McGill-Queen's University Press Blog

Akenson's "Some Family", a review from the Maclean's Web site

"Around 1600, a shipwrecked English sailor named Andrew Battell fell into the hands of an African people known as the Jaga. Pushed out of their own central African homeland, the Jaga had been fighting their way southwards for decades, and had militarized their culture beyond even Spartan levels. Infants born in the army camps were killed at birth, Battell reported, lest they should slow their progress; the Jaga maintained their numbers by adopting the older children of conquered tribes. Out of several thousands warriors, only about a dozen older men were of the original Jaga stock. When an Italian traveller met them 80 years later, the Jaga lived in a permanent city. They no longer had any genetic link to the men who began the march, but culturally they remained the Jaga, proud of their "ancestors" and faithful to their now ancient military law: all children born in their city were still subject to infanticide, so warriors’ wives took care to give birth outside its walls.

The Jaga are a salutary (if extreme) reminder, according to Queen’s University historian Donald Akenson, of a truth that genealogists ignore at their peril—genealogy is a social, not biological, construct. Tracing lineage is a universal cultural imperative, Akenson notes in his marvellous book Some Family: The Mormons and How Humanity Keeps Track of Itself (McGill-Queen’s UP), our prime means of keeping our sense of collective self from dissolving into "swirl and flux." It tells us who is entitled to what in a material sense and who may marry whom; equally important is the social cohesion conveyed by a shared history that shades, in traditional societies, into a common origin myth. Just don’t confuse the storyline with literal truth.

Akenson aims his warning squarely at the Church of Latter Day Saints’ vast genealogical project—and those who utilize it to research their family lines. He means it kindly, for Akenson is an unabashed admirer of the Mormons’ "immodest, hubristic, monumental and heroic" undertaking. Since 1894, the LDS has been gathering the information required to create a single human family tree, one that will include each of the 102 to 106 billion of us that demographers estimate to have ever lived, and it has done so in the generous spirit of retro-baptizing everyone and thus seeing the entire species into heaven. (This despite the fact Mormon hell is remarkably mild, at least compared to the damnation envisaged by the more fire-and-brimstone faiths, and barely inhabited at all—in an interview Akenson says the only occupant he is sure of is Judas Iscariot and "maybe Hitler.")

The Saints’ Family History Library now contains two billion names, collected from old Bibles, census documents, and every other demographic source it could tap. The Mormons have poured resources into their goal, introducing five generations of new computer systems between 1969 and 1991. Once they find—as Akenson is sure they will—efficient ways of mining the genealogical riches of Asia, there’s every reason to expect the Saints will collect as many as five billion names of real people. That’s an astonishing statistic, well worth emphasizing: the Mormons are set to identify five per cent of all the individual humans who have ever existed.

This is the approximate point at which Akenson thinks the Mormons will hit the wall of forgetfulness, made up of cultures (and social classes) in which names were never written down and are forever lost. But it’s the problems inherent in the current two billion names that most intrigue the historian. Human interbreeding, not just third cousins but much, much closer than we care to contemplate (and in most cultures, record), is rampant in all our ancestry. Without it, an individual living now would have required, 2,000 years ago, separate ancestors to the number of 6 followed by 23 zeroes. Estimated world population in the time of Christ: 300 million.

Then there are the genealogies uncritically absorbed from various ancestor-fixated cultures. They tend to stretch back to mythic eras. Akenson checked his own Swedish ancestry and found he was related to "Odin and other folk who came from Asgaard." At least great-great- etc. grandfather Thor sticks outs like a red flag; the far more widespread instances of false paternity lie hidden.

Medical research indicates that between five and 10 per cent of children are not the biological offspring of the men commonly called their fathers. (It is, indeed, a wise child who knows his own father.) Matrilineal reckoning is more certain, but given the one-in-10 childbirth mortality rates in pre-modern societies, "mother" in old records at times means the woman who raised the child. But most genealogies, certainly those in the Western tradition, are patrilineal—consider the long line of "begats" in the Old Testament (the Mormons certainly do). Any male lineage of that length, says the genetic evidence, is almost certainly broken somewhere along the line.

