Pimping in the Streets of Ottawa

Well, I’ll be a dirty bird.
Roll me in eleven herbs and spices and call me Kentucky Fried. I’m shocked and appalled. Outraged. Think of the kids.
I think I’m getting ahead of myself.
Last week, people on Parliament Hill and the handful of viewers of Stunned News were subjected to the moral outrage of Sun TV staffers spewing spittle on their camera lenses because the CBC was peddling soft-core porn on a Radio-Canada web site.
Seems Radio-Canada had a partnership deal with an outfit in France to produce a soft-core romp comedy called Hard, which centres on some chump who inherits a porn magazine business. Sun denounced the entire CBC and trashed them for using taxpayers’ money for smut that’s posted for easy viewing by your kids and mine.
I’m very happy that the Sun folks troll the Internet looking for porn. I know there is some out there, so I am always glad when someone takes the bullet for me and warns me off smut sites. I’m sure my adolescent children don’t look at porn on the Internet, but that could change. Thanks, Sun TV, for looking out for them.
My gratitude turned to rage when I picked up a free copy of the Ottawa Sun, mere blocks from one of the city’s high schools. Left in a coffee shop for anyone to pick up, this newspaper had (except for some World Cup skiing results),a page of ads for actual prostitutes.
Not softcore porn.
Not hardcore porn.
Actual sweating, grunting, rutting whores who are eager to seduce our young people and break up our families.
And it gets worse. (I’ll get to that later.)
Let’s see what’s on offer in the Sun’s classifieds.
There’s the gay cruiseline. Nothing wrong with that, but I don’t want my six-year-old to read it. And an ad for Shemale Suzy Hung. Not sure what’s going on there, but it looks too complicated for me to figure out over just one coffee.
There’s the eager Mistress Whitney, offering “Exp’d Dom & Fantasy” which sounds vaguely Italian. And one ad had the heading GRAND OPENING, which is not only suggestive but rather daunting.
You can get take-out or eat in. You can bring your spouse, or two people can come to your house. You can get girls whose parents can’t spell, people like Katerine, Lany, Jordyn and Ashlyn.
Here’s where it gets worse. Some of these vermin are actually hiring.
Yes, the Ottawa Sun is engaged in a campaign to lure our daughters, our wives, our sisters, our mothers, and maybe our little brothers, into a life of whoredom. That’s why, when the Sun newspaper delivery guys come by my house, I will set the dog on him.
Unfortunately, my dog is a female. They probably want to recruit her, too.
I don’t know what’s happened to morality in this country. Where, oh where, is the idea of a “family newspaper?”
While I do thank the Sun for trolling the Internet and protecting me from inadvertently stumbling on taxpayer-funded filth, I simply cannot forgive them with sprinkling whore recruitment ads around our high schools and on city busses.
Enough is enough, I say. Someone should pass a law.

Freedom 55?

I’ve been struggling with this topic. It hits pretty close to home and sparks a bit of an existential crisis. In a couple of months, I turn 55.

I’m an author of 10 books, with another coming out this fall. I have a PhD — my thesis was published to great reviews in just about every newspaper in the country. Excerpts ran in Esprit de Corps, the Halifax Herald, the National Post, and the Ottawa Citizen. I’ve had academic articles published. I was invited, as a scholar of the media in the Second World War, to contribute to a collection of essays to commemorate the work of the renowned historian Terry Copp. My co-authors are among the best historians in Canada. I’ve won a whack of media awards, including a National Magazine Award. I’ve written for every big paper in Canada and most of the small ones as a freelancer.

And I’m unemployable.

As I said, I’m pushing 55. The very few jobs that open up in the news media are given to kids who work cheap and are completely pliant. In academia, young PhD grads are preferred, despite that they’re quite likely to become deadwood after they get tenure and spend 15 or 20 years teaching the same old courses.

I’m not alone. A recent survey found almost 28 percent of workers aged 45 or older felt they had been discriminated against on the basis of their age. I suspect the number of people over 50 would be even higher.

The first story I wrote for Ottawa Magazine was about Olive Dickason, a brilliant historian pushed out of her job because of her age. Dickason had been a journalist most of her career, but went back to school when she was middle-aged and earned her PhD. Her writing was fantastic. Her book, Canada’s First Nations, is probably used as a text at the University of Alberta, which fired her because she was old. It’s required reading in Native history courses everywhere else.

Dickason took her case to the Supreme Court of Canada. She spent her forced “retirement” writing and updating her books and advising students as a volunteer adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa’s History department, which had the good sense to make her feel welcome.

Now, I suppose I have no one else to blame for having spent my time learning two buggy-whip trades — journalism and academic history. But what I see in my life is becoming the norm through the workplace.

Older workers are expensive. They aren’t always pretty. There’s a misconception they can be stubborn — that they don’t understand younger people and their trends. Often, they’re older and more qualified than their potential bosses. Yet they tend to be eager, especially if they’re changing careers and are given a break.

What does that have to do with politics? We all know that governments have a tough time preventing discrimination in hiring — even for government positions. And, to be frank, fairness in hiring has never been an obvious government priority.

This is the problem: the old age pension eligibility date is about to rise to 67. Changes to the Canada Pension Plan will make it more difficult to retire early, even though often the present choice for older workers is welfare or early CPP.

So what happens to the person who loses their job at 50? Head to Walmart and get a job as a greeter? Flip burgers? Try to start a business?

I’m not griping about the proposed change to increase the OAS age to 67. I think, though, if we’re going to adapt to the new demographic reality, we need to look at the lack of value for, and the outright discrimination against, workers who are 45 and older.

I’m more than capable of supporting myself because my skills are portable and I’m adaptable. My books sell well, I have some great magazines that will run my work, and I teach the odd university course. But there are so many blue- and white-collar workers who have specialized skills that don’t translate to consulting, self-employment, freelancing, or whatever you want to call it.

And, unless that workplace mentality changes, we’re going to see an awful lot of people falling into poverty if they lose their jobs in late career, and that hardship will last even longer as the government expands that limbo period between middle-age and the arrival of the first pension cheque.

Election blog

Ottawa Magazine is hosting my blog through the election.

You can read it at www.ottawamagazine.com

Blog - Day 3 of the Run of the Rodents

Sir Robert Borden is burning in Hell.

He must be. After all, he’s the only Prime Minister of Canada ever to lead a coalition government. Sir Bob, as good a Conservative as ever drew breath, wanted to draft Canadian boys to fight in the trenches of Flanders in World War I. So he made a deal with the dev…, er, Liberal MPs from English Canada, and cobbled together a Union Government.

Now, I do understand that Stephen Harper would rather be caught by a CBC camera crew in a Hull motel room with Leanna VIP than head anything with “Union” in the title, but I wouldn’t rule out a Harper-led coalition.

And if he did put one together after this election, hey, that’s how the system works.

Yes, Steve Madely, (who was flayed by Paul Dewar and David McGuinty on CFRA this morning when he tried to re-write the constitution in an exercise in mental gymnastics that became sad and painful to listen to), you read that right. That’s how the system works. The Westminister parliamentary system. Not the U.S. presidential system, though, as Al Gore learned the hard way, he who has the most votes does not always win there, either.

In most elections, the vast bulk of Canadian voters actually cast their ballots for candidates of parties that do not win. A political party can come to power with a majority having won about 42% of the vote. That gives almost unbridled control over the mechanism of state to parties that won about two out of every five votes cast.

(Adolf Hitler came to power under the same circumstances, never winning anything near a clear majority. Having taken power in a coalition government, Hitler tossed his opposition into concentration camps, burned down the parliament building and tore up the constitution. I hope I am not giving anyone ideas here.)

In 1985, Frank Miller, a Progressive Conservative, won the most seats in an Ontario provincial election. He named a cabinet, recalled the legislature, and brought in an amazing budget that did every nice thing, short of giving everyone free Molly Maid service. The Liberals and NDP worked out a deal – what they called an “accord” – published it, and made it clear they would vote Miller down in the legislature.

Now, this is where it gets interesting. Frank Miller did not go bawling onto your TV screen. He did not call his opponents thieves or traitors. Despite his taste for plaid suits, acquired during his years selling cars in Muskoka, Frank Miller had some class.

Miller went to the Lieutenant Governor, told him the PCs did not have the confidence of the legislature, and asked the Lieut. Gov. to call on Liberal leader David Peterson to form a government. Peterson did so, governed for two years, then won a solid majority.

And that’s the way the system works. We elect Members of Parliament. We do not elect Prime Ministers. And the person who has the support of a majority of MPs gets to govern.

Stephen Harper knows this. His first two budgets were supported by the Bloc. He’s used the votes of separatist MPs, socialist MPs and even of Stephan Dion himself to stay in power. When the rules suited him, he was eager and ready to play by them.

How do I know this?

Got it right from the horse’s mouth. Here’s Harper explaining it all to the strangely-coifed Paula Todd on TVOntario in 2004: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDTmpXj9vyM&feature=player_embedded

New Ottawa magazine blog post

Ottawa magazine Blog-Day 1


Back in the early 1970s, psychiatrists at what was then called the Ontario Hospital for the Criminally Insane came up with a great idea to cure psychopaths and serial killers. They would crowd them into a small room, prevent them from leaving, and force them to learn co-operation and empathy.

For 100 days, they would be cut off from visitors, mail, radio, TV, newspapers. They were not allowed to smoke cigarettes. The lack of physical space was supposed cause them to make small concessions to each other. They would learn empathy.

But the Hundred Day Hate-In was a failure. Rather than communicate with each other and change their ways, the inmates spent their time in isolation looking out the window, watching groundhogs frolic in the green fields of Penetanguishene.

Imagine being locked for 37 days in a steel tube with Stephen Harper, Michael Ignatieff or Jack Layton, plus their handlers and a bunch of reporters. Certainly, there’s a psychiatry thesis in there somewhere. It may not be 100 days, but the potential for crazy-making must be about the same.

And, as most of us know, there are no groundhogs at 40,000 feet.

That’s why anything can happen in a campaign. Canadians always say they don’t want an election. Unfortunately, we cannot export our ballots to Egyptians and Yemenis, who have faced tanks to win the right to vote. Nor, yet, have we outsourced our politics to Calcutta or Xinjiang.

