T

Television Industry Spokespersons

a.) Accountants armed with the latest Neilsen ratings announcing that in the free market system, the public has a right to the kind of programming it demands. b.) Well-dressed persons announcing corporate media mergers or c.) government ministers and their stooges announcing public sector cutbacks and programming cancellations. All three of these definitions will be valid until well after the year 2002, or until the disappearance of public broadcasting.)

Temagami

Large area in Northern Ontario once filled with white pine and now a battle zone for environmentalists, loggers and tourist camp owners sucking up to the outdoor recreation market. At issue is a 1400 hectare stand of old growth white pine, one of the last in North America, and more significant but less glamourous than B.C.'s tiny Karmanah Valley, which now features handicam battery rechargers attached to each large tree.

Thanksgiving

Mid-October harvest festival where we're supposed to thank God we're not Americans. So far, so good.

The "quebec Question"

It is almost impossible to say anything about the Quebec Question that doesn't dissolve into instant cant, thanks to rednecks, sentimentalists, and a lot of truly mean-spirited people on both sides of the issue. Maybe the main point of the Quebec Question is that there is a serious question, and it deserves an answer. It isn't enough to simply ask "What does Quebec want?" and then tie, bind, and gag the question with sloppy metaphors about marriage, divorce, sex and raising children. The true question reads more like "What would be a reasonable political arrangement for a hybrid-state historically shaped by trees, rivers, snow, and by francophone, anglophone and aboriginal immigrants, resulting in a diffuse national identity that has subsequently been diffused further by substantial further waves of human immigration from environments and cultures radically different those that founded it? Probably more important than asking ourselves stupidly obtuse questions is that we stop looking for simple answers to the questions under our noses. There aren't any simple answers. Other countries have figured out how to live with autonomous regions, self-governing peoples and even patchwork solutions that are far sillier than anything we're proposing. But almost anything would be an improvement on the present trajectory of the country, which seems intent on an absolute devolution of confederation into a loose association of shopping megamalls.

The Auto Pact

Supposedly a trade pact that blew up on the Americans, it is actually a function of monetary policy, or was until Brian Mulroney pegged the Canadian dollar artificially high and caused an exodus of auto manufacturing to Ohio and anywhere else in the U.S. and Mexico where the incest rate is abnormally high and wages are low. The Auto Pact still exists, mainly as a tribute to the power of inertia.

The Canadian Encyclopedia

A Toronto-centric view of Canada as recognized by those Canadians who own Volvo station wagons. It was first published in the late 1980s by Mel Hurtig and is now, despite its considerable merit, perpetually to be found on remainder tables in discount bookstores. Now in CD-ROM, if you're impressed by technological advances of that sort.

The Canadian Identity

There is no single metaphor that adequately describes the character of Canada or its people. We aren't unified, we're not monocultural, chromal or cytal. We're people who live north of the Great Lakes or the 49th parallel. We don't wear sandals after September 15th unless we're on drugs or vacationing outside the country, we're not Survivors, Bush-Gardeners, tiles in an Ottawa mosaic or base metals in an American melting pot. Somewhere, deep in our collective and individual souls, we are a people who understand that when you mix big metaphors with politics, you get bullshit, and you get dead people.

The Ciurluini Sisters

Jennifer and Cynthia Dale, locally over-exposed Canadian television actresses who can't seem to get steady work in the U.S. Hard to find a heterosexual Canadian male over 30 and under 75 who doesn't think they're babes.

The Cuban Missile Crisis

The point in history (October 1962) when the U.S. reintroduced the Monroe Doctrine, and Canadians lost their independent foreign policy and began to crouch under tables and desks like good Americans during civil defense exercises.

The Dollar

About 75 cents when things are going really well. The goal of NAFTA is to make the Canadian dollar indistinguishable from the Mexican peso.

The Fraser Valley

Richest stretch of former farmland on the West Coast now being Wise Use-d into bedroom communities for Vancouver's service industries and pockmarked with Bible-thumping enclaves of fundamentalists who have seen Jesus and can't distinguish him from Preston Manning. Fraser Institute executives do not live in the Fraser Valley.

The Globe & Mail

"Canada's Newspaper" in the sense that it is not terribly well written, isn't terribly well edited or managed, isn't politically independent of foreign control, thinks that used cars are pre-owned Jaguars and exit-level BMWs, and is about as authentically Canadian as the National Post.

The Group Of Seven

The kindest way to look at this group of outdoorsmen, cocksmen, poor swimmers, drunks and socialites is to call them the visual arts equivalent of Don Messer's Jubilee. But as the official CanCon sector of Canadian visual arts shrinks to a three mile radius around Kleinburg, Ontario, can't the rest of us admit that Patterson Ewen, Harold Towne and Greg Curnoe, along with a half dozen others who are still alive,were or are superior art guys in every possible way?