So is the Family History Library useless? Not at all, according to Akenson. Identity is social too—we are who our cultures say we are. If you want to know where great-grandpa (whether he was so genetically or not) came from, the Mormons have provided an unparalleled resource, one that reinforces a lesson humans often forget: we’re all family."

- Brian Bethune

Tom Flanagan -- a special to the Globe and Mail

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

September 22, 2007 --

"CALGARY — Admit it – you'd love to see a federal election. Governments may be boring, but campaigning is so much fun. Sadly, this week's Quebec by-elections make a quick call for a national vote much less likely. After doing so badly, neither the Liberals' Stéphane Dion nor Gilles Duceppe of the Bloc Québécois will be in a hurry to pull the plug.

That's because the results were a dream come true for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Not only did the Conservatives gain a seat while their main opponents each gave up one, the Liberals' loss was right in their leader's backyard. Mr. Dion imposed his candidate on what had been the safest of ridings and then hyped the Outremont race by spending so much time there that he must have damaged his already shaky reputation.

As a result, political junkies waiting for Parliament to reconvene on Oct. 16 can forget about seeing the opposition parties defeat the government right after the Speech from the Throne and spark an election this fall – Mr. Harper's fifth campaign in six years. Much as he might like an early race, election dates are now fixed by legislation and he can't just ask the Governor-General to dissolve Parliament. The opposition must pass a no-confidence vote, and that just got a lot less likely.

And why would he want to go to the polls? Because Stephen Harper is trying to do what no Conservative leader since Sir John A. Macdonald has been able to do – build a viable, long-term political coalition with a broad enough appeal to win elections and, if it falls short, enough strength of character and self-discipline to avoid immolating itself on a bonfire of recrimination. In other words, he wants the Conservatives to replace the Liberals as the natural governing party of Canada.

By winning the last election, Mr. Harper's campaign team demonstrated its ability to learn from experience and to correct its mistakes. And there were plenty of them. When the team came together in 2001, its members were more like "friends of Stephen" than professional campaigners – although passionate about getting their man elected, they had a lot to learn.

For example, at the beginning, the Canadian Alliance campaign's organization was simply unworkable (too many people who didn't know each other in too many cities) and the plan for selling and processing of memberships was inadequate. In 2003, several months were wasted in the Perth-Middlesex riding's by-election (although the loss led directly to the merger with the Progressive Conservatives) and, in 2004, there was a failure to respond to negative ads, poor communication of the platform and the absence of an indigenous campaign in Quebec. As well, there was the late lapse that caused a Conservative slump and a devastating Liberal counterattack at the end of the race.

But the team learned – in politics you have to, or you won't be back – and the learning process has continued since the party came to power. For example, Mr. Harper has seen first-hand how difficult it can be to make good on some campaign promises.

But there are certain things the party still must do if it is to forge the political dynasty the Prime Minister has in mind.

I am no longer directly involved with the party's campaigns; after managing three of them and helping to organize a fourth, I've gone back to my day job as a political-science professor. However, from this tranquil perch, let me summarize what I learned before leaving – my Ten Commandments of Conservative Campaigning.

1. Unity The party contains libertarians, social conservatives, populists, Red Tories, Quebec nationalists and Canadian nationalists, plus many people who don't care much about any of these "isms." They all need each other. They can never win unless they try to understand each other and reach compromises that they can all live with.

2. Moderation Canada is not yet a conservative or Conservative country. The party can't win if it veers too far to the right of the average voter. In times of perceived crisis, a conservative party can win by positioning itself further to the right, as shown by the victories of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Ralph Klein, Mike Harris and Gordon Campbell. But Canadians don't perceive themselves in crisis right now.

3. Inclusion The traditional Conservative base of anglophone Protestants is too narrow to win modern Canadian elections. While preserving that base, we have to appeal to francophones, Roman Catholics (44 per cent of the population, according to the 2001 census) and other racial and religious minorities. The key to the long-term success of the Liberals has been their cultivation of minority groups. Conservatives have to take away that advantage.

