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

In 1995, my best friend Rob Stocks and I co-founded Northwest Passages, the only bookstore in the world to specialize exclusively in Canadian fiction, poetry, drama, and literary criticism. Since then, Rob’s partner Sarah Bagshaw has taken over all the day-to-day operations of the store, while Rob and I stay involved on many fronts. One of my jobs that I don’t do as well as I would like is to look after the Northwest Passages newsletter which goes out to nearly 1000 readers. It’s supposed to be monthly, but recently semi-annually might be closer to the truth. At any rate, here’s my editorial for this month’s issue:

The Canadian Experience

10/17/2007, somewhere just south of the NY/Quebec border

I’m writing to you today from the front seat of a 54 passenger bus that is taking me, two colleagues, and twenty-nine American students from Burlington, Vermont to Ottawa. In a few hours, our group and the group from the packed bus driving just ahead of us will be sitting in Question Period in Canada’s House of Commons. Our goal in this three-day field trip, run by the University of Vermont Canadian Studies program for more than 50 consecutive years, will be to learn something about Canada, its political institutions, its art and culture, and its national identity.

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Spring registration begins for Seniors on November 12, and opens up for everyone else gradually over that week. Make sure to check the UVM Registration schedule to see when you may begin registering for Fall classes.

I’m setting aside enough 20 minute appointments over the next week or so to meet with all 45 of my advisees. I’ll be available to answer any advising questions and to help review your choice of courses for the spring semester. If you’re a senior planning on graduating in the spring, you should definitely come to see me before registering so that we can make sure you’ll be set to graduate.

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Tomorrow, 84 students, 5 faculty and staff and I head to Ottawa for the annual, legendary Ottawa field trip. We’re going to see what promises to be an exciting Question Period, meet with four very interesting Members of Parliament, and catch an Ottawa 67s hockey game. As great as that’s all going to be, I think the most exciting thing anyone will have seen in Ottawa this week is this:

I can’t tell you how great it was to discover that a free preview of the Centre Ice package on TV allowed me to watch the Edmonton Oilers‘ season-opener last night. It was a great game and the changes the Oilers made over the summer all seem to have made the team more exciting than we’ve seen them in some time (with the exception of their incredible Stanley Cup run two years ago). I can’t think of the last time they’ve started so many rookies at the beginning of a season. Gagner and Cogliano both got points in their NHL debut’s last night, which was great to see. Nice to see Brodziak pot one as well.

It was also a thrill to watch UVM’s own Torrey Mitchell make his NHL debut. I’d had almost forgotten that he had signed with the Sharks last year and certainly hadn’t anticipated we’d be seeing him make the lineup this year. Not only that, he played a great game last night and seemed to be having an impact every time he was on the ice, just as he had done back here at UVM. I had to laugh when the announcer on last night’s broadcast asked “What’s a catamount?”

I’m too busy to think this week, let alone blog, but I was inspired by my colleague Richard Parent’s wonderful “Holy Crap!” posting earlier this week to pull together some of the things I’ve been meaning to blog on for the last week or so. Channelling the spirit of the great Bob and Doug McKenzie, I thought I would provide a Canadianized version of my colleague’s exclamation that I occasionally hear him shouting from his office from time to time. 😉

No way, eh! The Weakerthans‘ new album Reunion Tour came out last week and NPR has an interview with the band’s John K. Samson. There’s also a good feature on the band at the cbc.ca Arts site. Great to see them getting some well-deserved acclaim for this album. Make sure to listen to his interview with Grant Lawrence on CBC Radio 3, too. If you’ve not heard The Weakerthans before, you can listen to some of their songs here.

Check out their “webisode” on curling that The Weakerthans have posted on YouTube.

No way, eh! Maybe it’s not so bad that I’m more a Jack of All Trades than a master of one or two…

No way, eh! This news made my week! Radiohead is releasing their new album In Rainbows next week. I heard a lot of the new material last year at their amazing concert in Montreal and have been waiting for this day ever since.

In a completely game-changing move, fans will be ordering it directly off their website and paying whatever they see fit. Issa (formerly known as Jane Siberry) has been using this self-determined pricing model for years now, but we’ve yet to see a band as big as Radiohead (is there a more important band in the world these days?) give this a try. What you can see from Issa’s store at www.sheeba.ca is that the majority of people who pay do so at the suggested rate or above.

