This afternoon I was interviewed by CBC Edmonton on a subject I never thought I'd be interviewed about - the issue of politically incorrect sports team names, and in particular the Edmonton Eskimos. When the network contacted me, my first reaction was, of course, "Why me of all people??"
The reason they sought me out, it turned out, was a post I wrote back in May 2012 on the subject of racially problematic team names. The article focussed largely on the Cleveland Indians, in part because I'm a longtime baseball fan but also because the backstory to the name is a fascinating one. But I also took a pot shot at our local football team, a team I otherwise have tremendous admiration for, not only for their on-the-field excellence but also for their superb communications team and stellar track record for community involvement - by players, alums, the cheer squad and their front office. The only thing the Eskies have going against them, in my opinion, is their name.
The Edmonton Eskimos is, in my humble opinion, a terrible name - for two reasons. The most obvious and talked about reason is the fact that the word 'Eskimo', while still in common parlance among Alaska's Inuit, is today considered a pejorative by the Inuit of Arctic Canada as well as in Greenland, owing to the name's alleged origins from an Algonkian term meaning "eaters of raw meat". (The Cree language cognate would be askamiciw, which is pretty close.) Furthermore, even if the etymological roots of the word are in some doubt, the mere fact that the word hearkens to colonial ethnocentrism for Arctic Canada's indigenous people makes the issue worth taking seriously.
But that's only part of my issue with the name Eskimos. In addition to being a now-offensive term, it's also a name that has absolutely nothing to do with the Edmonton region. Edmonton, as anybody with any familiarity with the city knows, is located in traditional Cree territory, and is situated a word away from the nearest Inuit settlement. Geographically speaking, Edmonton is closer to Los Angeles than to Iqaluit, and given the complete lack of ethnocultural connectivity between the Cree and the Inuit, it would make just as much sense to call the team the Navajo or the Aztec.
Defenders of the name will argue that it is a reflection (if a somewhat unlettered one) of Edmonton's historic role as "gateway to the north". But as we Edmontonians know, this epithet has always been something of a kiss of death for us. Just ask novelist and Edmontonian-at-large Todd Babiak what he thinks of the "gateway to the north" boilerplate - a characterization that for many in city implied that we're nothing more than a transit point to other places than a place where people might actually want to stay. The crux of the popular #MakeSomethingYEG campaign has been about changing the way Edmontonians talk about ourselves, because most of our slogans, from City of Champions to Gateway to the North, frankly suck. And having a football team - especially one with hallowed history and an impeccable community reputation - called the "Eskimos" isn't helping us.
No, we can do better than this, and this is why I'm proposing, for what it's worth, a new name for the team. Let's not make the whole Redskins controversy force our hand - let's do it ourselves. Over the phone I was asked what I would like to see the name changed to, and I didn't have an answer. But shortly thereafter a new named dawned on me: the Edmonton Muskwa.
Muskwa, for those who don't know, is the Cree word for 'bear'. But it's more than that. The word muskwa (or maskwa, depending on the romanization) holds a deep significance for the Cree people, as the bear one of the most hallowed figures in Cree cosmology. It's a name that has deep resonance among Alberta's Cree population, as evidenced by the decision by the band councils of the adjacent Samson, Ermineskin, Louis Bull and Montana First Nations (located south of Edmonton) to change the name of their combined municipality of Hobbema to Maskwacis (Bear Hills), a name that long predates European colonization.
Edmonton Muskwa - think about it. In addition to being a nod to the Edmonton region's original inhabitants and a name far more reflective of the region than the Eskimos, here are a few other arguments for the name:
It's a classic football name. Muskwa is a protector and defender with a mean arm, surprising speed, and he'll maul you if he has to. And besides, it hearkens nicely to one of professional football's other legendary teams, the Chicago Bears.
It also meshes nicely with Edmonton's other great gridiron squad, the University of Alberta Golden Bears.
As an Aboriginal name, it still, in a way, pays homage to the legacy of the Eskimos. It just corrects the name a bit.
It shortens to the "Muskies", which has the same ring to it as the "Eskies".
No pesky pluralization problems - it works as singular and plural. Just ask the Toronto Maple Leaves about this problem.
It sounds kind of badass. Like a war cry of some sort. Or like something the Apache Chief from the Super Friends would utter before doing something heroic.
Or we could just do this.
In sum, I would like to see the team's name changed, although not necessarily for the reasons that are being trotted out. Unlike with the Redskins and the Indians (and to a lesser degree the Chicago Blackhawks and the Atlanta Braves), we really haven't seen the kind of polarized acrimony over this issue north of the border.
My sense is that this is because we're a little easily inflamed people than our southern neighbours, and Edmontonians in particular are a sanguine bunch who don't come to anger quickly (unless it's over Neil Young making silly remarks about the black viscous livelihood to the north). That and Albertans are a pretty libertarian bunch who tend to take poorly to being hectored by the standard bearers of political correctness. Moreover, the Eskimos have never had a racially caricatured mascot like the Indians or the Redskins have had, which has, I think, allowed the Edmonton public to disassociate their team name from the ethnic group it was once applied to. To most Edmontonians, the word "Eskimo" means football - and nothing else. Hidden in plain sight.
Still, I say let's change the team's name and start a new chapter of sporting history here in Edmonton. Do it because "Eskimos" is really a silly name for a region with no relation to the Inuit, and because we have a beautiful cultural inheritance of our own in this city. In my January 2014 post on Edmonton New Year's resolutions, I challenged the city to take more ownership of its Aboriginality - after all we're, by some counts, the most Aboriginal city in Canada. Adopting the name Edmonton Muskwa for our beloved football team would be a decisive step in that direction.
That and it would be fun. And it's a cool name. At least I think it is. MUSKWAAAAA!!!!
To see my interview with CBC Edmonton go to 15:30 here.
Between the Quebec Liberal Party's triumphant return to power in April to the Montreal Canadiens' inspiring run at the Stanley Cup (alas no more), something interesting has happened in Canada in the first half of this year: English-speaking Canadians seem to be rediscovering a love for La Belle Province.
