Language controversy in Canada is often associated with Québec, with the French stereotypically turning their noses up at anything English. This malaise is, however, a two-way street: Cornwall is a town of 46,000 in the East of Ontatrio, 120km Southwest of Montréal and 400km Northwest of Toronto. Since January, its Community Hospital has conformed to legislation that favours the hiring of bilingual workers (English and French) over those who only speak English. Considering that 27% of Cornwall’s residents are Francophone, and in theory deserve the same access to healthcare as Anglophones enjoy, one would expect this move to be welcomed.

However, this has not been the case. The mayor of South Stormont (the municipality within which the hospital lies), Bryan McGillis, has withheld his annual donation of $30,000 to the hospital, joining public outrage instigated by Doctor Danny Tombler. Dr. Tombler published a letter in The Standard Freeholder (a local newspaper) criticising the move, stating that Anglophone jobs were being lost at the expense of pandering towards a minority.

MP for Stormont-Dundas-South Glengarry (Cornwall’s electoral district), Jim McDonell has distanced himself from the issue, stating that he would “keep tabs” on the situation, admitting that said situation was proving to be difficult to handle.

This unravelling situation raises the larger question at play: to what lengths should minorities be catered for? Considering that Eastern Ontario has a sizeable Francophone population, I would judge the move a justifiable one: Québec makes numerous provisions for its Anglophone residents. However the situation turns out, the polémique highlights the social and political problems that arise in a region where languages and cultures cross over.

The 70s were an exciting time in Montréal: Expo ’67 set the tone for an exciting decade of disco, escaping the dark ages of La Grande Noirceur, a greater openness to the western world, and economic prosperity. The icing on the cake was of course the hosting of the Summer Olympic Games of 1976, an event placing Montréal firmly on the world stage, indeed becoming the first Canadian city to host the games, beating Moscow and Los Angeles to the title.
One factor favouring Montréal was Canada’s lack of status as a world power, with the IOC wishing to avoid a USSR/USA stand off, later exemplified in the 1980/1984 games. Further “controversy” occurred when separatist René Lévesque sent a letter to Queen Elizabeth II asking her to refuse her invitation to attend the opening of the games, an invitation that had been sent by the then-in-power sovereignist leaders of Robert Bourassa and Pierre Trudeau; she chose to ignore the request.

The main action took place at the Stade Olympique, a purpose built site in the East of Montréal designed by French architect Roger Taillibert that features a circular arena covered by an elaborate retractable roof, a roof supported by the world’s tallest inclined tower. The tower houses an observatory at the summit (Montréal’s sixth-tallest structure), and the stadium is accessible by two purpose built Métro stations on the green line, those being Viau and Pie-IX. This impressive structure has, however, turned out to be something of a white elephant. Construction problems and that oh-so-French pastime of going on strike meant that the roof wasn’t completely installed and operable until 1987, some 11 years after the games had taken place. Furthermore, the roof cannot be retracted in winds of more than 25mph (how embarrassing) The stadium had been home to The Montréal Expos (baseball) and The Alouettes (american football), however both have now left, leaving the stadium with no real purpose, only playing host to the odd rock concert, an audience with the pope (as was the case in 1984), and a biannual monster truck show.

Montréalers are now faced with the choice of demolishing the stadium, or refurbishing it: both options are equally undesirable, being costly in both time and money. Demolition would cost $700 million, an eye-watering figure considering that the city only just paid off the staggering $1.47 billion bill (taking into account all the necessary repairs and alterations) needed to build the stadium in the first place. At the other end of the scale, a redevelopment plan has recently been proposed to construct a new roof, an Olympic museum, a general regeneration of the entire complex, and to provide a centre for Montréal’s diverse communities to come together and get active. Whatever plan is decided upon, the stadium will remain a feature of the Montréal skyline for the foreseeable future, for better of worse.

Montréal By Night is a short english-speaking documentary produced in 1947 by the National Film Board (NFB/ONF: l’Office National du Film), providing a ten-minute Montréalais glimpse into a lazy summer night spent by our good friends Colette and Claude who wander the Boulevard Saint Laurent and the Parc Belmont – as well as a smattering of the history and industry that Montréalers can proudly boast about.

