Every Friday, Yoko Ono answers questions on her website Imagine Peace from anyone who tweeted or posted to her Facebook that week. Fans can ask the world-famous activist and artist about anything. Yoko’s never really one to put limits on expression. I happened upon Yoko Q&A Day after I attended World Pride in Toronto this past summer and got interested in Trudeaumania again, even though I’d never experienced it first-hand to begin with. My friend Philip and I ran into Justin Trudeau randomly on a side street after the parade. He was wearing a miniature disco ball as a necklace pendant. We were in provocative crop-tops. He still agreed without hesitation to take a photo with us.
I wasn’t starstruck because I’d seen Justin out on St. Laurent Blvd. all the time when I was younger long before he went into politics and still wore white tanks and jeans on Friday nights. My brain made a connection in that moment though that it never made when I saw him back home in Montreal: Pierre Trudeau, his controversial and legendary Dad, decriminalized homosexuality in the late ’60s — that’s almost half a century ago. Canadians were trailblazers once who stood for things the rest of the world wouldn’t. I don’t know what I think of Justin yet, but I do know what I think of his father. I don’t remember him as a prime minister because I’m “the Echo” generation — the offspring of the Baby Boomers. I’m worried we’re facing a critical moment in Canadian history where our identity has been fractured by the recent political climate set by Harper and further confused by Ford. What can we do? I asked Yoko Ono.
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Yoko Ono’s controversial peace tour in 1969 with Lennon is “part of our heritage” in Canada, much to what I imagine is Harper’s dismay. Trudeau impressed the Beatle and his artist wife with his willingness to listen to their ideas at a time when teaming up with celebrities a la Obama era politics wasn’t common practice or even a strategic move. I tweeted the photo of my friend Philip, Justin, and me at Ono asking what a new politician of today like Justin could learn from his father. “Integrity, sincerity, and true dedication to his vocation. These are characteristics needed in the present politicians,” Ono answered. It wasn’t exactly ground-breaking thought, but it struck me that she still had strong positive feelings for a Canadian politician she’d met a lifetime ago. We used to be bigger than our tiny population, bigger than our young age as a country, bigger than our internal differences. Values evolve and change, but we lost something — a desire to fight for things bigger than our time that made us us. Where did it go and who did we become?
I decided to actually look for “it” — the fight — starting at John Tory’s mayoral victory party. I felt like a giraffe on the tundra in the event hall looking for someone from “the Echo” demographic to clue me into the Conservative party allure. I’m not Conservative, you see – I just happened to vote that way in this particular election. None of the three mayoral candidates compelled me with their platforms. I wanted my heart to say Olivia Chow, but in the end I didn’t really vote for John Tory either. I voted for “Not Doug Ford.”
Toronto, united in apathy: the “Not Doug Ford” vote
Almost 1 million Torontonians voted, which was a record number, but it was still barely half of the population who were eligible to vote. The scandal-ridden year — one that began with a crack tape and morphed into an international spotlight pointed at our controversial mayor that landed him Esquire features, Jimmy Kimmel Live guest spots, New York Times profile pieces, and an Oscars invite before his brother took the reins of his questionable campaign — only brought out 150,000 more voters than the election before. Tory’s 40% win in light of Ford’s sizable second-place finish at 34% meant 60,000 ballots separated the two candidates. We’d blamed American media in particular for turning our crazy mayor into Honey Boo Boo with political power, and we shamed them for interfering with our political system by adding a massive celebrity element to his power, but even we didn’t feel inspired to interfere with our own politics when election day came around.
Ford’s international star status had worried friends and acquaintances of mine all year. Not only did it make his supporters grow in passion and numbers, it advertised Toronto — not to mention Canada since international media usually ignores most things going on up here — as a backwards place with ignorant citizens who were the ones responsible for putting a guy with a penchant for derogatory remarks and making crack tapes in charge. We knew we had to end the era not just to put a stop to Ford’s policies, but to clean up our international image — we were progressive, but we’d given Ford the microphone by accident. We all agreed he had to fix it, but when his brother Doug took over the campaign due to Rob’s health, maybe we just stopped worrying. We knew without Rob’s influence, Doug couldn’t win. We were content to win the battle that was “the war on cars” without seeing the rumblings of a potentially epic war all around us, one we were already losing because the Fords had already started making their bid for more territory.
