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Dyer Straights: A High School Confidential

Posted by :James Howden On : January 14, 2007
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Category: At First Glance

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If a remarkable speaker came to a school and nobody listened, did he actually say anything? (If a tree falls in the forest…) I do the odd suppy teaching gig, and I got thinking about an assembly held in a small-town high school of my intimate acquaintance.

It was the spring of ’02, I think. The principal had booked a speaker; not the usual “you-have-so-much-to-gain-from-getting-involved-so-hey-whaddaya-got-to-lose!” motivational banter from a caffeinated twenty-something with a degree and no job.  This was a lecture on Canada’s place in the world from a greying Gwynne Dyer: historian, writer and commentator on international affairs. (I’m still not sure what he was doing in the Home of the Blue Devils.) The staff had been poorly briefed, and the students didn’t know what was up, but it was a substitute for fourth period, so we trooped down to the auditorium at two o’clock. At least, those of us who hadn’t already escaped to Timmy’s or McD’s.

I was superbly biased: I’d read Dyer in newspapers, seen him on The National, and been wowed by his eight-part documentary film, War. (It made me want to teach history.) He’s a brilliant guy, rumpled and wryly funny, so I was looking forward to hearing him speak. (Yes, I often feel alone. How’d you know?) He spoke for 50 minutes, with two major points to make. He put our present world situation in perspective, apologizing for the role he plays in the media’s portrait of the world as a frighteningly violent and despairing place. (I don’t think he would retract the grimly but clearly optimistic tone he took that day, but his recent book IS Future: Tense — The Coming World Order? His biggest concern there was America’s singular quest to police the world, including this typically blunt Dyer-ism: “The United States needs to lose the war in Iraq as soon as possible. Even more urgently, the whole world needs the United States to lose the war in Iraq.”)

But back then, the end of the Cold War had him arguing the following, in spite of the threat of terrorism: “The world is in better shape than it has been in my entire lifetime” and “World War III has been cancelled!” He argued that the generation of high schoolers he was facing had great reason to be hopeful about the world they were inheriting. Second, he argued that “the single best thing Canadians have done” was the 1967 reworking of the Immigration Act. It has steadily transformed Canada from an inward-looking population descended from northern European settlers, he said, into “a representative sample of the human race”, the most diverse country on earth. Sure, there are problems, he explained, but not only does this diversity make us truly interesting, but it gives us a creative advantage in the global marketplace, and is the key to diluting French-English antagonism and preserving Canadian unity. Whew!  It was a big message for suburban white kids on a Thursday afternoon.

There were twin conclusions to the talk.  One was Dyer’s: “It’s a great country—take good care of it!” The other, after an odd delay — so that our guest could leave the room, I guess — was our vice-principal’s dressing-down of the students for their rudeness and lack of attention. Which message are they going to remember? I wondered. I was moving past my own reaction (impressed) to Dyer to consider what the rest of the crowd got from it. I picked out one red-headed Brain that I’d worked with in class and cross-country running. “Hey, Chris, Canada’s in the world — who knew?” I said, and he smiled. He’d obviously been tuned in; he separated himself from those around him by his unbroken attention and by laughing at Dyer’s subtle jokes. (Mentioning the sexual revolution of the 60s, he had deadpanned, “Pity you missed it”). Chris’s buddy Ryan admitted (well, confessed, actually) that he had understood most of Dyer’s talk, noting a bit sheepishly that “we always listen to CBC Radio and my dad always talks to me about this stuff”. These guys felt a little alone, too.

Most of the students I talked to had more to say about the V.P.’s 30 seconds than about Mr. Dyer’s hour. Pressed to comment on his address, comments ranged (but not too widely) from “It was boring/stupid” to a disgusted “He just stood there and talked” to a more self-examining “I tried to pay attention but I couldn’t follow it, so of course we’re gonna talk a bit…” I was amazed.  We hear all the time about kids and short attention spans and how information needs to be a jump-cutting jolt of entertainment to get through to them. I was facing them daily then, but I was still surprised by how many had surfed to another channel (if not another location altogether) before Dyer had finished his opening comments, or, in some cases, spoken at all. Perhaps I didn’t want to think about how little of my own chalk-stained raving had flown right past bland and pleasant faces…

Granted, we hadn’t been very well-prepared. Students who heard afterwards from a teacher that Mr. Dyer had been shot at several times in the course of his globe-trotting journalism, or spent time as a sailor, said “I wish they’d told me that before!” And we should have prepared the kids much better. It was an afternoon that made high school teaching feel, just fer a second there, like the ultimate tilt at a bored and impervious windmill. But thanks for coming out, Gwynne.

