Though I am loath to endorse any hyperlink that leads back to the dreadfully awful Montreal Gazette, the following story is both important and uplifting to anyone who believes that all Quebecers should have the same full, and equal, rights under the law. This should encourage anyone who believes in freedom of expression, of multiculturalism, and most of all, of courage in the face of overwhelming (albeit utterly discredited) opposition and even violence.

I reprint it here, without permission, solely to ensure that in the likely event the Gazette caves to pressure from a "special" interest group comprised of a goon squad of separatist racists.

One woman against the anti-Royal mobBy David Johnston, The Gazette

Photograph by: John Mahoney, The Gazette

She was a single lone woman up against a noisy nationalist mob tonight outside of the Black Watch armory on Bleury St., in the hour before Prince Charles arrived with Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall.

As the bright lights of national television created an something of a chilling aura around the 150 slogan-chanting Quebec nationalists, a small determined woman named Suzanne Reny walked up to the front lines of the protest and told them they were all a disgrace.

Speaking in fluent French and English, and carrying a well-known Scottish flag, the Rampant Lion, this petite daughter of a retired Canadian air-force pilot, and husband of a man of Scottish orgin, tore a strip off the protestors in front of a dozen cameras.

She called them ignorant and stupid, and she called them other things that can’t be printed – and the protestors were taken aback at first, until one man pushed her, prompting other protestors to intervene on behalf of her.

“If they are allowed to have their way in public, then I am allowed to have my say in public, too,” said Reny, the daughter of a father from the Beauce region and a mother from Trois-Rivières.

“If they are going to come here as a gang and say ‘We’re the Jeunes Patriotes’ and all that stuff and ‘we represent Quebec,’ well, I’m here to say they don’t represent Quebec,” said Reny.

Royal-family lovers who had come to stand outside the armory in the hope of greeting the royal couple looked on in amazement as Reny took on all comers and stood her ground in the glare of TV lights against the intimidating mob.

“Am I afraid? No way!” said Reny, who grew up in Lachine, LaSalle and Dollard des Ormeaux.

One of the protestors, a red-haired francophone woman named Danielle Fortin who said she was “a quarter” Irish and who was carrying an Irish flag, said to Reny, “Whose the real minority here? Don’t you know your history?”

Reny shot back, “Where did you learn your history? At the University of the St. Jean Baptiste Society?”

The louder Reny shouted the protestors down, the more the protestors in the background craned their necks to get a look at this woman who had come to stand them down. She was a one-woman counter-demonstration, and the royal couple’s and Black Watch’s strongest defender.

© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

All is Quiet on New Year's Day

2009 begins.

The holidays are behind us at last, and by Monday the stores will have Valentine's Day and Easter crap on the shelves and decorating the malls. The United States will celebrate the end of an error when Bush is finally kicked out on his ignominious ass and Obama takes one of the most historic and important oaths of office of our generation.

Here in Canada we will hopefully be rid of Stephen Harper in a few weeks' time, although I'm not holding out much hope for that, given that the new Liberal leader doesn't seem to care much for the coalition or the will of the Canadian electorate--which puts him on an even keel with the Wrong and Dishonourable Stephen Harper, who is possibly the worst and most hated Prime Minister since the King of Graft, Lyin' Brian Mulroney.

I will absolutely continue to post my opinions on the state of Canadian and Quebec politics--it is my right and obligation to do so. However, I intend on focusing my energies and my time on other things, in 2009.

First and foremost, it is my intention to see more of my work get published, this year. The Darkness and the Stars is, for all intents and purposes, ready to roll. I will be submitting that the publishers of The Unearthing, and it is also my intention to finalize Oh Well, Whatever, Nevermind and find a publisher for that book, by the Summer. Both books are, for all intents and purposes, ready to sell. I have spent too much time procrastinating over them, because of The Unearthing's lack of commercial success.

