Update: our community mailboxes

So what’s up with Canada Post and the mailboxes they promised we’d have no later than September 21?
Turns out, in Campbell River the Canada Post contractors got only the first third done, prepared the sites for most — but not all — the others, and then, near as I can tell, halted the project. Maybe only temporarily, but I’ve seen no progress since well before the 21st.
People here tend to blame the incompetence of Canada Post, an easy target. Some even blame the union (how on earth does that work?!) 
But what if the apparent stoppage is deliberate policy? What if someone has finally  figured out that if the Conservatives don’t win the election, they’re not actually going to need those boxes in those locations?
That would actually be kind of smart!
And nobody at Canada Post is going to put out the obvious press release, saying, “It’s likely there will be a change in government after the election, so we’re going to wait until we get our new instructions.”
Even if that were entirely accurate!


September 29 revision:
Sandy was right and I was wrong: Canada Post is merely incompetent, proved by the fact that our mailbox arrived sometime late yesterday.
Which once again demonstrates the wisdom of Occam's Razor: the simplest answer is probably correct.
Justus' Addendum also applies: it's almost always delusional to look for any of subtlety, strategic thinking, or intelligence when dealing with a bureaucracy!

Notes from my walk through our neighbourhood today, September 20, 2015

1.  Usually by this time there would be Conservative signs sprinkled throughout the Rockland area where we live. This time they’re almost non-existent, although our across-the-street neighbour finally got his up this week, after our NDP sign had been up for nearly a month. As a rule, he beats us to it.
2.  Many of the places I associate with Conservative signs now sport Liberal signs. But not enough to be a trend.
3.  The Liberal signs are red. Except the bag signs, which started to appear this week. They’re quite distinctly orange, and from a distance I kept mistaking them for orange Blaney NDP signs. The Liberal candidate’s name is Schwarzhoff, hence takes up a lot of room on a small sign, hence is rendered in a small typeface, so you can be quite close before you notice the difference.
4.  I cannot see how the Liberal campaign would profit from this colour synergy, so maybe what we have here is the first clear indication of cooperation to come, as it surely must: there’s simply not enough separating the NDP and Liberal platforms to allow the Conservatives to carry on. And it’s pretty obvious by now that no party is en route for a majority.
5.  Judging only by the sign campaign, North Island-Powell River will return an NDP member. (Fortunately, there are other reasons to believe this as well!)
 6.  Canada Post sent us a letter three weeks ago:
"You will start picking up your mail and parcels at your new community mailbox on Monday, September 21.
We have started to install community mailboxes in your neighbourhood and to deliver keys to customers. If you haven’t received your keys or your mailbox has not yet been installed, don’t worry; you will have everything you need to start using your community mailbox by September 21...
Canada Post is proud to serve you and we are committed to making this mail delivery change as smooth and convenient as possible."                                                                       
Today there are no new community mailboxes in our immediate neighbourhood. Although most of the pads appear to have been prepared, some locations are still just holes in the ground.
Bet we don't get any mail tomorrow.
Just on the other side of the hill, en route to the Beaver Lodge Lands, I spotted a couple of the new ones, and of course all the ones I expected, the ones that have been there since that subdivision started to fill up, some 30 years ago.