So we are stuck with elections and the strangeness they create. Serious issues will be reduced to slogans. The workings of a $250 billion-a-year government will be explained in platitudes. Strangers will come to your door. People in very expensive suits will say how worried they are about your job.

None of them will take your kid to the dentist, although Jack Layton would probably do it if his hip didn’t hurt so much. As for your laundry, you’d probably have to explain the workings of the machine to Michael Ignatieff. You could count on Stephen Harper to feed your cat, when he’s in town. The guy loading your garden shed onto a flatbed truck with Quebec plates is Gilles Duceppe.

But to get an honest answer about how the books will be balanced without big hits to the Ottawa magazine readership, about Canada’s ongoing military adventures abroad, the real cost of new fighters, about real reforms to make government open and democratic, would take more than a Hundred Day Hate-In, let alone just 37 days of entrapment in buses and planes.

There are lots of uncertainties. Will Demerol make Jack Layton an interesting speaker? Will Michael Ignatieff be caught wandering the darkened streets of Whitby seeking a meal of human blood? Will Stephen Harper’s hair be caught in the wind, hurling it into flesh of a fresh young Tory campaign worker, a member of the rally prop guild?

Will Gilles Duceppe’s addiction to crumpets, marmalade and boiled sausage be exposed? Or will someone find a secret PCB dump behind Elizabeth May’s house?

As certain as Peter Mansbridge’s head will shine tomorrow morning, something unexpected will happen in this campaign.

After the Hundred Day Hate-In, one murderer said “I’ll shine people’s shoes, but I can’t love them.” Politicians may feel the same way about us. And, in their efforts to shower us with money, flowers, compliments – anything but real love – we should find some reason to either dance with the one that brung us, or seek out some new action with the strange dude with a coffin in the basement.

For Kady

Halifax, VE Day: A Censor Describes a Riot
H. Bruce Jefferson

Jefferson, a long-time journalist in Nova Scotia, was the government’s press censor in Halifax during World War II. Jefferson was a packrat who, from his room on the top floor of Halifax’s Lord Nelson Hotel, acted more like a spy than a censor. He photographed convoys and warships as they came and left the city, kept tabs on all of the U-boat attacks in the northwestern Atlantic, was wired into Halifax’s busy gossip grapevine, and, months before the Halifax Riot, predicted there would be trouble at war’s end. During the riot of soldiers and sailors that followed the announcement of V-E Day, Jefferson wandered the city looking for material to send to his superiors and colleagues in Ottawa. Jefferson blamed the riots on the snobbery of Halifax business owners and residents who, he believed, had no qualms about fleecing soldiers and sailors stationed in Halifax while, at the same time, snubbing them. The riot ruined Adm. Murray’s career.

Because the weather forecasters predicted rain for tomorrow, the Halifax committee had decided not to await Churchill's announcement of VE day, but to shoot their fireworks ex George's Island this evening.
The display began about 2100 hours, and Citadel Hill was absolutely jammed with thousands of people watching the affair, which lasted for nearly two hours.
As soon as it was over the crowd began to come down from the hill, serious rioting broke out on downtown street. First I saw of it was a dull glare over Barrington street, where they had set fire to two street cars, and upset a police patrol car, letting the burning gas run over the pavement.
Through the open window we could hear the crash of glass as window after window went in, and soon over the roofs we could see the crowd breaking into the Sackville street liquor store.
About 2 a.m., I got a car and toured the devastated area, which did not look too bad at that time, broken glass being the main item. Three of the liquor stores bad been looted, and about 250 RCN shore patrolmen were gathered around the fourth, on Agricola Street in the North End.
This had not been touched.
By this time the rioters had gone home, and nothing more happened Monday night.
During the late evening I passed stories for Dennis, Ken Chisholm (Globe & Mail) and several others, all somewhat lurid and placing the damage at $1,000,000.

May 8, 1945.

This morning had several enquiries from locals and wire services about coverage of last night's riots, which I assured them were wide open, as no security was
involved.
In the afternoon I attended a short garrison drum-head service of prayer and thanksgiving on the Garrison Grounds, back of the Citadel, and just west of the old Atlantic Command HQ.
There was quite a large turnout of troops of all branches (Navy, Army, Air Force and women auxiliaries) but they did not show any particular enthusiasm over the business-- as it turned out, their thoughts must have been with their brethren down town.
Coming down Sackville Street, near the corner of Barrington, our ears were greeted with the now familiar sound of falling plate glass. I spent some time observing the scene from various angles, and it kept getting worse and worse as the afternoon advanced. When most of the plate glass had been smashed, people climbed into the windows and kicked in the glass or thin wood backs of the show windows, and entered the stores. In some cases goods were thrown from upper windows to the crowd below, in others the stuff was merely carried out.
Generally speaking, the service men, principally navy although there were lots of Army and Air Force boys, too, took the physical and other risks of breaking and entering, while the civilians cheered them on and carried off the loot.
There was absolutely no interference with them by city or service police or RCMP. There was so much going on that it was like a 43 ring circus, and no one person could begin to follow all of it. For example, one Barrington street crowd broke into Eaton's store, and for a time it looked as if nothing was being taken, but in the meantime another crowd had obtained entrance through Granville Street, and were carrying goods away by the ton through rear doors and windows.
It was the same everywhere.
As we passed the corner of Granville and Sackville, some people were looting the best shoe store in town. A man would appear at a window up two or three flights, with half a dozen shoe boxes in his hands, and throw them down to pals below. On the way down the boxes would open and the shoes get scattered, and then one fellow with a number seven worth $15 a pair would be hunting for somebody else who had the mate and vice versa.
There were all kinds of comic incidents, such as the old lady who must have been 75 or 80, with her dress covered with old war medals, who came up the
car tracks arm in arm with a young airman, each drinking from bottles of beer and singing lustily. Later they did a sort of square dance in the intersection of Sackville and Barrington, and one of the locals took and printed a picture of it. In some ways it reminded me of a scene from the French revolution movies.
I forgot to mention that when I came out of the hotel shortly after noon on my way to the Garrison Grounds, I noticed a number of beer parties beginning on the lawn around the Cornwallis statue across the drive from the Nova Scotian. Other sailors kept arriving with cases on their shoulders, and I vaguely wondered how they had been able to save it from the night before. It turned out that they were even then looting Keith's Brewery, and as we went up South street more sailors kept arriving, and a standard salutation was "Well, I see the liquor store is open today, after all."
At one point a civilian came dashing down the line to warn the sailors that RCN patrol trucks were touring the city snatching cases back from sailors, and that they had better get rid of the boxes at once. This proved to be a racket. When the sailors would rush to hide their boxes under verandahs, etc., other civvies would call them away on one pretext or another, while still others made off with the cached beer.
One man told me he was looking for hard liquor but was unable to locate any. Some friends invited him into have a drink of beer. While they were chatting,
a policeman who knew him came in and said: "What are you doing here?" He said: "Having a drink of beer." The cop said: "O.K. but let me have that box of brandy you're sitting on."
One of the last places attacked was Birks' store, and they made quite a mess of it. While watching the crowd go through Birks, I ran across A.D. MacNeill, former owner of the Glace Bay Gazette who sold that sheet to the U.M.W. when he had to retire on account of ill health, and learned for the first time that A.D. has been living since October at 129 Spring Garden Road.
It was at this time (about 1855 hours) that I heard a horn car coming through the crowd, and a voice which I recognized as that Admiral Murray commanding the service people to go home to their barracks. For a moment I thought that he must have made a record of the kind sometimes used in these cars, but in a few seconds, I heard an impromptu remark from the horn which showed me that the Admiral himself was on board, and when the car came past I recognized him in the front seat.
The gist of his remarks were:
"This is the Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Murray, in person. The mayor of Halifax has declared a curfew effective at 8 p.m. Any service personnel found on the street after that hour will be subject to the full penalties of the law."
Some sailor must have interjected a wisecrack as the car went by, as the Admiral said: "This is the Commander-in-Chief speaking -- and that’s not funny at all." I did not hear the statement attributed to him by the Chronicle and Star and others to the effect that "You don’t want to get caught with loot, do you?" or words to that effect. From the general tenor of his remarks, I would gather that if he did make such a remark it was only ambiguously worded, and meant that they would not want to expose themselves, etc. for staying after 8 P.M.
The Admiral came around several times, completely circling the district, and there were slight variations in his remarks each time. For example, someone must have asked if this applied only to service people, because on his second circuit he took pains to specify civilians as well as personnel were subject to the order. (Which, incidentally, I am informed by one of the brightest legal minds in Cape Breton is all baloney and has no standing in law whatever.)
However, the bluff, or whatever it was, worked. As soon as the Admiral came around the first time, all service people on the spectator side of the street
began to move away toward barracks, etc. and within a short time even the rioters departed, except for a few in the stores who possibly could not hear the horn or had not taken in what it said.
To my mind this indicates that if similar action had been taken earlier, the whole business could have been avoided. It was the slowness of action that permitted the chief destruction to occur.
I have been told that while there was some desultory activity in other parts of the city, on Gottingen Street and elsewhere, no damage of importance took place after the admiral made his rounds. Thousands were still AWOL but were parked with beer cases in such dark spots as Point Pleasant Park, Camp Hill Cemetery, etc.
The job was a very thorough one, and cleaned out the various business areas completely. Barrington was smashed and looted on both sides from the Convoy cafe (which is between the Nova Scotian park and Morris Street, for a distance of two miles to the end of the store district above the Dockyard. Gottingen is smashed from Cogswell to Stadacona. The East-West streets like Spring Garden Road and Quinpool Road escaped attention altogether. But all the hill-side streets lying between Brunswick and Water street in the old city were cleaned out in toto.
Woods’ -- the place Jacques was asking about -- was the only downtown store to escape glass damage or looting. Why, Lord only knows as their clothing prices were terrible. They took no chances on a second visitation and boarded them up right away. Everything else along there was smashed.
The crowd also smashed some of the windows in the Mounties barracks (old Halifax Hotel) not the plate glass lobby windows, but smaller panes in the adjoining Julien section. There were all kinds of queer sights, such as looters using the RCMP verandah to lay out their dresses, stockings, etc. and pack them into neater bundles for carrying. Cash registers lay all over the streets with their keys bent and twisted.
(I picked up a brand new quarter on the curb in front of the little Ideal store, where some fellow was busy bagging up sugar for himself out of a bin beneath the counter.)
When we went home to dinner, a sailor's dream was being enacted on the front steps of the Nova Scotian. A captain (four striper) was standing in stiff dignity waiting for a taxi, with a sailor in a jersey haranguing him and the crowd on the Navy and what he thought of it. In front of the captain in civvies, was an old jovial veteran of the last war, with one leg and crutches. Both the veteran and the sailor were pretty drunk, and behind the captain was an open mouthed audience of retired duchesses from the hotel hanging on every word. The sailor, however, was good-natured and polite, although drunk, and refrained from any really naughty language. The conversation as I came up was going something like this:
Old Vet: "Now, me lad, you shouldn't be carrying on like this. Remember you are a member of the Silent Service."
Sailor: "To hell with the Silent Service. I wasted three years and a half in it, and they can take their silent service and put it you know where."
Old Vet: "Tut, tut. That's no way to be talking in front of your captain."
Sailor: "He ain't my captain and you can put him you know where."
Old Vet: "You wouldn't talk like that to him if you were on the quarter deck."
Sailor: "I ain't on the quarter deck, and neither is he, and you can take your quarter deck and put it you know where."
Old Vet: "Have you no respect for your superiors in rank? Don't they teach you any discipline in the Navy?"
Sailor: "They ain't my superiors except in rank, and I've seen all the captains and admirals I want to see for the rest of my life, and you can take your captains and admirals and you can put them you know where."
The sailor carried an open bottle of rum in his left hand and never lost his polite leer and this went on and on until the skipper's taxi finally arrived and he left in a cloud of dust much to the chagrin of the aforesaid dowagers and duchesses who apparently were getting quite a kick our of it. Similar scenes were going on all over town, although there were no attacks on officers with the exception of Commander Smith, who was found on King's campus with his head bashed in, but there is some uncertainty whether this was an accident or someone settling up old scores.
Although I did not see it myself, I understand that some of the Cwacs and Wrens also distinguished themselves in the "Battle of Halifax," which was a long while getting here but turned out to be a lulu when it finally arrived.
I heard one yarn about two Wrens who were fighting half a dozen sailors in a vacant lot bounded by a board fence, lined with spectators who applauded lustily as one side or the other scored a particularly telling point.
The harbor side of Citadel Hill staged the biggest beer picnics in the history of the city, and there are some almost incredibly, but apparently yell authenticated yarns about genuine "orgies" which went on in such public places as Grafton Park and Cornwallis Park (in front of the NSH).
One of the features on the Commons was a nude dance put on by members of several of the services. Apparently old Robespierre and the boys would have felt right at home in the Warden of the Honor of the North on May 7-8/45.
A lot of this stuff no doubt will come out at the official hearings.
We had very few submissions on this event, in fact mostly enquiries, from the newspapers and services. The wire censors (as old soldiers mostly) were shocked beyond words, and frequently referred the flamboyant stuff that was being sent, out in query and story form by various local feature writers at last free to give full rein to their natural instincts in the matter of exaggeration.
I passed everything, telling the boys that there is no censorship on this. I had a particularly strong kick about Eric Dennis including rape as one of the features of the day, and I think this is a fake, or at least based on very slight grounds, as no such charge has appeared since in local courts. All accounts of the day's activities agree that this would have been a work of supererogation.
Neither of the locals had intended to publish today, but on account of unusual circumstances, both Mail and Star put out extras replete with editorials, stories and pictures.
The Mail blew rather hot and cold, one front page editorial deploring the incident and demanding vengeance and recompense, while another took pains to point out that the whole Navy should not be blamed for the actions of a comparatively small number.
The Star rather stole the show with a front page editorial actually naming Admiral Murray as the person responsible for the whole business by reason of his alleged failure to take prompt and vigorous action to stop the rioting before it got started again on the second day.
In the evening, over CHNS, Admiral Murrary made a short statement in which he maintained that naval personnel were only a small part of the shock troops and that civilians were primarily to blame for both breaking and looting.
He was followed at 1900 hours by Mayor Butler, who followed the Star lead in naming Admiral Murray as the chief cause of the trouble, demanded compensation, and added the charge that many of those (provosts) sent to quell the rioting had in fact deserted to the rioters.
(Mr. Pickering, an old soldier who works upstairs, had predicted this very result if small pickets were used against the rioters, saying that the same thing happened in 1900 when Halifax troops sent on a similar errand hid their rifles behind fences and joined in the disturbances. He was through Boer War troop riots in Newcastle and Durban, South Africa, in 1899, Halifax: riots in 1900, and additional local riots in 1917, 1918 and 1919, and qualifies as something of an expert on the subject.)

