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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2007-01-18, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JANUARY 18. 2007. PAGE 5. Bonnie Gropp TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt Premier Dalton McGuinty is being given an easy ride on an overseas trip selling Ontario products that will give him a bonus a lot more useful than frequent flyer points. The Liberal premier also is selling his party and will collect some of the most valuable votes in the October election. McGuinty has organized a mission to India and Pakistan on which he has taken 100 business leaders and two ministers responsible for economic and business issues, Sandra Pupatello and Harinder Takhar, who can be said to have legitimate reasons to be on it. He also has with him at taxpayers’ expense four Liberal backbenchers, Vic Dhillon, Kuldip Kular, Shafiq Qaadri and Linda Jeffrey, which is a surprise, because backbenchers normally do not go on trade missions. The premier explained the business experts will build relationships that will make the province more prosperous and MPPs demonstrate people with Indian and Pakistani connections play important roles in Ontario. Criticism has been muted, particularly because Ontarians with origins in other countries mostly retain pride in them and would resent any suggestion a premier visiting them was on the wrong track. Progressive Conservative leader John Tory said he supports the principle of the trip, but later added concern McGuinty was turning it into one to promote his party. Toronto media generally have praised the premier for going and a case can be made that he should, because Ontario sells only $211 million worth of goods a year to India, paltry considering that country’s 1.1 billion population. But McGuinty will get a political boost, because his mere visit suggests he has interest in the two countries and Ontarians with origins in them will appreciate it. His timing for his visit is suspect, because it is only months before the election and will still be fresh in the minds of Ontarians with origins in India and Pakistan. McGuinty also would have difficulty justifying taking the backbenchers, because they will not help much in sales and their common link, shared by Takhar, is they have large numbers of voters with origins in India and Pakistan in their ridings. By taking them McGuinty is presenting them as key figures in his government, who have his ear and should be re-elected because they provide inside tracks to decision-making. But the backbenchers have only the minor influence of an average MPP and Takhar burdened McGuinty with his most serious conflict of interest by failing to cut ties to a former business, hangs in cabinet by the skin of his teeth and probably would be dropped if McGuinty could afford to offend visible minority voters. McGuinty needs to get these MPPs re- elected if he is to keep power and win over generally voters of Indian and Pakistani origin. Because there are nearly half a million, they are among the fastest growing waves of immigrants and highly political, with more MPPs than any other visible minority. McGuinty’s visit to their countries of origin is reminiscent of one made to Italy by a Conservative premier, William Davis, in the mid-1970s, after immigration soared from that country. Davis and leaders in Ontario’s Italian community toured it from Sicily to its northern border, visiting mostly small towns from which many had emigrated. He was met like a hero and residents painted their front doors, dressed in their Sunday best and stood in the glaring sun for hours, because his motorcade often was behind schedule, for the premier to dart in, shake a few hands and rush off to the next stop. This writer remembers 300 people at a dinner waiting three hours without taking a bite of food or sip of wine, according to the local custom, until their guest of honour arrived. It was all moving and helped Davis win the next election. McGuinty will not be greeted with such reverence on his mission to India and Pakistan, but it will win him some votes, which he says he is not looking for, but will not refuse. Inspirations Thumbing through this week’s issue of the Manchester Guardian I come across this whimsical headline: WHY NOT BE A WRITER? It’s an advertisement from a British company that claims it can make you a published author. You send them money and they will give you tips and shortcuts that will have you hob-knobbing with Alice Munro and Stephen King before you can say Roget’s Thesaurus. And really – when you think about it – why not? Being a writer isn’t like being a structural engineer or a biophysicist – or even a long- distance truck driver or a TV repairman. You have to go to school to get those jobs. You have to take examinations and pass rigorous tests. On the other hand, anyone can be a writer. All you have to do is…write. Right? It’s curious how many people think being a writer is as easy as putting on a different pair of shoes. Such folks would never dream of trying to pilot an airplane or run a restaurant without first racking up years of schooling and on-the-job experience. But give them a Bic to flick and they reckon they’re on their way to a Giller nomination. There is the famous story of a neurosurgeon accosting Margaret Laurence at a cocktail party: “So you’re a writer, eh?” the brain surgeon says. “I plan to take up writing when I retire.” “What a coincidence,” purrs Laurence. “When I retire from writing I plan to take up brain surgery.” “Why Not Be a Writer?” the headline says. I’ll tell you why not to be a writer. You’ll probably starve to death, for starters. Sure, authors like Margaret Atwood, Peter C. Newman and Alice Munro don’t exactly have to take in boarders to pay the mortgage, but they, my friends, are the overachievers, the Great Blue Whales in the literary goldfish bowl. The rest of us guppies live on scraps. The truth is, most Canadian writers can’t make a living wage from writing. They have to hold down outside jobs