And a few years later, on my first solo crossing of the Sahara, I was in a marketplace in an oasis in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, as far away from civilization as any place on earth. Timbuktu was the nearest location,   but it was a long way away, over a thousand miles perhaps, but in the same desert. A woman eyeing me, sitting for hours while I was waiting for some form of transport to the next oasis in the central area near a few market stalls, she engaged me in some humorous, even flirting behaviour in pidgin French. “Quelle compagne?” “Where you from? You have wife? You want another wife? Very faithful, very beautiful!”  We laughed as a crowd gathered around to enjoy the good fun.

Then she pulled out a necklace, (she was wearing dozens of them and bracelets), and gave me one to give to my wife. The beads are battered and broken and I swear some of them are hundreds if not thousands of years old, but together they are beautiful. Now that I think I have “wisdom”. I wear the old Amazonian’s bead necklace as a badge of honour and when I feel a need to connect to all time and all places, I wear the oasis woman’s timeless necklace. It connects me to all those indigenous men and women I have lived with and come to know, even though briefly, on five continents, in over twenty deserts, in dozens of remote countries, over 52 years of wandering into their village or krall or yurt or thatched hut or in Borneo into the longhouses of Dyak head-hunters, alone, unannounced, a single white man! I was  always welcomed, always fed, often no words were understood by either party, but there was always much laughter, mostly at me , but warranted, not derisive just humorous,  in my ignorance of their culture or because of how I looked.. . .and mostly with their children. I knew they appreciated the special way I had with their children (needless to say I never laughed at how they looked) Sometimes I was asked to sing  one of my cultures songs and a few times I was asked to dance,  and when I did  it was always the Charleston. And I might add, always well received, except when in the Dyak longhouse.  I fell through the bamboo slat floor up to my armpits.

You know what is remarkable? It’s 52 years since visiting them, living with them, eating with them sleeping with them, I have never paid any of them a single dollar, nor ever asked.  I was always the honoured guest.

Now I wear the gift of their beads to remind me of what they have taught me.  My loved ones ask me “when I am going to grow my hair and wear a pony tail”. It has become a joke.

But I suspect now,  that in some desert hut in the Sahara,  I met the Buddha essence, I reached ‘satori’ but I didn’t know it  and there’s the joke. These precious beads and jewels are proof of  my satori.

It was in 1962, soldiering across Baluchistan,  alone,  boldly singing “you had a good wife when you left, Sound off, Sound off one, two three“  I never sang so joyously, and on into Iran and the deserts of Syria,  Jordan into the Sinai and the Negev, that I had these remarkable indescribable feelings. Words like spiritual, sacred, holy  don’t quite make it and none of it shook my atheist beliefs. But my feelings were overpowering with a sense of my part in something so big that it defied comprehension, just that I knew it was  awe-inspiring and uplifting.  These insights came in flashes. I had macro/micro visions of reality  instantaneously (that requires a whole journal entry on its own).  So I keep going back to deserts to try and recapture those feelings and mostly I do.   (It is of interest that Abraham,  Moses,  Jesus, Mohamed and Buddha had their 40 days and 40 nights in the desert and it was there that they had flashes of profound in sight! There is something about deserts!)

The only thing that seems to explain these flashes of insight for me  is Buddhism , he was an atheist  and deplored any form of his deification,  but his views about the inter-connectedness of all things for all time, in all places are being confirmed daily by subatomic physicists in labs everywhere. In the desert I felt that profoundly. Flashes of insight? Satori perhaps? ( see footnote) It makes me feel like a subatomic physicist working in Switzerland exploding atoms  every day,  as much as it makes me a Buddhist. Whatever I am,  I get more and more flashes of insight every day.  I think I am getting exponentially wiser LOL.  Not that I think I am something special.  Some of these insights may  come to anyone of any faith and at any age

BUT,  for now

Convention commands me to wear a polo shirt and chino’s.    MY life’s experience commands my heart to wear two iconic relics of my life around my neck. To understand the symbolism of those two necklasses is to understand me.

to reply or comment on this  to this blog  email        jdiakiw at edu.yorku.ca

Satori is a Japanese Buddhist term for “enlightenment.” The word literally means “understanding.” “Satori” translates as a flash of sudden awareness, or individual enlightenment, and while satori is from the Zen Buddhist tradition, enlightenment can be simultaneously considered “the first step” or embarkation toward nirvana.

Preamble

I  went to Vietnam recently.  Not my normal type  of destination.  I  still prefer to  head off on one of my solo trips to some out of the way desert, many deserts now,– the Kalahari, the Sahara, the Gobi, Atacama, in Chile, the Thar in Pakistan, the dozens of  deserts in the Middle East including Sinai and the Negev,  Always alone! . These are places most people think I go for the landscapes,  but in fact it is more like a time machine, going back to a prehistoric time where people live lives of remarkable simplicity. Their cultures and practices are so simple and yet so complex that it seems beyond my comprehension at times,  but I am fascinated and my photographs only skim the surface of what I see and learn.  AND alone I experience periods of great peace, meditative by default really, but very spiritual nonetheless. I have become I think very wise in the process, wise in a way that aesthetics could understand,  wise in a way that I know how much I do not understand, how little I really do know, and from indigenous people living in sacred lands  I have had many awe-inspiring flashes of insight  that shock and surprise me.  I have acquired a unique knowledge, but more!  It is more than knowledge,  it is as,  a result of  an exposure to the  layering, upon layering of experiences with various indigenous peoples in sacred lands, of  life at a visceral level by a single  white traveller, not  in a group,  that  I really do feel it is a knowledge that morphs  into a kind of wisdom that does not reveal itself in my day to day living. Few people, I think know the depth of what I feel and know. Few people in the world, in reality have accumulated that much exposure to so many deserts and so many diverse forms of  indigenous peoples.  As arrogant or pretentious as it sounds, I feel Buddha would understand. I have reached satori or flashes of insight (which is what the Japanese word means), steps on the way to some form of enlightenment. I have never felt so enlightened. . . or perhaps mad!

It is interesting that so few people ask me really what did I do and what did I see or what did I learn. It is like I was off for two weeks in Florida. What is there to ask?

It doesn’t bother me in any way it is just an interesting phenomenon and I know it doesn’t happen just to me,  but to anyone off on a different trip. Or even just a trip to Europe today.

This trip to Vietnam was different. I was asked by one friend why I didn’t write my little blog as I have in the past as I went along.  For example, my legendary description of my Gobi personally-inflicted enema, if you can call it that, was a detailed description that was so excruciating that it went viral!  I told him I could not write about my trip  in Vietnam at that time  as it was too painful.  Well now all the pain is out and I have expiated the demons that haunted me .  I have held a private wake for Ernie.  I am exhilarated!  Though a loss, is a loss, is a loss.

This is the story of that wake.  Read it if you like,  but I will not be offended if you do not read it  or if you read a few pages or paragraphs and quit.   I would love it if you commented on it but do not feel obliged. I have wept for days over this  and I am free now.  It  is a rambling diatribe.  It is a record of my emotional, warped perhaps ,  experience of carrying Ernie with me on this journey and what I inadvertently discovered about hideous war crimes committed  by the USA, that I had previously obliterated from my mind.  But I have experienced it all through the special knowledge I have acquired through my insights in the desert living with indigenous peoples and learning how they have dealt with death over aeons.

THE REUNIFICATION EXPRESS

How a trip to Vietnam became a wake for a loved family member and a lament for a Nation.

I took a trip to Vietnam in Feb  2010, from Hanoi, often on the Unification Express, a railroad that has run along the coast since French colonial time to Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City).  I took the trip with a small group of committed backpackers, who were young and middle-aged seasoned travellers and one decrepit senior,– me. I read many books written by North Vietnamese soldiers while I was there and I have been reading obsessively about Vietnam since I have returned.  I visited many of the places where my cousin lounged about bored, or fought horrific battles.  I feel tortured both by my visit there a month ago and all the books I have been reading since. It has been a revelation and I am ashamed at my naiveté.  I feel a bit like the concerned Polish man living a few miles down the road from Auswitz, wondering what was happening behind all that barbed wire and what was that smell?

I had a beloved cousin Ernie, a brother really. He was 2 or 3 years younger than me and idolized me. He was my Aunt Mary’s, son. She raised me with a devotion unparalled  during my first 4 or 5 years of my life. She married and moved to North Tonawanda, NY, just across the border from Canada. He followed my life from the US, like an explorer’s addict. He followed me everywhere.  My days at sea  in the Royal Canadian Royal Navy ,  later on Norwegian freighters to Africa, working on the gold mines of near Johannesburg,  and then my monumental journey around the world ,  a nomadic trip of mythic proportions from Vietnam then  Singapore to Beirut for 10 months of hitchhiking for a total cost of $3.41 for my transportation and accommodation  and lived in temples and monasteries  most nights. Sold my rare blood  for food money , and Ernie  knew everything I did there. He treated me like his older brother.  I am Godfather to his firstborn son, He was with me every day of my two weeks in Vietnam. He was why I went.

This trip was about Ernie’s wake, And a surprising and disturbing discovery. because it became more than  just a wake for Ernie,  but a lament for a Nation as well.

So on this trip there was not one satisfying photo, but a collection of happy  postcards to show my family and friends.  The images flew by on the large TV display screen as the family was anxious to dig into the Sunday meal, Not one of my pictures  has been printed large as usual. That too,  is like a metaphor. There will be a wake for the death of my photography.   Only my mind was printed large and it exploded.

. . . . . . . . . . Humpty dumpty fell off the wall. . . . . . but only my inner wisdom could put the pieces together.

To make a long story short he was conscripted as a grunt into the US Marines and spent his time in the worst hell holes of the battle front in Vietnam, He came home a hero with dozens of medals.  They renamed almost his entire town after him, he then went to Medical school, had three children, one of them severely mentally limited (Agent Orange). He would call me night after night in  his first year as an MD, He earned one million dollars in his first year practicing medicine.  He couldn’t get over it.   He kept all of it in cash on the floor in one room of his house, throwing bills into the air in disbelief. As he would ramble on and on about the war and the atrocities he committed, shaking down villagers with no Vietcong there, capturing strategic hills overlooking the Ho Chi Minh trail and on and on, in hell, obviously on Viet style drugs.

I was incapable of knowing what to do but listen and it was not enough and he shot himself in the head with his US issue army revolver in that room with all that money.  My brother Johnny and I went to the military funeral with the fly by, the 21 gun salute and all the weeping.

I went to Vietnam for Ernie. Now I am reliving it, hill by hill village by village through literature, particularly with a book that is high up on the best seller list right now, touted as one of the great war novels of all time called Matterhorn.   After one of the hills they captured, left for no reason, and then had to recapture it for no reason and the body count was horrific. The stupidity of higher ups, stupidity of platoon lieutenants and the relentless un-necessary loss of life of  a million  of North Vietnamese boys and girls, (300,000 MIS) and  a million South Vietnamese  boys and girls, and 269,000 US soldiers brutally slaughtered and  often  with agonising slow deaths waiting for a Medevac that could not come because of the relentless fog.