May 10, 1945.

Last night Bob Rankin (managing editor of the Halifax Herald) told me that they were going to give Murray the ride of his life. I said: "I thought he was a pal of yours"? Bob said: "Like Hell he is. He hates my guts and I hate his and I am going after him in good style."
Today they did assail the Admiral but still not as outspokenly as the Star did yesterday.
In reply to Mr. Isley's appointment of Cousins, Port Administrator, to investigate the riots, the Star ran another front page editorial "Cousins Won't do," and concurrently Cousins notified the acting premier that he felt this should be handled by a judicial rather than an administrative officer.
This about brings the developments up to date, and I add a few comments of my own, based upon local observation:
1. Apparently the Admiral did not realize the extent of the damage until he made his first round in the horn car at 6.55 p.m. Up to that time he had been relying on reports from subordinates, a bad feature of the Navy and also rampant in the RN. Even as good an officer as Bonham Carter sometimes would not know of the presence of an important ship until three or four days after she arrived.
2. There seems to be a tendency to jump on the Admiral now that they think they have him down. Stories even were circulated that he had left town when he heard about the murder or whatever it was of Commander Smith. I am also skeptical about the reports that the chief of police couldn't get him at 11 p.m. One surprising thing about Murray, for a conservative brass hat he certainly is, that he answers the phone himself at both office and home, instead of straining calls through servants, secretaries and so forth as is the usual custom of higher officers.
3. From the prompt response to his first order to get out of the devastated area, I think there would have been no afternoon riots on the 8th if this had been done during the progress of the one the night before. After all, although there were thousands and thousands of people on Barrington and adjoining streets, not a tenth of them were active rioters. The rest were merely spectators. Even the actual heavy civilian looters were confined mostly to men, women and children from the poor relief and red light districts on the streets immediately below the citadel.
At the same time there were thousands of what I might call "incidental" minor looters, such as well dressed people of all ranks who obtained small souvenirs of one kind and another, or picked up packages of cigarettes sown broadcast by celebrating sailors from tobacco stores, etc.
4. It was the best natured riot I ever attended. There were a few comedy fights between sailors and other rioters, but absolutely no friction between rioters and civilians. In fact it was not unusual for some fellow staggering toward a window with a club to bump a civvie and stop and say "Excuse it, please," only to resume his crashing the next minute. In fact the rioters seemed to enjoy their audience and were stimulated to new exertions by it.
5. There are said to be three main reasons for the riot, and no doubt dozens of minor motives. But in various parts of the disturbance I heard a number of scattered sailors giving reasons like these:
(a) They felt that their time in the Navy has been wasted. Presumably they expected to be sent to sea and instead were kept ashore on piffling jobs which they felt could have been carried on by any kid, thereby missing the promotion they might have had in their own trades.
(b) They felt that they have been rooked and robbed by Halifax landlords and profiteers. I heard many men make statements to that effect during the riots, and many civilians who were not rioters remarked that they had a just grievance there, although this was not an effective solution.
(c) They resented the actions of retailers who have made fortunes out of them during the war, barricading their places as against criminals. Particularly
they resented the closing of the liquor stores several days before VE Day.
Innumerable remarks were overheard to the effect that "this is one time the ratings as well as the messes will have their liquor."
(I am informed that in the Navy each officer is allowed a monthly quota of six bottles of rum or whiskey, which he is able to purchase for about $1 each, while the men have to come down town and pay full prices (averaging $5.) at the public stores.) Although I am not a liquor store or beer parlor fan, seems to me that better judgment was shown by old Enos Collins and the pioneer profiteers of 1812-14. Their custom on VE Day was to put a hogshead of rum in the public square and let all hands go to it. When that one was gone, hey put out another until all hands were dead drunk and there was no further danger to premises. It was cheap insurance and apparently worked.)
6. While the streets looked as if a V-bomb had hit them during the actual riot and shortly afterward, and a returned officer told me that it looked as bad as some the captured towns in Italy, actually the substantial damage is not so very great.
With the streets swept of glass, and the store fronts boarded up until new plate arrives, buildings show no other signs of exterior damage. Nor is the interior damage much, except to breakables like show cases and china.
For example, right after the riot I went in to see the damage at the Casino Cafe, just across the square from the NSH. The windows had been smashed, some of the pictures and silk fittings torn down and so forth, and the place was dirty and looked like the wreck of the Hesperus. Proprietor said "You buy bonds, you help the war, and look at this. Even the Germans wouldn't have done worse if they bad come."
However, I notice today that he had resumed business and the interior shows little signs of damage. Most other restaurants are making a similar comeback with the exception of a couple of notorious gyppers who were given the works. Norman had a close call, but showed great t presence of mind in meeting them at the door and lining them up at the counter for cigarettes, coffee, muffins and so forth. They left with three cheers, but later his windows were broken by another mob, but this did not damage the interior of his place.
As far as the general run of store-keepers is concerned, I think the situation is this: Actually the rioters have done them a favor by cleaning out the old war worn fixtures and junk. They will now get full compensation from the government and be in a better position than ever.
Col. Powers, who himself is highly indignant over the business, told me today that he had been talking to his Montreal of Ottawa HQ and had found that the reaction in Upper Canada was: "Served them right for profiteering. The Halifax store-keepers had it coming to them.” One bad feature of the affair was that owing to the large number of participants, no discrimination was made between those who had rooked the sailor and those who had treated them fairly. Local papers are compiling a list to show that some of those looted were war veterans, or had sons or daughters in the armed forces. This, however, in Halifax, means little or nothing, as I am told that some of the worst profiteers are war vets themselves. Since the place was founded in 1749, it has been noted for war profiteering, and for the unusual fact that profiteer families invariably have been heavily represented in the actual fighting forces.
7. Complete breakdown of police protection. There was absolutely no police attempt to interfere with breaking and entering, looting, etc. Some truckloads of naval police arrived at various times, and after standing uncertainly for awhile, disappeared just as the worst atrocities were being committed.
In Sydney, where rioting of the same general character occurred about the same time, city, service and RCMP combined forces and easily drove the rioters out of the business district. I think the same thing might have succeeded here. Instead the police adopted a policy of non-intervention and watchful waiting, meanwhile taking the names of all they could identify. These people are now being locked up and raided. A few already have pleaded guilty and been sent to the pen.
One comic aspect of the raids was that in many cases police searching for goods stolen from stores on the eighth, turned up big caches of United States Army rations, tinned fruits, candy, cigarettes, etc, from the wreck of the Martin van Buren (January) referred to by me in previous rulings. In one instance they unearthed a truck with the original January load still in it.
8. It appeared to me that most of the service MPs or shore patrols had no police experience. They drove up in their trucks and then stoop about uncertainly.
An example: When I visited Agricola Street at 2 a. m. Tuesday, there were about 240 shore patrolmen grouped about it, and no successful attack was possible. For some reason these men were withdrawn and only two Mounties remained inside. A few hours later the place was attacked by a large mob and the Mounties, unable to resist such a crowd opened the doors themselves, I am told, to avoid unnecessary damage to the building.