The Lunatic Fringe

No, not B.C and Alberta. These are born-yesterday political movements who've made the Rhinoceros Party from days of yore seem like moderates. One of them is the Heritage Front, which is Canada's only admitted racially motivated political party outside of the Parti Quebecois. Most of the fringe parties are less nasty , but still harbour beliefs in things like Elvis, UFO's, Black, Asian and Jewish conspiracies, and other tenuous grips on reality. The Natural Law Party, for instance, believes that the road to good management lies through a national Yogic frequent flyer program. These believers are likely to become more extremist in their views as Reform and other elements of the mainstream parties stop pretending they're sane and occupy the natural territories of the conventional lunatic fringe under the aegis of the Reform/Alliance

The Maritimes

Quaint set of territories similar to New England except with icebergs, odd accents, a more or less total absence of jobs and industries and so many Celtic Revival entrepreneurs clamouring for attention that it is impossible to drive from Moncton to Halifax without running one over. Burial ground of choice for Canadian government industrial development programs since Halifax was blown up by stray armaments ship during the First World War. The only other excitement it has had was Leon Trotsky's short internment during the 1930s. Maritimers throw the best parties in Canada, which is not an admission that the poor have more fun.

The North

A vague area thought by Torontonians to be somewhere north of Barrie and Lake Muskoka and which they believe is best suited for Native land claims, hydroelectric megaprojects, and sanitary landfills. For most other Canadians the North is one of three things: 1.)Something you brag about when you're drunk and American tourists are annoying you, 2.)a place to avoid, or 3.) a vast area north of the 60th parallel populated during the winter by Native Indians and Inuit, some extremely picturesque but mostly bad-tempered wild animals, ice, air pollution levels equalivalent to those in Los Angeles, and no ozone in the upper atmosphere. During the summer, one can expect to find an additional 40 billion blackflies, and a slightly smaller number of nature photographers.

The Okanagan Valley

Formerly one of Canada's prime fruit-growing areas, famous for its good weather, Social Credit premiers and the Ogopogo, which is a tourism industry invention from the 1950s that about four people in the valley still believe in. The Okanagan is rapidly filling to capacity with trailer parks for the elderly, and it is a prime terminus point for sunshine-questers from all across the northern Prairies and the B.C. north, who believe they've discovered Arizona.

The Prairies

A permanently depressed economic region noted for its cultural vitality, derelict wheat fields, radical shifts in government, and a willingness to get drunk and forget about how flat it all is. No, wait. The word "depressed" should read "depressing"

The Rankin Family

Damn! Just as everyone realized that their music wasn't a family of fingernails scraping a blackboard, one of them had to die in a car accident that was pointless even by Cape Breton standards.

The Senate

Vestigial British institution originally designed to protect traditional property rights and privileges from the belligerent, ill-bred pigs elected to Parliament. In Canadian practice, it has become a pasture for elderly, belligerent, ill-bred parliamentary pigs who have lost their seats. Recent governments, while making grunting noises to the public about disbanding the Senate, have turned it into a partisan institution with powers parallel to those of Parliament. This alteration has led to paralysis of both bodies, leaving effective power in the hands of the Prime Minister and his close friends in the U.S. State Department and Trade Secretariat.

The Turbot War.

Alright, let's go over this one more time. Canada boarded a couple of Spanish fishing boats, defeated the Spanish Armada, turned Brian Tobin into a culture hero and premier, and gave Newfoundlanders a real reason to go out, get drunk and celebrate. But was it a great naval victory or a triumph of public relations? Did it save the east coast fishery?

The Young

(see Human Resources) A rapidly aging segment of the Canadian population born between 1950 and 1970 and educated to form a disaffected lumpen bourgeoisie. Presently being heavily propagandized by the right, as are those born after 1970, most of whom are too frightened and angry about their financial futures to be young.

Thobani, Sunera

Feminist racism fundamentalist and entrepreneur, former NAC head and UBC Women’s Studies professor who has spent most of the last decade trying to shout slogans while cramming her foot down her own throat. Currently being hounded by outraged B.C.-based nitwits like Premier Gordon Campbell and Stockwell Day for employing, in an Ottawa speech, the same blood-splattering rhetoric to describe the United States as Osama ben Laden does. No one seems to have noticed that George W. Bush and most other Western political figures are using similar rhetoric to describe Muslim fundamentalists and their governments. The unfortunate part of this otherwise comic dumbshow is that Thobani’s lack of discretion is making her the poster-person for those who want to restrict immigration to those who’ll keep their mouths shut and wash dishes, or can afford to hire someone to wash their dishes.

