Sentenced to the Electric Couch

            On Tuesday morning I memorized the second verse of “La poupée qui fait pipi" (The Poppet that makes Peepee) by Serge Gainsbourg.

            I worked some more transcribing my Indigenous Studies lecture notes.

            I needed milk so I rode down to No Frills where I got a bag of three bags. I also got an almost empty bag of black grapes.

            When I was unlocking my building door the bent over woman that's often panhandling in the area approached me. I apologized and told her I couldn’t help her. She asked me to confirm that it was Tuesday December 3. I notice that she has a beard now. Later I heard her shouting while begging that she was going to kill herself, but she says that fairly often.

            I had oven fries for lunch.

            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Sapphire insists that Kingfish takes her on a vacation. The last trip they took was their honeymoon to Niagara Falls where Kingfish got her a job as a chambermaid. Kingfish sells his car to Andy so he can afford to take his wife on a holiday. But then Sapphire tells him that a friend of hers is lending them her cabin in Canada and so all they have to do is drive up there. So now he needs to get Andy to drive them to Canada and goes to see his lawyer Laguardia to find an angle on how to do that. While there he finds out that his lawyer was recently visiting a client at Sing Sing. Kingfish asks if the electric chair is busy these days. Laguardia says they’ve had to put in an electric couch. The advice is to tell Andy's girlfriend that Andy is dying so she'll let him go to Canada and so he tells her that Andy has hereditary hydrophobia. In the end the trip is cancelled because Sapphire’s friend’s daughter has a boyfriend with hereditary hydrophobia and he's going to stay at the cabin to be cured.

            I grilled chicken drumsticks and had two for dinner with a potato and gravy while watching Zorro.

            In this story the two men that were caught stealing the gunpowder are in a cell. The magistrate is worried that they will talk and so he orders Figueroa, one of the corrupt soldiers to let them escape. However, just as they are climbing the wall to get out, Sgt Garcia is climbing the wall to get in. He captures them. But later they die of poisoning in their cell. Meanwhile the commandant, Captain Toledano is examining the eagle feathers found on the two men, and like Zorro he is figuring out that they are coded messages. The Magistrate wants to figure out how to get rid of the captain. Zorro sneaks into Toledano’s quarters and binds and gags him so he can tell him about the Brotherhood of the Eagle Feather. There is a knock on the door and when Zorro hears it’s Figueroa he lets him in. Figueroa has wine for the captain but Zorro pokes him with his sword and tells him to drink it. Figueroa refuses and breaks the glass. Just then the other soldiers arrive and Zorro escapes. Figueroa also gets away and when Garcia unties Toledano he tells him to forget about Zorro and go after Figueroa. Figueroa tries to ride away but Zorro captures him out in the desert.  The magistrate organizes a meeting of dons, including Don Alejandro, who is Zorro’s father. In it he tries to claim that Toledano is the leader of the organization that is trying to take over Los Angeles. Just then Zorro arrives with Figueroa, who exposes the magistrate. The magistrate shoots Figueroa. There is a sword fight between Don Alejandro and the magistrate while Toledaro and Zorro take on several of the magistrate’s men. The fake blind beggar tries to stab Don Alejandro in the back but they rotate suddenly while fighting and the magistrate is killed. Toledano’s sword breaks but Zorro tosses him his sword. At the end when all the bad guys are dead Zorro asks for his sword back. Toledano hesitates but smiles and returns it.

Stop Asking Questions and Let Me Teach the Class!

            On Monday morning after yoga a practiced one verse of one song in French to keep it in my memory and then I started the final push of working on my Indigenous Studies essay. From time to time I checked my email because I was hoping for a message from U of T that classes would be cancelled because of the snow storm that was still going on outside. But I received no email and the snow eased off. My paper was mostly done except for the conclusion and harmonizing a few elements in the body. The essay was finished in plenty of time to get armoured up for my first real winter bike ride of the school year.

            I put on my very worn old pair of sweat pants for long underwear and an extra shirt. I pulled on three pairs of socks including the big wool ones and slipped my Kodiaks on top. I had been dreading the ride to campus because I thought for sure it would be dangerous but I was surprised to find it was far less treacherous than I’d expected. Only on Maple Grove did I have to ride on top of slippery hard snow. The riding was fairly smooth all the way to Huron and then it got nasty. It hadn’t been ploughed at all and riding up to Willcocks was a severe balancing act. The next time after a snowfall I'll just ride up St George, which is sooner cleared.

            Associate Professor White admitted that that he bungled the first part of the term in not being fully prepared to teach a full course. Down in the states he had only instructed half courses.

            That being said he continued to teach another US centric class with occasional gratuitous mentions of Canada.

            The desperate salvaging of Indigenous knowledge took place from the 1870s to the 1930s at the same time that there was a push to wipe Native culture from every young mind.

            He said that when people ask his nationality he tells them Mohawk.

            The effort to give a European education to Indigenous people goes back to colonial times.

            He said that the western method of education compared to Indigenous Americans is that the west starts with the big picture and work back while Indigenous people begin with observation.

            He said Japan does zero testing before the fourth grade. It didn’t take much research for me to discover that the professor was perpetuating another myth. Japanese students don’t have national standardized tests before the sixth grade but they are tested by their teachers pretty much continuously from the beginning of school.