as teachers or writers-in-residence. Or cab drivers. Okay, you say, but that’s novelists. Everybody knows most novelists starve in garrets. What about freelance journalism? Hah. If it’s money you want, become a bartender. Or a bouncer. Or a bookie. The odds are you’ll make a lot more dough than the typical Canadian freelancer. The going rate for most freelance magazine and newspaper writers in Canada hasn’t changed since the 1970s. That is not a typo. Most Canadian freelancers haven’t had a raise in over 30 years. And the going rate was no hell back then. You probably think I send my chauffeur down in the Bentley to pick up my weekly stipend for writing this column. Hear that high, keening wail in the background? That’s the editor, laughing hysterically. Mind you, it’s not all sackcloth and ashes. Writing has its up side. The hours are flexible, there’s no dress code and a significant proportion of the populace believes that if you are a writer you must be…deep. There’s that high, keening wail again. No, wait – that’s my wife. The truth is, being a writer isn’t a career option to be weighed against other employment opportunities like furniture refinishing or gunsmithing. Writers don’t have much choice. We write because we have to. We may end up with a desk full of unpublished novels and enough rejection slips to paper the Calgary Saddledome, but we will continue to write – even if we have to take jobs as fruit pickers or pop bottle recyclers to pay the bills. Writing is what we do. Whether we’re any good at it is pretty much beside the point. As for shortcuts and hot tips on how to succeed at writing, the British author Aldous Huxley offered the best advice. Years ago, a young hopeful cornered him at a party and asked him how one became a writer. “It’s simple, old chap”, said Huxley. “First go out and buy yourself quite a lot of paper and a bottle of ink and a good sturdy pen.” “There now! All you have to do is write!” Arthur Black Premier sells party with overseas visit Aweek ago, I had another funeral to attend. The departed was the wife of an usher at my wedding. I met her for the first time New Year’s Eve 1976, just months after meeting my husband. A diabetic, she had suffered from poor health for as long as I can remember and time certainly didn’t improve her lot. Declared legally blind many years ago, she also underwent a kidney transplant in 1991. That too eventually failed and she was back on dialysis the past few years. Her overall health continued to deteriorate. By the time of her death, she had also been diagnosed with cancer, she weighed less than 90 pounds and her body was shutting down. And not once do I ever recall hearing her complain. It was something that was mentioned time and again at her funeral, and with each re-iteration I would find myself thinking back to different visits and never once remembering as much as a sigh or a whine. Not even looks of concern or words of sympathy ever illicited a word of self-pity. As seems to be happening with this inferior being that I am, I was yet again humbled. Then when the service ended, my husband and I turned to speak with an acquaintance who is currently undergoing treatment for cancer and I was given my second round of humility. He was doing fine, he said. “And anytime I think I’m not, I don’t have to look too far to see somebody worse off.” All, unfortunately, too true. And not, equally unfortunately, always easy to remember. Why it is that a relatively healthy person will bemoan a new ache or pain, knowing that there are those who are stoic in their suffering of much greater agonies? Why do we complain of a dismal grey day, when there are those who don’t have clean water or fresh air? Why do we express frustration over not having everything we want, when we know the world is full of those who would be grateful for half as much? What came to mind as I pondered these questions was the oft-spoken sentiment, “I felt sorry for myself because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.” With a little research I discovered this is just one of several paraphrases apparently deriving from Sa'di's Gulistan (Rose-Garden), one of the most popular books in the Islamic world. A collection of poems and stories, it is widely quoted as a source of wisdom. “I never lamented about the vicissitudes of time or complained of the turns of fortune except on the occasion when I was barefooted and unable to procure slippers. But when I entered the great mosque of Kufah with a sore heart and beheld a man without feet I offered thanks to the bounty of God, consoled myself for my want of shoes and recited: 'A roast fowl is to the sight of a satiated man Less valuable than a blade of fresh grass on the table And to him who has no means nor power A burnt turnip is a roasted fowl.'” It’s perhaps only human that we feel a little sorry for ourselves when we hurt. Pain, whether it’s physical or emotional, is relative. It affects you at the moment and removes you from any feeling for what another might be experiencing. Putting it into perspective isn’t always a priority. To accept the realities of life, therefore, to not resent those who appear more fortunate and to smile through adversity are admirable qualities. Those who have the courage and sensitivity to love life in spite of its suffering, and the common sense to remember it could always be worse, are inspiring. Other Views So you want to be a writer … Eric Dowd FFrroomm QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. – Martin Luther King Final Thought Letters Policy The Citizen welcomes letters to the editor. Letters must be signed and should include a daytime telephone number for the purpose of verification only. Letters that are not signed will not be printed. Submissions may be edited for length, clarity and content, using fair comment as our guideline. The Citizen reserves the right to refuse any letter on the basis of unfair bias, prejudice or inaccurate information. As well, letters can only be printed as space allows. Please keep your letters brief and concise.