Timmins, Margo

Some testosterone-addled jackass at Esquire magazine decided that Timmins was a world class babe a few years ago, and Canadians have been paying for it ever since. It would be interesting to find out whether she can hold her key when she's off Valium.

Tobin, Brian

Federal Fisheries minister during the 1995 Turbot Wars with Spain, recently reneged Premier of Newfoundland. And the man Jean Chretien wants to keep Paul Martin Jr. from becoming Prime Minister. A Great Communicator, whatever that means aside from giving the media good clips and an occasional bloodless naval battle.

Tommy Douglas Research Institute

A recently minted social democratic medical lobby aimed at defending Canada’s medical care system with ideas and tactics instead of whining sentimentality about how great the recent past was. While the formation of the Institute offers the first evidence of neural activity within the Canadian left in more than a decade, we'd still like to know why, during their recent press conference to announce that the "crisis" in Canada’s medical system is being articifically created by right wingers in order to position us for double-tiering and privatization, was the ancient Dave Barrett, former B.C. Premier and a man old enough to have hung out with T.C. Douglas, sitting at the table trying to generate enough brainwaves to look wise.

Topless Laws

A couple of years ago a university of Guelph student named Gwen Jacobs got annoyed after the police charged her for walking around with her T-shirt off. She went to court and won Canadian women the right to go topless whenever and wherever they want. While the guys down at the bar are waiting for the topless ruling to become compulsory summer behavior, a lot of women are waking up to the fact that rights need to have a basis in common custom, imagination and maybe common sense before they've really been won.

Toronto

Once among the dullest cities on the planet, and for a few years during the 1970s and 80s, among the most self-proud. Toronto has become a great city by taking in more than a million immigrants in the last two decades and becoming multicultural and multiracial without becoming violent. In the 1980s, the global economy kicked the city so hard that it forgot about being world class, and its citizens became kinder and more cosmopolitan. It is now-and without dispute-the largest safe city in the world, it has a thousand small, often exotic neighbourhoods, and outside of its financial district, appears to be a deciduous forest when you fly over it in a plane. Toronto is currently under siege by right wing suburbanites wanting to rid it of immigrants or any other kind of complex human textures, and left wing anti-smoking and safety zealots overeager to supervise the city's uniquely liberal quality of life.

Toronto Maple Leafs

Until recently it wasn't clear to anyone in Ontario whether this is Toronto's hockey team, lucrative sports franchise, or a 30 year experiment to determine how much damage autocratic management can do to a community amenity and national institution. Recently appointed president, Ken Dryden, who has been the most intelligent person in hockey since the 1970s, changed all that in three years and made it the NHL's equivalent of the Dallas Cowboys. When the NHL wakes up and shrinks itself to the 20 or so financially viable franchises it can support, the Leafs may soon be the only NHL franchise in Canada.

Toronto Star

Once Canada's best liberal newspaper, progressively slimmed down and brought far too close to tabloid journalism's style-book for anyone's comfort except TorStar's accountants.

Torstar

It's a neat-sounding name for a news service, but it's really a bottom-liner's device for exterminating local coverage, like most everything else in the corporate management bag-O-tricks. Owns and is presumably responsible for Harlequin Books

Tory Youth

Mismatched amalgam of market zealots and ideological virgins (people who have never had sex because they believe premarital sex is sinful -or because no one else is interested in sleeping with them). Most noted for their unabashed thirst for power through dirty tactics, they are often to be found trying to scramble aboard Team Clement's 'Reconnection Tour' or trying to make themselves look like Joe Clark. (David Banerjee)

Trade Balance

Multipurpose monetarist indicator that a.) propagandizes gross import/export balance as a meaningful indication of economic health, which it is not; b.)simplifies and therefore distorts the nature of international economic behaviors; c.) disables the common sense of everyone credulous enough not to question its validity as an indicator of anything other than statistical disinformation.

Trade Deficit

An economic condition easily confused with public deficits, and therefore highly useful to monetarists wanting to convince others that social services are superfluous and communistic. Over the last 20 years the United States has had a trade deficit equal in dollar value to the combined assets of the Third World, while Canada has maintained a trade surplus. Anybody see any profound differences between the two economies, not counting the greater percentage of homeless people in the U.S.?

Trade Surplus

Canada has a large and chronic trade surplus that tends to widen whenever unemployment jumps. Doesn't this suggest that a trade surplus is a pipeline of brown bovine by-product being injected directly into our collective brain? (see Current Account Balance).