            Both day schools and residential schools had the goal of removing the Indian from the child. New territories always wanted to deal with the Indian problem.

            Professor White told us the story about his sister. She has a daughter who had a learning disability and could not speak until she was five. When she was pregnant with her second child a teacher said to her, “Maybe you shouldn’t drink with this one.”

            Schools for Indigenous people tended to prepare them for work as labourers.

            Richard Pratt's philosophy for educating Indigenous people was, "Kill the Indian and save the man." He found that Geronimo's warriors were willing to cut their hair. Cutting hair demonstrates grief or is a way of shaming. He farmed Indigenous children; sometimes taken from home until they were sixteen, out for labour.

            For decades the Mohawk Institute was a respected school. Carlisle started in 1877. There were nutrition experiments conducted. Treaty rations were withheld to force parents to send their children to boarding school. I see that there were also experiments in feeding extra supplements instead of full meals to some children and an experimental flour mixture that was illegal in the rest of Canada in two residential schools.

            He said that residential schools started in Canada in the 1820s but I think one should distinguish between schools that were entirely conceived of and run by churches and the later government sanctioned schools.

            The government took the control of residential schools away from the churches in 1969 and the last residential school closed in 1996.

            In 1971 Blue Quills University became the first Native owned and operated school in Canada. As far as I've been able to find out the United States didn't give Natives the right to run their own schools until 1975, so we win again.

            In the residential schools there was criminal and sexual abuse.

            Sterilization without informed consent after giving birth has been performed as recently as 2018 in Saskatchewan.

            The Catholic, the Presbyterian, the Anglican and the United churches carved up the population of Native children in Canada. In the United States it was the Catholic, Episcopalian, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, Unitarian, Lutheran and Quaker churches. Churches stole Indians from each other.

            He asked us to name what we know about Abraham Lincoln. I said he wore a stovepipe hat. He said that Lincoln is not remembered fondly by Indigenous Americans. Four hundred Sioux were sentenced to hang. Lincoln spared most of them but still had to make a show and so 38 were hung and it was the largest public hanging in US history.

            Ely Parker was a Seneca US army officer, attorney, engineer and diplomat. He had one foot in a canoe and one in a boat.

            He said in the 1850s residential schools were compulsory for children between eight and fifteen. Actually they weren’t technically compulsory until 1920 but between 1894 and 1920 Indian agents had the power to decide if a child should be sent to a residential school. Until the 1940s there were more children in Indian Affairs day schools than in residential schools. The first year that residential school enrolment exceeded that of day school was 1944. The percentage of all First Nations children attending residential schools that year was about 33%. They were supposed to eventually pay for themselves but when they didn’t by 1951 the government, finding day schools cheaper, began working with the provinces to integrate all Native children into public schools.

            In the states there were Indian agents that cut blankets meant for Indians in half and sold half.

            Merrill Gates was a scholar of Indigenous studies but also believed in reforming Indians.

            The Hawthorn Report of n1966 was a survey of contemporary Indians of Canada. It recommended that all forced assimilation programs be abolished.

            He said that Trudeau said that the recommended reparations for residential schools were too high. I shot back that he didn’t actually say that. Trudeau is not disputing the compensation but they need more time to study how to properly deliver the compensation.

            The compared Trudeau’s very public apology to the paper apology that was filed with no fanfare in the United States. A couple of students started ranting about how there is no difference between the two and one woman said Trudeau’s “mealy mouthed” apology was nothing without action. Obviously a public apology is better because the government will be called on it. In his first term Trudeau halved the number of long-term water advisories on reserves.

            Luther Standing Bear was a Lakota chief and Gertrude Bonnin was a Sioux writer. They were at the forefront of the progressive movement to change government policy toward Native Americans.

            Plenty Horses was a Carlisle school survivor who killed a soldier and said he did so to redeem himself as a warrior among his people upon being hanged. But he was acquitted.

            The Indigenous suicide rate in Canada is three times higher than for non-Indigenous people. It’s more than 3.5% higher in the United States.

            There were only five of us in tutorial. Safia told us that she has seasonal affective disorder.

            She and I had an argument because I told her that she had given us incorrect t information about residential schools. She had said that every Indigenous child went to residential schools from 1920 to 1951. I told her that there were no residential schools in New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island or Newfoundland. I said that the biggest year for residential schools was 1931 when there were 17000 students enrolled. There couldn’t possibly have been only 17000 school age Native children in Canada in 1931. She was indignant about being contradicted and reminded me that she has taught this course for years. She said she wouldn’t debate with me there but if I emailed her she would set me straight.

            She said in 1884 European leaders met for the Berlin Conference and divided up Africa. She said the south is where the resources are and the north is where they go.

            The Sixties Scoop involved Native kids being forced into foster homes from the late 50s to the 80s. It happened to my ex-girlfriend’s kids in the 80s. I don’t think it was federal though but rather provincial, since federal government passed the control of Native social services over to the provinces in the 1950s. .

            John A. MacDonald started the residential school system.

            The Indian Act supposedly made residential schools mandatory in 1920, but I’ve downloaded the 1927 amendment to the Indian Act and the actual wording is that "Every Indian child between the ages of seven and fifteen years shall attend such day, industrial or boarding school as may be designated by the Superintendent General.” So what was mandatory was attending school. It wasn’t technically mandatory for Indigenous children to attend residential schools unless the superintendent general said so.