Conservatives will not win a majority government simply by adding seats in Quebec, although that will be part of the formula. They also must add seats elsewhere and that means doing better with ethnic voters. The suburbs of Toronto, Vancouver and, to a lesser extent, other cities are now filling up with new Canadians who, based on their social values and capitalist work ethic, should be natural Conservative voters, but who are still emotionally tied to the Liberal Party.

Conservatives must break the Liberal hegemony over Italian, Chinese, South Asian and other ethnic voters. That doesn't mean getting all their votes, but it does mean getting a bigger share, in order to win the suburban ridings that a conservative party would ordinarily expect to win.

4. Incrementalism Conservatives must be willing to make progress in small, practical steps. Sweeping visions have a place in intellectual discussion, but they are toxic in practical politics.

Incrementalism is the twin of moderation. Small conservative reforms are less likely to scare voters than grand conservative schemes, particularly in Canada, where conservatism is not yet the dominant public philosophy. In any case, incrementalism is intrinsically the right approach for a conservative party.

Modern conservatism has its origins in Edmund Burke's critique of the sweeping radicalism of the French Revolution. "We must all obey the great law of change," he wrote. "It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation. All we can do, and that human wisdom can do, is to provide that the change shall proceed by insensible degrees."

5. Policy We have to develop well-thought-out policies and communicate them effectively. Since conservatism is not yet dominant, our policies may sometimes run against conventional wisdom. The onus is on us to help Canadians understand what they are voting for.

A political campaign is an extended exercise in rhetoric, mobilizing ethos (character), pathos (emotion) and logos (reason) to persuade millions of people to vote for the candidates of your party. People don't vote just for good ideas; they vote for potential rulers whose character they can trust and who inspire passions of loyalty and support.

Conservative statecraft has to be more than the logical deduction of policies from philosophical premises if it is going to succeed. It has to be an artistic combination of sound policy with the deft communication of conservative values, such as integrity, reliability and fortitude.

6. Self-discipline The media are unforgiving of conservative errors, so we have to exercise strict discipline at all levels.

There must be a complete plan for the campaign, so the leader is not forced to improvise. Staff must avoid the limelight and let the communications department deal with the media. Candidates must talk about the platform, not their personal beliefs, and (except for designated spokesmen) concentrate on local rather than national media. Members and supporters must be careful and dignified in all their communications, even e-mail and Web postings.

The media can be savage with any party that lacks discipline, but they are particularly suspicious of conservatives. There is no point complaining about it; the situation is the same everywhere in the democratic world. But it means that conservative parties must put special emphasis on self-discipline to win elections.

7. Toughness You cannot win by being Boy Scouts. Conservatives have to conduct thorough opposition research and make use of the results, run hard-hitting, fact-based negative ads, and do whatever is legally possible to jam our opponents' communications and disrupt their operations. The Conservatives were ambivalent about playing hardball in 2004. In 2006, however, Tory advertising went for the jugular and it paid off. Their war-room messages also scored heavily against the Liberals (especially with their campaign jet's "beer and popcorn" rejoinder and the income-trust investigation).

Another point for consideration is how to respond when other parties play hardball. Mr. Harper set the right tone during the last campaign in a squabble with the Liberals' Paul Martin about who was in bed with the separatists. When the media asked him if he wanted an apology, he said simply, "I don't go around demanding apologies. I can take a punch."

8. Grassroots politics Victories are earned one voter at a time. Door-knocking, voter identification and Get Out The Vote programs make up the holy trinity that wins close races. Conservatives must extend their lead over other parties in ground-level campaigning and grassroots fund-raising.

All political parties need to raise money, identify supporters and mobilize volunteers, so they all make use of the same methods, to varying degrees. But grassroots politics is particularly critical. A conservative party stresses individual choice and responsibility in a competitive marketplace. That gives it a special responsibility to deal with voters as individuals, to find out what their concerns are, and to give them a stake in the political process by making it easy for them to donate time and money.