What a difference a year makes! A year ago the rest of Canada seemed to have all but given up on Quebec. From the standpoint of most English Canadian media outlets, Quebec was a basket case mired in cultural and political isolationism, economic dysfunction and an alarming xenophobic streak in the form of the Parti Québécois' so-called "Values Charter" that would have passed a raft of laws against public displays of hijabs, turbans and other religious accoutrements. At the peak of the Values Charter debate, Western Canadian animosity towards Quebec was reaching such a fever pitch that it appeared a "yes" vote on sovereignty would actually be welcomed by many.
Today, however, the mood appears quite different. Canadians coast to coast cheered as the myopic, mean-spirited PQ government of Pauline Marois crashed and burned in April's election and mild-mannered brain surgeon Phillippe Couillard took the reins in Quebec City. All of a sudden National Post, a paper that can normally be counted on to blast Quebec's provincial leadership, started printing articles with titles like "Time to take Quebec seriously again" and whatnot. Even the Sun Network (once led by would-be PQ Sith Lord Pierre Karl Péladeau) has softened its usual anti-Quebec stance.
All of this is of course music to the ears of western Canadian Francophiles like myself. At the same time, though, we've seen enough of this teeter-totter in Anglo-Franco Canadian internal relations to know that if we're to build a bona fide bridge between Canada's two "solitudes" we need to try something different. My modest proposal, and one that's a win-win for everybody in my opinion, is that Anglophone Canadians can start by not only getting to know Quebec's lively homegrown music scene, but genuinely embracing it as part of a greater Canadian scene.
The fact is, in spite of all of Quebec's current problems - a moribund economy, rising unemployment, skyrocketing provincial debt, ugly (and still lingering) ethnocultural friction and the ever-present spectre of separatism and language politics, Quebec's cultural scene, and in particular its music scene, is as vibrant as it's ever been. Trouble is, almost nobody west of the Ottawa River knows this, as Francophone artists hardly get any radio play outside Quebec - and Quebec artists (understandably) feel it's more worth their time and effort booking tours in France and Belgium than in Alberta or BC.
It's a real tragedy - and a really unnecessary one at that. Unlike French-language TV and movies, which is unlikely to develop a significant following outside the French-speaking world, music has the well-demonstrated capacity to travel well outside their geolinguistic roots. Back in the fall of 2012 I wrote a post about the history of foreign language hits within the English-speaking world, including one of the few French-Canadian pop hits to ever hit the Anglo-Canadian charts, Mitsou's extremely silly but equally catchy 1988 hit 'Bye Bye Mon Cowboy'. (To Anglos she's a one-hit wonder; to Quebeckers she's a pop icon and the granddaughter of a legendary playwright who's still in the public eye as a TV host.)
The real paradox of Anglophone Canada's complicated relationship with the country's rogue province is that Anglos love visiting Quebec, especially the city of Montreal, especially in summer when the city's bazillion performing arts festival are in full swing. But as much as the rest of Canada has a love-in for Montreal's cultural scene, they tend to regard it as a foreign country - basically Paris except you don't need a passport to travel there. The result of this, of course, is that while Just for Laughs, Osheaga, the Montreal Jazz Festival and other cultural extravaganzas are well attended by non-Quebeckers, the province's homegrown acts (unless they're English language acts) are completely overlooked. Why is this? If a nerdy-looking Korean rapper can command the attention of English-speaking Canadians, why not our fellow passport-holders east of the Rideau?
My theory is that English Canada's reluctance to embrace French Canadian artists is rooted, at least in part, in fear - fear of the unknown, fear of reproach from the other "solitude" for some sort of perceived cultural Philistinism. I suspect this goes both ways, which is why Quebecois bands and solo artists hardly ever make appearances in Canada's other major cities, even as they make appearances in Paris and Brussels. Quebec and English Canada are like a strained married couple who haven't had sex in far too long, and are now in marriage counselling and trying to make amends but each one is scared to make the first move in bed.
To my mind the best prophylactic against future sovereignty SNAFUs is a genuine cultural rapprochement, starting with a genuine embrace of Quebec's currently exciting Francophone music scene. In other words, less politics, more rock 'n' roll. And for those Anglos looking for a primer to get them started, here are ten very different acts worth getting to know.
1. Ariel
Origin: Montreal, QC
Style: Glam Rock, Post-Punk, Electroclash
Recommended for fans of: T. Rex, The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Libertines
Source: francophil.ca
Noisy, sassy and glamourous, Ariel is one of the most exciting rock bands on the Canadian scene today - and one that graphically illustrates Canada's linguistic problem when it comes to arts and culture. One of the freshest young rock acts in the country today, Ariel is virtually unknown in Canada outside La Belle Province in spite of a growing following in Paris and Brussels. Founded in 2007, this Montreal-based quintet is made up of members from across the province (including Baie-Comeau, Saguenay, Sherbrooke and Quebec City) and centred on a fetching, multitalented Richey Edwards lookalike named Ariel Coulombe.
Since the release of their 2010 debut album Après le crime, the grungy, synth-heavy glam punk of Coulombe and his gang have gained considerable critical acclaim for both their music and their outlandish music videos, including best emerging artist at the 2010 Osheaga festival and a Juno nomination for the video for "Chargez!" (see below). Their latest lineup for their brand new 2014 release Fauve features an unorthodox twin bass configuration and a darker sound overall, according to Coulombe in a recent interview. Having already established themselves as one of Montreal's most exciting young bands, the next obvious step would be a western Canadian tour.
Which, I should mention, I've already bugged them about on Facebook. So if you see these kids in a western Canadian city near you in the next little while, I say "de rien" in advance.