            All of the churches involved but the Catholic Church have apologized.

            We discussed the idea of the “empty” apology and Safia said that it’s empty if it is not followed by action. I asked if there wasn’t some action and suddenly Safia expressed dissatisfaction with the way I “push back”. She said, “Questions are good but it’s the way you do it!”

            Lump sums of compensation don’t help when people are damaged and need healing.

            What kind of education are Indigenous students getting now? There are a very small number of Indigenous students at U of T.

            Integration versus assimilation. Safia said, “You all know the difference.” I said, “Not really.” Someone said that assimilation is forced. Assimilation is fully adopting another culture whereas integration is entering a society as part of a different group but as an equal. The dictionary says to assimilate is to become the same. To integrate is to become part of the whole.

            She told the story of a friend of hers who was a teacher. There was a Native student in her class that knew the whole alphabet except for the letter “G”. On the last day of class he presented her with a piece of artwork with a big letter “G” on it, proving that he had understood that letter but had left it out to maintain control.

            We got back our Finding Place essays and I got an A minus with a note that she would have liked me to talk about my relationship with the sites and how researching them changed that relationship. I’m okay with the mark. I couldn't think of myself having any personal involvement with these places.

            After tutorial I said to Safia that I have never had a teacher tell me not to ask questions. She admitted that maybe it was her fault because of being overworked, sleep and light deprived and she apologized. I asked her if she wanted a hug and she opened her arms and we embraced.

            After class I went to the Help Desk at Robarts Library because I wasn't able to access U of T Webmail. I don't normally use it because all mail addressed to my U of T email address just gets channelled to my gmail account. But I’d sent a writing sample to Smaro Kamboureli as an audition for the Jack McLelland Writer in Residence Seminar starting in January and Smaro told me I needed to re-send it from my U of T email address. When I tried to do that however my password was rejected. At the Help Desk it took them five minutes to fix the glitch. Somehow I had opted out of Webmail and so I just had to opt back in.

            I hopped back on my bike and headed home. I stopped at Loblaws and bought grapes. There was only one nearly empty bag of black grapes and so I also got an expensive pack of scarlotta grapes.

            I had a late lunch of pork ribs and yogourt.

            I started typing my lecture notes.

            I had a potato, my last three pork ribs and some gravy for dinner while watching Zorro.

            This was the most intriguing story of the first season. Bernardo observes a blind beggar in the pueblo begging from the soldiers and the magistrate. But when they put money into his hat they also take out a note. Meanwhile the magistrate is organizing a horse race with an obstacle course and a large prize. When Zorro follows the blind man he is led to a meeting between the magistrate and other members of the Eagle Feather Brotherhood. He overhears that they are plotting to use the distraction of the horserace to steal gunpowder from the armoury for their overthrow of Los Angeles. As the commandant and all but a few soldiers are in the race, Zorro enters the race, beats the commandant to the halfway point and then calls for him to follow him. He and his men give chase to capture Zorro but he leads them into the pueblo just in time for them to catch the men stealing the gunpowder.  

Sour Treaties and Bad Acts

                         The powerful are skilful in colouring over their enterprises – Emer Vattel 

                                                        Sour Treaties and Bad Acts

The execution of the Indian Act was illegal under international law. It became law while the government of Canada was negotiating treaties with various nations that were not made aware that the act would be imposed upon them. The wording of the act does not acknowledge separate nations in Canada (The Indian Act, 1876), but the very process of signing treaties with other nations is recognition of their sovereignty (Vattel, Book II, Chapter XII). In acknowledging the separate nations with the treaties while at the same time enforcing the Indian Act as if those nations did not exist, the government of Canada was engaged in contradictory policies.

I will focus on Treaty Six but its similarities with the other ten numbered treaties are sufficient to show their common standing in international law and how The Indian Act was a breach of those agreements. The nations of Treaty Six did not give up sovereignty but they did offer to share their hunting land with settlers in exchange for reserves to live on and assistance towards prosperity. Canada did not fully honour its Treaty Six agreements and in many ways used the Indian Act as a vehicle of that betrayal. This was especially true in the later implementation of residential schools (Beyond Treaty Six). If Canada had simply fulfilled its end of the treaties there would have been no need for the Indian Act and the question of “What is an Indian?” would have been irrelevant.

Treaties are agreements that result from conference between nations and therefore they are formed under international law (Vattel, Book II, Chapter XII). The numbered treaties are several that were the consequence of consultations between the Canadian nation and many others. In the case of Treaty Six there were scores of nations involved (Treaty Texts: Treaty No. 6).

While Treaty Six resulted from international diplomacy there was no consultation with the nations over which the Indian Act became law. The legality of the Indian Act is questionable because it was not preceded by treaties of submission or agreements to give up sovereignty on the part of the other nations within the boundaries of the Canadian nation (Vattel, Chapter XVI, s. 193).  Treaty Six makes no mention of the giving up of sovereignty or nationhood. The signatories of Treaty Six agreed to “conduct and behave themselves as good and loyal subjects of her majesty the queen”. This would not entail the giving up of sovereignty, as there were many distinctly sovereign nations within the British Commonwealth, including the Canadian nation, whose citizens were required to be loyal subjects of the monarchy (Treaty Texts: Treaty No. 6).