Check out these stats from the Sheeba website:

Avg Price/Song $1.18

% Paid Below Suggested 6%

% Paid At Suggested 80%

% Paid Above Suggested 14%

If Radiohead comes anything close to this, and I expect they will, this might really change the face of how music is bought and sold.

As usual, Bob Lefsetz has some interesting things to say about this on his blog, and I think he really nails it here:

No way, eh! A shout out to my pal and former bandmate Brad Clarke for tipping me off on an up-and-coming band from Edmonton, the perfectly named The Wheat Pool. I’ll buy their CD for that name alone, though it doesn’t hurt that they have songs about Whyte Avenue and Emily Carr either.

No way, eh! The Edmonton Oilers‘ first game of the season is tonight and the team is looking great. The only trouble is that it’s nearly impossible to catch the Oilers on television here, aside from when they appear on Hockey Night in Canada.

No way, eh! If only our governments would be as quick to realize that Nourishing the mind and the soul are as important as food and clothing. Over the next two years, the Chilean government will be donating care packages of 49 books to over 500 000 needy families. A three-person jury worked to select these titles and announced the results of their deliberations this week. It’s a pretty phenomenal list, and reading it reminded me of a great Harpers article I used to have my Composition students read back when I taught at Mount Royal College in Calgary. It’s by Earl Shorris and it’s called “On the Uses of a Liberal Education: As a Weapon in the Hand of the Restless Poor.” It’s companion piece in that issue, Mark Edmundson’s “On the Uses of a Liberal Education: As Lite Entertainment for Bored College Students” is also well worth reading, and it perhaps even more relevant now than it was ten years ago.

The Chilean jury’s reading list is fascinating, and it includes Gabriel García Márquez, Jack London, Pablo Neruda, Aesop’s fables, Daniel Defoe, Franz Kafka, and Oscar Wilde. If your French and Spanish are up to speed you can read these articles for the full story.

No way, eh! A few more interviews with William Gibson in the Canadian press over the last couple of days about his new book Spook Country. Dying to read that book…

No way, eh! The Arctic ice is melting far faster than anyone could have imagined. Something tells me that this scary news should have been listed above all of these other stories.

We’ll be adding a few more specific details to our Ottawa itinerary in the coming week or so, but here is a pretty complete look at what we’ll be up to while we’re there.

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The Edmonton Oilers’ own Raffi Torres makes a hilarious cameo on The Daily Show in a feature about the growing numbers of Mexicans immigrating to Canada. Contrary to the opinions of the intolerant bigot they interview as part of this segment, Canada is very happy to welcome Mexicans and any other immigrants who would like to move there. Canada needs more immigrants, and most of us believe that immigration only makes our country better and stronger.
If only Raffi could have had a go at that guy… (I’m not going to mention his name or organization here). I loved how dumbfounded he was when asked to describe Canadian culture.

Yesterday, I came across this incredible “Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon University professor of Computing Science. Moving and inspiring stuff. My favourite line from this is that “brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things.” That’s an important reminder for all of us about how we should look at what might seem to be setbacks.

You can watch a good story about his lecture in the video below, and the whole thing online here. Good Morning America also had a nice interview with Dr. Pausch on Friday, which is worth watching.

To me, one of the amazing things about the internet is to be able to find and hear the stories of other people in the way that other traditional forms of media do not permit. Randy Pausch’s courage in the face of his battle with cancer is a lesson from which we can all learn. I wish him and his family the very best.

One of my favourite writers in the world is Jacques Poulin. I teach his works here frequently and he is an important part of the online course here I teach every summer on three Canadian writers: Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood, and Jacques Poulin.

For that reason, I was excited to see that Archipelago Books, a wonderful not-for-profit press out of Brooklyn has purchased the US rights to Poulin’s novel Spring Tides (Les Grandes Marées). I am thinking I may well teach that book next semester or in 2008/09.

The first US review I’ve seen of that new book has just come out in the New York Sun. It would be great to see Poulin start to garner the attention outside of Québec that I’ve always believed he deserves.

At 10:58 AM today, the loonie was trading at $1.0004 US, the first time we’ve reached parity since 1976.