Moreover, the Conservative Party draws heavily on the legacy of Preston Manning. His vision of the Reform Party as a neo-populist revival did not lead to forming a government, but it triggered an ongoing organizational revolution of political parties. As Mr. Manning's heirs, Conservatives have to be in the forefront of creating a party that is easy for individuals to join, encourages donation and volunteerism and is committed to winning elections one voter at a time.

9. Technology We are living in the biggest, fastest-moving communications revolution in human history. Each election campaign features new technologies. We must continue to be at the forefront in adapting new technologies to politics.

Right now, Conservatives are the grassroots party of Canadian politics. They have to keep using technology to mobilize the grassroots in ways that no one has ever dreamed of. As students of German philosopher Friedrich Hayek, they believe in the market as a process of discovery. It is only logical for them to be in the forefront of applying to politics the technological marvels produced by human ingenuity in a market economy.

10. Persistence Campaigning is a tough business and mistakes are frequent. We have to correct errors, learn from experience and keep pushing ahead.

The Harper team certainly has no grounds for complacency. The Liberals are cunning and experienced and have enormous bench strength. They are the best-established brand in Canadian politics and the Conservatives still have a lot to learn from them.

The New Democrats and the Bloc Québécois are not national parties in the same sense, but they are equally tough competitors on their own turf. The next election will be not just a street fight but a brawl, as the other parties go all-out to recapture ground taken away from them.

But even if complacency is not in order, the team should have a little confidence, based on its achievements. In just a few years, they were able to stop the supposedly unstoppable Mr. Martin. The next time out, they have a chance to make Mr. Harper the one who is unstoppable.

Tom Flanagan is professor of political science at the University of Calgary and a former Conservative campaign manager. This essay for The Globe and Mail is drawn from his new book Harper's Team: Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power, published today by McGill-Queen's University Press. "

*** Harper's Team is currently being sold in book stores.

The Torontonians - Review in the Quill & Quire

From Vol. 78, No. 8, October 2007 --

"Academic chit-chat has led to a forgotten Toronto-set novel being republished and given new scholarly consideration – it just took a while.

Twelve years ago, Dalhousie University history professor Suzanne Morton came across The Torontonians, by Ontario author Phyllis Brett Young. Published in 1960, the novel details the life of a housewife in 1950s Toronto. Morton began using it in a small Canadian women’s history seminar, where she and the students shared one copy between them. "Historians interested in women’s experience often draw upon fiction as a way to get insights not available in more traditional sources," Morton says.

The Torontonians was first published by Longmans, Green and Company, receiving a glowing review from The New York Times and a mixed review from The Globe and Mail. The Ontario-based Young, who was born in 1914, wrote four novels, one fictionalized childhood memoir, and a thriller under the pseudonym Kendal Young, all released between 1959 and 1969. Her books were published in Canada, the U.S., and across Europe, and her novel The Ravine was made into a movie.

Fast-forward to 2007. Morton is now teaching at McGill University, and on a lunch date with McGill associate dean of arts Nathalie Cooke, the two compare notes about which Canadian novels they are using in their classes. Realizing their selections were completely different, Cooke reads The Torontonians and comes to think it would be "a wonderful addition" to classes in literature, history, sociology, and women’s studies. Cooke had also been the co-editor of the Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series for McGill-Queen’s University Press, and she and Morton dream up the idea of an MQUP reissue of The Torontonians. "[Executive director] Phil Cercone didn’t hesitate for a moment. I discussed it with him one day, and he basically agreed on the spot," Cooke says. "So Suzanne and I started our sleuthing."

