Free Trade

Code term for a vague plan to make life easier for financial sector personnel and nasty, brutish and short for everyone else. In practice, Free Trade in Canada has involved dropping financial, cultural and trade protections against the U.S. without asking for anything in return. Whether this tactic was motivated by Brian Mulroney's stupidity or his life-long neurotic desire to lick U.S. political and corporate Gucci loafers is still unclear--unlike the effects of the agreements his government signed. The current Liberal government is now furiously tyring to extend the existing agreements to every other country on the globe large enough to have a decently-organized crime syndicate.

French Language Charter

Draconian set of regulations passed by the Quebec legislature aimed at protecting the French Language from the English-and apparently from civility, common sense and people like Mordecai Richler.

Fresh Water

Canada has over 100,000 cubic metres of fresh water available each year to every one of its citizens. By comparison, Libya has 160. So, why aren't we cleaner? Why do we want to drink imported beer and designer water from France? Why aren't we more worried about being invaded by thirsty Californian suburbanites--or by Libyans?

Frum, David

Quintessential Aggrieved White Guy and grimacing post-teen right-wing hepcat who thinks that social entitlements are character corrupting. He and his sister Linda are the best arguments going that smacking your children when they behave like jerks ought to be reconsidered as a parenting strategy. See, [AGGRIEVED WHITE GUYS]

Fry, Hedy

Longtime Vancouver-centre Liberal MP and unofficial village idiot of Western Liberal Party circles. Among her many embarrassing gaffes during her tenure as Canada's Secretary of State for Multiculturalism include railing against cross burning episodes in Prince George, B.C. despite both hard evidence to the contrary and the word of the city's Mayor, and more generally, mistaking anti-racism for racialization. While she does not appear to be deliberately malevolent in her actions (or inactions), blunders such as the Prince George incident underscore the inherent dangers of having people in power who don't pay attention to details, and of Petering stupid people: there weren't cross-burnings in Prince George(and why would there be, since there's only one or two black people in the entire town?) but there is a major problem with racism-and racialization--in Canada. Fry's grand-standing screwups overshadowed the real issues that needed, and still need to be addressed. . Her latest goof, getting Canada's age wrong in her official 2002 Canada Day message to constituents, demonstrates either her inability to learn or a penchant for hiring staff who are as detail-oriented as she is-or both. I guess we should all be grateful that politics took her away from her medical practice. Now among the 2006 leadership hopefuls, where she is a village idiot amidst a village of idiots.

Frye, Northrop

Speed typist and biblical scholar whose articulate belief in literature as the gestural zone of polite middle-class amateurs normally incapable of gestures made him, for a time, the Bob White of University English professors across Canada. His opus, while not toxic in and of itself, has led to a functional separation between those who create literature and those who process it for industrial reasons, and has virtually ended any serious study of domestic literature in the country. Unless it involved Marshall McLuhan, whose centre at the University of Toronto Frye was reputed obsessed with crushing, the Great Professor was an extremely decent and witty man. But then, isn't that what he should have been, given the degree of respect and privilege he was accorded?

Fta

Acronym for 1988 political\cultural agreement between Canada and the U.S. aimed at providing executives and other technical functionaries of the multinational corporate sector with dual citizenship and guaranteed rights to taxation-free profits in both countries. Subsidiary elements of the formal Agreement included the right of Canada to retain higher levels of social entitlement and cultural funding without the financial means to sustain either and the orderly and staged erosion of Canada's industrial base and socio-cultural institutions under the euphemism of "harmonization of programs and standards". The U.S. obtained the right to continue trade harassment without remedy or reason, even though it was not required to provide compensatory climate control within Canadian cities unable to protect the newly-equivalent Canadian homeless sector against Canada's harsher winters.

Fulford, Robert

Radio critic recently resurrected by the media to represent the elderly and the four-square-behind-the-Family-Compact, Fulford may be the only old guy in the Canadian media who hasn't lost his confidence in the face of the Internet and Mall Culture. He bears a close physical resemblance to Mr. Weatherbee from the Archie comic strip, and he critiques according much of the time. That's a shame, because he has a highly entertaining mean streak, he's consistently intelligent, and despite appearances, he isn't an [Aggrieved White Guy].

Funding Agencies, Corporate

Among the few things all current Canadian governments agree on is that Canadians shouldn't continue to expect cultural funding from the public sector, and that they should seek alternate funding. They recommend, not always euphemistically, that artists learn to beg for this from the corporate sector's Funding Agencies. Never mind that so long as the corporate sector in Canada consists of branch plants of offshore multinationals, "alternate funding" has roughly the chance of a snowball in hell. Corporate branch plants suck profits out for their shareholders, not redistribute them to surly natives, and their Funding Agencies, by their actions, make it clear that if they want to hear people in branch plant countries like Canada playing violins, they'll wait till they're working the street corners with a monkey and a tin cup.

Galiano Island

B.C. Gulf island and Lesbos West. The only place in Canada outside of the Queen Charlotte Islands that has customs checks at the ferry terminal. Those not wearing Birkenstock sandals are ridiculed and given vitamin injections, then deported on the next ferry out.

Gaspe

Area of patriotic pride for French-Canadians, and occasional site for experimental mass chemotherapy, hence the name. Uninhabitable to all mammals but nature photographers, federal government film crews and a shrinking population of diseased whales and fur seals.

Geminis

Canada's awards for television merit-all thousands and thousands of them despite the scarcity of watchable television programming. Until recently, the only television people who had time to watch television or vote on the awards were CBC's thousands and thousands of non-producing producers. With them gone or soon to be departing, expect stranger but more entertaining events to happen at the ceremonies.

Generals (retired)

After Lewis MacKenzie became a media star by accomplishing absolutely nothing as head of UN peacekeeping forces in Bosnia in the early 1990s, the goal of Canadian military personnel changed from "serve and protect" to "screw up outside the country but give first rate interviews to CNN, Retire immediately and sign a book deal, become a television commentator whenever two or more olive-garbed human beings begin to hack at or shoot one another, and run for parliament under the banner of most opportunistic political party." Due to some miscalculations on the part of MacKenzie's advisors, Canadian civilians have been spared from having the general conduct his moral renaissance from the floor of the House of Commons.

Genies

Awards given to Canadian film-makers after stuffing them with rubber chicken. We now make good films in Canada, but FTA and NAFTA took away any hope of distributing them.

Gill, Alexandra

The Globe & Mail’s one-person National Enquirer until she was shipped off to the West Coast to blather on about "Lotusland" and other cliches that only Torontonians fall for. Gill has an entertainingly mean mouth on her and an eye for where the cosmetic surgery scars are. But if she doesn’t stop letting the rich and corporate off easy, she’ll end up as the next Zena Cherry.

Gillian Guess Syndrome

Set of social behaviors in which women on B.C. juries unaccountably fall in love with accused persons and go from there to further sorts of silly behavior such as co-authoring books and other acts of dubious creativity. It’s hard to say whether GGS is caused by the B.C. climate, or by the nine years of NDP government, which seems to have widened the definition of what constitutes a victim so profoundly that literally anything out there can be forgiven and anyone fallen in love with. Was recently the subject of the worst soft-porn movie ever made in Canada.

Glasco, Kimberley

According to some people, this principal dancer with the National Ballet of Canada was denied interesting roles and eventually canned because she was 38 years old and her brittle set of dancing skills were fading fast. Others argue that she was fired because she’d called into question, as the dancer’s representative on the Ballet Board of Directors, the financial arrangements of the Company. Glasco went to court over her dismissal, and was reinstated. Arts managers are now whining that Glasco’s reinstatement raises the spectre of the courts regularly telling employers in the arts who they must cast in starring roles. If that’s going to be the way things are, they argue, what’s to stop every hack actor from suing theatres when they don’t get the plum roles, or minor dancers suing dance companies when they audition and don't get the parts they think they deserve? The Canadian Alliance Part will enjoy the resulting chaos, but has anyone else got a problem with this?

Global Television Network

Canadian television’s "Third Network" owned by the same guys who now control the National Post and most of the country’s other newspapers. The best way to get onto Global Television news broadcasts is to car-jack somebody within a mile of the local Global stations, because they do their local news-gathering on a strict proximity radius.

Gould, Glenn

Amateur Stockbroker. Good pianist. Strange person. Subject for innumerable CBC radio and television documentaries. The recent revelation that his eccentricities were the product of autism raises the question of what percentage of rock musicians, politicians and Fiscal Giants (tm) aren't autistic.

Government/industry Cooperation

Code word for bizarre economic development practice nearly universal among Canadian governments: 1.) Governments sign into cooperative ventures large, financially plump corporations (preferably foreign-owned or controlled), pump vast numbers of dollars into goofy joint ventures in the form of direct grants, tax credits or non-secured loans. 2.) While the money input is near its peak, the corporations whine loudly about bureaucratic interference, high taxation, and Big Government. 3.)When and if the joint venture becomes profitable, the politicians privatize it, write off the public investment and offer the participating corporations further asset write-downs, tax credits and further grants until the corporation decides to close the in-country manufacturing facilities and move them to the U.S. or Mexico. 4.) If (as is usually the case) the joint venture fails, the loans are written off, the tax grants forgiven, and the government leaders make mea culpa confessions about the dangers of socialism. Cf. The Bricklin car or growing cucumbers in Newfoundland.

Governors General

Ceremonial representatives of the British Crown, the post has recently been conferred upon political retirees who have demonstrated skills at standing still for long periods without mumbling or fainting. Bet on Adrienne Clarkson to change the pattern.

Grant, George

Canadian Christian philosopher, author of Technology and Empire, a book that got nearly everything Marshall McLuhan missed or glossed over, and Lament For a Nation, which depicted the pickle we're in with eerie prescience. Grant was not a "supermind" and his lack of recognition offers a credible argument that it isn't always a great idea to write clear sentences filled with connected, lucid ideas.

Great Lakes

Sewerways for Central Canadians, who like to pretend that the real pollution comes from Cleveland, Ohio instead of the 500 or so miniature Clevelands that dot the northern shore of the lake system.