(Hey, my site seems to be working! A condensed version of this piece will appear shortly in my hometown weekly, The Grand River Sachem.)

A Little Nightmare Down Home

Posted by :James Howden On : May 31, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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It’s a sleepy place, with a languid river running through it. People have nice lawns and enjoy quiet. But in 1996, I was taking my new wife, a city girl, home to live in my little town, and she was worried. “Does anything happen there? Will there be any interesting people?” I understood, but my roots were deep and everything was there – my mother, my kids, and teaching and coaching at my alma mater high school – so we packed up our honeymoon kit (and the caboodle) and moved back – to Caledonia, Ontario, “a Grand place!”

Prodigal son that I am, I’d always thought so, but I’d also come to see how suburban sprawling my childhood village had become. (Caledonia is three times bigger now, yet its downtown has suffered. There are three stoplights and two Timmy’s on the main drag. Too much!) Diana fit right in with my family and bore up well under all that local history, but she found interesting conversations hard to come by, never mind excitement. Now that Caledonia and its eternal neighbour, the Six Nations reserve, are at the centre of Canadian attention, Diana flings her hands in mock dismay.

“I lived there for six years and now it gets interesting?!” I know how she feels. I spent the better part of my life in Caledonia, and wish I was there now. I always tried to convince my students and my children (and myself) that Real Life is right where we live; there’s no magic source of delight and importance Somewhere Else. Well, town and reserve teens can’t complain about boredom now, and I have the small sour pleasure of not having to explain that I grew up “in southern Ontario, near Hamilton, you know, about an hour from Toronto”. (I also lived and taught in Hagersville during the Great Tire Fire. It’s small-town vindication of a weird and ironic sort.)

Here’s the thing: I know these people, on both sides of the now-famous barricades. For our shared six years in Caledonia, Diana and I lived around the corner from them in the town’s first condominiums. They had been built by Jack Henning (father of John and Don, the developers stuck in the current dispute) about 1970. Then, to this chauvinistic north-side kid, they seemed a ridiculous distance south of the river, since the downtown, the arena, older homes and the original stoplight were on my side of town. Now, the Zehrs and Canadian Tire superstores that appear in newscasts are farther south still, along with the new rink, library, high school and streets (Laird, Tartan, Douglas, McKinnon) in this Scots-flavoured town. Dear old Caledonia Baptist, my north-side childhood church, has its new south-end sanctuary right next to the disputed housing development.

John Henning played first base in the age group below mine, and was the first kid I knew to have a proper trapper. (Rumour was that it cost forty bucks. John had the country habit of spitting and rubbing in its pocket between pitches; it stank to baseball heaven.) He was a rookie on the Caledonia High football team in my glorious senior year – we won several games after years of being pounded – and became a touchdown machine when the Blue Devils dominated.

Listen: John and I, like his brother Don and generations of white kids from Caledonia, shared science labs, hallways and playing fields with kids from the upper end of Six Nations who came to town for high school. I played four years of football with Ben Thomas and Alfred Logan, and was a teammate of various Hills and Bomberrys, Porters and Thomases. So were the Hennings. I wonder how these young men from a parallel world, guys we “went to war” with as adolescent athletes, have felt about those barricades.

For too long, they separated a quiet town and the proud and struggling nations that have watched it grow, from a single mill, along the banks of their cherished Grand River. The barriers were tangible, often tense and angry, but they weren’t exactly new, just obvious. It used to be that, if you wanted to, you could pretend such divides didn’t exist. I’d spent enough broiling afternoons running the bases at the Ohsweken fairgrounds, enough road trips with Martins and Montours, enough basketball refereeing at J.C. Hill school, that parts of Six Nations were clear (and dear) to me. Until I got to high school, though, much of it was mystery. Some still is.