Treaty Six is essentially a land for protection treaty (Vattel, Book I, Chapter XVI).  Probably without full understanding that they were giving up land (Venne 6), the nations that signed the treaty ceded about 200,000 square kilometres and promised to obey the law (Vattel, Book II, Chapter XVII). The nations were promised in return 640 acres per family of five on reserves, farm items, hunting and fishing tools, seed, livestock, money, medicine, a school on every reserve and the promise of relief during times of famine and pestilence (Treaty Texts: Treaty No. 6).

The government got what it wanted from Treaty Six but it did not fully honour its own promises. While families of five did receive 640 acres and individuals received 160 acres for farming, much of the reserve land was not conducive to agricultural pursuits. The farm tools were grossly inadequate and many people willing to work had nothing with which to till the soil (McQuillan 389-390). There was not sufficient livestock, the widespread medical assistance, nor schools on each reserve as promised (Beardy’s and Okemasis, 117). Finally, there was starvation following the treaties and pestilence in the form of a widespread outbreak of tuberculosis. The government’s response to these problems was inadequate and often indignant (Daschuk).

The greatest breach of treaty promises came about when the government implemented the residential schools program (Beyond Treaty Six). Treaty Six clearly states that there would be a school on every reserve: “Her majesty agrees to maintain schools for instruction … whenever the Indians of the reserve shall desire it.” With the specification of “whenever the Indians of the reserve shall desire it” the treaty puts the power of the choice of education in the hands of the nation on the reserve. The responsibility of the government of Canada was to provide the nations with the education that was so important to them that they gave up land for it. The removal of children to attend school elsewhere was a severe betrayal of Treaty Six.

Since many of the promises of the government in Treaty Six were broken, according to of The Laws of Nations whatever nations signed the treaty should be able to reclaim their sovereignty, land and nationhood (Vattel Book I Chapter XVI). Further, “If the more powerful nation should assume a greater authority over the weaker one than the treaty of submission or protection allows, the latter may consider the treaty as broken (Vattel Book I Chapter XVI).” This was clearly the case with the enactment of The Indian Act.

Part two of the preamble of the Indian Act declares that a Superintendent-General of Indian Affairs would be in charge of “control and management of the reserves, lands, moneys and properties of Indians in Canada” (The Indian Act, 1876). As Treaty Six and each of the other numbered treaties contained an agreement to obey the laws of Canada there was no need to impose separate laws on Canada’s Indigenous people (Treaty Texts: Treaty No. 6).  Certainly a Department of Indian Affairs would have been useful is a ministry responsible exclusively for fulfilling the government’s treaty obligations rather than for governing reserves. As these Indigenous nations already had their own traditional governments they should have required no more micromanagement by the government than any municipality in Canada.

Before signing Treaty Six each of the various nations were trusted to have

decided which men and women were members of their nations. The authorities of the various chiefs and headmen were respected enough by the government of Canada to let them determine the geographical fate of the thousands of members in their care by signing over to Canada an area of land the size of the British Isles. As there is no wording in Treaty Six that diminishes the authority of those chiefs and headmen over their people (Treaty Texts: Treaty No. 6), they should have continued to maintain the power to decide their own membership rather than the Canadian government making such determinations, as in Term three of the Indian Act (The Indian Act, 1876).

Sections 86 to 93 of the Indian Act imposed the strange and pernicious laws of enfranchisement, which cancelled all treaty rights enjoyed by any member of a reserve that became an educated holder of an academic degree such as a doctor, lawyer or Christian priest. Even more horrendously, in the Indian Act women are considered as less than any male above the age of fourteen. In section 3 (3. c and d) of the Indian Act the removal of treaty rights was imposed upon any woman who married someone outside of her treaty (The Indian Act, 1876). The removal of treaty rights based on criteria not delineated by that treaty is illegal under international law (The International Origins of Aboriginal and Treaty Rights).

Treaty Six has some of the language of a marriage ceremony as if the chiefs were the fathers of the bride of the land being wedded to the British monarch "to have and to hold" (Treaty Texts: Treaty No. 6). The idea of Treaty Six as a giving away of the bride of the land by the Indigenous nations works as an analogy for how the marriage should have come to be, without the need for the Indian Act. The spouse does not take possession of the bride and the parents-in-law but merely has the bride to hold while the parents-in-law continue to enjoy a close relationship with their daughter, the land.

Works Cited

“Beardy's & Okemasis Band #96 and #97 v. Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada."

Specific Claims Tribunal Canada, 6 May 2015,

decisia.lexum.com/sct/rod/en/item/231041/index.do#_Toc521398077. Accessed

20 November 2019.

“Beyond Treaty Six.” treaty6education.lskysd.ca/book/export/html/45.html.

Accessed 22 November 2019.

Daschuk, James. “Old Tomorrow’s Bicentennial: Don't Think Motivation, Think Law."

Active History, 9 January 2015, activehistory.ca/2015/01/dont-think-of-

macdonalds-motivation-think-about-the-law. Accessed 21 November 2019.

McQuillan, D. Aidan. “Creation of Indian Reserves on the Canadian Prairies 1870-1895.”

Geographical Review Vol. 70, No. 4, JSTOR, October 1980, pp. 389-390.

The Indian Act, 1876. Canada.

q.utoronto.ca/courses/113928/files/5161777?module_item_id=1033557. Accessed 18 November 2019. pdf.