Green, Tom

Canadian-born shock comic who’s making it big on U.S. television by being willing to do literally anything, right up to humping dead animals and dating Drew Barrymore. What makes him funny and frightening at the same time is that he’s shortened the gap between television comedy and cruelty/criminal perversity spectacles the medium has been heading toward for thirty years, and he’s made it look easy.

Greene, Lorne

Greene left the CBC in the late 1950s to become an American father figure on Bonanza, the last television program to argue that women are irrelevant and don't need to come on the cattle drive. Later on Greene worked as the only TV host ever to simulcast voice and his own unique interpretation of international sign language. While only 13 percent of Americans believe Elvis is still alive, 70 percent of Canadians believe that Greene is still alive and guiding U.S. network television from his isolated Arizona ranch.

Gregg, Allan

Tory Pollster and media bon-vivant, with a fringe on his hair, presumably to hide the glue spilled securing his toupee. If everyone systematically lied to pollsters for about five years, polling accuracy would disintegrate, the pollster's strangle-hold on the Canadian political system would loosen, and we could start having political lives based on what is good or true-or on what the rich and powerful are prepared to force down our throats-instead of on our vilest and most myopic impulses.

Gretzky, Walter

Premier Canadian parent of the late 20th century. Why hasn't somebody gotten him to write a parenting manual?

Gretzky, Wayne

Archetypal Canadian Character, late 1970s, early 1980s: Slight, fast, married to an American movie starlet, more interested in sidelines than the main game, intensely loyal until something better shows up. Durable and not easily hit. "If you try to stop me, I'll pass off to someone else, and he'll get me what I want." Grezky is convincingly nice man, which means he's become the pitchman for nearly every consumer corporation selling product within Canada's borders.

Griffin Prize

Already-in-trouble $40,000 annual poultry prize named after Toronto philanthropist Scott Griffin. The jury gave out its first award to Montrealer Anne Carson, who most of the sixty-five people in the country who read poetry know is among the most gifted poet currently working in the English language, and in a league of her own within Canada. This leaves the troubling problems of how to recycle the outpourings of skinny and unsaleable tomes of deeply sincere poetic feelings the prize money will engender, and who to give the prize to in the years when Carson doesn’t have a new book.

Grudges Quebec Justifiably Holds Against English Canada.

1. Clarence Campbell's suspension of Rocket Richard in 1957. Montrealers busted up St. Laurent street, Les Canadien lost the Stanley Cup, and Quebecois are still steaming about it. 2. The Iroquois. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the French backed the Hurons, the English helped the Iroquois exterminate them, and that's why there are no francophone Indians.

Gun Registry

Much bally-hooed federal Liberal program to force law-abiding citizens to register guns and to re-employ federal bureaucrats defenestrated from worthwhile programs. Cost overruns ran the tab to over a $billion, and the illegal handguns continued to pour across the border unabated. Soon to be dismantled, or truncated into irrelevance by Ottawa Conservative MPs wanting to keep hunting rifles in their House of Commons desks.

Gzowski, Peter

Fuzzy-voiced CBC talk-show host and nationalist astronaut personally charged with preserving national unity among the 5000 educated upper middle class English-speaking Canadians who listen to the CBC. His last few years on radio were marked by a curious unwillingness to interview anyone smarter than him, something that made the CBC difficult to defend with any great conviction.

Hackers And Hewers

Mythic Canadians devised and held on to by theme-obsessed historians and journalists who seem to have missed the fact that Canadian resource harvesting is now the most technologically advanced (read labour-free) on the planet. There are reputedly a 18-20 hackers and hewers in the woods north of Peterborough harvesting scrub hardwoods for Toronto's wood-fired pizza ovens.

Haggard, David

Former IWA Canada president and recent turncoat Liberal candidate for New Westminster-Coquitlam. Widely noted for his vigorous defence of labour rights and even more vigorous consumption of everything in sight. As one BC political strategist noted, on any given day the belt on his pants is the hardest worker in Canadian politics.

Halloween

The Night of Misrule was once the single annual occasion in Canada when small children were permitted to make themselves sick eating candy and adolescents were allowed to settle scores with grumpy adults and test pipe bombs, the tensile strength of egg shells and other minor IRA ordnance. Now a night of social terror controlled by apple/razor perverts and UNICEF do-gooders.

Hampton, Howard

Ontario NDP leader chosen because he was the opposite of Bob Rae in everything but gender. The only question about H.H. anybody in Ontario gets excited about is whether he’s more like Gomer Pyle or hockey great Gump Worsley right after being nailed between the eyes by a slap-shot. Unlike Bob Rae, who is also a fishing enthusiast, Hampton actually knows where the fish are in Northern Ontario.

Hannon, Gerald

Middle-aged homosexual journalist, part-time Ryerson professor, part-time father-figure prostitute who periodically disturbs the public calm by giving a living demonstration that the marketplace can accommodate anyone and anything--thus raising the hackles on fundamentalists of nearly every dispensation, including the gay community.

Hargrove, Buzz

Leader of the Canadian Auto Workers union, which represents 148,000 non-auto workers along with the 90,000 who actually do make cars. Is he an out-of-control megalomaniac and raider responsible for the labour movement's slo-mo death-by-bickering? Or is he cutting a path past the moribund NDP by shaping the CAW into a social and political movement. Either way, the man has smarts, vision and isn’t afraid to take a punch from any political direction to give voice to what is left of the left.

Harnoy, Ofra

Cellist and the all-round fool-destroying blonde bombshell everybody hoped Leona Boyd might grow up to be.

Harper, Stephen

Founding member of the Reform Party, Head of National Citizen’s Coalition 1997-2002, Leader of the Canadian Alliance 2002-2004, Leader of the New Conservative Party since 2004, Current Prime Minister of Canada 2006-. More asthmatic than charismatic, Harper is a slightly agoraphobic product of the Calgary Syndrome ,which makes people in Alberta think the presence of oil in their backyard makes them more intelligent than people in other parts of the country, and the National Citizen’s Coalition, which does missionary work for the Fraser Institute, mandatory missionary-position sex and other moral postures that Oral Roberts preaches but doesn’t practice. In the total leadership vacuum created by Paul Martin’s civil war against anyone associated with Pierre Trudeau and his memory, and given the NDP’s ongoing inability to get interested in anyone who hasn’t lost an arm in an industrial accident, Harper will likely keep his job as Prime Minister unless he steps hard on his own tongue or is caught having sex with David Frum.

Harris, Michael

Golf dufus and lead thinker, after Newt Gingrich, in Ontario's Common Sense Revolution. Harris should be the most hated man in Canada for his Marie Antoinette social policies. That he managed instead to get himself re-elected to a second term is yet another a testimony to the intellectual bankruptcy of the left. His attempts to appear thoughtful in television commercials are among the several truly hilarious regular events in Canadian media. Last book read was Mr. Silly by Roger Hargreaves. Check the book out of the library if you're curious to know what kind of thought entertains powerful conservative premiers ...

Health & Doctors

There's no necessary relation between these two things any more. We merely live longer, and the doctors employ every known medical device except nurses, hospitals and timely surgeries to ensure that we do. In the next few years these two words are likely to be associated with things like private health insurance, decline of medical coverage, closure of hospitals, jettisoning of nurses, and user fees.

Hockey

Game of choice for semi-literate male cement-heads that supposedly reveals the Canadian national character: Young men dressed in plastic-reinforced polyester suits sliding around on sheets of ice at blinding speeds chasing a disk of circular black rubber, slashing themselves and imported Europeans with aluminum-fiberglass weapons, and punching one another in the face at the slightest provocation. Until recently, the management and marketing of the sport has been the most incompetent in the history of professional or amateur sport, and the players union was operated as a divine right monarchy by a man who once tried to start a nuclear war with the Soviet Union during a tournament game in Moscow. The game is of no intrinsic interest to the United States, notwithstanding the recent flight of NHL franchises southward.

Hollinger

Owned by loquatious, circumlocutious, long-winded man-of-many-words UCC educated communications mogul Conrad Black, who's out to downsize the number of sentences written by Canadian journalist, presumably to make room for his own Black controlled about 60 percent of Canada's print media before he sold it to Izzy Asper.

Homeless, The

Current focus of the greatest densities and volumes of partisan bullshit in Canadian society. Depending on who has the hose stuck in your ear, Canada has anywhere from 500 to 500,000 of these conspicuous illustrations of post-Soviet capitalism’s abject failure to redistribute enough wealth to hide the system’s inherent unfairness and cruelty. What’s most despicable about the current haggling over the homeless is the universal inability to recognize that homeless people are miserable and unhappy, and that homelessness is demeaning and physically hazardous to everyone.

Homolka, Karla

Jailed sex murderer who was the gasoline for Paul Bernardo's rapist-as-entrepreneur engine. The easy way to deal with this woman is to whine that she wasn't adequately punished, and campaign for stiffer sentences for criminals. But a more relevant response might be to have a close look inside her Disney icon-besplattered jail cell, which offers a chilling glimpse of our fate if Mickey Mouse and the global economy succeeds in replacing culture and civility with sentimental greed, entrepreneur-grade self-absorption and the universal consumer shopping mall.

Howe, Gordie

Archetypal Canadian, 1950s & 60s: Shy, slope-shouldered, large. His wife Colleen is interested in money, but Howe just wanted to play hockey. Great stamina and elbows. "I'll stop you and break some bones if you try to get around me, and then I'll score enough goals to win and get what my wife wants."

Human Resources

Euphemism for surplus persons. Until the last decade, surplus persons were officially thought of as unemployed or as students studying obsolete subjects in universities and trade schools. This same resource is now mainly being deported from province to province as welfare rates are ratcheted downward and entitlement criteria are made more onerous.

Hunter, Robert

Journalist, Environmentalist, Novelist, Writer. Hunter’s rare distinction is that he managed to taste most of both the right and wrong things that presented themselves to an intelligent, politically liberal/left white male during the cultural smorgasbord of the last quarter of the 20th Century, and he survived relatively sane and phobia-free into the 21st. A puritanical NDP smear campaign sunk his attempt to win the Toronto Beaches provincial riding in a recent by-election, but let's hope he goes back for a second run when the general election comes in a few years. He'd make a very, very interesting Minister of Environment if the Liberals win in Ontario.

