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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1992-07-22, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JULY 22 , 1992. PAGE 5. Arthur Black From England to Nova Scotia by car'?!!'? About 10,000 years ago, give or take a millennium or two, some nameless member of a rag/tag long-forgotten band of Siberian nomads lifted his or her foot off the ground, leaving a footprint behind. It was the usual residue from an ordinary, human footstep, but in its own way, that footprint was as momentous as the one N^il Armstrong planted on the moon's kisser, back in 1969. It was the first human footprint ever to appear in North America. Technically, North America was part of Asia ’way back then. The continent was connected by a narrow umbilicus of barren rock that ran from Siberia to Alaska. They were a restless bunch, those early Siberians. Not content with crossing the Bering Sea, they kept moving farther and farther into the New World. Over the eons, they evolved into the native peoples of North and South America. They became our Inuit and our Aztecs; our Haida and our Hurons. And they settled everywhere from the Great Arctic Barrens to the jungles of the Yucatan. They had no choice. The land bridge that they used to cross the Bering Sea The Other Side By Keith Roulston We'ZZ miss it when it's gone The 25 years since Canada celebrated its centennial have been exciting years to be in the cultural industries but in 1992 one has to wonder if the glory years are gone. In fact, one has to wonder if we're soon going to be back where we were before the excitement of the centennial when Canadians were hard pressed to find anything their own when they looked on bookshelves and magazine racks, movie screens and theatre stages or listened to the radio. Lost among the hoopla (or was it the yawns) of the news of a constitutional deal reached by the nine premiers not representing Quebec and the federal government was the news that culture was to be handed over to the provinces as part of the dickering. This was no doubt designed to placate Quebec nationalists who have resented the efforts of the federal government, undermining their efforts to shut off the rest of Canada from their closed world but it could be the beginning of the end of a culture that spreads from coast to coast and envelopes all Canadians. In the last 50 years it has been primarily the federal government that has been the spur to promote a Canadian culture. It began in the early 1950's with the Massey Commission which looked at culture and recommended the start of the Canada Council. For many years the Canada Council was the only agency funding the arts before provincial governments belatedly began arts funding for more regional groups. There was a time when very few books were published in Canada. Canadians authors were almost unknown aside from a few like Lucy Maude Montgomery or our own Harry J. Boyle who still managed to get their books published somehow. Today we have a publishing industry that assists disappeared. They were stuck in the New World whether they liked it or not. I can't help wondering if some of the nomads didn't have second thoughts about this dubious adventure. What if some of them got fed up with this harsh New World full of unfamiliar plants and animals? What if they got homesick for the old world? What if, after several unhappy years, a band of them turned around and retraced their steps to that Alaska beach, only to discover that the bridge they'd crossed over on ... had disappeared? Sunk beneath the waves? Imagine how alone that would make them feel. If it happened, it might account for mankind's passion for relinking landmasses. We build bridges and trestles and viaducts and tunnels. Especially tunnels. We've got the Lincoln Tunnel, connecting New York and New Jersey; tunnel between Windsor and Detroit. On the East Coast, we've been talking for decades about reaming out a tunnel under the Northumberland Strait, joining Prince Edward Island to the rest of the Maritimes. And over in Europe of course, they've done it. The Channel Tunnel - or Chunnel - now routinely carries auto, truck and railway cars back and forth between Dover and Calais. The success of the British/French Chunnel seems to have sparked worldwide interest in underground linkups. Austria ar»^ Italy are writers like Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood who are known around the world. Unfortunately, the industry which is always on the edge, is in even more trouble these days. Not only must book publishers deal with the recession like every other business, but they've been hit hard by the GST which, for the first time, put a tax on books, driving up the cost of buying books. At the same time, the cost of mailing books went up, hurting the industry farther. Those same twin blows hit the magazine and newspaper businesses which were also clobbered by cutbacks in advertising by hard-hit businesses. The Canadian magazine industry in particular had greatly benefited by federal government action to promote our own culture. When I graduated from journalism school in 1969 there virtually weren't any real Canadian magazines. Magazines like Time and Readers Digest were putting out Canadian editions that had mostly content from their American parents, including a very strong U.S. slant on all world views, and soaked up all the advertising dollars that might have supported a Canadian industry. Intervention by the federal government prevented Canadian companies from writing off advertising expenses for publications that weren't Canadian, and created a new industry, an industry that had been vibrant until the most recent troubles. As a teenager growing up, I remember it was unusual to hear a Canadian record on the radio. There was only about one recording studio in Canada in the late 1960's. Then, with federal government encouragement, the Canadian Radio­ Television Commission under Pierre Juneau, set up quotas about how much content on radio had to be Canadian. There were howls it couldn't be done...but it was. Today Canadian recording stars perform all over the world, yet know they can live at home because there is a market there. We have recording studios so good that people come from all over the world