01 Herewith Justin Bieber makes his inaugural appearance in Convivium, surely one of the last publishing ventures to include the intergalactic celebrity from Stratford, Ont. A recent video — not a music video but a deposition — showed the sullen star speaking about being "discovered on YouTube" and "being detrimental to my own career." Much hooting followed, for Mr. Bieber meant "instrumental" instead of "detrimental." Not being greatly familiar with the Bieber oeuvre, I can't say whether he often gets his words mixed up or just made an understandable slip under the pressure of being questioned under oath. Word mix-ups can happen to anyone. Some years ago I got a letter from a reader who took the time to write while hospitalized. It was very warm and full of praise and concluded by saying that he found my writing "enervating." I choose to believe that he meant energizing or invigorating, as the alternative was too terrible to contemplate — namely that my writing afflicted a hospitalized man, leaving him debilitated, enfeebled and exhausted. Of course, he could have meant just that, summoning his last strength to protest on behalf of other sick readers that I cease afflicting them in their diminished state. As perhaps Mr. Bieber meant what he said, that he is indeed detrimental to his own career..
02 Ever since Canada Post announced its bold new corporate strategy — significant price increases to accompany significant cuts in service — I have been on the lookout for the new stamps. What will the new $1 domestic service stamp look like? A Canada goose being gouged? In any case, I am paying more attention to stamps and so was surprised to receive a letter at the parish rectory from another parish, duly stamped with a Toronto Maple Leafs stamp. Perhaps Canada Post issued them to point out that other Canadian institutions have also been in long-term decline? No, it turns out you can get any team on your stamps. The question is why would a Catholic parish send out letters with hockey stamps? It seems rather an inversion of loyalties. I buy enough stamps at Christmas time so that letters year-round go out with Christian images. I doubt very much that NHL teams, super conscious of their brand, use Madonna and Child stamps on their letters. Churches should be at least as savvy about their letters, especially given that Christians have been in the letter-writing business since the days of Saint Paul.
03 In the days before individual seatback screens on airplanes, everyone had to watch the same movie on the same screen. (Apropos of last issue's report on the Prime Minister's trip to Israel, taxpayers might be interested to know that his Royal Canadian Air Force plane still offers a single screen for the entire cabin, meaning that it is impossible for ordinary Canadians flying steerage to experience the lack of amenities on the prime minister's plane.) It was said that movies then would be edited to excise airplane crashes; even the news was censored to avoid alarming passengers. It was a kind, if cautious, consideration. Returning from our Convivium conversation with Rex Murphy, I settled into my seat and opened the Vancouver Sun to read about the Malaysian flight that disappeared en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. It was a Boeing 777-200, by chance the exact same plane I was ensconced in for my flight from Vancouver to Toronto. The article helpfully explained that in almost 20 years, the 777 had had few mishaps of any kind and a sterling safety record. Which is what a passenger on MH 370 could easily have been pondering before whatever happened happened. In the event, I was not alarmed but rather amazed at the routine and serene nature of air travel, even when reading about the disappearance of the very model of plane I was flying in. The old line in the media is that safe landings aren't newsworthy, only crashes. True, but reading about the crashes makes one rather more grateful for the safe landings.
04 The stunning collapse of Heenan Blaikie, a quintessential Canadian establishment law firm, occasioned the following comment from the firm's co-founder and former partner, Donald Johnston, who later went on to serve as a senior minister in the Trudeau government. "There's a lot of evolution taking place in the legal system.… There was a Greek [philosopher] who said something like, ‘Athens is not forever,' and I guess that's true of law firms as well. It's sad."1 Heenan Blaikie was the kind of firm where one expects Greek philosophers to be quoted. Indeed, it was where Pierre Trudeau landed after being prime minister, and from where he sallied forth in 1987 to deliver his broadside against the Meech Lake Accord in parliamentary hearings. He concluded that intervention with the same Greek quotation as employed latterly by Johnston, and then added: "I think we have to realize that Canada is not immortal. But if it is going to go, let it go with a bang rather than a whimper." Alas, few things go out with a bang, let alone a blaze of glory. A whimpering end is more common in this vale of tears, to employ more Christian vocabulary. Heenan Blaikie, repository of former prime ministers and other worthies, has now discovered that.