Hurtig, Mel

Nationalist, Anti-American, Anti-poverty author, Anti-Globalism Warrior. Hurtig brought us the Canadian Encyclopaedia a few years ago, for which we ought to be more grateful than we are. Because Hurtig’s upper middle-class priggery too often convinces him that the upper middle class spendour he enjoys constitutes everyone else’s reality, and that choosing to buy a Saab instead of a Buick is a serious blow against American cultural imperialism (and that he has a sacred obligation to share such insights with Canadians who drive Honda Civics and Chevy Cavaliers), we aren’t grateful at all. Hurtig’s chronically too-certain judgments have ensured that the string of political entities he has mounted over the years have the political appeal of a tea-sipping gathering of tenured professors talking retirement in Toronto’s Rosedale.

Immigration Policy

A cynical view of recent Canadian immigration policy would describe it as a mechanism originally designed to get the dishes washed in fast food chains that devolved into a system willing to let anyone wealthy enough buy their way into the country. It's much more complicated than that. Since the 1950s Canada has had no coherent or stable immigration policy, but rather a series of bureaucratic capitulations to circumstance mixed with political collapses in the face of expedience which together have resulted in one unfortunate ruling after another. What the solutions to the mess of immigration are isn't very clear to anyone, but some of the unadmitted effects are: 1.A patchwork set of entrance regulations based primarily on the worst sort of nepotism or on the principle of receiverless bribes; 2.the presence of several xenophobic and openly racist immigrant minorities in various parts of the country, some of them organized and militant, others simply wealthy enough to buy whatever tolerance or fear suits them. 3.A serious split between the major urban centres, which are multicultural and in several locations dominantly non-European; and the hinterlands, which are white and getting hostile about it. 4.) Neither the will nor effective mechanisms to introduce incoming immigrants to the indigenous culture of Canada-immigrants are invited to bring their habituations with them, lock, stock and barrel, even when they are refugees coming from dysfunctional cultures that have degenerated into barbarism. Presumbly they've come here for something than they had, but no one has the confidence to offer anything to them except television and the mall.

Imports

Imports are forbidden by theoretical economists as fruit of the devil--unless it is investment capital or is being brought in for direct use by the theoretical economists, funding agencies and other affiliated corporate officials, together with their friends and families.

Independent Weeklies

Mostly a carryover of what used to be called underground newspapers such as Toronto's Now Magazine, and Vancouver's Georgia Straight, they are 70 percent entertainment industry non-news and 20 percent ideological cliches that we'll all be embarrassed about within five years. But the other 10 percent will be about the only non-corporate political and cultural analysis available to casual readers in Canada's big cities, and that makes them pretty damned important. Too bad they're learning to behave like the papers they set out to provide alternatives to. See Weeklies

Industrial Resources

Once significant in volume and sited mainly in Ontario and parts of Quebec. Now on their way to Mexican Maquilidoros on American-owned transport trucks.

Innis, Harold

1950s University of Toronto academic who wrote several interesting essays on the fur trade to which he appended some tentative speculations about the need for efficient lines of communication north of the 49th parallel if Canada was to thrive economically and culturally. Innis' untimely death in 1953 has resulted in generations of unsupervised academic intellectual embroidery, blather, self-serving enthusiasms and other genial miscommunication. Innis himself is still a regular invitee to Liberal Party culture wanks, where he is able to interact without difficulty despite his condition.

Intellectuals

Canada has about 800 of these fragile devices, ninety percent of whom know one another but never talk freely except at conferences. Not to be confused with university professors or members of the media, who are not intellectuals and never talk freely about anything, least of all at conferences.

Internet

A few years ago it was the digital version of open mouth radio, but it is now fast becoming the digital equivalent of those advertising flyers that clog your mailbox. If this is how the Information Highway is going to transport people and ideas, let's blow the bridges and ramps while we still can.

Inuit

One-time Eskimos in the Eastern Arctic attempting to gain restitution for ecological and cultural trauma of incoming nature photographers through self-government, cultural self-deification and six-month annual government-paid vacations for Native population in global fun spots. See DAVIS INLET

Investor Confidence

A new and mysterious need of wealthy people and lending agencies to have their confidence constantly and egregiously bolstered by government tax breaks, policy wonks, and cruel treatment of persons with low incomes. This need is not uniquely Canadian, but it may put an end to Canada.

Jacobs, Jane

American-born urban critic and scholar who settled in Toronto during the Vietnam War to protect her children and her sanity. She has become a national treasure, and a beacon to U.S.-born immigrants for her commitment to and understanding of the differences between local and cosmopolitan values, and how they rarely have any resemblance to government policies and urban development practices. See Amer-Canadians

James Bay I

Hydroelectric development designed to drown Northern Quebec's native and caribou populations while providing separatist Quebecois with economic dowry for entry into the North East Power Grid. Primary drownee to date is Quebec Government, in red ink.

James Bay Ii

Indian lands, along with 60 cent of Quebec's land area, if the PQ attempt to sever Quebec from Canada.

Japanese Restaurants

One of the pleasures of Vancouver is that it has the best Japanese restaurants in North America, and the only good ones in Canada. It's almost enough to make you miss the place, if you've left it.

Je Me Souviens

Quebec's license plate slogan: Freely translated, it means, "We're going to get You English pigs may have defeated Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham, but we're going to punish you with our bad manners-and get all the federal civil service jobs in the process. Kind of makes you wish they'd remember that this has been the most benign 230 year military occupation in human history.

Jobs

We don't seem to have enough jobs to go around, or governments that recognize that the lack of meaningful work is the primary threat to Canada, not a debt crisis that is nearly pure ideology. How can you have a just or happy society unless the abilities of its citizens are wanted?

Johnson, Ben

Jamaican sprinter, steroid user, comeback artist, now personal trainer for Moamar Khaddafy's brats. Was he a hoax or the victim of a hoax? If he was the victim, just exactly what was the hoax, and when is it going to be over?

July 1st

Formerly Dominion Day, now Canada Day. It was more fun when we were still sure there was something to celebrate other than American domination and the availability (in Ontario) of poor quality Taiwanese fireworks.

Junos

Canadian Music Awards given to musical performers acceptable to parents. This explains why Anne Murray, Murray McLaughlin, Corey Hart and various friends of David Foster have basements filled with Juno trophies. Things are getting better, if you think Alanis Morissette is a step in the right direction.

Kain, Karen

Aristocratic and once beautiful, now merely glamourous in an upper-class Anne of Green Gables sort of way. If she'd come of age ten years earlier, married Glenn Gould instead of Ross Petty and had about five children, Canada would be a better place and Kain would have been an even more extraordinary dancer. Now condemned to doing farewell tours until she's well into her 70s.

Kates, Joanne

Toronto restaurant critic so secretive about her identity that even close associates aren't sure she's not former Ontario Tory cabinet minister and current TVO head Isabel Bassett. Being from Toronto, Kates wouldn't know a good Japanese restaurant from a tractor-trailer truck even after it backed its duals over her limousine.

King, Mackenzie

Canadian Prime Minister 1935-51 who guided Canada through WWII by consulting with his dead mother and discussing economic and foreign policy with his dog, thus setting the bar for Prime Ministerial levels of intellectual penetration during the 1980s and 1990s.

Kingston

Beloved of Don Cherry, birthplace of Doug Gilmour, Kirk Muller and the Tragically Hip, site of Canada's major criminal holding tanks, point of origin for the Harrowsmith lifestyle, and home to every gardening writer east of the Rockies, most of whom have recently lost their jobs to corporate American buyouts, and are moonlighting as folksingers, intellectual lesbian therapists and prison guards.

Kinsella, W.p.

American writer and Indian fighter, but such a big fan of Canada's Medicare system that he still resides in Canada. He was elected to the Order of Canada for his loyalty to Canadian values, and for believing that heaven is somewhere in Iowa. Kinsella writes, ad nauseum, about baseball despite the handicap of only having handled a baseball for the purposes of having publicity photos taken, but has had considerably less success writing love stories or having successful relationships with women under 200 pounds.

Klein, Ralph

Alberta Premier, former open mouth radio host and all-round fiscal butt-kicker. He became a corporate culture hero by exporting homeless and other disadvantaged Albertans to other provinces and is one of the spiritual beacons of CCRAP for his attempts to transform the federal income tax structure into a facsimilie of the tax system practiced by Imperial Rome in 100 A.D

Kroker, Arthur

Michel Foucault meets Wired magazine. Any more than five of this Supermind's sentences in a row will give even the most open minded people a nuke-level migraine headache. see [SuperMinds]

Labour

Depending on who's talking : a.) a vestigial element in capital accumulation. b.) the most heroic of victim classes and the source of all human virtues. Nobody has ever been very clear about what labour is, but there's a popular belief circulating within the business community right now that in 21st Century economies it has no purpose.

Labour Day

End-of-summer holiday after which former workers head down to the UIC offices to discover that their entitlements have run out, and that they're no longer eligible for welfare either.

Lakes

Pre-reservoirs/or holding tanks for sewage and liquid industrial waste. In Eastern Canada outside the ground-pollutable areas, acid rain has lowered the pH balance in most lakes to levels that are lethal to fish and most other aquatic life-forms, but merely corrosive to human epidermis.

Land Claims

Native Indian program to overturn the treaties they signed--usually at gunpoint, while drunk or physically absent--between 1550 and late last week Unfortunately, settling land claims will force Native Indians to become opportunistic real estate entrepreneurs and provoke a new variety of absurdist theatre that enables those without cultural concepts of land ownership logical and dignified entrance to a collapsing culture that is entirely based on the ownership and division of property.

Landry, Bernard

Latest Quebec Premier to attempt a resurrection of New France by removing Quebec from 2nd Nation status within Canada and bringing it into the North East Power Grid as a resource extraction zone and Hydro-electric reservoir. It’s hard to say where this movement is headed except to note that the pathfinders are becoming progressively less witty and more hysterical as they drift to the right of Rene Levesque.

Landsberg, Michelle

Stephen Lewis' wife, and constant, high-pitched whiner. Once a gifted feminist journalist, now serves as an example of why the New Conservative movement is so ascendant.

