Dawg’s Blawg

You may already know about “The Clock” - apparently it’s been all the rage for the last couple of months (Venice Bienalle, exclusive Canadian booking at the National Gallery, etc.) But I was talking to a film-maker friend today who had never heard of it, so perhaps it may be new to some members of the Dawg House as well.

When “The Clock”it was first described to me, it sounded like a clever gimmick, and not much more. The film is twenty four hours long, and its showings are synched to real time. The time shown on the screen is the time shown on your watch: when it’s 2:21 am in “The Clock”, it’s 2:21 am wherever you’re watching. And you’re never in doubt about what time it is.

The film is composed of literally thousands of clips from three thousand movies and TV programs, and virtually every one of those clips includes a reference to time. Sometimes it’s direct- there are clocks in every second or third shot, from full screen images of Big Ben (obviously filmdom’s most popular timepiece) to a quick glimpse of a wristwatch on Marcello Mastroianni’t arm, a sundial in the background of a shot, or a PA announcement in a subway station. Sometimes the reference is subtle - a faint background chime signalling the quarter hour at the end of Hamlet’s “Alas, poor Yorick” monologue. But literally every minutes is counted off in this film, marked by an onscreen reference.

This yields two immediate pleasures - delight at the cleverness by which the minute by minute passage of time recorded by a century of film-makers has been assembled here, and a film buff’s joy at this treasure trove of clips. It’s an encyclopedic montage of world cinema, from the first Méliès brothers frames to Tarantino, incorporating shots from every nation, era, and genre - highbrow to pop, schlock to masterpiece. The clips aren’t identified; I think I recognized about a quarter of the films - and I know film.

All reflect the theme of time in one way or another. The longest clip I saw, about 45 seconds, was excerpted from Christopher Walken’s hilarious monologue from Pulp Fiction. Remember this?

“This watch was on your daddy’s wrist when he was shot down over Hanoi. He was captured, put in a Vietnamese prison camp. He knew if the gooks ever saw the watch it’d be confiscated, taken away. The way your dad looked at it, that watch was your birthright. He’d be damned if any slopes were gonna put their greasy yellow hands on his boy’s birthright. So he hid it in the one place he knew he could hide something. His ass. Five long years, he wore this watch up his ass. Then he died of dysentery, he gave me the watch. I hid this uncomfortable hunk of metal up my ass two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the watch to you.”

So at the simplest level The Clock is a terrific stunt and a hugely enjoyable banquet/Trivial pursuit game/master class for cinéphiles.

But it’s a lot more than that.

a) It’s an artful technical demonstration of the ways in which films create meaning and continuity from a sequence of images. The clips are not simply organized by time. They’re linked visually and thematically through every editing device that filmmakers use to create a sense of flow. A character in a 1928 silent film will hear a phone ring and glance off to the right of screen (in the background is a clock showing 3:13). The film cuts to a hand in a 1954 Hitchcock movie picking up the phone (wristwatch clearly showing 3:13), then pulls back to a wider shot of James Stewart, cautiously answering “Hello?” Then an intake of breath and a aharp “Where ARE You?” Cut to a medium shot of Orson Welles as Harry Lyme, fairground clock visible in the background at 3:14, slowly hanging up a pay phone and moving on. A little imaginary piece of narrative built on nothing more than clever cutting. The six hours I’ve seen so far flow effortlessly through cuts on motion, composition, character, action or dialogue.

b) In the same vein, the playful and ingenious use of sound to create artificial continuity is a treat. Shots are bridged by characters’ reactions to the sound of a train arriving in the NEXT shot, or a teakettle hissing from the last shot, or (of course) the chimes of a clock, sounds used to create an entirely confected sense of unity.

c) While its obvious theme is time (what WAS your first clue?),”The Clock” develops and explores dozens of other themes, which emerge out of a sequence of clips and fade back into the flow of the film. This is done without narrative, without transitional linkages or explanation, but solely through the juxtaposition of sound and image reassembled and resequenced to create new rhythms and meanings. It was not a surprise to learn that the filmmaker, Christian Marclay, was originally a collage artist.

While the sheer variety of filmmakers and styles is nearly overwhelming, some directors tend to appear more than others - and those are the ones for whom the passage of time - often as a device to heighten suspense - is a recurring theme. Thus we see a lot of Di Palma, Hitchcock, and Frankenheimer (and quite a few snippets of Rod Serling’s original Twilight Zone). But you’ll glimpse Ozu, and De Sica, and Sembene, as well as the better known directors. The catholicity of the selection may be a response to the challenge of finding twenty four hours of clips that cover every minute if the day.

