Today I wake up to the happy news that Canadians are using ‘Harper’ as a verb – as in go Harper yourself. Satire is a powerful force in the Zeitgeist.
I feel as if I am living in an Epic Battle of Myth for the saving of the Kingdom (Canada) The archetypes are powerful and the lines are clearly drawn. It’s Cowboys vs. Indians and this time the Indians must win.
One the one hand we have Black-Hatted Alberta paleface Harper, the poster boy for those inflated egos who first came to this land from an overcrowded, class-strangulated and disease-ridden small island; finding it absolutely, mind-bogglingly vast and beautiful, full of natural riches and resources beyond their wildest dreams they thought the way to improve it was to kill its human life and strip it of trees and fish and animals and minerals.
The Black Hats have taken over the seat of the Kingdom and are repeating their Cowboy ways. Robber Barons. Defilers of the Land and waters. Killers of Nature’s creatures. Canada’s ‘settlers’ are a particular brand of Cowboy; they think they have God on their side. The White-Hatted palefaces seem unusually quiet as Harper blunders and plunders his way through our rights, our ecology and our economy. I know they are out there. They are the majority of Canadians who did not vote.
One the other side we have the Indians. From East to west and everywhere in between the Indians have been fighting this battle for centuries. Having congregated by Pow-Wow and by Potlatch, now they have electronic media so communication is instant and global. With so many descendants of cowboys who love this land as the Indians do, we know that this time the Indians have to win. So this is a call out really, to the White Hats to please step up for Canada and the world, which needs this pristine resource.
One of the most fortunate things that ever happened to me in my life was meeting Canadian Indians soon after I arrived in Vancouver. They took me to their homes and shared their perspectives and their cultures in a way that I completely understood. As post-colonial myself, the parallels in our histories were obvious. Ireland was the first country ever invaded by England and as the Irish say – they practiced on us first and then exported their military, cultural, ecocidal and physical genocidal ways to the rest of the world. Annoyingly, the Irish refused to be wiped out and kept their language and traditions alive underground.
I had no idea until I met the people here that this was also true in Canada. They wryly told me they were so far West the colonists were exhausted by the time they plundered across the country made it out here. They had their ration of horrors but survived. Knowing Indians bonded me to this country in a way I may not have done if it was only for the mainstream white English culture, which is basically rampant capitalism, mostly based on exploiting natural resources.
In the 40+ years I have lived here, it has always been true that the Indians have a profound presence and influence on things and I miss their presence when I live in California. And it has been invisible to most non-Indian Canadians. Their tribal cultures work for forming groups to consult, share, activate; their matriarchal cultures respect those sage grandmothers who have time now in their lives to save the world. From rich oral traditions their hereditary Chiefs and dignitaries are trained from childhood to remember and reiterate word-perfect information. Numbers of a certain generation became lawyers and politicians so they have integrated the bureaucratic systems. Their artists have an influence on world culture. All of this has gone on with a steady beat. They are warriors for Mother Earth, with soft voices and immovable strength.
I do not mean to romanticize the history nor belittle the struggles of my Indian friends. Anti-Indian Racism goes deep in Canada and is still a daily pain. A former Chief of the Musqueam people told me her GRANDCHILDREN at school on Vancouver’s West side (ancestral lands) are prejudiced against by newly arrived immigrants. That is how ingrained it is. Do they pick it up at the airport on the way in?
Imprinted on memory is a conversation over dinner in West Vancouver in about 1970. I had recently worked with Chief Dan George who was a delightful man in many ways and I was trying to understand how the inhuman and inhumane treatment of the Indian people could still be happening. ‘ Darwinism’ said mein host a Toronto WASP with bloodless righteousness. Survival of the fittest.