Lang, Kd

Vegetarian entertainer and lesbian culture hero. She may or may not be the reincarnation of Patsy Cline, but she's literally everything Alberta's Klein government would like to eradicate.

Lapierre, Jean

Paul Martin's lieutenant in Quebec, Lapierre is a former Montreal radio host, more former founder of the Bloc Quebecois and really former Liberal MP and organizer of Paul Martin's 1990 Liberal leadership campaign. "Comical Ali", as he was called by the more fun-loving members of the Quebec media because of his stubborn insistence that things were great when they obviously weren't, Lapierre's "I'm a federalist, now I'm a separatist, now I'm a federalist again" routine turned off Quebec Liberals in droves and led to the resurgence of the Bloc Quebecois. That he almost lost Outremont in the 2004 election, a riding where Karla Homolka could win as a Liberal, speaks to his appeal in his home province and the Liberal fortunes there in the future.

Lastman, Mel

Toronto's tiny, imperfect former mayor. With his dyed, permed hair and his loony wife, Lastman often appeared clownish. But through his first term as Mega Toronto mayor, he consistently got the last laugh because he was on the job when and where it counted. For a while, he seemed to recognize when politics is showmanship and when it isn't, and he wasn't afraid of anyone except those two look-alike who claimed he was their dad. In his second term, he lost it, got old, and was a clown.

Latimer, Robert

In 1993, Saskatchewan farmer Robert Latimer rerouted carbon monoxide into the cab of his truck while his severely handicapped daughter was inside, and allowed her to die. After a succession of court decisions and appeals, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that Latimer is guilty of second degree murder and must spend a minimum of ten years in prison. Latimer’s decision—or crime—has literally every sector of Canadian society doing contortions. Extremists from both ends of the spectrum are tripping over their own righteous certainties, while the rest of us struggle to figure out whether Latimer’s actions were the right thing to do, and more generally, if there really is a right thing to do in such a situation. Meanwhile most of us agree that the Prime Minister ought to exercise his right to commute Latimer’s sentence so that he can go on with what’s left of his life as a decent, thoughtful man who circumstances once put into an impossible situation.

Layton, Irving

Now-elderly Montreal poet, blowhard and self-declared Nobel Prize candidate with a perpetually over-eager "cowled friar" no Canadian woman has ever quite been willing to go on record as having actually seen. Until Layton's son David spent an entire book slagging him in unmistakably Laytonesque sentences, it wasn't clear that he had one at all.

Layton, Jack

Recently-elected leader of the federal New Democratic Party and new kid on the block in national politics after a carefully righteous career in Toronto civic politics. He blends in better in Ottawa than he did in Toronto, what with his questionable fashion choices (see ties, orange) and his relentless commitment to making every moment of his life a media opportunity. While he and his dashing 1970s moustache crushed Bill Blaikie and Lorne Nystrom in the NDP leadership race, making an impact on the federal scene has proved more difficult. Early on, he bungled the hiring and subsequent firing of his anti-seal hunt executive assistant and, more surprisingly, the all important and generally hilarious Press Gallery Dinner. Instead of being a wet-dream come true for this media whore, he was badly outplayed by Canadian comedic geniuses like Stephen Harper and Peter Mackay. It seems that the curse on Toronto civic politicians venturing into the federal scene and wallowing in mediocrity (see Eggleton, Art) isn't in danger of being broken just yet.

Leacock, Stephen

McGill university professor and Canadian Uncle Remus beloved of sentimental university professors and public sector broadcasters all across Canada. Recently replaced by Gordon Lightfoot as official tourism spokesperson for the City of Orillia, Ontario.

Lebreton, Marjory

Marjory LeBreton: She was the last person in Canada willing to defend the reputation of Brian Mulroney in the aftermath of his political demise, possibly because when Mulroney elevated her to the Senate in 1993, she though it was the U.S. Senate. Aside from giving Stephen Harper motherly advice (Don’t talk to any of those commie bastards) she is the chairperson of MADD, and the more-or-less-official bridge between the old Tories of Eastern Canada and the Calgary Mafia.

Lee, Pamela

The most-recognized Canadian on the planet, even if no one knows she's a Canadian and her most distinguishing physical feature is American-made silicon.

Lee, Sook Yin

One-time Bob's Yer Uncle vocalist out of Vancouver and Western civilization's revenge on Chinese immigration, and vice versa. Will she end up as Adrienne Clarkson: The Next Generation or as merely another in an endless and boring string of affronts to conventional behavior? By the time she's been fully processed by Moses Znaimer's universe, will anyone care? Now hosting CBC radio's Definitely Not the Opera, and making movies in the nude.

Lemieux, Mario

Archetypal Canadian Character, late 1980s: Oversized, bilingual, ambivalent. He's interested primarily in money and is physically fragile: "If you try to stop me, I'll reach around you and get what I want anyway." Lives in the U.S and retires young.

Levesque, Rene

Short, balding, cigarette-smoking leftist Quebec political leader not to be confused with anyone in any major 1990s Quebec political movement. Levesque wanted Quebec to separate from Canada because he believed that English Canada was getting all the bonbons, was suppressing Quebec culture and the French language--and that it would continue to do these things. To refute his claims, Ottawa has had a bonbon hose down Quebec's throat ever since and Quebec culture now has a better chance of surviving globalization, Disneyfication and the New Conservative movement than anything comparable in English Canada. But it isn't all good news. The ideas about cultural autonomy that energized Rene Levesque have about as much to do with the Quebec separatism of the 1990s as Che Guevara's ideas about socialist revolution have to do with the Cuba of the 1990s. Quebec's current leadership seems determined to put a high percentage of Northern Quebec under water in order to gain membership to the U.S. Northeast Power Grid , and the leaders themselves want to take long paid vacations in Paris and New York under the pretense of attending G-7 and U.N. conferences.

Lewis, Avie

Son of former Ontario NDP leader, grandson of former federal NDP leader. Lewis the youngest is himself a former MuchMusic intellectual, now hosting a "what do those dreadful young people want" show for the CBC. Unfortunately for the CBC, Avie Lewis is bright enough that he might actually find out what the young want.

Libel Chill

A set of legal maneuvers and moral intimidations more used in Canada than anywhere in the world outside of Disney to protect the solitude of the money-counting classes and to silence annoying journalistic and artistic inquiry.

Liberals

Reactionary Conservatives who buy and hang the work of prominent Canadian visual artists in their homes and too lazy to get hot about their own reactions. Not to be confused with American liberals, who are extinct.

Lies

Canadians are neck-deep in lies just like everyone else in the world. Lying about what's happening has become the only non-denominational activity all Canadians share. The lies come from our politics, our commercial system, our media and press. The lies come from the political right, where the power lies, but they're also coming from our fast-shrinking centre and left. The lies come from our collective and individual greed and intolerance, from our public and private myopia, and they come from an education system so overwhelmed with correctness-crazed safety freaks it's only willing to teach our kids to have a nice day. Some of the lies are planned and deliberate futurehype, others are designed to habituate us to products (or lately, to the absence and uneven distribution of product) and some are designed to overload and disable our critical faculties so more lies can be stuffed down our craws. These kinds of lies are a testament to the growing fear of democracy and openness that is the dark side of the information revolution we are experiencing. The more powerful the engine of lying, the greater the wastage and debris and polution.

Lindros, Eric

Archetypal Canadian Character, 1990s: Oversized, too aggressive, too interested in money, endurance questionable. Slogan: "Get the fuck out of my way or I'll run over you". Resides in his mother's lap in suburban Toronto during the offseason when not getting into bar-fights or recovering from the concussions that seem likely to end his career and/or lead to the collapse of the NHL.

Lobster Scandal

A 1980s incident, possibly apocryphal, in which federal fisheries attempted to stock several west coast inlets with 140,000 juvenile Atlantic lobsters, but forgot to remove the elastic bands from their claws before releasing them. In the real world, the lobsters would have died of oxygen starvation on the plane coming from Nova Scotia when fisheries scientists stopped in Calgary to get drunk and chow down on some Alberta grain-fed porterhouse steaks. The next lobster scandal will be their virtual disappearance from the east coast due to overfishing and pollution.

Logic, Applied Commercial

If we've really created a secure continental marketplace with NAFTA, and have gained ready access to the global marketplace through GATT, and if capitalism reigns supreme and constitutes the only possible road to social and political justice; and if we're really concerned about excessive government---Can't we disband the Federal Trade Secretariat, fire the hordes of nattering government economists, tighten up the rules on non-profit societies to exclude political lobbies, close the industrial development cargo cults that now moulder at every level of government, and let capitalism do its work? Or are we missing something, or not being told what the downscaling & deregulation of government is really about, and for?

London, Ont

The only city in the world where women are forced by civic ordinance to dress in Laura Ashley designer fashions. Populated mainly by insurance executives, accountants and visual artists, determined not to be mistaken for citizens of London, England or anywhere else.

Los Angeles

California city where Canadian media figures refuse to emigrate to--unless offered work. Thought by unobservant actors and other chronic optimists to be under the control of Lorne Greene, Leslie Neilson and Wayne Gretzky. Most of the actors who move there return home two years later with permanent tans, inflated body parts and deflated bank accounts and egos.

Lotusland

A term coined in the 1970s by one-time humourist Allan Fotheringham to describe the lifestyle of about 10,000 wealthy Vancouverites who spent most of their time in Hawaii pretending they were from Los Angeles and yammering about what a splendid place B.C is to visit and/or to exploit. Dwellers in Lotusland have seen their numbers swelled by Hong Kong's financial refugees in recent years, and it is now compulsory to spend at least a week each year skiing and taking drugs at Whistler. But attitudes and behaviors in LotusLand are otherwise unaltered by a quarter century of self-delusion and environmental and economic abuse. In the real world, Southwestern B.C. has rainy summers, suicide-inducing winters, and a dangerous obliviousness to the declining Third World economy of the rest of British Columbia

Macleans

Time/Newsweek poor cousin that demonstrates that Canadians are even more stupid than Americans, and that their writers can make even more crisply imbecilic summaries of national and world events than their American counterparts, and that cultural protections are sometimes wasted on the Canadian magazine industry.