The NFB is a federal government funded agency that, in short, provides funding and support to Canadian filmmakers who wish to make a film about something Canadian. The agency, now based in Montréal after a long time spent in Ottawa, has helped to produce 13,000 oeuvres since its inception in 1939. Originally an exclusively anglophone organisation, the agency bowed to pressure and funded many successful francophone films that formed part of the internationally influential Cinéma Direct movement of the 1950s and 60s.

This film, shot in the 1940s, far predates the french language legislations introduced by the Québec provincial government some 30 to 40 years later, and, although the narrator tries to emphasise the apparent harmony between the English and the French, there is still the feeling that the city’s story is being told from a distinctly anglophone supremacist point of view (Or, perhaps some of Québec’s infamous victim complex has been instilled within me).

Either way, the film succeeds in painting a warm and friendly picture of Montréal, contrasting with the usually hivernal views of the world’s second largest francophone city. The fun of the fair, the old men playing le jeux canadien under the stairs and the beautiful girl brushing her hair in the mirror waiting for her hunky date: it all seems a bit too good to be true (Indeed, in its early days the NFB was really nothing more than a propaganda machine for the federal government).

But please, don’t mistake my comments for put-downs: I still love this film. The smiling faces, the fuzzy black and white film, the portrait of simpler times where everyone got along, a Canadian society where rap music hadn’t yet had the chance to “brainwash our children” or succumb to the pressures and misery of 21st century life. Montréal by Night most definitely succeeds in serving up a healthy dose of rose-tinted nostalgia, the kind that can be all the more appreciated in today’s supposedly dystopic world; the kind that no one can resist.

The film can be found at this address: http://www.onf.ca/film/montreal_by_night

As a side note, I highly recommend following the NFB on twitter. Their feed is regularly updated with news on new films and directors, as well as works from the past. The agency is a real asset to Canada, one that can and should be appreciated by everyone.

A taste of Italy this week for you all, although not the pizza or pasta you were probably hoping for. Whilst on my year abroad in Canada last November, I remember reading in the papers about the assassination of a man named Nicolo Rizzuto: the 86 year-old was shot in the head by a sniper at his luxurious Cartierville mansion in Montréal. I recall the bizarre period of public mourning that ensued and being dumbfounded when I saw pictures of 800 people attending his funeral at Notre-Dame-De-Grâce Church, with Nicolo having the privilege of crossing the Styx in a lavish gold coffin. Who was this man? And why did he merit such luxurious transport? I later found out that he was, in fact, the head of the “Rizzuto Clan”, widely accepted as being Canada’s most powerful mafia family: a family that has wielded influence over Montréal for the past 50 years, one that continues to do so today.

One area of Montréalais and Québécois society that the Rizzuto’s seem heavily invested in is the construction industry: take one look at Radio-Canada’s website on any given day, and something to do with corrupt builders and dodgy contracts is more than likely to come up. Opération Colisée, a 4-year investigation finishing in 2006 led by the Montréal police and the RCMP, exposed the undeniable links between the awarding of public works contracts in Québec and the persuasive powers of the Rizzuto’s. Let’s look at one concrete example of this Italian “persuasion”: in 2006, the Pavillon Jean Coutu of the University of Montréal was unveiled to the public, a drug research and development facility constituting a great asset to the university and to the city as a whole. However, it was in 2005 that construction companies who were legitimately working on the building started receiving mysterious phone calls. For example, the head of one tiling company was told to back away from the project; if he didn’t, he would face grave consequences. These calls were coming from rival construction companies that had been infiltrated by the Rizzuto’s, or ones that belonged to the Rizzuto’s themselves. Their demands were simple: leave it to us, or expect to find yourself sleeping with the fishes.

Other high profile projects influenced by the Montréal mafia include the building of two Metro stations in Laval in 2007, and the refurbishments of Montréal town hall and the parliament buildings in Ottawa: all have used construction companies who only got the job through the Rizzuto’s bullying. This practice, commonplace in Québec over the past 10 years, has apparently affected 5% of all major construction projects in the province.