The professors track down the rights, which have been held by Young’s daughter Valerie Argue since the author died in 1996. Supportive of the new edition, Argue agrees to provide a foreword and photographs, providing "a glimpse into the world of a bestselling Canadian novelist in the mid-20^{th century – when bestselling Canadian women novelists were as rare as trees above the tree line," Cooke says.}

Voilà: an October fiction title for MQUP. The new edition of the novel also features an introduction from its champion professors, who plan to teach the book in some of their classes. And York University professor Amy Lavender Harris will also use parts of the reissued book for her undergraduate course on Toronto literature. Harris also runs the Imagining Toronto project, which tracks references to the city in literature, and previously wrote about The Torontonians on her blog. She seem The Torontonians as "remarkably prescient" about subsequent Toronto issues and literature, from Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman to Russell Smith’s angst – "it’s an essential book about Toronto," Harris says – as well as of the crisis of the middle-class woman unveiled three years after Young’s book in Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique.

But there was still a small hitch for the press: how do you promote a novel without its author? In response, MQUP publicist Jacqueline Davis created a trivia contest featuring 10 questions about 1950s and ‘60s Toronto and negotiated a stay at Toronto’s Fairmount Royal York Hotel for the grand prize. "The idea was to attract people that are interested in looking at that era of Toronto history to do the research on the questions and get them interested about the information provided in the book," Davis says. The hotel, which is referred to in the novel, was happy to donate a one-night stay for the contest, Davis says. Contest winners were to be announced on Oct. 1, to coincide with the novel’s release."

- Megan Grittani-Livingston

Harper's Team in the Quill & Quire

From Vol. 78, No. 8, October 2007 --

"Harper’s Team is a lively and intriguing firsthand account of Stephen Harper’s rise to power, as well as a valuable historical document that does not pretend to be unbiased. With an infectious excitement about the process, Tom Flanagan, a University of Calgary political science professor who played a key role in Harper’s two leadership campaigns and his national campaigns, recounts the trials of fighting an election. His account of the democratic process in action quickly becomes the foundation for a subtly anti-democratic treatise on political strategy.

Flanagan, a committed classical liberal inspired by Friedrich Hayek, the guru of Thatcherism and Reaganomics, is clearly thrilled to have broken from campus life and bloodied himself in the political fray, and he is ecstatic that his team has emerged victorious. This book is above all a victory song, one that recounts tales of courage and perseverance; of near-misses, mistakes, and painful blows endured and overcome; and of shrewd strategy and finely executed tactics.

It is perhaps the glow of the victor’s fervour that has caused him to forget himself and reveal the truth he worked so hard to mask. He writes as though his readers are political allies who share his enthusiasm, ready to employ his market strategies, his "Ten Commandments," in the final push of what he calls a "domesticated civil war." What else could explain his ability to deride the Liberal claim that Harper has a "hidden agenda" while simultaneously outlining the man’s agenda and the techniques he has used to hide it?

Flanagan reveals that, for him, Harper’s electoral victory is a major step toward the ultimate goal: "The work is far from done. Canada is not yet a conservative or Conservative country." He argues, however, that conservatives must not frighten off the voters by stating or implementing their agenda too suddenly. In politics, one must appear to be moderate, initiate conservative policies incrementally, and, once a position of power is attained, "you control the government, you choose judges, appoint the senior civil service, fund or defund advocacy groups, and do many other things that gradually influence the climate of opinion."

Flanagan’s look behind the scenes tells us about the agenda Harper is concealing and the methods he uses to conceal it. Clearly, his hope is that by the time Canadians realize where Harper is leading them, he will have already achieved his goal."

- Robert Meynell, a Senior Public Policy Research Fellow at the Dominion Institute

Richard W. Pound, review and interview in the McGill Reporter

By Neale McDevitt --

"Win Wimbledon. Swim the English Channel. Walk in space. These three items could very well be on Richard Pound's ever-dwindling To Do list. Chancellor of McGill, Chairman of the World Anti-doping Agency, partner in the Montreal law firm of Stikeman Elliott and a former Olympic swimmer, the outrageously accomplished Pound will conquer a new frontier on September 17 with the release of his book Unlucky to the End: The Story of Janise Marie Gamble (McGill-Queen's University Press).