Mad Cows

What should people expect to happen if they process diseased sheep-brains as cattle feed? That said, nothing warrants the volume of self-involved hysteria being generated amongst health Nazis over this issue, and nothing quite explains how willingly they've allowed themselves to play into geopolitical trade nightmare we're in the midst of. The worst part of it--aside from the slaughter of millions of cows who did nothing wrong but eat what was put before them--is when it clobbers poor farmers who’ve just spent their life savings importing a herd of water buffalo from the EEC, because what’s really victimizing them is our own trade bureaucrats lashing back at European penalties against our moronic forestry practices. The good side is that it is going to be impossible to get a hamburger anywhere on the planet in a few years. Now, if only we would extend the hysteria to hot dogs, and get our trade bureaucrats to recognize that the true villains here are Agribusiness interests and GATT...

Magic Mushrooms

Big item in B.C.'s underground economy, it is, along with downtown marijuana growing, the only major industry left in B.C. willing to employ workers under 25. The tiny mushrooms are said to grow so well between the runways at Vancouver International that small planes occasionally crash land there merely to get at them.

Manguel, Alberto

Often called "Ubiquito" in cultural circles, this Argentine-raised anthologist and critic, despite being a one-person multicultural group who speaks most of the nation's official and unofficial languages, was one of the first commentators to smell a rat in cultural equity policies. Manguel's good manners, appreciative reading habits, and the fact that he's almost always to be found on a continent other than North America gives outsiders the impression that Canada is a civilized country.

Manitoba

Flood zone and mosquito-breeding area, famous for being the geographic centre of Canada, at least within a 20 mile radius of Winnipeg city hall.

Manley, Elizabeth

Thrilled everyone in the country, herself most of all, by winning the 1988 Olympic Silver medal in women's singles and getting romantically involved with Doug Gilmour. She's been hanging around with Muppets, Smurfs, Care Bears and a wide variety of genderless Disney figurines of various species ever since. Needs new makeup consultant and some way to keep her weight 30 pounds less than Karen Magnusson's.

Manning, Preston

Bible-puncher, Gay community pinup boy, speech-slick and son of former Alberta Social Credit Premier Ernest Manning. Preston became a culture hero for Canadian Old Age Pensioners, disaffected Chartered Accountants and other right-of-centre WASP remnants, mainly in Western Canada mostly by speaking slowly enough for them to understand. Manning's speech impediment makes him sound like he's talking through a mouthful of horse manure, which is something Alberta politics provides plenty of opportunity to practice. He did provide nearly all the moments of near-reality in the 1997 federal election but even with the contact lenses and the denim shirts, he's wasn't a convincing cowboy. Since then, he's become so Ottawa-friendly that real Westerners are beginning to wonder whether he still knows what to do when stopping in the woods on a snowy evening.

Marijuana

There's now only eleven people left in the country who really believe marijuana use leads to heroin and cocaine addiction, and eight or nine more who think all that crap about it ruining short-term memory is real. Wow. Let's see, where were we? Oh yeah. Marijuana is the most logical pulp & paper crop for our forestry clear cuts once the trees are gone.

Marketing Boards

An administrative device created for a number of Canadian industries (mainly agricultural) to protect them from having their larger American counterparts dump products into the Canadian market below cost. The idea was to ensure a minimum level of Canadian production, and thus a degree of freedom from dependency on the United States. Sensible in their origins and basic purpose, marketing boards remind us that open and fair competition isn't a simple matter of lining up the horses and letting them run as fast as they can.

Martin, Paul Jr.

As Jean Chretien's finance minister, he was Michael Wilson with a red tie,disingenuous grin and a wife as boring as he is. For nine years he doubled as Jean Chretien's ideas man, which was supposed to be Lloyd Axworthy's job until it was discovered that Axworthy's brain could be disconnected from his spine with a simple downturn in fiscal spending estimates. Martin owns a steamship company that won't employ Canadian workers and doesn't pay Canadian taxes. That this man got to be Prime Minister for almost a year demonstrates just how far the right we've drifted. The best political speech he ever gave was the one announcing his resignation after being defeated at the polls in January 2006 by a right-wing robot and a herd of cats.

May 24th

Queen Victoria's birthday, whoever she was. Last day for the suicidal to try skidooing on Canadian lakes.

Mays, John Bentley

Chronically depressed American dilettante who, despite never having met anyone who actually lived in a surburb, has gradually honed his observational skills to the point that his occasional newspaper columns on Toronto's architecture and urban design have become a unique cultural event-unless he's extolling Modernism or the private pleasures of the outer colonies of Toronto.

Mcdonald, Don

Former Federal Liberal cabinet minister and Canadian architect of the FTA. At one point while a member of Pierre Trudeau's cabinet he advocated that Canada withdraw from NATO. Then he joined the Trilateral Commission. There's an interesting story here, if you're into conspiracy theories or alien abductions.

Mcdonald, Sir John A.

Political genius and whiskey enthusiast who invented Canada by giving alternate sections of land across the country to capitalists on the understanding that they would build a railroad and provide rail passenger service in perpetuity. The "perpetuity" ended in the mid-1980s without anyone in the government demanding the land back.

Mcdonut, Alexis

She's a sharper, more intelligent and funnier politician than her predecessor, and as human beings go, she's less than normally boring when she's able to untangle the party line from around her neck and doesn't have a television camera focused on her. But she's going to end up as Audrey McLaughlin II because she's allowed herself to be overpowered by her party handlers, who are, with many of the balance of the NDP apparatus, one long intellectual aneurysm.

Mclaughlin, Sarah

She's already written some very good songs - on her own according to the courts, she's young, gifted enough to get even better, she's a brilliant organizer with a throat-slashing sense of how to do business. But she's New Age, she's from Vancouver, and she's way too impressed by her own talent.

Mclean, Ron

Sports journalist, straight man for Don Cherry on Hockey Night in Canada, amateur referee and maybe the nicest person in Canadian media. He has intelligence, civility and he can see outside and beyond the tunnel vision of sports. If Canada survives-and we're assuming that McLean can continue to survive working with Don Cherry--it will be because quietly intelligent people like Ron McLean help us to define ourselves as meaningfully not-American. His interview-or attempted interview-with Donovan Bailey after the Olympic 100 metres race in 1996 was an unintentional lesson in Canadian forebearance, and as revealing as (and infinitely more charming than) the blowhard national self-aggrandizement that has scarred nearly ever American telecast of the last two Olympics.

Mcluhan, Marshall

1960s communications speed-freak and corporate raconteur who was hounded by packs of wild academic and media dogs into total incomprehensibility. The grandfather of today's SuperMinds, McLuhan was primarily a gifted intellectual thief and an assembler of ideas. His weakness was his devout Roman Catholicism, which made him imagine that there was a Godly order within communications trends that subsequent events and developments have not revealed.

Mcquaig, Linda

Generally reliable leftist journalist and always creative researcher--except when she's talking about the Left or leftish alternatives to right wing programs. She is arguably the only social democratic analyst around who understands the monetary and banking systems.

Meat Inspectors

It’s now becoming clear that among the most damaging casualties of deregulation and government cutbacks is the regulatory apparatus of inspectors who are supposed to make sure our still-multiplying food regulations are being adhered to. Suddenly, The Toronto Star tells us that 58,000 people are getting ill each year from tainted meat, and that we can save $172 million by spending $28 million on meat inspection. The math here smells as bad as the meat has lately, but neither are as high as the stink coming from the post-Walkerton Ontario government, which doesn’t seem to understand that laws without enforcement are worse than having no laws at all.

Meech Lake

Bloodsucker-loaded recreational lake in the Gatineau Hills east of Ottawa that inspired Brian Mulroney's first organized attempt to dismantle Canada. The Meech Lake deal, which was agreed to by nine drugged or drunk Premiers, was foiled only because a native Indian MPP from Manitoba objected and the premier of Newfoundland woke up at the last minute. Birthplace of the political oxymoron "distinct society".

Mercredi, Ovide

Lighten up, Ned. You're not a philosopher nor an international statesmen. Phone your wife and kids more often. And go fishing once in a while. And then lighten up some more.

Metis

Western Canadian term for Mohawks: Some Native blood, a lot of attitude and the same lust for Casinos and cross-border trade that characterizes treaty Indians.

Metrotown, Burnaby, B.c

. The set of Bladerunner with a life-size toy electric train running through the middle of it. And next to Toronto's City Hall, it has Canada's most lethal underground parking maze.

Mexico

We got into bed with this country in 1993 by signing NAFTA and being told that sending our industries southward to be attended by workers forced to labour without security, safety or a livable minimum wage would somehow help us and raise the Mexican worker's quality of life. Mexico's monetary system quickly collapsed, its soldiers began shooting its citizens, the president who negotiated NAFTA turned out to be gangster and the already disgusting gulf between its rich and poor grew wider. But crawling into bed with Mexico was inevitable, right? Part of progress and evolution. A natural partner.

Mills, Dennis

Four-term Toronto-Danforth Liberal MP and part-time promotional impresario. He is a bizarre combination of the personalities of PT Barnum and Pierre Trudeau, a man at once solidly committed to political realities like elections and committees and also, when bored, to grandiose yet often successful schemes that other elected officials wouldn't even think of. His latest rock and roll venture, the Molson Canadian Rocks for Toronto featuring the Rolling Stones, was a masterpiece of private-public partnership and logistical execution. It helped turn the city's economy around, possibly made it impossible for Paul Martin Jr. not to give him a cabinet post and clearly cemented his place as the Liberal’s big kahuna in Toronto politics. It was also another example of why Mills is among the half-dozen federal politicians it would be interesting to be stranded on a desert island with: the conversations wouldn't ever be boring, and he’d probably find a way to get you home. Eric Blair

Minor Hockey

It's hard to say how this came about, but between the homophobes, the media's Reptile Machine and the caring professionals who want to make us afraid of everybody and everything, we've managed to make minor hockey and day-care centres the two leading public stewpots of child molesters. Well, everybody is for apprehending and punishing molesters, but all this publicity shouldn't be taken to mean that parents no longer need to teach their kids not to go into dark, enclosed spaces with members of certain occupational groups we've all known since about 1497 were prone to molest.