05 James Harrington's world is not turning out as he expected. He and his wife are atheists — "religiously disinterested bleeding-heart liberals" — and their eight-year-old daughter, sent to Catholic school for purely quality reasons, now wants to be baptized a Catholic.2 All of which is rather shocking news to the editors of the Guardian, where the plaintive parents were profiled. "Looking back, we realized we had regularly discussed our differing beliefs," writes Harrington. "Our daughter brought us Genesis. We gave her the Michael Bay-friendly Big Bang. She brought us the Nativity and peace and goodwill at Christmas. We gave her family, friends and good food. She brought us the Crucifixion. We gave her the Easter Bunny. She brought us Heaven, God and an afterlife. We gave her 21st-century life and a brief future as worm fodder. After all that — and in spite of our gentle antipathy to God and Creation — she still had the courage of her convictions to say to both of us, to our faces and again in front of the priest, that our worldview isn't enough for her. She believes. She wants to be baptized and she wants to be Catholic." That eight-year-old is just a decade off most believers on campus today, who are more religious than their parents. Religion as youthful rebellion against secular parents has been around for some time now, but to see it seep into the elementary schools is more encouraging still.
06 Magazine editors get a never-ending stream of publicity e-mails, calling our attention to this or that possible story. Especially persistent this year was the International House of Pancakes promoting its first ever National Pancake Day for Canadian locations. IHOP gives free pancakes, and pleased customers make a donation to the McMaster Children's Hospital Foundation. IHOP's press agent assumed that after several e-mails, we were aware of the fundraiser on March 4, but "what you may not have noticed is the Mardi Gras connection! If you are planning any Mardi Gras coverage, IHOP's National Pancake Day fundraiser is a perfect fit. Why? Pancake Day is a tradition that dates back several centuries to when the English prepared for fasting during Lent. Strict rules prohibited the eating of all dairy products during Lent, so pancakes were made to use up the supply of eggs, milk, butter and other dairy products… hence the name Pancake Tuesday, or Fat Tuesday. This Huffington Post article explains a bit more." I had actually noticed the Mardi Gras connection (Fat Tuesday en français, a clue that this might not be an entirely English innovation). In any case, for those editors without a liturgical sense of time, it was especially thoughtful of IHOP to point them towards that noted religious authority, the Huffington Post.
07 Yes, his name is Dr. Doolittle. In February, Professor W. Ford Doolittle won the $1 million Herzberg gold medal from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada for his work in molecular genetics. The Dalhousie University scientist has advanced ideas that are often disputed in his field, namely that "junk DNA" — DNA that doesn't code for genes — has no use. That is anathema to lavishly funded scientists mapping the human genome, promising all sorts of practical therapies and manipulations when they discover which gene does what. I have no idea whether Dr. Doolittle is right or not, but his award does remind us that "settled science" is not settled in the laboratory but by grant proposals and press releases. "The linking of DNA to realizable products means we [as scientists] have to claim we know what we're doing even when we don't," says the professor. "It forces us to be non-critical and hype-ish about the way we present work that might possibly have commercial benefit."3 Scientists have their orthodoxies, too, often coincidental with their pecuniary interests. "People don't actually spend as much time as they should trying to debunk scientific ideas…not with non-scientific ideas, but with alternative scientific ideas. That's what I seem to like to do."4 That's a million-dollar attitude.
Pecuniary interests are rather easier to spot in the banking industry and can be no less corrupting there. Indeed, integrity in banking has reached such a crisis that in the Netherlands, truly extreme measures are being employed to restore trust. Bankers are swearing oaths that they will not be crooked.5 The oath is straightforward: "I swear that I will do my utmost to preserve and enhance confidence in the financial-services industry. So help me God." I don't know the original Dutch, but it's unfortunate that "confidence" — unhappily similar to "confidence game" — would work its way into that oath, but the meaning is clear enough. Bankers who don't wish to swear to God can make a non-religious affirmation of the same sentiment. Convivium is not translated into Dutch (yet!), but English is the international language of banking, so it must be that they read our article on our symposium last spring with Governor Mark Carney on faith and finance.
09Mark Carney was part of our Hill Family Lectures last year, and we just held our latest in Vancouver with Rex Murphy. In the course of saying many things in his inimitable style, Rex allowed that after generations at the peak of Canadian journalism, he has concluded that the most radical thing one can do is to defend tradition. Rex has a radical spirit, which is why he likes our company — convivial radicals are what we aim to be.