“The International Origins of Aboriginal and Treaty Rights: Conclusion.” Chapter 5:

Aboriginal and Treaty Rights. The Justice System and Aboriginal People, The Aboriginal Justice Implementation Commission, ajic.mb.ca/volumel/chapter5.html#13. Accessed 23 November 2019.

Treaty Texts: Treaty No. 6. Canada.

q.utoronto.ca/courses/113928/files/5161781?module_item_id=1033568. Accessed

18 November 2019. pdf.

Vattel, Emer de. “Book I, Chapter XVI: Of the Protection sought by a Nation, and

its voluntary Submission to a foreign Power." The Law of Nations, edited by

Richard Whatmore and Béla Kapossy, Online Library of Liberty, 1797,

oll.libertyfund.org/titles/vattel-the-law-of-nations-lf-ed. Accessed 19 November

2019.

Vattel, Emer de. "Book II, Chapter XII: Of Treaties of Alliance, and other public

Treaties.” The Law of Nations, edited by Richard Whatmore and Béla Kapossy,

Online Library of Liberty, 1797, oll.libertyfund.org/titles/vattel-the-law-of-

nations-lf-ed. Accessed 19 November 2019.

Vattel, Emer de. "Book II, Chapter XVII: Of The Interpretation of Treaties.” The

Law of Nations, edited by Richard Whatmore and Béla Kapossy,

Online Library of Liberty, 1797, s. 271, oll.libertyfund.org/titles/vattel-the-law-

of-nations-lf-ed. Accessed 19 November 2019.

Venne, Sharon. “Introduction.” Honour Bound: Onion Lake and the Spirit of Treaty Six,

The International Validity of Treaties with Indigenous Peoples, 1997,

iwgia.org/images/publications/0143_Honour_bound.pdf. Accessed 21 November

2019.

Unboxing

            On Saturday morning I posted “Pamela Popo” by Serge Gainsbourg on my Christian's Translations blog. The next song I’ll learn is Gainsbourg’s “La poupée qui fait pipi" (The Doll that makes Peepee), in which the speaker is either comparing his lover to a doll or has a doll for a lover.

            I worked a bit more on my Indigenous Studies essay with two days before the deadline.

            On my way to the supermarket I stopped at Freedom Mobile to pay for my December phone plan. There was one guy waiting ahead of me while a single clerk was selling a new iphone to a guy who was trading in his mint condition iphone. After ten minutes the guy ahead of me gave up and left. Buying an iphone seems to be a big production. The clerk asked the guy if he wanted to do the “unboxing". Another guy came in and said his phone had been stolen and he was wondering if he could get a new one under his plan. The clerk told him no because phones are expensive. After another ten minutes the clerk asked him to wait five minutes because his manager would be there to give him a good price in cash for the iphone. My transaction took one minute. Two places behind me there was a young guy who looked homeless and he was also waiting to pay his bill while kicked around one of their black Friday balloons.

            At No Frills I bought three bags of black grapes, a half pint each of blueberries and raspberries, three containers of Greek yogourt, a bottle of mouthwash and some dental floss. The only open cashier was the attractive young woman with the close-cropped hair and the weaponized eyelashes. Another cashier came up and told her that when she smiles it makes her very happy and that made my cashier happy.

            For lunch I had a cheese and salami sandwich.

            I worked on my essay for most of the day and didn’t do my afternoon exercises.

            I steamed some Pacific white shrimp and had them on pancit canton citrus flavoured noodles with a beer for dinner while watching Zorro.

            In this story the new commandant, Captain Toledano arrives in Los Angeles with his beautiful and very flirtatious wife Raquel. Although the captain as irritable and very jealous of men that attend to Raquel, he is a dedicated soldier and is not diverted by the criminal temptations that the magistrate had hoped he would be. But at the inn the magistrate sees Raquel and a local Don Juan named Lalo making eyes at one another. He has a note sent to Lalo that Lalo believes to be from Raquel, which asks him to serenade her under her balcony. The magistrate does this because he knows it will result in a duel between Lalo and the captain and Lalo is known to be a very good swordsman. But Don Diego has been watching from his table at the inn and when Lalo begins his serenade, Zorro stops him and warns him it’s a trap. Then Sergeant Garcia arrives with a guitar and serenades Raquel because he has also received a note to do so. Garcia’s note came from Zorro but he thinks the captain sent it. The captain bursts into the courtyard with his sword drawn, expecting to find Lalo, but when he sees Garcia he begins to laugh. Garcia explains that he was instructed to serenade Raquel on her saint’s day. The captain asks him to sing again and then invites him for a drink. Meanwhile Lalo decides to cash in on the reward for Zorro. They fight for a while until the soldiers attack. Zorro swings around evading them for a long chase until finally escaping. Captain Toledano comments that he understands now why people are writing songs about Zorro.

            Raquel is played by Canadian actor Suzanne Lloyd, who lived in Europe for many years and appeared on several British TV shows such as the Avengers and six episodes of The Saint. She also played Maya in the Twilight Zone tale, “Perchance to Dream”.

             

The Crystal Men

            On Friday morning I started working out the chords for “Le complainte du progrès" by Boris Vian. It sounds like the set of chords in C7 are the right ones so far.

            I worked out the chords for “Pamela Popo” by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through the song in French and English.

            I spent a lot of the day working on my Indigenous Studies essay although I got more research than writing done. I have about a page and a half plus about the same amount of notes.