Mirabel Airport

Federal line department fuckup-extraordinaire from the late 1960s. The federal government expropriated 95,000 acres of Quebec farmland for this never-used white elephant, pushed Quebecois families from farms they'd worked since the 17th Century, and provided convincing evidence that Canada is too insensitive an instrument to govern Quebec.

Mirvish, Ed

Toronto businessman who has put his money wherever his mouth and ego has uncovered public value. You can question Mervish's taste if you want, but not his commitment or his generosity. If Canada had a hundred people like him, this would be a truly entertaining and maybe great country. It wouldn't have good restaurants or an indigenous theatre community, but it would be cheap to live in, the poor would get enough to eat, and there would be more laughter and merriment than we've got right now.

Mitchell, Joni

Saskatchewan Folksinger who lost her grasp of the major keys in the 1980s but remains one of Canada's few decent poets and among the few Canadian entertainers who never loses her dignity or violates her own privacy for commercial purposes. Perhaps the best measure of Mitchell's personal dignity is the way she was able to publicize the existence of a daughter given up for adoption thirty years ago, find the daughter and integrate her into her life without it being turned into a nightmare of soap opera sentimentalities.

Monetary System

Until the early 1980s Canada enjoyed a relatively independent monetary system, along with a highly centralized and secure banking system and a high level of local investment and moderately high personal savings. In less than 15 years American-style deregulation, foreign takeovers and chicken-shit government policies have made us a capital and profit flight zone with a dependent and volatile currency, preyed on by a criminally profitable banking sector wholly divorced from responsibility to local and national well-being.

Monetary Union

Right wing fiscal intellectuals have been campaigning for a Canada/U.S. monetary union, knowing that the lefties will whine loudly about how it will cost us the last shreds of national autonomy. The righties know damned well that the U.S. has no interest in a monetary union with Canada, and will reject the idea as soon as the trap has been set. And the left will have been had yet again...

Monopolies

Twenty-five years ago both Canada and the U.S. had strong legislation to safeguard citizens against the formation of unfair monopolies that reduce the commercial competition which is the source of capitalism's vitality. A very large portion of Canada's anti-combines energy went into worrying about the effects increasing multinational corporate agglomeration could have on the country's fragile cultural integrity. But at almost exactly the point in our history where two decades of enlightened policies and programs for culture were beginning to produce decent products and even one or two artists able to stand with the world's best, a cycle of radical agglomeration and mergers, took over and Canada fell into the grip of an open conspiracy no legislator will acknowledge but which reduces competition, standardizes markets, and applies a cybernetic choke-hold on the flow of dissident views.

Montreal

A once great city reduced to a hodge-podge of language obsessed commissars and lunatics. Yet Montreal remains a remarkable city. There are those innumerable casual moments where Montrealers will from English to French in the middle of sentences without finding it unusual, there is the ironwork staircases, the grandiose modernist architecture, the charm of the cathedrals and the scent not quite of Paris but of a cosmopolitanism unlike anything anywhere. It makes you wistful about how great Canada might have been. Particularly when you realize there is a possibility that Montreal could end up being to Canada what Berlin was to Germany during the Cold War.

Moores, Frank

Former Newfoundland premier and lobbyist rumoured to have lobbied for the highest bidder willing to open secret Swiss bank accounts for his employers and pals. Canadians are willing to believe that their public officials are stupid, but corrupt? No way, eh?

Morgentaler, Henry

Abortion pro-choice culture hero undeterred by death threats and exploding clinics. He motors on, unsmiling, unrelentingly logical in his commitment to women's choice. Now that we live in a country where the governing powers don't even pretend to care about the nation's children, why does this stupid debate over whether or not women should bring more unwanted children into the world continue? To distract us from the real problem we face?

Morissette, Alanis

She talked about giving head in a rock and roll song. She's 200 times smarter than Debbie Boone and Britney Spears. She makes rock videos that make you interested in the lyrics of her songs. But really. Whoever's in charge please take their foot off the cat's tail before we all go mad.

Motion Picture Industry

A euphemism for U.S.-based Japanese-owned open conspiracy to prevent people from seeing accurate depictions of their lives. The Motion Picture Industry builds movies to formulas too tight for creativity, spends astronomical amounts of money on special effects that addict the weak-minded and prevent poorer outsiders from competing with movies about human beings.

Mowat, Farley

Writer and bon vivant who devolved into a children's writer-possibly under the strain of serious research. During the height of the cold war in the 1960s he was permitted inside Russia, but merely asked where the best bars were. The credibility of his research has been questioned by Saturday Night magazine, which may or may not be worrisome in light of that magazine's willingness to excerpt anything written by Elspeth Cameron, including her recent half-cooked lesbian revelations, as gospel truth. Even if Mowat spent only 30 minutes dancing with wolves and living with aboriginals, Never Cry Wolf, and People of the Deer are perfectly readable books for young adults almost a half-century after they were written.

Mulroney, Brian

Canadian Prime Minister 1984-92. He carries the distinction of having a smaller percentage of voters support his government than the segment of the population who believed that Elvis is still alive. He also has a lifelong fetish about singing Irish folk songs while sitting on the knees of American corporate captains. Any other country in the world would have impeached, assassinated or splattered him with noxious-smelling substances after his first two years in office. Canadians reelected him. Whether or not Mulroney had Swiss bank accounts, as the RCMP bumblingly tried to allege, doesn't matter. When he was allowed to spend eight years shoveling our national assets across negotiating tables to anyone willing to grab them, does.

Multiculturalism

Originally an offshoot of unofficial federal government programs to ensure that Canada's drive-in restaurants would have enough dishwashers, multiculturalism eventually evolved into a two-pronged immigration strategy aimed at securing workers willing to labour at or below minimum wage jobs and for securing offshore investment capital. The strategy didn't include telling incoming immigrants (capital-intensive or otherwise) that Canada had customs, laws and a culture they ought to learn, a climate they're not supposed to whine about, and that Canadian citizenship involves duties more extensive than working long enough hours to buy a Camaro. Multiculturalism is rare outside the major cities in Canada and is in the process of being exterminated within Quebec. Outside of Toronto or Vancouver it is practiced at a limited scale under the disguise of common sense and basic decency-- provided that new participants can afford the $900 entry head tax. In spite of the government's crappy intentions and inconsistent policies, multiculturalism has evolved into a phenomenon that, due to the tenacity, imagination and aggression of its intended exploitees is rapidly replacing Canada's dowdy Euro-WASP cultural fabric with a slightly shredded but more colourful and vibrant weave. Criticizing multiculturalism is a little like shooting fish in a barrel, but everyone should remember this before pulling the trigger: if Canada doesn't self-destruct as a nation state before the globalist/New Conservative revolution burns itself out, an experiment of large-scale immigration into a hybrid-nation with a weak national identity will be one of the crucial political experiments of the 21st Century.

Munro, Alice

Famous writer of tiny, perfect stories about the bitterness of incapacity, the richness of WASP stoicisms and other subjects suitable for conversation at a quilting bee. Had she chosen another trade, she'd have been a jeweler who crafted exquisitely complex broaches for elderly women. Some folks think she needs to hang out with more interesting people, but so long as the New Yorker keeps publishing her depictions of how rural woodchucks manage their sewing machines and their neuroses as if that's an interest subject matter, no one will notice.

Murkans

A species of Americans who are the ones Canadians ought to be worrying about. Murkans own massive quantities of household automatic weapons and model themselves politically and intellectually on Richard Nixon and G. Gordon Liddy. Today, Newt Gingrich, Christine Whitman, George Bush the Younger and about 100,000 large, repressed and angry males of various backgrounds hanging out around bars and taverns across the U.S. are the primary Murkan threats to Canada. Unlike Americans, who are perpetually wet behind the ears when it comes to the real politik, Murkans understand the nuances of invasion tactics and the infinitely repeatable ways in which invasion, blockade and subversion can be masked as international trade equalization, capitalist progress and other incontrovertible inevitabilities of the 1990s.

Murphy, Rex

CBC Mediafave, almost as overexposed as Peter Mansbridge. Judging from Murphy's permanent grimace and garbled Newfie delivery style, he's there to represent that small but vocal minority of Canadians with screwdrivers stuck in sensitive zones of their bodies. But at least he's not Brian Stewart and 99 percent of the other CBC on-air blocks of wood.

Murray, Anne

Nova Scotia physical education instructor and erotomania target famed for being able to sing alto and dance the on-stage foxtrot at the same time. She's a small price to pay for the CRTC's CanCon regulations, but please, please, no more television specials.

Nafta

1992 Agreement between U.S., Canada and Mexico aimed at funneling jobs to Mexico, profits to U.S. multinational centres, and distracting Canadians with empty new conservative slogans about becoming more competitive while the countries assets are trucked south by American trucking companies using Mexican drivers.

Napo

National Anti-Poverty Organization. It is nearly as predictable as its contrary BCNI, and certain to raise diametrically opposite views. Somewhere between these two lobbies and their hurrah-for-our-side positions the real issues are asphyxiating in self-justification and righteous ideological bullshit.

Nash, Steve

Twenty-six year old Victoria, B.C. native who almost led Canada’s national basketball team to an Olympic medal, and having done that, turned down one of the Spice Girls for a local girl he was already dating. He plays in the NBA with the Dallas Mavericks, leads the league in free throw percentage and couldn’t do a slam dunk if they put a trampoline out for him. But if the Toronto Raptors had any brains they’d trade Vince Carter straight up to get this guy. He has a heart, and he could make basketball a popular sport in Canada, which is more than any those attitude-heavy Americans can hope for.

National Post

Conrad Black’s giddy experiment in news-reporting without even the slightest pretense of objectivity and printed exclusively in red ink, is, as of September 2001, over. The writing was better than that in the Globe & Mail, which might have had something to do with the fact that most of the Post’s writers were twenty years younger and hadn't had their brains pickled by job security and/or the carbon monoxide being re-circulated by closed-system office air conditioners. The paper, under the bottom-lining Aspers, is again barely distinguishable from the Financial Post Conrad Black edduced it from a few hundred million dollars in tax write-offs ago.

