Book Review: Nikki Everts "Evidence of Uncertain Origin"

As part of my second career as a journalist, I've become something of a collector of business cards. One day while at the Farmer's Market I bumped into someone I'd never met before and we had a brief conversation about Saint Louis Missouri (she'd noticed I was using a shopping bag promoting that city's excellent library). She mentioned that she'd published a novel and I asked for and received a card. Eventually I emailed her and got a review copy of Evidence of Uncertain Origin---which turned out to be an engaging "whodunit" set in Montreal during the October Crisis of 1970.

For those of you who are too young to remember what this was, it was one of the key points in the transition of Quebec society from being a "second class" part of Canada to being an "equal partner". This was a long process that involved elements like the quiet revolution, bilingualism, the rise of the Parti Québécois, and, two referendums on independence: one in 1980 and the other in 1995.

The October Crisis was about the rise and fall of the Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ). In a nutshell, this was a group of nationalist radicals who sought to "accelerate" already existing divisions between working class Francophones in Quebec and the Anglo elite who controlled the province. They did this by trying to goad the authorities into over-reaction through a series of relative minor bombings (a lot of mailboxes blew up). The authorities generally "refused to take the bait", which led to an eventual escalation into kidnapping. This cost them the support of most of the population when the authorities started to play rough. The Trudeau (Pierre Elliott) government imposed the War Measures act (precursor of the Emergencies Act recently used by the Justin Trudeau) yet still managed to show a light hand in that it negotiated with the kidnappers for the release of one of their hostages and allowed key members to escape to Cuba. 

Soldier guarding buildings in Montreal, 1970. Image from Royal Montreal Regiment website, originally from the Toronto Star (used under Fair Dealing). 

The result of the affair was a collective decision by both Anglos and Francophones that there are better mechanisms for dealing with the legitimate grievances of the population---which led to the election of leaders like Rene Levesque and the introduction of various regulations aimed at both allowing French Canadians to be "masters of their own home" and at the same time, more welcome in the rest of Canada. 

I'll let Trudeau himself explain one key part of this. (If he seems a bit heated, it's because this was a very controversial project at the time, and fought against by many small "c" conservatives.)

People of good will sometimes say that Trudeau over-reacted when he brought in the War Measures Act, but I suspect that they don't understand the mood of the country at the time. Leading up to this event, radical Quebec separatists had been raiding militia armouries and construction sites to steal weapons and explosives. (If memory serves, when I was researching another story in the Mercury archives I read that Guelph's militia unit had some of it's inventory sent to Camp Borden where it could be better guarded.) I can only imagine what would happen today if some organization---the Proud Boys or Black Lives Matter maybe---started raiding militia armouries to steal weapons!    

Having said that, there does seem to have been something of a paranoid reaction by the police in some ways. For example, the Ontarion (the University of Guelph student newspaper) attempted to publish the FLQ manifesto, but local police prevented it on suspicion that this constituted "sedition" under the War Measures Act. But while people will no doubt take refuge in the "slippery slope" fallacy, the salient points to remember are that the federal and Quebec provincial governments didn't really know how big a problem they were facing and in the long term no one ended-up in a Canadian version of the Gulag. 

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Evidence of Uncertain Origins brings all this context to bear on the lives of two Anglo Quebec sisters---Sondra and Kit---who are dealing with the death of their grandfather. Nikki Everts brings in the political background, but it is closely entwined with the family issues. In this book the "personal is the political" and the "political gets personal". 

Nikki Everts in a photo series that look suspiciously like a mug shot---. Images provided by the author.

Sondra is happily married with two children, but she has a history of being somewhat mentally fragile. She's much more "in tune" with her instincts and believes that she's had a visitation by grand-dad in a dream which points to his having been murdered. Kit is much more scientifically-inclined and is concerned that Sondra is sliding back into depression and worse. She's left Montreal and now lives in Hamilton where her husband, Paul, is studying medicine at McMaster. Kit is toiling away at a job she loathes to support him and is afraid she's following in her mother's foot-steps, who eventually became so unhappy from playing second-fiddle to Kit's father's career (he too is a doctor) that she descended into alcoholism, leaving Gramps and Grandma to raise them instead of her. As the mystery gets solved and Quebec politics becomes more intrusive in their lives, her commitment to the marriage unravels. 

