CKNW Editorial
for September 13, 1999

My friend Trevor Lautens writes so elegantly that even when it’s nonsense it reads so awfully well. He is the only reason I still permit that ideal bottom of the bird cage, the North Shore News, to come to my door.

Last Saturday in the Sun, Trevor, who is a tad on the conservative side, waded into the Chinese boat people issue. Interestingly, Stephen Hume did the same thing and pointed out just what a picayune issue it is when you think of the few hundred involved and the more than 25,000 refugee claimants we have per year, most of whom arrive by air. But Trevor is not troubled by the facts – like John Reynolds he would prefer to get emotional but unlike Reynolds, Trevor isn’t running for anything unless it’s the school board in West Vancouver.

Trevor, like so many I hear from, yearns for the good old days. Hear this from paragraph four.

“Goodbye Canada of my youth, now land of the loonie and the lunatics! Once you were the country of tough people who survived harsh winters, depression, war, scarcity. Now you are the land of lobby groups, soft-handed lawyers, governments with their retinues of fawning courtiers, apologists and fixers – the class that writes off $100 lunches with each others.”

Trevor even throws in a little John Donne to wrap things up. Such elegance … such good writing … and such utter rot.

The Canada of Trevor’s youth just happens to be the Canada of my youth. It was the era where Chinamen drove vegetable trucks, took our laundry, and, so we supposed, spent the rest of their time in opium dens. Japs fished, farmed and looked after our gardens. Hunkies farmed and occasionally were graciously permitted to play for the Toronto Maple Leafs to show how tolerant and liberal Conn Smythe’s team was – it did not, it must be noted however, go so far as to permit French Canadians to play. The hierarchy was set in stone. Lesser breeds didn’t vote or belong to professions – they were expected to know their place. When Doug Jung, two years my senior in law school, became the first Chinese Canadian lawyer and had the temerity to contest Vancouver Center and win for the Tories, Senator Farris was apoplectic and could only sputter “that Chinamen …”

Women knew their place then too – it was in the home cooking, sewing and making babies. And if the old man belted her about a bit from time to time, the police would seldom even answer the call, it being only a domestic affair. The hubby could get drunk, screw around to his hearts content, and slap the little woman around and nothing was said. The little woman just smiled and knew her place. Divorce was virtually impossible for most women both for social and financial reasons and we kidded ourselves that it was really because ladies really liked their spot in the social pyramid.

Indians, of course, were not even people. They were whatever the Indian Act from time to time said they were. Our society gave them a massive alcohol problem then complained that they were mostly drunks.

The only real citizens were those of British extraction. Every once in awhile a Polish name like Gzowski popped up but that just served as a bit of seasoning to the Anglo-Saxon mix. Best not be a Catholic – and your child certainly ought not to marry one. And as for Jews it was like my Dad said. While there is the occasional good Jew they’re kikes, not to be trusted, and for God’s sake don’t let one in your club because the next thing you know you’ll be swamped with them.

Of course lawyers did more gentlemanly things – even personal injury lawyers like my very good friend and teacher Tommy Griffiths were looked upon as uncouth mouthpieces because they used juries to separate flint-hearted but oh-so-proper Toronto insurance companies from their spoils. And Trevor’s right - there were no lawyers standing up for people’s rights because the people who needed those rights, the Chinese, the Japanese, what we called Hindus back then, the Indians – and of course women - were prevented by the social structure in which they were stuck from making a fuss.

Places like Toronto where Trevor grew up and Vancouver where I grew up were run by family compacts – all nice and white and mostly Anglo Saxon. For those in the upper third of that pyramid, things were terrific. When you graduated from University, your Dad always knew someone. And you continued as part of the great Canadian Oligarchy as your parents and grandparents had done before you.

Yes Trevor, those words of the good doctor are indeed so apt … never send to ask for whom the bell tolls … it tolls for thee and me and ours – and for the nifty way we ran things once. The tocsin tolls to tell us that Canada’s not a white Anglo Saxon country with a bunch of rather tiresome French Canadians thrown in any more – indeed it hasn’t that been from the outset. It’s just that minorities – and women – began to believe us when we talked about democracy, freedom, tolerance and civility, with a fair chance for all, and stepped up to take their turn at bats.

And it will never be the same again.

And I say thank God for that.