2. Jimmy Hunt
Origin: Montreal, QC
Style: Folk Rock, Alt-Rock, Shoegaze
Recommended for fans of: Wilco, Bright Eyes, Mojave 3, Robert Charlebois
Source: jimmyhunt.bandcamp.com
Montreal is a busker's paradise, as anybody who has spent anytime there in the summer months will attest to. And indeed it has been this street music scene that has launched the careers of many a Quebecois singer-songwriter, including that of newcomer Jimmy Hunt, who in spite of his Anglo-sounding name is a thoroughly Francophone singer-songwriter very much out of the tradition of Robert Charlebois, Gilles Vigneault and other iconic Quebecois song crafters. After about 12 years as a guitar and harmonica-toting street busker, Hunt made his recording debut in the mid-2000s with the briefly successful alt-rock combo Chocolat before going solo with his distinctive blend of Dylanesque folk rock, twangy alt-country and synth-laden pop evoking everything from late-seventies Bowie to the early 1990s British shoegaze scene.
Like so many Quebec artists, Hunt's acclaim, while widespread in his own province, has largely ground to a halt at the provincial borders, forcing to look across the pond for touring opportunities. Which is a real pity given that his poetry remains firmly rooted in the scenery and vibes of the city of Montreal, particularly in his critically acclaimed latest album Maladie d'amour, which beautifully merges his many and varied musical influences. If anybody truly captures Montreal's inimitable street vibe, it's this guy. And Montreal, last time I checked, was still in Canada. So it would be worth the rest of Canada's time to give this Jimmy Hunt guy a chance.
3. Forêt
Origin: Montreal, QC
Style: Dreampop, Trip Hop
Recommended for fans of: Cocteau Twins, Mazzy Star, Lamb, St. Vincent, Portishead
Source: journalmetrocom.files.wordpress.com
Montreal's rich musical legacy has generally come in two flavours: French and English, with the city's Francophone artists usually taking their cues from Paris and their Anglo counterparts from London and New York. But while the political divide between French and English Canada has never been more pronounced, there are signs that the artistic (or at least the musical) divide is starting to narrow. Case in point is the highly acclaimed new group Forêt, a group that's been lauded by numerous Quebec music critics as a breath of fresh air in the province's music scene. Unlike the electropop of groups like Le Couleur that hearken to Daft Punk, Stereolab and other continental artistes, vocalist Émilie Laforest and her group combine French-language lyrics with a very British sound evocative of Cocteau Twins' hypnotic dream pop and the melancholy trip hop of Portishead - one of the band's oft-stated seminal influences.
With Laforest's haunting, Liz Fraser-esque vocals and Joseph Marchard's shoegazey guitar work, Forêt is most definitely a departure from the music typically associated with La Belle Province. And as a brand new act (only a couple of years old), these trippy Montrealers make great candidates for some serious music bridge-building with the rest of Canada - if the rest of Canada can get over its phobia of French-language lyrics. But in the shoegaze/dream pop genre, the lyrics really don't matter much, do they? After all, is there a single Cocteau Twins or Slowdive song where the lyrics were actually intelligible?
4. Lisa LeBlanc
Origin: Rosaireville, NB
Style: Alt-Country, Blues Rock
Recommended for fans of: Dixie Chicks, Riff Cohen, Bonnie Raitt, Karen Zoid
Source: newslestudio1.files.wordpress.com
It should be noted at this point that La Belle Province is not the only provincial player in Canada's Francophone music scene. New Brunswick's 200,000-strong Acadian population (roughly a third of the province's population) has long had an outsized artistic presence, fired up by a turbulent history and a gnawing aggravation from having been forgotten about by both Quebec and English Canada in equal measure. While Acadian music remains, for most Canadians, synonymous with cheesemeister Roch Voisine, the Acadians' long tradition of great poetry has made Francophone New Brunswick a treasure trove of great singer-songwriters, including the late Angèle Arsenault, legendary hillbilly-hippy country star Réginald "Cayouche" Gagnon and the multitalented singer-poet-actor Marie-Jo Thério.
The latest addition to the ongoing Acadian musical love-in is the young and sassy Lisa LeBlanc and her unique brand of twangy, raunchy 'trash rock' delivered in the characteristic 'Chiac' dialect of northern New Brunswick - a blend of French, English and lumberjack drawl. At 23, LeBlanc is getting a great deal of exposure in the Francophone media, and her star is clearly rising. At any rate she should made a refreshing departure from Roch Voisine's suburban fromage.
5. Syncop
Origin: Montreal, QC
Style: Worldbeat, Reggae
Recommended for fans of: Abdel Ali Slimani, Michael Franti, Riff Cohen, Asian Dub Foundation
Source: festivalnuitsdafrique.com
For a province that gets more than its share of flak from English Canada for its supposed isolationism and ethnocentrism, Quebec is a pretty diverse place. Roughly ten per cent of Quebec's population belongs to a visible minority, putting it smack dab in the middle of the provincial pack and only a tiny bit below the national average of 11 per cent. That said, Quebec's "ethnics" (to quote Jacques Parizeau) are disproportionately concentrated in the Montreal region (and to a lesser degree in Quebec City), with the 'Pure Laine' rural ridings, with their outsized electoral sway, ensuring that the xenophobes in the Parti Québécois have plenty of ethnocentric outrage to tap into. But even this is slowly weakening, as the latest provincial election results would suggest.
It's worth noting, particularly amid the recent anti-religious accoutrement hysteria in Quebec, that the province's third most widely spoken language (after French and English) is Arabic, a fact due primarily to immigration from the former French colonies in North Africa, as well as from former French Middle Eastern mandates Syria and Lebanon. Arab cultural influence is particularly evident in the city of Montreal, and is starting to find its way into the local scene thanks to worldbeat artists like Karim Benzaïd, the Algerian-born frontman of the popular Afro/Arab/reggae crossover project Syncop. Founded in 1998, Syncop mixes Berber-style raï and chaoui music together with reggae, hip hop and Afrobeat, with lyrics centred on the immigrant experience in Montreal. Their party vibe coupled with punny titles like Scirocco d'érable and Cabane à souk have made them festival favourites.