My daughter Kate came into my room while  tears were pouring down my cheeks, asking why I torture myself reading all this stuff.  But my  two weeks in Vietnam,  every day Ernie was with me and like a lot of vets they go back to search for some answers to all the stupidity, the human waste, the atrocities on both sides.

They search for  answers, some resolution,  expiation of shame or guilt. Ablution.  I finally came to grasp the absurdity of the presence of the Americans to even be in Vietnam. It  is beyond me. It staggers my mental capacity.

As an aside, my readings of the French Colonial occupation that, I so revelled in  as young  man in the wild and  romantic days on Rue de Catinent, the high street of old Saigon in 1965 were a facade. Old Saigon, the Paris of the East  was a lingering,  archaic remnant of 80 years of the most oppressive  and brutal raping of a country, both from the physical, economic and even intellectual  point of view. Women were raped at will for 80 years.  All in the name of bringing `their version of “civilization“  to a “tribal” people, violating every principle of the Republic . . ., Liberte, Fraternite, and Eqalite! The atrocities they committed are unspeakable.

Yet on our trip we met hundreds of joyful energetic and hard working people and were never confronted with a single expression of anger about what happened in what they call the American war.

I remember often a spring day in Washington at the awe-inspiring Vietnam War Memorial, with every name of the 269,000 American boys and girls etched into the black face of the granite who gave their lives for fucking nothing but the stupidity of a bunch of dumb old white men both in safe locations in Vietnam and in Washington.

I watched the same process over and over again–, an old man, or a woman, or a child search for a name, then move to the wall and touch it. Or run their finger over a name or kiss it.   I was overwhelmed with grief each and every time and I was reminded of the absurd waste and the fallout. I still weep just at the thought of that wall and those people touching a name (I wish Ernie’s name was on that wall) . . .  and the thought that there are millions of mourners who are reminded of their loss and the absurdity every day, not to mention the two million north and south Vietnamese soldiers slaughtered and the blistering damage to man and nature by agent orange and the devastating defoliation of thousands of acres of beautiful landscapes

And, as well, the thousands of living war vets, and their tortured dreams,  dreams that Ernie dreamed every night.

Admiral Zumwalt on CBS 60 Minutes, recently,  said he ordered the defoliation because they were losing 6% of their soldiers every week which meant there was a 75% chance of them not surviving one year. He then had to admit on national television that his son, a Swift Boat captain, died after the war from a form of leukemia caused by his exposure to Agent Orange.

My 2 weeks in Vietnam were like a 2 week holiday to Dachau.
Now I relive it because in the book Matterhorn, I have crawled on my elbows up every hill with Ernie through, every village with him and back again up Matterhorn. I know what it feels like to have machine guns raining down on me and  rocket grenades every minute and  watching a guy I have come to love have his face half blown off and another stepping on a mine and losing both legs ( “who is going to fuck a watermelon”, he asks angrily).  The hero, losing half his platoon just for the stupidity of a major who would not wait a day for the fog to clear for air support. . . . And it goes on and on and I was there with him and I finally understand.

After all the books, this last one finally let me, let it go. It took me day by bloody day, through the life of a marine grunt; Kate came by again and asked while I wept, “Why put yourself through this agony? Read a funny book” Why did I?   I did it for Ernie. I understand now what he was trying to tell me in his late night phone calls before he pulled the trigger.
I explained to my DR.  After I read Matterhorn, ( there on another matter) that I was weeping a lot, that my father had always taught  me to learn to cry like a man, when  joyous at a new born child, or your daughters wedding or at a funeral  or loss of a friend.  But where is the boundary between weeping joyously at your newborn child or the symptom of a mental problem,  I have been weeping relentlessly over my Vietnam experience  particularly at this last book about a platoon like Ernie’s, following the orders of imbeciles causing  the unnecessary loss of  marine faces, limbs  and lives.

The Dr said it is simply the cocktail of drugs I take. but I feel it is more that that, it is facing a psychological barrier on my own and coming out of it safe and whole and happy, because I weep with a dual feeling; the insanity and needless human waste and with the knowledge that I am approaching a union of understanding with what Ernie experienced and why he killed himself.

Yes I have wept relentlessly these last weeks.   I weep at the thought of  those 269,000 young men who have never known what it is like to slip naked into clean sheets with a loving partner, to see one’s first child or to watch a grand child grow up.  Yet with all those tears of feeling like I was with Ernie, came an enormous relief, an expiation of the horror of it all. But at the same time, I love the feeling of losing it; I love to cry, and all while knowing that I am resolving this madness in some inexplicable way.   I feel healthy and whole now.  I feel I can now move one and feel in some small  way I have honoured Ernie  with the feeling I have been at a month long wake ( two weeks of visiting Vietnam and two weeks of weeping  about the American War through reading Matterhorn mostly).   Yes a wake.

My journey to Vietnam with Ernie was my version of a wake, strange and irreplaceable. The psychological purpose of a traditional wake is to face up to the dead child, father, or son and look at horror of his dead body and face and then in the comfort of all the other people there who love that person to weep and wail and,  at the wake to drink, sing and dance, and to remember,  and somehow inexplicably one is able to face up to and  expiate the loss and move on productively. Even thouhg one never foregets the loss.  This practice of thousands of years in Europe is long gone in North America

In recent years we continually move away from all of this. Caskets are  mostly closed, often even the body is not present and a memorial is held, and in some cases nothing happens. At the request of the deceased nothing happens and all memory of the deceased is obliterated as if she/ he did not exist and the remains are scattered by a family member in woodland or scattered over the waters of a lake, often unknown to other members of the family. All pain of the deceased is presumed to be obliterated almost as fast as he or she died.  Is the pain of their loss swept under the carpet? Or is it buried deep within us somehow unresolved. I think so.

Is avoiding pain, disappointment or anger, whether in society or at home the way to deal with loss or social injustice? My trip was, I came to realize not just about Ernie but the emotions brought on about the American war in Vietnam. My trip was not just a wake for Ernie but a personal wake for the unspeakable horrors of an unjustified and ultimately illegal war against the North Vietnamese.  Violations against humanity? It was simply a war crime ,  as the Museum  of American War Crimes in Saigon amply  proves  with endless documentation and supportive photographs (Now called the Reconciliation Museum).

My weeping over reading Matterhorn was viewed with raised eyebrows by my wife and adult children.  I suspect they thought I was losing it and needed to see a psychiatrist,  They were relieved by my MD’S opinion that the cocktail of drugs I was on was causing my endless weeping.

Yet I have never felt better about understanding, my cousin’s death.   I feel strangely honoured to have somehow experienced what he experienced but in some holistic way I have expiated the demons of the mad men responsible for this needless war, this inhumane war crimes. And yet , a loss is a loss, is a loss.

If you would like to comment or respond to this entry email

jdiakiw@ edu,yorku.ca

Thoughts on gender identity and creativity

I was listening to CBC radio in the car last year while two celebrity men my age were talking like giddy little schoolboys about their hockey and baseball sports card collection. I envied their enthusiasm and pride in their collections and wondered why I never got the bug, even though at one point I had boxes and boxes of them that I had won from playing toss and match gambling. I loved sports and played virtually all types. I had a large number of cards only because I won them. Soon after grade eight I just threw them out. But as the celebrities waxed on about their collections I realized that I too had my own collections during my youth, and as William Wordsworth wrote, “ the child is father to the man”

In my young boyhood the secrets of my future creativity were revealed and it was only on looking back did I realize how early my quirky creativity became apparent. My boyhood interests fathered the creative person I am today. I had two collections, one a stamp collection which I still have, the other a collection of match boxes from restaurants and hotels. My stamp collection was my art gallery. I loved the exquisite designs of Olympic sport stamps from countries all over the world, created by the best artists in each country. I treasured these little lithographs. I selected them in the same way an art collector would. The match box collection also revealed this artistic bent. I selected them, not like others who collected them from as many cities or countries as they could. I collected only the ones which appealed to me because of their artistic design—- another one of my art collections.

From a very early age I also treasured my Kodak Brownie camera and collected photos I took that I thought were fine art pieces. Today I have other collections of fine art. While I could never afford original paintings, I do own a Miro lithograh and Picasso lithograph and many lithos of the modern French artists, some fine Japanese woodcuts, as well as photos by Walker Evans, Josef Karsh and Robert Frank . These are my stamps and matchboxes of old.

But there is more to my creativity than just collecting. I remember in grade seven and eight, tearing out images from magazines of dancers like Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly with images of them leaping through the air with incredible grace and athleticism. I was never able to tell anyone of my interest or do anything about it because at that time a boy who was interested in dance had to be gay and I was terrified of being labelled that way. The only way I was able to come close and maintain my masculine integrity was to take up sports that captured some of the elements of dance. I became a gymnast as well as a springboard diver. In both cases I was able to perform my dance moves in the air and not be labelled gay!

When I retired, at the age of 58 as a school superintendent and returned to university to teach, I fulfilled a childhood dream and enrolled in a modern dance class at the Toronto Dance School. By this time I felt confident enough about my own masculinity that I didn’t care what anyone thought. In my class of 20 students, I was one of only two males and the other 18 were young women more than half my age. They were all hoping to improve their skills to the level that would allow them to gain admission to the school on a fulltime basis. What a sight to see me in tights amidst all this feminine pulchritude.

Our classes were held in a wonderful room with a high ceiling and the walls were covered with mirrors . I remember one crowning moment when the accompanist drummer led us though a routine that culminated in all of us rising up on our toes to one final climactic plie. As we approached the final moment and the drummer reached his final strum on the drum, and as we rose up as one, arms gracefully above our head on our tippy toes, the drum beat ended precisely at the moment when I unfortunately punctuated the final drum beat with a horrific thunderous fart. All twenty sets of eyes could be seen in the mirrors glancing my way and I turned pomegranate red. It certainly affirmed my masculinity. I did not attain admission standards for a fulltime place in the program.

There were other manifestations of my creativity that affected my identity. I began to sew. For years I made my wife’s clothing as well as my two daughters. My crowning achievement was making my daughter’s wedding dress. It was simple, elegant and chic. Again I feared that people would think I was gay. Whenever I publicly told anyone I sewed I always said “yes, I can make a skirt or a dress for my wife on a Sunday afternoon during an NFL football game.” It was in fact true, but it was an attempt to dissipate any thoughts of my sexual preference by adding this very masculine activity. How silly it now seems on reflection.

And it doesn’t stop there. I am avid flower grower and arranger. I made two massive flower arrangements for my daughters wedding that framed the ceremony. And I also love to cook . I studied French cooking while living in Germany and I devour cookbooks and cooking magazines. I am a very inventive and creative chef, if not a consistent one. As well, I love interior decoration. Our house and cottage are carefully decorated with many antiques that I have restored – collections of antique glass, fine artwork or my own photographs, and of course always fresh flower arrangements. My main hobby now is photography and I hold three or fours exhibitions a year of my work.

It is not that I excelled at all these hobbies, in fact I engaged in far more projects that I ever completed and fine detail and finishing are not my strengths. The old adage applies that I was a jack of all arts but master of none, but there is a record here from a very early age of an innate predisposition to artistic endeavours.