The end of a week from hell...

Update: Turns out Canadian publishing is a much classier business than I thought. The support from media such as Quill and Quire, the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, Publishers Weekly, the CBC and many bloggers has been heartening. As well, my dealings lately with Jordan Fenn have shown me that, in my anger and shock, I was uncharitable. I feel for him and the situation he is in, and for the publishing business in general. Right now, it is hell out there.
It's also rough for writers. Fewer Canadian books will come out. There will be many people who, like me, are eager to tell stories and may not get the chance. If we are lucky, there will be a rebound -- both from a stronger economy and from a settling-down of the marketplace as everyone adapts to new technologies and people find ways to be properly compensated for their work.
My book has a publisher. It will be issued this fall by Douglas & McIntyre, a great house. Four other publishers expressed serious interest in the project, and all of them were very supportive, keen and would have done a good job with this book. I have accepted Douglas & McIntyre's offer because of their track record of publishing and promoting some of the best Canadian non-fiction and fiction.



Canadian publishing: don't mistake it for a classy business. This book was supposed to be published Jan. 25. This arrived today:


Mark,



It was communicated to me today that you had called our publicity department to query the status of your title, THE FOG of WAR, and to learn the anticipated release date of same.



It would seem that a significant breakdown in communication has occurred in that you were not notified of the hold status placed on this publication. It would seem that several members of our team were all thinking that the other had spoken with you, while in reality none of us had. This is regrettable. This is embarrassing and I suspect this is incredibly upsetting, frustrating, angering and disappointing for you.



I am available to speak with you today, or this week, at your convenience, to discuss this situation. Key Porter Books has recognized the necessity to restructure our business in light of the current market conditions and the challenges and considerable impact that this has had on our operations. The publishing industry is going through difficult times and we as a result have made drastic changes to our house in order to adjust and strengthen our position.



Again Mark, it is with sincere regret that we find ourselves in this position and even greater regret that this was not properly communicated to you.



I will look forward to speaking with you at your convenience.



Sincerely,

Jordan Fenn

The rent is too damned high!!!

If things don't work out for this guy in Albany, let's bring him to Ottawa.

How China Sees Us

Here's a story I wrote for the Chinese news service Xinhua on the move to bring civility to Question Period. While still maintaining an authoritarian and very centralized regime, the Chinese do value politeness:


Canadian politicians vote to bring civility back to political debate

Mark Bourrie


OTTAWA, (Oct. 8), Xinhua—Canadian politicians, frustrated with the decline in manners in their House of Commons, have passed a motion requiring members of parliament to find ways of improving the quality of debate in the Canadian legislature.
Much of the criticism of parliamentary debate focuses on “Question Period,” a 45-minute session in which members of opposition parties ask government ministers about the administration of their departments. Through the national media, millions of Canadians follow Question Period each day, and the debates make up the bulk of Canadian political coverage.
In recent years, Question Period has, critics say, become nothing more than political grandstanding, with opposition MPs asking politically-loaded questions and ministers replying with answers that rarely address important issues. During the session, the debate is often drowned out by heckling and shouting by MPs.
A recent survey conducted for the Public Policy Forum, a private organization that seeks ways of improving government, found two-thirds of Canadians believe Question Period is a forum for MPs to "grandstand" for the media and score "cheap political points."
The poll also found a majority of Canadians think less of this country's system of government because of what they see and hear in the daily session.
Earlier this week, a motion to reform Question Period, moved by Michael Chong, a member of the governing Conservative Party, was passed in the House of Commons by a vote of 235 to 44. The motion orders a parliamentary committee to study various options and propose changes to reform Question Period, and to complete this task within six months.
According to a recent public opinion poll, Canadians overwhelmingly disapprove of the behavior of government and opposition MPs during Question Period.
“During the election, I promised to reconnect Canadians with the democratic institutions that belong to us all,” Chong told reporters. He added, “Question Period reform is a first, but important, step toward the reform of Parliament.”
“This motion proves that you can build bi-partisan consensus and get things done for all Canadians,” he said.
Glen Pearson an opposition Liberal MP, seconded Chong’s motion, calling Question Period the “most shameful 45 minutes in any parliamentary day.”
Chong’s motion calls for giving the Speaker, who chairs debate in the House of Commons, more powers to discipline disruptive MPs. The time limit for questions and answers would be expanded from 35 seconds so that the exchanges could be more substantive.
And the Prime Minister, who usually attends the session four days a week and answers, on average, six questions, would only be expected to be present one day a week, where he would take questions during the entire 45 minute session.
The motion had the support of MPs from three parties: the governing Conservatives, and opposition Liberals and New Democrats. It was opposed by the Bloc Quebecois, a party that advocates the separation of the province of Quebec from Canada.
"This is a victory for Canadian democracy," Chong said after the vote. "Canadians have indicated they want to see reforms to Parliament. This is the first step, a small but important step toward parliamentary reform. So I'm thrilled."
Chong said he believes the Canadian people have lost faith in parliament because of the spectacle of MPs shouting and insulting each other every day. He says only about half of Canadian adults bother to vote because they have lost faith in the system.
"I think the reason for that is the behavior and the dysfunctionality that they see in the House of Commons is not something that they approve of. So they want us to fix this dysfunctionality."

Good news (for me, at least)

My book will be published after all.
Key Porter let me know late last week. That means six months of work (on top of the research and writing time used to write and research this material when it was a thesis) will not go to waste after all.
I have another manuscript finished and waiting for a green light. It's a look at Canadian war correspondence from the very beginning to the present. I decided to write it when I tried to look up some stuff on Canadian front-line reporters World War II and found there was no book on them and their work. Hopefully, in a year or so, no one will have that problem.

Key Porter

My book, the Fog of War, is scheduled to be published by Key Porter Books on January 25, 2011. Right now, the publisher is in a state of flux. Most of the staff has been let go and the survivors have been moved out of their office and into the distribution facility on Bolton, north of Toronto. Some very talented people have lost their jobs and a very important Canadian cultural institution is in jeopardy. Despite the millions and millions of taxpayers' dollars that have been poured into Canadian book publishing, Key Porter was the last big Canadian company left. All of the rest, including McClelland and Stewart, which still calls itself "the Canadian Publisher" are now foreign-owned.
Key Porter published about 100 books a year. They published some fiction, kids' books, history, military books, political stuff, cook books and hockey titles. Farley Mowat, Jean Chretien, Margaret Atwood, Joan Barfoot and many other top-tier Canadian authors published with them.
My book is done. All the editing, typesetting, proof-reading, the dust jacket (with blurbs by Peter C. Newman, Steve Maher of the Halifax Herald, and Jeff Keshen, who did the definitive book on WWI censorship). It just needs to be printed.
Needless to say, I am sticking close to the phone. There are five years of my life invested in the book, and I know people are going to find it interesting.
I am told I may hear something by Friday.
So hope for the best. Even better, pre-order it now from Chapters-Indigo if you were planning to buy it. Normally, i'd be lobbying for people to buy it from an independent book seller, but in this case I think a big Chapters order might save the book. Plus they're selling it for about $20, which is a good deal.

We're now featured on Metromarks

This blog has been picked up by Metromarks, You can see their pages here. This is great news, and I thank them.