Nicolo’s son, Vito (known as Montréal’s Teflon Don) was extradited to the USA in 2006 and imprisoned for 6 years due to his involvement in the 1981 gangland shootings of three members of the rival Bonnano clan in Brooklyn, NY. Vito’s son Niccolo (known as Nick Jr.) was shot dead in 2009 whilst in his car in the Notre-Dame-De-Grâce neighbourhood of Montréal.

Whilst many have questioned whether Vito will attempt to reclaim his influence as the head of the clan on his release from prison next year, his freedom may be short lived: his arrest warrant has been out in Italy since 2005, due to his involvement in (guess what?) corrupt construction contracts, this time in relation to the planned Strait of Messina bridge, a project designed to connect mainland Italy with his Sicily homeland, due to open in 2016.

There is no doubt that the position of influence of the Rizzuto clan has taken a bashing. But with companies such as Samara and FTQ Construction still in existence, both having links to the family, it is hard to say whether the issue of fixed contracts, bribery and threats will ever be resolved: corrupt construction is a sticky subject that both the provincial government and the city council are reluctant to confront. The saga highlights the unexpected position of Montréal as an international hub of wrongdoing, and that the Canada can “do mafia” just as well as their more famous friends south of the border.

I am sure that you, good readers, have been waiting all week on the edges of your seats, waiting for the second instalment of licence plate goodness. Well, the wait is over! Below you will find the remaining seven plates that I did not cover last week, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the US border the freezing Arctic.

Let’s kick things off with the Northwest Territories, a vast area of Taiga forest and tundra, and home to about 40,000 hardy souls (18,000 of these living in Yellowknife), as well as 11 official languages. The Territories chose to celebrate their centenary in 1970 by introducing a polar bear shaped licence plate, an amusing and unique choice that has stuck ever since. The design had been an icy blue-on-white since 1986, featuring the slogan of “Explore Canada’s Arctic” (because there sure is a lot of it to explore) A makeover this year changed all that, and the plate now declares N.T. as “spectacular”, featuring a chilly landscape of rocks, trees and a polar bear (can you say picture in picture?) I like this design: it’s funny, reflects the raw nature and power of the Territories, and definitely stands out from the crowd.

Upon splitting from the Northwest Territories in 1999, Nunavut chose to recycle their new neighbour’s design and simply change “Northwest Territories” to “Nunavut”, a logical and economical decision, if a little lacking in imagination. Come on guys, you’ve had twelve years to come up with something now!

Ontario is Canada’s most populous province, home to 13 million Canadians, and the Canadian capital of Ottawa. So how does (arguably) one of Canada’s biggest players chose to advertise itself? Ontario has been “Yours to Discover” since 1982; prior to that motorists were informed by the plate to “Keep it Beautiful”, but clearly someone decided that cleanliness was no longer a problem in the fast-moving world of the 80’s. The slogan invites us to think of all of ON’s assets, both natural and man-made (Toronto and Ottawa included) A crown has been continuously used to separate the characters since at least 1969, giving a not-so-subtle nod to the royalist and colonial past (and present?) of Canada. A french version of the plate (Tant à Découvrir) is available, presumably reflecting the bilingual nature of the National Capital Region.

Prince Edward Island (named after the father of Queen Victoria) has had a bewildering number of plate designs in recent years, including ones telling us to belt up whilst at the wheel, ones proclaiming PEI as Canada’s “Garden Province” (and home of Anne of Green Gables), and one informing us that PEI was “The Place to be in ‘73”. Such indecision! The latest issue shows PEI jumping on the eco-friendly bandwagon and declaring themselves as “Canada’s Green Province”, featuring one of the jurisdiction’s many wind turbines perched upon a sandstone cliff overlooking the sea. This is a nice idea, featuring the province’s rolling hills and rugged coast; however I find the layout and font quite busy, and not particularly bold.