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The “I’m with the bland” mentality: our biggest threat…
Maybe Tory’s predicted landslide win that was really only a 6% bigger slice of the political pie than Rob’s was an embarrassing relief, but we’d only detonated a bomb in a land mine. Former mayor Rob Ford, who still ran for council in Ward 2, won his district giving him technically about the same amount of pull at city hall as Tory. And with such a clear strong second-place finish documented in numbers, Doug’s now considering running for premier, and why wouldn’t he? The people of Toronto don’t seem to protest too much, which means he can focus his campaign on the rest of the province. With the right catchy slogan and a quick tailoring of his “Every Man” values customized for the small town and country folk set, he might just win. It will only help his cause that Toronto urbanites claim to hate him so much.
The Ford era is still here, and it’s our fault as both voters and as Canadians who’ve never really pushed for our politicians to be anything more than beige. When attention-seeking, brand-heavy characters like the Ford brothers come along and woo supporters with catchphrases, slogans, and media spectacles that only build their brand power, we can’t offer them a more effective alternative — a candidate with a different brand of hope. As the poll results indicate, we clearly don’t even think we have one worth believing in. Ford’s followers — known to us and themselves as “Ford Nation” via the Fords’ marketing strategies — are proud and passionate. They actively announce “I’m with the brand” on their T-shirts, and in tweets, group chants, bumper stickers, and bobbleheads while the rest of us barely raise a stir with our “I’m with the bland” sentiments. We’re not passionate; we just know what we don’t want and what’s a more sensible option. We support politicians with the amount of passion we reserve for selecting our meal on planes: chicken, fish, or no-thanks are clearly the only choices on the menu and asking for ingredient substitutions clearly isn’t an option. I voted for Tory, but I put the campaign pin a supporter at his victory party gave me politely in my purse. Voting for him wasn’t a statement I wanted the world to know.
The Canadian identity crisis in Obama era politics
To truly, truly understand what catapulted the Ford brothers into the position they’re in today, Canadians need to first own up to some of our most damaging shortcomings in a more uncomfortable way than we’re used to. Sure, we like a good nudge in the ribs for being ”adorkable” as a nation. We’re known for constantly apologising, but we’re never actually saying sorry for anything. We’re not sorry people. In fact, we’re relentless about telling the rest of the world how much better we are than Americans morally (healthcare, gun control, gay marriage, etc) because that’s the base of a huge part of our identity. If Trudeau had trailblazed for gay rights and women’s rights giving us values of our own to uphold and be proud of, we’d watered down our politics since, preferring inoffensive and bland to controversial. Our politicians still sucked, and they sucked often; they just suck enough in a memorable way to draw international mockery. We scoffed at Bush when he did two terms in office, but then something shocking happened we totally weren’t ready for. The American people took back their politics and changed the game.
On Obama’s inauguration, I stayed home to watch a nation – who’d had well-known history with slavery, civil war, gang violence, hate crime, and riots – swear in a black man named Barack Hussein Obama. They were ready to take history back and so against all odds they did. Friends of mine with cars had gone down to drive college students to polls on election day to make sure Obama got the youth vote he needed. That’s how powerful the Hope era of Obama really was—Canadians wanted a piece. After all, as Obama was writing American history, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was just getting started on what appears to be his ongoing efforts to erase Pierre Trudeau’s history from public records…or at least how it’s currently remembered: mostly favourably. Trudeau made Canada a place that pioneered human rights, from decriminalizing homosexuality and raising gender equity issues in the ‘60s. Rather than compete with the past, he seems to think erasing it is just easier.
