Centennial Year

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Headnote: In 1967 there was a fad: a certain stuffed cartoonish arctic snowy owl called an Ookpik (Eskimo word) was selling everywhere; there was even an Ookpik (The owl’s name) comic strip in the newspaper. I’m sure the owls were sold as commonly at Expo 67 as are the stuffed Paddington Bears now selling in the stores near Paddington Station. My sister received one for Christmas holding onto a sign saying, “I hate men.” She said, “That’s what I say when coming home from a date on Friday nights.”

Hello Reader,

Got a favorite year?

This Saturday at Confederation Park, as part of Canada’s 150^th birthday, or “Canada 150,” a time capsule will be dug up. It has traveled through time, carrying to us the dreams of fellow Canadians of 1967. I wonder what they were eager to show us? Did they put Ookpik in the capsule? In ’67, as the original Star Trek showed an idealistic federation of peace and harmony, Canadians took pride in their confederation: con is Latin for coming together.

The most popular song that year went: “It’s the hundredth anniversary of… confederation! Every-body sing!” Another line went, “Frere Jacqua, frère Jacqua, merrily we roll along, together, all the way!”

Having a hundred years of continuous democracy was a big deal. The French were on their latest numbered republic, East Germany was still communist, Spain still fascist, and India hadn’t gotten democracy and statehood until the late 1940’s. By world standards, we were doing pretty well. The telephone book cover showed the horse and buggy days, captioned 1867-1967: as our hearts swelled with innocent pride.  

By the next year, innocence was waning, leading to a few years of monotonous bomb threats all across our land, while back east were a few French-speaking “Pure Wool” (white, not ethnic) terrorists, as movies seeped out of Hollywood with pointless violent endings, sexploitation and Blacksploitation.

But the previous year, still innocent, a syndicated newspaper magazine ran a narrative-style article on soldiers of the future, complete with their jet packs and infrared goggles. I think that year had a cover story about a “Top Gun,” a German submarine captain who sunk the most ships in the Saint Lawrence. Today I suspect magazine editors would not present such things, not because Canadians are too liberal, but too squeamish.

The successive year, less innocent, that magazine had a book review, with scary illustrations made for the article, of the novel Killing Ground about a future Canadian civil war. In January of 1968 Middle Americans were to hear Walter Cronkite, their most respected TV newscaster by far say, “What the hell is going on? I thought we were winning this war!” Innocence drained rapidly after the Tet Offensive.

But 1967 was golden.

That year people went to San Francisco with flowers in their hair, (link to song lyrics) while Canadians hitchhiked to see Canada’s world exposition, Expo 67. A man fixing my furnace once told me, “By the next year hippies were hitchhiking, and spoiled it.” In 1967 the Boy Scout magazine, Canadian Boy, did an innocent article about hitching across this land, called “Thumb-ting to Sing About.” The magazine also did an article on the wonders of Expo. Somehow, I doubt the later World Expo of 1986, in Vancouver, held the same cross-country pride and excitement.

As for this year of 2017, let me tell you, I am just not feeling anywhere near the same hoopla for “Canada 150.” Of course I’m older now, not in school, not watching TV as much, so maybe, although I listen to a lot of CBC radio, maybe I’ve somehow failed to notice any prevailing winds of excitement, but still … let me tell you how we celebrated back in my day, for our 100 year birthday.

In schools the children all got a centennial medal—I got heck for taking mine out of the plastic wrapper, as my parents thought it would tarnish. Servicemen in the armed forces all got a campaign medal to show they were in the service that year, while Girl Guides and Boy Scouts all got a special badge to sew on.

School kids in all grades did athletic testing (situps, runs and so forth) and then received a big centennial crest to put on, in gold, silver, or bronze. There was a smaller rectangular one in red to show participation. I don’t know if we would want our kids to be so visibly competitive today: This was before “losing” in Viet Nam led Terry Orlick to devise “cooperative games” such as children surrounding a parachute to bounce a ball with no score, no losers.

As I wrote earlier this month, the Ca-na-da song music video, of a pied piper leading singing children over a grassy field, caused the CBC phone to ring off the hook with requests for lyrics. Also on TV were exciting calls to “Plan your centennial project now.” The clip I still remember is of a few people in formal eveningwear on the top of a mountain playing their symphony instruments. Those TV ads were aimed at individuals.

While individuals “did their own thing,” at our community level we built the aforementioned Confederation Park, while down in Lethbridge volunteers go involved to spend 25 million in 1967 dollars on a real Japanese Garden. (No flowers) A contractor volunteered to work out a cost estimate—he was almost bang on. (Try doing that today) Japanese royalty attended the opening. Some of the emperor’s family will be back to experience the garden for the Canada 150.

Elementary school kids raised money for centennial projects. For example, Project 100—and there was a poster in the classroom showing forlorn children of color—was to raise a hundred dollars for children overseas. That year students created and staged many stage plays and such, while charging a few pennies—back when one cent bought a big candy. I remember a fashion show where many of the girls modeled three-piece bathing suits. The third piece, of course, was a snug strip across their middle. That was back when boys and men were wearing jockey style swimsuits. (non-speedo) There was cultural funding that year for young grownups to come in and do plays with audience involvement… part of why I still remember is that such things didn’t happen in succeeding years. We had just one kick at the can.