*Let me use this word for clarity and because the elders are okay with it. As someone from a country named IREland by foreign invaders when the original name was Eire or Eireann – believe me I am sensitive to it.
More on this to come…

The first time anyone ever asked me if I was a feminist, I immediately answered yes. I was in my early teens at the time and did not know what a feminist was but interpreted the other option as masculinist so it seemed self-evident .In the post-colonial atmosphere of my childhood, the men were still damaged and reeling from years of ego-smashing poverty, unemployment and powerlessness. Though our history was loaded with heroic and good men, live ones in the new Republic were hard to come by. Dublin women from mothers to nuns were clearly the strongest forces for good. The women endured and to my child eyes were heroic in their endurance.
I met distinct groups of feminists in Geneva, Paris and Amsterdam soon after; some were inspiring as models of a female ideal (for me) of absolute independence, freedom of speech, thought and action, aesthetic sensibilities, and active and generous involvement with society. Others were the hairy- legged, hiking boot sisters who disdained all feminine habits and weren’t too fond of men either. Still others were women with intellects so soaring and theses so educated they broadened the listener or reader’s mind with every thought. Former or current wives and mothers had their own set of furies, needs and demands to be recognized for the essential services they provided. We women were and are a motley crew.
As I had been raised as one of five sisters and educated entirely in convents it was no stretch for me to think that women were capable of anything and everything. I had personally never experienced male superiority and was astonished by the notion of it. Equality, fair enough but superiority? Nah. Some men were superior to some women, no doubt but gender superiority had no evidence to support it.
There was disharmony among the factions of women from time to time but the major points did not get lost. Equal pay for equal work. Autonomy over one’s body and reproductive system. Equal opportunities for education and career paths whether in firehouses or boardrooms. Nearly fifty years later, those equalizing measures still do not exist.
Feminism in my life is not without its funny moments. The time when the aforementioned hairy legged and hiking boot sisters threw horesemanure at a fashion show the modeling school I worked for had produced. They thought it degrading of women. In truth the school and attached talent agency was the most feminist business you could imagine. It was all women, founded by a woman – a Native woman at that -in an exemplary atmosphere of female voices and respect. The woman director who hired me was a single parent – an expression I had never heard before. She supported her three children, two in private school, by her wits and hard work and showed up to work every day wearing a hat and in heels. The women there did not call themselves feminists; it was a very derisive label for women in business in the day. They lived it though, every day in every way.
We have made many many mistakes as women and as feminists. We have given up a lot. A wise woman I know said to me a few years ago that all the practicing feminists she knew were alone and broke. We were so naïve about what really went on with the men behind closed doors. Dangerously naïve about the retaliatory viciousness of the macho ego state.
And look where it got us. Society has been devolving steadily since the 80s. Men sire children and leave them to raise themselves. Women are working around the clock to live up to impossible superwoman standards. Designers and clothiers dress young women like tarts and the biggest ass in the Western world is made Woman of the Year. Media role models have so many chemicals in their makeup they no longer look fully human. Successful women in business have a tacit agreement to behave like baby-faced boys.
It is an ugly culture. And most distressingly Mother Nature (not Father Nature we note) is under constant assault from the rapacious greed of men to make money.
Everywhere we look there is evidence of deep malaise. Children are being exploited, human trafficking is big business, and pollution is legal. War and weaponry are trillion dollar concerns. Workers and the families they support are taxed to the hilt as the public purse is ever more bloated to fill the coffers of the few.
I do not say women are superior to men but definitely different. I have raised both a son and a daughter and can attest to that. The nurture is the same, the nature is different. And our differences may be just what are needed to save the world. We have to believe as 51% of the population that we need no-ones permission to step up. Young women have to take over and plot the course; we greyhairs need to help them do it. We need to educate them on how recently they have the rights and freedoms they have and unless ensured by vigilant activism, that those rights and freedoms could disappear quickly.
Now is the time for all good women and the men who recognize our worth, to come to the aid of the party.

A sigh of relief this morning to see that Scotland is staying united even though I fully understand their desire to assert their rights more forcefully. Both as an Irish woman and someone who lives in Canada, the Scots influence in my life is strong. From scientific geniuses to great writers, poets, actors, singers and Billy Connolly the unique Scottish DNA has proven itself invaluable and irreplaceable.

There is also the forbidding side of the genus, the dour, narrow-minded religious that allowed the Scots for centuries to be the repressive tools of Empire when colonizing other lands. This dichotomy  in the national personality made it hard to predict how the vote would come out.