When you combine all these interests – the dancing, the fashion design and sewing, the interior decorating, the photography, flower arranging and the creative cooking, you emerge with a distinct stereotype of a gay male. When I was in the navy during my university years, I was the one who cut every mid-shipman’s hair! I have always had this fear growing up of being accused as gay and as Seinfeld said, “not that there is anything wrong with that”, it is just that I didn’t want that label applied to me . It is interesting and regrettable the things I did to ensure no one thought I was gay, including, regrettably, at times displaying homophobia. I am truly ashamed of those occasions, even though they were verbal displays. It is only now that I am comfortable enough in my own skin that I can talk about it. I know I am a “raging heterosexual” and I am proud of the more feminine aspects of my interests and talents.

]]> http://blogs.yufe.ca/jdiakiw/2009/10/21/the-search-for-my-sexual-identity/feed/ 103 http://blogs.yufe.ca/jdiakiw/2009/10/03/teach-for-ontario/ http://blogs.yufe.ca/jdiakiw/2009/10/03/teach-for-ontario/#comments Sat, 03 Oct 2009 15:25:41 +0000 jdiakiw http://blogs.yufe.ca/jdiakiw/?p=35

Fundamentally, I am calling for the opportunity for teachers without hope of a teaching position in the immediate future, to continue to develop their teaching skills in positions which can make a contribution to society. We do it for nurses, why not for teachers? Are the costs to society in the long run not comparable? There are many creative ways of implementing this initiative, perhaps offering up an additional teacher qualification for this service for example. If not a government program, a program, like Teach for America could be funded largely by contributions from supportive corporations like many of the organizations currently working with York University now operate.

We do need a “Teach for Ontario” type program, where social justice and equity underlies our commitment to our neediest students. It would provide an alternative outlet for our unemployed or underemployed teachers while improving the achievement of our failing students. It is not just an economic issue, it is a moral one as well.

A Ministry of Education task force could be created to explore these possibilities. Graduating 10,00 to 12,000 new teachers a year without much hope of employment is a waste of our best and brightest.

“Keeping the Conversation Going”

We currently have unacceptably high levels of youth unemployment, disturbing levels of violence, soaring drop out rates among Black students. Black-focused schools have been offered as one solution to this problem. It is not my intention here to argue for, or against Black-focused schools. I am interested in promoting a variety of alternatives that have proven successful in other jurisdictions or countries. I hope, also, to explore the issue of unacceptably high drop out rates among Black youth in a larger context and examine the problem in a more comprehensive way.

I teach in the Faculty of Education at York University. In the context of the social justice and equity approach I take in my Models and Foundations of Education courses, I repeatedly impress upon my students that in my opinion racism is the most divisive problem we face in our democratic Canadian society. While I am convinced that no nation on the face of the earth is more egalitarian than we are in Canada, and that no nation has implemented a multicultural, multi-faith society more successfully than we have, we still have a long way to go!

While we are inclined to not believe the extent to which racism is alive and well in Canada, it is undeniably true, based on several recent studies in Toronto, that White job applicants with comparable experiences and qualifications will be consistently hired over Black candidates. There are still areas of the city where Black applicants have more difficulty renting an apartment than White applicants do. We are failing our Black Canadian citizens.

I feel strongly that racism is the greatest threat to our democratic multicultural society. If we are to rectify this problem, the most critical, feasible place to do so is in our schools. It is sad to realise, as research has shown repeatedly in several countries, that Black children believe themselves to be inferior to White students before they enter Kindergarten, and White students perceive themselves to be superior to Black students before entering the school system.

As a starting point, it is critical that anti-racist principles be integrated across the curriculum, regardless of the composition of the student body or the location of the school within the province. All students will be immersed in a multi-racial environment at some point, whether it is at the hockey arena or a regional track meet and certainly in the workplace. However, a multicultural approach although beneficial to some extent, has fundamentally been unsuccessful in combating racism, as revealed in many studies. During the Bob Rae NDP government, an Anti- racist Directorate was established within the Ministry of Education and curriculum was being re-written from an antiracist perspective. All of this was dismantled, sadly, following the election of the Conservative Party under Mike Harris.

While an anti-racist initiative focussed on all students in all schools is essential in order to combat racism, there is still the problem of how to address the high drop out rate of many of our Black students, as well as other ethnic groups that persistently under-perform in our schools. Walking through the campus at York University one is immediately aware that Canadian minorities are the majority on the York campus. Thousands of Black students do achieve at a high level academically, but on the other hand there are thousands of Black students who are not succeeding in our Toronto schools. There is no reason why they can not be performing and succeeding as well as the students at York University.

Black students are certainly not less intelligent than White and Asian students. White students living in poverty, equally under-perform in our schools, drop out early, are unemployed at higher rate than their middle class White peers and are involved in crime at comparable rates to poor Black students.

I may be naïve, but I feel there are no compelling reasons why Black students can not complete high school and college at comparable rates as White students ‘

if given a supportive family and an educational system committed to addressing the problem of unacceptable dropout rates among Black youth.

A glimpse into other cultures where similar groups are disadvantaged by society offers insights into why Black students are not succeeding. In a region of Sweden, there is a pocket of historically Finnish citizens who are looked down upon by the Swedish population. They have a low status. The Finnish students do not perform at comparable levels to their Swedish compatriots. They are not expected to achieve well and they don’t. Yet when they immigrate to Australia along with their Swedish compatriots they perform equally to Swedish immigrants. Why is this? The Australians can’t tell the difference! They are expected to perform as well as the high status Swedish students and they do. Similarly in Japan, an ethnocultural group called the Burakumin performs poorly in Japan where they are perceived as a low status group, but they perform as well as other Japanese when they emigrate to the United States. When the social status of a group changes the educational performance also changes. Black children born into poverty, but raised by Black or White middle class families perform as well as White students.

In Canada, regrettably, whether subconsciously or overtly Black student are not expected to do well and they don’t. It is the perceived expectation of low status that has led to the concept of a Black-focused school in order to place students in an environment where they are consistently expected to do well. The Aboriginal focussed school in Winnipeg Manitoba has proven to be successful for seventeen years. This school has increased the dropout rate for Aboriginal students from 50% for the provincial norm to 70%. There is the hope, for those who are advocating the establishment of Black-focused schools in Toronto that Black students will be equally successful. It is not my intention here to argue for or against Black-focused schools. There is however a number of other approaches that would benefit Black students raised in poverty as well as all students faced with similar early disadvantages in life. I have been accused of being naïve and living in an ivory tower. There is nothing radically new about the suggestions I am making here. They are all accepted practical strategies that have proven successful elsewhere. Nor do I believe that any one of the following suggestions is a panacea any more that I think a Black-focused school is the panacea. I am simply putting together proven initiatives into a systematic package. I maintain a concerted effort is necessary at four major periods in the school life of a disadvantaged child; in the pre-kindergarten years, in grade 1, in grade 7 and in grade 11.

Certainly the biggest “bang for the buck” in my view is Head Start and other early childhood education initiatives. The impact is astounding and overwhelming. The Ypsilanti study initiated in the 1960s followed thousands of children born into poverty, half of whom were offered the Head Start program and the other not. They followed these students from their pre-school days to adulthood and concluded that for every dollar spent on Head Start society was saved eight dollars down the road. The difference in savings is truly remarkable. The dollars down the road are savings reflected in the decreased drop out rate, and hence higher employment. The savings came from a decrease in number of police, prison guards, teen-age pregnancy, judges, drug counsellors and unemployment and welfare benefits. Eight dollars saved for every dollar spent on early childhood education!

An infusion of funds to facilitate the implementation of widespread early childhood education in our most depressed low income neighbourhoods would help to ameliorate the disadvantages that children from low income homes experience. For example, the richness of the travel, literary and cultural experiences considered normal for middle class children is often missing in low-income homes.

A powerful and convincing drop out prevention program is aimed, oddly enough, at grade 1 students. The argument is made that those students who do not learn to read by the end of grade 1 are at an enormous disadvantage to their peers as they move on into grade 2 and 3. As the whole world opens up to them in print, being able to read allows students to speed ahead exponentially compared to those who can not. It is important that all students start on the same page as they enter the world of the written word. It is this gap between readers and non-readers that opens a gulf in achievement over a short span of time. By the time students hit grade 7 and 8 the writing is on the wall and one can predict future drop-outs as they struggle with their reading, particularly when confronted with the kind of reading required for comprehending “the text book”.

In 1990, my principal colleagues became convinced of the veracity of this argument and struggled to implement Reading Recovery, a very innovative, highly technical and very expensive program for all lagging grade 1 students. Two years later I released a teacher from our staffing complement in order for her to spend the year in Reading Recovery training. We then had within our own jurisdiction a teacher trainer available to train teachers to implement a widespread Reading Recovery program. York Region District School Board, with the strong support and leadership of the current Director, Bill Hogarth, now has a Reading Recovery program in every elementary school. It is my contention that this program is an enormously successful dropout prevention program.

After grade 1, the next wall that students face is at grade 7. It is at this level in particular that students are confronted by “the textbook”. Studies have shown that there is a significant jump in the level of vocabulary demands in intermediate level textbooks. There is also an overall rise in the level of academic demands placed on students and it is here that early identification of at-risk students should be made. Some schools and school boards have made this connection and have implemented remedial reading programs to counteract the gap that appears here between those who are going to sail through their high school years and those who will struggle.

It is at the grade 7 level that at-risk, disengaged students need to be identified and appropriate interventions taken. For example, in 1991, when I was Area Superintendent of 25 elementary schools and three secondary schools in Markham and Thornhill, the principals began expressing concerns over the number of struggling Black students. We agreed on a series of controversial actions to identify at-risk grade 7 and 8 Black students in Thornhill and Markham elementary schools. One teacher was pulled out of our area staffing allocation and given the sole responsibility of counselling and working with at-risk or disengaged Black students identified in conjunction with the teachers and administrators in the schools. We advertised in the York University student newspaper, inviting Black student volunteers willing to work with at-risk disengaged Black students once a week, as role models, mentors and tutors. We had a flood of applicants. Paul DeLyon, who was engaged for this project went at this responsibility with passion and enthusiasm. He worked with the parents of these at-risk students and they developed a Saturday morning Black school in 1992, perhaps our first Black-focused school where the curriculum reflected the Black experience in Canada. I contend that by identifying students at risk, beginning at the grade 7 level, and offering them intensive counselling, caring support and remedial assistance, and if possible offering them the opportunity to work and play with meaningful mentors, can significantly impact future drop out rates. York University has implemented such a program at their Westview Project as well as their Regent Project, working with students already in secondary school, but I contend that similar initiatives aimed at grade 7 and 8 students would have impressive payoffs.

