A little John Keats seemed apt seeing as my favourite season is finally arriving.  While I wish i were in England for this season Canada is not too shabby either. Above is a little spot on Manitoulin Island in Ontario.

Ode to Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,–

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

by John Keats

An event happened last week that, in an oblique way, applies to this blog and its implied theme. So, sorry for the long post.

This event pointed to the increasingly insidious problem of political correctness in the way we talk about our collective past. We have descended into a murky, Orwellian world where history is rewritten and facts blythly ignored in order to appease the easily-offended and the politically motivated. Today, in our schools and institutions our history—in this case our British history—is labeled racist and invalid. And it is getting worse.

Let me say I am not a victim here. This sort of racism bounces off me and is not the same sort of thing as an African American or Aboriginal Canadian gets on a regular basis, so to keep it in perspective here…but

A serious piece of rubbish happened in Quebec this month that highlights a much more serious problem in the revisionism of history and the blatantly racist attitude in this country in some official quarters toward the English. If any other national group came under the sort of concerted intellectual attacks that the British do, they would be called …Americans. So, why is it acceptable to attack Anglo culture and history in a way that would be completely unacceptable anywhere else and would be, rightly, labeled racist and xenophobic?

This past week saw the 250^th anniversary commemoration of the Battle of Plains of Abraham. When I was a kid, the story of this battle was that British led by General Wolfe, guided by Captain Cook, stealthily sailed down the St. Lawrence River, bravely scaled the cliffs behind the French garrison of Quebec and then stared down the bravely advancing French army until unleashing a volley that broke the French line. Quebec fell and New France became, effectively, British North America. Wolfe, and his French counterpart Montcalm, were both fatally wounded in the battle.

Apparently that was all a racist lie.

The reality was the oppressive, imperialist monkeys duped the French by unfairly hiking up a bike path in the dark, murdered the brave and tragic French soldiers more or less as they slept, illegally usurped power and initiated 250 years of catastrophic, fascistic oppression of the French people. The commemoration of the battle this week didn’t mention that the British actually won it, and Quebec nationalists demanded and succeed in stopping any reenactment of the battle that might show such a grotesque thing. The event itself wasn’t a celebration of a significant moment in Canadian history but a remembrance for the millions of oppressed and a wake for the death of what might have been had the infinitely more cultured French have prevailed. Je me souviens.

Now, it should be said that this attitude is held by a small few, but clearly an influential few.

Winston Smith was working late into the night for this event.

This is just the latest in a long string of Canadian revisionism that is now endemic in schools, the media and our social discourse. The British Empire was guilty of a number of bad things. No one is ever suggesting covering that up or ignoring it. It was not all William Wilberforce and longitudinal clocks. There was plenty of oppression and racism.

In spite of that, the English managed to infect the world with such evils as democracy, rule of law, free markets, civics, stable political intuitions, navigation, football, the relative emancipation of women, and railways.

And yet to teach English history, or any history that makes mention of the Empire, or the history of the English in Canada is now deemed inherently racist. The British era of Canada is a shameful chapter to be ignored, exposed or derided.  I mean, look what they did to the French – allowing them to keep their language, culture, religion, institutions and flag. What is up with that? (If Quebec had fallen to the Americans they would be speaking as much French as the people of New Orleans do now. Laissez les bon temps rouler notwithstanding.)

Apparently, this now happens in England too, where the fear of offending immigrant children means that British history is no longer taught in schools.  The left wing intellectuals who have taken over academia across the West, now deem any teaching of western history to be a form of cultural oppression and patently racist.

It is time to stop this nonsense. No one is suggesting a return to the uncritical days of The Boy’ s Own Empire Annual wherein Captain Flash gives it to the fuzzie-wuzzies. “They don’t like it up’em sir.” But to ignore the importance and significant positive impact of western history and culture is a slippery slope. History is important and the current crop of lily-livered and racist revisionists are every bit as nasty as the grey clad drones of 1984’s Ministry of Truth.

The other day I mentioned that you as an English person should trying explaining what Spotted Dick is to your North American wife someday.

“Honestly honey, it was from a toilet seat.”

Actually, Spotted Dick s a traditional English dish (above)….which means it is quite disgusting, fatty and stodgy. So well loved in Lancashire then.

The dish is suet —  which as far as I can tell is beef fat and flour – that is rolled out into a pastry like thing, then sprinkled with currents or sultanas – or raisins as North Americans like to call them – and then rolled up and baked or boiled or something.

This is the Spotted Dick. It is then lathered in custard.

This was a mainstay of my school dinners when I was young, back in the 1920s,  and I didn’t die or grow obese or develop heart problems at 15. It stuck to your ribs as they used to say. I think some is still clinging on in my colon.  I would be hard pressed to scarf some down these days, however,  even with my sudden nostalgia for all foods English.

