Wasn’t I so ready to move on with this column? To something else in life—something more up-beat, more normal, more natural. Food fun on spring break. Warming up for Easter, not the planet. Something good for us all—physically and otherwise—with tentacles reaching to the past or the future.
But then aren’t we all? Ready to move on, that is. From the outrage. The fear and chaos, the indignation. And I ain’t just talkin’ about Canadians. But ready or not, here it comes, again and again—and will for at least four more years. I’m betting—along with a lot of others, including world leaders—that won’t be the end of it: The wave after wave of spinny confusion, danger and betrayal that, for now, can be laid at the feet of one single little man.
Still, you have to admit, at least a few good things are rising up out of the chaos. Some great memes and GIFs, to start with: A magnificent beaver, Canada goose and moose chasing you-know-who. The stalwart presidents on Mount Rushmore, mortified and chagrined, hiding faces in hands.
Our ever-important editorial cartoonists, until recently almost an endangered species, are now in a satirizing heyday, trying to lighten the load and crystalize the moment. Like for the Feb. 21 Pique, Greg Perry dusted off the iconic Bob and Doug McKenzie duo from the 1980s and sat them in front of a map of the Irate White North with appropriate scowls and urgings: “Take off, ya hoser.” Brendan Loper in a New Yorker cartoon offered a super unflattering caricature of Donald, pock-marked with a strange blank expression—but wait, maybe that’s an accurate classical portrait!—staring wild-eyed from behind a desk piled high with papers and two over-flowing “in” baskets: “Insane” and “Out of Control.”
I know, I know. I shouldn’t be buying The New Yorker—or anything else American for that matter. But that’s one more good thing rising up, albeit in a sometimes contradictory, confusing way. Of course, we know our American neighbours aren’t all bad. But more strikingly, beyond business and government leaders, a lot of us Canucks are starting to realize that we need smart, well-balanced Americans more than ever to simply navigate what’s going on.
Then there’s the more human side: Many Americans are simply great people we know and love, who just happen to live on the other side of the 49th parallel, and they’re as bewildered, angry and fearful as we are, and they aren’t even responsible. According to The Guardian, (still considered the best English-language newspaper in the world largely because it’s funded by a foundation so it doesn’t rely on advertising for revenue) more than 90 million Americans didn’t vote at all last election—more than the number who voted for either presidential candidate.
Even better, many Americans have been reaching out to us in a sense of community even as they suffer just like us—like all the callers into Canadian talk shows, like CBC’s BC Today, or the American couple in Windsor who apologized!, then picked up the tab for everyone in the very full Toast restaurant.
Like all reasonable, sentient people in times of crisis, we’re all looking for community wherever we can find it. And that’s one more very, very good thing that’s arisen from these murky, troubling times.
Unexpected communities. Unexpected connections. Like the woman at the check-out in the grocery store the other day who showed me one more Canadian-made product I hadn’t discovered yet. Delicious Sprague soups, started in beautiful Belleville, Ont., by the Sprague family in 1925, and still operating its huge cannery there—the only organic soup cannery in Canada. Bonus: it’s also a company that avoids plastic packaging.
Then I showed her mine: A tin of delicious Raincoast Trading wild pink salmon (no salt added). Started by a multi-generational fishing family who happen to love and care about the ocean and the environment, they use only hook-and-line caught fish, not stuff from the hugely destructive net fishers, and the company is based in beautiful downtown Nanaimo.
Besides offering great products that are so good, for me, for you, and for all the people who work there along with the fishers, farmers and suppliers who depend on them for their income, these two companies have something else in common.
Once upon a time the Belleville area was home to 75 canneries all operating at full steam ahead. Today the Sprague cannery is the only one left. It reminds me that once upon a time, Vancouver Island was totally self-sufficient for its food. Of course, everyone in Canada enjoyed what’s now called food security during the days of our First Nations who lived off the land sustainably without a grocery store in sight. (A few lessons, there, eh?)
But a lot of people are amazed to learn that, until the late 1800s, smack in the middle of the post-colonial heyday, all the fruits and veggies and fish and dairy products that anyone on Vancouver Island needed were there for the asking right. There were enough canneries, for fish and otherwise, enough dairy producers, enough farmers and orchardists to supply everyone on the island without relying on ferries and ships to bring in food supplies.
Interesting, almost exactly a year ago, well before the U.S. election and the scourge it has brought the world, Evan Fraser, director of the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph in Ontario wrote a piece for the Vancouver Sun urging B.C. to build a resilient, home-grown food supply. This after the shocking climate-crisis winter last year that saw temperatures plummet nearly 30 C in just a matter of hours. It devasted orchards and vineyards in the Okanagan and beyond. (See my column, and more, for articles on that disaster.)
Back in those good old days, many of us were urging policy makers and consumers alike to pursue everything from shopping and eating wisely with the “seventh generation” in mind to policies to protect our precious environment and mitigate the climate crisis. Anyone remember that emergency? It’s still happening, even faster and more dangerously than ever, now that the current and, one hopes, very temporary U.S. president has pulled America out of countless environmental protection and climate initiatives, including the Paris Accord.
Ironically, some of those very initiatives people are in hot pursuit of more than ever in these dark days of living alongside someone mad with far too much power—like buying in season, buying local, trying out a new garden plot or at least a pot of fresh parsley on the window—are going to help move us all along with the climate file too.
So there! We’re doing it, people! We’re moving on, as we good, strong Canadians do, often in very good ways. Maybe we just need to start realizing we are, and cultivate even more good stuff, as more madness is sure to come.
Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning journalist who always tries to look on the bright side of life—without sticking her head in the sand.