Oh Québec. Trust the French to get political. Their slogan of “Je Me Souviens” (~I remember) has been in use since 1977 (introduced at the height of the separatist movement), with no English version offered to motorists. The plate features no printed graphics, and is one of the last in North America to be completely stamped, slogan and all. The sparse design of blue-on-white (naturally) leaves little to the imagination, presenting the Québécois nation, symbolised by the fleur-de-lys, as very much politically engaged, making sure their francophone voices are heard above the overwhelming anglophone noise surrounding them.

Saskatchewan has chosen to define itself with the natural combination of the Northern Lights and… wheat. SK has been the “Land of Living Skies” since 1998, making a reference to the prevalence of the incredible Aurora Borealis in the Northern parts of the province. Wheat has featured since 1977, reflecting SK’s position as producer of the majority of Canada’s wheat, flax, rye, canola and oats. Now that’s a lot of grain! The green and brown colours reflect the province’s agricultural nature, with the twee serif font suggesting the traditional, rural values held in the hearts of the one million “Saskies” that inhabit the jurisdiction. Incidentally, SK is Canada’s second largest producer of oil after Alberta, but I guess that’s not quite as picturesque.

After having criss-crossed the great country that is Canada, we find ourselves finishing in Yukon Territory, home to 34,000 Yukoners and the Klondike, a region that played host to the Last Great Gold Rush between 1897-99, referenced on their licence plate by the prospector panning for a piece of the action. Gold and the wider mining industry is still a part of Yukon life, although public sector jobs provided by the territorial government now employ 5,000 out of the 12,500-strong workforce. I like the bold italicised font, the colour scheme, and the funny little cartoon: good design guys.

I hope that I have successfully shown that licence plates are more than “just licence plates”: they are a reflection of the political, ideological and environmental diversity that Canada has on offer, that makes Canada the astounding country it is. They are a source of pride, controversy and amusement, a part of Canadian life always changing and always present.

“Licence plates” “…Huh? What about them…?” When faced with these two words, most people would probably say that they are merely inanimate pieces of metal, serving simply as a way of identifying a car, its owner, its origins; nothing more, nothing less. Who cares, right?

As an avid and unashamed collector of plates, I would beg to differ. In North America, where registration plates are free from the constraints of EU law, each province (or state) comes up with their own unique design, reflecting what delights or qualities each jurisdiction has on offer for the visitor. Though the designs may often be considered “naff”, usually becoming more and more elaborate and wacky as time progresses, these plates become an instantly recognisable visualisation of the values invested in a province and it’s people: an omnipresent, mobile advert that creates links between the individual, the car (an unavoidable and essential component of life in a country as vast as Canada), movement and belonging. The rich businessman’s BMW will be branded with the same visual identity as that found on the poor immigrant’s clunker: the plate and its values becomes a unifying tool, an identity that binds together a diverse group of people, one that does not observe the often cruel world of social hierarchy.

I will take each of Canada’s 13 provinces and territories and their respective current plates in turn, and offer my humble opinions/analysis.

Alberta has required motorists to carry licence plates on their vehicles since 1912. The current slogan of “Wild Rose Country” has been in use since 1973, with the current design (in use since 1984) depicting a Rosa Acicularis, one of the many flowers that bloom during the spring on the Albertan plains. This presents a community deeply rooted in its nature and natural environment, a valid point considering the importance of Moraine Lake, Banff National Park, Athabasca Lake and the Rockies, to name just a few of Alberta’s natural wonders.

British Columbia, Alberta’s next-door neighbour, continues with the outdoorsy theme: a simple design of blue-on-white validly stating “Beautiful British Columbia” (nice use of alliteration) accompanied by a proudly sailing provincial flag has been in use since 1985. A special Olympic edition was released in time for the 2010 Vancouver winter games stating B.C. as being “the best place on earth”: let’s not get arrogant guys…

Manitoba: “friendly” since 1976! This optimistic slogan is accompanied by a landscape containing trees, rivers, the waters of Lake Winnipeg and wheat. More detail is added in the form of a bison, and a red maple leaf acting as the “i” of Manitoba. So, another province and its people rooted in the environment (I see a trend developing…) Things weren’t always this picturesque though: Things got political and controversial in 1981, with the win of the NDP in the province allowing them to change the plate’s colour scheme to red, white and black, which just so happened to be the colours of the NDP at the time. This decision was swiftly reversed 5 years later when they lost. Go figure.