It’s hard to make Canadians care enough about their own politics – especially with American politics to get riled up over and American culture to distract us. We’re more invested in who wins The Voice most of the time, but that’s why the Ford debacle might have done us a silver-lining favour. If the Fords had embarrassed us so badly that we had no choice to care from now on – or at least until the world stopped watching us so closely – we might as well start with Harper who’d benefitted in his own twisted way from the Ford insanity. He’d taken heat for refusing to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which would clearly inspire talk of Trudeau, and arouse memory, and maybe influence future generations to not be so passive. If it seemed like just a grand oversight, Harper also callously altered the “official” version of the 1982 photo of Trudeau and the Queen signing the repatriated Constitution with a Charter of Rights, which is on display in Ottawa — cropping Trudeau out. Harper was starting to look “total crazypants” to say the least, so after Rob Ford barrelled around Toronto in the wake of a crack pipe scandal doing and saying incriminating things that would get most people fired and/or institutionalized, the big cheese of Canada seemed to be letting the nutty Ford bros run amok to make his anti-Trudeau actions seem less attention-worthy. How Canadian.
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When America judges Canada for a change
As America turned its attention to us, Canadians across the country experienced collective horror. We’d always compared ourselves to the USA when it was convenient for us to point fingers. We didn’t know how to fix our own mistakes when they turned around to mock us for a change. But it was worse. When we had a Bush-like buffoon in charge, they invited him on their talk shows, to the Oscars, and into the pages of their magazines. Perhaps it was like Jersey Shore meets The Truman Show to them – with Rob Ford as Snooki and brother Doug as J-Woww. Jimmy Kimmel endorsed him, Esquire did a photo shoot, and CNN was practically airing a new reality show: The Real Political Brothers of Toronto. If we didn’t see what Harper was already doing internally to obliterate the Trudeau era from our sense of identity, we understood what America could do. We’ve seen what they did with The Kardashians. So we voted for “Not Doug Ford” and pressed restart, but we still have to actively take our own history and future back into our hands if we don’t want to repeat recent history.
Canada’s loss of innocence: a gain for national identity
If the last year will be remembered as Canada’s loss of innocence internationally, it’s an innocence we never really had anyway. We were ballsy trailblazers once upon a time who pioneered gay rights and women’s rights – a country that dared to make mistakes to overcome greater obstacles, so that in the end we had nothing to say sorry for. Russell Brand recently called out Harper’s post-Ottawa shooting anti-terrorism speech as a blatant attempt by an oppressor to channel 9/11 era Bush politics to brainwash people into seeing a different story before them — one that fuels his self-serving agenda. Combined with his obsession with removing Trudeau’s legacy from national identity history,Harper appears to be ripping a page right out of George Orwell’s famous political satire Nineteen-Eighty-Four.
Harper has more reason now than ever to destroy Trudeau’s legacy other than just the passion of a mad man. In 2000, back when a then 41-year-old Harper was still just president of the National Citizens Coalition he wrote a harsh, uncomfortably cold article for the National Post critiquing Trudeau’s place in Canadian history. He warned that Trudeau “continues to define the myths that guide the Canadian psyche, but myths they are,” which is clearly a job Harper wanted for himself. The article was published, notably, a week after Trudeau died and two days after his funeral at which Fidel Castro, Jimmy Carter, and Leonard Cohen served as honourary pallbearers. A much younger Justin delivered the eulogy rousing interest from Canadians who watched the televised event across the country because Trudeau – we’d forgotten – made us all care. Harper’s article was just a blip in the outpouring of admiration in both Canada and internationally in memory of a man who made people in his country proud to be Canadian – then and still.
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I can’t say I know I’ll vote for Justin Trudeau in the 2015 federal election. Maybe they’ll be someone more progressive with better policies who makes me believe he or she could bring our country back to being a pioneer of human rights movements. But I’ll give my vote to Justin if he’s the next best thing, because I’d gladly make Harper’s kick out of Canadian politics just a little bit more poetic – a kick that would sting in the history books. I won’t be just voting for “Not Harper” in 2015. I’ll be voting to take back my history, and to take responsibility for the future. I’ll be voting to own up to my mistakes as a Canadian — to say sorry and mean it — and never let something like this happen again. And then hopefully we can get back to making history we’re proud of — not because the world is watching, but because we can.
If you liked this article, check out Vicki Hogarth’s feature on political provocateur and street artist Shepard Fairey.
What are your thoughts on the politics in Toronto currently? Let us know in the comments below or tweet us @ViewTheVibe
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