E-mail

HOME

On softwood lumber, Bush alienates an ally SALT SPRING ISLAND - My cousin sent me a brochure about the Canadian D-Day memorial on Juno Beach. The memorial will consist of individual bricks inscribed with the name of a Canadian who landed there. Now I think, all right, I know that we have already subscribed to a brick, as determinedly as I tried to pretend the various conversations were not taking place about the brick, its cost and meaning and so on. But I'm willing to pay for a brick of my own, with my father's favourite niece, that sounds rather OK, sure. The opening of this letter in the car on Sunday occasioned the following conversation. "What," asked Jamie, "did your father think of you in the last five years of his life?" That was easy. "He alternated between pride and brawling, honking fury," I said. "Nothing he loved more than a good rant." Silence. "So what enraged him most?" That was easy too. The Americans. So much so that when I left my American husband, my mother told me, "Darling, there's no greater gift that you could have given your father than to leave that man." Well. I happen to like Americans. And I've been quite involved with them, thanks, and it was swell. In fact, once I plucked up my courage and tried to, with some delicacy, peel back the layers and find out just what irked him most about the whole darned country. "TRADE WARS," he bellowed. "HUNDREDS OF THEM." "Really, Colonel, sir, Lord of Everything?" (That's what we had to call him.) "YES! I'VE SEEN THEM! WITH MY OWN EYES! IN MY LIFETIME." Now, if you hadn't already gathered this, my father was a true blue, blue Conservative who hated Trudeau, and had ice in the counting house that was his heart, as does any decent WASP whose spiritual home is the East Coast. Not only that, he was American, admittedly a few generations back, but so very echt American that he was a collateral descendant of George bloody Washington. He worked with Americans, sold his company to Americans, holidayed with them and went to New York almost every week of his working life. Him ripping up the turf in the Latin Quarter is one of my favourite memories. So I figured it started with D-Day. "TERRIBLE ARMY, TERRIBLE. CAN'T FIGHT WORTH A DAMN." The Canadians during the Second War always got the worst beaches and the hardest hills, and were used, as were the Australians and New Zealanders, as fodder, while the Brits and the Yanks took all the glory. My father's funniest story (and there were many) about American war activity had to do with a field or a hill he and his fellow majors and troops and so on had just taken, and they were leaning against a battered old jeep, having a smoke, and chatting, all lean and hard and shadowed from years of fighting (I have snaps), and the Americans, having just got into the war, charged down the road to this field, with their colonel standing in the back of the spanking new lead jeep shouting, brandishing a shiny new sabre (!), with all his corn pone Indiana gosh darn it boys who'd never been out of the Midwest in tow. They charged down the road, did a big circle and charged back up it, to the collapsed-in-heaps merriment of all the Canadians. Doubtless, they had just "taken" the hill for the Americans. Did I mention how much we hate Stephen Spielberg in my house? Saving Private Ryan could not even be thought about inside the compound or shouting would start. So I'm glad he's dead now that this softwood lumber thing is happening. Particularly since he loved B.C., being born and bred here, and knew it better than anyone else I've met. The hit (I've heard up to $300,000,000 a month) that the province will take would depress him utterly. The roof of the house would be lifting off now and then, from sheer steam, and me, well, let me put it this way: I wouldn't be welcome. Unless I had written this column. I cannot find one think tank, one columnist on the right or left, one editorial in any country that thinks this softwood lumber thing is ok. It's not. Hundreds of thousands of American families have just been priced out of homeownership by this new tax. The subsidized forest accusation has some merit, but the Americans subsidize on the other end. Little doubt that our forest ownership structure could be reorganized, but we won't do it because we're being bullied. Americans should know that when their government pulls something so categorically wrong-footed, they are alienating their natural allies, men like my father, who despite his eccentricity, was both a pragmatist and a man of virtue who wanted the greatest good for the greatest number. Little wonder that, when I worked for Time Inc., in Europe, wherever I ventured into polite society, people would confide, "Oh heavens, it's lovely you're not an American. We were dreading it." There are little time bombs like the softwood lumber deal festering in every country and every section of society. Everywhere, in every sector, there is some natural American ally who, despite him or herself, just, well, hates. 9/11 made America not only the economic capital of the world but, necessarily, because the battle is so huge and just, its moral core. The Bush administration, with its emphasis on public and private virtue, and its vast popularity could hew to the principles of free trade, push through (in the wake of Enron) accounting and financial disclosure regulations that would make it possible for small stockholders, entrepreneurs and, yes, even Canadians, to have faith that they can compete fairly in their markets. Otherwise ... read your Gibbon, bushies. It was when the well- heeled middle classes, burdened by unjust taxes, gave up that the barbarians started to win.

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