In conversation, Everts freely admits that she sees a parallel between Kit's marital problems and the issues threatening the break-up of Canada. As well, the story also brings in other issues that were "in the air" at the time. For example, two of the minor characters turn out to be gay lovers who were upset about Gramps' self-righteous homophobia. (It was so early in that issue's progress that Sondra and Kit both are startled to realize that their grandfather's prejudice was a real "issue".) 

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I can't get too much more into the plot for fear of giving it all away (it is a mystery, after all), but I can offer a few further general points. 

Several people with more insight than me have pointed out that human beings seem to be hard-wired to learn from stories rather than catalogues of facts. Everts has written a book that explains to younger people what it felt like to be living in Quebec at this time. To cite two examples, it points out how central CBC radio was to a certain segment of the population. It also has Kit describe the chemical composition of cat pee that makes it so pungent---which gives us a glimpse into her scientific mind and also a "whiff" of life in a run-down apartment in the urban core.       

In an interview, Everts told me that during the time of the novel she had just emigrated to Quebec from California. She lived on a farm in the countryside not far from Montreal, but I suspect that as a university graduate (microbiology) she was interested in finding out all she could about the exotic new country she found herself in. And at the time, Quebec nationalism would have absolutely dominated both print media and the CBC. 

As just an ordinary person without any connection to the "movers and shakers", Everts probably lacked any "inside dope". But this was probably more than sufficiently compensated by the new immigrants hyper-sensitivity to the differences she found around her. (For example, she told me that she was surprised---in a good way---that the Canadian establishment was willing to negotiate with the FLQ cell, allow some members to escape to Cuba, and, then years later allowed them to return to Quebec. Would this ever be allowed in the USA?) Future historians will no doubt want to read cabinet documents, academic dissertations, and, newspaper articles from the time. But they will also need to read first-hand accounts and fiction written by people who lived through the events in order to get a feel for how ordinary people experienced them. I think that Evidence of Uncertain Origins is a useful addition to this literature.

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I've taken on writing these book reviews because I think it's important for a functioning community---like Guelph---to have a localized artistic scene. It's not just enough to have a few "rock star" authors, like Margaret Atwood. We also need to have local "word artisans". That's because culture thrives on conversations, instead of lectures. Lectures are where one person does all the talking and everyone else just listens. Real conversations involve a back-and-forth. That's what's happening when a local author writes a story about things that you experience---like cooking in the kitchen, listening to CBC radio, and, wondering if and when the Prime Minister is going to "drop the hammer" against a small group of people causing chaos in society. (Will some future author write a mystery set in Ottawa during the "Freedom Convoy"?)

A lot of people take it "as a given" that there is a value in having local musicians instead of just listening to recorded music. I think that people should also appreciate local writers who bring their own local and regional viewpoint to the page. The promise of the World Wide Web is that more and more people can get involved in the "community conversation". That's what I suspect Marshall McLuhan was fumbling towards with his statements "the medium is the message" and "we increasingly live in a global village". 

Right now what has often happened instead is that capitalism has tried to change the conversation into a competition. The tech lord's algorithms seek to sift out a very small number of big name "influencers" who can then build a giant base that can be monetized to sell advertising. But the real promise of the Web is to create functioning communities---both geographic and of interests---that will be able to knit together an increasingly complex and resilient human ecosystem. 

We've been told that it helps the planet to "eat local" and some hard-cores have even suggested we restrict ourselves to the "100 mile diet". That's maybe too much. But I do think it is important to learn to appreciate the local. And I think that music and literature is much the same. I think it would help Guelph and area if everyone decided to listen to local music and read local writers at least part of the time. If you'd like to make the effort to do this, you might want to attend the Wellington County Writer's Festival on April 23. (To be totally honest, I won't be going---COVID's sixth wave is here and I'd like to avoid getting the bug as long as possible. But there will be other ones in the future.)   