6. Ponctuation
Origin: Quebec City, QC
Style: Garage Rock, Punk
Recommended for fans of: The Who, The Cramps, Ramones, The White Stripes
Source: nightlife.ca
Thus far with the exception of Lisa LeBlanc this list has focussed solely on the city of Montreal, but with half of Quebec's population living outside the Montreal region, it's only fair that the rest of the province be given its due attention. Further up the St. Lawrence River in the province's eponymous capital city, a smaller but nonetheless energetic music scene has long churned out great artists, including iconic poet-musician-activists Félix Leclerc and Gilles Vigneault, legendary theatre artist Robert Lepage and, of course, Q-pop starlet-turned-media personality Mitsou. Having long been overshadowed by Montreal on the global music scene, Quebec City has, out of necessity, grown a scene all its own, but thanks to a thriving club scene and steady tourism revenue, the town continues to do well artistically.
One of Quebec City's most interesting current band is the gnarly garage rock duo Ponctuation, made up of brothers Guillaume and Maxime Chiasson. With Guillaume on guitar and vocals and Maxime on drums, Ponctuation's gritty analogue recordings and stripped down garage punk sound makes them one of the most refreshing rock acts to come out of anywhere in Canada in recent years - let alone poor, neglected Quebec City. Established in 2011, Ponctuation are definitely a band to watch - and yet another candidate for some welcome language divide-bridging.
7. Dubmatique
Origin: Montreal, QC
Style: Hip Hop, Acid Jazz
Recommended for fans of: Gang Starr, Mos Def, MC Solaar
Source: lametropole.com
While French-language music in Quebec has generally taken its cues from across the Atlantic in France, one notable area of musical divergence between the two French-speaking "nations" in the domain of hip hop. Since its first appearance in the banlieues of Paris in the early 1980s, rap music has been embraced by the French (particularly within its Afro-Caribbean immigrant community) like few other countries, and today France is the world's second largest hip hop market after the US, with French rappers like MC Solaar, Doc Gynéco and La Fouine achieving international success. Quebec, on the other hand, has been much slower to embrace hip hop music and culture, perhaps out of a knee-jerk resistance to perceived Americanization. (Indeed MC Solaar among others have criticized their country's scene for being overly derivative of American hip hop.)
But while Montreal still miles behind Toronto as a hip hop city, beats and rhymes are on the rise in this increasingly cosmopolitan metropolis, thanks in large part to increased immigration from the same cultural influences that brought the genre to France. Among the scenes most notable pioneers are the duo Dubmatique, featuring the duo of Cameroonian-born Jérôme-Philippe "Disoul" Bélinga and Senegalese-born Ousmane "OT MC" Traoré. Founded in 1992, the group's acid jazz-infused freestyle and Solaar-esque word craft made them Canada's first commercially successful Francophone hip hop act. Today Disoul and OT remain Quebec's hip hop "elder statesmen" and are frequently called upon to speak about the state of the current Montreal scene.
8. Le Couleur
Origin: Montreal, QC
Style: Synth Pop, Disco
Recommended for fans of: Dragonette, Daft Punk, M83, Depeche Mode, Serge Gainsbourg
Source: 3.bp.blogspot.com
Both Montreal and Buenos Aires vie for the title 'Paris of the western hemisphere'. Generally speaking Montreal hits closer to the mark - both in terms of language and pop culture proclivities. Quebec's largest city has long taken many of its cultural cues from Paris, and nowhere more so than in the former's long love for schmaltzy synth pop music. It was Montreal that gave the world synth pop icons Men Without Hats in the 1980s as well as bubblegum pop princess Mitsou, and the genre has continued to thrive in the city, inspired by the likes of Daft Punk, Air and M83 across the pond. The genre also spans the city's linguistic divide, featuring notable Anglo-Quebec artists like Chromeo and Vancouver-born Claire "Grimes" Boucher (just goes to show Francophone names can be deceptive - just ask Jimmy Hunt) as well as numerous Francophone standouts in the genre.
Newcomers Le Couleur are the latest exponents of a genre synonymous with Canada's sexiest metropolis. Bilingual, kitschy, sexy and unapologetically hipsterish, Le Couleur hearkens to late-1970s, early-1980s Eurotrash disco pop along the lines of Giorgio Moroder and Gainsbourg's Love on the Beat era, an influence further emphasized by vocalist Laurence Giroux-Do's lighter-than-air Jane Birkin-esque vocals. Established in 2008, this combo has a well established fan base in La Belle Province and has toured extensively in Europe, and this year have made inroads into the English-speaking world, albeit in the UK courtesy of Liverpool's Sound City Festival. Western Canada next? We can only hope.
9. Akitsa
Origin: Montreal, QC
Style: Black Metal
Recommended for fans of: Gorgoroth, Bathory, Burzum, Rudra
Source: metal-archives.com
I have to be honest here - I really can't tell the difference between all the myriad different sub-genres of extreme metal out there. While many of my best friends are metalheads and I certainly have an abiding respect for a music style that perhaps more than any other has managed to implant itself in virtually every part of the world, the evolutionary family tree of metal has become so dizzyingly complex (perhaps a reflection of its global ubiquitousness) that I really can't begin to tell the difference between so-called 'black metal' and other subgenres like 'doom metal', 'technical death metal', 'goregrind', 'deathgrind', 'mathcore', 'war metal', 'blackened death metal', 'seared and pan-fried trout metal in a white wine sauce' et cetera. So if you're one of my metalhead readers - and I know you guys are sensitive about people getting this taxonomy wrong - I would love a tutorial on how to navigate my way through this terminological labyrinth.
All I know for sure about the Montreal-based group Akitsa is that they are officially categorized as 'black metal', putting them in the same genre as the infamous Scandinavian noise merchants Gorgoroth, Bathory and Burzum that more or less defined the idiom. Other than that, all I could really ascertain about these guys is that they were founded in 1999 and are still apparently active (but with no locatable website), they have two permanent members (OT and Néant) who play 'all instruments', and that they 'sing' in French. C'est tout! The one interview I could find with the band, by some Finnish guy back in 2001, raises more questions than it answers. Anyone know more about these guys? I'm intrigued.