Some modest requests

For me this election it's all about replacing the toxic Harper government, and I'd vote for anyone most likely to do that. Luckily for me that's the NDP candidate in our riding, but I'd vote Liberal or even (gasp!) Green if I thought those were more realistic choices.
So I'm happy to report they all have viable plans that would improve the present democratic deficit enormously.
Which brings us to the rest of the agenda for the next government, where, once again, I'm lucky because the NDP platform appears to me to be both realistic and transformative and consequently, easy to vote for.
But  ­- although it pains me to say it, and maybe it's a “third party” thing  ­- there are some files on which the Liberals clearly own the way forward.
So I'd like the next government, whether coalition, NDP, or Liberal, to steal some of those ideas, please, and implement them.
For me, infrastructure support for cities lines up right behind affordable child care. The Liberal plan to go into more debt while the interest rate is at an historical low so that the federal government can get involved in city infrastructure spending makes more sense to me than obsessing with “balancing” the budget, which is always a mugs game anyway. Over 80% of us live in metropolitan areas, and conditions are not improving, especially in the larger centres. Furthermore, such spending, it has been demonstrated repeatedly, is good for the economy, which just happens to be tanking under the careful ministrations of the Conservatives.
Win-win, in other words.
Then there's the Senate, our expensive, ineffective, but unfortunately necessary albatross.
I'm for abolition, of course, so it's easy to vote for that. But I'm also realistic enough to know that Prince Edward Island and Quebec, among others, will never agree to abolition. They have their reasons, and they're not illegitimate. Abolition also means opening the Constitution, and, having watched both the Meech Lake and Charlottetown debacles, I'm not prepared to go there again. For me, that's off the table, which means that reform is the only realistic option. The Liberals just happen to have implemented what I think could be the most transformative reform possible: they've removed Liberal senators from the Liberal Parliamentary Caucus, and have promised to reform the way senators are appointed.
Let's have more of that, please.
And finally, the drugs file. The Conservatives have been disastrously wrong about this, and any of the opposition parties would improve matters dramatically. But the Liberals are correct to press legalization and control, which is a far better option than the decriminalization the NDP is proposing.
I was watching some of our very middle-class neighbours sitting out on their deck with some friends, chatting and  overlooking the pool the other night. They all looked to be in their 50's. I was busy doing the dishes, and happened to see one of the guys smoking what appeared to be a cigarette. He didn't appear to be exhaling smoke; I then saw him pass that cigarette to the woman next along. I couldn't see the others, but eventually the cigarette came back to him and the process was repeated.
It's not news, but Justin Trudeau is on to something when middle-class Canadians sit calmly on a deck of an evening, evidently totally unmindful of who can see them, and pass cigarettes around!
Just sayin'.

News: Conservatives want to warn us about change!

A few days ago my sister-in-law, Marion, sent me and a raft of others a link to an article in the New York Times called “The Closing of the Canadian Mind” by Toronto writer Stephen Marche. It's perhaps a little over-the-top but makes a good case, seasoned with a dose of acid, for why we desperately need a change in government; I recommend it.

You will undoubtedly already have read it.

Consequent to this, in my email inbox this morning, I received a copy of a letter from one of the others on the raft. It was addressed to Marion, and titled, “Be careful what you wish for...” It claimed to be based on a reading of her blog.

It clearly wasn't. It was a reaction to her recommending the New York Times article. But OK.

What struck me, however, and what I cannot get rid of, is the smugly condescending, even chauvinistic tone of the title: as if a successful semi-retired businessman from Penticton knows more about the needs of the country than a retired judge from Toronto, and feels free to point out the errors in her thinking!

As if.

I'm guessing he votes Conservative.

In reaction, I thought I'd compile a little list of my top 10 political wishes for implementation after the campaign ends, just in case anyone has forgotten why we need change.

I want...

1.  an electoral system that doesn't reward 39% of voters with all the marbles.

2.   a government that respects and obeys the law, particularly the Charter of Rights and Freedoms

3.   a government which isn't in perpetual election mode and doesn't game the system for partisan advantage.

4.  a Senate (if, as appears almost certain, there must be one) that actually applies “serious second thought” to government bills

5.  a Security apparatus that is supervised by either an independent or a multi-party political board

6.  parliamentary committees that actually consider the bills and issues before them, and are free to report to Parliament on the evidence, in a non-partisan way

7.  a Ministry of Defense that respects its service men and women, and proves it by looking after the injured

8.  non-partisan judicial appointments

9.  an end to partisan advertising on the public dime

10. a foreign policy that is about more than unconditional support for Israel

There is, of course, an entire litany of other issues: support for the CBC, resuming the long-form census, answering questions in Question Period, loosening the rules for charity political involvement...and I, just like you, could go on and on. In fact, the Tyee compiled a list of 70 outrages so we don't have to try to remember them all.