I don’t doubt that Heston Blumenthal will be doing a show on his “Ultimate Spotted Dick” wherein he goes to Corinth to pick original currents, crushes a mixture of French flour and Ecuadorian llama fat in to a suet like substance, rolls it up in a German printing press from the 1600s and then lathers it in crème custard spiked with B and B (ah, there’s a use for that crap) and then slips it all under a polaris rocket to cook. The show will be called ‘Ultimate dick by ultimate dick.’

The ‘Dick’ apparently is a corruption of the word ‘duff’ which means dough in er….Lancastrian. So, really this isn’t a dish named because of its resemblance to syphilis. A version of this exists in Canada (or should I say Newfoundland), which is called Figgy Duff.

I bring this all up because this week, Flintshire County Council in Wales decided that too many people in the cafeteria where making jokes about the Spotted Dick on offer that they decreed it should henceforth be known as Spotted Richard. This in turn revealed that a number of places had done the same to avoid embarrassment.

Talk about political correctness run amok.

So, people make jokes. So, we all have a snigger if we say spotted dick. So, we have to stop worrying about offending people at every turn.

It is a kind of political encroachment on history and culture. What else do we ban? There is a wonderful little Spanish pastry called a farton. That is offensive to my prim and proper English ears –can’t the EU do something? Do we ban Toad in the Hole because that kind of sounds rude. A university in the US named Beaver College had to change its name a couple of years ago because of jokes. College is a euphemism for vagina apparently.

There are place names that can offend too. Do we change the names of Dildo Newfoundland, Acocks Green in Worcestershire (thankfully it is just the one) Bald Knob Arkansas, Blue Ball Pennsylvania (which is, I kid you not, is next to Virginville, PA), Dikshit in India, Climax Saskatchewan, Fukumama in Japan and my favourite, Titz in Germany because some people are going to be outraged? People just need to grow up. They are just words, which often have interesting histories and stories behind them, that are lost if you easily -offended toadies have your way.

So, leave my Spotted Dick alone and take your political correctness and shove it.

The Met Theatre in Technicolor

There’s a maxim in real estate that a house is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. There should be a similar maxim for vacant buildings. Its usefulness is only equivalent to the use someone is willing to make of it.

Take the Metropolitan Theatre. Please. Boom Boom.

The Metropolitan encapsulates Winnipeg in a nutshell. Built when the city was a rocking boomtown — a mix of Chicago and Deadwood —  it was  the biggest, gaudiest and most over the top theatre around, filled to the brim with happy punters and agape audiences. A gilded confection of plaster and paint. Then vaudeville didn’t have the same bang anymore and it was turned into a movie theatre and then closed when even that didn’t attract anyone. Then it sat empty, slowly crumbling and gently filling with pigeon guano.

Meanwhile, outside, the beard and cardigans chained themselves to its shuttered façade and demanded that someone — someone else — do something and save it.

Because it was formally beautiful, famous, decrepitly elegant and, above all, old.

Well so is Elizabeth Taylor but I would want to go into her either.

The former gem has been vacant about as long as I have been in Winnipeg. Sure, it was famous for its vaudeville. It was part of Winnipeg’s fabric. A rich part of the heritage of the city’s golden age. But now it sits like a lump next to the shiny new arena and shiny new library reminding everyone Winnipeg used to be dingy and built of bricks.

The value that is put upon it is an abstract thing. And if some use could be found for it, it would be more valuable. There was talk of it becoming a rock and roll museum. A hotel company took it over to do that, but as with so many other projects around River City it just turns out to be a plan with some fancy graphics on a website…artist’s interpretation of potential future maybe planned envisioned and projected hall of fame. Not to scale…either size or time. Hey, if this is still the plan, then great….but I don’t see any of Neil Young’s guitars heading in there, do you?

People form an illogical attachment to things and then people can’t bear to be parted from them. Some people still hold on to LP records. “You can’t compare the sound quality to an iPod!” No, but then it is a bit cumbersome to pull out your turntable and speakers and play that Pavlov’s Dog LP on a plane.

If we didn’t evolve a but, I’d still be wearing a trilby hat to work, driving a ‘49 Buick, getting a martini from my wife when I get home, relaxing with a pipe and my dog while my wife does the housework…hey hang on.

I am still attached to my Brooke Bond tea card collection. But even I realize it can go on ebay any day now. It is worth nothing, only something vague to me. I know that the minute I kick the bucket they are going in the garbage. So even I am resigned to tossing my Race into Space cards out for the good of my basement storage and for my own campaign to put away childish things.

So the Met theatre. It is time the city stood up and said “OK for one last time, can anyone come up with an idea to do something with the theatre and, if you do, you have six months to get it done or at least started. If not, it comes down. ASAP.” Sure we need to preserve things. But if we can’t come up with a plan and some money to do it, we might as well let the markets decide and move stuff along and free up some space. There is a ton of development going on all around Winnipeg  and the city could spend more of its time attracting people to spots downtown than trying to find some developer who will sit on empty building for ten years with some vague plans. It isn’t a heritage building if it’s vacant and crumbling.

It’s just old and empty.