The Unearthing has been successful as an ebook; it has been downloaded thousands of times since being put online in March of last year. While that proves to me I have the skills to write an engrossing story, it is obvious to me I do not have the know-how to successfully market one. Therefore, I am going to be looking for marketing assistance, possibly even representation. An agent or a publicist will go a long way to help me move my "brand" forward, and so this will be an ongoing effort of the New Year.

CONFRONT Magazine continues to be and will continue to be a priority for me. I've just written my first cover article for the magazine, chronicling the up and coming band, Bad Flirt. I will continue to write for the magazine and I will dedicate one blog post per week to CONFRONT; pending Editor approval, I will cross-post that weekly blog to CONFRONT, as well.

I will also continue to reorganize this weblog, to make the Chronicles of an Independent Author more prominent, and as I will once again be working to see my writing published, there will be more updates to the Chronicles.

I intend to post more entries to the blog, as well. Last year I averaged 1 post per week, but I don't feel that that is necessarily adequate. Part of the problem has been that I've spent so much time over the last year and a half since The Unearthing was published worrying about the book's failure and what it means for me. I'm over it now, and I'm working on getting more work out to readers.

So that's it for my first post of the New Year. I hope everyone's had a great holiday, I wish you all the best for 2009 and I promise that there will be more to come, soon.

Stephen Harper: Fuck Culture.

Stephen Harper, the Conservative Party’s Canadian Prime Minister by Default, leader of a minority government (which means that a majority of people voted for anyone else but him and his party), recently slashed 45 million dollars from Canada’s arts funding. Under the guise of fiscal responsibility and moral leadership, Harper attempted to justify this attack on Canadian ideals.

The question is, why slash 45 million dollars from arts funding, but maintain 50 BILLION dollars in corporate welfare-subsidies given out to some of Canada’s richest corporations? This wasn’t money to bail out a bankrupted industry; this was cash giveaways to “encourage” business.

Is it that much more fiscally responsible to cut culture programs than it is to stop profitable corporations sucking at the taxpayer’s teat?

Which brings us to the next problem: the government imposition of morality. This isn’t the Harper Conservative’s first attack against culture on moral grounds. Earlier this year, they pushed through legislation that allowed them to deny Canadian films public funds, if the films were found to contravene “public morals”. What contravenes public morals? Well, the Harper Conservatives seem to take particular offence with the word “Fuck”. One of the films they cited as justifying their cuts was “Young People Fucking” which, according to them was an obscene and immoral film. Ironically, there are shows on television with more graphic portrayals of sex and sexuality. Likewise, the fuckophobia of the Harper Conservatives continued, when they claimed that music acts like Canadian rockers Holy Fuck were what was wrong with Canadian culture, and singled them out as one of the reasons for the 45 million dollar funding cut.

Here in the province of Quebec, we have always been militant when it comes to culture, and we have always elevated our artists to the status of cultural icons. In the last couple of weeks, a series of free concerts have been held in protest of the Harper Conservative arts funding cuts, featuring many of Quebec’s greatest and most respected artists.

Upon learning of this, Harper said “I think when ordinary working people come home, turn on the TV and see a gala of a bunch of people at, you know, a rich gala all subsidized by taxpayers claiming their subsidies aren’t high enough, when they know those subsidies have actually gone up - I’m not sure that’s something that resonates with ordinary people.”

In so doing Harper betrayed not only his own anti-intellectual temperament, but his complete ignorance of what it is to be an artist, particularly a musician in Canada. To say Harper is out of touch with reality is nothing short of hyperbole. Harper demonstrates the ingnorant’s disdain for anything intellectual, creative, or to use a favourite word of Harper’s Conservative cronies in the United States, “elitist”.

That Harper, who has never done a hard day’s labour in his life, has the audacity to claim these funding cuts in the name of the “working people” is offensive, for several reasons.