I won’t go on: smarter and more articulate people than me have written about this at length. I am working my way through it in three hour blocks - this Friday I think I’m going to try to do 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm. There’s an obvious problem with the concept - because the film is linked to real time, we’ll never get to see the hours that occur while the National Gallery is closed. The Gallery held a couple of all-night screenings earlier this year - maybe if enough of us ask they’ll do it again.

I haven’t done this wonderful piece justice: but trust me, it works. If you decide to go on Friday, I’m the fat guy sitting alone and occasionally laughing at the wrong spots.

Discussion about the failure of some Aboriginal communities quickly splits non-Aboriginal bloggers and journalists into two predictable camps. In the left corner, in the red trunks; those who believe it’s the “fault” of the government for abrogating its treaty responsibilities, slashing programs designed to promote real capacity creation, and pursuing a not-so covert agenda of assimilation. In the right corner, in the blue trunks, those who blame the Band (Attawapiskat is the fashionable target this year, or just Injuns in general) for their feckless, spendthrift ways, lack of accountability, and general corruption).

I suppose that formulation of the issue betrays my bias. But there’s a bigger, broader question that deserves reflection and discussion, and it’s one that folks in my camp, including me, have a hard time with.

When IS it time to abandon a settlement?

Humans have always formed communities in places where they make sense. At the place where the caribou ford the river. Where the two trails cross and people need shelter and provisions. Where the wheat grows. Where the mine is. Where the cod are. Where they put the church and the store. Where the shore is sheltered and the water is deep enough to harbor. Where the slope of the land lets us fend off those other guys. Where the volcano isn’t. (Yo, Dawg!! ‘Ware lava!)

Those are all reasons to settle. But none of them are permanent. The world is full of abandoned places that for one reason or another stopped working - the new railroad bypassed the town, the sickness came, the coal seam ran out, the potato harvest failed too many times. A settlement is created at particular time, in response to a cultural, physical and economic environment. Sometimes those environments change; sometimes those changes mean the community can no longer be sustained.

Many First Nations are working just fine, successfully managing the transition from traditional economies to integration with the larger Canadian and global economies. They retain their land base. They negotiate development agreements that ensure a fair return to community through resource revenue sharing agreements, employment and training contracts, environmental protection and remediation standards, and all the indirect benefits inherent in large-scale development.

Those are the lucky ones. The ones with oil, or natural gas, or gold, or diamonds. The ones with a great vista for the tourists, or polar bears for the rich Germans to hunt. The ones with arable land, near a highway and a city where the kids can go to school and the elders have access to health care.

But many don’t have those assets. Pic Mobert, Grassy Meadows, many Arctic settlements that relied on hunting before spoiled German teenagers and preening, naked supermodels destroyed the market for fur. All they have left is their land, held in trust by the Crown. Their kids are growing up without hope of employment, watching the world through TV and the internet, wondering where they fit, and deciding in horrifying numbers that they don’t.

Rock: the one asset the First Nations can count on is the land they own.

Hard place: the land they own, in many cases, can’t sustain an economy.

I believe a community must ultimately retain the right to determine its own best interests, and set its own path. And while allowing for a certain amount of politics and self interest - about what you’d experience in any community or corporation - I assume that most communities will eventually make their decisions on the basis of their members’ best interests.

But some communities are simply unsustainable. The train don’t run by here no more.

So…?

In a volcanic land where villages and towns are built upon hilltops, the presence of Etna is something altogether new—a vast, brooding, malevolent presence, shown above from a rooftop in Taormina.

Just a few days ago, a small eruption scattered cinders on the roof of a fine restaurant where yesterday Ms Mew and I partook of pigeon, swordfish, cocoa-flavoured gnocchetti in a Sicilian cheese fondue and some local wine.

Today was Etna day. I discovered what driving was like in Sicily. Narrow, twisty mountain roads and aggressive drivers are something best told of—believe me, you don’t want to be in the thick of that action. But our trusty Italian-speaking GPS got us to the jumping-off point, as it were, well up the slopes.

Ms Mew had to remain there—a retinal condition does not permit her to venture as far above sea level as I was planning to go. Leaving her in a bar in Il Rifugio Sapienza, I hopped onto a funicular and was transported much, much further upwards, where tough-looking buses awaited. These took passengers to nearly 3,000 metres above sea level—not an abstraction, as the Mediterranean was clearly visible.