New Brunswick’s plate, introduced earlier this year, features a little boat sailing across a bright blue sky, referencing the province’s maritime history. The design also takes the province’s sizeable francophone minority (33% of the 750,000 population) into account by featuring the slogan in both English and French (reflecting N.B.’s status as Canada’s only officially bilingual province). This admirable gesture, promoting good ol’ N.B. as a unified and harmonious place, is marred by the confusing wording of the slogan itself. “Be…in this place” invites the audience to fill in the blank, making New Brunswick seem dynamic and flexible, a place where you could freely be whatever you please. The slogan hardly rolls off the tongue, however: it certainly took me a few attempts to understand what exactly was being conveyed. All in all a nice idea, but poorly executed.

Newfoundland & Labrador is clearly on a cost-cutting drive: the plate used to feature a boat, the province’s flag, and the tagline of “A World of Difference”. However, since 2006, the lacklustre blue-on-white design leaves a lot to be desired. Interest comes in the form of a barely-visible picture of a Pitcher Plant, Sarracenia Purpurea, which just so happens to be the province’s official flower. If I were a “newfie”, I would be sorely disappointed by this feeble design.

What does Nova Scotia have? Boats! Big ones, too. N.S. has been “Canada’s Ocean Playground” since 1972, with the tall-masted schooner “The Bluenose” featuring prominently in the background since 1989. I like this design: the large font size, the boat, and the strong blue pallet all add up to make a purposeful plate that says “Hey, I’m from Nova Scotia: we are a nation of sea-farers and sea-lovers, and we’re here to stay”. Good work.

(The final seven plates and a conclusion will appear next week)

The Bank of Canada unveiled today the start of what will become the next generation of Canadian banknotes. The former “Discovery” series has been ditched in favour of a new “Frontiers” theme. But what does this all mean to the average Joe? It’s time for him (or her) to say goodbye to the ice-skaters and aboriginal art that have adorned the notes since 2004, and hello to a whole new set of fairly forgettable illustrations and scenes depicting proud moments of Canadian history.

However, I had better not get too sarcastic: these notes really are revolutionary. Not only have the pictures changed, but the material has too. Canada has entered the hi-tech age, and its notes will from now on be made out of a special polymer that includes a clear panel allowing for all kinds of sparkly silver security ribbons and holograms. The new plastic, see-through money has been introduced to combat the ever prevalent problem of counterfeiting: 35 bank notes out of a million are fakes in Canada, something that the government (and the folks with all the large bags of cash) want to reduce further. The notes are also designed to last twice as long as their paper counterparts: good news for us all, including the trees.

The new technology has been introduced on the $100 note with the $50 to follow in March 2012, and the rest ($20, $10 and $5) to all be in circulation by the end of 2013.

The $100 note still depicts former Prime Minister Robert Borden (who we all knew was in office from 1911-1920) accompanied by the development of insulin, with the $50 now showing former wartime Prime Minister W.L. Mackenzie King (1921-1930, 1935-1948) with the Antarctic explorer CCGS/NGCC Amundsen, making its way through the ice packs of the chilly North. Point of interest: the eyes of all those depicted in the new portraits will now stare directly at you. Creepy.

I presented my paper on the Italo-québécois playwright Marco Micone hoping to contribute to the topic of the conference which was aiming to discuss the presence of Francophone theatre in America since 1968. Concurrently I was also longing for a chance to show the invaluable work that members of my university, notably the CCS and the School of English, are doing to support my research. Finally, I was looking forward to telling the inquisitive Canadians (more precisely, Quebecers) that the other side of the pond is interested in studying about/them!