In 1995, at Park Avenue Public School in Holland Landing we identified two severely at-risk grade 8 students who were bound to drop out even before the early school leaving option. The guidance counsellor placed them in a half-day co-op placement with two kindly old local craftsmen working in their workshops and the students were able to successfully complete their elementary schooling without further disruption or academic struggle. Innovative co-op work placements are an important option for disengaged or struggling grade 7 and 8 students. For so many of these at risk students a full day of school is unbearable. Finding meaningful placements for identified students in grade 7 and 8 can impact positively on their future prospects at secondary school. We need to be aggressively progressive in our efforts to achieve this kind of radical programming. It will not be easy to do but if we want our struggling Black youth to find a meaningful place in our Canadian society, this is the age level to do so. The opportunity is ripe for asking our business communities to partner with us to find appropriate placements for our at risk Black youth. We know that co-op placements often lead to employment and with Black youth unemployment so high this may also has positive employment side benefits

The final area for consideration is aimed at disengaged students currently attending high school. It is in the middle years of high school where the credit system finally catches up with lagging students. They miss a couple of credits in grade nine and another couple in grade ten, and when they start to calculate the annual rate of credit accumulation they begin to realise how many years it is going to take them to graduate, they become disillusioned and give up. A number of options to open up the structure of the high school are possible. The 24-hour High School would provide one site with intensive counselling, that combines online or correspondence courses, intensive credits or regular credits, in either day school or night school settings. A 6-year Grade 9 to 14 option would allow students to work half time or take extensive co-op programs and stretch out the time it takes to get a diploma but they would get one in a methodical planned and supportive environment. A final option is a 4-year dual diploma program. I recently presented a proposal to Seneca College to implement a 4-year dual diploma program — a high school graduation diploma and a 2-year Business Education Diploma. Disengaged students who have completed grade 10 will be eligible to attend this program at the Business Campus in Markham in conjunction with the York Region District School Board. At this point they have agreed to proceed with planning to implement this program. I would contend that this option would be of great interest to a significant number of disengaged Black students. I have elaborated on all these secondary school options in a discussion paper entitled the Postmodern High School
These then, are the alternative initiatives that address the problem of under-performing Black students in our schools. There are four barriers where the difference between the advantaged and disadvantaged youth are most marked; in the immediate pre-school years, in grade one, in grade 7 and in grade 10. I have offered some suggestions at each of these levels; early childhood education programs, Reading Recovery in grade one, alternative interventions in grade 7 and 8 and finally alternative structures and routes to graduation in our secondary schools. A combination of these initiatives could prove to be a powerful force for reducing the drop out rate among all students, but the most critical group of students that needs immediate attention in our schools is our under-performing Black youth. As Richard Rorty, the philosopher noted, “It is not so important to find the absolute truth of anything as it is to keep the conversation going”. This article will hopefully at least achieve the goal of continuing to face the problem of our under-performing youth and “keep the conversation going”.

]]> http://blogs.yufe.ca/jdiakiw/2009/05/21/aternatives-to-black-focussed-schools/feed/ 6 http://blogs.yufe.ca/jdiakiw/2009/02/08/table-of-contents-3/ http://blogs.yufe.ca/jdiakiw/2009/02/08/table-of-contents-3/#comments Mon, 09 Feb 2009 02:19:16 +0000 jdiakiw http://jdiakiw.blogs.edu.yorku.ca/?p=14 March
Children’s Literature and Canadian National Identity: A Revisionist Perspective
The Search for my Gender Identity
Our Culture’s Native Roots: The Native Contribution to Canadian Culture and Identity
Growing Up Ukrainian in Toronto
Alternatives to Black-focused Schools
January
Canadian Culture and Identity
December
Golfers I have known . . ..
November
Early Memories of my Emerging Literacy
The Post Modern High School: Thinking Outside the Box

February 2009

Remembering Joel

Joel was an enigma to me. The guidance counselor told me that Joel had been given an IQ test, but his score could not be calculated. They just knew it was well over 160. His music teacher said that on a test of musical ability, Joel had attained a perfect score on all four musical attributes two of which are pitch and tone. The music teacher had never had a student score perfectly on all four musical attributes until Joel. Joel seemed to be blessed with remarkable talents, but they did not reveal themselves in any obvious way in a school or class setting.

I learned from his Mother, some time later, that he had at one time expressed interest in the violin. His parents bought him a violin and arranged lessons. After a few lessons, the renowned maestro, who had agreed to take Joel on as a student, made a special visit from the city to talk with his parents. He exclaimed with great excitement and animation that young Joel was a prodigy and that in all his years he had never taught a more gifted student. Joel never returned to the maestro for another violin lesson. He never picked up the violin again.

Joel was not easy to talk to. He would not look you in the eye. With his shoulders hunched, head downcast, he always seemed to be staring off to some point off the tip of his shoes. He was absolutely exasperating to deal with.

I left the class to work on a lab assignment and made my way to the library. In what was essentially a one way conversation, we made arrangements that he would work in the library to do his own research on various aspects of the course instead of coming to class. He chose to start research on glaciation. As I checked in on his progress in the library from time to time, he was doing some excellent work. I gave him resources I had used in my university graduate courses in physical geography.

I was planning a field trip on glaciation for my classes, and had planned to spend some time on the weekends scouting a suitable route. I asked Joel if he wanted to come out with me on one of my trips. I would hardly call his response enthusiastic, but he did say yes. It got to be a pattern over the next few Saturdays that we roamed the back roads of southern Ontario climbing eskers, digging into kame deposits and sketching drumlin fields. The silences were as vast as the Pleistocene ice sheets. Occasionally we had brief technical discussions about certain features of which he was now as knowledgeable as I. “Yes” and “no”, however, were still the main words in his vocabulary.

Joel had a job sweeping up and dusting at a local commercial art gallery He came to school one day claiming that he had inadvertently created “drumlins” with his broom and dust-bane. Drumlins, those beautiful inverted teaspoon-shaped hills scattered all across Ontario, still posed a research problem for geographers. There was no real understanding or agreement as to how they actually formed under an ice sheet. Joel could reproduce them at will on the floor of the gallery. I was so excited about his discovery I called Dr. Putnam at the University of Toronto, the leading Canadian authority on the Pleistocene era. Joel had some interesting discussions with Dr. Putnam. For the firs time, I overheard him in animated, politely argumentative, discussion with my renowned professor.

2.
On night, from a dead sleep I was awakened by a telephone call. When I lifted the receiver a hysterical female voice said, “Come now! We need help.” In the background I could hear high pitched screaming. She started to say something more but the phone was slammed down and the line went dead.

What was that? I checked my watch. It was after 2 a.m.. I wasn’t exactly sure who it was, but I decided it wounded like Joel’s Mother. Over my pajamas I put on a pair of trousers, jumped in the car and drove to Joel’s house. The lights were all on. I stepped in the back door. There were terrifying noises all over the house, screaming, sobbing, slapping, and smacking noises. With the taste of bile on my tongue, I stepped up the stairs, turned on the landing and there on the stairs above me was Joel’s father cowering on the stairs with his arms up protecting his face. Joel, who was half his Fathers’ size stood above him with a belt raised ready to strike another blow. Joel’s face was frozen in a rigid tormented glare. As soon as our eyes met, he dropped the belt, lowered his arm and scurried past me downstairs. His father retreated upstairs to his own bedroom. I entered the living room where Joel’s mother and three sisters were sobbing uncontrollably . As best I could, I settled them down until they began to doze off. Joel and I never talked about that night.

As well, the school was in a terrible state of anxiety at this time. The principal, “Dimples”, as the students called him was incapable of decisions. On the other hand, Nigel Barrick, the vice-principal who was an ex British army commando, shot from the hip, firing off a hundred decisions a minute, – usually the wrong ones. He roamed the halls like General Montgomery, – hands behind his back, forehead creased with furor, and lower lip furled. Only the swagger stick was missing. You could hear Barrick’s voice in every corner of the building, “You there, stop that! To the office, now”!

One morning, a news-sheet called VICE was stuffed into the doorjamb of every student locker. The VICE logo depicted a hand squeezing a fistful of students. Some were dripping out below the fist. The paper was a brilliant expose of life in the school and contained some scathing satire about the administration. No one knew who had crafted this underground paper. “Dimples” retreated to his office and was unavailable and Nigel Barrick, the VP, rampaged around the school trying to ferret out the instigators of this inflammatory diatribe, which viciously satirized his role in the school. I never asked Joel whether he had anything to do with it. I think that deep down, I was afraid to know.

The Beatles were the rage at this time and Joel and a small group began to grow their hair long. By March, Joel’s hair was as long as Paul McCartney’s. He and the others were warned by the vice-principal that they had to cut their hair, “or else”. Joel ignored him and came to school the next day. He was locked in a room for most of the day with several other resisters. Other students called CBC and CFTO television news departments, who sent camera crews to the school. There was a rumor of a massive student protest planned for the next morning. A strategy meeting was called by the Superintendent for the administration and all department heads to attend at 7 a.m., the morning of the expected rally. The department heads were all assembled behind a closed door in a front classroom overlooking the entrance to the school. Finally, the door opened and in strutted Mr. Barrick, the VP, inflated with military presence, followed by “Dimples”, with terrified eyes darting every which way. They were followed by the Superintendent, whom I dubbed “the grey man” because he always looked the same, – gray suit, gray shirt, grey tie, grey hair, grey eyes, and grey skin. “The grey man” ( a WW 2, army vet) began discussions by listening to ideas on various student scenarios, while V.P Nigel surveyed the scene below. In the early morning misty light, I remember feeling like I was at the last planning session for the-Day landing. I could almost hear the sound of flack guns going off in the distance.

At one point Nigel Barrick excused himself to go below and check things out. He returned a few minutes later looking a little shaken.
“Give us an update, Barrick”, the Grey man requested.
“The students are starting to gather, sir, and they are carrying placards.”
“And what do the placards say,. Barrick?”, the Gray man pursued. Nigel froze, he looked at the Superintendent and tried to speak, his furled lip furled further. His eyes watered and grew red. Hi said nothing.
“What do the placards say Barrick?”, the Grey man asked again, firmly and somewhat impatiently this time.
Nigel’s lip began to quiver. “Hang Barrick, Sir”, he said, his voice trembling.
The battle unraveled in the media for a few days. Joel kept his ground and never backed down. He had a meeting with the Superintendent and was told he couldn’t return to the school until his hair was cut. He apparently said in his defense that Jesus had long hair, not that Joel was a Christian. Joel never returned to school again, ever!
Ironically, a few weeks later, in a blitzkrieg move, the Superintendent called a staff meeting. Neither, Principal “Dimples” nor Mr. Nigel Barrick were there. He told us that “Dimples” had been transferred to the board office to work in purchasing and that Nigel Barrick had accepted a new position in another School Board.

Joel and his family moved to Winnipeg a year or so later and we lost touch.

3.
Several years later my family and I moved to Germany, where I was seconded to the Department of National Defense Schools in Europe. One day, there was a knock at the door of our quaint house in a small village in the Black Forest. When I answered the door, there stood Joel. He asked if he could stay overnight as he was on holiday trip around Europe. He stayed with us for over a year. He lived in our trailer in the driveway whenever we weren’t travelling ourselves. He was fond of our daughters, one year-old Kate and five-year-old Lindsey. He frequently baby sat them. They loved “Jobol”, as Kate called him then.