For some Caledonians, though, it has been easy to live as if the reserve wasn’t there. That time is over, and that’s not all bad. Suspicions and stereotypes have deepened, and buried antagonisms have surfaced right on TV. (To think it all happened on Argyle Street!) However, this is also an opportunity to build understanding of a more than merely tolerant kind. (“Tolerance”: something we have for bad smells or uncomfortable shoes.) We need to better know and cherish the tangled history along the banks of that lazy river, and the needs and hopes of the communities that share it.

I was back home on Victoria Day. I was among the hundreds waiting by the barricades. I hoped for calm; some didn’t. I was ashamed by the lobbed insults, sorry for the cops, and sickened by the certainty of greater violence. I cursed the damage to community relations, and my own helplessness. Diana and I drove to Ottawa that night with foreboding, awakened grateful that riots hadn’t enflamed a darkened town, and were astonished that the barricades came down later that day.

So peace is possible. So Caledonia is an interesting place. (Who knew?) It’s a piece of geography that speaks of Canada, and the months and years to come will tell us a whole lot more.

A slightly edited version of this piece appeared in the Forum section of the Hamilton Spectator on May 29.

Caledonia Gets Interesting

Posted by :James Howden On : April 21, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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Back in 1996, when I was dragging my new wife back to my little town, she was worried. A city girl, she wondered, “Does anything happen there? Will there be any interesting people?” But my roots were deep and my sons were there, as was my job teaching and coaching at my alma mater high school, so we packed up our honeymoon kit (and the caboodle) and moved back to Caledonia, Ontario. “A Grand place to live!”

I’d always thought so, but influenced by my Diana, an environmentalist and Jane Jacobs admirer, I’d come to see how suburban sprawling my childhood village had become. (It’s three times bigger than when I was a boy, but its downtown struggles. There were, as of our 2002 move to Ottawa, three stoplights in town. Too much!) And my bride did find it dull, and though there were lots of JamesHowdenHistory and family there, interesting people were hard to come by, let alone excitement. Now that Caledonia and its eternal neighbour, the Six Nations reserve, are at the centre of Canadian attention, Diana flings her hands in mock dismay.

“I lived there for six years and now it gets interesting?!” Well, my blissful life sentence in Caledonia was commuted after thirty years, so I know what she’s talking about. And I’d like to be there right now. I know these people, on both sides of the barricades. For our shared six years, Diana and I lived in the town’s first condominiums, built by Jack Henning (father of John and Don, the developers at the centre of the current dispute) in the 1970s at what then seemed an absurd distance south of the river; the town’s business area and its older homes were all on the north side. Now, the Zehrs and Canadian Tire superstores that have been appearing in national newscasts are farther south still.

John Henning played first base on Caledonia baseball teams the age group below mine, and was the first kid I knew to have a proper trapper. (Rumour was it had cost forty bucks. John also had the country habit of spitting and rubbing in its pocket while he played; it stank to baseball heaven.) He was a rookie on the Caledonia High football team in my glorious senior year – we nearly won the league after years of being a patsy against larger schools – and became a touchdown machine as the star running back when the Blue Devils actually won.

And John and I, like his brother Don and generations of white kids from Caledonia, had the experience of sharing science labs, hallways and playing fields with guys from the upper end of Six Nations who came to town for high school. I played four years of football with Ben Thomas and Alfred Logan, and was a teammate for shorter periods with various Hills and Bomberrys, Porters and Martins. So were the Hennings. And I can’t help but wonder who, among these young men from a parallel world with whom we all “went to war” as adolescent athletes, might now be on the other side of that barricade.

It’s a divide between the town and the proud and struggling nations that have watched it grow from nothing along the banks of their cherished Grand River. Today, the barrier is vivid and tangible, tense and angry, but it is not new. It just used to be quieter. It used to be that, if you wanted to, you could pretend it didn’t exist. For some Caledonians, like many Canadians, it was easy to live as if the reserve itself wasn’t there.

That time is over, for now, and that’s not all bad. There’s great potential for entrenching suspicions and stereotypes in the heat of this conflict, but – and call me naïve, if you like – there is also the chance in this standoff to build understanding: of the tangled history along the banks of this lazy river, and of the needs and aspirations of the two communities that share it. It’s an interesting place now. It’s a piece of geography that shows us a great deal about Canada, and what happens in the days and months to come will tell us a whole lot more.

[This entry was later expanded into a Hamilton Spectator Forum piece that you can find here.]