The conference was held under the patronage of the CRILCQ (Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la littérature et la culture québécoises), the BanQ (Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec) and the CEAD (Centre des auteurs dramatiques), with sponsorship from the SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) and the Faculty of Arts of the University of Montréal. It was co-ordinated by Professor Gilbert David, who is Professor of Francophone studies at the University of Montréal – to whom my gratitude for having organised such an electrifying venue extends beyond the imaginable.
Now, the experience… I did not want to leave Montréal. I now believe that I had found my primal space in there. Could this be the case? Is it enough to spend a week somewhere to reconsider your own existence? My Italian parents would probably disagree with me considering the tear they shed and the scenes they made when they first found out that my paper had been accepted . . . now, that’s what I would call encouragement . . . Luckily enough, Graham Huggan, my supervisor, and Rachel Killick, my former supervisor, did their best to infuse me with the necessary calm to face an unknown Francophone audience of my first conference in French, during my first time ever in Canada.

I am not going to lie, the stress deriving from delving into something that you do not know and the fears that you might not fit in had been travelling with me since my paper had been accepted. I had many an ‘overwhelming question’, questions which followed me in Montréal. However, as soon as I passed the not-so-daunting customs, fears and doubts started to fade. Between a “hey” and a “tabernacle”, I made my way through the city and I found myself completely at ease crossing the line of my comfort zone from Anglophone Montreal to Francophone Montréal.

Montréal is my city. I woke up in the morning and talked with my parents. It wasn’t only a fight between asserting the power of my breakfast over their Italian dinner; it was mostly me juggling with a jetlagged Anglo-Italian-French code switch…. and I adored that. Those three languages are part of me. Although English and French are the “foreign me”, I felt at home where I least expected to find a home. In Montréal you can be English, you can be French and you can be Italian . . . you can be what you want, when you want, where you want . . . and how you feel . . .

The conference was a goldmine of information to further my knowledge of Canadian theatre and to meet my myths “in the flesh”: playwrights I literally worship like Larry Tremblay and Carole Fréchette were there; literary critics like Jane Moss, Louise Forsyth and Jean-Cléo Godin, who took the academic establishment hand in hand through the world surrounding Québec theatre and French-Ontarian theatre, were there. I will never forget how I struggled to get through the very first minute of my paper with Jane Moss next to me, in my same panel. My mouth was talking, but the rest of me was doing his best not to faint – but I survived the worst twenty-five minutes of my university life up to then. The scholars at the conference were happy to talk to me after I presented my paper and were eager to give me precious pieces of advice. They were very supportive and keen on my research. They made me feel welcome over the four days, which made me hope “I was liked”.

The days I spent at the conference started very early in the morning and finished quite late in the evening. We barely saw the lights of Montréal outside. However, it did not matter to me. The panels addressed issues of strong contemporary relevance for Francophone Canada, especially in Québec: both the legacy of theatre production in 1960s, and the present-day prospects for the Francophone minority (and the ethnic minorities within the minority) at a time of broader uncertainty because of the scarcity of funds and the effects of globalisation on the literary / theatrical production of Québec. The stimulating and agenda-setting keynotes made a pertinently timed event of this conference. Speakers comprised leading figures across Francophone Theatre Studies: a mixed audience of up 35 academics, and playwrights, actors and set designers. Although only three PhD students presented their work at the conference, I particularly enjoyed meeting a student from Edmonton who is doing her research on the cultural dynamics of English subtitles for French Canadian plays destined to an English Canadian audience. Likewise, I hope to have laid the foundations for a future collaborative bid with two French-Ontarians whom I simply adored – a scholar, Lucie Hottie and a scholar/playwright, Patrick Leroux. Their works are still unknown on this side of the pond and that’s a real loss as the originality of thought and insight of their work struck me to such an extent which I thought could never be reached.

As I mentioned earlier, the four-day conference did not leave me with a decent amount of time to visit the city. Yet I managed to watch an Italian Canadian play (that, alone, would have me go off many a tangent) and to spend a great night out with the editor of Guernica (as well as a very prolific trilingual writer from Montréal), Antonio D’Alfonso. During that magical night I had access to the two solitudes of the Montréal, the Anglophone and the Francophone one, and having no particular inclination to think that one solitude is better than the other helped me unlock the secrets of marvellous Montréal and those of its inhabitants in their entirety.
You see now why I said that it was difficult to be back . . .