            I didn’t do my usual afternoon exercises.

            Today was the deadline for submitting writing to the Jack McLelland Writer in Residence workshop and so I sent an old science fiction story I wrote called “The Crystal Men”:

The last Man before me has burned. I want nothing more than to burn, but if I fall there will be no one left to shepherd the flock to God's slaughterhouse where the Crystal Men will single out our prime cuts & Jesus will feast on us all.

Swingle the dingle-ball, ooweeoo, the Crystal Men are comin in two by two. They don’t cast no shadow. They don’t cast no fuckin shadow. Have ya noticed that they don’t cast no shadow & that they shit see-through rocks? Fire & war & war & fire & cold, cold money that ain't worth nothin no more burnin a pocket in your hole. & there’s that bastard out there sellin Crystal Men piss for dope. Here, I'll piss on you ya friggin asshole! Come and get the real thing! Take yer puppets and shove em brainless and dancin up the Crystal Men’s asses.

            It’s fuckin hot! Oh yeah, of course! Down the street one of them Crystal bastards are meltin somebody. He’s screamin now, No! Help! Help! No! but it ain’t gonna do him no fuckin good.

            Funny thing... them guys never bother me or my buddies... Only once... When Sammy tried to clean his self up and get sober. He was on his way to church and one of them glass bastards fried him like a friggin fish stick.

            I got a theory. It’s the booze. I know it sounds crazy but I don’t think them things can fry anybody that’s drunk. I walked right by one of them once and he didn’t even pay no attention. I think it’s the booze, so as long as I stay sauced I’m safe. I'd rather burn out than get burned. The drunks shall inherit the earth an the next fuckin Prime Minister of Canada will be smokin rollies from gutter butts, drinkin bitters, singin drunk in the alley with his premiers an readin his blanket when he wakes up in the afternoon in the park or wherever, cuz there ain’t gonna be no Sussex Drive no more.

            You'd think the Crystal Men woulda brought everybody together against a common enemy, but that ain’t the way people really are. Everybody feels even more alone than before, cept fer us drunks. If what I’m thinkin is right we can go anyplace we want and take anything we want. The drunks shall inherit the Earth but then they’re gonna trade it in fer a bottle of wine an then stagger off into the sunset cuz it ain’t worth keepin, an then it's all gonna start up all over again anyway, but they ain’t never gonna get it right, cause whatever they build is gonna burn.

            But that ain’t nothin ta cry about. Its somethin ta drink about, cause drinkin kills alla the germs in the head. Pour it on yer wounds an then go get some Chinese take-out & an ole Playboy magazine out of a dumpster... Man, that’s Heaven!

            Hey! I don’t care, cuz they don’t bother me anyways, but Ill bet I know how ta kill them Crystal bastards! I bet if I threw this bottle a wine I’m holdin right now at one of them glass fuckheads he’d melt like a son of a bitch!

            Ahh, fuckit! Think Ill go check out the dumpster behind the Pizza Pizza.

            There’s one of them creeps now! Hey Buddy! Here's a present fer ya!

            (The careless aim sends the nearly empty bottle flying, bottom first from the wino's weathered hand. The drunk doesn’t even stop to look at whether it strikes its target until he hears a loud cracking noise like a heavy frost biting into a tree limb, then he turns to see the Crystal Man collapse on the street, a gnawing rift ascending from its red wine stained ankle, up its leg & into its upper body until it lies like a broken Christmas ornament on the concrete.

            The homeless alcoholic suddenly changes his mind about the dumpster & heads for the liquor store instead.

            I found one I found one! shouts the tourist on her knees in the alley.

            Her husband leans begrudgingly forward & scolds, Willya give it up, Martha? The last shard was picked up years ago! That’s a piece of a broken wine bottle or somethin, not a Crystal Man!

               Martha’s face lights up. Do ya think it was a piece of the one thrown by Joe? she asks.

            How the hell should I know? he barks. Look, everything that bum owned or touched is down at the Joe Schmecky Museum, Martha! Come on! Lets go home! There’s this great recipe book I bought at the gift shop. Its called Cookin With Thunderbird. I wanna try out the barbecue sauce!

            She puts the broken glass in a baggy & slips it into her purse.

            Oh, all right Fred. she says, &  they hobble away from the alley.

                Whadaya suppose ever happened to the guy? she asks as they lock arms & continue down the street.

            I had a potato, three pork ribs and gravy for dinner while watching Zorro.

            This story begins with Bernardo doing magic tricks in the market for the children. Then Don Diego intervenes in an argument between a Romani woman named Maria. She paid for some groceries with two shiny nuggets that look like gold. The shopkeeper does not think they have value because at this point in history everyone knows that there is no gold in California. Spanish California lasted until 1821 and the gold rush was a generation away. Diego pays for Maria’s groceries and the shopkeeper gives him the nuggets. A prospector who happened to overhear examines the rocks and says they are fools gold. Later Diego’s father confirms they are gold and dreads what would happen to California if gold fever were to hit. Maria had gotten the nuggets from her grandmother, who is a witch living in the hills outside of town. Diego goes to ask the old lady not to tell anyone about the nuggets but he learns that Maria has gone off with two men that claimed they needed help with a sick child. When the old lady describes one of the men Diego realizes that he is the prospector that he had met in Los Angeles and that Maria has been kidnapped and forced to lead them to the gold. The old lady had gotten the nuggets from an Indigenous woman from the mountains. Diego and Bernardo follow the bad guys into the mountains as they force Maria to show them where the Natives live. Diego changes to Zorro but with no cape and with a knife instead of a sword. The bad guys find a mine rich with gold. Maria runs and one of the guys tries to shoot her but Zorro stops him. Zorro has a knife fight with the prospector during which he is unmasked again. The Natives show up and kill one of the bad guys. They’ve also captured Bernardo, who dazzles them with magic until he throws some flash powder into the fire and they escape. The prospector tries to escape with a big bag of gold but the Natives start an avalanche and he is crushed.

