I went to a dinner recently in honour of the retirement of my mother-in-law and about 50 other employees of the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board. In addition to the excellent food there were the usual longwinded ramblings of the Master of Ceremonies, who began the evening by playing an audio-visual tribute to Canada.

This piece consisted of someone singing something about Canada accompanied by slides showing images of this country. Except for a picture of the CN Tower and a night-time shot of Vancouver, all the pictures were of the natural Canadian landscape – mountains, forests, icebergs and ocean.

Afterwards, the room erupted in vigorous applause as we basked in pure pride of country. We Were Canadian.

But does our pride in our geographical heritage actually make sense? After all, it’s something no Canadian can claim as an accomplishment. Could our reliance on pride in geography and the maintenance of national myths – that we are environmentally progressive, for example – be a symptom of declining pride in what really defines a nation: our society, culture and accomplishments?

Canada’s land – our territory – is the result of some people getting together with a map and drawing lines on it. These lines encompass a lot of stuff, and it just so happens that we were born inside these lines (or crossed the lines to get here). Now we share space with some mountains, some trees, some tundra, and a whole lot of water.

Instead of feeling like we won the geography lottery, we look at this as an enormous accomplishment. But we didn’t build the Rocky Mountains, dig the Great Lakes or grow our magnificent forests. In fact, we’re busy strip-mining our mountains, bottling and selling our water, and cutting down our trees – all good indications that even if we could have built the geography of our land we probably would have just sold the raw materials instead.

National pride because of lucky circumstance is misplaced. Well-placed national pride is pride that is rooted in a country’s accomplishments, its society, and its culture. That we fall back on our geography as a source of pride is perhaps no surprise then, because in Canada these rarely well-defined national characteristics are eroding.

We have universal health care, except that it’s in such bad shape the Supreme Court has said mandating its use violates our guarantee to “life, liberty and security of the person” in the Charter. We have a democracy, except that we make no demands of our politicians to show vision, leadership, or ethics. We have a vibrant economy, except much of it is based on the exploitation of our natural environment. It’s little wonder that our national pride is based on slogans designed to sell more beer or our supremacy in hockey.

As our national pride declines, regional and local pride increases. Quebecers are proud of their unique society and resurgent separatism indicates that many see no need for it to be Canadian. Albertans are proud of their booming economy and resentful of the monopoly Quebec and Ontario hold on the federal government. A recent article in the Toronto Star detailed the freedom and acceptance gay couples enjoy in Toronto, but the featured pair, two men from Brazil, spoke of how that acceptance didn’t extend to small towns in northern Ontario.

So what is the thread that ties together all Canadians? One person I spoke to on the weekend said “diversity”. But is an agreement to disagree really much of an agreement at all? Another person said they felt that Canadians quietly shared truths instead of openly flaunting beliefs. But are these shared truths uniquely Canadian, or do they extend across borders, uniting residents of British Columbia and Washington State more than people from British Columbia and Quebec?

It’s easy for young Canadians to forget the youth and thus the fragility of this country, it’s easy for liberals to dismiss the millions of Canadians who are conservatives, it’s easy to ignore the “centrifugal forces” that continually tug at our unity and it’s easy to put municipal, local and regional concerns ahead of our country. But if we do, we may lose the opportunity to forge a uniquely Canadian society, something we can all be proud of.

One of the people I talked to about this at a weekend party came up to me a couple of hours later as I was leaving. “I’ll think about that question and get back to you”, he said. “What question?” I asked. “You know”, he said, “how to save Canada”.

Let me know if you have any ideas!

Most Canadians have a strange relationship with their politicians, one that is characterized by indifference and a feeling of contempt that rages in degree from mild to severe. Our politicians are a small, detached and clueless clique who constantly struggle for superiority amongst themselves, all the while missing the increasingly obvious cues from a frustrated populace who just want to see some vision and leadership.

Informed by intellectual elites, acting on the results of polls, and communicating via spin doctor, our politicians fiddle while Canada slowly smolders. How has such a vibrant country managed to produce such a mediocre lot of selfish, squabbling children? Is Canada so unimportant to our best and brightest that public service does not beckon them?

Let me make a couple of assumptions: first, that it is possible for an individual to have a vision for the country that appeals to most Canadians, and second, that these individuals do exist and are seeking to hold public office.

These are optimistic assumptions but I think I can defend them. If the first assumption isn’t true, then this country is in deep trouble. Our two main parties have increasingly (and dangerously, for Canadian unity) become representatives of their home bases – the Liberals draw on support from Ontario and (formerly, after the Gomery inquiry) Quebec and the Conservatives draw on their support in the West. But there are common threads that link all Canadians, and I refuse to believe there is no one out there who does not have a vision woven out of all (or most) of these threads.

