[PHOTO] Department of Household Science, 157 Bloor Street West

Department of Household Science, 157 Bloor Street West
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

This building once housed the Lillian Massey Department of Household Science, at 157 Bloor Street West at the intersection of Bloor with Avenue Road. Once housing a major centre for food science research the building now hosts, among other things, a Club Monaco clothing store.

[LINK] "First Nations' future: a human resource"

This editorial in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald comes up with some interesting points.

Where would you look for the fastest-growing pool of young workers in Atlantic Canada?

The answer might surprise some. It’s not in Halifax or Saint John. It’s among the region’s 35 First Nations communities, whose population has grown by 16 per cent since 2000 while the overall population has shrunk by 0.7 per cent.

In the age 25 to 44 demographic, this disparity will really begin showing up soon. Over the next 14 years, this segment of the region’s aboriginal population is forecast to grow by 25 per cent. For the general population, the same age group is expected to become 14 per cent smaller.

There’s a clear message here for the region’s governments and employers. You should be reaching out to First Nations and their young populations as they strive to realize their economic potential. You should make sure they are part of your thinking when you’re making investing, training, partnering and hiring7 plans.

This demographic snapshot was part of a dynamic story examined at the Atlantic Policy Congress of First Nation Chiefs in Halifax this week — a tale of communities in the throes of re-inventing themselves as they learn to run enterprises, generate revenues and loosen the bonds of dependence on Ottawa.

Much of this change was triggered 10 years ago by the Supreme Court of Canada’s historic Marshall decision, which recognized a Mi’kmaq and Maliseet treaty right to harvest and trade fish for a basic living. As Congress executive director John G. Paul showed in a progress report, the Marshall ruling has had a profound impact on the well-being of First Nation communities: in a decade, the treaty-based fishery has grown nine-fold in revenues, to $35 million annually, created 1,000 jobs and raised the average income by 23 per cent.

It's worth noting, however, that the numbers of First Nations in Atlantic Canada, mainly twenty thousand Mi'kmaq but including some three thousand Maliseet and several thousand Innu in Labrador, amount to barely more than 1% of the Atlantic Canadian population.

[LINK] "The referendum"

lux_apollo linked yesterday to this interesting blog entry by Tim Kreider at the New York Times' site, "The Referendum." In it, Kreider talks about the growing divided between adults who opted for relatively traditional lifestyles centered around marriage and children and adults like himself who don't.

The Referendum is a phenomenon typical of (but not limited to) midlife, whereby people, increasingly aware of the finiteness of their time in the world, the limitations placed on them by their choices so far, and the narrowing options remaining to them, start judging their peers’ differing choices with reactions ranging from envy to contempt. The Referendum can subtly poison formerly close and uncomplicated relationships, creating tensions between the married and the single, the childless and parents, careerists and the stay-at-home. It’s exacerbated by the far greater diversity of options available to us now than a few decades ago, when everyone had to follow the same drill. We’re all anxiously sizing up how everyone else’s decisions have worked out to reassure ourselves that our own are vindicated — that we are, in some sense, winning.

It’s especially conspicuous among friends from youth. Young adulthood is an anomalous time in people’s lives; they’re as unlike themselves as they’re ever going to be, experimenting with substances and sex, ideology and religion, trying on different identities before their personalities immutably set. Some people flirt briefly with being freethinking bohemians before becoming their parents. Friends who seemed pretty much indistinguishable from you in your 20s make different choices about family or career, and after a decade or two these initial differences yield such radically divergent trajectories that when you get together again you can only regard each other’s lives with bemused incomprehension.

Even as I acknowledge, with a certain queasiness, the similarity of this situation to my own life--guess which of the two demographics I belong to--I also recommend the article, and the comments, to everyone regardless of occupational or relationship or familial status.

[LINK] "How the Cold War was won... by the French"

John Lichfield's article in the Independent makes for interesting reading, not least because of the secrecy that continues to surround the espionage relationship that changed the world.

James Bond and George Smiley can eat their hearts out. Who really won the Cold War for the democratic world? The French, naturellement. This rather startling claim is made by the publicity for a brooding, brilliant, French spy movie which reaches cinemas next week. Although somewhat far-fetched, the boast that French intelligence "changed the world" does have some basis in fact.

The story of L'Affaire Farewell, how a French mole in the KGB leaked information so devastating that it hastened the implosion of the Soviet Union, is comparatively little known in Britain or even in France.

Due credit is given to the French, the once-reviled "surrender monkeys", by, of all sources, the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA's official website still carries a compelling essay, written soon after the affair was declassified in 1996, by Gus Weiss, the American official who ran the Washington end of the case. He concludes: "[The] Farewell dossier... led to the collapse of a crucial [KGB spying] programme at just the time the Soviet military needed it... Along with the US defence build-up and an already floundering Soviet economy, the USSR could no longer compete."

The official version of events shows that the French taupe, or mole, was Colonel Vladimir Vetrov of Directorate T, the industrial spying arm of the KGB. In 1981-82, he gave French intelligence more than 3,000 pages of documents and the names of more than 400 Soviet agents posted abroad. The information, shared by Paris with its Nato allies, was deeply alarming but also hugely encouraging.