to record here. But seriously talking about a 35-mile-long tunnel between their two countries. Japan has already finished a 33-mile underground railway tunnel that links two major Japanese islands. Now there's a group that wants to re-create that Bering Land Bridge that carried the first humans to the Americas. But this time they plan to run the bridge underground. The Interhemispheric Bering Strait Tunnel and Railroad Group hopes to forge a man-made link between Alaskan and Siberian tundra. A Tundrel, perhaps? It's not as wacky as it sounds - the two land masses are only 56 miles apart at the closest point. If it works, it could lead to a railway linkup - even a roadway, eventually. Which means that some day, in our lifetimes, it might be feasible for a really adventurous type to jump in a car in say, Land's End, England and, thanks to the Chunnel and the Tundrel, drive all the way to ... say Pictou, Nova Scotia. And who knows? By that time they may have finished the tunnel link between Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island - so you could keep right on trucking into Anne of Green Gables' back yard. That Maritime tunnel won't get in the Guinness Record Book as the longest, or the deepest or the most dangerous in he world. However with a nickname like the PEI/NS tunnel, it just might make it in as the world's first X-rated land link. what happens if the federal government loses the right to tell stations in each province that they must play Canadian records. The revolution on the Canadian stage has been one of the most remarkable stories in the last 50 years. Before the Stratford Festival began in 1952, there was hardly any Canadian professional theatre. After that, encouraged by the Canada Council, theatre slowly found its legs. By the 1970's theatres were springing up everywhere, including an unlikely Huron County village named Blyth. But what happens if the Canada Council can't "interfere" in provinces' jurisdiction anymore? And if we don't destruct from within our own culture, how much longer will our pro­ big business federal government stand up to U.S. pressure to take off guarantees for Canadian culture built into the Canadian- U.S. Free Trade Agreement. Word is that the U.S. is pushing hard again in the North American Free Trade talks to reduce Canada’s guarantees, which would undo 40 years of progress. We're all worried about the future of Canada these days but with the dangers encircling the cultural industries, one wonders if there will be books and magazines, radio and television to tell us if Canada does cease to exist, or if we'll have to hope it's big enough news for the Americans to tell us about it. Letters to the Editor on page 6 The Short of it By Bonnie Gropp Topless issue not top priority > Well, I don't know about you, but 1 know I'll be eternally grateful that some brave women had the courage to bare their breasts and march for all us females this past weekend. Yes, it was indeed, a truly valiant stand for a very worthy cause. Call us weak, but I and many others of my gender played chicken and let the others take the fall. We stood by, while a handful of women paraded to be ogled, protesting they should have the same rights as men. The right to take off their tops when the weather's hot or on the beach should they so choose. Well, I guess everybody has to believe in something. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't have empathy for the point they are trying to make. For a woman to be charged with indecent exposure for baring the upper part of her anatomy when many very indecent looking men can get away with it really doesn't seem quite fair. The one daily newspaper illustrated the injustice best with a photograph that showed a bare chested woman being taken off to the pokey, (whom by the way, if she had a statement to make shouldn't have covered her chest) while a shirtless beer-bellied neanderthal stood by watching. If either looked indecent being exposed, it wasn’t the one being arrested. Twenty odd years ago, I was a firm supporter of the bra burning era. I mean I had wanted to get rid of that thing ever since my mother told me to put it on 25 years ago. I thought I was going to strangle! "You'll get used to it," she said. "Terrific, but why should I have to?" I wondered then. So, when the women's libbers declared I shouldn't, I didn't. Yet, I remember watching the television and seeing women line up to bum their bras and I laughed. Because, what I felt then is much like what I'm feeling now. This just really isn't that important. Sure, it's a freedom we don't have and certainly it should be our choice. Canada is one of the only countries where women are not allowed to roam certain areas topless. In European countries it is considered acceptable behaviour to show up without a bathing suit top, while even the United States has beaches for nude sunbathers. But, it's going to take awhile. We are, typically conservative and though maybe it's time that women had the pleasure to go topless if they so choose, I can't help thinking the men will have the greater pleasure. There are many things about being female that make me feel hard done by at limes, but in all honesty, I gotta tell you this ain't one of them! I don't think I stand alone either. Il was not a pleasant experience I'm sure for the many women who found themselves answering repeated remarks about whether or not they were going to bare all. I don’t believe that the thousands of women, who chose to ignore the significance of this protest by staying home with their clothes on did so because they had something to hide, either. After motherhood and decades of mileage most of us don't look on our upper anatomy with quite the same pride as when we were a taut teen, but I don't think many are ashamed of our bodies either. It's just that there are real issues of injustice occurring in this world and the inconsequential nature of this one trivializes the important ones. When women are still being abused, when third world wives have no protection against AIDS because their husbands can refuse to wear a condom it's difficult to care whether Canadian women will ever be able to walk around topless. That is barely a skirmish in the war of injustice and as such deserves less energy and less dramatics.