If I've tweaked your interest, you can find Evidence of Uncertain Origin at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the Bookshelf Bookstore in downtown Guelph, and, other places listed by the publisher: Arboretum Press.  

 

Arboretum Press Logo

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Book Review: The Ark of the Oven Mitt

Like many other people, local musician (and City Council member) James Gordon has been trying to figure out to keep his business going during this plague time. Unable to actually do any touring, he's written a book/album about the decline of the bar band circuit. In the process, he's attempted to come up with something of a prescription for a new world. 

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The book starts out by introducing a folkie band by the name of "Miles Gerber and the Shit Disturbers". This group consists of the main singer/song writer/guitarist Miles Gerber, bass and fiddle player Dougie, the Drummer, the van they travel in (Nelly-Belle), and, a young woman they literally picked-up off the side of the road who goes by the letters "MG". The plot progresses by illustrating how much the bar circuit has declined since the "good old days". 

Haunting this depressing state of affairs is Mile's decline---both professionally and personally---after the other half of his original, semi-successful band "Miles and Myles", left him under mysterious circumstance. His wife and the band's lead singer, Maddie Myles, unexpectedly left him one day never to be seen again. He never got over the loss, and it left him in a tailspin. 

Once MG arrives, however, things take a bit of an upswing. First off, MG announces that her initials stand for "Merchandise Girl" and shows how the Shit Disturbers can augment their meager income by selling t-shirts and downloading songs off the Web. Eventually, she takes over the role of agent---which she proves very good at, even to the point of organizing a show at a major bar in downtown Toronto---which is live-streamed. 

The artistic basis of this mini-renaissance is Miles' connection to a member of his audience who shares with him the story of the decline and fall of his family's sheep ranch. This leads him to write a song about this personal tragedy, which he promises to sing at the next venue. When the band gets there to set up, they find that the ex-rancher is in the audience and pleased as punch that he has been heard. 

This leads to other stories from audience members, which leads to other songs, which eventually results in a caravan of folks following the Shit Disturbers across the Prairies and eventually to Manitoulin Island where an impromptu "Woodstock" coalesces into the "Ark of the Oven Mitt", which you'll have to read the book to understand. ;-)

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The book has it's moments, but the real appeal is the music. When you open it you are confronted with a QR code which you can scan with your phone or tablet. It takes you to a BandCamp page that allows you to stream or download the songs.

James Gordon has a real knack for writing songs that encapsulate someone else's emotional point of view. Consider, if you will, the following example. Here're the lyrics from one of them.   

James Gordon, looking mysterious

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Angus Maclean

On that awful day, they took my license away

Might as well have taken me out back and shot me

Bit by bit they steal, everything that makes me feel

Like a man, time has tracked me down and caught me.

 

Well the auctioneer, he's on his way here

To take everything except my pain

What am I bid, how much to get rid

Of one old man named Angus Maclean

Their gonna take me away, to that old folk's place

Put me in a hog pen to die in

And when they try to say, Angus it'll be OK

I still got enough upstairs to know they're lying

Well the auctioneer, he's on his way here

To take everything except my pain

What am I bid, how much to get rid

Of one old man named Angus Maclean

You can't separate the land, from an old farmin' man

We're made of the same damn dirt

Might as well auction me, then maybe we'd 

Know what an antique like me was worth

One more trip into town, on this old David Brown,

Don't need no license for that 

Then we'll sit in the barn, till they auction off this farm

And we're sold off together for scrap

And here's the performed song as a YouTube clip.

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The way to understand this book is to recognize that James Gordon is an old-fashioned balladeer. By this I mean that he writes small, emotional songs that explain a specific human situation. 

This is an old tradition that goes back long ago. In the British tradition, balladeers were people who wrote songs and travelled from town to town sharing them with people who were gathered in pubs or markets. When cheap printing and increased literacy came along, songs were often printed on "chap books" so they could be shared more widely than a individual balladeer could travel.

In a world without newspapers---or any other formal source of information---the ballads a person would hear in a tavern would often be their only source of information about significant or just plain interesting news from the wider world outside the village. 

For example, here's a ballad from 1759 about the death of General Wolfe during The Battle of the Plains of Abraham. 