An alleged 85+% of the electorate – (what could be fairer than that) -cast their votes. The history and bloodlines between Scots and English are so intertwined back into the mists of time, cutting off from each other is impossible.  The shambles that would have arisen from bureaucratic separation would take years and billions to sort out. Now everyone knows where they stand – status quo or change and clearly almost 50% of the people want change in their relationship to the British system. Well-played Scottish voters. May it be a bloodless revolution.

And what will the English have learned from this near-disaster? Will they see that their first move has to be to change their attitude and come from a position of respect? To stop being such annoying prats to everyone outside their very small club? That Scots jokes are not that funny told with an English accent and are offensive and demeaning?

The English, let’s say Anglo Saxon, sense of superiority has been a source of amusement and bemusement all my life. The unhealthiest, twerpiest little English men I have met feel innately superior to the best of the Irish. It is to laugh.

I have been told I was a ‘vigorous hybrid’ – so much better than the rest of my race and expected to take that as a compliment. A dowager who had a life in Canada she could not have dreamed of in England once said to me ‘ aren’t you doing well for an Irish gel’. They just can’t help it. And some of my best friends really are English

So I think it is good for all of us that Scotland has thrown down the gauntlet and told them to wake up and mind their manners. The system they are holding up, an economy based on war and rape of the earth and oceans, cannot stand. Their class, gender and racial divisions are archaic and redundant and they have deep social problems.

All of the ills of Imperialism and Colonialism have now come to their shores, long after the booty and plunder has been spent. They need their best minds and passionate hearts to save the whole United Kingdom and not just its parts.

So much of my culture and value system was shaped by being an aboriginal of those islands. Of course I am rooting for them to succeed, to be able to embrace new boundaries and ideas and let their old school tie stop choking them. Observing them evolve is riveting.

I am steaming about the last and I hope final outrage committed by Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The deal he rammed or slimed through, the controversial Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA) today simply cannot be allowed to stand.
The deal will come into force on October 1, 2014, and will be effective for 31 years, until 2045.
The deal would allow Chinese investors to sue British Columbia if it changed course on the Northern Gateway pipeline proposal. Shockingly and surely illegally, there is no requirement in the treaty for the federal government to make public the fact of a Chinese investor’s lawsuit until a tribunal has issued an award. This means that the federal government could settle the lawsuit in a way that many Canadians would oppose, or by paying out public money before an award is issued, and we would never know.

Say what now? Stephen Harper does not have the political capital to make deals that extend decades into the future and give away constitutional rights. Though I am looking intently I do not see the energetic routing of him that other elected representatives owe us. What’s an individual to do? Where are the leaders who will stand up for Canada? I am befuddled that this sellout could happen.
I have been a follower of international and global politics my whole life. From the days when we used to call them Statesmen –rarely women – because that was their primary role. Regardless of their personal peccadillo’s, and down through many centuries they all had them, from the Caesars to Roosevelt to Shaka Zulu; regardless of that the business of the state seemed to be conducted with some cohesion of vision. Canada is now running a permanent garage sale. Step right up, everything is reduced. It is tragic to witness. Did Canadians give him the right to do this?

It feels slightly bogus to be writing about this when clearly what is needed is sleeve-rolled-up activism across the country. I am out of practice and out of connections and am not cheered by what I read and hear.
I first became politically active when I was nine years old, going door to door in my working-class ghetto in Dublin to encourage people to vote and arrange their transportation to booths. The idealistic concept of government for the people, of the people, by the people fires my blood.
This righteous fire came with me to Canada and contributed to the creation of the foundation of Canadian film making through CFDC/Telefilm and the provincial film offices across the land. Hand in hand with this was the need to create jobs and so we organized the success of Canada as a location for foreign filmmakers. Billions and billions of dollars into the Canadian economy. Had to be done.
We were all volunteers. We had Boards and meetings and fights and illuminations and all believed that Canadian culture was worth it and that the power of the people was the greatest force in any country. The Government of Canada had already sold out their filmmakers many years before in an agreement with Hollywood. We needed to move the behemoth to reverse that. It took smart people from many disciplines, linear and creative. And it took time. And we did it.
The rallying cry for all of us, because the cultural argument fell on deaf ears, was that filmmaking was labour intensive and non- polluting. It brought in fresh money, and took nothing from the land but canisters of film. This was an argument that Canadians, even politicians, could get behind as it was true to the spirit of Canada.
Some years ago the NFB sent filmmaker Mo Simpson across the country during yet another period of head scratching on Canadian identity, what it was, did it exist and where was it. From Coast to Coast to Coast Mo reported back that regardless of origin, ethnicity, religion or politics, what Canadians had in common was love of the LAND.
We are the keepers of something as old as time, a continuing pulsating life force through infinity unless we kill it; one of the few remaining places on earth where animals roam free on land and in the water. And that natural freedom has a very strong impact on what it means to be Canadian. I see it in my children. Even with an Irish mother and an American father and living on both sides of the border, their Canadianess is a strong identifier.
There is copious evidence that this is not a factor in the business machinations of China. Their own land is polluted perhaps beyond recall. Their workers rights, divisions between rich and poor, their steadfast denial of what Canadians take for granted as civil rights – all of these are antithetical to the Canadian way. Any business between us should be based first on complying with the Canadian way of life. Hundreds of thousands of people have died for this land – started with Native Canadians (Indians) and through world wars.
Are we really just going to let it be sold out in this way?
I will return to this in more blogs.