Most famous for her tale of cheerful red-headed orphan Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery offers a more complicated view of the Canadian war experience. Like many of her contemporaries, the fiercely patriotic Montgomery viewed World War I as a struggle for liberty against a threat of evil from Kaiser’s Germany. Her novel Rilla of Ingleside follows WWI through the eyes of Anne Shirley (Blythe)’s daughter, Rilla, and dramatizes the role of women in the war effort with comedy and pathos. Rilla’s sensitive brother Walter writes a poem, ‘The Piper’, which the book describes as the one great poem of the war, inspiring men, women and children across countries to ‘keep faith’ to ideals of freedom. The novel never quotes the poem, allowing the reader to link Walter’s experience to Lt. John McCrae’s, especially as both soldiers die. The poem is only quoted in Montgomery’s last work, The Blythes Are Quoted, recently edited and published in full by Montgomery critic Benjamin Lefebvre. This text depicts a series of evenings in which the Blythe family recount stories and poems.

The Piper
One day the Piper came down the Glen
Sweet and long and low played he!
The children followed from door to door,
No matter how those who loved might implore
So wiling the song of his melody
As the song of a woodland rill.

Some day the Piper will come again
To pipe to the sons of the maple tree!
You and I will follow from door to door,
Many of us will come back no more
What matter that if Freedom still
Be the crown of each native hill?

Another Montgomery critic, Elizabeth Rollins Epperly, terms the poem a ‘lacklustre lyric’ and a ‘tepid endorsement of war’, and certainly, its sentimentality does not possess the energy of ‘In Flanders Fields’. Yet the poem depicts war-time sacrifice from a position of anguish and loss, which McCrae’s poem does not. The image of the Piper is an ambiguous one, recalling the folktale in which townspeople suffer the loss of all but one of their children to a piper’s compelling music. The line ‘No matter how those who loved might implore’ underscores this context of bereavement. In Rilla of Ingleside, ‘The Piper’ helps Anne’s family come to terms with the loss of son and brother.
A generation later, Anne and her family confront the futility of Walter’s death in the face of World War II, quoting and discussing another poem by Walter, ‘The Aftermath’ (written just before his death). The agony of this poem contrasts sharply with the sentimental sacrifice in ‘The Piper’. (I don’t quote it in full as I wish to quote the surrounding conversation in the text).

The Aftermath
Yesterday we were young who now are old
We fought hot-hearted under a sweet sky,
The lust of blood made even cowards bold,
And no one feared to die;
We were all drunken with a horrid joy,
We laughed as devils laugh from hell released,
And, when the moon rose redly in the east,
I killed a stripling boy [ . . . . ]
I killed him horribly and I was glad.

Now we are old who yesterday were young
And cannot see the beauty of the skies,
For we have gazed the pits of hell among
And they have scorched our eyes.
The dead are happier than we who live,
For, dying, they have purged their memory thus
And won forgetfulness; but what to us
Can such oblivion give?

We must remember always; evermore
Must spring be hateful and the dawn a shame . . .
We shall not sleep as we have slept before
That withering blast of flame.
The wind has voices that may not be stilled . . .
The wind that yester morning was so blithe . . .
And everywhere I look I see him writhe,
That pretty boy I killed!
“ANNE, steadily, ‘I am thankful now, Jem, that Walter did not come back. He could never have lived with his memories . . . and if he had seen the futility of the sacrifice they made then mirrored in this ghastly sacrifice . .’
JEM, thinking of Jem, Jr., and young Walter:- ‘I know . . . I know. Even I who am a tougher brand than Walter . . but let us talk of something else. Who was it said, “We forget because we must”? He was right.’”