The case is depressingly clear; it's no wonder Conservatives want to warn us about the dangers of change.
Because it sure is tempting!

A story...

...In which Justus learns something useful:
Last summer San bought a large blow-up wading pool. For the grandchildren.
It's fine, and the kids loved it, but inflation is time-consuming and a bit tricky. As one might expect, it takes a lot of air.
So last summer I thought, "I'll just use my shop vac". The big one, the one that actually works and that I use for cleaning the workshop and also, when that was necessary, for unflooding the basement. Turns out it sucks really well, but doesn't blow worth shit.
Happily, I had an old one, on its last legs, which no longer sucked much, but blew long enough to inflate the pool.
As I  said, the kids loved it, and consequently, so did we.
That was last summer, and this winter I did a cleanup. The old vac was one of the casualties, because I'd forgotten why I still had it but remembered it was nearly dead.
So we arrive at this year. San and various grandchildren would like the pool up. My shop vac still isn't adequate and our house vacuums don't blow.
But, I remembered, somewhere we have an inflation pump, for the large air mattress we used to go camping to Ontario which we no longer have because it sprang one too many leaks.
I found it: 12V; I got a pump that plugs into the car.
I couldn't see how I could get the car close enough to the pool.
So, I reasoned, there must be a transformer available that would do the trick. And there was, AC to DC, available at Canadian Tire.
So I bought it, brought it home, and plugged the pump in. It ran, but barely. Not nearly enough to inflate the pool.
Off to the internet, to discover that, while the output of my new transformer was 12volts, 2amps, the car's output is 12 volts, 15amps.
So I maneuvered the car down to near the pool, nearly taking out the bird feeder, and inflated the pool.
And resolved never to try that again.
Instead, I ordered the correct transformer, worth considerably more, from Amazon.
It arrived today, and works exactly as advertised.
Anyone want a spare AC to DC transformer in perfect working order, for free?

The Alberta election: some random thoughts

1    How about that election, eh?
It was certainly one for the record books, like the Rae win in Ontario in 1990, but much more decisive: all the polls said NDP majority, Conservatives running as far back as 3rd, but almost nobody believed something that politically improbable could happen.
Until it did.
Now, of course, the result appears kind of obvious: this is the province that elected mayors Naheed Nenshi and Don Iveson, the one that elected the most “progressive” of Progressive Conservatives, Alison Redford, when the polls all said that scary Wildrose was sure to win the 2012 election.
So it turns out all that really happened was that Jim Prentice appeared to be both kind of uncharismatic and in the pocket of the oil industry. And Rachel Notley, who almost nobody knew before the campaign, appeared, by contrast, to be kind of charismatic, straight-talking, and progressive, but in a business-friendly way. Really, not scary-NDP at all.

Isn't it delightfully satisfying when political hubris is punished so completely?


2    Many pundits have identified Prentice's “look in the mirror” remark, assigning responsibility for Alberta's current economy to Alberta voters, as deeply offensive, and one of the reasons he and his party were crushed. Although it's hard for an outsider like me to see how he's wrong, he apparently didn't help himself when he added: “We all want to blame somebody for the circumstances that we are in. But the bottom line is we’ve had the highest cost and the best public services in the country, and we haven’t built, basically, a revenue model that sustains them.”
Prentice could hardly say, “We've been pandering to those of you who want first-class services but wanted to pretend they were free for the last 43 years”, but that's what the Alberta economy and political system look like to those of us in the neighbouring provinces.
I'm not convinced Notley's NDP will have an answer. In Canada we're all deeply committed to magical thinking where taxes are concerned. We don't want to pay them, but we insist on the services. The NDP is not better than other parties in this regard: we still believe that taxing the rich and corporations is the solution, when that is, at best, only a small part of it.
Previous Alberta governments could have done like Norway, but voters chose instead not to pay sales tax.
I doubt if Notley's NDP will take that on.