My second assumption, that individuals with this vision do exist and are seeking public office, I base simply on my own passionate political beliefs and those of others. Each day I read or listen to what Canadians have to say, and it’s clear to me that there is no shortage of passionately articulated and thought-out beliefs about our country. So there must be those who have formulated these beliefs into a broad and consistent vision in our political parties.

If these two assumptions are true, then I’m led to only one conclusion, which is that those individuals in our political parties who have the vision for this country and the leadership qualities Canadians need are not being promoted to positions of prominence in our political parties.

That all of our “leaders” seem to be white men between middle-aged and elderly bears out this conclusion.

Instead of seeking and promoting to leadership positions those who are best for Canada, our parties run on the grease of influence, favours, and backroom deals. Witness the long conspiring of Paul Martin to the throne, the power brokering to merge the Progressive Conservative and Reform parties, the unseemly bagging of Belinda and her instant promotion to cabinet.

How many Canadian leaders and visionaries who are so badly needed in service to their country are passed over each time this happens? How many times does this need to happen to someone before they get frustrated and enter private life instead?

Until we see democratic reform in our political parties, we’re not going to see political reform in our democracy.

Before I had access to a car, I used to take the bus to the US every now and then to visit friends in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Perhaps because people riding a bus are automatically assumed to be a bigger potential problem than people travelling in cars, crossing the border was always a hassle.

On one occasion, I almost didn’t make it across because I was not carrying anything that showed I was commited to staying in Canada, like utility bills for my place of residence, rent receipts, or school records, none of which are things any normal person would bring with them on vacation. Protesting that as a Canadian citizen I would rather live in Canada didn’t make a difference. “Everyone wants to live here”, she claimed. I finally made it across because I reminded the customs officer of her son, she said.

The next time I showed up at the border I had a file folder with everything she had requested the last time: rent receipts, an overdue library book notice, a gas bill and a paystub. The unfriendly customs official asked me if I had anything to prove I was planning on staying in Canada. I confidently produced all of the evidence I had brought with me.

“If you brought all of this stuff, it must be because you don’t think you’re going to make it across the border. Why did you bring all of this? Have you been refused entry before?” And so began another 1/2 hour of hassles.

What I didn’t realize then was that if I looked like this guy:

And I was carrying “a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles and a chainsaw stained with what appeared to be blood”, I probably would have been fine. That’s what Gregory Despres was carrying when he crossed the border into Massachusetts from New Brunswick, according to this bizarre story in the Toronto Star today.

According to the story, “Bill Anthony, a spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said the Canada-born Despres could not be detained because he is a naturalized U.S. citizen and was not wanted on any criminal charges on the day in question.”

He did admit that it “sounded stupid” that someone carrying a bloody chainsaw could cross the border. But he said that they did everything they could to see if there were any outstanding warrants against him, and when they found nothing, they had to let him pass. In fact, Despres was due in court that day to be sentenced for assaulting and threatening to kill a man named Frederick Mowat last year.

Frederick Mowat is the son-in-law of a man named Frederick Fulton, whose decapitated body was found on his kitchen floor in Minto, NB. His wife Veronica was found dead in a bedroom in the house, stabbed to death. Despres is now in jail in the US awaiting extradition for murder charges.

And they claim that the border is unsafe…I wonder why?

Returned from the Muskokas last night after a great weekend up at a cottage where I took a picture of this intimidatingly large but apparently friendly trumpeter swan:

I looked up the trumpeter swan on the net and found a few interesting facts:

– they’re the largest waterfowl in North America
– they were almost hunted to extinction in the early 1900s
– they mate for life but they can occasionally “divorce”, especially after a “nesting failure”. Apparently the trials and tribulations of married life are not reserved solely for human beings. Other creatures suffer too.

This trumpeter swan very nearly dined on peameal bacon Sunday morning, but a last minute consideration of how this would upend the entire foodchain with unknown consequences somehow found its way into our beer-addled minds.

Payday loan businesses seem to be popping up all over the place. These businesses offer cash advances based on your income that must be paid back on your next payday. Their clientele are often low-income earners. When I came across an article about a proposed law in Manitoba that is seeking to regulate interest rates in the province as a “crack down” on these businesses, I thought I’d look into this a little myself.