Not that this is his first foray into the world of literature. By his own count, Pound has authored "seven or eight" books, including a biography of W.R. Jackett, the first Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Canada. It's the genre of Unlucky to the End that makes it stand out. Richard Pound, true crime author?

In Unlucky to the End, Pound tells the shocking story of Janise Marie Gamble, a 21-year-old Peterborough woman who, on March 12, 1976, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for the first-degree murder of Calgary police officer Allan Keith Harrison during a botched robbery—despite the irrefutable evidence that she had not fired the fatal shot.

Pound first heard of the story from his squash partner and fellow McGill alumni, Colin Irving—a Montreal lawyer who took up Gamble's cause after seeing her story on CBC's The Fifth Estate and eventually helped secure her release after 14 years. "Irving asked me if I was interested in writing the book and gave me all his files," says Pound.

Poring over the documents, Pound's interest turned to shock and incredulity at the court proceedings. In the book, Pound contends that the sentence was based on legislation not even in force at the time. As a result, Gamble was punished more severely than she would have been under the existing law of the day. "When you realize that she was charged with a crime that didn't exist at the time that the events took place and given a sentence that didn't exist at the time that the events took place—something is clearly wrong," he says.

Pound broadened his research by conducting interviews with witnesses, police and lawyers from both camps. The deeper he probed, the more disturbed he became with his findings. "It's scary to see how very small incremental steps can lead to life in prison," he says.

Having completed the bulk of his research—or "most of the backswing" as he puts—Pound had to put the book on the shelf for several years as other literary projects demanded his attention, including a book on the Olympics that was published in 2004 and another on doping in sports that came out in 2005.

Although it only took four months to write when he finally sat down to do it, Pound shrugs off the suggestion that it was any great literary feat. "I think it's easier to write non-fiction than fiction. When you have to sit there and generate a story from your own head—I can see why that would be daunting. With non-fiction it's just a matter of marshalling the facts and telling the story the way it happened. Hopefully, the injustice or the pathos will hit you that much harder."

And where does Pound find the time to research and write such a thorough account—especially considering his many professional duties? "There's loads of time," he says in his typical straight-shooting manner. "The key is just not to piss it away." Spoken like a true crime writer. "

Paul Eid reviewed in the LRC

An abridged version of Rawi Hage’s recent review of Eid’s Being Arab from the Literary Review of Canada --

"I was at first reluctant to review Paul Eid’s Book Being Arab: Ethnic and Religious Identity Building among Second  Generation Youth in Montreal because the book is a study of second-generation Arab Canadians (or more precisely, Arab Québécois) and of this group’s ethnic and religious identity. I am a first-generation Arab Canadian or Québécois, among other things, and one of the few secular, heretic non-believers among this group. In short, I am an anomaly in a community where even members of the second generation consider religion to be an important factor in their lives. (According to the statistics in the book, 52 percent say that religion is "very important" and 30.5 percent that it is "important"). I am always slipping and twisting not to be confined within a single identity box with the label "A." But then, somehow, reading through the book, and perhaps because I have been living in the West for a long time, I found myself feeling a certain communality with the second generation’s mode of an ever-shifting existence, and I was reminded of my own profound rebellion and self-imposed exile from first-generation ways of living and values.

Being Arab is a social and psychological mapping of a very misunderstood and neglected group, the second generation of Arab immigrants living in Montreal. Chapters and questions cover a wide range of topics, including language proficiency, the consumption of cultural goods, in-group friendship and parental commitment to ethnic identity transmission, and the place of religion in second-generations Arab lives. Eid charts the ever-volatile negotiation of identity and endless maneuvering that is performed and adapted in the presence of the ethnic majority. It is a complex sociological analysis, backed by scientific data, which presents a portrait of the community I had rebelled against in many ways, covering attitudes toward gender, the predominance of organized religion and the confessional divides.

A multifaceted, multilayered and constantly changing identity is certainly not exclusive to Arab second-generation youth. It is virtually a universal second-generation immigrant experience, a fact that Eid is well aware of. As he states in the introduction: "It must be acknowledged that children of immigrants never mechanically replicate the cultural models and patterns to which they have been exposed. Rather, they draw on them to make contextual and multifaceted identity choices."