Colonel Vetrov, codenamed Farewell by the French, laid bare the successful Soviet strategies for acquiring, legally and illegally, advanced technology from the West. He also exposed the abject failure of the Communist system to match rapid Western advances in electronic micro-technology.

The case directly influenced President Ronald Reagan's decision to launch the "Star Wars" programme in 1983: a hi-tech bluff which would drag the USSR into an unaffordable, and calamitous, attempt to keep up with the democratic world.

Raymond Nart, the French intelligence officer who handled the case from Paris, reported that Colonel Vetrov approached the French because he had once been stationed in Paris and loved the French language. His original contact was a French businessman in Moscow and then a French military attaché and his wife. He passed on secrets by exchanging shopping baskets with the wife in a Moscow market.

The Russian never asked for money or for a new life in the West. He was an "uncontrollable man, who oscillated between euphoria and over-excitement", said Mr Nart. He appears to have been motivated by frustration with the Soviet system and, maybe, a personal grudge. He was eventually caught, and executed, after stabbing his mistress and killing a policeman in a Moscow park in February 1982. The case remains deeply sensitive, and mysterious, in Russia and France. The democratic Russia of Vladimir Putin (ex-KGB) and Dimitry Medvedev brought pressure on a celebrated Russian actor, Sergei Makovetsky, to withdraw from the French film, L'Affaire Farewell, which premieres at the Toronto film festival this week. A request to film in Russia was refused.

Thoughts?

[DM] Want some demographics-related interactivity at the Financial Times?

Over at Demography Matters I've a post up linking to a multimedia presentation hosted by the Financial Times at the address http://www.ft.com/migration, the Financial Times hosts the multimedia presentation "Trading places: Migration in the crisis." Unsurprisingly, it takes a look via video and audio at the consequences of the global economic crisis on everything from Ukrainian labour migration to white South Africans' consideration of returning to their homeland. Go take a look.

[BRIEF NOTE] Louisiana's shift away from the francophonie

The Encyclopedia of Cajun Culture's article on the French language in Lousiana, the only American state to belong to la francophonie, seems quite accurate to me.

During the nineteenth century, most Cajuns spoke only Cajun French, which frequently irritated Anglo-American observers. As one New Yorker noted on a visit to south Louisiana during the 1860s, the Cajuns were "unable to speak the English language, or convey an intelligent idea in the national tongue." Even those non-Cajuns who appreciated standard French frowned on Cajun French as inferior. For example, in 1880 a Chicago Times reporter on assignment in Iberia Parish stated that "The educated people speak the bona fide Parisian, but the ‘Cagin’ [sic] patois is deemed good enough for 'the low-down folks.’ . . ." Census data indicates that about eight-five percent of Cajuns born between 1906 and 1910 spoke French as their primary language. In 1916, however, the state board of education banned the use of French in public classrooms; in 1921 legislators confirmed the ban in a new state constitution. As a result, many educators subjected Cajun students to humiliating punishments for daring to speak their traditional language at school. In addition, twentieth-century Cajuns were increasingly exposed to powerful Americanizing forces (such as compulsory military service, radio and television, the coming of interstate highways and "the jet age," and so on). Because of these factors, the percentage of Cajuns speaking French as a first language dropped considerably, particularly after 1940. Today few young Cajuns speak French: of those born between 1976 and 1980, for instance, slightly less than nine percent speak French as a first language.

The Louisiana Creoles went through a similar process of Anglicization. French, it seems certain, is not very likely at all to recover--Francophone minorities in western Canada may well be in better shape.

What happened? Louisiana French did seem to have some advantages at the start. Unlike more sparsely populated Upper Louisiana, the core areas of French settlement in what is now the south of the State of Louisiana had accumulated a large Francophone population, composed of Cajuns and Louisiana Creoles, the second group including both whites and blacks. Even after Louisiana's sale to the Untied States, Louisiana retained a dynamic Francophone culture well into the 19th century--Degas spent no little amount of time in New Orleans, for instance, Kate Chopin was strongly interested in the stories of Maupassant, and generations before the Harlem Renaissance, free blacks in New Orleans composed a vibrant literature. Unfortunately, the dynamics of assimilation described in Carl L. Bankston III and Jacques M. Henry's 1998 paper in the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, "The Silence of the Gators: Cajun Ethnicity and Intergenerational Transmission of Louisiana French" (PDF format), ended up prevailing.

[I]n a movement which accelerated after the Civil War, wealthy Acadian landowners assimilated to the white Creole or American society, while small farmers, labourers and craftsmen of Acadian extraction retained their French culture, low status and Cajun label (Dormon, 1983). This was the basis for the stereotype of the marginal, poor and uneducated Cajun which endured through most of the 20th century. The industrialisation and urbanisation of Louisiana in the 1930s was accompanied by the rapid assimilation of Cajuns into the American way: in a three-generation span, English became their first language, traditional farming and fishing occupations gave way to jobs in the oil-and-gas industry and manufacturing, and a kinship- and neighbourhood- based way of life was transformed by modern amenities in communication, transportation and leisure.