In Canada, it’s a criminal offence to charge an annual interest rate that is greater than 60 percent. That means that if I were to borrow $1000 for one year, the most anyone could charge me in interest is $600 – things get more complicated if the interest is compounded in periods less than year (like monthly) which is usually the case (and you end up paying more), but I’ll ignore that for now to keep it simple. With that information in mind, I headed downtown to check out two payday loan businesses right across from each other in Gore Park – CashMoney and MoneyMart.

My first stop was CashMoney. Attached to H & R Block in downtown Hamilton, CashMoney has a small location with just one cashier. There were no customers when I arrived, so I was able to stroll up to the front counter – protected by a thick bullet-proof pane of glass – and speak with the cashier immediately.

I asked her a few questions about their service. All you have to do is provide a paystub, a bank record, proof of address and some ID. Then you tell them the amount of the advance you’d like and they calculate how much you need to pay back on your following payday. After writing them a post-dated check dated to your next paycheck for the amount you need to pay back, you get your advance. It’s that simple.

I asked her how much I would end up paying in “interest”. Well, she didn’t call it interest and she didn’t call it service charges either. She said, “You pay $22 on every $100 you get advanced.” I asked her again just to clarify – yup, it’s $22 for every $100.

Assuming a standard scenario where you get paid every two weeks, we can work out the annual interest rate easily. Twenty-two dollars per every $100 is 22 percent over two weeks. There are 52 weeks in a year, which works out to 26 two-week periods. Twenty-two percent multiplied by 26 is 572 percent!

Offering a 50% advance on your paycheck…

I grabbed a couple of pamphlets, including one on responsible borrowing, and headed across the street to MoneyMart. There were three cashiers on duty and a lineup. I took a couple more pamphlets and read them while I waited.

The fees for advances were clearly outlined on the pamphlets. To get a fast cash advance, you pay interest at an annual rate of 59 percent (note they come in just under the 60 percent law), which as the pamphlet describes works out to 89 cents per week per $100. Pretty cheap compared to CashMoney, I thought.

But wait – there’s more. As well as the interest, you pay what MoneyMart calls “1st party check cashing fees”. Those fees? $7.99 per check, plus 9.99% of the face value of the check.

So what does that work out to? MoneyMart lets you borrow from $100 to not more than 30 percent of your net pay, up to a maximum amount of $1500. Let’s say you make $1200 net every two weeks. That means they’ll front you 30 percent, which is $360. So if we look at service charges like interest rates, what’s the total interest rate you’ll pay?

It’s a bit more complicated than CashMoney, but here goes. You pay $6.41 in regular interest, calculated at 59 percent over the year. You also pay a flat rate of $7.99 and 9.99 percent of the $360, which works out to $35.96, for a total payment of $50.36. This works out to an annual interest rate of about 260 percent!

I asked the cashier at MoneyMart what would happen if the post-dated check I wrote to cover my advance bounced. “It’s a $35 NSF charge”, she said, “in addition to the NSF charge your bank will charge you. You don’t want to do that!” No, I don’t, and I don’t imagine anyone does. But what about the people who do? Can they afford that tacked on to an already expensive loan?

The cheapest payday loans around aren’t that cheap…

This is what is bothering anti-poverty groups. Harold Dyck, from the Social Planning Council of Winnepeg, as quoted in the article I linked to above:

“It does particularly victimize people in the most desperate of circumstances. The general term they use to describe it is the alternative consumer credit market. It’s a bit of a fancy title for a way of essentially soaking people in poverty and just aggravating their condition.”

Of course, the pamphlets and the advertising for these businesses clearly state that this is for short-term loans only, and in order to belong to the Canadian Association of Community Financial Service Providers, you have to prohibit “roll-overs” – the practice of extending loans or of allowing people to take out a new loan to cover their old one. These conditions sound a bit like the “for tobacco use only” stickers on the bongs at the local hemp shop. Are they taken seriously? And is there anything stopping someone from covering an advance from CashMoney with an advance from MoneyMart?

I called CashMoney to find out, and to see what they had to say about an interest rate for their loans that I calculated at 572 percent annually, far in excess of the legal limit. “Is there anything in place to stop someone from covering a cash advance from CashMoney with a cash advance from somewhere else, like MoneyMart?” I asked. “No,” Heidi explained, “it’s two different companies. There’d be no way we could know that”.

I confirmed with her that CashMoney charges $22 on every $100 advanced, and then explained that I had worked that out to an annual rate of 572 percent. “It’s not interest,” she said, “it’s just a fee.” But isn’t that fee essentially interest under a different name? She was adamant – “it’s not interest. It’s a fee.”