10. Samian
Origin: Abitibi-Témiscamingue, QC
Style: Hip Hop
Recommended for fans of: Rezofficial, Eekwol, Eminem
Source: hebdosregionaux.ca
Quebec's Aboriginal population may only be two per cent of the province's total (Alberta's is over five per cent), but the province's ten First Nations and 13 Inuit settlements have long punched above their weight politically thanks to their vastness of their traditional lands, which represent over half of Quebec's total territory. Quebec's Aboriginal leaders have historically never been afraid to assert themselves in the face of provincial governments indifferent to their cultural and economic needs and desires (including an ongoing threat to 'separate' from Quebec in the case of a vote to withdraw from Confederation), up to and including armed standoffs with the provincial police. That said, the post-Oka story of Aboriginal relations in La Belle Province has been relatively serene, and while many of the province's more isolated indigenous communities remain mired in poverty and social ills, many other communities have enjoyed steady economic growth and improving quality of life indicators.
While Aboriginal artists' impact on Quebec's music scene has generally been limited, the most notable exception in recent decades has been the acclaimed Innu folk rock duo Kashtin, whose trilingual (French, English and Innu) songs gained brief international fame thanks to Robbie Robertson's 1994 album Music for the Native Americans and cameos in the soundtracks for shows like Northern Exposure and Due South and the Bruce McDonald rez drama Dance Me Outside. Currently the province's fastest rising Aboriginal star is young rapper Samuel Tremblay better known by the stage name Samian. A member of the Abitibiwinni First Nation north of Val-d'Or in western Quebec, Samian raps in French and Algonquin and achieved a critical breakthrough in 2010 thanks to an appearance at the Vancouver Winter Olympics. With two albums and concert appearances in Europe and China under his belt, this Franco-Algonquin hip hop star is definitely worth following.
As many of the people who follow this blog will know, 2013 was a watershed year for the city of Edmonton in a number of ways. Not only did it mark the end of Stephen Mandel's transformative nine-year tenure as mayor, but it also a number of key civic issues finally laid to rest, including the new arena, City Centre Airport and the Churchill-NAIT LRT line. It was the year Edmonton declared war on 'sprawl', fought publically with Air Canada, watched with amusement as our outgoing mayor chewed out everybody from Councillor Kerry Diotte to the city's transportation department to the National Post's Chris "Twitchy-Eyed Savage" Selley and elected a button-cute civic boy scout to the city's top job.
So how do we top such a highlight-laden year? Well, Omar Mouallem of Metro Edmonton offered five suggestions of bad Edmonton habits he'd like to see broken in 2014. While I agree with Omar on all of them, four out of five (complaining to the mayor about roads, using the word "revitalization," NIMBYism toward affordable housing and constantly moaning about being "busy") probably apply to a great many cities. But it's an excellent start, and one that I would like to take further with my personal list of five New Year's Resolutions I'd like to see the city of Edmonton take on.
1) Lose the hate-on for Calgary.
The Bert & Ernie of Alberta (Source: CBC.ca)
Edmontonians, let's be honest. You don't really hate Calgary that much; you just think you do. Calgary is actually a fine city, and according to the world's quality of life indecies, it's indeed one of the nicest places to live on the planet. It may be a bit more go-go-go than Edmonton and it's definitely got more money, but that hardly makes it the Abode of Satan. And frankly, the more you moan about Calgary-this and Calgary-that, the more insecure you sound. We've already broken the 'Calgary Habit' in economic and infrastructural terms. Let's now break the Calgary-hating habit. After all we're all in this provincial economy together and we both have smart, charming mayors with good ideas. Let's try working together for once.
2) Develop a regional transit plan.
Not good enough (source: Sherwood Park News)
While there's been a lot of progress made, Edmonton is still a world-class city with inadequate public transportation. And as the city continues to grow, both population-wise and economically, this is becoming more of a problem, as it makes it very difficult for young people and others working in lower-wage jobs to actually commute to where they're needed, while clogging up streets (and city air) with single-occupancy cars. A big part of the problem is the fact that all of the municipalities in the Edmonton region have their own transit plans (or in some cases no transit at all), making it exceedingly difficult to commute from residential areas in Edmonton to, say, Sherwood Park or the Acheson industrial area, and so on. For regional transit to work, all the municipalities need to get together to develop an integrated system, and this year would be a great year to start.
3) Get serious about affordable housing.
Brought to you by the nice people of Terwillegar
(source: Edmonton Sun)
While I've been a supporter of the redevelopment of the ECCA lands for a new mixed-use neighbourhood since it was first proposed, I confess that I haven't been thrilled with the actual proposals, inasmuch as it's going to be a whole lot of expensive condominium developments aimed at the well-heeled segment of the city's population along the same lines as Windermere and other new developments. As Omar Mouallem astutely points out, this city has a real NIMBY problem when it comes to affordable housing, and this really needs to change. And not just for altruistic reasons. Unless Edmonton can solve its chronic shortage of affordable housing options for service-sector workers, the city's robust economic growth will soon peter out. It's in everybody's interest to fix this enduring problem.
4) Develop a sense of humour.
Edmontonians are funny people, but we're not particularly good at laughing at our own city. Last summer when National Post wag Chris Selley jokingly referred to Edmontonians as a bunch of "twitchy-eyed machete-wielding savages" the city went nuts on social media, and the usually sharp-witted Mayor Mandel responded in a manner befitting, well, a twitchy-eyed machete-wielding savage, frankly. Seriously, people, are we really that insecure about our status as a city that we can't deal with being called a more linguistically rich J-school educated equivalent of 'Mr. Poopypants'? Can't we own our city's clichéd reputation for being a desolate, uninhabitable shithole? We all need to work on that.
5) Stop f*cking tailgating!
