History I Partly Bunk: Part Six by Dave Jaffe

  History Is Partly Bunk by Dave Jaffe; Part Six.




   In 1983 Social Credit premier Bill Bennett swept away many of the social programs that Dave Barrett's N.D.P. government had put into law in the early 1970's. A massive group of protestors took to the streets in Vancouver and Victoria and tried to pressure the premier to withdraw his tough programs of restraint. Yet premier Bennett remained defiant and finally won the day. His program of austerity stayed in place.
   At this time in 1983 I worked as a volunteer in the Vancouver Unemployment Action Centre in the heart of the hard scrabble Downtown Eastside area. So the Action Centre which was set up to help the jobless sat smack dab in the middle of the anti-Socred protest that was now called the Solidarity Coalition.
     Upstairs was the office of the United Fishermen's Allied Workers Union or UFAW. And in that office you could find the tough talking and young UFAWU organizer George Hewison. Hewison had helped create the Solidarity Coalition. As the talk in the centre became more intense, I would exit the centre and get on a bus that would drive into the Kitsilano area of the city. Wandering along Broadway, one of the main east roads of Vancouver. I sometimes ended up in small greasy spoon restaurants or laundromats. Most of these places have now vanished, swept away by the rising tide of gentrification.
     After settling into a seat I would take out a sketch book and start to draw trees outside in the streets. For 1983 for me was not just the year of the Solidarity Coalition. "Protest and survive," said the well-known British historian Edward P. Thompson as he and many others in Europe protested the escalating arms buildup and the resurgence of the Cold War. I surely wanted to protest premier Bennett's cutbacks.
     Yet in 1983 I had just discovered the magic of drawing and the history of the visual arts. I spent hours drawing again and again. I realized with great joy that I had the power of creativity within me. This was for me a great moment. Still  to be sure it doesn't belong in any history of B.C. in the 1980's. Yet in some way my drawing helped soften the blows from Bill Bennett;'s austerity program.
       "Success turns an artist who continues to claim exemption(from history) as an escapist," wrote John Berger. I am not a successful artist. Yet in the summer of 1983, I still enjoyed escaping for a few hours the heavy politics of the moment, and in this way I managed to be partly exempt from history. History was not bunk as Henry Ford once said.  Still, drawing in a sketch book helped lift its heavy hand from my back.
     

History May Be Partly Bunk: Part Five by Dave Jaffe

  History May Be Partly Bunk by Dave Jaffe: Part Five




    Did Henry Ford really say, "History is bunk." ?  Some writers say he did. Others writers disagree. Yet wherever the truth lies, Ford was a true innovator. His Model T Ford car opened up the auto as a mass method of transit to millions of Americans. He despised tradition and most of the past and paved the way to a consumer society and mass affluence.
     Most historians I've read do seem to stress the negative. Wars, plagues, depressions and famines fill their books. Yet these afflictions don't tell the whole story. "To-day there are still liable to be pockets of exemption from crises anywhere," wrote the British writer John Berger over 50 years ago.
In other words no matter how bad things look, there's always places where good things occur.
    In the early 1980's, I lived in one of these pockets of exemption. Interest rates had soared to over 20 per cent and the British Columbian economy nose dived. The jobless rate climbed to more than 15 per cent as one sawmill after another shut down. Next door in Alberta, dozens of oil wells closed down and many oil workers were left without jobs. I didn't blame these people and others for feeling bad. Yet I felt immune from the general suffering.
    At that time in the early 1980's, I moved into a spanking new housing co-op and had never felt better. I was working for an organization that served the disabled and for the first time in years I saved money, instead of living on welfare. "Life is sweet," I told a friend of mine back then. "Though it's not the same for many others."
     In the early fall afternoons of 1982 I would rent a car or get on a Greyhound bus and ride through the Fraser Valley. For the first time since I had moved to Vancouver in the mid-1960's, I explored this beautiful area that stood a bare hour from where I lived. I marveled at the beauty of this land whose mountains and lush forests looked lovely in the autumn months. Ten years later the valley started to fill up with shopping malls, suburban tract homes and high rises. Yet in the early 80's, I moved through Chilliwack, Langley and parts of Surrey, thinking how these small places were surrounded by scenic beauty.
   Once again as in the late 1950's, I felt truly happy and fulfilled. History was not bunk. I knew that some people would look back at this time as a time of torment. Yet for me I felt happy and fulfilled.  Yet times did change and soon I felt history's sharp edges.
    In 1983, history or the age's politics moved in on me. In 1983, the B.C. Social Credit premier Bill Bennett led his right wing party to a third election victory in a row. In the  summer of 1983 he swept away the reforms that Dave Barrett's N.D.P. government had brought in from 1972 to 1975. The premier fired over 10,000 government workers, scrapped one social program after another and told the public as he justified these sweeping changes, "We are facing a new reality." Now I couldn't escape history.