3    It is an article of faith in NDP circles that assembling a database of sympathetic electors and then organizing them to get to the polls is the path to success, and undoubtedly that groundwork is part of it. But in the Alberta election that territory belonged to the PC's, who also happened to have most of the money.
We can probably conclude from this, and the last federal election in Quebec, that sometimes the leader and the conventional wisdom of the day is all that really matters.
Further evidence: the last provincial election in BC, when Christy Clark, a charismatic, photogenic lightweight, beat  Adrian Dix, a serious, thoughtful pro, on style points and with a whisper campaign that impugned his morality. The fact that she promised to deliver the wonders of the Ali Baba cave didn't hurt, but I doubt if it tipped the balance.
We could easily have lost North Island, and would have, in spite of far superior organization and enough money, had it not been for Claire's popularity on the islands, where she, as the MLA, had been regularly and where the Liberal candidate hadn't bothered to visit.


4    What kind of premier will Rachel Notley be?
Above all, I suspect, she will be pragmatic. You don't overcome 43 years of PC government by challenging the electorate's fundamental assumptions, at least, not all in one go.
She'll have her work cut out just to deal with the well-funded campaign to undermine her government's legitimacy that is undoubtedly in the offing, and she should expect the federal Conservatives, the ones that offered their congratulations today, to do everything they can to sabotage her success.
I imagine she'll be guided by the examples of Roy Romanow, Alan Blakeney, Gary Doer and Greg Selinger, rather than those of Dave Barrett and Mike Harcourt...
She certainly won't be a socialist premier.

And finally, can we NDPers please abandon the canard that the NDP has to revert to it's “socialist roots” in order to win? That's so clearly not the case!

Duffy, drugs, and redundancy

ONE:

I never liked Mike Duffy.

And when, at CTV, he became an obese, hale-fellow-well-met caricature of “The Parliamentary Reporter”, whose only journalistic attribute was that he could gain access to any politician he wanted in return for faithfully reporting the spin of the day, “loathing” is perhaps not too strong a word for the quality of my admiration.

I do believe I liked him even less than I like the odious Rex Murphy today.

So Stephen Harper appointing him to the Canadian Senate merely confirmed what I already knew about Harper and his government.

Patrick Brazeau? Pamela Wallin? Mere icing on that cake.

Subsequently, when Duffy et al were caught with their faces fully submerged in the trough, apparently (if reports are to be believed) some people were astonished that Duffy and Harper took advantage of the appointment. Apparently no one could have foreseen that the Senate of Canada would be exploited to satisfy the political desires of the Harper government.

Seriously? Did they think Duffy was being recognized for his outstanding journalism? Did Duffy accept the appointment because of any ambition to subject the laws passed by the House to “sober second thought”? Did someone have to point out the trough to Mr Duffy, and did anyone think it necessary to warn him against immersing himself too deeply?

Of course not. Duffy did exactly what was expected: he raised tons of money for the Conservative Party, spoke to partisans whenever asked, and basked in the limelight and the love. Almost all of it on the Senate's dime, and while making sure that his income was commensurate with his new status.

Like most Canadians, I cheered when Duffy and Co. were outed as the porkers they are, and followed the subsequent political farce, the one that culminated in bribery and the self-serving justice imposed by their fellow Senators, closely.

But I'm mostly over that now. I'm pretty sure almost none of this will stick to Harper by the time there's an election on the line, and I'm pretty sure the Canadian electorate is already feeling even more cynical about politicians. The Senate, which for procedural reasons cannot be abolished, will be discredited even further. 

I expect this cynicism suits the present government, the one that brought in and passed the "Fair Elections Act" (Bill C23, which actually only makes it harder for disadvantaged people to vote) just fine.

None of this is good news for the 60% of Canadians who do not support the Harper government. I wish I saw any indication that the combined opposition was actually serious about taking control, changing government, and cleaning up the mess.

TWO:

Yesterday the CBC did an expose, revealing that too often your local drug store carries expired drugs on its shelves:

After Shoppers Drug Mart recalled one lot of Alesse 21 birth control pills that expired in September 2014 and were sold to about 100 women, a Richmond, B.C., resident sent CBC News photos of a newly purchased non-prescription allergy medication stamped with an expiry date of August 2014. A CBC producer found more on the shelf at the same store.