The air is noticeably thinner up there, and the group I found myself with moved slowly—it was easy to get out of breath, even on flat land.

The first thing one learns about a volcano is that it is in fact several volcanoes. The crater that we partially circumnavigated was one of three hundred or so. It appeared in 2002 and cooled (relatively speaking) in 2003. We could see no magma, but there was steam, some rising at our very feet—in various places the earth we walked on was warm to the touch.

An exceedingly active volcano, Etna has a considerable history. One lava-flow made it all the way to the sea: part of the coastal city of Catania was destroyed in an eruption in 1669. More recently, in 1992, the village of Zafferana was threatened with destruction, catastrophe averted by the use of explosives to shatter a lava tube that was sending hot and fluid lava directly towards it. In 2001, another flow made it within 6 or 7 kilometres of the village of Nicolosi.

The peaks shown just below—the true summit, another 400 metres from our position—are off-limits. They tend to spit without warning. The rounded peak on the far right was created by a series of eruptions in 2011; there have been several eruptions this year as well.

As if visiting this hot-spot wasn’t enough, we dared the devil on our return by taking another narrow road above Taormina to Castelmola, perched on the top of a steep hill.



We were looking for a legendary bar, Le Pene dell’Inferno, whose decor reflects a pun that will be obvious to some. We didn’t find it, but did discover a fortified mediaeval town, almost worth the hair-raising drive to get there—and to return.

Basta! Safely back at the hotel, a meal of spaghetti colle vongole is planned, with a very large beer or two. I’m just beginning to relax!

The vibrant city of Milan holds the lessons of recent history in plain sight. Above is a monument to fifteen partisans shot by the Fascists in 1944, their bodies displayed in the Piazzale Loreto as a warning to others who might be tempted to oppose Benito Mussolini, at that point only nominally in charge of a Nazi puppet-state in Lombardia.

In his heyday, Mussolini, so the story goes, made the trains run on time. That was a convenient lie, but he did oversee the building of grandiose train stations like this one:

Made Prime Minister of Italy in 1922, Mussolini set about concentrating executive power in his office until finally he was no longer responsible to parliament. He passed legislation with little opposition, glorified war and militarism, crushed the unions, and undertook a massive programme of privatisation.

Fate caught up with him in 1945. He and several supporters were shot by anti-Fascists and their bodies were taken to the same Piazzale Loreto where the partisans had been put on display a year earlier. Il Duce is the one in the middle.



Tomorrow Ms Mew and I fly to Sicily, where Mussolini had ordered a crackdown on crime. His lieutenant there, Cesare Mori, was given a completely free hand: in a telegram, Mussolini wrote:

Your Excellency has carte blanche, the authority of the State must absolutely, I repeat absolutely, be re-established in Sicily. If the laws still in force hinder you, this will be no problem, as we will draw up new laws.

I am looking forward to my first dinner in Taormina, and an eventual trip to Mount Etna and other points of interest.

Andrew Coyne believes that a robust democracy of many voices and interests should not be promoted at the taxpayers’ expense.

To be more explicit, he states in an article today that Harper’s crackdown on charitable groups for “political activity” is warranted, and that subsidies for political parties are wrong as well. Why should a taxpayer be forced to fund, in one way or another, views with which he or she disagrees?

Under current law, charities are forbidden from overtly partisan advocacy of any kind. They are, however, permitted to devote up to 10% (as a general rule: there are higher limits for smaller charities) of their resources, financial or otherwise, to more broadly defined “political activities” — for example, advocating that a particular law should be “retained, opposed, or changed,” or some other equally explicit “call to political action.”

It’s a safe bet that a good many of the more well-known advocacy groups in the country, including the various think thanks of the left and right, are operating in excess of this standard, and have been for years. As long as it’s even-handed about it, I see nothing wrong with simply enforcing the law, as the government proposes. Indeed, I’d go further. Why should any charity be permitted to spend any money on advocacy of any kind?

Setting aside the fact that Coyne advances no evidence of anyone’s operations being in excess of the law, it might be noted that similar arguments have been made about the CBC, notably by its competitors. But why stop there? Without too much difficulty such arguments can be applied to almost any government expenditure on anything. Why should I have to pay for the F-35s? Why must I support the risible Office of Religious Freedom on my nickel?