Until only a few years ago, downtown, on the sidewalk across from the Hudson’s Bay Company, by the church, stood a turquoise molded one-piece plastic bench. It had the centennial logo: a maple leaf made of triangles. Now, that’s the kind of humble centennial project that warms my heart. The Canada 150 logo is a leaf made of diamonds… I wonder, since our government on Parliament Hill today seems full of young whippersnappers, if anybody on the hill besides the artist noticed the similarity in the two leafs? The golden year of 1967 was so long ago.

My favorite year.

Sean Crawford

Late June

Calgary

2017

Footnotes:

~Some old memories only surfaced in the writing of this essay—how nice, while others I had been reviewing so as not to lose them for the last fifty years. “Reviews it or lose it.”

~For me, the Japanese garden (link to images) alone makes the drive to Lethbridge worth the trip.

~Following a reader’s outrageous suggestion, in 1967 Canadian Boy magazine ran a science fiction story, starring kids from a previous three-part story, called Who Stole Expo 2067? (The expo was orbiting as a space platform; the bad guys turned it invisible) Say, I wonder what the 2067 maple leaf logo will look like?

~I wrote about the centennial song (with links) being ignored by whippersnappers in my essay Sawhorses Blocking the Forum in June of this year. Once again, here is a link to some children singing the song at Expo 67.

~Terry Olick gets a broader mention in my essay-and-book-review of Backfire, about Vietnam, contrasting bureaucrats (civil and military) with citizens, archived September 2010. That essay is one of my top ten for reader stats.

~I so despised the contemptible, cowardly, costly, cover-your-ass paperwork of Vietnam, that one semester at university, without asking my professor first, I accepted a lower mark in university to go do one (of two) of my term papers on “red tape,” instead of on an a proper course related subject. I still passed.

There’s lots of research out there to show that, like cancer, red tape can be beaten. (Of course by “costly” I don’t mean in terms of money or man-hours—you know what I mean)

~As it happened, my course was on “social workers and the medical system.” About the time President Bill Clinton was trying and failing to bring in affordable healthcare, my professor had heard, at a U.S. university conference, a U.S. politician, a name you would recognize, lying through his teeth to his fellow Americans about Canadian medicare. It would seem poor Clinton was doomed before he even started. How President Obama ever managed to pull it off is a mystery to me.  

I sure hope the Yankees, by 2067, will have finally achieved world-class health care. I’m still chuckling at a recent Canadian editorial cartoon of an American health care “draft” manual, covered with shabby post-it notes on rumpled pages, next to a very tall stack of pristine manuals with the names of first world countries… Sometimes, being an arrogant American is its own punishment.

Recent Footnotes

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Hello Reader

Got footnotes?

One of my favorite scholars, back in the days before black-and-white TV, once broke with tradition to write an entire book without footnotes, after he first excused himself to his fellow academics, saying he was trying to be more readable for the average reader. The book was about a noble ancient Roman, Scipio Africanus, the writer was Captain Sir Basil Liddell-Hart.

During recent times, one of my favorite websites http://scottberkun.com is by web-essayist and book writer Scott Berkun. He once asked his readers about his next book. Question: Would they prefer his footnotes to be at the bottom of various pages, or held back until the end, in a footnotes chapter? The survey results were about half one, half the other. For myself, I prefer footnotes at the very back of the book—then I can read several at once, at my leisure.

Another web-essayist, computer millionaire Paul Graham, was one of the first people to realize that the Web will allow an Age of the Essay, He advised in his essay Writing, Briefly http://www.paulgraham.com/writing44.html that for essays one can use footnotes “to contain digressions.” Yes! I can relate, for sometimes I just have too much to say. In fact, for about half my posts, my footnotes would become an awfully long list, unless I deleted some.

For a while I kept a collection of my unused footnotes, hoping that some lazy day I could save myself the trouble of composing another weekly essay and just post all my unused footnotes. Bad idea. Big surprise: When I hauled them out to look at them, well, they were as dry as an ancient mummy, one uncovered by a surprise sandstorm out in the Egyptian desert, lying in the middle of nowhere, no context, nothing to say.

Maybe a good definition of a footnote, then, is something time-sensitive and page-sensitive, something that can’t stand on it’s own. Yes, and then maybe the footnote is not worth writing in the first place. Sir Basil Liddell-Hart knew what he was doing.

My own website, Scholar-wise, doesn’t require any footnotes. That’s because I came up through journalism, which means I am keenly aware of how unintellectual the average reader is. Even in my university campus newspaper we (a) took care to explain everything, as if the reader had been away in an Iranian torture-prison, and (b) we used short declarative sentences—and that was for students! As for (b) I suppose graduates would retain their ability to read long sentences.