Indian Act versus Treaties: Canada said two different things at the same time

            

            On Thursday morning I copied the rest of the last set of chords I’d found for “Le complainte du progres" by Boris Vian. Next I have to find which chords work for me.

            I finished memorizing “Pamela Popo” by Serge Gainsbourg and looked for the chords online but as I suspected, no one has posted them. It’s a simple blues melody so it shouldn't too hard to work them out.

            I worked on typing my lecture notes.

            A few weeks ago I bought two small containers of Tetley Earl Grey tea. The first one was fine but the second one tasted like gasoline and so I bought a much more expensive box of the same brand at Loblaws. I discovered afterwards though that only the first two bags of the other pack tasted vile and the rest were okay.

            I can smell the Christmas trees in my apartment from the corner store across the street.

            I went to Freshco in the late morning and bought four bags of black grapes, two half pints of raspberries, a 500 gram bag of frozen shrimp for $5, spoon size shredded wheat, a bag of McCain wedges, orange juice, hot salsa, dish detergent and paper towels.

            For lunch I heated a burger that I’d cooked a few days before.

            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. The story begins with Sapphire complaining to her husband Kingfish that the reason he is a no good dirty bum is that he hangs out with Andy Brown. Next we hear that Andy has just received a telegram from his uncle in Brazil offering him $200 a week to help manage his rubber plantation. Kingfish decides to cash in by opening a travel agency to arrange for Andy’s trip. Andy says he hears he has to go through customs and he asks Kingfish what that is. Kingfish tells him that Customs is a bunch of islands owned by Spain off the coast of Gibraltar and it’s a wonderful trip going through them. Kingfish goes to a travel agent to arrange Andy’s trip but the agent doesn’t know where Brazil is. He says, “Tell your friend to be reasonable! If we can’t find it he can’t go there!” Finally, wanting the $200 a week for himself, Kingfish steals Andy’s ticket and ships out. When Andy tells Sapphire she says that she sent the telegram pretending to be Andy’s uncle because she’d wanted Andy to leave town.

            I got caught up on my journal and returned to working on my essay but it was too late in the day for me to apply a lot of brainpower to it. I wrote about the Indian Act being illegal under international law. It’s also ironic that the Canadian would enact a law to govern all Indians while at the same time negotiating several treaties with groups that it recognized as being sovereign nations by the very act of negotiating treaties with them. Canada was effectively speaking out of both sides of its mouth. I have a little over three days before the deadline.

            I grilled some pork ribs and had a few for dinner with a potato and gravy while watching Zorro.

            In this story the fake commandant sees Rosarita with Don Diego in the Los Angeles market and recognizes her from the boat that he took to get there. He hides when he sees her because she met the real commandant on board before he killed him and she could expose him as an impostor. Bernardo overhears the fake Ortega plotting to kill Rosarita and he runs to warn Don Diego. Dressed in civilian clothes and introducing himself as Sancho Fernandez he comes to Rosarita’s uncle’s house at night while her uncle is away and the servants are asleep. He is just starting to attack her when Zorro arrives. They have a swordfight for a while until Fernandez escapes. Knowing that he will soon be exposed and that his mission has failed he goes to the magistrate’s office and robs him. He is just leaving when Zorro gets there. They fight on the roof and at one point he has the upper hand and unmasks Zorro. Zorro recovers but as they are fighting again Fernandez falls from the roof and dies. Zorro’s identity is safe.

 

Yeats Infection

            On Wednesday morning I found the last set of chords for “Le complaint de progres” by Boris Vian. I always stop searching after four.

            I memorized two more verses of “Pamela Popo” by Serge Gainsbourg and there is only one more to go.

            A few weeks ago the rubber ring that had been directly moulded onto the stopper in my toilet tank broke off. I rigged some wiring around the hinge so I could still pull and flush but yesterday the wiring broke off. This morning I rigged it again with a new and longer wire. The water back there is cold on the hands!

I worked a bit on my Indigenous Studies essay but mostly on changing the wording of the first paragraph.

            I had time to take a shower before leaving for Aesthetic and Decadent Movements class.

            I delayed leaving for fifteen minutes because it had been raining. Fortunately it stopped just before I headed out.

            A little after Dovercourt on College there was a short construction area in the right lane and so I moved to the centre. After clearing the construction I went back to the right lane but the cyclist behind me stayed in the centre to pass me. He then wanted to pass the rider ahead of me and so he continued in the centre lane. The cyclist ahead was going pretty fast and when the guy in the centre lane got to Ossington he perhaps was too focused on speeding up to pass the other cyclist and not paying attention to the turning streetcar tracks and so he wiped out. It looked like it only hurt his pride though because he was getting up by the time he passed.