First, anyone involved with the arts on any level knows how difficult it is for artists to make a living in their chosen field-if they even can. Musicians must practice constantly, learning new songs; they usually have to provide their own transport and accommodation when on tour; at CONFRONT Magazine we’ve spoken with countless musicians who spend their tours sleeping in the back of a battered Econoline van. Likewise, the cost of supplies, be it guitar strings, musical instruments, what have you, can be exorbitant. More than one band has folded for want of being able to afford to replace lost, stolen or damaged equipment.

One need only look at the faces of the young men and women who are working artists-be they musicians, actors, painters, sculptors, or God help them, writers-to see how tiring it is to live an artist’s life. It’s certainly not the life of excess and delights that Harper and his gang of anti-cultural bigots would have us believe. These men and women work diligently and tirelessly, not just to be able to afford to practice their art, but to be able to afford food, clothing, shelter…the basic necessities of life. On average, working artists earn less than 27 thousand dollars a year. That’s less than most people make. Professional artists depend on those government subsidies to survive.

If Harper does not think that the struggles of artists resonates with ordinary people, then he is ignorant of the vital and ever-present role that art in all its many forms plays, not only with what we label “Culture”, but in our everyday lives.

How many of us drop earbuds into our ears in the morning, and crank up the MP3 player as we head out on our commute? How many of us adorn our walls with photographs, paintings, pictures? How many of us buy little odds and ends from street-corner vendors, like decorative sculptures, hand-made bracelets, necklaces, earrings or pendants? How many of you go to museums, or stop to look at public-display sculptures? How many of you go to movies, watch television, go to plays, go to the outdoor summer festivals? Art and culture is all around us. Art and culture saturate our daily lives. Whether we notice it, appreciate it, take it for granted or ignore it, whether we love it, hate it, are passionate about it or outraged by it, art and culture affects each and every one of us profoundly, regularly, constantly.

Subsequently, Harper has claimed that 45 million dollars is a paltry amount, that it is a small cut to cultural funding. If that is true, then why has he repeatedly claimed that these cuts are of such importance to fiscal policy? If that 45 million is so desperately needed, why are corporate handouts in the excess of 50 billion still allowed to continue?

The anti-cultural bigotry of the Harper Conservatives is vile, outrageous, and is an attack on Canada’s ideals as a nation, as a society, as a people. His disdain towards artists and arts programs smacks of ignorance, of the very sort of elitism he supposedly derides. For who else but elitists so ignorantly assume artists to be decadent, lazy, arrogant low-lifes? Who else but elitists think they know what is in the best interests of the “ordinary” person? These cuts were not merely the deletion of a few line items from an invoice. Vital programs have been affected:

• PromArt, a grant program supporting foreign travel for artists ($4.7 million)

• Canadian Memory Fund, which gives federal agencies money to digitize collections and mount them online ($11.7 million)

• Culture.ca Web portal ($3.8 million)

• Canadian Cultural Observatory ($560,000)

• Research and Development component of Canadian Culture Online ($5.64-million)

• Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund ($1.5 million)

• Audio Visual Trust ($300,000)

• National Training Program for the Film and Video Sector ($2.5 million)

• Trade Routes, supporting international tours by Canadian performers ($7.8 million)

• Northern Distribution Program, which distributes the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network signal to 96 Northern communities. ($2.1 million)

These decisions are supposed to be fiscally sound, but yet they fly in the face of any real understanding of the revenues generated by cultural programs, arts, music, film, theatre and television. According to ACTRA spokeswoman Taborra Johnson, “The arts contribute $85 billion per year to our gross domestic product. It creates 1.1 million jobs, which is 7.2 per cent of our employment.”

The arts don’t just contribute to Canadian culture; they contribute to the Canadian economy. When you consider the residual sales of merchandise, memorabilia, food, beverages, hotel and tourism dollars that festivals, concerts, exhibits, productions and plays generate, when you consider the multitude of spin-off income generated by such things, not to mention the jobs for technicians, service people, maintenance professionals and others, it becomes clear that cuts to cultural programmes are not only myopic, but imbecilic in the extreme.

