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A depressing chapter in our development SALTSPRING ISLAND, B.C. - It is somewhat disconcerting to have Vancouver's Empress of Books, Celia Duthie, examining the contents of your bookshelves. Former Empress of Books, one should say, since Duthie's spectacular bankruptcy in 1999. That bankruptcy caused, in no small part, by Chapters moving in and setting up superstores in direct competition with the family business. Celia, who had taken over Duthie's Books from her father, in anticipation of the threat, expanded "too fast," she says today. By the time her creditors started howling, and the banks lost their laundry over the titanic big box superstores bearing down, she had 10 stores, a few ancillary bookish businesses and 170 employees, some of whose names, she admits, she didn't even know. Duthie and her father were key promoters of Canadian writing and culture, key in helping the region develop a distinctive voice. They were famous for it. And the family enjoyed it. "We're very committed to the community, we think what we do has value. Frankly we all regard it as a moral imperative. The American way of consuming is sweeping into Canada, which is the attitude that you're a fool if you pay full price. Frankly I see us as the front lines -- high noon." Central to B.C.'s developing culture, they were socialists, primary supporters of the NDP, and Glen Clark's government.Big mistake. Huge. Celia is making bookcases. She and her husband managed to wrench an estate with a small forest from the meltdown (there is still one Duthies in Vancouver), and learned forest lot management. Since there is no business in British Columbia that actually makes product from the raw logs we so merrily ship to the U.S. and Japan, she decided to start one. With artisans, she designed a dictionary stand, bookcases of various sizes, and a rotating book carrel, all very beautiful indeed, found a manufacturer, and last fall, launched them onto the market. Were Canadians interested? Did the Duthie name resonate as expected? Were customers thrilled by actual B.C. wood in actual products? In beautiful design, made by Canadian designers educated at taxpayer's expense in taxpayer-funded beautifully-built-and designed-by-insanely-expensive-architects colleges? Nope. Not a whit. Oh there have been orders from Canada, but mostly it is those vulgar American philistines who want to buy Duthie bookcases. And buy them they do. In more than respectable numbers. Why don't we? Because Canadians buy their furniture from IKEA and the Great Canadian Superstore because that's all we can afford. But Americans, who have disposable income and can afford fine bookcases and dictionary stands can. How could that be? Is it because they do not ship 47% of their annual salaries to thugs in Ottawa so they can buy votes in Quebec? I don't know, it's just a theory. A few weeks ago, the B.C. Progress Board released a report that stated in page after page of brain-freezing numbers and graphs that B.C., if measured against the 30 OECD countries, measured as 29th in growth and development over the past 20 years. We can't buy beautifully made bookcases because we haven't got any money. We can't support local businesses because we can't afford it. We can't afford it because we give every extra penny not spent on food, housing and the most basic needs to the government. That's the end result of the scandal we see today in Ottawa. It's not so much the misdirection of monies in this debacle that we should work ourselves into a frenzy over. The real crime has been the systematic and deliberate raping of the middle class for the past 30 years. If, as one political wag put it last week, the U.S. government takes money from the young and transfers it to the elderly, in Canada we take money from the middle-class and transfer it to those educated upper-middle class who can bleat most convincingly about sovereignty and culture. Our filters: our fat and lazy publishing houses; our silly film industry which throws out one ghastly clunker after another; the unwatchable, juvenile and foolish CBC; the bloated regional theatre system, our endless public works, the new cities policy, all these were devised for a country that was wealthy. We are not. Our government has bankrupted its citizens. And we have not yet begun to pay for the chaos they have wreaked upon us. That will come home in the next 10 years, when we can't afford medical care for the generation that has insisted on the tinker toy of Kultur, not a vibrant business environment and thriving men and women half of whose salaries were not garnished by the pickpockets who rule over us. And sovereignty? There will be none.

© 2004 Elizabeth Nickson The material at this website is available only for personal non-commercial purposes, and it may not be reproduced without permission.