What I believe justifies the book’s insular and geographically confined study is Eid’s insight into and awareness of the particularities of this community’s history and values, and the role of gender and religion therein. Such insight makes the community a unique case study. But, in the end, one must also stress that the book is not just an analysis of the Arab community of Montreal but also a reflection on the wider experience of Canadian multiculturism, particularly in Quebec.

One of the strongest and most insightful aspects of Eid’s book is precisely [the] elaboration—premised on a deep understanding of the intricacy of the dialectic—of the divide and, more importantly, the communality on cultural and social issues between Christian and Muslim Arabs, particularly on issues of gender, religion and patriarchy. Another strength is how well the book succeeds in situating this internal social fabric against the backdrop of a multicultural metropolis like Montreal.

Eid’s studies on gender and the female role in the Arab immigrant family could only come from an insider who has lived, experienced and reflected on these issues. He describes how female virginity, chastity and the relation between tradition and family honour are important components in the tension that exists within the community—between first and second-generation Arabs, and between young men and women (who have different perspectives on this subject). He shows how this tension helps build an invisible fence between the Arab community and the French Québécois. Luckily the book does not present this issue simplistically. For instance, according to Eid’s interview, within the community the attitudes of young women toward virginity are nuanced. His study also indicates that attitudes on female chastity, honour and "protection" differ little between Arab Christians and Arab Muslims. And throughout the book, Eid does an impressive job of laying the data for potential cultural generalizations—the kinds of simplistic notions that some of the western media would love to exoticize and sensationalize to assert the superiority of one culture over the other—but then swiftly and thoughtfully reassesses these generalizations with nuanced analysis, data and interviews.

In the final chapters, Eid proceeds to compare the diasporic Arab communities in France and in Canada. According to Eid, both communities are subjected to discrimination. But the two contries’ policies—and the reactions to the ethnic communities to these policies—are very different. France’s assimilationist approach aims for a forced integration, whereas Canada’s multicultural ideal permits—if it does not exactly encourage—minority groups to maintain their ethno-cultural differences. In France, the confrontational relationship between the Arab second generation … and the majority is part of a wider dynamic, namely the struggle of the neo-colonized in French society. In contrast, the Arab Canadian relationship to the majority is not framed by historical injustices. Eid argues that discriminatory practices in Canada are far subtler. He cites Raymond Breton’s 1983 study, which shows "very low levels of racial discrimation awareness among visible minorities in Canada; rates of self-reported discrimination among Canada’s racialized minorities are abnormally low," according to Breton, "when measured against the actual magnitude of the problem."

*** Read the full review in Vol. 15, No. 7 – September 2007 issue of the Literary Review of Canada.

Gruenwald's "After Auschwitz" reviewed in The Canadian Jewish News

Review by Janice Arnold --

"Two new memoirs by Montreal survivors make important contributions to the Holocaust canon.

Hungarian-born Hermann Gruenwald’s After Auschwitz: One Man’s Story, as told to Bryan Demchinsky, business editor of the Montreal Gazette, is published by McGiull-Queen’s University Press, while Romanian native Yossi Indig self-published A Promise to My Mother: Memories of a Life Shaped by the Holocaust.

Both authors have remarkable memories and gifts for storytelling, as well as candour.

Gruenwald, born in 1925, grew up in a well-to-do landowning, liberal-thinking family in the northern Hungarian village of Rohod. He recalls an idyllic, sheltered world that soon would be shattered by an evil no one could have imagined.

"Growing up in Rohod during the 1930s was like living in an enchanted garden with a pack of wolves lurking nearby. We were isolated in our backwater village and lulled by the enduring traditions of rural life," he remembers.

Gruenwald, his parents and four siblings were deported to Auschwitz in the summer of 1944. He entered the death camp as a still naïve, rather vain, youth. That would change soon. One of the teenager’s first jobs was grinding up human bones that had not been totally consumed in the crematoria.