Canada is currently in the midst of a Federal election. This election was called by Harper, in an attempt to change his minority government into a majority government. The funding cuts that Harper has so cavalierly justified have become one of the elections major issues.

It is incumbent upon all Canadians who care about culture, be they fans of music, patrons of the Arts, theatre-goers or festival fans, to send a clear message to the Canadian government that these funding cuts are unacceptable, and far more obscene than the use of the word “Fuck”.

Stephen Harper and his gang of Conservatives have shown a callous disregard for public opinion on this, and on several other issues. The fact of the matter is, nothing less than our Canadian identity is at stake in this election. Anyone who cares about that identity must take action. There is only one way to remedy this situation, and that is to ensure that Stephen Harper does not return to Parliament as Prime Minister. If we care about culture in this country, if we care about our friends and family who toil to make a living in the creative fields, there is only one thing we can do: On October 14th, we must vote against the Conservatives; we must ensure that they are not re-elected to Government. This is a war on Canadian culture. We cannot afford to let the Conservatives win.

The insane day which is in the midst of extremeness using

Amazingly, after midnight and as tired as I am, I can't fall asleep. Funny, I can remember as far back as six or seven years old, oftentimes not being able to sleep at night, until 2 or 3 in the morning.

It's not that I don't want to sleep...I just need to unwind.

The day started in its usual way for a Friday: me going up to go to work at the newspaper, Fridays being my super-busy crazy day (or, as translated into Japanese and then back into English by the Babelfish translation engine, my The insane day which is in the midst of extremeness using) followed by two interviews I'd had scheduled for CONFRONT Magazine, at Le National.

Let me just pause here to plug the Babelfish translator. It is hilarious. You take a block of text, any text, and then translate it from English into Japanese. Then, copy the Japanese text back into the translator, and translated it back into English. The results are hilarious.

For example, you probably recognize the opening lines of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.

Well, this is what English-to-Japanese-to-English makes it read as:

As for that before us the best of the time, as for that at the time of age of intelligence it was worst before us, the light/write which is the infidelity and that new era which are conviction and that new era which are foolishness and that age which that are, the darkness which is that season, the winter of the despair which is desire and that spring which are that season, us what which us it did not have everything which it had, entirely was we who go to the heaven which is we directly, it was the other method of going and indicating entirely

You can have a lot of fun with this software. I imagine that fans of Battlestar Galactica could use this to actually make sense of the jabberings of the Hybrids.

Anyway, back to my insane day which is in the midst of extremeness using. I can't complain about my job, because I enjoy it so much. Oh yes, the coffee is shit, but at least it's free, and although it's high pressure because of newspaper deadlines and such, the end result is still a feeling of having accomplished something worthwhile.

Plus, I get an hour for lunch, which I usually spend sitting in the Quad at the nearby McGill University, writing and looking at all the girls go by dressed in their summer clothes...short skirts and pantyhose, windy days and games of hacki sack...I love this city.

Oh, and the fresh air is nice and the writing I get done at lunch is usually good.

But because of the day job, I had to have my interviews--with the bands As I Lay Dying and Evergreen Terrace--scheduled for after work. They were supposed to be at 7:00 and 7:30, but in the music world things like scheduled interview times tend to change.

Also, I had a Hunter S. Thompson moment (No, not one of THOSE Hunter S. Thompson moments, the other kind) in which, as I was going into the venue, a burly security guy stopped me and wanted to go through my backpack.

Now, although it has been a number of years of (relative) sobriety for me, I have nevertheless an absolute hatred for People of Authority searching my things, especially my backpack. And with the last name I have, that means when I go on a trip, I'm usually pretty annoyed by the time I get through at customs. I'm on a Department of Homeland Security "He Has a Funny Last Name" watch list.