Shifting demographics also played a role in ensuring the assimilation of Creoles.

With imported furniture, wines, books, and clothes, white Creoles were once immersed in a completely French atmosphere. Part of Creole social life has traditionally centered on the French Opera House; from 1859 to 1919, it was the place for sumptuous gatherings and glittering receptions. The interior, graced by curved balconies and open boxes of architectural beauty, seated 805 people. Creoles loved the music and delighted in attendance as the operas were great social and cultural affairs.

White Creoles clung to their individualistic way of life, frowned upon intermarriage with Anglo-Americans, refused to learn English, and were resentful and contemptuous of Protestants, whom they considered irreligious and wicked. Creoles generally succeeded in remaining separate in the rural sections but they steadily lost ground in New Orleans. In 1803, there were seven Creoles to every Anglo-American in New Orleans, but these figures dwindled to two to one by 1830.

Anglo-Americans reacted by disliking the Creoles with equal enthusiasm. Gradually, New Orleans became not one city, but two. Canal Street split them apart, dividing the old Creole city from the "uptown" section where the other Americans quickly settled. Tcross Canal Street in either direction was to enter another world. These differences are still noticeable today.

Finally, Creoles, unlike the Cajuns who were istanced from the sources of power, were even politically important, but even this involvement in state affairs worked to the disadvantage of French.

When the Constitutional Convention of 1811 met at New Orleans, 26 of its 43 members were Creoles. During the first few years of statehood, native Creoles were not particularly interested in national politics and the newly arrived Americans were far too busy securing an economic basis to seriously care much about political problems. Many Creoles were still suspicious of the American system and were prejudiced against it.

Until the election of 1834, the paramount issue in state elections was whether the candidate was Creole or Anglo-American. Throughout this period, many English-speaking Americans believed that Creoles were opposed to development and progress, while the Creoles considered other Americans radical in their political ideas. Since then, Creoles have actively participated in American politics; they have learned English to ease this process. In fact, Creoles of color have dominated New Orleans politics since the 1977 election of Ernest "Dutch" Morial as mayor. He was followed in office by Sidney Bartholemey and then by his son, Marc Morial.

From 1864 on, the state constitution imposed by the post-Civil War reconstruction regime explicitly removed prior commitments to French, particularly the requirement of state officials to be bilingual.

Efforts late in the 20th century to revive French, again seem doomed in the face of the numerous forces eroding French. The picture painted by Allard and Landry's 1996 paper "French in South Louisiana- Towards Language Loss" in English, and by reinforced by Jacques Leclerc's survey of Louisiana's linguistic and legal structures on French, confirm that French may not even survive this generation. Louisiana will likely become, past aside, as Francophone as fellow francophonie member-state Lithuania.

[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] On my queasiness with long-after-the-fact apologies

News of the apology made to Alan Turing on the grounds of the state persecution that drove him to suicide has, of course, been widely disseminated.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologized Friday for the "inhumane" treatment of Second World War code-breaker Alan Turing, who was convicted of gross indecency for being homosexual at a time when it was illegal in Britain.

A mathematician, Turing helped crack Nazi Germany's Enigma communications code, which was a turning point in the war.

He was later convicted of gross indecency for having sex with a man and forcibly treated with female hormones to reduce his sex drive. Turing committed suicide in 1954 at the age of 41.

Turing was also known for his pioneering work on artificial intelligence and computer science, including his development of the "Turing Test" to measure whether a machine can think. One of the most prestigious honors in computing, the $250,000 US Turing Prize, is named for him.

"The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely .… We're sorry, you deserved so much better," Brown said in his apology published Friday in the Daily Telegraph newspaper, as well as on the prime minister's office website.

This, the culmination of a campaign, saw an open letter from the Prime Minister himself get published. This, surely, is a very official apology. It also seems to be widely supported: if the reactionary Daily Mail can publish an article concluding that a statue of Turing should be put up on the empty fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square, this says something.

But what? The British state of 2008 is a direct descendant of if not practically identical with the British state of 1954, but will this apology have any practical effects on what's overall a very queer-friendly set of state policies? Doubtful. Will it have any effect on Turing's reputation? Not so, since it's his reputation that made this apology inevitable. Can it do anything for Turing himself, a man whose body was so badly violated that suicide was--as he saw it--his only way out? Of course not.

The apology made by Brown to Turing is based in partisan politics, of course, the need to recognize a past wrong if somewhat uselessly coinciding with the ability to shore up some part of one's support base. "I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him"? This can have great effects, as seen by the catharsis of Canadian First Nations and Australian Aborigines upon their national governments' apologies for past mistreatment. But still, what will the practical consequences of this apology be, in terms of future policy-making? Followup's essential if words like these are to mean anything, I think

(Britons, am I missing something cultural or political here?)

UPDATE (7:06 AM) : As creases suggests, my use of "catharsis" in connection to the reaction of Canadian First Nations to the recent apology is overstated. Call it instead the "appreciation."