Indeed, it’s doubtful that my taxes overall are being spent by the Harper government in accordance with my own views and wishes. But I pay them anyway: motivated not only by the penalties for refusal but because they are part of the social contract. We pay for services, and we supposedly have a democratic system in which leaders are held accountable for their delivery. If the latter these days is a debatable question in itself, the position Coyne has taken is a principled one that would apply regardless of the government in power.

But even if it were possible to build a wall around charities and political subsidies to prevent a libertarian voluntarism from being extended to its logical limit, there are two fundamental questions at issue here.

First, democracy is healthiest when the citizenry is actively engaged—few would disagree with that proposition. But in a large, spread-out country of many different regions like Canada, the ability to engage poses serious challenges.

In this respect, taxes and subsidies that facilitate vigorous public discussion from many different perspectives are money well spent. This is certainly the case with political donations, and with charities that engage in advocacy. With respect to the latter, I would agree that there should be limits, although Coyne’s hope that the Harper government will be “even-handed” about this is a pious prayer.

But Coyne takes the matter further. He wants nothing less than the end of tax breaks for charities, period:

[They] might be okay where the cause in question is universally agreed to be advancing the public good. But the very nature of advocacy implies the opposite. You’re entering into an argument, and if you’re a registered charity, you’re doing so on my dime. [emphasis added]

Indeed, a charity’s whole purpose, whether or not it engages in advocacy, may be repugnant to one corner of opinion or the other. In which case, why should they be forced to fund it? If it’s wrong to conscript all taxpayers to fund political parties (and it is wrong, whether via explicit subsidy or the extraordinarily generous tax credit on political contributions), it is no less wrong to conscript them in support of the 85,000 charities (and counting) on the Canada Revenue Agency’s list.

This goes well beyond a discussion of engagement and democracy, to a second basic principle, and here I would offer Coyne a fair trade. Given that charities do essential work that the government does not fund—feeding and clothing the poor, defending the environment, offering training to new immigrants, etc., etc.—let the government take over those functions directly rather than indirectly, as arguably it should.

Advocacy, which as already noted enhances the democratic process, could be moved onto the national stage by subsidizing representative advisory groups, such as the recently-disbanded National Council of Welfare and the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy.

There is only one taxpayer. How my money gets to those in need is not my concern. But the latter do require, and must have, the assistance of the more fortunate: that, too, is part of our social contract. Proposing measures that would in practice simply reduce charitable revenues is inimical to the Canada that most of us believe in.

Should taxpayers collectively bear the cost of promoting democracy and the good health of the body politic? The floor is open.

[H/t]

Every three years, the Public Service Alliance of Canada holds its Convention—the supreme governing body of the PSAC.

I’ve attended ten of them, once as an observer, six as a delegate/officer, and three as a guest. They can be brutal occasions, as any extended accountability session tends to be.

At Convention, the top leadership of the Alliance is placed under a microscope. Candidates for National President and National Executive Vice-President in the next three-year cycle live a tense few days. The budget for that cycle, having been through more than a week of committee scrutiny, can take a lot of Convention time as well, especially if there is a dues increase proposed. I chaired the Finance Committee twice, and in 2000 I spent two and a half days on the podium under the hot lights—literally and figuratively.

This year’s Convention was expected to be a bloodbath. All of the old hands predicted it. Tens of thousands of PSAC members lost their continuing severance benefits, in return for a higher wage settlement. The vote was 52% for the contracts, 48% against.

Guess which side activists in the hall came from.

On top of that, the leadership was asking for a dues increase. Part of it was to shore up the pension plan of PSAC employees: part was to keep the union solvent if the number of members drops below 170,000 (it’s now at about 180,000). And part was to resource increased political action to counter the escalating attacks on public services by the Harper government.

All week we heard directly about those attacks. Blizzards of letters were being received by members while the Convention was actually taking place, informing them they might be laid off—or were laid off.

On the very first day of Convention, speaker after speaker, including invited guests Stephen Lewis and CLC Secretary-Treasurer Hassan Yussuf, made appeals for solidarity, given the threat that public employees are now facing. John Gordon, the National President, made similar comments in his president’s report.

They were heard. The floorfights didn’t materialize. The blood failed to flow. Discussions were largely civil. Disruptive procedural tactics were few and far between. The sheer enormity of what PSAC members are facing, and the need for real, not rhetorical, solidarity had sunk in. The old flashpoints—internal structural tensions, language, progressive vs. “business” views of unionism—were damped down.