When CBC News checked a dozen drug stores from three chains in Toronto, journalists found a diabetic nutritional supplement that expired last October, other past due allergy medications, an expired sleep medication and a number of products that expire this month.

OK; that's not good. I think we can safely assume that expired drugs are less effective than they are meant to be, and that's bad. But they're not toxic, and they do contain active ingredients.

On those same shelves one can find homeopathic nostrums, “approved” by Health Canada:

Health Canada is responsible for ensuring that remedies sold to the public are both safe and effective. In recent years, however, Health Canada has allowed various natural health products to enter the market without requiring rigorous proof of effectiveness. Indeed, there are many remedies and homeopathic preparations currently licensed for sale that do not contain any of the allegedly active ingredient. A number of these are hom­eo­pathic “nosodes.”

…

Health Canada continues to assure Canadians that it tests products for safety and efficacy before allowing them to enter the market. All approved homeopathic products are given a DIN-HM number.

And there's more: “Bogus Children’s Remedy Invented by CBC Marketplace Approved by Health Canada” is the headline of a story which pretty much sums up the contents. Follow the URL for the story.

Personally, those stories strike me as a lot more to be really concerned about.

Just saying.

THREE:

There's a war memorial in Ottawa, located just outside the front doors of the Parliament Building.

After someone was seen urinating on it a few years ago, the Conservatives thought it would be a good idea to put a guard there.

So there were two ceremonial guards there when a nutter with a rifle decided to make a statement at Canada's Parliament, and the first thing that nutter did on his way into the building was shoot at both, and kill one.

The thing is, those guards, as is the norm, were armed. They just didn't have any ammunition.

And that seems fine, if you're only protecting the War Memorial from urinators.

So, after Cpl Nathan Cirillo was killed, did the braintrust at the Parliament Buildings decide to provide the guards with ammunition, so they could actually guard the war memorial?

Well no: they provided police protection for the guards at a cost of $425,000/ year.

Frankly, that seems more than a little counter-intuitive.

Not to mention redundant.

Bill C51

19 February, 2015

The Hon Stephen Harper,
Office of the Prime Minister

80 Wellington Street

Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2


Dear Sir,

I am deeply worried that Bill C51, currently before Parliament, goes well beyond the intentions stated by the government.
I refer you to the articles by a number of very knowledgeable people, including legal and parliamentary experts, who have made this point before me.
And I am old enough to remember the RCMP, acting under similarly-vague authorization to that envisioned by this bill, illegally burning down a Quebec barn belonging to a relative of an FLQ member.
I thought we had learned from that experience.
It is also very worrying that there appears to be no effective oversight of the security agencies which would be empowered by this legislation.
I trust appropriate amendment will be made before passage to correct this legislation, and to render it acceptable in a fully-democratic society.

Yours very sincerely,



copy: MP John Duncan
121 East Block
House of Commons
Ottawa ON K1A 0A6

On Just Havelaar, by Mike Rooksby

Mike Rooksby, initially my father's Oak Bay High School colleague and subsequently his long-term friend, wrote the following appreciation in reaction to his death on December 13, 2014, aged 99: 

 

Justus, my ancient friend

It’s the first Oak Bay staff meeting in 1969 and he, along with other teachers new to the school, has been introduced. He is an interesting-looking man, tall and thin with an unusual accent that I can’t quite place; my accent is also commented upon regularly so I feel free to ask him about it. Dutch, my goodness, and teaching English?? On subsequent occasions, at staff meetings or elsewhere, there was always something interesting going on behind those eyes and his opinions on educational matters were often quite different from mine. And yet I did not feel any animosity, rather returned interest, and soon I started to listen more carefully to this man. I started to realise that the teaching of Math and that of English were very different matters, different skills for both students and teachers, and also that my approach to things in general was not the only valid one. He was patient, but resilient and even insistent; in spite of the 24-year difference in our ages, we discovered other mutual interests in woodwork and the natural world and, on going to visit him at his house, I made the acquaintance of the remarkable woman who was his wife. Once, while I was there, we used a canoe, I think, to tow a large log into the channel from Portage inlet that was behind the house, for cutting into firewood. He was also proud of the prodigious rhubarb that grew where the septic field outlet emptied, and showed off the huge jade plant that flowered and that had come with them from Terrace. Later, with my family, we would go on walks in Thetis Lake Park or by Esquimalt lagoon, and Hanneke would make her delicious mushrooms-in-sauce-on-toast to warm us up, a concoction I have sometimes tried to make but never replicated.