Joel was still a very frugal conversationalist, but over time I was able to piece together what he had done since we were last together. He had a job as a mail clerk at Carleton University. Frequently, however, Joel went AWOL and could not be located on the job. He was brought into his supervisor’s office for a “terminal” discussion. When interrogated as to his regular disappearances, he admitted to getting side-tracked by the computers in the university computer center. When on the computers, Joel lost all sense of time. It just so happened that the university Computer Services department was looking for a clerk to take the key-punched cards from the data-processing room to the computer room, as well as answer the telephone. Joel was reassigned to Computer Services.

Within weeks, he was in trouble again. He was not doing the job. His supervisors called him I to dismiss him at the Department Head’s request. She sought an explanation from Joel as to what he was doing that interfered with carrying out he’s simple tasks. I could picture the conversation vividly, with Joel staring down at a point just beyond the tip of his shoe. He told her that when he was at a terminal he just seemed to forget time. “What do you do at the terminal?” she inquired.

‘”Oh, I dunno.” He said, “I guess I just write programs”.

“What kind of programs?” she persisted her curiosity aroused. She certainly hadn’t expected a low level clerk to be programming on the mainframe computers. “Let me see what you have done,” she insisted. He shuffled off to a desk and pulled out a wad of computer paper. She looked at his sheets. “What are you doing here”, she asked pointing to one of his sheets.

“It’s a program to generate Fibinachy numbers”, he explained. He had read an article in Scientific American about this abstract theoretical mathematical number and he had developed a program to find them. He also had developed an elaborate program for playing Black Jack which provided the odds on every play of a card and kept a running tally of all scores.

“Where did you learn to do this Joel? his supervisor said.

“I dunno” he replied.

“I didn’t know that you had taken computer programming” she said.
“I haven’t” he answered.

She studied his programs for a while, shaking her head in disbelief. She then walked into the Department Head’ office, apparently she tried to convince him to hire Joel as a programmer, since they were looking for one at the time. He thought she was crazy and exclaimed that Joel had no training and could only program in “Basic”, and that all of their programming was in a more sophisticated language called “Cobol”. He reluctantly agreed to give Joel a trial. If Joel could write a program in two weeks in Cobol, they would hire him. After one of his all night vigils, Joel brought in his new program the very next day, in “Cobol”! He got the job. After a year, he decided to travel for three months in Europe. That is when he ended up on our doorstep. Joel settled in to life in Germany and got a job on the base working in the dairy department of the base supermarket.

One day he bought an antique German motorcycle, reputed to be part of Goering’s motorbike pool. He had discovered, however, that his Ontario Motor League international driver’s license was stamped valid for automobiles only. In order to qualify for German motorcycle license, Joel had to take a six month course. He was not prepared to do this. When I came home late from work one night, Joel was sitting at the dining room table with newspapers all spread out. Assembled on the table atop the newspapers were a bag of potatoes, an exacto knife, and an ink plate and roller.

“What are you up to Joel”, I asked.

“I’m completing my International driver’s license so I can drive my motorbike”.

It took me a while to realize that he was intending to carve a potato to replicate the silver dollar’ sized stamp of the Ontario Motor League and stamp it in the motorbike space on his international driver’s license. I looked at the intricate stamp in his license. It had “Ontario Motor League”, printed in a circle around the outside edge, the OML symbol in the middle, along with the year and the date.
“You’ll never do it. You’re wasting your time”, I said and went to bed. When I woke in the morning, Joel was still at the dining room table, the pile of potatoes had dwindled to nothing. He was still hunched over the table working on one last potato.

“Didn’t work eh?” I said.

“Watch this”, he said and with all of the flair and ceremony of a bureaucrat, he opened his license, squished the potato in his hand onto the ink plate, nonchalantly stamped the motorcycle entry, and handed the license to me. I couldn’t believe my eyes. You could never tell the difference from the authentic stamp.

We eventually moved on to CF Baden Air Force base and Joel remained in Lahr. Joel’s round trip air ticket had long expired. But when he decided to return to Canada, I understand that he doctored his useless airline ticket, all three copies including the carbons, and flew home to Ottawa.

4.
The years passed by and occasionally we heard stories of Joel’s marriage and his career in computer programming with the Canadian Federal Government. One night I turned on “The National “ to watch the news. A journal item was in progress and there was Joel being interviewed, still staring at that point just beyond the tip of his shoe. He and his wife Nancy, had just had a daughter born through in vitro fertilization. Through all of his painful shyness there was glint of the proud father and I thought back to our treks through the Black Forest and the Vosges Mountains, with Kate perched perilously on his shoulders clutching his head desperately, I could still picture Joel with a “ciggie” dangling out of the corner of his mouth, and Lindsey scurrying along beside him hand in hand. I thought of the time he stayed up all night, to bake Kate and Lindsey the biggest ginger bread house I have ever seen. I remembered the hours he spent reading and playing games with them. He always seemed so comfortable with them.

At my retirement party, after the customary speeches by colleagues, I rose to say my final words. As I gazed across the crowd at all of my friends and colleagues, there, way at the back, near the door stood Joel. There, two decades after he last visited us in Germany, and now looking me straight in the eye. He stood there wearing an ill-fitting blew suit and bright red high-top running shoes. He was the proud father of new-born triplets! In a brief moment, I had a flash –a teacher and a student driving silently through the lush spring countryside of Southern Ontario, looking for eskers…

What is important about Ethiopia, is that there is a strong sense  that this is the home of man (sic woman).  Visiting Lucy where she  lies in the National Museum in Addis Adaba, the oldest human remains  and accepted as the missing link, was a moving  and  awe-inspiring  moment. She was beautifully displayed  in a room as she appeared in the silt of the rift valley floor. Days later standing on the crest of the Rift Valley looking over a massive uninhabited expanse of the valley forest, forged a deep connection  for me  both in space and time to realize that the evolution of  humankind emerged here. This is the epicentre. I was looking over an expanse of the globe  that held all of Lucy’s forbearers, her brothers and sisters and all of her descendants that led us to where we are now.

Visiting the tribes in the Rift valley was like walking into a time warp.  The Hamer, Bani,  Mursi  and Kanso tribes live simple lives, almost no different to those of prehistoric man. Not only do they have no electricity,  gas,  water,  candles, but they live virtually without any  modern utensils   or implements. They herd goats and cows as a sign of status but farm small plots using a wooden hand carved plough blade behind two oxen. Walking into one of their villages is like walking into a living museum.  Visually, their scarred bodies, elaborate hairdos  (formed from butter and red clay), masses of beading, brass, copper armbands, body tatoos and markings and  for the Mursi, lip plates, are rivetting.  A truly remarkable  experience just to visit them with their sleek black bodies  adorned so fantastically.
If ever  there was a garden of Eden  it must have been here in the verdant green valley of Ethiopia where Lucy was found  buried 3.5 million years ago.  Even the roadways, etched through the valley, are lined with wild Adam and Eve  poisonous apple trees!

What is also important about Ethiopia is  that it is a profoundly Christian nation. As the official  religion of the country, one of only two countries known to do so, Christianity is  a daily part of  life here. It is in your face like no other country I have ever visited. While there is a 30 % population of Moslems, overall the major cities are dominated by Christianity and small pockets of Moslems are found in various parts of the country but they are basically invisible in the major cities.  Churches are filled to overflowing every day of the week here. The Ethiopian Orthodox church dominates and the Patriarch  resides in  Addis despite the fact that that Axum   is one of the holiest churches in all Christendom.   There is a strict adherence of lent and in April the 55 day fasting  called Surga, which  begins on palm Sunday, ends the weekend I left. Fasting is religiously adhered to and  restaurants,  when  available where I camped,  only offered fasting menus, with no meat or dairy products.

My week long visit to the north, which is commonly called the historic route was  an immersion into a unique form of Christianity and a home of  many surprising, largely ignored civilizations by the west. In Bahir Dar, after visiting the headwaters of the Blue Nile and the largest waterfall in Ethiopia,  I took a boat tour out  on to Lake Tana  where over 20 monasteries from the 14th century still thrive,  each with their own circular thatched  church,  housing elaborate paintings depicting  biblical events.   The monateries thrive and  there is a peaceful mediaeval feel to   the religious lifestyle lived out by thousands of   novitiate monks, deacons and abbots   on Iislands on lake Tana.

I was not too keen on a  another church tour high up on the Ethiopian plateau at  Lalibela, but I gamely  went along for the tour.  The photos of the churches seemed so uninspiring to me.  Was I wrong. As one author wrote “Were it virtually anywhere but in Ethiopia, Lalibela would rightly be celebrated as one of the wonders of the world, as readily identified as the Pyramids or the Sphinx in Egypt”. Why?  This Africa Petra was carved out of volcanic rock in 700 AD.   11 churches were  carved out of the rock down from ground level employing 40,000  freemasons and craftsmen  to carve all these churches in 23 years. Everyone said  it could not be accomplished without the hand of God.  To come upon one of these 30 foot churches below ground simply takes your breath away. These  churches  are considered by  the cognescenti  as some of the foremost pilgrimage sites in  all of Christendom and recognised as such  as a Unesco World  Heritage site. They are astonishing and  defy description.   Like the 16th century Portugese traveller,  “I can’t possibly describe it”, he wrote, “because it seems to me I should not be believed if I write more.” Nor shall I.

What is also important about Ethiopia is its  fascinating and pervasive Biblical nature. The myths and legends  of the Queen of Sheba, King Solomon, Adam and Eve, even Prester John permeate everyday life in the country. The Ark of the Covenant plays a dominant role in the mythology and  rituals of Orthodox Christian life  here. This ark was believed  to be built by the children of Israel  to hold the tablets of law given to Moses by God.  It is believed to be housed in the  historic church Maryam Tsion in Axum. which I visited during one of  the ritual days of  ceremony  with the local Bishops  leading the pilgrims  in the three ciruit walk around the church.

What is also important about Ethiopia is that it is profoundly African. It is the only country of Africa that was never colonized. I stood on a crest of a plain of Adwa,  where Italy attempted to colonize the country  in 1896 and in the battle of Adwa the Italian king ordered his generals to move  on and get the  job done .  They were defeated  so soundly that they left the country  humiliated. This stands all over Africa as the first time that Africans defeated a European power in a battle of any significance.  Italy under Mussolini  also attempted to occupy Ethiopia and in 1936  occupied parts of the country for nearly five years under  constant insurrection, but was ousted by the Ethiopians,  with the support  of England and  retreated.  Haile Selassie,  despite  many atrocities was  ultimately a progressive  leader who advocated a society that supported  all faiths and ethnicities,  is regarded as one of the great modern leaders  in Africa. So there is a tradition, a mythology, of an historic nation  free of foreign occupation or colonization.

So, what is most  important for me  about Ethiopia is that it is the hope of Africa. Despite its enormous problems as one of the poorest countries in the world with  its persistent susceptibility to famine,  it is still a model of democracy, of an independent economy, of a country that has always maintained its independence and has a long history as a proud and accomplished nation  with  a diverse population and an astonishing history of many  remarkable civilizations with artistic achievements that stun!

