Winnie the Pooh in the trenches

Re: Winnie the Pooh Saga turns 100 years old today (CBC news)

Many know that the beloved children’s story character Winnie the Pooh was named after a real life bear-cub rescued by Lieutenant  Harry Colebourn, a Canadian vet with the Royal Canadian Army Veterinary Corps.  The bear was named Winnipeg Bear in honour of Colebourn’s hometown, and the name was later shortened to Winnie.  Winnie travelled with Colbourne from Canada to England, and was later donated to the London Zoo, where he become the inspiration for author A.A. Milne’s famous character.

Many admirers of A.A. Milne’s work do not realize the full significance of the fact that Winnie the bear travelled with Canadian soldiers on their way to war in 1914.  And many do not realize the full significance A.A. Milne’s own war experiences as an officer.  And if we look to Edmund Blunden’s classic memoir, Undertones of War (1928) we find Milne’s inspiration for the famous “The More it Snows (Tiddley-Pom)” song which appears in The House at Pooh Corner (1928).

Blunden describes the rhythm of the machine gun fire in the early years of the war (either German or Allied) as: “Ri-tiddley-i-ti … Pom POM”.[1]  In the chapter “In which a house is built at Pooh Corner for Eeyore” Pooh sings the lyrics about the snow, and Piglet provides the “Tiddley-Pom”.  True to the fashion of World War One, Pooh is the officer, and Piglet is the officer’s loyal servant – or batman.  And it is worth venturing that when Pooh sings of “cold … toes”, he is likely honouring the great ailment of trench foot, the result of standing in mud and water for too long.

Who would have known that Winnie the Pooh stems directly from a war that began 100 years ago this month.

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[1] Edmund Blunden, Undertones of War (Toronto: Penguin, 2010), p 48.

Stephen Harper's Margaret Thatcher premise on Tina Fontaine, 15-year-old aboriginal murder victim

Margaret Thatcher: “There is no such thing as society” (October 31, 1987)

Stephen Harper: “We should not view this as a sociological phenomenon.  We should view it as a crime.” (August 21, 2014)

Note: according to RCMP statistics over 1000 aboriginal women have been murdered in Canada in the period from 1980 to 2012 (Globe and Mail, Editorial, Saturday August 23 2014, p. F9)

Thomas Paine's words for Stephen Harper

A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and a government without a constitution, is power without a right.[1]

~ Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man, 1791

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[1] Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man in Two Classics of the French Revolution (New York: Doubleday, 1989), p. 420 (Chapter 4).

Recommended reading for (and on) Stephen Harper

Stephen Harper has never apologized for impugning the integrity of Canada’s Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, yet another apparent “error” in savoir-faire.  I recommend that he read the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen” (August 26, 1789), but perhaps our Prime Minister would reject the dichotomy: “Any society in which the guarantee of the rights is not secured, or the separation of powers not determined, has no constitution at all.” (Article 16)[1]

It is worth noting that the Constitution of 1789 lasted 4 years (but left a huge legacy beyond the French Revolution) and was replaced by the Constitution of 1793 (known as “Year 1”).  Associated with Robespierre and the Reign of Terror, the Constitution of 1793 makes no case for the separation of powers, which was first articulated in Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws (1748).[2]  For Montesquieu (as I have said before), his notion of spirit was the holy trinity of the legislative, the executive and the judiciary, rooted in Augustinianism and the Christendom of the Middle Ages.  Unfortunately, our Prime Minister favours the Romans (who it is worth mentioning also invented the concept of dictatorship in the West).

I would recommend that Harper also read Montesquieu, but our beloved Prime Minister likely has other, more current priorities – and none so long.  It matters not that Montesquieu was a major influence on the framers of the U.S. Constitution, for it seems Harper does not dwell at length on the concept of a required “mediation” (a ‘liberal’ term) between the legislative, executive and judiciary.  Again the word “balance” (a ‘liberal’ term) is foreign to Harper’s lexicon, and so is the idea of “checks and balances” (unless we consider the role of populism – or elections). Ultimately, if we are to believe the German political theorist Carl Schmitt, strongly influenced by (Harper’s favourite) Hobbes, and author of the prescient 1921 book Dictatorship (written in the wake of WWI and in the early throes of the Weimar Republic, prior to Hitler’s Beer Hall putsch) the executive will only come to dominate the legislative.[3]  This is consistent with Harper’s (and Hobbes’s) individualism and their anti-social premises – and the Tory need for the state to restrain the passions of the people.[4]

In other words, Harper’s “error” in not apologizing to the Chief Justice represents an attempt to curry favour with his constituency of non-liberal, so-called democrats, populists who see political incorrectness – and (not infrequently) political irresponsibility – as a badge of honour hearkening an aura of authority for the state.  Because his base is ‘unread’ (immersed as they are in Sun News and the like), these said constituents will remain unaware of the creeping significance of Harper’s assaults on the Constitution.

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[1] Laura Mason and Tracey Rizzo, eds., The French Revolution: A Document Collection (Boston: Wadsworth, 1999), p. 104.  Emphasis added. 

[2] See Carl Schmidt, Dictatorship, tr. Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014), p. 128.

[3] Ibid., p. 91.

[4] Herbert Spencer, Political Writings. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, ed. John Offer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2001), p. 78.

Harper's "diplomacy" meets China's "diplomacy"

Note our Prime Minister’s unequivocal tone … compare Harper on Putin, on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, on Crimea, on Ukraine, on Israel, on the Likud Party, on Netanyahu, on Gaza, on Hamas … on China’s hacking of Canada’s National Research Council. 

It would appear that Canada’s warlord has confronted ancient Chinese warlords, who wield power as they see fit.  And so Kevin and Julia Garratt, a missionary couple from Vancouver, have gotten caught up in a “diplomatic” tangle.