The Conservatives and the Establishment: The fight to be Ottawa's "New Men"

These days, I spend quite a bit of time explaining Canada's political system to Chinese journalists who find the whole process more than a little strange. And the fact that Canada's political system, along with its players, is in a constant state of morph does not make things more comprehensible to them or easy for me.
Take the Conservatives. I grew up believing the Conservative Party was the linear descendant of the Family Compact and the Chateau Clique, the closed group of Tory blue-bloods who controlled the patronage machine of Upper and Lower Canada until we got something resembling democratic, responsible government in the 1840s.
Tory politicians were either scions of wealth or were, themselves, well-connected new money, earned, like R.B. Bennett's, from blue-chip corporations like the CPR. The Tories did not welcome people who didn't come from Rosedale, British Properties or Westmount, except as door-knockers and stamp-lickers. Catholics were not welcome, nor were people with a lot of vowels in their names.
Liberals were middle-class and upper-middle class people: small-town lawyers, school teachers, academics. They had a big tent that held ethnic minorities, Jews and Catholics. That, in any case, was the pitch, and it was reinforced by Mackenzie King, who could honestly say he was the grandson of a genuine leftist hell-raiser.
But things have changed. These days, the Conservatives are far from being members of the Canadian Establishment. Any toe-hold they have in it is tenuous and probably transitory. Unlike Brian Mulroney, Stephen Harper did not cultivate Westmount money and American business leaders before going into politics. He is a professional politician from the very fringes of the Canadian Conservative tradition, an outsider, and he acts like one.
Harper is trying hard to gain control of the levers of power and respectability. he's hobbled by the fact that his staff and advisors are also outsiders, people who learned about power and government from books and media articles. Part of their problem lies in the fact that reality does not fit what they've read over the years. Their reaction is to develop rigidity and defensiveness, rather than open their eyes and ears.
It enrages them that the Liberals are the true Establishment party of Canada. No amount of power and perks can, for the Tories, change the fact that the top Liberals were born to power and see themselves that way.
So many are sons of power.
Michael Ignatieff is the son of George Ignatieff, one if the most connected bureaucrats and diplomats in Canada. His mother was a member of the Grant family, solid members of the establishment that sees Queens University as a breeding ground of leaders. The Grants practically created Queens and the clique that grew from it.
Ignatieff was brought to Ottawa by Ian Davey, whose father was the campaign brain of the Trudeau regime
His main challenger, Bob Rae, is the son of diplomat Saul Rae, who moved among the Pearsonian elite in the days when the Department of Foreign Affairs was Canada's most interesting and glamorous ministry. Rae held sway in the years when Canada was shifting its focus from the British to the American empire, and young Bob Rae, like Ignatieff, was dispatched to private schools and good universities. Eventually, he went to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship.
The previous Liberal leader, Stephane Dion, was son of Leon Dion, a man not particularly well-known in English Canada. He was a tough, sometimes ruthless politician who negotiated constitutional issues on behalf of Quebec and is credited with developing the "knife to the throat" tactics that have served Quebec so well in the past 45 years.
The younger Dion surrounded himself with other establishment Liberals with famous last names, including Mick Gzowski, who was saddled with the debacle of Dion's disastrous TV speech during the 2009 coalition attempt.
Of course, to the Tories, Justin Trudeau is the most infuriating "name" Liberal. Trudeau 2.0 has hardly had a stellar career inside or outside of politics. His education is minimal, his work experience before he was elected was unfocused and rather uninspiring. As an MP, he has said nothing of substance. Many Liberals see him as a contender in the next decade, but no one can say what he stands for.
All of these people, and many more senior Liberals, are socially and intellectually hard-wired into the media and the bureaucracy. Old, established Ottawa believes the Harper regime will disappear soon and be forgotten as a sort of quirky anomaly, like E.C. Drury's United Farmers of Ontario provincial government of the early 1920s.
The Harper control freak system, along with the Conservative outreach to rural and new Canadians, is a reaction to that, an attempt to cobble together a coalition big enough to win a majority government that will be taken seriously by Canada's elites. They might be able to pull it off, though I'm really not sure the political talent or the intellectual depth is there.
But certainly the motivation exists. The Tories will either govern long enough to create a new country, in many ways similar to Reagan's America, or they will will be cast aside as a sort of political palate-cleansing.
The next election will probably be the watershed.

Canada's Greatest Freeloaders

I notice the Queen's spending on palaces and staff -- Buckingham Palace, Windsor and Hollyrood (Sandringham and Balmoral are her own property) barely outstrips the cost of our GG's salary, staffing and upkeep of Rideau Hall:

Here's the squawk in the British press:

Here's what Canada's GG costs:

And the Brits get the full tourism draw of the monarchy, while we get Order of Canada ceremonies.

OK. Now for the "crisis."

It's coming, just like the storms of fall.
The economy is tanking again, the Afghanistan pull-out is on the horizon, and Stephen Harper pledged to the G-20 that he would make big spending cuts this spring. Plus stimulus spending ends at the end of March. All-in-all, 2011 is already shaping up to be a hard year.
Plus Ignatieff is shaking off the mantle of Stephane Dion. And the country is warming to the idea that Harper is a control freak.
So, yes, look for the crisis that vapour-locks Parliament and "forces" an election. Will it be a crime bill? The pending mini-budget?
Trust me. It will be something.

New Sponsor: Ottawa's Best Golf Course

Thanks to Loch March, one of our new sponsors, we have a monetary incentive to keep the blog going. Thanks, Loch March!
Take a good look at their web site. It's a beautiful course with a gorgeous Tudor-style club house.

Messin' with the Deity

You'd think this guy would realize that he's already pissed off God enough. Likely the Almighty bought A Brief History of Time and, like the rest of us, found it to be unreadable.

Adventures in disfunction

I went to a press conference this morning to hear Peter van Loan, who had just come back from a visit to Central and South America, talk about extending free trade into that region. It's an important topic that Canadians should talk about. First, is it a good idea? What's in it for Canada? Will we lose jobs or gain them? What do we get from them and what do they want from us? Will it open the door to more immigration from the region, which is a source of a large migration of unskilled workers from farm regions to cities in Latin America and the US. People's jobs are on the line, and jobs are not that easy to get these days.
So the minister walks up to a podium set up in front of the House of Commons. He reads a rather long statement in French. Then he does the same in English. This has eaten up about 15 minutes. His flacks say there's time for two questions in French, two in English. (This, of course, is not enough for a serious session on trade.)
The first question, in English, is about the trade stuff. Julie van Dusen of the CBC asks the second question. It's about the gun registry. I decide the "two questions" rule really should relate to the subject of trade. I ask how many deals we are going after, and whether NAFTA could be extended deeper into Central America and into South America.
The rest of the questions are about the gun registry, which is obviously the story du jour. Van Loan, who used to be Public Safety minister, doesn't have the good sense to say that's not his department anymore, and if people want to talk to the public safety minister, they should find Vic Toews.
So we have some trade deals cooking with some pleasant and unpleasant states in South and Central America, and with some Caribbean states. Details of the deals? Forget it. No time. Are there going to be human rights links? Wish I could say. Security links? Dunno.
But we do know that Peter van Loan, who is no longer public safety minister, is like the rest of the Harper cabinet and doesn't like the long gun registry. And in Ottawa, today, that's important. That's news. In fact, it's more important than trade and the economy, or your job.

A Day in the Life of Your Tax Dollars

Media Advisory: Government of Canada Invests in Quebec's Hops Industry

OTTAWA, ONTARIO--(Aug. 11, 2010) - The Honourable Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Foreign Affairs, on behalf of the Honorable Jean-Pierre Blackburn, Minister of Veterans Affairs and Minister of State (Agriculture) will be in Ile-du-Grand-Calumet, Quebec on Thursday, August 12th to announce an investment in support of Quebec's Hops industry.

Government of Canada Invests in Community Environmental Projects in Regina and Central Saskatchewan

REGINA, SASKATCHEWAN--( Aug. 11, 2010) - Andrew Scheer, Member of Parliament for Regina-Qu'Appelle, on behalf of Canada's Environment Minister, the Honourable Jim Prentice, today announced funding from the EcoAction Community Funding Program for three new environmental projects in Regina and central Saskatchewan. In total, $52,826 in federal funding will support local action to reduce pollution, improve air and water quality, and protect wildlife and natural habita


Media Advisory: Human Resources and Skills Development Canada

FREDERICTON, NEW BRUNSWICK--( Aug. 11, 2010) - The Honourable Keith Ashfield, Minister of National Revenue, Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, Minister for the Atlantic Gateway and Member of Parliament for Fredericton, on behalf of the Honourable Diane Finley, Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development, will announce funding to the University of New Brunswick to help combat homelessness.

Minister Ashfield will be available for a photo op and to answer questions from the media following the announcement.


GOVERNMENTS OF CANADA AND NEW BRUNSWICK
INVEST IN THREE EDMUNDSTON-AREA COMPANIES

EDMUNDSTON (NB) – August 11, 2010 – Federal and provincial representatives joined company officials from Fraser Specialty Products Ltd., Beaulieu Plumbing and Mechanical Inc., and IPL Inc. today to announce funding that will help these companies purchase new equipment, expand their operations and create jobs.

The Honourable Keith Ashfield, Minister of National Revenue, Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) and Minister for the Atlantic Gateway; and the Honourable Donald Arseneault, Minister of Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour, announced investments totaling close to $2 million toward these projects.



GOVERNMENT OF CANADA INVESTS IN CAPE JOURIMAIN NATURE CENTRE

BAYFIELD (NB) – August 11, 2010 – The Cape Jourimain Nature Centre will soon offer improved services to its visitors, thanks to an investment of more than $48,000 from the Government of Canada. The Honourable Carolyn Stewart Olsen, Senator for New Brunswick, on behalf of the Honourable Keith Ashfield, Minister of National Revenue, Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and Minister for the Atlantic Gateway, today announced funding for the renovation and improvement project.


ATLANTIC INTERNTIONAL AIR SHOW
COMING TO SLEMON PARK IN SUMMER 2011

Summerside, (PE) August 11, 2010 – ACOA is supporting the Air Show with $35,000 through its’ (sic) Business Development Program. The Government of Prince Edward Island will contribute $35,000 through Innovation PEI, and Summerside will contribute $10,000 towards the 2011 event.



ANNOUNCEMENT

Saint-Léonard, NB – August 10, 2010 – As the Honourable Keith Ashfield, Minister of National Revenue, Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) and Minister for the Atlantic Gateway, continues his working tour of Northern New Brunswick, members of the media are invited to attend an announcement in
Saint-Léonard on August 11.

Town of Saint-Léonard / Club Skirakdoo

Date : August 11, 2010

Time: 3:30 p.m.

Location: 189 Diamond Road, Saint-Léonard, NB

Minister Ashfield will announce funding for a project under the Recreational Infrastructure Canada Fund (RInC) – a key component of Canada’s Economic Action Plan.


GOVERNMENTS OF CANADA AND NEW BRUNSWICK
INVEST IN PNEUS ABC TIRES INC.

ATHOLVILLE (NB) – August 11, 2010 – Federal and provincial representatives joined company officials at Pneus ABC Tires Inc. today to announce funding to help the company purchase specialty equipment to expand its product line and create up to 15 new jobs.

The Honourable Keith Ashfield, Minister of National Revenue, Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) and Minister for the Atlantic Gateway; and Roy Boudreau, MLA for Campbellton-Restigouche Centre, announced investments of more than $1,000,000 toward the equipment purchase.