Back in December of 2012 I wrote a post called "How To Drive Like An Edmontonian" in the hopes of bringing more attention to some of the city's less-than-admirable driving habits. While the post was by far my most popular ever, it appears to have done little to improve the quality of driving in the city. In particular, people still tailgate. A lot. Even on slick winter roads on the Anthony Henday while travelling at over 100 km/h. For the love of God, please stop doing that! It's dangerous at the best of times, and exponentially more so in winter. Of all the bad road habits in this city, this is the one I'd most like to see disappear.
6) Genuinely embrace Aboriginal culture.
Proposed interactive storytelling pavilion for Fort Edmonton Park
(source: Edmonton Journal)
Edmonton is home to the country's fastest growing urban Aboriginal population, and is predicted to overtake Winnipeg as Canada's most Aboriginal major city within the next few years. However, the city has a long way to go before its fastest-growing minority group is truly embraced as part of its cultural mainstream. Ever had an Indian taco at Bannock Burger on 124th Street or partaken in Cree language classes or cultural programming at the Edmonton Native Friendship Centre? There are innumerable pockets of First Nation and Métis cultural life in Edmonton, but sadly it's all but off non-Aboriginal Edmontonians' radar. Which is particularly unfortunate given the rising tide of Aboriginal identity politics by way of Idle No More and other movements and the growing friction between Native and non-Native Albertans over the future of the Athabasca Oil Sands and other controversial resource projects. If there was ever a time for non-Aboriginal Edmontonians to start truly getting to know their indigenous neighbours, that time is now. And fortunately it's never been easier.
For the record, I love the new Travel Alberta marketing campaign "Remember To Breathe." It's a great catchphrase for a province with an enviable treasure-trove of awe-inspiring scenery and interesting things to do. Here's my problem with this ad, though. The imagery in it is overwhelmingly biased towards the southern part of the province. (For the record, I'm referring to the Edmonton-Jasper corridor as 'central' in this post.) Not to disparage the beauty of the province's southern prairies and Badlands or the majesty of Waterton and Banff or even Calgary's ever-more-impressive skyline, but is there really nothing north of Edmonton worth visiting?
Endless forest, dancing lights in Wood Buffalo National Park
(source: National Post)
Alberta, it's worth mentioning, is enormous. At 661,848 square kilometers in size it's larger than France or Ukraine and it would be the 41st largest country by land mass (between Burma and Afghanistan) were it to be independent. And like the aforementioned countries, Alberta's land mass is one of epic diversity, but as a result of a number of factors (relative population density, proximity to the United States and major rail lines, the economic ascendency of Calgary etc.) tourism in the province has been all but limited to its southern half. It's as though the southern half were France and the northern half were Afghanistan or Burma! But unlike the latter two countries, northern Alberta's tourism woes cannot be blamed on wars, banditry, local insurgencies or xenophobic dictatorships intent on shutting out the world. Nor can it be blamed on a lack of attractions. Take, for example, Wood Buffalo National Park: Canada's largest national park and the second largest in the world (and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983), home to the world's largest herd of free-roaming wood bison and one of only two nesting sites for the whooping crane. Or Peace River Country: a vast stretch of aspen parkland spanning northwestern Alberta and northeastern British Columbia and crucible of the Fur Trade. There's the historic hamlet of Fort Chipewyan, Alberta's oldest continually inhabited settlement and governing hub for the region's largest First Nations, the Mikisew Cree and Athabasca Chipewyan.
Grass dancers at Lac La Biche Powwow (source: Facebook)
There are great festivals too, like Slave Lake's North Country Fair - a hippie love-in/folk music festival on the shores of Lesser Slave Lake and Fort McMurray's YMM ArtFest, as well as the region's numerous Aboriginal-themed festivities (most notably Fort Mac's Métis Fest and National Aboriginal Day festivities). There are fishing, hunting and nature tours all across the region's endless lake-studded boreal forest landscape, including trips to remote fishing camps where your chances of encountering another human being are next to zero. And, of course, there are aerial tours of the region's most economically important - and controversial - feature, the Athabasca Oil Sands, tours which do much to quell the notion that the entire region (as opposed to a fraction of one percent of it) resembles a bomb-blighted wasteland. Yet in spite of this, tourism in northern Alberta, as well as promotional muscle behind it, remains negligible at best. Apart from simply historical habit (the south has always been far more synonymous with tourism), this may be simply due to the fact that the region, with all its resource wealth, has never felt the need to develop a tourism sector. After all, with Fort McMurray Airport passenger traffic growing at an annual rate of 29 per cent (by far the fastest in the country), it's not as though people aren't coming to the region - they're just not doing it for pleasure. Which is a real shame, because in addition to the region's truly stunning physical landscape and abundance of things to do, northern Alberta would also benefit from a greater focus on attracting tourists for the following reasons: 1) Tourism is a truly recession-proof industry.
Still the only game in town (source: National Post)
Alberta economists talk about "boom and bust" economics with the same fatalistic tone that Japanese architects talk about earthquakes. And while this is unlikely to change anytime soon, a more diverse economy makes for less severe busts. And tourism, perhaps more than any other sector, is a great recession insurance policy. Not only does an abundance of local attractions provide more affordable alternatives to overseas travel in times of greater economic hardship (in turn pouring capital back into local communities), recessions make a country more affordable to overseas visitors. A vibrant tourism sector is therefore a great insurance policy for a region, particularly for one so prone to big economic ups and downs. 2) Tourism keeps people around. While Fort McMurray continues its steady evolution from seasonal work camp to a real city, it still maintains a disproportionately high "shadow population" of seasonal workers. A more substantial tourism industry would be a further step in the city's evolution. As the Municipal District of Wood Buffalo's only real urban settlement, Fort Mac is the logical hub for a full-fledged Wood Buffalo tourism industry, and it's not hard to imagine the place as a new Jasper or Banff, replete with superb eateries, lodgings, coffee shops, retail outlets, live music venues and art galleries, which would not only create jobs but also curb the outflow of people following their two weeks on the oilpatch. 3) It would be a great boon for the region's Aboriginal people. Northern Alberta is not only home to tremendous cultural diversity among its First Nation and Métis communities, but it also some of the country's most economically successful Aboriginal groups. While the oil sands continue to cause much consternation and division among the region's First Nations, there's no denying their positive impact on many communities. The Fort McKay and Fort McMurray bands are amongst the wealthiest First Nations in the country, and the Fort Chipewyan region's Mikisew Cree and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nations have both built successful groups of companies that encompass everything from trucking to ecotourism. Some of the region's Aboriginal tourism drivers, such as the wonderful Mikisew Sport Fishing and the fantastic Aboriginal hotelier group Sawridge, are very much market-ready, while others need more time and support to reach that point. Considering the widespread interest in Aboriginal culture and traditions among European and Asian tourists, this would seem to be a natural magnet - and a huge potential benefit to the local population. 4) It would help combat the region's enduring PR problem.