Trans-canada Highway

Pre-1960s device to unify the country and foster real estate development and population growth along coherent corridors. Like the CPR in the 1870s, the TCH mainly benefited the contractors who built it, and made it possible for the rest of us to go nowhere faster. By the 1980s the highway was heavily populated by challenged persons hopping from coast to coast and other publicity stunts that amused the rest of the world but influenced Quebec's and Alberta's separatists not one iota.

Trees

Canada was once covered with trees, but fifty years of treating them as a renewable resource to be renewed only where clearcuts are visible to tourists from main highways has transformed vast tracts of the country into denuded neo-tundra. In water-rich B.C. and parts of Northern Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario, this appears to be a subconscious form of reservoir preparation.

Trotsky, Leon

Famed communist dissident sighted in Nova Scotia in the 1930s by Timothy Findley. Trotsky is still rumoured to control Canada's postal unions, even though he died in 1940 in Mexico from an ice pick in the back of his head. If Trotsky had written a couple of poems while he was within Canada's 200 mile limit, we'd have called him a Canadian poet and be having annual festivals in his name if not honour.

Trudeau, Margaret

Hey! She’s Pierre Trudeau’s ex-wife, not his grieving widow, and anyone who caught her recent performances on TVO knows where Justin Trudeau gets his talent for over-acting. Notwithstanding the above, a more important point to make about Mrs. Kemper has to do with the irresponsible exploitation of her condition by the television media. With Pierre Trudeau gone, Margaret should be moved out of the public spotlight quickly and permanent, because she could never handle it without putting her foot in her mouth.

Trudeau, Pierre

Jesuit, acrobat, and Canadian Prime Minister 1968-84 (with short breaks) and a current object of nostalgia as the last Canadian political leader with a connected brain and spinal cord. It'll be fifty years before it's clear whether he was a great statesman or a blundering egomaniac who poisoned the country permanently by repatriating the constitution. Trudeau's death in 2000, the outpouring of respect and admiration that resulted, and Jean Chretien's studied ignoring of it during the recent general election demonstrates how far from liberalism the Liberal Party has wandered.

Trust Companies

Canadian version of U.S. Savings and Loans, they are nearly as prone to bankruptcy and still more liable to be swallowed by Chartered Banks, who sometimes keep them alive as repositories for their high.

Turner, John

Whitest-of-the-white Prime Minister for a few months after Pierre Trudeau saw the writing on the wall. Turner quietly traveled the country and listened to nearly every sector of the political spectrum before the 1988 election. He turned out to be the only political figure in the country who understood the implications of Mulroney's Free Trade initiatives, and came close to saving the country from what it is today. Unfortunately, he was also a bum-pinching Good Old Boy who had trouble staying on his feet in a social breeze. We'll never know if he was the right man at the wrong time, or the wrong man at the right time. Wife Giels, who was the best qualified PM's wife in a half-century, apparently has a discreet opinion about this. .

Twain, Shania

Faux First Nations country singer whose singing career is being jeopardized by the suspicion, created by her wardrobe and her music videos, that her ankles are about the same circumference as her waist. Currently holds the distinction of being the least sincere celebrity in interviews anywhere in creation, and the owner of a pickup truck full of Grammy and Juno trophies. .

Twenty-three Bookstores

As part of the federal Competition Tribunal ruling on the Indigo/Chapters monopolization of Canadian book selling and publishing, Heather Reisman has been asked to divest herself of twenty-three bookstores, thirteen of them megaStores and ten mall outlets. Unfortunately most of these stores are in parts of the country where nobody reads (areas near malls) or where only a minority of the nearby population speak and reads English (Richmond, B.C.). Part of Chapters corporate strategy was to overbuild stores in order to kill off independent booksellers, so the Tribunal’s ruling is more likely to confirm that the independents are indeed stone dead (while killing off half Canada’s book publishers) than to entice anyone to occupy Chapters reject stores.

Twenty-two Minutes

Halifax-based Newfie-run Salter Street-produced television newsmagazine that breaks more real news stories, strikes more fear into the hearts of politicians and lays down more pertinent political commentary than the entire news-gathering apparatus at the CBC’s Toronto headquarters. Departing Rick Mercer is a genius, but as a news and cultural analyst, not as an historian or dramatic actor, something the CBC will likely do everything in its power to prevent him from discovering. The others three are just outrageously funny, well-informed and smart people no one in their right mind would want to have to drink under a table. Did we mention they’re from Newfoundland? Or that Newfoundland is to Canada what Canada is to the United States when it comes to comedy?