There would always be a project on the go, or plans for one; over the years I learned a myriad of skills, from the need for SHARP tools (that was a tough lesson where his patience wore thin because of my incompetence) to the tried and true ‘mend and make do’ philosophy which extended to all aspects of his practical life ( later there was the ‘famous’ replacement of a broken metal part of a Felco Pruner with an oak one; it did not last long, but the very idea I found amazing) . He impressed upon me the importance of using hand tools respectfully, of drawing out a plan beforehand (though later in his woodworking life that particular aspect appeared to take a back seat, or sometimes no seat at all). He taught me about joints and glues, grain and texture and numerous techniques which were of interest even when I couldn’t conceive of ever using them. His practicality, however, did not extend to cars, of which there were a number of highly doubtful choices that came to unseemly ends, but he was not interested in them, instead getting annoyed if they did not work. There was one occasion when he needed to borrow my TR4A sports car to go home for something forgotten, I think, and he phoned me in a panic because he could not get the handbrake off. It was a special kind called a ‘racing’ handbrake, for which the end knob that is generally pushed in to release it worked in reverse mode, so that to release it all you had to do was pull on the handle; the knob was pushed in when you wanted it ‘on’. He told me many times that it was a “stupid” design!

Over the years he shared with me many stories from his early days as well as later ones, always belittling his own contributions and extolling Hanneke’s; the stories about coming to Terrace by train, of his early jobs, of times without a job, of their transfer to Vancouver Island, Hornby, UVic and then Kingham Place are all recounted in his memoirs, but I remember being so impressed at how he and Hanneke could be so very different in so many ways, and yet still be absolutely devoted to each other. There was never the slightest doubt as to the solidity of their marriage and the pride they took in each other and their family. It is hard to imagine the courage it took to be married and start a family under those so difficult times of war and post-war Holland, and then to take their family to a far-off country with no prospect of returning for a long time. He told me that the two of them had  promised each other that, once they were in Canada, they would speak only English to each other so as to assimilate more quickly and learn the nuances of the language, and indeed I never heard them speaking Dutch unless on the phone to their relatives in Holland. 

And then there was the laughter. Always there was this effort on both our parts to get each other’s goat, resulting in all kinds of jokes and loudness that I think both our wives found somewhat raucous and uncouth. His views on things were always well-articulated and rational so it was sometimes hard to find an angle to argue, but we generally found conversation a wonderful fresh-air experience and it all helped me find my own ‘voice’ on important matters. And that is the crux of what the real influence of Justus on me was: he forced me to think about what I said before I said it, to question every assumption that I was making and to examine all I said for flawed reason. It was, too, always a joyful and exhilarating experience, often ending with trivial issues or discussions about woodworking or boats or music. He so enjoyed ‘intellectual’ banter.

You, to whom I am writing this, know him better than I, of course, so I am unlikely to bring anything new to your knowledge. I thought, however, that you might like to hear what an ‘outsider’ had to say; I can barely scratch the surface of who he was, only express what he meant to me and to Susie and my children. It was he who told me about the piece of property along Piercy Road that we eventually bought, that proved such a wonderful place for us and our kids for holidays. It was he who got me going to the discussions about ‘left’ and ‘right’ schools in Victoria and made me think about elementary schooling. It was he (and Hanneke, of course) who showed many people what standing up for their beliefs meant to him in all kinds of situations (not just Clayaquot and Strathcona). But it was all melded into a mix of humour, genuine liking for each other and for the battles of the mind, and a trust that was paramount to all his dealings with everyone he knew. He probably knew neither how to lie, nor even contemplate it. 