If only Fort McMurray looked like this! (source: Globeimages.net)
When Neil Young compared Fort McMurray to Hiroshima, my initial reaction was that this was a rather unflattering thing to say about one of modern Japan's prettiest and most hospitable metropolitan centres. It also reminded me of one of the other great benefits of tourism: combating unfounded negative stereotypes. When it comes to shedding a bad image, nothing beats tourism. The latest issue of National Geographic Traveler lists former hellholes Rwanda and Sarajevo among its top twenty "must-visit" destinations of 2014 (together with the now recovered and rejuvenated New Orleans, ranked at #1), and tourism looks to help lift long-beleaguered Burma as it emerges from fifty years of despotism and destitution. Tourism also stands to help northern Alberta shed its unfounded reputation as an environmental disaster zone akin to western Kazakhstan's nuclear test zones (see Kazakhstan's noble attempt to reinvent itself as a tourist destination), which in turn would do wonders for Alberta and Canada's reputations abroad. 5) Northern Alberta is Canada writ small. The current state of Northern Alberta's economy is very much reflective of Canada as a whole - thriving but woefully under-diversified. Once a global leader in the tourism industry (ranked second behind Italy as recently as the 1970s), Canada has become a colossal global underachiever, with tourism revenues having dropped 20 per cent since 2000 and the country now ranked 18th in overseas visitors, behind the likes of Saudi Arabia and Ukraine. There are many reasons for that, including the high cost of internal travel, prohibitively high aviation fees and tariffs, protectionist airline policies, unfriendly visa regimes and a plethora of emerging market competitors, but the main reason is simple: it hasn't been prioritized. Many observers have pointed this out, and yet political will to curb Canada's international tourism demise remains in short supply.
Financial basketcase turned tourism darling. Skál!
(source: National Geographic)
Why should any of us care? See Reason #1. Consider the case of Iceland, which in 2012 was ranked 16th overall in spite of having less than one per cent of Canada's population. Prior to Iceland's 2008 banking meltdown the country already enjoyed an international reputation as a "cool" destination thanks to its otherworldly landscape, surprisingly temperate climate, fascinating ancient history and hip modern art, music and design scene. Then when the country's economy collapsed (taking its overvalued currency with it), the country's government and private sector sprung into action , promoting Iceland as a fashionable alternative gateway to Europe, together with its enterprising national air carrier Icelandair, offering transatlantic passengers the option of flying to Europe from smaller hubs (like Halifax and Boston) via Reykjavik and stopping off in the land of Erik the Red and Björk at no extra cost. Result? When Icelandair launched non-stop flights out of Edmonton International Airport to much local fanfare, the airline quickly found no shortage of demand on the Alberta side for travel to Iceland as well as to continental destinations like Paris, Amsterdam and Barcelona. Filling the planes on the way back with anything other than Canadians returning to their regular lives, on the other hand, has proven to be more challenging. That could change. Northern Alberta, and indeed western Canada as a whole, has at least as much going for it tourism-wise as pint-sized Iceland. Edmonton, with its multitude of arts festivals, resplendent park network and increasingly ambitious architecture, makes a compelling foil for Reykjavik, and the haunting landscape of boreal Alberta, as well of course as the Rockies, the Badlands and the postcard cowboy landscapes of the prairies, ought to be drawing Europeans by the thousands. They're not. Not even close.
Let's try to do something about this in 2014. Starting with Alberta's neglected north.
This week the children of three women who were murdered by Robert Pickton filed lawsuits against the police and the serial killer, marking the
first such cases involving women Pickton was convicted of killing. This brings the total number of cases filed since May in relation to the Pickton slayings to nine, alleging the RCMP failed to properly investigate their disappearances.
The families and loved ones of these missing women continue to fight for justice, even as this crime has now faded from public consciousness. This unspeakable crime against the city of Vancouver's most vulnerable and downtrodden residents, and the apathy that surrounded their plight until the horrible reality of the situation was revealed to all, must never be forgotten.
I wrote this poem over six years ago. The fact that any news story on this and similar stories involving murdered women on the fringes of society are either shut down to comments altogether or have close to half the comments blocked due to offensive content tells me that the bigger fight against the prevailing social attitudes that abetted this atrocity is far from over.
These days, skepticism seems to be all the rage. Thanks to the onslaught of the 'nu-atheism' over the past decade as exemplified by Christopher Hitchens, Dan Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Ayaan Hirsi Ali as well as the exploits of celebrity debunkers like James Randi and Michael Shermer, mainstream intellectual culture appears to have taken a much-needed turn away from lukewarm political correctness to the point where skepticism and secular humanism is the new new-age spirituality. While 'atheist' remains a loaded term, 'skeptic' anymore is tantamount to 'intelligent' - at least in the less benighted corners of the developed world.
The Webster-Merriam Dictionary defines skepticism first and foremost as "an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object," while also noting the term's frequent use within the context of religious faith. These days, skepticism is largely synonymous not only with the world's major religions but also with new-age beliefs, alternative healing modalities, traditional worldviews and anything else deemed pseudoscientific. And in the hard-edged world of the nu-atheists, this means a no-quarter attitude to many of the cultural sensitivities that we've learned to take to heart. After all, how can we criticize Southern Baptist faith healing without applying the same standard to Inuit shamanism or Ibo animism. To do so would be cultural relativism, which, the skeptical argument goes, is far more racist and orientalist than applying an even standard to all of the world's cultures and creeds.