First the lyrics:

Bold General Wolfe

On Monday evening as we set sail
The wind did blow a most pleasant gale
For to fight the French it was our intent
Through smoke and fire, Through smoke and fire
And it was a dark and a gloomy night 

Now the French was landed on the mountains high
And we poor hearts in the valley lie
Never mind my lads, General Wolfe did say
Brave lads of honour, brave lads of honour
Old England shall win the day

The very first broadside we gave to them
We killed seven hundred and fifty men
Well done my lads, General Wolfe did say
Brave lads of honour, brave lads of honour
Old England shall win the day

The very first broadside they gave to us
They wounded our general in his right breast
Then out of his breast living blood did flow
Like any fountain, like any fountain
Till all us men were filled with woe

Here's a hundred guineas all in bright gold
Take it and part it, for my blood runs cold
And use your soldiers as you did before
Your soldiers own, your soldiers own
And they will fight for evermore

And when to England you do return
Tell my friends that I am dead and gone
Pray tell my tender old mother dear
That I am dead O, that I am dead O
And I shall never see her no more

And now the performance:

Gordon's ballad Angus Maclean is much the same thing, only it isn't about the conquest of French Quebec by the British Army, but rather the decline of the family farm. That's what The Ark of the Oven Mitt is about, the personal impact that our changing world is having on individual people. If Gordon lived at the time of the enclosures, he'd be singing about people being kicked off their village lands. At the time of the potato famine, he'd have been singing about starving while shiploads of Irish wheat were being shipped to England. And if he currently lived in Ukraine, he'd be singing about training as a guerrilla to defend his home while Russian troops concentrate at the boarder. 

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As a matter of fact, James has written another ballad recently which has become something of a hit (ie: downloads alas, not sold recordings). Ironically, it's about a different sort of convoy than the one described in The Oven Mitt. It's not composed of people who lost their livelihoods because of the new economy, but rather fools who threw away their employment because they were gulled into thinking that a life-saving vaccine is a plot by reptiles from outer space/Bill Gates/blood-drinking American politicians/whatever.

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

 

Book Review: Fault Lines, by Tsveti Nacheva

I have read a lot of novels in my life, but generally not the sort that dig deep into human psychology. Instead, I have been attracted to ones that work with ideas. I've read Tolstoy's War and Peace many times (I've lost track---over six times for sure), lots of science fiction (I just finished reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy)---both of these books are mostly philosophy of history. I also like formulaic mysteries---during this pandemic I've read just about all the Kathy Reichs forensic whodunits and Craig Johnson's "magic Western" Walt Longmire books. These books are inspired by current events and meditate on how human beings navigate larger social forces.

This isn't to say that there is no value in novels that delve deep into the human psyche, just that for one reason or another I find learning how other people think somewhat intimidating. I'm a lot more comfortable thinking about ideas than instincts and emotions, so what passes for a "entertaining leisurely activity" gets chosen accordingly. That's probably a good reason why I should read them---but that doesn't mean that I find it any easier to do so. 

I remember reading once that novels of psychological introspection only became popular in the late 19th century and this was part of a significant change in the way human beings looked at society. This makes sense to me. Pretty much the only way any of us can really put ourselves into the skin of someone else is by reading the introspective descriptions put out by that subclass of novelists who do this sort of writing. And with the decline of religion in people's lives and rise of social sciences like sociology and psychology, it only made sense that art would decide to spend less time looking outward towards God and philosophy, and instead direct our gaze inward towards the human psyche. 

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This gets me to Tsveti Nacheva's book Fault Lines. It's a mystery, but it's told from the point-of-view of someone---Laurie---who about as alien to me as a Martian. When the novel begins, she's a good-looking university student who's involved with a young man, Nate. She's at a Halloween party where she has too much to drink and wakes up in bed and notices her boyfriend nowhere around.

She looks around and finds a set of his clothes drenched in blood. He comes back from a five-mile "morning run", and explains the clothes as being a result of a malfunction of an elaborate Halloween installation that involved a fountain of pig's blood. 