Note: This article was originally published in the fall issue of the quarterly journal Canadian Children’s Literature

Summary: Canadian children’s literature can play an important role in affirming a Canadian
culture and identity. The school has always played and, whether we like it or not, always will play,
an important role in promoting a national perspective. This article argues that there are
commonplaces of our Canadian culture and identity that are inclusive of Canadians of all racial
and ethonocultural origins and from all parts of Canada. The promotion of any national viewpoint
is usually directed at the secondary level where Can-Lit and Canadian history become a focus for
study. This viewpoint has traditionally been a Eurocentric perspective that has ignored the reality
of Canada’s current diversity. A focus on the secondary level ignores the fact that most societies
have traditionally focussed on inducting their youth into the “tribe” before the age of thirteen.
Therefore elementary schools have an important role to play in telling the Canadian story through
children’s literature, a literature that can not only reveal the splendour of our regional diversity,
but one that can promote equity, justice and fairness through the richness of our multicultural
literature.

Resume: L’auteur rappelle Ie r8le essentiel (fue joue {’institution scolaire dans I ‘affirmation de
I’identite et de la culture canadiennes; il plaide en favour de I ‘abandon de la vision eurocentrique
traditionnelle et d’une plus grande ouverture a la diversite et au pluralisme. A cet egard, I’ecole
primaire devrait non seulement sensibiliser les eleves a la variete des productions regionales mais
aussi promouvoir I’egalite, la justice et la tolerance grace a la diffusion d’une litterature de plus
en plus multiculturelle.

Many Canadians believe that there is such regional, cultural, linguistic and religious diversity in this country that we do not in fact have an overriding culture or identity. But even those who express this belief are quick to distance us Canadians from our American neighbours and from our British and French roots. I would like to argue that there are in fact powerful commonplaces in our culture and identity — shared values that most Canadians can identify with — and that the school is an important place to explore, discuss and debate these commonplaces. I especially want to suggest that, because story and literature are important ways to reveal these commonplaces, there can be a powerful connection between Canadian literature and Canadian cultural identity, a connection educators should take advantage of. Nor is it just a matter of including Canadian literature at the secondary school level. Since it is in the early years before puberty that who we are really comes into focus, I believe it is imperative that we give young children access to the rich body of Canadian children’s literature.

Schools in Canada and elsewhere have always conveyed cultural andpolitical views, and they will continue to do so whether we like it or not. In thepast, of course, these views were dominated largely by the white male European
perspective of the most dominant powers in society; but as the conviction of somany that there is no over-riding Canadian culture suggests, this is no longertrue. The culture and identity we all share is multi-faceted, and not dominated by any one group. The difficult task schools now face, therefore, is determininghow to convey our culture and identity in a way that is inclusive of all Canadians, so that justice and equity are underlying principles of the curriculum.

How Cultures Have Traditionally Transmitted Their Values
In most culturally homogeneous countries, children grow up hearing and learning the stories that define their culture: myths, legends, folklore, historic tidbits, tales of heroes and villains, miraculous tales and tales of courage and achievement. These shared stories lie at the heart of a culture’s identity. Literature, arts and crafts, music, dance, film, and poetry blend together over time to crystallize an image that says, “This is who we are.” The shared stories provide a culture with its values and beliefs, its goals and traditions. The myths, legends, folk tales, histories, and experiences of any cultural group bind the individuals together to form a cohesive society which allows people to communicate with each other and to work together with a shared purpose. These common stories become the foundation of public discourse, and they are a source of pride in their community.

The education of children is central to this process. According to E.D. Hirsch Jr., “The weight of human tradition across many cultures supports the view that basic acculturation should largely be completed by age thirteen. At
that age Catholics are confirmed, Jews bar or bat mitzvahed, and tribal boys and girls undergo the rites of passage into the tribe” (30). Hirsch traces how Korean children traditionally memorize the five Kyung and the four Su. In Tibet, boys from eight to ten read aloud and learn the scriptures, in Chile the Araucanian Indians use songs to leam the customs and traditions of their tribe. The Bushmen children of South Africa listen to hours of discussion until they know the history of every aspect of their culture.

Hirsch also traces how the education system has been used to convey a national culture in modem nations. Traditionally on any particular day in France, for example, each child in each grade would be reading the same page
in the same textbook. In the history of American education, the text book has been a constant source of debate over attempts to control the culture transmitted through the schools.

Hirsch cites an example of the influence of one particular document in defining a culture. In 1783, Hugh Blair, a Scot from the University of Edinburgh published Lectures on Rhetoric and Belle Lettres, intended as a compendium of
what every Scot needed to know if he or she were to read and write well in English. This book had enormous impact on curriculum in school systems throughout the English-speaking world. Widely used in Great Britain, US and
Canada between 1783 and 1911, the book went through 130 editions! Blair defined English literary culture for use initially by the Scots, later by colonials like Canadians and Americans; and eventually it became the standard for
educating Englishmen and women.

In Nations & Nationalism (1983), Ernest Gellner argues that, viewed from a historical perspective, it has been the school and not the home that has been the decisive factor in creating national cultures in modern nations. Literate
national cultures, he maintains, are school-transmitted cultures. He asserts that the chief creators of the modern nation have been school teachers; they helped create the modern nation state. They perpetuate it and make it thrive. The history of Europe has shown that the schools play a major role in thecreation of a national culture. Even in the United States with its many disparate groups, the schools have done much to create a national culture through such common shared stories, both real and imagined, as George Washington, Daniel Boone, Tom Sawyer, and Casey at the Bat, as well as through the promotion of strong central shared values and symbols of patriotism.

The history of the evolution of nationalism in country after country indicates clearly that a national culture is an artificial, created construct. Discussing how nation builders use a patchwork of folk materials, old songs,
legends, dances, and historical tidbits, selected and re-interpreted by intellectuals to create a national culture, Gellner says, “The cultural shreds and patches used by nationalism are often arbitrary inventions, any old shred or patch would have served as well…. Nationalism is not what it seems and above all, not what it seems to itself. The culture it claims to defend is often its own invention” (56).

While these readings and discussions have illuminated for me how culture has been transmitted during our recent world history of colonialism and nationalism, they have unsettling implications. Hirsch, for instance, laments
what he sees as the disintegration of central core values and a shared common knowledge in recent years. He argues for the need to identify what every American needs to know, and works to promote a return to a narrowly
Eurocentric curriculum based on the glories of Greek civilization, the British Empire, and the Bible. While the European civilizations, and in particular, British and French traditions, are an integral part of our identity, they are but one significant facet among many facets.

Yes the school is, and always has been a major purveyor of a national viewpoint. But what kind of a viewpoint do we want to promote for the future? Any examination of the curricula of the past reveals a program of indoctrination
into the culture and mores of those in power. The old African proverb is still true: “Until lions have their own historians, tales of bravery and courage will be told about the hunter.” Or, as Napoleon put it more bluntly, “History is a set of lies agreed upon”(cited in Wright 2). History is written by winners (Wright). The winners write the school curriculum and decide what stories will be told and what literature will be read.

As the child of immigrant Ukrainian parents in grade seven and eight in Toronto in the late 1940s, I vividly remember spending hours memorizing the Kings and Queens of England in chronological order. Later in high school I read the required stories and novels of Rudyard Kipling, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, and the poetry of Tennyson and Wordsworth. I do not recall ever reading any Canadian authors. The children’s books in the local library reflected this Anglocentric curriculum. I grew up feeling that I was somehow an outsider in Canada despite the fact that I was bom in the country. Nor was I alone: My current research into the life histories of racial minority teachers in Canada reveals time and again that as students these young Canadians did not see themselves reflected in the curriculum of their schools. These experiences illustrate how recently in our history educators perceived the transmission of traditional culture as a major function of schools. It was clear who the winners were.

Revisioning the Traditional Culture
Since Prime Minister Trudeau proclaimed the policy of Multiculturalism in 1971, there has been a remarkable change in our official notions about our culture. It is no longer officially English or French-based or Eurocentric. Indeed, Trudeau said, “While we have two official languages we have no official culture, no one culture is more official than another” (italics mine). I have long celebrated Trudeau’s statement; but the longer I ponder it the more I have
difficulty with the words, “we have no official culture….” It seems to imply what many have said for decades, that Canada has no cultural identity at all. The insistence on no official culture has resulted in a backlash against
multiculturalism, while multiculturalists struggle to stem the tide of racism and disempowerment.

Education, then, is caught between conflicting demands. As Grossberg suggests, on the one hand, there is the discourse of multiculturalism and liberation which calls for a democratic culture based on social difference and which is usually predicated on a theory of identity and representation. On the other side there is a discourse of conservatism based on canonical notions of general education and a desire to impose what it cannot justify — the existence of an illusory common culture. (10)

Simply, there is a lament over the loss of a culture rooted in Western civilization and values, and there is also the cry for equity and a multicultural curriculum. Must there be a dualism? Is there an alternative to these two positions? Amidst the remarkable diversity of this country are there inclusive commonplaces? Can a patchwork quilt of our stories welcome all Canadians?

It is helpful to review some history surrounding some of these issues. We have been inundated the last few years with critical examinations of the meaning and purpose of multiculturalism and its affects on the curriculum in
the school. Popular best selling books like Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy, Bibby’s Mosaic Madness and Bissoondath’s Selling Illusions have promoted a return to a traditionalist view. In Henry Giroux’s view, they have “argued that
multiculturalism posits a serious threat to the school’s traditional task of defending and transmitting an authentic national history, a uniform standard of cultural literacy, and a singular national identity for all citizens to embrace” (1). The heated position of the traditionalists is best demonstrated by Roger Kimbal’s provocative statement:

Implicit in the politicizing mandate of multiculturalism is an attack on the idea of common culture, the idea that despite our many differences, we hold in common an intellectual, artistic, and moral legacy, descending largely
from the Greeks and the Bible/supplemented and modified over the centuries by innumerable contributions from diverse hands and peoples. It is this legacy that has given us our science, our political institutions, and the
monuments of artistic and cultural achievement that define us as a civilization. Indeed it is this legacy, insofar as we live up to it, that preserves us from chaos and barbarism. And it is precisely this legacy that the multiculturalists wish to +dispense with. (6; italics mine)

This position is widely held in Canada as well. The notion that our cultural mosaic and regional and ethnic differences can promote “chaos and barbarism” is a form of extremism that is not useful in promoting a constructive dialogue.
An alternative is to think of culture as, in Gates’s words, “a conversation among different voices.” Is it possible, by identifying a set of commonplaces, to balance the traditionalist objective and yet incorporate a multicultural,
inclusive and liberating perspective? Is it possible for diversity to be a source of cultural identity? Is the idea of multiple loyalties and identities possible within the framework of a national culture and identity?

I personally identify with my Ukrainian heritage, my Toronto and Ontario regional roots, with immigrant cultures, as well as feeling an overriding identity with Canada and even a pervading global outlook. Survey data
indicate strong regional loyalties and identities in many parts of Canada, far stronger than any regional loyalties in the United States; yet the evidence shows that the stronger the regional loyalty, the stronger the identity with Canada (Lipset).