Nationalism

Canada's nationalism is unique in the world. It is not xenophobic and does not require citizens to wave flags, get drunk at high-school and college football games, place our hands over our hearts, start wars, or engage in other jingoistic behaviors. Canadian nationalism has an exquisitely noble purpose: to keep Canadians from becoming citizens of the United States.

Native Self-determination

Determination of native leaders in Canada to be able to sit on and oversee the activities of all government bodies and corporate boards of directors in Canada and to make long, boring speeches about animals and spirits without anyone having the courage to tell them to lighten up and get real.

Native Self-government

Euphemism adopted by Canadian governments to tag the practice of allowing Pre-European immigrant enclaves to determine what they would like to be and do provided that it doesn't impinge on corporate resource harvesting and any other high-priority financial sector pastimes.

Ncc

National Citizens' Coalition. This occasionally funny gang of aggrieved white guys was started by David Smith, made more pointy-headed by David Somerville and now run as a many-headed dog that will bark at anything to the left of libertarianism. It is the highly organized property-rights lunatic fringe of the Canadian Alliance.

Ndp

New Democratic Party: Formerly social democrats with ideas about social justice they occasionally embarrassed Liberals and Conservatives into implementing. Currently a coalition of a.) neophyte capitalists willing to delude themselves that dogs don't eat dogs b.) Safety Nazis bent on strapping all free-standing objects or persons to walls and floors c.)Trade Unionists who will sacrifice any democratic institution or industry to protect the union privileges of members over 45.

Neocons

Disgruntled Liberal and NDP party members, not to be confused with New Conservatives or Conservative Intellectuals, who loathe neoCons. There are a lot of NeoCons running around these days, and they tend to play a lot of golf and threaten to vote for Alliance party at cocktail parties after they get a few drinks.

Nep/neb

Trudeau-era national energy policy instrument (not to be confused with 1930s Soviet New Economic Plans) that crashed shortly after takeoff, leaving behind the massively debt-ridden PetroCan, Alberta's tar sands project and the Newfoundland Offshore Oil project, which has a much greater capacity for sucking money out of the Federal government than for producing crude oil.

Never Trust Anyone Who Grins While They Speak

Paul Martin Jr., Preston Manning, Ralph Klein, Brian Mulroney

New Conservatives

The ideologically-involved right wing of the conservative movement. They tend to be young business dorks of both genders, and they're our own special chapter of the international movement that believes employed workers are the chief impediment to wealth, and that the poor should be kicked hard in order to make the rich wealthier. David Frum is a leading New Conservative.

New Conservatives:

Imaginary political beings engendered by the physical fusion of the Western Canada-based Canadian Alliance (a coalition-of-cats that included Christian zealots; Calgary Bushites and other fans of Donald Rumsfeld from the 1970s; Oil Patch separatists; and retired Reform Party millionaires from B.C. who think the earth is flat and was invented in 4004 B.C.) with people from Eastern Canada who knew Brian Mulroney was an asshole but voted for him anyway, and the remaining dozen or so small-c conservatives across the country who were fond of Dalton Camp. No one has yet uncovered a New Conservative, and if it turns out they don’t exist, Stephen Harper is in for a relatively short but extremely painful ride.

New Year

Once an evening and following day when the Scottish got dead drunk and complained gloomily about the English, it has been taken over by celebration culture maniacs and RIDE roadblocks to ensure that future generations don't have any fun.

New York City

Where Torontonians phone to find out how to they're supposed to behave in complex situations. Quebec residents would like to do the same, but can't understand the behavior codings due to the language barrier. Because New York solves problems by hiring more police, it has become the New Conservative's urban redevelopment model for major Canadian cities.

Newfoundland

Nature park for chronic unemployment, folksingers and icebergs. This former British colony gave up its autonomy and its fish in 1949 for the promise that Canada would find a publisher for Joey Smallwood's memoirs, provide dental care and climate improvement, and maybe transfer a few viable industries from Ontario. The Federal government dental hygiene programs have been almost as ineffective as the Navy has been in defending Newfoundland's fishery; unemployment levels threaten to reach 75%; the fishery is closed; the only industry brought in involved imaginary oil rigs that drowned as many Newfoundland workers as it employed. The icebergs are now being studied along with island's over-supply of comedians as a source of potential new exports, while the remaining Newfoundlanders go around threatening to start clubbing seals again, along with a few people in Ottawa and Quebec they suspect are responsible for destroying the fishery, stealing their hydro resources and otherwise screwing up life on the Rock.

Newman, Peter C.

Czech-born Hudson's Bay salesperson and author of popular histories that no one outside the newspaper industry reads. This Upper Canada College grad is Canada's most convincing political gossip, for which, according to a bunch of over-60 journalists who are also UCC grads, we're supposed to be grateful.

Newspapers

Canada's most suicidal media/communications subsector. Corporate agglomeration has reduced the total number of papers operating by close to fifty percent in the last two decades, and editorial and local coverage by ninety percent. If all newspapers want todo is list sports scores and stock market results, publish photos ofnewly appointed business executives and pull entertainment industry PRreleases off the wire services, how long will it be before all ofCanada's newspapers will originate from a single office in Toronto staffed by fifteen or twenty digital technicians who all look and act like Andrew Coyne or David Frum, and secretly wear Conrad Black costumes late a night.

Ngo’s

Non Government Organizations. It is wise to be wary the moment this term appears in conversation, particularly if it is midstream in a torrent of other acronyms. If the speaker is from political right (ROC), he or she is talking about organizations meant to reduce government services while avoiding government’s traditional responsibilities. If the speaker is from the left (LOC), he or she is talking about gangs of activists on payroll (AOPs) trying to make it illegal to move, speak or even think without a permit and a full array of safety devices.

Niagara Falls

Zone of extreme commercial vulgarity overlaid on one of The Seven Wonders of the World. If you want a perfect example of the aesthetic collision between early 20th century public trust and late 20th Century mercantile "trust nothing", go to Niagara Falls. The Falls have the world's longest active tenure as a disposal unit for depressives, exhibitionists and fools. And oh yeah. Our falls are grander and prettier than theirs.

Notwithstanding

The linguistic rat in the granary of the cultural exemption Canada gained with The Canada U.S. Free Trade Agreement in 1988 and with NAFTA in 1993. The "notwithstanding" clause tacked onto the exemption allows U.S. traders the right of retaliation--to equivalent commercial value--to any attempt the Canadian government makes to protect Canadian cultural institutions. Thus, no serious new protections have been attempted since 1988, and those that were already in the works met with a hail of American threats, and thus died quietly on order papers and in Ottawa back rooms. Wary Canadians now duck whenever they hear this word spoken by anyone in a position of authority.

Npi

AKA "New Politics Initiative": currently a badly-designed web site owned by Judy Rebick and B.C. MP Svend Rob that seems to think that renewing left wing politics in Canada is a matter of pumping some oxygen into the politics of the 1970s and early 1980s, in which the virtuous and the relatively oppressed band together to heap abuse on the ruling classes, and then demand fair play from them. Hold your breath, because it may get better.

Nukes

Canada's Atomic Energy Commission specializes in the design, development and sale of obsolete nuclear reactors to such politically stable areas as Iraq, Pakistan, Rumania and Ontario. For decades, Northern Ontario was the source of much of the world's raw uranium, which is only one of the factors that makes it a leading candidate to become the eventual repository for the world's supply of spent uranium and other nuclear wastes and byproducts. This will obviate the need for street lighting in northern communities or the settling of land claims with Northern Ontario's Native Indians.

Obscenity

Thanks to a unique convergence of Christian conservatism and full-fanged feminism in the chambers of the Supreme Court of Canada, it is now possible to commit the crime of obscenity any time you make a sexual image (in words or pictures) that someone decides to find offensive. The Supreme Court's R. v Butler judgement of 1992 redefined legal "harm" (previously thought to require, minimally, that you punch someone) to include the "perception" of harm, "especially to women" in the representations of sex. The harm, wrote Justice John Sopinka, in a unanimous decision, consists of people, especially men, acquiring bad attitudes that might lead them to do bad things. The judgment has made our highest court an intellectual laughing-stock in law journals across the English-speaking world.

Ocap

AKA Ontario Coalition Against Poverty: Foot-in-mouth mostly-downtown Toronto lobby for pretty much everything the Ontario Conservatives would like to eradicate. OCAP’s de facto head, John Clarke is an abrasive working class Brit who has made Lastman and a few others with normally-longer fuses seriously consider taking steroids so can apply Jean Chretien-level choke holds on him.

October 17, 1970

For many boomers, this date marks the Canadian equivalent of the U.S. Kent State killings. October 17th, 1970 was when then-Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, in response to "perceived threat" of a Quebec insurrection by a group of separatists who'd been smoking too much dope, acted tough on television and then sent police and military personnel running loose for a couple of weeks arresting and generally being impolite to several hundred members of the middle classes with known attitude problems. The arrests gave Quebec dissidents the impetus to start a serious separatist movement under Rene Lesvesque, and gave English Canadian intellectuals the moral elan to go out and protest against the Vietnam war like good Americans.

Offshore Lenders

According to the federal government, these are salt-of-the-earth philanthropists generous enough to hold Canada's public debt for us. In many cases, these people got their investment capital inside Canada by buying majority stakes in Canadian industries, sucking them dry for profits, and then reinvesting the money in extremely generous government bond issues.

Ogden, Frank

Vancouver Futurist and Supermind. Yeah, sure, Frank. Life in Canada probably would be better if everyone owned a Pentium III-based PC and five grand worth of other communications technology. But the big monitors and minitowers don't fit into a shopping cart, and the Pentium processor has a tendency to crash when you're trying to be interactive from a cardboard shelter in a mall parking lot during a snowstorm.

Oil

Political substance that, talked about while ingesting bourbon or rye whiskey, propels people to the far right edge of the political spectrum. Canada has sufficient oil and gas reserves to turn Alberta's economy into a small-scale facsimile of Mexico's.

Oka

Cheese factory, costume party, real-estate brawl, media event that backfired on everyone involved except owners of military surplus clothing stores in Kingston and Montreal.

