Category: Uncategorised

The Crisis We Must Face

Canadians are now confronted with an existential crisis. We are faced not only with economic hardship but with fundamental threats to our sovereignty and as importantly, with profound moral challenges. How we will bear and endure harsh measures against us if they come to pass, and what are we willing to do to resist? And who or what do we look to for support? 

Four of my uncles enlisted in the RCAF in 1940. By 1941 they were bombing Germany. By the end of 1942, when I was only a year old, three were dead and buried in Europe and one was a prisoner in Stalag Luft 3 who would survive the forced march of January 1945. 

Now that we are threatened again after what was for me a lifetime of peace and security, I think about them more than ever. I asked my mum once why they went, she replied only “that’s just what people did.” 

Is that what people would do now? I don’t mean getting into a stripped-down airframe to get shot out of the sky, that’s not the way things get done any more. I mean, more broadly, would we do what is necessary and what may be demanded of us not only to live in peace but also to prevent tyranny. 

My uncles enlisted and trained in Canada, but once they got to England they flew under the authority of the Royal Air Force, because we were still a semi-colony of Britain. We are on our own now. No mother country across the Atlantic, and apparently no reliable ally to the south. 

My uncles’ enduring legacy was their letters and diaries. From these I gained a pretty good idea of why they went, what they experienced, and what they thought at the time. They were very clear about the rightness of the cause for which they had volunteered, and why they themselves could not stay home and watch from the sidelines. Their purpose was not just a military victory on a far off continent, but the defence of civilization as they understood it. They were not teenagers when they signed up, nor were they desperate for a job. They were old enough to know the risks and what they were sacrificing in their immediate future. 

In 1941 our Minister of Defence for Air characterized the thousands of Canadian airmen serving in England as “mainly third, fourth and fifth generation Canadians, bred in Canada, schooled in Canadian schools and with an intensely Canadian viewpoint.” My uncles, however, were first and second generation Canadians, but with no doubt about who they were: Canadians who happened to be Jewish. They knew that they would have to work hard for what they might get in life, and that they would have to endure slings and arrows along the way. Most importantly they knew that they lived in a country that had offered their parents and grandparents security of life and property and the opportunity for a decent life. 

Perhaps as Jews they were more sensitive to the country’s inequalities and injustices, but they weren’t saints, and they weren’t entirely free of every casual prejudice of those days. Yet they had a vision of a better and more equitable post-war future and wanted to help build it. 

They and a million other Canadian servicemen and women contributed mightily to the good life that I have enjoyed for eighty years, and that so many millions of others sought and found in coming to Canada since then. I was fortunate in never having to answer the call as my uncles did. I hated war in my youth, but I hated tyranny more, as they did, and as I still do. Tyranny might not look exactly as it did in their time, but the way it comes about has not changed much and we need to recognize that. 

What will be the moral compass as well as the practical content of our resistance as individuals, as communities, and as a country? What bad things must be fought against right now, with all our might and dedication, and what good things might have to wait but nonetheless be planned for because their value does not diminish in tough times. I am forever grateful that so many of my parents’ generation knew all that and acted on it. 

Let us do that in our time.

— Peter J. Usher

Springtime in Huron County

Huron County is the land of corn, soy, and wheat. If city folk wonder where their food staples come from, this is the place. The land here is bountiful, productive, and readily cultivated.  It’s as good as it gets in Canada. Drop a nine-furrow plow in the dark soil and you could go for miles without turning up a stone. In this fourth week of May, the fields are awakening. Corn has just been planted and in some fields is already at the two-leaf stage. The fields with last year’s corn stubble are being disced, harrowed and rolled, likely to be planted with soybeans within days. A few have already been planted. Seed heads are emerging in the wheat fields planted last fall, and will be ready for harvest in a couple of months.

I took these photos while cycling along the Orchard Line, which runs a mile in from where our cottage overlooks Lake Huron. The orchards are gone now, including the one my wife’s uncle had at the south end. But the crop fields are still interspersed with woodlots dense with hardwoods, spruce, and cedar. The trees are tall here, too.  Those woodlots haven’t been high-graded, at least not lately, nor have they been clear cut, although sadly, they are visibly marked by the skeletal remains of ash trees that fell victim to the emerald ash borer. Pine plantations, elsewhere intended to regenerate forests from abandoned fields, were not needed here and so are rarely seen.

Hundred-year-old maples mark the edge of the Orchard Line. Farmers seem to treasure them: they are quick to replace those that die, and they don’t begrudge the moisture and sunlight that those huge maples take from the first two or three rows of corn adjacent. Yes, there is industrial-scale farming here, but there is also stewardship.

Should the food that comes from these fields be cheap? Not if those who produce it can’t get a reasonable return for their work and risk. Should the grocery chain magnates get less of a share and pay more taxes? Maybe, but that share divided up among all the farmers of the land wouldn’t amount to much. Would “axing” the carbon tax make a difference? Some, no doubt, to the individual farmer, but certainly less than by “axing” all the other costs for equipment and fertilizer and every other input (which nobody proposes to do), along with lower interest rates. But none of that would make food in the grocery store cheaper. Better to ensure that everyone gets a living wage so that we can all afford to buy the food we need.

 

Springtime in Huron County. All photos by Peter Usher.

On Snowshoeing

One of the consequences of Covid has been rediscovering the joys of snowshoeing.  While isolated on a hundred acres of bush in eastern Ontario, with three kilometers of trails, there was never a boring day in winter, whatever the weather.  And so it continues.

While snowshoeing I read the news: what animals are moving about the place, and what they are up to.  Deer trails and feeding craters, coyote tracks and their occasional kills, signs of porcupines and racoons, rabbit tracks, squirrel burrows in the snow, mouse tunnels, and on rare occasions the telltale pattern of wing tips on either side of a suddenly terminated mouse trail – prey surprised by an owl.