As individuals we hold a complex set of loyalties and cultural identities,particularly in Canada. We have a strong bond to place — neighbourhood or community; often a strong affinity to our bio-region — the Maritimes or the Prairies, for example; often also a bond to our ethnic and/or our linguistic heritage, and to our religious group; and finally, to our country. For manyCanadians there is even a strong feeling of loyalty to, and identity with, the planet. We move in and out of our various “tribes” with ease and comfort. The complexity of our “tribal” relations is in fact quite extraordinary. We are a mass of hierarchical, overlapping, shifting, often contradictory and conflicting loyalties and identities.

Given this complexity, one might ask why national identity and culture are so controversial. Among many academics, nationalism is a concept in disrepute. At one extreme, David Trend declares, “Nationality is a fiction. It is
a story people tell themselves about who they are, where they live and how theygot there” (225). And in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin andSpread a/Nationalism, Benedict Anderson demonstrates how nationalism is only a recent phenomenon in human history. He finds its origins in the late eighteenthcentury, and points out three paradoxes about it. The first is “the objective modernity of nations to the historian’s eye vs. their subjective antiquity in the eye of nationalists.” The second is “the formal universality of nationality as a socio-cultural concept — [the idea] in the modem world that everyone can, should, will ‘have’ a nationality, as he or she has a gender….” The third paradox is “the ‘political’ power of nationalisms vs. their philosophical poverty and even incoherence.” Anderson comments that, as Gertrude Stein referred to Oakland, one can quickly conclude with respect to nationalism that “there is no there there”(2).

But despite his unwavering scorn for the concept of nationalism, Anderson reflects on the continuing process:
And many ‘old nations,’ once thought fully consolidated, find themselves challenged by ’sub’-nationalism within their borders — nationalisms which, naturally, dream of shedding this sub-ness one happy day. The reality is
quite plain: the ‘end of the era of nationalism,’ so long prophesied, is not remotely in sight. Indeed, nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time. (3)

Why Culture and Identity need to Be Addressed in the Schools
Regardless of how we feel about this debate, nation-ness is with us. Nationalism is clearly not going to go away. It is unlikely we can do much about it. We can, however, make every effort to ensure that the manner in which our nation-ness is promoted in the school is based on democratic principles of justice and equity, concepts which also lie at the core of our Canadian commonplaces. As a pragmatist educator I am confronted with the problem of observing a gathering of fundamentalist, traditionalist and conservative forces which are erupting across this country and whose views are consistent with those of Roger Kimbal — that the legacy of western civilization and the Bible saves us from “chaos and barbarism.” They are fanning a backlash and are profoundly influencing the policy-makers and practitioners to bring back their “common culture,” a move which they see as a return to essentially an exclusive Eurocentric Christian society. They view the schools as having a central role in transmitting their view of our common culture through a common curriculum.

“Some argue that in an increasingly multicultural society there is a need for a common literacy; others propose that we are moving toward a culture of many literacies” (Trend 227). I propose bridging these two positions — that we
work towards a common literacy as long as the common literacy is inclusive of all Canadians.

This sort of bridging of these positions requires a revisioning of our traditional notions of our culture. For example, we have to recognize the temporal character of culture. As Tomlinson points out, “There is no such thing
as a single national culture that remains the same year after year. Nations are constantly assimilating, combining and revising their national characters” (as cited in Trend 229). In a speech given by Sheldon Hackney, Chairman of the
National Endowment for the Arts in 1993, he claims, “All ethnic groups have permeable boundaries, and the meaning of any particular identity will change over time … History has a way of changing who we think we are.” Hackney
postulates a view of America that I believe is equally true of Canada: “There isan American identity that is different from the identities of any one of the ethnic groups that comprise the American population, that is inclusive of all of them and that is available to everyone who is an American.”

Commonplaces of Canadian Culture and Identity
One way in which culture and identity can be addressed from a revisionist stance is by approaching the issue from the perspective of commonplaces of our culture accessible to all. It is important to identify these commonplaces, not
because they are finite, correct, or complete enough to end the debate, but simply because they can provide a starting point for further debate and discussion. As Richard Rorty has argued, it is not so important to arrive at the
absolute truth as it is to “keep the conversation going” (1982).

While Canadian culture is constantly evolving, I am convinced that it is tied together by a number of commonplaces which most Canadians consciously or unconsciously accept, promote and take pride in, commonplaces which
permeate many aspects of our society and reveal some central truths about our country. Elsewhere, I have discussed ten such commonplaces in some detail (Diakiw 1996). Let me list them here:

1. Canada: A wilderness nation, a land of awesome size and grandeur, with savage beauty and incredible obstacles. Despite our largely urban existence our wilderness preoccupies our psyche, our literature,
our arts, our mythology.

2. Canada: A country of diverse and distinctive regions with powerful regional identities — Quebec, the Maritimes, the Prairies, for example.

3. Canada: A democratic, multi-faith nation with remarkable freedoms.Equity is enshrined in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but we are nevertheless a nation marked by equity struggles yet unfolding, for First Nations, women, people of colour, and French Canadians.

4. Canada: A nation with a strong sense of social welfare. A social safety net is part of our tradition, a tradition that is the envy of many of our neighbours to the south.

5. Canada: Home of our First Nations. Our Native roots are deeply entwined in our Canadian way.

6. Canada: A nation of immigrants. We cherish our multicultural mosaic, our immigrant culture — this immigrant culture has forever attracted adventurers, inventors and entrepreneurs.

7. Canada: A nation state founded initially on the cultures of France and England. They have profoundly contributed to many of our institutions, laws and principles. Most of us respect and support our bilingual society and our distinct Francophone culture centered in Quebec.

8. Canada: A nation of enormous resources with a vibrant, inventive economy. Our identity is in part a product of this economy, one that permits one of the highest standards of living of any nation in the world.

9. Canada: A nation of rich cultural traditions in the arts, sports and popular culture. We have a legacy of distinctive creative and artistic achievement in all the arts, provided by institutions such as the CBC, the NFB, the National Ballet, the Montreal Symphony, the Canadian Opera Company as well as by individuals like Bryan Adams, Alanis
Morriset, Celine Dion, and our many comedians.

10. Canada: Peace-keepers for the world and a partner with all nations.Our long history as peace-keepers and mediators, our participation in international organizations, our long involvement with developing
nations, and our comparatively open immigration and refugee polices, confirm our global commitment as global citizens and our family ties to virtually every country in the world.

In struggling to identify these commonplaces, I asked myself a series of questions. Do they provide ample latitude to address critical issues in our society? Do they provide for a new multicultural curriculum that provides
opportunities for students to become, in Henry Giroux’s words, “border crossers”? As Giroux states, “Teachers must be educated to become border crossers, to explore zones of cultural difference by moving in and out of the
resources, histories and narratives that provide different students with a sense of identity, place and possibility” (11). And finally, do the commonplaces reveal that there is a Canadian identity that is different from any one of the ethnic or regional identities that comprise the Canadian population, and are also different,for example, from an American identity?

I believe that the answer to all these questions is yes. Canada is a complex nation with multiple characteristics and identities. Its identity is comprised of layer upon layer of physical, regional, linguistic, ethnic, religious and cultural variations. While any one of the commonplaces I listed may also be characteristic of other nations, the layering of them, one over another, creates a unique Canadian culture. But despite this complexity, there is a Canadian
culture and identity that emerges from this layering that is different from any one of the regional, cultural or ethnic cultures and identities that exist within Canada. Nevertheless, this national culture and identity is inclusive of all
groups and individuals and is accessible to all Canadians. All regions and ethnocultural groups can relate to these commonplaces.

Most significantly in terms of literature, these commonplaces are rich with stories that are part of our “community of memory.” There are gripping and fascinating stories that emerge from them, whether through narratives of
events or through biographies of remarkable women and men who exemplify them. While there is room for considerable debate and discussion here, these commonplaces are the “stuff” that myths are made of. The big stories of Canada are embedded in them.

The Role of Story and Literature
Story is a powerful and traditional way to provide a common bond for members of a society and to familiarize children with a culture. According to Postman, “Human beings require stories to give meaning to the facts of their existence … nations, as well as people, require stories and may die for a lack of a believable
one” (122). And Bellah states:
Communities in the sense that we are using the term, have a history — in an
important sense they are constituted by their past — and for this reason we
can speak of a real community as a ‘community of memory,’ one that does not
forget its past. In order not to forget the past a community is involved in
retelling its story …. These stories of collective history and exemplary
individuals are an important part of the tradition that is so central to a
community of memory. (153)

It is through stories that our central values and commonplaces are shared. It is through stories that we can preserve and enhance our Native roots, our rich multicultural heritage, while still revealing an understanding of the historic
traditions and structures that created the Canadian nation state. Our stories explore and reveal our commonplaces.
In Survival, Margaret Atwood argues for the important understanding of how our culture is revealed in our literature:
I’m talking about Canada as a state of mind, as a space you inhabit not just
with your body but with your head. It’s that kind of space in which we find
ourselves lost.

What a lost person needs is a map of the territory, with his own position marked on it so he can see where he is in relation to everything else. Literature
is not only a mirror; it is also a map, a geography of the mind. Our literature
is one such map, if we can leam to read it as our literature, as the product of
who and where we have been. We need such a map desperately, we need to
know about here. Because here is where we live. For the members of a country
or a culture, shared knowledge of their place, their here, is not a luxury but
a necessity. Without that knowledge we will not survive. (19)

Canadian Children’s Literature: Toward Understanding Our Culture and
Identity
Because our identities, our attitude to people of different races, our sense of self and therefore probably our sense of a national identity or lack of it, is largely fixed by the end of elementary school, children’s literature can be a powerful
way of sharing a nation’s stories. Fortunately, furthermore, there is now a rich body of Canadian children’s literature which can provide our children with knowledge of our culture and identity — “a map, a geography of the mind.”
Many titles provide rich insight into many of the commonplaces I have identified, and reveal a revisioned Canadian culture consistent with the heritage of our young Canadians from across Canada of all races, religions, and cultures.
A loose collection of such titles, if profiled and shared across Canada, could bind all Canadian school children together in the knowledge that in every school from White Horse to St. John’s, whether Black, First Nation, Chinese, French
Canadian or fourth generation English Canadian, they would all be reading and discussing many of the same Canadian stories, stories in which they can see a reflection of themselves. Through this process they would be inducted into the Canadian “tribe.” These central conceptions and the shared stories, tales, histories, and poems would be the starting point for the beginning of our student’s understanding of a Canadian culture.