But anyway, the guy was sort of being a dick about it, so I just looked at him flatly and said "I'm Press!" Which of course I am. But as these two magic words (and verification of my press pass) did their trick, he let me through...and in my head I heard Johnny Depp shouting that line from the film version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: "I'm a doctor of Journalism, dammit!" and it was just...unreal.

So, I did my first interview about half an hour before showtime at eight, with the second originally to be right after the second. Usually these interviews are short affairs, ten, fifteen minutes, though sometimes you get into a zone with the person you're interviewing and lose track of time.

The first interview I did was over and done with in less than twelve minutes, according to my digital recorder. It looked like I was going to complete a tactical surgical strike: get in, get the interviews, get out.

Of course, you know what they say about plans only working until they're actually attempted...

After my interview with Tim from As I Lay Dying ended, the label rep then told me that the next interview was rescheduled and now would be after Evergreen Terrace did their set.

This was a tad annoying, as I was tired from a month's worth of not sleeping properly (Case in point it's a quarter of one and I'm still writing this post) and a long day's night, the fact that I walked from University Street to Ste Catherine's and Montcalm, where Le National is. That's over 16 city blocks, and several kilometers. Also, I'm perhaps not old, but old enough to want to go home and rest after being out and about since 7:30 in the morning.

However, I had to stay for Evergreen Terrace's set, so I did. They put on one hell of a live show, and they did a cover of Mad World, which most of you know from the film Donnie Darko, as performed by Gary Jules, although it is in fact an old Tears for Fears song.

Then, instead of being right after their set, some other unforeseen circumstances delayed things further, but finally, about two hours after I got to the venue (nearly four hours after I finished work--and no, it didn't take me that long to walk to the venue from work; I stopped to have supper and a coffee before the show) I was going into my second interview.

Anyway, the interview with Craig of Evergreen Terrace (which, along with my interview with Tim you'll just have to wait for the relaunch of CONFRONT Magazine on May 29th to read about) ran long...coming in at 45 minutes. It was a great interview, don't get me wrong, but this crotchety, set-in-his ways geezer was wanting to get home early enough for a shower, a cup of tea, some quiet time with my wife and to watch Battlestar Galactica.

Didn't happen that way. Sometimes in an interview, reporter and subject just end up having a conversation. Conversations are long things, so it was nine thirty by the time we'd finished talking (and he went off to help the band finish loading the gear and I went off to call my wife and let her know I was still alive) .

I live 25, 30 minutes from downtown, when the public transit is on peak hours. 9:30 at night is not peak time. It took me an hour to get home. At this point, I've been up since 6:00, worked all day, walked 20 blocks and spent two and a half hours doing music journalist stuff, then making the sojourn home.

If I'd have dropped a gold ring into a molten pit, well then the Tolkienian undertones of my day would have been complete.

I did get the tea, quiet time with my wife and the shower, but I'm going through some serious BSG withdrawal. Thank God the show repeats tomorrow at eight PM...I'd be inconsolable if I missed it.

I love working as a journalist, talking to the bands, listening to new music all the time, seeing shows for free (usually) and just the whole atmosphere of the lifestyle. It does take a lot out of you, though, especially when you have a day job. I wouldn't change a thing. Except of course to be a full-time journalist, of course. Or, to be a full-time novelist. Full-time anything involving writing, other than technical writing, of course...Hell, I have a couple of ideas for graphic novels that I'm kicking around, now...on top of my rewrite of The Darkness and the Stars, coming up with the next phase of promoting The Unearthing, and the work I'm doing on Lengths of Love (The TENTATIVE title for the story I'm working on now) and rewriting Oh Well, Whatever, Nevermind, I'm very busy creatively speaking.

Which may explain why, at 1:30 I'm still nowhere near ready to shut the laptop down and pull the covers up over my head and get some fucking sleep.

Fortunately, it's a long weekend here in Canada, so I have three days instead of two to recuperate. God bless the long weekend!

On that note, Happy Victoria Day, Canada!