The moonrise always seems sudden as she pops up over the small island that sits opposite me. She is not there and then she is; Luna. dazzling, casting wide red-gold swathes on the rippling water. As she glides along her course she sits on top of my skylights for hours. The Harvest Moon shed so much light my little house was still illuminated at 4.30 a.m. Impossible not to be awed by all that power and beauty, luxuriant to bathe in it, held in the force-field until it moved on.
Nature keeps me sane in an insane world. It is why I keep coming back to this crooked little cottage in this glorious spot. A born and bred city woman, I sorely miss the cultural and intellectual stimulation of urban life but here, my soul is restored.
This morning I had to stop on the road for a passing deer with his baby array of an impressively shaped rack of horns. He is one of a family of four who often show up in my garden, arriving silently. Frequently I raise my head from a book or laptop and find myself looking right into their eyes. Absolutely peaceful, observant, fearless.I clap my hands gently and they leave,not panicked but gracefully and quick. The make effortless leaps that Barishnikov would be proud of in his prime.
I have had a few encounters with bears both here and in Connecticut. Each time they just passed me by and really, how sensible. If you have all that power and force innately there is no need to prove it unless attacked. A lesson that could prevent war if we would only learn it.The insects love me and prove it every time I step outdoors to return with mosquito, spider or who-knows-what bites.
The moonlight brings out all creatures great and small and my motion sensor lights click regularly on and off. I do not see coyotes but I hear them.
Raccoons are omnipresent no matter how I try to discourage them. I cut back the 30 year old grapevine that yielded more than 100 lbs of sweet grapes each summer. A family of raccoons nightly traversed my roof, made an immense racket and were slowly demolishing it on their way to the fruit. Any evening in summer I can go on my deck and look into their eyes too. They just go about their business, uninterested in me or my alleged ownership of the vine.
If only people could co-exist like this, go about their business and allow different critters to go about theirs out of genuine acceptance of the nature of things.
It is not all Francis of Assisi ish amongst the wild animals. Last night there was some loud gnawing, a really unpleasant feral noise in an otherwise silent night. I could not see anything so just closed my window against the sound.This morning there are three large mounds of fresh poop in the garden, of a shape that is not raccoon nor deer nor bear. Hmmmm. I wonder who that visitor was.
The news from everywhere is mostly bad; man’s inhumanity to man is commonplace now. Children the world over, in developed and undeveloped countries, are everyday subjected to horrors of abuse and want. Racism continues unabated – assinine and ignorant divisions of human worth based on colour.
Everywhere I look here are flowers and plants of different shapes and shade; ,gardens and parks are a riot of colour; each bird and fish is different from the other. Nature encompasses all of them – how have we become so denatured that we cannot?
And then there is a pod of whales in the bay, breathtaking – and the tall mountains,and the trees changing their colours, dropping the old to be rebirthed in spring. The symphony of life is constant, interconnected and solo.
When humans appear to have lost the plot entirely, nature carries on. We are so unimportant really, just one creature amongst a large family of creatures. Opposable thumbs are not enough – we do not look very superior any more. Maybe we should behave more like animals?