“Our Government’s investment in Pneus ABC Tires will help the company purchase critical and specialized fabrication equipment,” said Minister Ashfield. “This investment will help enhance the company’s production capacity, positioning it to better compete in markets, create jobs and increase its sales.”


Media Advisory: New Affordable Housing in Halton Region

BURLINGTON, ONTARIO--( Aug. 10, 2010) - The federal, provincial and municipal governments will celebrate two affordable housing projects in Burlington.
Media are invited to join the Honourable Lisa Raitt, Minister of Labour and Member of Parliament for Halton, on behalf of the Honourable Diane Finley, Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development and Minister Responsible for Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC); Jim Bradley, Ontario Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing; Gary Carr, Halton Regional Chair, and Cam Jackson, Mayor of the City of Burlington for the announcements.


ANNOUNCEMENT

The Honourable Vic Toews, Minister of Public Safety, will join Mr. Curtis Ross, President and CEO of the Thompson Airport, to make an important announcement regarding the Thompson Airport.


Date: Wednesday, August 11, 2010

G-20 violence

If you build it, they will come.
The outcome was as predictable as a math equation: use the G-20 leaders as bait in the center of the country's largest city, deploy thousands of excited cops, many of them completely unfamiliar with the city -- or any large city -- in riot gear after psyching them up for months. Then the usual crowd of lawful protesters, lawless anarchists, shit disturbers, bored people will, of course, show up. Toss in lots of live TV coverage, with panting, delighted commentators, to ensure that everyone plays their part.
It happens at summits all the time. That's why we should have known it would happen in Toronto.
Leaders from countries that don't have Canada's civil rights must get an interesting lesson. Democracy, they are told through the actions of the government, is a veneer. When the chips are down -- and not by much -- democracies like Canada must suspend civil rights, crack down on public dissent, and keep leaders away from the people.
I'm not sure that's the lesson we really wanted to give the Saudis, the Indonesians and Chinese, but actions speak louder than words. We just showed them that democratic states are not "weak," but we also told them that Canada sees mass arrests, riot cops and rubber bullets as "go to" tactics at a relatively low level of provocation.
The events this weekend were part of the polarization of Canada into "ins" and "outs". Toronto, the great Tory whipping boy, known in every cornfield and duckburg as a great center of decadence filled with sketchy people and bad attitude, was thoroughly scourged this weekend. I found it symbolic that the worst trouble was at Queen and Spadina, Toronto's trendiest neighbourhood, the epicenter of the city's arts and media culture.
Anyone with any knowledge of how these things work would have, must have, seen it coming. So, in effect, this is what they wanted.
Stephen Harper left Toronto with a deal that frames his plans to cut the federal budget into a plan by the major countries of the world to cut their deficits. When he brings down tough restraint budget next spring and sparks an election, he will be able to go to the people saying the cuts are mandated by the G-20.
Meanwhile, the people of Canada learned that all the nice trappings of the state -- Question Period silliness, Canada Day pap, royal visits, HST rebate cheques -- are the velvet gloves of modern governments.
This weekend, we saw the fist.

Ici on parle Francaise

From the Senate Committee on Official Languages. It seems Francophones are doing OK when it comes to Senate committee memberships and flak jobs:

“Some federal institutions have been slow to act because they do not fully understand the scope of their duties. We would like to emphasize that the entire federal government is responsible for taking positive measures and that a failure to comply with this obligation can now be taken to a court. Our former colleague Senator Jean-Robert Gauthier, now deceased, fought tirelessly to bring a change in attitude within federal institutions. That is why he laboured to amend the Act in 2005,” stated Senator Maria Chaput, committee chair.

For her part, the committee’s deputy chair, Senator Andrée Champagne, added: “While some institutions showed initiative and originality in implementing Part VII, it is our view that the government must provide more guidance to federal institutions, and must do so in a way that makes Parliament’s intent clear. Our observations and recommendations have one purpose alone: to honour the commitment made by the Parliament of Canada in November 2005.”
The report is entitled “Implementation of Part VII of the Official Languages Act: We can still do better” and is based on evidence gathered since May 28, 2007. The committee held 34 meetings and heard from 53 witnesses over the course of this study.
Members of the Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages include the Honourable Senators Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu (La Salle – Québec), Andrée Champagne, P.C. (Grandville – Québec), Maria Chaput (Manitoba), Pierre De Bané, P.C. (De la Vallière – Québec), Suzanne Fortin-Duplessis (Rougemont – Québec), Rose-Marie Losier-Cool (Tracadie – New Brunswick), Michel Rivard (Les Laurentides – Québec), Judith Seidman (De la Durantaye – Québec), and Claudette Tardif (Alberta).

The full report including recommendations is available on the committee’s website at: http://senate-senat.ca/ol-lo-e.asp.
- 30 -

For information please contact:
Francine Pressault
Media Relations
613-944-4075 or 1-800-267-7362 or 613-299-5359
pressf@sen.parl.gc.ca
Danielle Labonté
Committee Clerk
613-949-4379 or 1-800-267-7362
labond@sen.parl.gc.ca

Changes...

I'm juggling a couple of job prospects, plus doing the last edits to The Fog of War. I have to match material in the book to the end notes.
Marion was called to the bar Wednesday. That brought in family and friends from out of town. Next week, I'll be on the Hill. Its expected the House will adjourn Thursday and won't be back until the fall. There may even be an election in between, but I wouldn't bet the farm on that.

Just Livin' The Dream

Of course Adrienne Clarkson and John Ralston Saul have a little farm in Provence. Doesn't every pretentious twit in Canada?