Unfortunately, it turns out that the woman Laurie shares an apartment with, Ashley---who was also at the party---has disappeared without a trace. 

This results in a latent distance between herself and Nate. Laurie never asks him directly about whether he killed Ashley, and lets his suspicious behavior the next morning hang over the relationship until it strangles it. Eventually they split up. She leaves the small university town they live in---"Solway", which is obviously based on Guelph---gets involved with a minor television/movie star, and, works as a producer for a schlocky television show titled Fault Lines. 

I'm not going to go into any details, because the book is plot-driven and I understand many people enjoy being surprised with twists and endings, and don't like "spoilers". Suffice it to say, she goes back to Solway to research a potential episode of Fault Lines which brings her back into Nate's world. Revelations present themselves, there may or may not be a Ghost involved, someone is framed for Ashley's murder, and, Laurie ends up back with Nate and lives "happily ever after". 

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I paid a $180 bill to SoundCloud today. That's the service that I use to host the audio part of the interviews I do for this blog. This month I cancelled my subscription to the Toronto Star because at $204/year I felt that I wasn't getting "value for my money". I've been using Scribd instead, which costs a little over half as much, but gives me access to a huge number of information sources. (I also sell three books on Scribd, and receive what I consider very fair royalties per reader.)

I'm sharing this info just to tell you that I do have costs incurred while publishing this blog. That's a significant part of the reason why I suggest to readers that if they can afford it, a subscription would be greatly appreciated. Patreon and Paypal make it easy to do.

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Tsveti Nacheva, supplied by author.

Being who I am, I was struck with the idea that Nacheva's novel wrestles with epistemological issues. That is to say, what is it that we do or do not really know about the world around us?

Laurie suffers from a lack of memory from the night when Ashley disappeared. She ascribes this to the fact that she was very drunk and she simply "blacked out". But she does have the odd strange dream. Moreover, once in a while she hallucinates things like blood dripping from her hands.

Moreover, in her relationships there is also a level of ambiguity. She is conflicted when she meets Nate again, she can't really tell if she wants to reconnect with him, or, if she is happy being involved with her rich, movie star beau who is on the other side of the continent filming a movie. 

When paparazzi catch this guy in the company of a cute young thing from his film shoot---and the photos get spread all over the web---he maintains that he is faithful to her and this is just the media being salacious. 

As a tv producer, Laurie is also not above "fudging the facts" if it creates an entertaining (and profitable) end result. She goes back to Solway to research a pretty lame story about a young child who says he has memories of a previous life as a young woman. This girl died under tragic circumstances in Solway at the time that Nate's grandfather was a town doctor. Through research in pursuit of creating some sort of "fig leaf" to justify a television show that supports the idea of reincarnation, she ends up pulling apart the "official court findings", and, unearths yet another hushed-up scandal. 

By the end of the novel the reader is left wondering what exactly happened anywhere. There are lots of objective facts that happen because the first-person narrative structure puts them in front of the reader. But there are also a lot of "facts" that get dug up on old newspaper microfilm, and, attested by people who are neither objective nor good witnesses. These lead to untested hypotheses, based on slim intuitions. And all the characters also seem to be prey to motivated reasoning: they need a good story to put on tv, to stay out of jail, and, to end up with the person you love.

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As I pointed out in the intro, the introspective novel was a creation of the late 19th century. So was the novel of ideas, which is what I am primarily more attracted to. But I'd say Fault Lines is an example that shows sometimes there isn't a hard and fast difference between the two. Modern psychology has shown our memories are a very weak reed to lean upon. It is far too easy to confuse imagination with remembering because the way the brain our processes them. In addition, it is a fact that the brain will suppress traumatic memories.

Where does that leave Laurie and the reader? This is a novel where there are a lot of stories. Some might be true, but a lot of them are obviously constructed by people because it makes life a little more convenient to remember things one way as opposed to another. Beyond that, what physical records we may have---be they old court documents, television documentaries, or, photos from paparazzi---are all constructed by people with their own particular agendas. 

Whatever reality we may objectively inhabit, it is mediated by the stories we tell ourselves and each other. Nacheva's novel reminds the reader of how much of our lives are just collections of stories. 

