the disabled, until that is Chinese immigrants started to show up in Vancouver in the 1970's.
Ron Malevich grew up in Thunder Bay at Canada's western edge of Lake Superior. His parents were born in the Ukraine and came to Canada in the 1920's. They met in farming country and then married and moved to Thunder Bay. At this point it was two towns, one called Fort William and the other was known as Port Arthur.
Ron's father found a job in an industrial plant in Port Arthur where he and his wife also found a house to live in. His mother raised two boys and one girl. She spoke English but never achieved her husband's mastery of the language. She often cleaned houses to make money. Ron had his problems. He was the middle child but he had only some vision in one of his eyes. He graduated from high school. Yet at times he was hyperactive in the classroom and often argued with his teachers.
Unlike his father, mother and his siblings, Ron didn't likes to work too hard. "I left Port Arthur after I graduated from high school," he once said. "There was no work there." In fact there was lots of work to do in Port Arthur. Industrial plants back then dotted the city. To-day many of these plants are shuttered . Yet this wasn't true in the 1950's. In any case, in his late teens, Ron Malevich left Port Arthur and headed east. By now he was a short dark haired confirmed smoker who didn't like working in the factories of his native town.
In the late 1950's, he headed south-east to Toronto, a sober growing city that beckoned to many dissatisfied Canadian youngsters as well as many immigrants who were coming to Canada from Europe. In this city, which was now Canada's biggest metropolis, Ron survived but never made much money. He panhandled in the streets, worked in low paying dress factories and gambled some of his money at racetracks. He lived in low rent rooming houses,, meeting in these places, prostitutes, gamblers and other low paid workers like himself.
This was his life for a few years. "These people you were hanging out with were the underclass," a sociology student told him years later. "Karl Marx called them 'The lumpen proletariat'". All of this was true but Ron who knew little about Karl Marx back then. Still he benefited from coming to Toronto. He went to the Toronto office of the Canadian Institute for the Blind and got a better pair of glasses there. These glasses helped him read much more easily.
Soon he ended up in libraries reading left wing magazines like 'Canadian Forum' and 'Monthly Review'. Then he came across the works of the Chicago based organizer Saul Alinsky and read his books very carefully. Here was a man who knew how to change the world in a progressive direction. He became Ron's favourite author.
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