History May Be Partly Bunk: Part Four by Dave Jaffe.

  History May Be Partly Bunk: Part Four by Dave Jaffe.




    Pierre Elliott Trudeau had a great time in the 1950's, despite denouncing that period as "The Great Darkness". I didn't have a bad time either in the city of Montreal in the era of the Union Nationale premier Maurice Duplessis. Still, not all French Canadians were as fortunate as Mr. Trudeau, our future Prime Minister. "We are the white negroes of America", proclaimed  the French Canadian revolutionary Pierre Vallieres in a book with that name.that he wrote.
     Here Vallieres was exaggerating. Still, many French Canadians in the 1950's did live in poverty. So did many other Canadians living outside Quebec. Canada in the 1950's was a deeply unequal country. John Porter in his 1965 path breaking book called 'The Vertical Mosaic' exposed a Canada of vast wealth at the country's top of the social ladder and many poor people at the bottom. Canada was no utopia in the 1950's despite the growth of a middle class.
      Yet for a time I enjoyed myself back then and I think many other people did too. So despite what some historians have written about the 1950's and other periods, some of them have been too pessimistic. Henry Ford may have been partly right. I would amend his statement to say "History may be partly bunk."

History May Be Partly Bunk: Part Three by Dave Jaffe.

History May Be Partly Bunk: Part Three.




     During most of the 1950's in when I was in my teenage years, I didn't see any signs of what later historians  and writers, who were mostly Quebecois called "The Great Darkness' or "Le Grand Noirceur". They were referring to Quebec during the reign of Union Nationale premier Maurice Duplessis,.
     Yet when I ended up at McGill University in the early 1960's my rosy view of the world started to crumble. At university, surrounded by very clever and rich people I soon saw how poor my parents were. Soon I travelled across North America and saw some horrible places. I also sat on lovely beaches, drove through prosperous suburbs and strolled through shopping malls stuffed with consumer goods.
    Soon I tired of life in Montreal and by the mid-1960's I left Montreal for the west coast. Yet whatever the 1950's was for others in Quebec, it wasn't a time of a great darkness for me. I was young and healthy and optimistic.
    Now Pierre Elliott Trudeau often referred to the 1950's as a time of "The Great Darkness".  Yet Trudeau, a future prime minister of Canada had a great time in that era. He lived with his widowed mother in the wealthy suburb of Outremont. He travelled to the Soviet Union in 1952 and to Communist-ruled China in 1960. Going to the Soviet Union in 1952 could have exposed Trudeau to the wrath of Maurice Duplessis whose government sometimes imposed the so-called Padlock Law on communists and their sympathizers. Police could padlock someone's residence and lock that person and their family out of their home.
   "In the 1950's," one left leaning man told me," the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the western world was in full swing. Many communist and their allies were in Canada lived under constant police surveillance and many were harassed by the law. I know I was." Yet Trudeau's great wealth and his family connections shielded him from any penalties.
     As mentioned,  Trudeau also went to China with his friend Jacques Hebert. At this time the very leftist communist government of China was a virtual outcast in the western world. Still Trudeau and Hebert came back to Canada without any great fear and no one bothered them. They even wrote a book about their China odyssey called 'Two Innocents in China'. By 1960 Duplesis was dead and the new Liberal Quebec government lifted or scrapped a lot of heavy handed Union Nationale laws.
Still, Trudeau and Hebert did take risks going to China.
     As well as travelling around the world, Trudeau also led a very active social life. He took out one well-connected French Canadian woman after another. He also of course wrote many articles that slammed the Quebec government of  Duplessis. Yet he had a great time in the 1950's. There was no darkness in his life great or otherwise. He certainly enjoyed the good things of life then and later.