The Quebec wing of the delegation supported two unilingual anglophones, from the same Component of the PSAC, to be the new National President and National Executive Vice-President. Robyn Benson and Chris Aylward, both seasoned PSAC leaders, will take the helm for the next three years, with Danielle Dubuc, an outspoken and skillful advocate for equity issues, as alternate NEVP.

The differences among the new leaders and their rivals were far more about individual style and personality than ideology. At the all-candidates’ meeting on Wednesday evening, this observer couldn’t see much daylight between any of them: virtually every one supported immediate measures to counter the Harper government, including mass demonstrations and civil disobedience. Most delegates and all leadership hopefuls wore a badge of red cloth, badge of the striking Quebec students.

The same went for supporting the wider social justice movement, once the purview of the left against predominantly bread-and-butter unionists, but now a common struggle supported by every leadership candidate. The PSAC’s Social Justice Fund, which offers support nationally and internationally to oppressed groups, is by now a popular initiative: we have moved far away from the day when “social issues” were a no-no on the Convention floor.

The budget, even with the dues increases, passed in a day and a half, which is more or less average at a PSAC Convention. Additional funds for the PSAC staff’s pension plan were voted after the clear point was made at the microphones that we couldn’t logically support defined benefit pension plans for the members but not for the Alliance’s own staff.

The PSAC presently represents not only federal public service workers, but a myriad of employees of “separate employers,” including many university workers. This year alone it will be negotiating more than two hundred collective agreements. The structure is becoming looser and more welcoming to new bargaining units, and while this is resented by some of the traditionalists, it is one of the reasons that the union is becoming more successful in its organizing drives.

In general this shift to an organizing model of unionism has led in turn to a shift in approach. There is more focus now than at any previous period in the PSAC’s history, more of a direction, more vision. The Harper government, including Treasury Board President Tony Gazebo” Clement, wants to destroy public services by privatizing them or abolishing them entirely.

The previous veneer of professionalism has all but disappeared from current federal labour relations, with Clement sneeringly referring to “union bosses,” and the extent of the current round of cuts being kept a closely-guarded secret from the unions whose members are being affected.

Of course unions will stand up for their members—that’s a given. But what Canadians are beginning to realize, as our health, our environmental protections and the safety of the very food we eat are put at risk, is that when public employees are axed, so are the vital services they provide.

It’s everyone’s struggle and everyone’s fight. This week, fractious PSAC activists were put to the test and they emerged more united than I, for one, can ever remember. That’s the story that so few expected. PSAC leaders and the general membership will be a formidable force on the ground, joining with others to rise up against regimes both federal and provincial/territorial that have openly declared war on ordinary Canadians.

Solidarity forever: not just a slogan any more, but the new reality. And for that, ironically, we owe a debt of gratitude to the Harper government.

…but the Canadian Science Writers Association (CSWA) and the Association des communicateurs scientifique (ACS) have received a prestigious award for exposing the Harper government’s bullying and silencing of Canadian scientists.

Surely it’s just a matter of time before NaPo’s Jonathan Kay, and bloggers Ezra Levant, Kathy Shaidle and Kate McMillan, so keen on destroying Canadian human rights commissions in the name of freedom of speech, join the chorus calling for freedom of expression for Canadian scientists, now under a standing Harper gag order.

Just a matter of time. Surely.

Just for a little comic relief while I put together my impressions of the PSAC Triennial Convention, now adjourned.

What a comic-opera farce Parliament has become.

The disgraceful Vic Toews, Canada’s Minister of Torture and Surveillance, has just been upheld by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. “Anonymous” has been called to account for YouTube videos that threatened to disclose, and then proceeded to disclose, personal information about Toews, when he didn’t back off from Bill C-30 (It’s still around, by the way, and it’s worse than ever.)

[I]n a report Wednesday, the committee said it is better for the RCMP to continue its investigation and they’d be willing to take a second look if more information comes to light.

“When the identity of the person or persons hidden behind the mask becomes known to this Committee, they will be called before the Committee to answer for their behaviour and, if appropriate, the Committee will recommend sanctions,” the report said.

The committee called the threats unprecedented in the medium that was used and raised concerns that it could happen again.

They noted that the freedom of the Internet is protected by the Charter right to freedom of expression, but the Charter offers no protection against bullying.

The irony of that last statement is breathtaking.

The Harper gang have made bullying their primary political tactic, smearing, targeting, harassing and threatening anyone, or any group, perceived to be in their way. Bullying is in their nature. Bullying is who they are and what they do. Bullying is the Conservative government’s very creed.