Footnote: Well, now I know yet another difference between secondary and post-secondary students. Not only are the latter, thanks to the West’s age of enlightenment, into free speech and free thinking, as in being able to study Huckleberry Finn (who uses the word nigger) but they can follow long thoughts: Schoolteachers use short sentences, professors use long. As the college students are hearing sentences with several clauses, they are becoming able to write that way themselves. End Footnote

Speaking of my own website, for the last few posts it has has featured longer, denser essays. Don’t worry, dear reader, my next one will be loose and easy. Call me lazy, call me “in love with my own writing,” or best of all, call me “not willing to waste any of the writing I do” but my next post will be a “sidebar” I have recently held back. Sidebars have more juice than footnotes do: They can go longer without any water.

Here are some footnotes I could have inflicted on you at the end of my previous post, but didn’t. You’re welcome.

Footnotes for U.S. readers:

Yes, I have seen the movie Milk, I know you have had line ups for metal detectors at your city hall at least as far back as 1978, and you even—going at least as far back as the old (1982) Sean Penn movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High—had line ups to get past detectors into your children’s schools, but such things would look silly in Canada. (Except we did put detectors in when we renovated our courthouse)

~ As mentioned two posts ago, the CBC and Canadian Boy magazine would be examples of things still protected under the Free Trade Agreement. Of course we have a distinct culture with lots of countryside—how distinct? Put it this way, our cowboys have never worn six-guns. And hey, country song pioneer Wilf Carter was Canadian, he sang here in Calgary. Nevertheless, our little sprig of a country and western magazine was stomped into the mud by Yankee imperialists who claimed it could not be legally protected because, they claimed, Canada has no Country culture. A pity.

~Recently Netflix was annoyed that the French at the Cannes Film festival were protecting their movie culture. Of course capitalism is good, of course, but maybe market fundamentalism is not qui-i-i-ite so good. Here is a big long article from film critic Roger Ebert’s website (link) called Everything you know about Cannes versus Netflix is wrong:

 ~No cowboy guns were needed because we had the mounted police wearing British army red coats. The North West Mounted Rifles, or N.W.M.R., later became the N.W.M.P., and still later became the R.C.M.P.

~Today in my city, according to a local policeman, you can’t be randomly killed, not unless you go looking for it, such as by consorting with criminals, or by arguing at 1 a.m. in a bar with a madman of low self-esteem. At high noon, even for women, there are no “unsafe” areas for walking in our fair city.

~Next month, if you come to the Calgary Stampede, (rodeo) then feel free to dress western like we do. Just don’t wear chaps or six-guns.

Sean Crawford,

Mid-June,

Calgary

Got Leisure Time?

If so, then here are some leisurely footnotes:

~I can’t resist saying that in a Series (season) 9 episode of Doctor Who, it’s no coincidence (I think) that the doctor finally reveals his first name—something he NEVER does—and it’s Basil!

You see, the episode’s theme was about breaking the cycle of having wars, while Sir Basil’s most famous book, Strategy could be subtitled The Strategy of Indirect Approach. Basil strongly disagreed with the most respected European war thinker of his time. Instead he agreed with ancient Sun Tzu that it is best to not to have any casualties at all, on both sides.

~Archived February 2015, with a nod to Sir Basil, is my long essay of a gorgeous translation of Sun Zu’s ancient work The Art of War. I wrote in the context of modern Chinese students, and, in the footnotes, with appreciation for a splendid Japanese TV series that became a major motion picture this year starring Scarlet Johansson.

~You could easily find on YouTube a four-minute “Doctor Who Zygon speech” of the doctor trying to tell two people, in a “press The Button” standoff, not to break the peace treaty. It’s a good dramatic speech. The scene is a grand metaphor, of course, not merely for “The Button” of the Cold War but for, say, Sunni Muslims living among Shiite Muslims in today’s middle east. 

Here (link) is the same speech, but within a complex, ten-minute version of the doctor struggling to use diplomacy. Many masked-as-human Zygons are, by secret treaty, peacefully and secretly living among humans. The two protagonists are Kate and Bonnie. Kate (older blond) leads the key United Nations armed forces; Bonnie (dark haired with lipstick) is a Zygon commander passing for human. 

Bonnie, metaphorically, is like a Saudi Arabian mullah (priest) who believes western Muslims today (her fellow Zygons) are traitors for believing Islam means peace. I like this clip better than the four-minute piece. (In the background, powerless, stand a human dark haired lady and a scientist-lady with spectacles)

~An application of being indirect:

My favorite science fiction author, Robert Heinlein, once wrote a novel, Sixth Column, where a reserve major, who in civilian life sells insurance or something, is in charge of the few surviving soldiers of the U.S. army. (Come to think of it, in the novel the U.S. lost the war because they expected an invading Asian army to come directly across the ocean, instead of sending their missiles and troops indirectly over the North Pole)

It’s a good thing he’s not a straight-thinking regular army officer: The good major has to keep reminding himself to use an indirect approach, because every time he tries a common sense military attack he loses.