The trouble with the skeptic movement - if you can call it that - is that there does exist a fine line between skeptical inquiry and cultural imperialism. And while I agree with Sam Harris and others that entire groups of people can indeed be wrong on scientific as well as moralistic fronts (the Taliban being a textbook case), I also take the view that as skeptical inquirers we need to be careful when stepping onto unfamiliar cultural terrain and indeed 'skeptical' of our own intellectual grounding. Such is the case of so-called 'Aboriginal science', a term that has gained considerable traction in Canada as well as in Australia over the past decade. A growing chorus of indigenous intellectuals, together with their non-Aboriginal supporters, have taken the position that indigenous knowledge has historically been written out of the mainstream (i.e. Euro-American) scientific narrative and that 'Aboriginal science' should be elevated to a position equal to that of 'western science'.
Important learning....but does that make it science?
There are several obvious problems with this argument from a skeptical standpoint. For one, it implies that 'science' is a cultural construct - and that this construct is intrinsically western. It also implies, much the same way that religions do, that there are multiple truths and that all points of view should be given equal weight regardless of how well they stand up to objective 'scientific' scrutiny. At first glance, this argument sounds disturbingly similar to the argument put forth by advocates of 'Intelligent Design' creationism, who routinely cast the mainstream scientific community as a sort of intellectual cartel dead-set on silencing theories that don't mesh with its ideological (read Darwinist) axioms.
At first glance, the Aboriginal science argument indeed sounds a lot like the intelligent design argument. Aboriginal science advocates such as George Hobson argue that western scientists "have a tendency to reject the traditional knowledge of native peoples as anecdotal, non-quantitative, without method and unscientific." A 2005 article in the University of Victoria newspaper The Ring makes similar claims, namely that 'western science' has effectively written out an equally valid scientific viewpoint. In this article, Gloria Snively, an associate professor of science, environmental and marine education, asserts that:
"The big, central questions here are what is science, and is aboriginal knowledge science. We're saying it is science, and that every culture has its own science. Right now, there's a complete blank—traditional knowledge is not only devalued, for most teachers it doesn't exist."
Is this simply pseudoscience along the lines of intelligent design creationism? To my mind, the answer is yes and no. Given that the generally accepted definition of science the world over is that of a quantitative, non-anecdotal approach to studying the universe, it is probably fair to say that the traditional oral transmission of knowledge does not constitute a separate 'science'. Science requires universal applicability in order to be of any consequence, which makes the notion of separate sciences abjectly non-scientific. On the other hand, it's an indisputable truth that North America's indigenous people possess vast knowledge of the lands they have inhabited for millennia, and that this knowledge has been systematically overlooked by Euro-American scholars. In this sense, the advocates of 'Aboriginal science' have a very strong case indeed.
While it's easy for western scientists to reject the notion of an 'Aboriginal science' on the grounds that science is simply science and belongs to no specific culture, such arguments do little to curry favour with ethnic and cultural groups that have for centuries been consigned to the margins of our society. Science may indeed be simply science, but the cultures that have dominated its language, its institutions and its practice have for centuries been white westerners (as well as, of course, men, which remains a significant problem in our culture). Moreover, traditional knowledge indeed has a colossal amount to offer to scientific knowledge, particularly in regards to its practical applications in terms of sustainable living.
It's still a bunch of white dudes.
To mind, the crux of the problem is linguistic and cultural rather than scientific. While few - if any - of my scientist friends would deny the importance of learning from all available sources and maintaining an open mind, most would invariably balk at the notion of separate 'sciences' based on cultural delineations. Science is indeed science - an ever-expanding body of knowledge that has benefited from wave after wave of discovery and innovation, much of which (especially over the past couple of centuries) has come out of the 'western' world. On the other hand, the word 'science' has, thanks to Euro-American parochialism and patriarchy, become synonymous with grey-haired white men in lab coats (in other words people who look and sound like Richard Dawkins). No amount of 'skepticism' can erase this fact, and to those who have been excluded for centuries, this matters a lot.
The word 'science' is a loaded word, a word which to many is - wrongly or not - synonymous with Eurocentric intellectual elitism. This, to my mind, is the main shortfall of the nu-atheism movement heralded by Dawkins and others. While Dawkins is a canny communicator, a phenomenal wordsmith and arguably the best PR man ever thrown up by science, he and his fellow travellers fail to adequately acknowledge their own inherent privilege - and how that privilege is perceived by people from other socioeconomic and cultural background who might otherwise embrace their worldview. If I were a scientist eager to encourage all of humanity to climb aboard Spaceship Science, I would be making it my mission to demonstrate how all cultures throughout history have contributed to the betterment of scientific knowledge and address this all-important issue of privilege. Call it political correctness if you like. I just call it good communication.
We need a lot more of these.
From Aboriginal standpoint, this means not only greater collaboration between scientists and Aboriginal elders but also improved science education in reserve schools, for which increased funding is needed. It means more Aboriginal science teachers and conferences like TEDx Hobbema and TEDx Six Nations. (If we can have a TEDx Mogadishu, surely we can have one of these!) It means a cultural reframing of what science is with a view to making the scientific world friendlier and more inclusive.
It might even behoove the scientific community to follow the example of Canada's Christian churches and embark on its own healing and reconciliation campaign and atone for past indiscretions against indigenous groups, which have included plundering gravesites, trespassing on traditional territories and generally treating indigenous people like lab subjects rather than as equal partners in the pursuit of knowledge.
And as for the Aboriginal worldview, I would argue that it constitutes a school of philosophy rather than a separate stream of science. But then again, who's to say that philosophy is a less important academic discipline than biology or physics? It is, after all, a 'social science'.
.png)
.png)
.png)