    

History May Be Partly Bunk: Part Two by Dave Jaffe.

History May Be Partly Bunk by Dave Jaffe: Part Two.




   Michael Bliss was just one historian that wrote books on Canadian politics. Another man who wrote a lot about Canadian politics and history was Canada's Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Yet Trudeau wrote his most incisive essays on Canada before he became prime minister. And most of his articles were written about the province of Quebec.
         What was Quebec like in the 1950's when Trudeau wrote many of his articles? "The province of Quebec," wrote Stephen Clarkson and Sandra Gwyn in their biography of Trudeau, "had attained a measure of prosperity and social calm under the firm hand of Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis." Allied to the Catholic Church hierarchy and Anglo-American businessmen, Duplessis and his Union Nationale government ruled Quebec with an iron hand.
     Workers who went on strike in industrial towns like Asbestos in 1949 and Murdochville in 1957 faced terrible violence and repression from scabs and the Quebec Provincial Police. Duplessis also refused to take any federal money for universities and hospital insurance. Bribery of politicians was widespread and Duplessis starved social programs.
     Trudeau as a young man bristled with anger at the Duplessis government. After studying in the U.S. of A. and in England and Europe, he teamed up with people connected with the small magazine called 'Cite Libre'. Here he and other members of the magazine's staff called for many much-needed reforms. They later called the era of Duplessis who ruled Quebec from the mid-1930's to 1939 and from 1944 to 1959 "Le Grand Noirceur" or "The Great Darkness".
    Yet I lived through this period that lasted into the 1950's and I enjoyed myself a lot . In fact my teenage years that took place in the 1950's were some of the happiest times of my life. Not until I reached my 40's, was I  as happy as I was in my teenage years. If someone had come up to me and told me in the late 1950's that I was living in "The Great Darkness", I would have replied "You must be kidding."
     Now at that time, my family was dirt poor. My father landed in Quebec City in 1953 with a measly $160 in his pocket which today would be about $1,000., and he had  a wife and three young children to support.  For the next twelve years, my mother and father just struggled to survive. "Your family was poor when you came to Canada," an economist cousin told me years later. "And in Canada you just got poorer." Bailiffs, lawyers and bill collectors hounded my parents for unpaid bills that usually remained unpaid. Irate landlords kicked us out of one apartment after another when we fell behind in paying the rent.  Yet because I was young and healthy and hopeful, I was happy.
      For others life was good, or at least an improvement on the Depression era of the 1930's and the war years of the 1940's. Inflation was tamed and unemployment remained low. "The 1950's were an age of innocence," B.C. premier Dave Barrett once said. This was true. The ugly side of the 1950's such as residential schools remained out of sight and out of mind. Corruption in politics and business often went unexplored
      Hardcore drugs like cocaine, heroin, and crystal metamphetamines didn't appear in any district where I lived. Even marijuana didn't show up. The 1950's truly was an age of innocence.
      
      

History May Be Partly Bunk: Part One by Dave Jaffe.

   History May Be Partly Bunk by Dave Jaffe. Part One.