I monitor the snow condition of my trails, whether hard-packed and firm, crusty after freezing rain, or mushy from a recent thaw.  I watch for the freezing and thawing of spring-fed outflows and wet spots, and when it is safe to venture across the beaver pond as revealed by deer tracks in the snow.   I marvel at the variety and beauty of the light and the snow whether it’s mild or cold, windy or calm.  Sunny days bring the diamond sparkle of fresh light snow, cold winds create hard sastrugi ridges on the open fields.  A prolonged thaw brings snow-fleas to the surface.

A heavy snowfall brings the drudgery of trudging through deep snow to break trail anew.  I call this slow hard work “trudgery”, but it is rewarding nonetheless.  Hard-packed trails in the cold make for fast going, not only for me but also for deer that use them to avoid deep snow.  Sometimes I see fresh deer tracks on my own track, on a second circuit around less than an hour later.

A moderate snowfall accompanied by strong wind brings the challenge of finding the old trail across open fields.  This is especially so when the flat grey light of a cloudy day obscures all highlights, including the tell-tale contours of an existing trail.  Even then, knowing how far ahead to look – perhaps ten or twenty metres rather than one or two – may reveal a hint.  When all visible signs are absent, the existing trail can be found by feeling for compacted snow underfoot as one goes along.

Falling snow muffles all sound.  Then there is only silence.  Otherwise I listen for woodpeckers and owls, for suddenly flushed grouse or bolting deer. I am far enough away from highways that there is no background hum of traffic.  Headphones are the last thing I would take with me outdoors, so I am entirely away from the ceaseless din of commerce and even the distraction of background radio or music.

As the season progresses I watch for the signs of trees melting snow.  A depressed ring appears around every tree trunk, deciduous or coniferous, alive or dead, because the trunk conducts heat upwards from the unfrozen ground at root level.

I can do all this just by going out the back door whenever the conditions look right, and strap on my snowshoes.  I miss the days of speedskating on the Rideau Canal, and of cross-country skiing in the Gatineaus, but I don’t have to get in the car to snowshoe at home.

I miss the aesthetics of my old wood-framed gut snowshoes and my simple moosehide mukluks, now both worn out.  And I miss the aesthetics of the track those old snowshoes made in fresh snow.  Yet my newer tubular framed snowshoes and my hardy Canadian-made Sorels – rubber-bottomed, canvas-topped snow boots with heavy felt inners (now no longer available, unfortunately) – are perfectly serviceable.

In the silence and in solitude I can contemplate and think.  Perhaps about the work that needs to be done in the bush once the snow goes, perhaps about the book I am currently writing.  Come mid to late March, the season draws to an end and it’s time to move on.  Walking and cycling will replace snowshoeing, and it will be time for bush work and later for gardening.  And come the fall, time again for trail maintenance and preparation for the coming winter.  I am blessed with sufficient health and fitness to carry on, and all is good.

Photos

My old snowshoes.  Woodframe and gut, made in Loretteville, Que., bought at auction near home, ca 1978, with lamp wick binders added.

My old mukluks.  Moosehide and canvas with Western Arctic trim, felt inners, made at Sachs Harbour NWT, ca 1967. 

An Open Letter to Don Cherry

Dear Don,

I watched the clip of your comment directed to “you people” on Hockey Night in Canada. Even if I don’t always like what you have to say, you’ve been a Canadian fixture for a long time, and I like that. And how could I not have at least grudging respect for the guy who came so close to knocking off my beloved Montreal Canadiens in 1979?

So I’m asking you to hear me out on why I think you were out of line on Saturday night. When you were a boy, a lot of Canadians didn’t like Jews. They thought Jews were of doubtful character, they wouldn’t fit in, and really just didn’t belong. Jews were often the butt of “you people” rants. You probably remember those days better than I do – you’ve got seven years on me. I guess you know that one of hockey’s icons, Conn Smythe, wouldn’t hire Jewish boys to sell programs at Maple Leaf Gardens.

When you were a boy, many Canadians predicted that Jews wouldn’t volunteer for military service, and wouldn’t make good soldiers even if they did. But Jews, most of them from immigrant families, did enlist in the Second World War, by the thousands. They volunteered in roughly the same proportions as other Canadians. Some of them earned DFCs and DSOs.

My maternal great-grandfather, who had come to Canada from Russia, was very proud that four of his five grandsons were serving overseas. One of them is buried over there, and one spent three years in Stalag Luft 3 – he kept watch for the tunnellers in the Great Escape and survived the long march in January 1945. My father’s cousin, a first generation Canadian, is buried in Shetland, as a consequence of a daring but failed raid on the battleship Tirpitz in Norway.

Today, unfortunately, some Canadians feel the same way about recent immigrants – many of whom are easily identified by their colour and sometimes their dress. To some Canadians, they are the “you people” of today, thought to be insufficiently grateful for their place here and insufficiently willing to become “real Canadians.” But you might discover that some of their fathers and grandfathers served and died for the British Commonwealth, if not Canada itself, in war, just as mine and perhaps yours did.

Yes, buying and wearing a poppy at this time of year is important. But more important is what sacrifices people will actually make for their country in its hour of need. Maybe the folks you addressed as “you people” haven’t yet been tested in that regard – and we should all be thankful for that, having lived in peace for so long. But you don’t really know how they might respond if so tested. Let’s wait and see who does what, should the time come. You might be surprised.

I’m not one to look for an apology – those are given out all too easily these days. But I’d very much like to hear from you whether you might agree that there are better and more positive ways of thinking about your concern. I’m sorry you have to go, but I think you do this time.

Yours sincerely,

Peter J. Usher