Canada's evolving military censorship

On September 4, 1942, Canada’s most famous war correspondent, Ross Munro, told a packed rally at the Montreal Forum that Allied commandoes had murdered 150 German prisoners at the height of the Dieppe raid just a few weeks before.
Speaking on a government-sponsored propaganda tour, Munro said Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat’s British commando unit captured a German coastal battery in one of the few successful moments of the raid. “Some of the Germans had been killed in the skirmish but many of them were left,” Munro said told the Montrealers. “Then,” Munro continued, “in an aristocratic tone Lord Lovat said to the remainder, ‘I’m sorry, but we will have to erase you’ and erase them they did.’”
This was murder, even in wartime. Why did Munro, only 28 years old but still one of the sharpest minds among the Canadian reporters stationed in Britain – he was to have scoop after scoop until the last days of the war and went on to a distinguished peacetime career – make the allegation? Killing 150 POWs in cold blood would, if true, be a war crime.
It could have been a defining moment of Canada’s participation in the war, like the modern debate on alleged abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan. Instead, Canada’s press censors and journalists covered up the allegation.
Munro was in a position to know what happened. He had gone into Dieppe and managed to survive the raid, then spent days interviewing the soldiers who had managed to get back to England.
The day after the Forum rally, Canadian military intelligence agents scrambled to shut down coverage of Munro’s claim. Munro later said he could not remember making the statement, which seems rather bizarre considering the details of the Gazette’s quote. Newspapers across the country were warned not to use anything about Lovat’s supposed actions. The editors obeyed, but the Montreal Gazette story was already on the streets of Canada’s largest city and nothing could be done to take it back.
So the Canadian government had good reason to fear German retaliation against the Canadians captured at Dieppe. It came quickly: the Nazis ordered Canadian POWs captured at Dieppe to be chained or handcuffed in retaliation for alleged mistreatment of German POWs. Then Germans held in Canada were chained up in retaliation, sparking a riot at the Bowmanville POW camp west of Toronto that was hit by a news blackout by Canada’s censors.
Canada’s wartime editors were hardly free press crusaders, although, for various reasons, many of them partisan, the Globe and Mail, Winnipeg Tribune, the Montreal Gazette and Montreal’s Le Devoir stood up to Canada’s wartime censors. The rest maintained Canada’s long tradition of talking a good fight about freedom of speech.
Still, the World War II censorship system was benign compared to the one imposed during World War I.
Any second-rate police state would have approved of the Canadian press censorship system in World War I. At first, it was branch operation of the British censorship system, which strangled all real debate about the war and tried to warp public opinion to believe the war was a glorious crusade, not a murderous slaughter of young men led by incompetents.
Canada’s Postmaster General, acting as a deputy of the British Chief Press Censor, could ban any publication that questioned the government’s version of the military situation or suggested the Allies were in any way responsible for causing the war. Nothing could be written that undermined recruiting or might dissuade the Americans from joining the Allies.
The maximum penalty for writing, publishing, circulating or possessing anything banned by the Postmaster General was a fine of $5,000 (about $600,000 in today’s money) and/or five years imprisonment. The owners of the print shop where the material was published faced the same fines and jail terms, and the presses could be seized.
These rules were enshrined in the War Measures Act, passed on August 22, 1914 but made retroactive to August 4, the day that Britain had declared war. Editors of the country’s larger newspapers went to Ottawa to help write the censorship rules. These were printed in a pamphlet and mailed to newspaper offices, publishing firms, advertising and public relations agencies, government departments, police departments, military intelligence officers, and to allied governments.
The censors dealt mainly with two types of news: domestic stories from Canada and pro-German articles from the United States, which was neutral for nearly three years. The government had no worries about coverage from the front. There wasn’t any. The British and French controlled all access to the fighting zone and threatened to shoot any journalists who went near the trenches.
“War correspondence” from France came mostly from Britain’s official “eyewitness” who was, through most of the war, Canadian Max Aiken (Lord Beaverbrook). Aiken was eyewitness to very little. He rarely went near the front, and simply re-wrote press releases drafted by army officers who likely hadn’t seen much action, either.
Censors spent most of their time killing stories that might change public opinion. The war could not be won unless the public gave its full support, and, as the streets filled with crippled men, the newspapers carried pages of casualty lists and the great breakthroughs announced by the army never seemed to change the lines on the map, that support weakened. Enlistment plunged and bond money dried up.
As the disaster dragged on, the Canadian censorship system became increasingly invasive and powerful. An Order in Council (a Canadian cabinet order) passed September 12, 1914, banned any news about troop movements, and, two months later, Cabinet outlawed publications “calculated to be, or that might be, directly or indirectly useful to the enemy, or containing articles bearing on the war and not in accordance with the facts.”
In the spring of 1915, Canada got its own Chief Censor, Ernest J. Chambers, an old Fleet Street reporter and militia officer who served as Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod of the Canadian Senate (the upper house’s head of security). His previous war work involved wiretapping overseas telegraph cables.
Month after month, Chambers tightened the censorship screws. Films and plays fell under censorship. In the last months of the war, the censors began poking through record stores. Just a few weeks before the end of the war, the government banned all printed material in the languages of the enemy powers, which included newspapers in Polish, Ukrainian, and the many other minority languages of Germany’s main ally, the Austrian empire.
No Canadian could publicly criticize the way the army and navy did their work. They, like the people in Britain, were not allowed to advocate a negotiated peace. it. The government, along with most newspaper and magazine owners, flooded propaganda into the marketplace of ideas. Censorship created the illusion that these official ideas were the only version of reality.
People might have expected the censorship to end when the Germans quit. But the Russian Revolution had created a whole new set of villains, and the Communists had some supporters in Canada. At the first post-war cabinet meeting, held on November 13, 1918, federal ministers tried to outlaw seditious talk. They criminalized the printing of anything advocating socialist revolution or criticizing capitalism. It was the only time in Canadian history that the media was officially censored for political ideas in peacetime.
The system survived, with a few tweaks, until December 20, 1919, when all of the Orders in Council dealing with press censorship were repealed.
Chambers didn’t spend his workdays breaking up print shops. Press censorship in World War I operated as a voluntary system, with editors and publishers engaged in self-censorship. Except for the Victoria Week, the Sault Ste. Marie Express, Le Bulletin of Montreal and Quebec City’s La Croix, all of which were banned, editors of commercial newspapers toed the line. They chose to ignore the obvious futility of the war and did not, like the banned Sault Ste. Marie paper, question the sanity of sending more Canadian soldiers to the front.
The government was more subtle in World War II, deliberately seeking out respected journalists to run the press censorship stories. He wanted a voluntary censorship system, based on a very clear set of rules. And he feared the rise of a powerful propagandist, knowing he lacked the charisma to be that person.
Still, when the Allies seemed to be losing the war, military officers and some senior politicians wanted a much tighter censorship system. “In the twilight war everyone had been reasonable and tolerant; as the bad news poured in and the foundations of life were shaken, reason gave way to passion and tolerance to blind fury,” Chief English Press Censor Wilfrid Eggleston, a former Toronto Star reporter, wrote in his memoirs.
The top mandarins, used to life under pressure, hung tough. O. D. Skelton, senior bureaucrat at External Affairs, Ernest Lapointe, the Justice minister, and Mackenzie King, himself a former reporter, backed the censors and rejected demands from lesser ministers and from military officers for tighter censorship of Canadian newspapers and the banning of Isolationist U.S. publications like the Chicago Tribune and The Saturday Evening Post .
Canada could not escape the war. Much more of it arrived on our shores than we learn in the paltry bits of history taught in school. About 300 people drowned, burned or froze to death in submarine attacks within sight of the Canadian (and Newfoundland) shore. Japanese balloon bombs drifted over the West carrying God-knew-what. As hundreds of thousands of Canadian men went off to war, thousands of German POWs were brought into the country and had to be guarded and put to work. Sometimes these prisoners rebelled, although the public never knew.
In Quebec, the French-speaking majority was at odds over whether the war was Canada’s business at all, and many people on both sides of the debate took to the streets to make their views clear to the government. Le Devoir and other nationalists papers opposed Canadian participation in the war, and Quebec City’s L’Evenement Journal carried, in the first weeks of the war, semi-satirical “letters from Adolf Hitler” pleading with Quebeckers to abandon Britain and France.
The federal government used a combination of censorship and judicial review to cover up the military’s failures at Hong Kong. In early 1942, Sir Lyman Duff was appointed a one-man Royal Commission to look into the lack of training and shortage of weapons among the troops that surrendered to the Japanese on Christmas day, 1941. King and Duff were close friends, and King extended his term on the court.
Ontario Conservative leader George Drew was “opposition” counsel on the Duff Commission. He denounced Duff’s secret hearings and the judge’s decision not to force senior generals to testify. When Duff’s report came out, Drew righty criticized it as a whitewash. To circumvent Duff’s powers to jail him for contempt of court, Drew asked King to table in the House of Commons Drew’s 32-page response to the Duff Report. King refused, newspaper editors were warned not to touch Drew’s letter, and the Hong Kong veterans were left to fight for years to put the truth on the record.
After the war, the government decided overt press censorship would no longer work. Instead, it used secrecy and subversion laws against journalists. In World War II, the federal government did not jail any reporters or editors for breaking the censorship or secrecy laws, but in 1970 Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa had 17 journalists arrested under the War Measures Act.
And in 1978, the Trudeau government charged Toronto Sun editor Peter Worthington under the Official Secrets Act for publishing the names of 16 Canadians recruited as spies by the KGB, the Soviet Union’s secret police and spy agency.
The federal government has, in fact, chosen to accept some of the recommendations of the last two press censors, Warren Baldwin (who went on to become a Globe and Mail parliamentary correspondent) and Fulgence Charpentier, a prominent francophone journalist.
They argued, in their secret 1946 report on wartime censorship, that information, once it gets into the hands of reporters or the public, can’t be suppressed. Instead of harassing journalists, governments had to do a better job of keeping secrets.
But they also argued that the military, and democracy, function much better when they’re scrutinized by a well-informed press and public. They suggested the government create commissions of military officers and journalists in wartime to vet information to determine if it really poses a threat to the war effort.
Instead, the Harper government has chosen to “redact” information from the files on the Afghan detainee issue before releasing them to opposition Mps and the media. The names and positions of the censors have not been made public. Since the documents are exempt from the federal Access to Information law because they deal with military issues, there’s no right of appeal.
At the same time, the government has hired a former Supreme Court justice to go over the material in secret and decide, as Duff did in 1942, whether the government and the military are at fault on a contentious wartime issue. In censorship, as in war, the battlefields may change but the battles tend to repeat themselves.

Coming Soon to a Store Near You

The first book-length study of Canada's World War Two press censorship. What stories did Ottawa cover up? Find out in a few months!

Helena Guergis, Busty Hookers, Coke and Sodomy

I just threw in the latter, simply because it sounded good. I have no proof that she engages in utterly frightening sex acts. Then, no one has any evidence -- real, solid, testable, get-into-court evidence -- that Helena Guergis has ever been near cocaine or what the Toronto Star keeps calling "busty hookers." But for the rest of her life, say another two decades or more of her working years and the forty or fifty years that she can be reasonably expected to live, she will always be saddled with the introductory phrase "disgraced former cabinet minister Helena Guergis."
Helena Guergis seems like a high-maintenance woman without a particularly sharpened intellect. Like many hicks who arrive in Ottawa, the perks of power seem to be her prime motivator. She and her husband strike me as the kind of young sophisticates that haunt the Byward Market in Ottawa and the ski clubs at Blue Mountain, back in Guergis' riding. But it's not against the law to be a vacuous twit. It may hinder your rise in the cabinet, but that's debatable.
Here's what we know:
Guergis' husband got busted for what, if you think about it, were some embarrassing charges involving great personal stupidity. The charges were not a huge surprise: Jaffer was always known as a big-time partier. I figure anyone who drives drunk probably has a problem with alcohol and personal limits. He may also have a coke problem.
And, as a sort of consultant, Jaffer may well have fallen into the company of douchebags, knowingly or not. It becomes harder all the time to know if business people are legit. And even legit business people can live sleazy lives and haunt strip clubs, I suppose. Guergis was not in the car with Jaffer. In fact, the night of the busty hookers and coke bust, she was out of the province.
So we may have a woman who is married to a guy who has drinking and drug problems and may cavort with women described as "busty" and "high-class" hookers, even though there's been a strange absence of innuendo that any sex actually happened. The hookers seem to have hung around with these guys at the bar, which strikes me as a rather poor utilization of the alleged skills of busty, high-price sex workers.
Getting back to Guergis. Maybe, politically, having a sometimes petulant cabinet minister married to a guy with booze and coke issues is not such a good thing for the Fam-Val crowd who really run the Tory party. But throwing her out of the Conservative party and calling in the cops seems pretty strong. I can't imagine how it will go at Guergis' next job interview when she is asked why and how she left her last job.
In fairness, Harper had the right to call in the police and to drop Guergis from cabinet, but he didn't have to throw her to the press dogs, then keep the story alive by refusing to come clean about the allegations against her. He could have done it with some class by saying the government takes accusations seriously enough to investigate them, and, in the interest of maintaining the credibility of cabinet, has asked Guergis to step aside from Cabinet until a quick but thorough investigation is completed.
But then, with Steve it's always about Steve.
Like the busty hookers, Guergis has been ill-used.

Just asking...

Do any of you who watched Question Period today know if they put John Baird on industrial-strength Quaaludes?

Vimy Ridge: The Original Coverage

Stewart Lyon, The Canadian Press

Lyon was the managing editor of the Globe. He was the first Canadian war correspondent in France, arriving in March, 1917. Lyon missed the attack at Vimy Ridge, and no other Allied reporters were on the battlefield.

Canadian Headquarters in France, April 12 (via London) – From the last position held by them on Vimy Ridge the Germans were swept this morning (Thursday) after one of the most fiercely contested engagements in which the Canadians have recently taken part. This morning at 5:30 o’clock during a blinding snowstorm, an assaulting column was dispatched to drive the enemy from the height known as “The Pimple,” occupying a dominating position on the ridge, to the northeast of Souchez. Though wearied by the constant struggle against the enemy and elements the last four days, the men responded splendidly. Swarming up the height, they attacked the enemy garrison, which included troops specially brought up to hold the position, among them the Fifth battalion of the Prussian Grenadier Guards.
The Germans fought under the peremptory orders to hold the position at all costs. The Canadians were not to be denied, however. Over the shell-plowed land and machine gun-fire, they climbed to the summit, and by 7 o’clock the flower of the German army were fleeing to the east and sought shelter in the village of Givenchy. This victory, the second within a week, gives our army absolute command of the entire ridge. Monday’s success opened the way by the capture of Hill 145. That hill is the highest point on the ridge. It had to be secured before the attack on “The Pimple” could be made with any hope of success.
By today’s win on the part of the Canadians, and the victory of the British, who carried Bois en Hache, on the west side of the Souchez River, the entire valley of Souchez is in our hands and we can look down on the enemy’s positions in the plain of Cambrai.