In a country in which educational curricula are controlled by individual provinces, however, no authority exists to set any such canon. But at the secondary school level, at least, an unwritten canon has evolved amongst
teachers across Canada. A central core of titles has emerged through word of mouth, through articles and journals, through courses, and through discussions at conferences and meetings. On the Can-Lit discussion group on the internet, for example, scholars and teachers from across Canada share their views about titles and authors they suggest for serious study. No such process has developed at the elementary level, where perhaps the need is greatest. Our students are more familiar with the wonderful children’s authors from England, the United
States and Australia than they are with our own Canadian authors and illustrators. In the faith that a loose list of shared Canadian materials would be of great value, I would like to offer some suggestions about what it might contain.
• Pre-primer alphabet books such as R.K. Gordon’s A Canadian Child’s ABC,
Ann Blades’s By the Sea (a BC alphabet book). Erica Rutherford’s An Island
Alphabet, about PEI, Elizabeth Cleaver’s ABC, Ted Harrison’s A Northern
Alphabet, Stephanie Poulin’s Ah! Belle Cite, A Beautiful City, ABC and A
Halifax ABC. Through these alphabet books, young children become familiar
with many of our Canadian icons.
• Children’s stories by some of our finest writers: Margaret Lawrence’s Olden
Days Coat, Gabrielle Roy’s Clip Tail, Mordecai Richler’s Jacob Two Two and
the Hooded Fang, W. 0. Mitchell’s Jake and the Kid, Parley Mowat’s Owls in the
Family, Ralph Connor’s Glen Carry School Days, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s
Anne of Green Gables, Marshall Saunders’ Beautiful Joe.
• Richly-illustrated picture story books that have entered into our canon,
such as Robert Service’s Cremation of Sam McGee and The Shooting of Dan
McGrew illustrated by Ted Harrison, William Kurelek’s Prairie Boy’s Winter,
Roch Carrier’s The Hockey Sweater, and perhaps even Robert Munsch’s Paper
Bag Princess.
Stories of our multicultural heritage such as lan Wallace’s Chin Chiang and the Dragon Dance and The Sandwich, Ann Blades’s Mary of Mile 18, Paul Yee, Curses of the Third Uncle, Mary Hamilton’s The Tin-lined Trunk, Sing Lim’s
West Coast Chinese Boy, Kit Pearson’s trilogy about war-time guests from England, Laura Langston’s No Such Thing as Far Away, a story set in Chinatown, Ann Alma’s Skateway to Freedom, and Marlene Nourbese Philip’s Harriet’s Daughter. Historical novels such as Susanne Martel’s The King’s Daughter, set in New France; Barbara Smucker’s Days of Terror; Barbara Greenwood’s A Question of Loyalty, Geoffrey Bilson’s Fire over Montreal, Marsha Hewitt’s One Proud Summer, James Reaney’s The Boy With An R in his Hand, Bemice Thurman Hunter’s “Booh/” series, and Janet Lunn’s The Root Cellar, to name just a few. We need to provide opportunities to have children appreciate and celebrate our spiritual and religious diversity through such books as Kathleen Cook-Waldren’s A Wilderness Passover, the Divali story in Rachna Gilmore’s Lights for Gita, Kim So Goodtrack’s ABC’s of Our Spiritual Connection, as well as Christmas stories such as Bud Davidge’s Mummer’s Song, about Christmas in Newfoundland.

The readings should also include stories that capture the majesty and savage grandeur of the country in wilderness survival tales such as Jan Truss’s Jasmin. First Nation stories such as Markoosie’s Harpoon of the Hunter, Jan Andrews’s The Very Last First Time, Grey Owl’s The Adventures of Sajo and the Beaver People, James Houston’s Tikta Liktak: An Eskimo Legend, and Kevin Major’s Blood Red Ochre. Fairy tales and legends from Eva Martin’s Canadian Fairy Tales, Maurice Barbeau’s The Golden Phoenix and other Tales from Quebec and Claude
Aubry’s The Magic Fiddler and Other Legends of French Canada, and First Nation myths and legends, such as William Toye and Elizabeth Cleaver’s How Summer came to Canada or The Loon’s Necklace as well as children’s
literature written and illustrated by Native Canadians, for example, Michael Arvaaluk’s Arctic 123. Poetry selections from anthologies such as Mary Alice Downie and Barbara Robertson’s The New Wind has Wings: Poems from Canada and David Booth’s Till All the Stars Have Fallen.

There are many titles that capture the essence of our many distinctive regions. The Prairies, as one region for example, are portrayed evocatively through such visually splendid titles as Jo Bannatyne-Cugnet’s A Prairie
Alphabet, A Prairie Year and Grampa’s Alkali, David Booth’s Dustbowl, William Kurelek’s A Prairie Boy’s Summer, Jim McGugan’s Josepha: A Prairie Boy’s Story, Marilynn Reynolds’s Belle’s Journey, a story of the Prairies in the
twenties, and of course, the works ofW.O. Mitchell. These and many other titles can convey a sense of the Prairies to young people from across Canada. Similar collections could be pulled together for each of the regions of Canada with the exception of Quebec. It is lamentable that the rich body of children’s literature that exists in Quebec is not widely available in English nor is much of the literature in English available to children in Quebec.

• Biographies too, have an important role to play in creating a Canadian identity, not just the traditional figures included in the curriculum such as our adventurous explorers, founding fathers and sports figures, but including
women, aboriginal and Black heroes in such sources as: Susan Merritt’s Her Story: Women of Canada’s Past, Jo-arm Archibald et al’s Courageous Spirits: Aboriginal Heroes of our Children, and Rosemary Sadlier’s Leading the
Way: Black Women in Canada.

• A rich body of recent historical works are available with the lively retellings of historic events by Pierre Berton, the “Adventures of Canadian History” series, Marsha Boulton’s Just a Minute: Glimpses of our Great Canadian Heritage, and Barbara Greenwood’s, A Pioneer Story, as well as compelling new historical biographies such as Jean Little’s His Banner Over Me, the story of one of Canada’s early female doctors, and new biographies for children including those of Nellie McClung and Roberta Bondar.
• But the Canadian story is not only about successes and heroic deeds. As
Bellah says,
A genuine community of memory will also tell painful stories of shared
suffering that sometimes creates deeper identities than success…. And
if the community is completely honest it will remember stories not only
of suffering received but of suffering inflicted — dangerous memories,
for they call the community to alter ancient evils. The communities of
memory that tie us to the past also turn us toward the future as
communities of hope. They carry a context of meaning that can allow us
to connect our aspirations of a larger whole and see our own efforts being contributions to a common good. (153)

Thus, the list should include stories of the Japanese internment, such as Joy Kogawa’s Naomi’s Road and Shizuye Takashima’s A Childhood in Prison Camp; stories about early slavery and emancipation in Canada, such as
Barbara Smucker’s Underground to Canada; stories about discrimination like Jean Little’s From Anna, Brian Doyle’s Angel Square, Paul Yee’s Tales of Gold Mountain and Ghost Train, Ann Walsh’s Shabash in which a Sikh boy
confronts racism, and Michelle Marineau’s Road to Chlifa, in which Karim emigrates from war-torn Beirut and faces discrimination in Quebec. While discussion and debate would be necessary to identify a core body of exemplary materials, as it has over time at the secondary level, it is important hat they reflect the central commonplaces of Canada’s culture. The selection of these stories would be like creating a patchwork quilt. Each patch or story
would be an individual creation of merit in its own right, but collectively, they would blend together to create a total image. Together these patches would tell the new emerging Canadian story.

While we do have some outstanding resources to begin, it is not enough. We still need to find new ways to tell tales about our heroes, not textbook biographies but fireside tales — tales about our First Nations, our explorers, our
fur traders, our pioneer women, our artists and musicians, our great athletes and scientists; about the settlement of the west, the discovery of our minerals, and the building of our railways, the contributions of our new immigrants;
about our international accomplishments, our Nobel Peace Prize winner; and in particular, we need sources about French Canada to bridge the two solitudes. We need to tell more stories that capture our multicultural heritage —
stories about the Jewish fur traders and settlers who were here even before the English; about the Black Canadian men and women who lived in Nova Scotia two hundred years ago in greater numbers than Scots; about the Chinese
workers who built the railways; about the English, Scottish, Irish, Ukrainian, Finnish, German, Sikh, and Japanese immigrants, to name just a few who broke ground across this country to make Canada what it is today.
Parekh defines multiculturalism in a way that fits appropriately within the intent of my conception of the commonplaces of our identity:
Multiculturalism doesn’t simply mean numerical plurality of different
cultures, but rather a community which is creating, guaranteeing, encouraging
spaces within which different communities are able to grow at their own
pace. At the same time it means creating a public space in which these
communities are able to interact and enrich the existing culture and create a
new consensual culture in which they recognize reflections of their own
identity. (Cited in Giroux 7)

We know that the school is a major purveyor of a political viewpoint. It always has been, and always will be. If we recognize this influence, we can promote a viewpoint that is reflective of all Canadians and that commits us to a continuing search for equity and a society for the new millennium that is free of racism and inequities. The “big” themes or commonplaces of Canadian culture can assist us in suggesting a core of readings for reading aloud, for study or discussion, for every grade from Kindergarten to grade nine in every school in Canada, that
contributes to a truly just, equitable and inclusive society. Through this collective patchwork quilt of shared stories we create “a community of memory,” and we reveal our Canadian culture and identity in a way that allows Canadians from all regions, French and English speaking, of diverse racial and ethnocultural backgrounds to “recognize reflections of their own identity” — a way that says, “this is who we are.”

Works Cited
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Verso,1991.
Atwood, M. Survival. Toronto: Anansi Press, 1972.
Bellah, R., R. Madsen, W. Sullivan, A. Swidler, and S Tipton. Habits of the Heart. Berkeley,
University of California Press, 1985.
Bibby R.W Mosaic Madness. Toronto: Stoddart, 1990.
Bissoondath, N Selling Illusions The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada Toronto Penguin, 1994
Diakiw J “The school’s role m revealing the commonplaces of our national culture and
identity a multicultural perspective ” Multicultural Education The State of the Art National
Study, Report #4 Ed Keith A McLeod Winnipeg Canadian Association of Second
Language Teachers, 1996
Gates, H L Jr “Multiculturalism a conversation among different voices ” Rethinking Schools,
Oct/Nov 1991
Gellner, Ernest Nations and Nationalism Ithaca NY Comell UP, 1983
Giroux, H “Living dangerously identity politics and the new cultural racism ” Grossberg
Giroux, H “Curriculum, multiculturalism and the politics of identity ” National Association of
Secondary Principals’ Bulletin 76(548[1992]) 1-11
Ghosh, R Redefining Multicultural Education Toronto Harcourt Brace, 1996
Grossberg, L ,ed Between Borders New York, Vintage, 1993
Hackney, S “Beyond the culture wars ” Speech to the National Press Club, 1993
Hirsch.ED Jr Cultural Literacy What Every American Needs to Know New York, Vintage Books,
1987
Kimball R “Tenured radicals a postscript” The New Criterion, Jan 4-13,1991
Lipset, S M Continental Divide New York Routledge, 1990
Postman, N “Learning by story ” New Yorker, Dec 1984,119-124
Rorty,R Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature Prmceton Pnnceton UP, 1979
Trend, D “Nationalities, pedagogies and media ” Grossberg
Wnght, R Stolen Continents Toronto Penguin, 1992
Jerry Diakiw is a former superintendent of schools with the York Region Board of
Education He is currently a doctoral candidate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education/Faculty of Education, University of Toronto and teaches part time at York
University in the Faculty of Education
• CCL.no 87,vol 23 3, fall automne 1997 49