Juxtapose what happened to Toews (and, for the record, I agree with the Committee that the YouTube videos were a clear breach of his privileges as a Member of Parliament) with what Liberal MP Irwin Cotler endured in the recent past. His constituents were falsely informed in a concerted telephone campaign carried out by a Conservative-linked marketing firm that he was stepping down as Member of Parliament. He was then “shadowed” for a time by Conservative MP-wannabe Saulie Zajdel (until the light of public attention made Zajdel scuttle off).

But Cotler, whose relations with his constituents were blatantly interfered with, supposedly did not have his parliamentary privileges breached—or, at least, so ruled Harper’s lapdog Andrew Scheer, presently curled up in the Speaker’s chair.

No Committee hearings for him. No investigation. No RCMP involvement. Why, said the shameless Peter Van Loan, everything Cotler had to put up with was just an exercise in free speech.

The culprits are known. Nothing will be done.

Meanwhile, the RCMP is still trying to track down Anonymous.

Good luck with that. And to the real bullies:

We are legion. Expect us.

Every time I see the smug, complacent, petty-bourgeois face of Margaret Wente staring out of the op-ed page of the Globe & Mail, I know exactly what to expect, but on occasion I read the damn column anyway, like biting down on a sore tooth.

Wente’s brow has never been furrowed by an original or unconventional thought. But in her banal observations on the subject of education, she at least is frank about her agenda, which, unsurprisingly, is entirely political.

The striking students in Quebec are left-wing. Hence there is something wrong with the education they are getting, and funding it only encourages them and their evil indoctrinators:

Quebec’s students have good reason to be furious. They should be furious at the professors who tell them that their cause is just, and who have deluded them into thinking that social justice can be achieved if only the greedy corporations are brought to heel. They should be even more furious at all the adults in the government and education establishment who have fooled them into thinking that the education they’re getting will equip them to thrive and prosper in the world.

The truth is, the education they’re getting is overpriced at any cost. The protesters do not include accounting, science and engineering students, who have better things to do than hurl projectiles at police. They’re the sociology, anthropology, philosophy, arts, and victim-studies students, whose degrees are increasingly worthless in a world that increasingly demands hard skills. The world will not be kind to them. They’re the baristas of tomorrow and they don’t even know it, because the adults in their lives have sheltered them and encouraged their mass flight from reality.

Everything for Wente and her ilk must be related to dollars and cents. No doubt when she hears the word “culture,” she, too, releases the safety-catch on her Browning, if she managed to slip one into Canada when she waltzed across the border a few years back.

A university degree is no longer an automatic ticket to a decent job and a pleasant living. According to a devastating story by The Associated Press last week, more than 50 per cent of recent university graduates in the United States are either unemployed or working in jobs that don’t require bachelor’s degrees. They’re more likely to work as “waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined.”

Obviously I draw a somewhat different conclusion from this than she does. The hideous waste of human potential that is a hallmark of capitalism is hardly the fault of the folks thrown on the scrap-heap.

There are few immediate monetary benefits accruing to most people who choose to enter the humanities or the social sciences. In her mind, that’s enough to condemn them. But we study them—as Wente did, by the way—because in those disciplines we learn to analyze and synthesize, to weigh evidence, to observe, to grasp, to critique, to understand existing concepts and to generate new ones.

These are not merely matters of personal indulgence; they’re civic virtues. Does a society not benefit from an engaged, inquisitive, critical citizenry? Is university education in the humanities and social sciences not a social investment worth making?

Wente would evidently prefer a country populated by drones and drudges, some slaving away at dead-end, non-union jobs, others doing well in the professions and the sciences so long as they don’t make waves, while still others, like herself—and they’re a dime a dozen these days—produce strings of reassuring bromides in the media telling everyone how lucky they are.

I’d pay good money to watch Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois of CLASSE debate Wente in an open forum on the meaning and value of education as a public good. But this is, of course, entirely hypothetical. “As a writer for The Globe and Mail,” her columnist’s profile states, “she provokes heated debate with her views on health care, education, and social issues.”

“Provokes,” certainly, but she never engages. On the Internet we have a word for people like that: trolls. Anyone can be deliberately annoying, but it’s really not much of a feat. The Quebec students on the other hand—engaged, questioning, exercising their rights—are giving the rest of us valuable lessons in the art of citizenship. Those of us not sneering for money in the corporate media would do well to pay heed.