            There were two students in the classroom when I got there.

            I plugged in my laptop and fiddled some more with the first paragraph of my essay.

            Professor Li said that colours figured prominently in the Decadent Movement and peacocks.

            William Butler Yeats was a bridge between Decadence and Modernism. When he was with the Rhymers Club he was a Decadent and when he wrote Easter 1916 he was a Modernist.

            The Decadents wrote about the rose a lot. George Meredith talked of the rose and so did Rossetti in “Body's Beauty”.

            Swinburne: Shall I strew on thee rose?

            Dowson: Flung roses. Roses riotously with the throng.

            The Decadents were about subtleties of feelings.

            She mentioned Terry Eagleton and a book called, “Hope Without Optimism”. Optimism is more external than hope.

            We looked at Yeats's “To the Rose Upon the Rood of Time”.

            “Rood” is the cross.

            Eternal is out of time.

            Yeats was a member of The Hermetic Order of Golden Dawn and the Rosicrucians. The Golden Dawn seems to have been a spin-off of the Rosicrucians.

            I mentioned that Henry Miller had a series of novels called The Rosy Crucifixion.

            Renna gave us our first seminar starter of three on this poem.

            The first line “Rose of all my days” is personal.

            “Cuchulain” is a mythical Irish warrior.

            In the poem he is talking to the rose.

            Sadness is the spirit of Decadence.

            There is indulgence but a surprising anchorage in reality.

            Yeats regretted not learning to speak Gaelic.

            He tells the rose to keep approaching him but not too close. It's like Xeno's Paradox.

            We looked at “The Rose of the World”.

            This poem has a more universal take on the rose.

            Jacob gave us our second seminar starter and pointed out Yeats’s complex use of time, circular time and eternity in the poem.

            Is Yeats talking about outside time or outside our sense of time.

            The professor reminded us that it’s always helpful to read a lot so we know what we are talking about when we analyze a poem.

            The speaker eternalizes the rose, which represents beauty.

            Yeats is more mystical than the other Decadents.

            During a break I mentioned to the professor that when I was a kid the Rosicrucians used to advertise in comic books and that Leonard Cohen mentions them in “The Dress Rehearsal Rag: “Why don’t you join the Rosicrucians? They will give you back your hope. You can find your love in diagrams on a plain brown envelope.”

            We looked at “Easter 1916”, which is later Yeats when he was a different guy. It’s raw history.

            The poem is about the unsuccessful and fatal Easter Rising by some members of the Irish Nationalist Movement against British rule. It addresses idealism versus reality.

One of those martyrs of the cause mentioned in the poem is John McBride. Yeats had hated McBride while he was alive because he married Maude Gonne, whom he loved. She turned down four marriage proposals from Yeats before marrying McBride.

Yeats is searching here for a sufficiently chaotic form.

Professor Li suggested that we write a poem and become more sensitive to prosody.

“Terrible beauty” is a loaded term. The Irish Nationalist Movement was beautiful in its ideals but terrible in its actions.

In the first stanza he shows that the people that died were familiar to him but distant. He knew them well enough to stop and chat meaninglessly but he would not have written about them if they hadn’t died.

He refers to a “shrill” woman as if she was one of the ones killed. This was the Countess Constance Markievicz. She was sentenced to death but spared because of her sex.

“This man … rode our winged horse”. Pegasus is associated with poetic inspiration.

            The rebels knew they would fail and so their martyrdom is like a stone.

            In Yeats’s poetry there are always two sides linked together and worked through in a tangibly tortured manner.

            Next week for our last class we would be watching a film adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest”. Earnestness is mocked. He is challenging the moral seriousness of the Victorian middle class. Ernest becomes an ironically empty name. The characters emphasize principles of Aestheticism.

            I like chatting with Professor Li but I had to leave right away because I had to work that night and I wanted to get home as soon as possible so I could eat a late lunch first.

            I had an hour and ten minutes at home. I ate a salami and cheese sandwich for lunch. I went out and bought a six-pack of Creemore. I started feeling tired and so I sat on the couch with my feet up and dozed for ten minutes before leaving for work.

            I worked for Brendan Flaherty in the Fine Arts department of OCADU. He told me he remembered drawing me when he was a student there. I think this was a Continuing Studies course as the three students looked like they were between their late twenties and late thirties. This was the first time they’d drawn from the figure.

            I did ten thirty-second poses and three fives for my first set. I just did twenty-minute sets after that. During the breaks I typed my lecture notes.

            When I got home I made a quick dinner of a mini-pizza with a slice of bread, salsa for sauce, three slices of salami and some melted cheese. I had it with a beer while watching Zorro.

            This story begins with the soldiers of Los Angeles having captured Zorro, but we see it’s not really Zorro because the real Zorro in his secret identity of Don Diego is watching in the crowd. The fake Zorro turns out to be one of Commandant Ortega’s men and it is a trap because he knows that some of the peasants will try to rescue Zorro. The real Zorro arrives to warn them but he is almost captured. He escapes on the commandant’s horse but Zorro’s horse Tornado is captured. An auction is held for the horse and Don Diego gives Sergeant Garcia money to buy it. Ortega had hoped Zorro would try to rescue Tornado. One of the soldiers begins whipping Tornado in the corral but inadvertently sets it on fire. He is trampled just before Zorro arrives to ride Tornado away.