The Spy Among Us

They went to the electric chair in alphabetical order: Haupt, Heinck, Kerling, Neubauer, Quirin and Thiel, six German spies and saboteurs who were dropped from U-boats on Long Island and in Florida. The two colleagues who ratted them out sat pensively in another cellblock of the Washington City Jail.
It had happened so quickly. In June, 1942, they had come ashore and, within days, had been betrayed. In July, they were tried by a special military commission, (the last time such a court was used until the trials of suspected al Qeada terrorists at Guantanamo). They were found guilty August 1 and, within five days, President Franklin Roosevelt had chosen the place, method and time of their execution.
On August 8, it had taken just over an hour to kill them in the Washington jail’s electric chair in America’s largest mass execution of the 20th century. Roosevelt chose the electric chair because of its horrors. The British might shoot Nazi spies in exotic and romantic places like the Tower of London, but the President wanted the deaths of the Operation Pastorius spies to deter any other Nazis who might come ashore on the Atlantic seaboard.
The story of the six executions filled the front pages of newspapers throughout the Allied nations. In Ottawa, they certainly had an avid reader: Alfred Langbein, the most interesting guest at Ottawa’s Grand Hotel.
Langbein had landed on the New Brunswick coast a month before the Operation Pastorius spies arrived. To this day, his mission is vague. He claimed to have been sent to Halifax or Montreal to watch for convoys and report ship departures so U-boats could position themselves. Supposedly, he decided not to spy, to simply lie low in Canada for the duration.
Yet, of all the places in Canada he could go on the thick bankroll he’d been given by Germany’s Abwehr spy agency, he chose the Grand Hotel, a long-gone rookery on the west side of the Market. The Chateau Laurier is the only hotel closer to Parliament Hill, but even Nazi Germany had some budget constraints.
So what was Albert Langbein doing in Ottawa for more than two years while he lived at centre of Canada’s wartime capital, camped out in a room over a busy beer parlor favored by politicians and military officers? We may never know because, it seems, no one has ever asked.
Langbein’s adventure began April 25, 1942 when Amelung von Varendorff, captain of U-213 had a secret agent come aboard his U-boat in sub pens at Lorient, France. Off the coast of Portugal, U-213 stalked a British convoy but, before von Varendorff could get his torpedoes off, he was attacked by a British destroyer. The sub’s crew raced forward to weigh down the U-boat’s nose as it crash-dove to 200 metres.
Ten depth charges went off, close enough to make the lights flicker and the hull shake. Several of the sailors, most of them fishermen from the Baltic Sea, began to cry and sob. The sub’s tough first officer tried to talk them back to their senses while the captain lay silently on his bunk, his automatic pistol at his side.
The rest of the trip was tedious. The sub fought the Bay of Fundy’s and emerged May 12 near St. Martin’s, New Brunswick. Just after midnight, the sub surfaced, popped the hatches prepared a dinghy for launch.
Langbein left with a Lt. Kueltz and two sailors who helped haul Langbein and his gear cross the boulder-strewn beach and scale the 80 metre bluff along the shore. By 7:30, the dinghy arrived back at the sub and U-213 disappeared. Six weeks later, U-213 was sunk off the Azores by three British warships firing depth charges. The captain and his 50 crew members died.
The man they left behind was born on April 6, 1903 in Graefenthal, Thuringia, Germany. His father, Willy, worked as an insurance broker, but Alfred liked to travel. First, he went to Shanghai and found a job as a special constable on the Shanghai police force. He returned to Germany in 1926.
Things were grim in Germany. His father’s firm was failing. In 1928, Langbein sailed for Halifax. He took a train across Canada to find a family in Pearce, Alberta that he had met on the ship. In Alberta, he found a job as a surveyor, then went to Northern Manitoba to work as a railway laborer. Langbein had been caught in a cat house in Flin Flon, but never got into serious trouble.
He wandered to Ontario, where he worked briefly as a freelance writer. Langbein arrived home just as Hitler took power.
Through the rest of the Depression, Langbein ran a small factory in Germany, then supervised construction of four kilometers of an autobahn – jobs that have a whiff of Party patronage. By the beginning of the war he was married with a daughter (a son had died soon after birth) and he was waiting for his army call-up papers to arrive in the mail.
Instead, Langbein got a phone call from an old school friend, Oscar Homann, who invited him to Hannover to talk business with a mysterious stranger, Dr. Nicolaus Bensmann, a former patent agent for a U.S. oil company operating in Romania. After a few formalities, Langbein was packed off to “The Nest,” the spy training school in Bremen that also taught sabotage to Abwehr agents.
Langbein turned down one assignment, parachuting into England to scout airfields and anti-aircraft gun emplacements, saying his German-Canadian accent would betray him. Then, his spymasters planned to set him up in a fishing boat operated by Belgian collaborators that would scout the English coast. This plan was foiled when British planes sank the fishing boat in Flushing, Holland.
A spying expedition with Bensmann in Romania was also a failure. Instead of spying, Bensmann spent most of the time trying to collect money owed to his American employers.
The Abwehr had a new plan: a U-boat drop in Canada, bury his equipment, get to Halifax or Montreal where British convoys assembled, find a job and blend in for about three months, then return to the landing place to get his radio. After three months, the Germans would listen for his signal every night at 11 p.m. German summer time. If Langbein did not retrieve his radio, he could write letters in invisible ink and send them to mail drops in neutral Switzerland and Portugal.
Langbein christened the mission “Operation Gretl” after his wife.
U-213’s was crew led to believe he was a reporter in Germany’s elite Propaganda Kompany. Langbein was given his fake ID and $7500 in US $50 bills, the same type used on Operation Pastorius. The spy realized with some horror that the wartime registration card, vital for employment, was made out to A.B. Haskins, Young Street, Toronto. Langbein knew Toronto’s main street had been spelled wrong, and he was sure someone would catch him because of it.
After the sub left, Langbein slept for a few hours. Then he traipsed through bogs to St. Martins, New Brunswick, where be bought a razor and some soap. The spy managed to hitch a ride to St. John in a lumber truck. He told the driver he had a cold, and spoke in hoarse whispers to disguise his strong German accent.
His biggest challenge was cashing those American $50 bills. He spent much of the next two years shopping, looking for stores that would accept large-denomination bills. Usually, he let them keep the 10 per cent exchange.
Arriving in Montreal by train, the spy checked into a rooming house where he had stayed in a decade before. On June 18, while the eight Operation Pastorius spies were still free in the States, Langbein went to a store to buy a couple of pipes. The owner couldn’t make change for the $50 bill Langbein offered, but a furtive little man grabbed him by the shirt sleeves and pulled him down St. Catherine Street and into a house on a side street. It was a bordello. The madam said she could get change.
Langbein, no stranger to Canadian whore houses, later said he stayed long enough to collect his change and have a beer, but he didn’t drink it fast enough to avoid a police raid. The cops booked him as a “found-in” under the name A.B. Haskins – his lack of real ID and strong German accent obviously of little concern to the vice cops – and eventually let him go on $50 bail, the Canadian change from his American $50.
When he got back to his rooming house, he packed his stuff and caught the first train to Ottawa. The spy claimed he flagged a cab at the Ottawa train station (now the Government Conference Centre, right across from the Chateau Laurier) and asked the driver to take him to a good hotel.
If Langbein told the truth, the cabbie drove him about a block, to the Grand Hotel on Sussex, about where the Rideau Street Chapters store now has its parking lot. There, Langbein made himself at home.
The hotel was a watering hole for politicians, civil servants and the hundreds of soldiers rolling through the city at any given time. It is exactly the place you’d expect a spy to set up shop.
Yet, for more than a year, in a city that was the headquarters of the RCMP and Canada’s military intelligence, the 40-year-old stranger with a heavy German accent and a seemingly never-ending supply of American $50 bills held court within shouting distance of Parliament and a five-minute walk from the military’s headquarters on Cartier Square (now the site of Ottawa’s city hall).
“The night after I arrived in Ottawa, I seriously considered surrendering myself to the RCMP or any other suitable authority and spent considerable time consulting the phone book to decide the most suitable authority to approach,” Langbein later told Canadian intelligence agents. Instead, he adapted to life in Ottawa and made an interesting group of friends.
Langbein bought a ping-pong table from a store on Rideau Street because one of his Air Force friends liked the game. So did Langbein: he had learned ping-pong from a friend in the Abwehr. He made friends with some of the hotel staff. Two of them had girlfriends who worked as secretaries for Naval Intelligence.
During his first six months in Ottawa, the spy left the hotel at 9 o’clock every morning and returned about five in the afternoon. “I would put in the day as best I could, taking long walks, going to picture shows and taking in any sporting events that might be in progress.”
Eddie Sabourin, a cook in the hotel, was his best friend. Through him, the spy became part of a group of young people who liked to party at the Grand Hotel. On summer weekend, they took short drives to Constance Bay and Buckingham to picnic and drink beer. Langbein usually picked up most of the tab.
Yet Langbein’s friends seemed to be of little interest to the spy’s interrogators. At least once, a friend had taken him into the Naval Intelligence offices in Temporary Building 8 at the Experimental Farm. Still, month after month went by without Langbein raising suspicion from the dozens of army, navy and airforce officers, the politicians and political staffers, and the war bureaucrats who drank with him at the Grand Hotel. His biggest problem was homesickness.
There was just one close call. In the early summer of 1943, while riding home from a Hull bar in a cab with “Bea”, the sister-in-law of the owner of the Grand Hotel, and her soldier boyfriend, Bea’s friend was a soldier. He looked at Langbein and said “I think you’re a spy.” When the drunken soldier left the cab in Hull to look for a cop, Langbein talked Bea and the cabbie into heading for Ottawa. Presumably, the Hull police paid no attention to the soldier’s accurate suspicions.
Once he got back to the Grand Hotel, Langbein avoided Bea and started looking for a new place to live. With some help from a waiter in the Grand’s beer parlor, he found a place to live in Lowertown.

(For the rest of this story, see the April, 2010 issue of Ottawa magazine