Not a bad message for an writer to convey. 

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Conflict and Compromise: Politics and Planning in Guelph 2000 to 2015

Executive Summary:  Local Geography professor Fred Dahms has written a book that chronicles the problems that Guelph's municipal government has faced since 2000 to 2015 and how local politicians have responded to them. 

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Conflict and Compromise:  Politics and Planning in Guelph 2000 to 2015

Retired Geography professor Fred Dahms has done Guelph an enormous service by writing and self-publishing a book that chronicles most of the angry debates that have characterized City Hall over the past fifteen years. He doesn't go into great detail over any of the issues---that would require a multi-

volume series. But he does give the reader a chronology and a basic introduction that will help her for further research and to put each issue into a greater context. While there is no documentation for each issue raised (that would again result in a multi-volume series), Dahms does have a very useful appendix that lists books and websites for further research.

Just to give you an idea of how timely this book is, it starts with the chapter "Water Supply:  Drought and Controversy", works through "Waste Disposal: Problems and Progress", "Planning in Guelph", "The Civic Administrations Centre:  A Legal Saga",
"Lodging Houses and Students", and ends with "Performance of Guelph Citizens and City Council". There's a lot more than this to the book too.

Reading through the book helps in several ways. First of all, for someone like myself who has followed Guelph politics fairly closely it serves as a useful "recapitulation" of a very contentious and confusing series of events. It also reinforces the fact that a great many of the problems that Guelph faces---such as water supply, solid waste, housing, and taxation---keep being "recycled" from administration to administration.

The second point that comes out is how influential community groups are in Guelph. As Dahms points out, time and time again the people of Guelph rally against just about any change to the status quo. Sometimes it appears that this is a good thing, and I suspect that Dahms would have been a supporter of any move towards protecting our water supply. But from my read of the book, I would suspect Dahms believes that opposition to high-rise rental and condominium developments have damaged the city by making it impossible for developers to build up the stock of affordable housing.

Fred Dahms

I also think that Dahms suggests that there has been too much inflammatory rhetoric thrown around in Guelph---especially with regard to taxation, which he says is pretty much "middle of the road" for a Ontario municipality of Guelph's size.

A third point that Dahms raises is the extreme secrecy that has come to dominate the inner machinations of city staff. People in high positions come and go, they get hired, fired, get large golden parachutes, sue the city for wrongful dismissal---and the public never seems to find out why. Everything that has to do with personnel issues has become a state secret seemingly on par with the atomic bomb. I suspect that part of this secrecy comes from a twin desire to protect staff from the extreme polarization of the citizenry and also because of an attempt to encourage "professionalism" among staff. But the unfortunate result is a growing suspicion by citizens that bad things are happening and no one wants to admit it in public. (You get a sense of the author's personal frustration over this in a very useful podcast published by Adam Donaldson at Guelph Politico.)

Unfortunately, because of the book's big-picture focus, it doesn't get into the "nitty-gritty" of various issues. For example, it mentions in passing that the Wet-Dry facility was a response to Guelph's landfill filling up, but doesn't talk about the seemingly endless search by very expensive consultants to find a new site. (As memory serves, all the consultants were able to find were places where the province's maps were in error. Provincial law forbids landfills on wetlands and good farmland---which pretty much defines the entire area around Guelph.) He does mention in passing that Council was discussing an incinerator, but Dahms doesn't mention the terrible state of incinerator technology at the time. Nor does he mention that the Wet/Dry proposal didn't come from highly paid staff, but rather a self-taught student who was given a grant by the university group OPIRG. (One of the issues with professionals is that they generally have a very hard time thinking "outside of the box".) As a result, I'd suggest that people see Dahms' book not as "the final word" on various contentious issues, but rather as "the first step" on the process of learning more. As such, the book is well worth the $21.75 it costs at the Bookshelf for a hard copy. And it's a real steal if you are willing to "hold your nose" and purchase it as an Ebook from Amazon.

Conflict and Compromise:  Politics and Planning in Guelph 2000 to 2015 is available at the Bookshelf and Amazon.