Ondaatje, Michael

Shy, gracious poet who became an international celebrity with the transformation of his Booker Prize-winning novel The English Patient into a mind-numbingly fatuous Academy Award-winning motion picture. Ondaatje's only response to fame was to become even more shy and gracious, and to gain 20 pounds so the starlets wouldn't hit on him. Twenty-five years from now, he'll still be famous in Canada, but only amongst young writers, and then for writing a book titled Coming Through Slaughter, which radically widened the boundaries by which young Canadian writers were able to approach their craft.

Ontario

Canada's largest and most confused province has at least four distinct regions: 1.) Metro Toronto, which would rather be New York City only cleaner and safer 2.) Southwestern Ontario, which just wants the Auto Pact to live on so everyone can afford to stay drunk on American beer. 3.) Eastern Ontario, where it borders Lake Ontario, which is obsessed with breeding hockey players and ridiculing Quebec-bred hockey players as contact-shy wimps. 4. The northern regions of Ontario, which are distinguished by ridiculously long winters, prehistoric rocks, mercury poisoning, and several glow-in-the dark mining communities which are the result of excessive anti-Communist zeal at the Atomic Energy Commission of Canada a few decades ago.

Orca Bay

West Coast investment company head-quartered in Washington State that owns Vancouver’s major sports franchises. Aside from insisting on stealing North West Coast Indian art motifs for its corporate signature and perpetrating the latest in a truly depressing string of horrible hockey uniforms on the poor Vancouver Canucks, this is just the latest version of foreign corporations screwing things up at our expense and keeping us from having to learn from the consequences of our own brands of incompetence.

Orchestras And Operas

Following the tradition of 18th and 19th century European centres, nearly every Canadian city larger than North Battleford, Saskatchewan has or is planning to have both a symphony orchestra and an opera company. All are heavily subsidized by both government and the corporate sector, and cater almost exclusively to the tastes of wealthy urbanites, who don't appear to have noticed that the Twentieth Century has yet to produce any orchestral music comparable to that of the Eighteenth. Nor have they noticed that opera has been replaced as a culturally significant activity, first by Hollywood and Broadway musicals, then by television soap operas, and recently by music videos. On the other hand, why not give the rich a regular excuse to wear their tuxedos and other formal garb?

Ordinary Working Canadians

Citizens the NDP believe will faithfully vote for them in elections. The 20-30% of Canadian workers who have university degees occasionally do.

Ottawa

Mosquito and snow-befouled city located on a defunct canal system thought to lead in the direction of Washington, D.C. In the 1960s and 1970s Ottawa was the Brazilia of the northern hemisphere, but now more resembles Rio. Current population mainly taken up by poultry breeding schemes aimed at perfecting an all-white-meat chicken, and furious paper-shuffling. Current all-party federal government plans are aimed at turning Ottawa into a ghost town by 2020.

Owner/operators

ALAN GREENSPAN: Chairman, U.S. Federal Reserve Board. He's the guy who tells the Bank of Canada how to experiment on us next. BCNI: Business Council on National Issues. Most powerful corporate lobby in Canada. Michael Wilson sat on its knee and clacked his jaw. Paul Martin Jr. is now on the same perch. MOODY'S INVESTOR SERVICE: Bond rater. When these guys call Canadian governments in for a conference, there is more fear and trembling that if it were the Horsemen of the Apocalypse inviting them to a rodeo. MARGARET THATCHER: She's been out of office in Britain for twenty years, but she's now running Canada and the U.S. in spirit along with Milton Freedman, and may have taken over Europe.

Ozone Layer

What Canada has progressively less of each year. Instead of serious programs to force alternatives to the use of freon, Canadian governments whine about the problem in harmony with the U.S. government agencies, and set loose a well-funded agency to inform citizens about how dangerous it is to their health to be outdoors without a body-suit, a hat, gloves, a parasol, and #45 sunblock.

Palmer, Vaughn

Aggrieved White Guy, veteran Vancouver Sun small-c conservative provincial pundit, with the temperament of a overfed wharf rat. He's wild about the infinite malfeasance of government, but lazily uninterested in social policy, culture, environment, and subjects beyond easy reach. Having written close to 1000 consecutive columns attacking B.C's NDP governments may be excusable in the circumstance. Being a major contributor to the media's demonization of governement where ever it is found on the West Coast is without excuse.

Parizeau, Jacques

Recent Quebec separatist leader, Premier and poutine-inflated Lee Van Cleef look-alike. Parizeau led Quebec's 1995 attempt to escape from Canada until Lucien Bouchard took over. Resigned as premier after pointing out that if everybody in Quebec were French-speaking and of French origin, Quebec could be a republic with ethnic and cultural policies as much fun as those in Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. Parizeau is currently drinking 7-Up, pondering imponderables, studying the career of Cardinal Richelieu and jamming his foot into his mouth whenever the Parti Quebecois needs someone to take a fall for it.

Parliament

Before Pierre Trudeau started the movement to Americanize the Canadian political system, parliament was the governing legislative body of Canada. Members of Parliament are now alternately comatose and hysterical while they await their pensions and the results of cabinet sessions, although the advent of parliamentary television has led to an illicit trade in amphetamines and other awakeness-simulating drugs.

Parti Quebecois

Formerly a social democratic political party in Quebec led by Rene Levesque and aimed at reenacting the Plains of Abraham battle of 1759 where British General Wolfe defeated a gang of drunken French soldiers under Montcalm. The party has gradually been taken over by crazed nationalists, language-deluded New Conservatives, church/state integrationists and Lucien Bouchard-for King enthusiasts. Separation referendums in 1980 and 1995 were inconclusive, except to let Quebec know that the financial community wasn't going to stand for much more nonsense from either side.

Partnerships

Recently-invented cultural procedure in which governments and corporations leap into bed, pretend to hump one another, then invite the public to sit on the end of the bed for the announcement that, in the interests of economic growth and sound management, tax burdens have been shifted from the corporations to the general public, and that all cultural programs will put on a profit/loss basis, with the profits group to the corporate sector.

Party Building

PARTY BUILDING: a political euphemism for selling out core values and sacrificing the public good along with any other institution in the country for short-term practical gains and/or more seats in parliament. Ed Broadbent did this in 1988, turning Canada over to Brian Mulroney’s corporate trade fiends in the hope of gaining a few more seats in parliament at the expense of John Turner’s Liberals, with whom he was in agreement over the dangers of involving the country in a free trade agreement with the US that would undermine the country’s political and economic independence. The Progressive Conservatives did it in 2003 when they climbed into bed with the fundamentalists and corporate crackpots of the Canadian Alliance to form the “new” and patently “unprogressive” Conservative Party. The Liberals do it all the time, but since all they believe in is power and contingency anyway, no one notices.

Peacekeepers

Troops sent to political hot-zones to keep crazed ethnic groups from murdering one another, and to keep enough of our armed forces outside the country that we'll remember we're not [Americans]. Canada's most successful peacekeeping foray has been in Cyprus, where Canadians and others have kept Greek and Turkish factions from their genocidal destinies for three decades. Canadian peacekeepers in Cambodia, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo-how can this be put delicately-notably less successful in recent years.

Pearson, Lester B.

Nobel prize-winning Canadian diplomat,who almost single-handedly avoided the Suez crisis in 1956. He was a sleep-inducing Prime Minister (1963-68) frequently pissed on by American diplomat, and the main achievement of his tenure was to lead the country into a ludicrous debate over the design and colour of its flag during a period when the U.S. was dismantling our foreign and military policy. On the other side, he was enough of a baseball fan to have been the primary force in getting Montreal a Major League baseball franchise for Expo 67. The fact that the CIA believed Pearson was a communist annoyed him enough that he annointed Pierre Trudeau as his successor, thus giving Canada the only Prime Minister in the 20th Century who had real social democratic ideas and an IQ above the national average.

People’s History, A

The reason why there have been no serious criticisms—or even serious critiques—of CBC lifer Mark Starowicz’s giddy attempt to re-bind the nation without offending any of its minorities is that no one has been able to stay awake through an entire episode. The few critics who have tried have slipped back into their comas mumbling "nice production values", which is a phrase that probably circumscribes our collective cultural future better than any other.

Perry, Mathew

Star of the television show Friends, but also the son of Pierre Trudeau's former travelling companion/secretary Susan Perry. It's unclear if the association with Trudeau elevated the younger Perry in any way, but boy, can this kid lose weight when his career is threatened.

Pettigrew, Pierre

Federal Minister of International Trade and Canada’s self-anointed philosopher king of corporate globalization. In "The New Politics of Confidence" he posited the greasy argument that globalization will allow the corporate lions to lie peacefully with the lambs--which in his parlance means women, minorities and anyone under 30 with spikey hair. He was last seen signing free copies of his book in Quebec City behind a ten foot fence and clouds of tear gas. Outside the fence, his gee whiz techno-doublespeak and affection for hair gel imported from Paris earned him the nickname "Slippery Pete".

Poets

Canada has more published poets per capita than any country in the world, which isn't surprising given that Canadian poetry as practiced is overwhelmingly writing for people who don't want to think anything through. Since poetry is a commercially obsolete medium of statement, one could interpret this unabated statistic as a signal that Canada's publicly funded cultural system has failed to respond to common sense. Canada's successful poets usually play guitars and other musical instruments, and they're so easy to find I won't name them. I'll offer three poets, relatively unknown outside their communities, who give in to no vulgarities and write as clearly as the age allows: George Stanley, Anne Carson and Robin Blaser. Find them, read them.

Police Unions

Among the many dangerous notions that can arise within a democracy is the idea that people who work within its various regulatory apparatuses are free to exercise political free agency so as to influence—as a group—political, social and cultural outcomes. This idea is particularly dangerous when those declaring free agency carry weapons that ordinary folks are not permitted to own let alone walk around brandishing in plain sight. The recent political activism within Canada’s police unions is therefore a deeply disturbing development. Toronto Police Union head Craig Brommell, who opines that it is acceptable for police departments to promote political candidates and to undertake behind-the-scenes investigations into unfriendly political candidates, is an example of a growing trend within the public service sector that no elected representative appears to have the courage to do much more than whine meekly about. Such people ought to be of the utmost concern to governments supposedly trying to limit the control, ownership or use of weapons and don’t want to see an entire generation of heretofore peaceful, law-abiding citizens arming themselves and turning the country into a refrigerated lookalike of Waco, Texas.

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