He had no time for sport of any kind, nor for other ‘games’. He loved classical music and he played his flute with delight even if his skills were not those of his beloved brother Charles. I can recall many times picking him up from their Denman house in the morning for our walk with the dog, having to pull him out of the cabin at the bottom of the garden from his practice. 

In the last phase of his life he was, of course, gradually declining in many ways, and yet in spite of Michelle’s more recent arrival in my life he always - till the end - remembered her name and who she was and never made a mistake; he always reminded me to give her his love if she were not there. I am so glad I saw him not a month before he died; he was still good to visit even if the conversation was at a different level; probably mine is too.

 My friend Justus: a man of passion and integrity, devotion and determination, whose love for his family always came first in every way. 

Michael Rooksby

Willem Justus Havelaar 9/11/1915 to 12/13/2014

First, a brief story:
In the summer of 1965, by one of those flukes that has pursued me from time to time, I found myself in Rotterdam, playing officer cadet on a Canadian naval frigate. We were in Rotterdam for an official visit, tied to a wharf across the harbour from where, in 1951, the Havelaar family had departed for Canada aboard the M.V. Zuider Kruis.
Shortly after arrival, I was granted some leave to visit my great-aunt Emilie Mees, known in the family as “Old Tante Miek”, who lived  on an estate in the middle of Rotterdam.
We eventually got around to what we'd been doing in Rotterdam, and I explained that I'd been part of a select group of appropriately turned-out cadets and officers who had been received at City Hall.
“And did anyone make a fuss over you?” she asked.
“No, except I was interviewed by a newspaper reporter.”
“Well, it's too bad it wasn't the old mayor who greeted you. He would have recognized the significance of meeting a Havelaar.”

I think that was probably my first real insight into my dad's culture.

Those of you who have read his blog (justhavelaar.wordpress.com) will know the particulars of my parents' voyage to and settlement in Canada, and will appreciate the vistas of opportunity that move provided. You probably won't, however (because he glosses over the facts) fully grasp the hardships of the first ten years or so, which went hand-in-hand with the adventure.
It can't have been easy, for example, to survive that first Canadian winter with 4 young children in an uninsulated house built largely of wet shiplap. In fact, I now think I probably very nearly didn't survive it.
It can't have been easy for an ex-publisher to survive and then become accustomed to working in the woods as a chokerman, or in a sawmill, hauling lumber from the greenchain and loading it into boxcars, either of which would have been hard for anyone.
It can't have been easy the first time he was “laid off” during one of those cyclical logging-industry downturns, and anyone can imagine what he experienced, wondering how the family would cope, and where the next job was. I know that fear penetrated even my seven-year-old brain.
It can't have been easy working in English, a language of which he really had only academic knowledge. (Especially in Terrace, BC, where the rules of grammar didn't really apply!)
I know it was a real leap of faith and desperation to pack up in Terrace so that he and my mom could go to Normal School in Victoria.
And the whole time, I now realize, a man who had grown up in a family of considerable privilege, with maids to look after the household, had to deal with the fact that we were constantly desperately poor in a way we had never been in Holland, and could only escape that poverty through his labours and intellect.

If you asked him about this, he'd tell you they were successful because he and my mom were a formidable team, with complementary skills. He'd tell you he owed everything to her strength and sense of purpose, and the fact that he couldn't fail her. He'd refer to her ability to manage and stretch the little money they had. And he wouldn't be wrong: they did complement each other, and she was a rock.

But I think there's more to it than that. I think my father, in a way that eluded even my mother, had an adamantine sense of self. He never doubted that it was important to be a Havelaar, not in the standard social or class sense, but rather in the sense that he was part of a long line of people who knew how life worked.
He had been brought up imbued with the social and cultural capital of his extended family, and he just knew the rest would come.

And then, of course, it did.