    Henry Ford was one of America's most important 20th century innovators. Ford helped create the mass production of cars at the giant plant he set up near Detroit. In fact so successful was this mass production plant at River Rouge that some social scientists called the methods and the age that he pioneered 'Fordism'.
     Ford and his cars helped change the way North Americans travelled, made love,  shopped and many other things.Yet he had little time for intellectuals or progressive movements. He was definitely anti-intellectual. "History is bunk," he once said. Now near the end of my life, I realize that Ford may have had part of the truth. For some historians' account of the 20th century do seem to stress the negative and not the good things that happened.
     Many historians of the 20th century write  histories chockfull of wars, purges, massacres by leftists and rightists as well as endless suffering. In fact much of the pop history I've written on my blog, is just like those more professional accounts by trained historians. Yet if someone asked me how I'm doing right now, I'd reply, "Never felt better. The first part of my life had its problems. The last half of my life has been very good." And I think most of my friends would give a thumbs up to their lives in the 20th century.
    Let me zero in on two Canadians who've written about 20th century Canada and may have given us misleading impressions of the country's life and times. Michael Bliss was a conservative who wrote a number of books about Canada. One of his books dealt with Canadian prime ministers. It just about trashed every prime minister save for the country's founder, John A. MacDonald. Yet anyone reading Bliss's account of Canada would miss some very important points.
       First off, life got way better for most Canadians between 1900 and 2000. Life expectancy shot up from about 45 to 75. Miracle drugs swept away polio, tubercelosis, whooping cough, and scarlet fever. Public health improvements wiped out cholera, plagues and typhoid fever. Living standards rose dramatically. In the late 1940's and after millions of new Canadians and native born citizens moved from inner cities to prosperous suburbs. And the list of improvements in people's lives goes on and on.
   Governments for the first time built up social programs. Somehow these things and a great burst of Canadian culture that started in about 1960 slip under the radar screen in Bliss's history. They do the same by the way in many other writings by historians. The next writer who I'll look at is Pierre Elliott Trudeau who wrote a lot about 1950's Quebec and its history before that time. He became a prime minister who was judged an expert on Quebec, which he was. Yet he too painted a very dark picture of 1950's Quebec that was only partly true.

No Smoking: THe Movies of Nicole Holofcener by Dave Jaffe. Part Three.

   The Movies of Nicole Holofcener versus 'Mad Men' by Dave Jaffe.




     Despite the politics she displayed in the film she directed called 'Please Give' I still like the films of Nicole Holofcener.There's no smoking in her flicks which I think is wonderful.
     Now let's compare her films to the very popular t.v. series 'Mad Men. It ran on t.v. from 2007 to 2015. Millions of viewers watched 'Mad Men' in the U.S. and Canada. 'Mad Men' said the Los Angeles Times created " a strange and lovey space between nostalgia and political correctness." This maybe true but from the series' first scene to its last take, people smoked and smoked and smoked.
     'Mad Men ' is about an advertising agency named Sterling Cooper based in New York City of the 1960's. The program unfolds in upscale offices and many bedrooms. At the start of the series, the lead man, Don Draper played by Jon Hamm sits in a crowded bar and smokes 'Lucky Strike' cigarettes. He questions an African American waiter who prefers another brand of smokes why he prefers his type of cigarettes.
     Nearly everybody in the bar is smoking. To be fair, in the 1960's over 70 per cent of Americans did smoke. Here, the series does reflect reality. The mysterious Draper's main job is to keep Sterling Cooper's biggest client which is a big cigarette company in good shape. This looks like a tough task since a recent article in 'Reader's Digest' has revealed that cigarette smoking endangers lives.
     The actors in the series weren't smoking real tobacco. They smoked herbal cigarettes. "You don't want actors smoking real cigarettes," Mad Men's main writer Matthew Weiner told 'The New York Times'. "They get agitated and nervous." I felt good to hear this, but I wondered whether many young people watching the series started smoking after tuning into 'Mad Men'. For make no mistake about it: smoking tobacco endangers lives. Sources I've tracked down say somewhere between 15,000 and 25,000 Canadians die every year from smoking.
     "100 Canadians die every day from smoking," said an even more alarmist web site. This puts the yearly total of deaths from smoking in Canada to about 35,000. Yet whatever the true figure of Canadian smokers is, many Canadians will die prematurely from heart attacks, lung cancer and strokes because they smoke tobacco every day. 
    Nicole Holofcener has complained that not many people know about the films she's scripted and directed. She goes to parties and tells people, "I direct movies." Yet most people, she says, have never heard of her films. This is too bad. The popularity of her films may never match that of 'Mad Men'. Yet so what? In her films, unlike the "Mad Men" series, nobody smokes. And that right now makes her my favourite film director.