‘The Aftermath’ references McCrae’s poem with the phrases ‘a sweet sky’ and ‘We shall not sleep’. Yet, while McCrae’s soldiers are sleepless because of a continuing need for action and sacrifice, Montgomery’s soldier is sleepless from guilt and trauma. In McCrae’s poem, ‘in the sky, the larks, still bravely singing, fly’; in Montgomery’s poem, the scorch-eyed soldiers ‘cannot see the beauty of the skies’ and ‘dawn is a shame’ — in contrast to McCrae’s soldiers, who ‘lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow’. ‘The Aftermath’ dramatizes an experience of what we might now term post-war traumatic stress disorder, a reality with which soldiers today still struggle and one which was less understood in Montgomery’s era. This trauma is shared by Anne and her family: their grief over Walter’s death is now compounded by the death of the ideals in which they, and Montgomery, believed, especially as Anne’s grandchildren are now fighting in WWII. The discussion around the poem still places the poem in a context of heroic sacrifice, but evokes the multi-faceted (mental, physical, psychological) anguish and loss experienced by both soldiers and their families – in World War I and subsequently. Drawn together, Montgomery’s poems offer remembrance as ambivalence and agony.

For more information, see The Blythes Are Quoted, edited by Benjamin Lefebvre with an introduction by Elizabeth Rollins Epperly (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2010); Elizabeth Rollins Epperly, The Fragrance of Sweet-Grass (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,1992), pp. 112-130; Owen Dudley Edwards and Jennifer H. Litster, ‘The End of Canadian Innocence: L.M.Montgomery and the First World War’ in L.M. Montgomery and Canadian Culture, ed. by Irene Gammel and Elizabeth Rollins Epperly (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), pp. 31-46.

This week, I am in the mood to give a healthy dose of 80’s nostalgia.

If someone says “Québec” to you, what do you think of? Maple syrup? Poutine, perhaps? The never-ending search for a unique identité? Whatever your answer maybe, it’s odds on that one of you thought of the timeless songstress, Céline Dion.

Born in Charlemagne, QC in 1968, Céline Marie Claudette Dion has an impressive singing career to her name, spanning four decades. The 80’s and 90’s saw her produce several successful francophone and anglophone records, not to mention her winning performance representing Switzerland in the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest. It was in 1997 that she shot to worldwide fame with the now ubiquitous My Heart Will Go On, produced for the motion picture Titanic, taken from her phenomenally successful, 31 million copy selling album, Let’s Talk About Love. Good news came to Dion’s fans this year with her announcement that she was to sign a new three year long deal to return to Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, executing a total of 210 shows over the three year period (she was last in Vegas from 2003 to 2007 for a 600 show programme under the banner of A New Day: but that obviously just wasn’t enough). Love her or hate her, you cannot deny that she has put Québecois and Canadian music onto the world stage, for better or worse.

But were you aware of her automotive past? (Gasp! Shock, horror!) Prior to her rise to worldwide fame, she often featured in Québec-specific car commercials for the Chrysler/Dodge Corporation, showcasing some of their finest models. Clearly someone at Chrysler thought, “Who better to sell our cars to the good people of la belle province than their own singing starlet?” So the idea stuck, and the rest, as they say, is history. Featured below are a few of my personal favourites.

If I were Céline and I had just finished a show-stopping performance, I would definitely want to jump straight into a 1988 Chrysler LeBaron, sing along to the radio and drive off into the sunset/Château Frontenac. And who could blame her? What a car!

Two years later and she is back, advertising the Dodge Shadow and it’s identical twin, the Plymouth Sundance (?!) No singing this time, but what’s this? Yes, Céline can dance too! She’s definitely “got the moves” here, and is doing a good job of distracting the viewer from the oh-so-mediocre car behind her that Chrysler are trying to flog.

1990 was clearly a busy year for our Céline: here she is again, this time cranking out a power ballad for the Plymouth Laser. Her spirited singing definitely matches the “0-100km in 6.6 seconds performance” of the heart-stopping Laser. Tina Turner was chosen to do the anglophone version of this ad, but I think Dion pulls it off with far more bravado and panache. Looking good Céline, looking good.