Through chance, he got a coveted job working in the camp’s kitchens, and was soon "promoted" to cook, a rare position for a Jew and one that had the advantage of being able to get enough to eat and other perks. "Among the inmates of Auschwitz, we were the aristocrats," Gruenwald writes.

He was among the group that also cooked for the SS officers, including the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele, who enjoyed mean and other fine foods inmates could only dream of.

Gruenwald describes the man who made the selections from the incoming trains, and unknown to him at the time, carrying on cruel medical experiments, as a civil person who would greet the kitchen staff daily.

Gruenwald writes frankly about the thievery and black market that flourished. The belongings confiscated from prisoners, stored in warehouses known satirically as Canada Kommando, were pilfered and bartered. Gruenwald himself had acquired a couple of suits this way that he was allowed to wear when not working.

He admits he quickly became hardened to horrific circumstances, like the frequent hangings that were required watching. "I never though of the man who was going to be hanged. I was 10 or 15 yards away from a life about to be snuffed out, and all I could think of was, ‘Let’s get this over with so I can go back ot the barracks and enjoy my free time.’"

Not proud of it today, Gruenwald reflects, "Your senses are deadened. You are wood. You do your job. Maybe Mengele figured he was like that—just doing his job."

After the Russians entered Auschwitz in January 1945, Gruenwald was forced along with several thousand in a march of almost a week through the winter to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. He soon was sent to Gusen II, a nearby camp where he slaved in an aircraft plant, slowly starving. The dead piled up.

"One morning when I woke up, one of the men in my bunk was dead beside me. In Gusen II, death lay next to all of us, so this event, which should have been traumatic, wasn’t. It was the natural order."

So natural that young Gruenwald was resigned to his own end. Only the U.S. Army’s liberation of the camp in May 1945 saved him.

Gruenwald returned to Hungary and tried to start over, but could not live under communism. He immigrated to Canada in 1950 and prospered in the garment industry, as owner of Reliably Hosiery, and in real estate."

- As printed in The Canadian Jewish News, August 23, 2007.

MacLaren's "Commissions High" -- Review by John Pepall

From the Times Literary Review --

"In 1880, it was decided that the representative of government of Canada in London should be called a High Commissioner. As a result, Nigeria today sends a High Commissioner to New Delhi.

The High Commissioner was initially a business agent concerned with railway financing and promoting emigration. The principal channel of communication between Ottawa and Westminister was the Governor-General. The position evolved with the evolution of Empire into Commonwealth; until the hundreds of high commissioners sent from one Commonwealth nation to another now are scarcely distinguishable from ambassadors.

Roy MacLaren, a former Liberal Cabinet minister, was Canada's High Commissioner in London from 1996 to 2000. He has written an at times wryly humourous and nostalgic history of the Canadian High Commission in London up to the eve of Britain's entry into the Common Market. He presents a vast amount of diverting political, social and biographical information, but two themes dominate.

There was constant concern for how Britain and the Dominions could work together in the wider world, which reached its effective high point in the Imperial War Cabinet established in 1915 and attended by the High Commissioner when Canada's Prime Minister was not in London. This trend was reversed by the paranoia of Mackenzie King, the Liberal Prime Minister of Canada for twenty-one years between 1921 and 1948, which saw British readiness to talk to high commissioners and keep them informed as an effort to exercise imperial control over the Dominions. Vincent Massey, High Commissioner from 1935 to 1946, was reduced to meeting British officials on the sly.

Schemes for imperial trade preferences generally foundered on British attachment to free trade and Canadian protectionism. The results were enough, however, that George Drew, a former Conservative opposition leader and High Commissioner from 1957 to 1964, engaged in a very public campaign against Britain's first bid to join the Common Market, concerned for the loss of Canada's slightly privileged access to the British market. MacLaren ends with the diplomat and diarist Charles Ritchie, High Commissioner from 1967 to 1971, writing: 'There remained the bonds of the past, but our future is no longer any concern of theirs.'"

- John Pepall