Making connections: we created Canada by imposing ourselves on nature, not by contemplating it.

Making connections: we created Canada by imposing ourselves on nature, not by contemplating it. Building Canada: People and Projects that Shaped the NationJonathan Vance Penguin Canada 318 pages, softcover ISBN ISBNabbr.International Standard Book NumberISBNInternational Standard Book NumberISBNn abbr (= International Standard Book Number) → ISBN m0143015284 Take a political map of the space known as Canada. Leave it blank,but then overlay it with successive transparencies. Each one displays anetwork filling up that space: telephone networks, broadcast networks,postal networks, arts centres, architectural and symbolic networks. Thespace looks denser, richer, spun into a finer skein. Giving us a sense of that tapestry and how it came to be isJonathan Vance's project in Building Canada. He weaves his argumentsuccessfully, entwining a number of disparate activities within apattern, that of creating a national infrastructure. Not aninfrastructure of pipes and sewers, but of communications networks. Ithas become a cliche, the Canadian interest in communications theory(Innis, McLuhan), but this treatment gives legs to the idea. Here is howthe material structures that convey all those messages that we theorize the��o��rize?v. the��o��rized, the��o��riz��ing, the��o��riz��esv.intr.To formulate theories or a theory; speculate.v.tr.To propose a theory about. into the media got built. It's a significant story, as Vance tellsit. There is more than one way to draw a map, and anybody seeking a holdon how Canada linked itself together has to read this study. It was notpreordained pre��or��dain?tr.v. pre��or��dained, pre��or��dain��ing, pre��or��dainsTo appoint, decree, or ordain in advance; foreordain.pre , or easy, but the process fashioned the country that we knowtoday. John Watson's masterly portrait of Harold Innis Harold Adams Innis (November 5, 1894 – November 8, 1952) was a professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of seminal works on Canadian economic history and on media and communication theory. , Marginal Man Marginal Man was a punk band that emerged in the Washington, D.C. hardcore scene in 1983. Some members of Marginal Man played earlier in Artificial Peace, a band which appears on Dischord Records' important Flex Your Head compilation, an essential document of the 1980's D.C. punk scene. (reviewed in the December 2005 issue of the LRC (Longitudinal Redundancy Check) An error checking method that generates a parity bit from a specified string of bits on a longitudinal track. In a row and column format, such as on magnetic tape, LRC is often used with VRC, which creates a parity bit for each ) showed that pioneeringgenius to be at odds with conventional colonial mapmakers. Innisdemanded from them a cartographic car��tog��ra��phy?n.The art or technique of making maps or charts.[French cartographie : carte, map (from Old French, from Latin charta, carta, paper made from papyrus representation of a Canadian east-westcommunications and settlement system (river, tributary and drainagesystems, for example) rather than a U.S.-oriented north-south pattern.Innis would have relished Vance's study, since its unstated thesisis to demonstrate how a technological infrastructure works hand in handwith a symbolic image-structure in the creation of modern Canada. Thisdegree of inclusivity, this willingness to imagine the linkages betweenthe actual and the mythic, locates the act of nation-building within afar more concrete context than that provided by July 1 bombast. BenedictAnderson's Imagined Communities The imagined community is a concept coined by Benedict Anderson which states that a nation is a community socially constructed and ultimately imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group. (1983) gave the world a new namefor nations. What Vance exposes is the built community that makespossible the imagined one. One of the best novels that has appearedabout the idea of urbanity--Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of theLion--tells us that "before the city could be built, it had to beimagined." How about reversing that, as Vance does, and gaugingwhat increase in understanding comes about? Reading about the history of such things as rural electrification rural electrificationProject of the U.S. government in the 1930s. As part of the New Deal, the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) was established (1935) to bring electric power to farms, thereby raising the standard of rural living and slowing the migration of farm and telephone servicing may not be quite as gripping as a war story (atleast for this reader), but it certainly combats what I see as one ofthe most pernicious myths about Canada and its raison d'etre rai��son d'����tre?n. pl. rai��sons d'��treReason or justification for existing.[French : raison, reason + de, of, for + ��tre, to be. . Mytarget here is the G7 Myth (the Group of Seven, central Canada'slongest-running showbiz act). According to according toprep.1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.2. In keeping with: according to instructions.3. this myth, the Group of Sevenforever fixed on canvas the primal act of Canadian-ness: the encounterwith the savage beauties of the wilderness. In fact, the artistic achievements of the group--paintersinternationally famous on a local level--legitimated the Romantic,humanist avoidance of the central thrust of Canadian history, theimposition of a technological and cultural grid upon Canadian space asthe most effective way of rendering it Canadian. Being Canadian in fact,rather than in romance, is about using great gobs of energy in creatinga clement anti-environment that one then discusses endlessly, in anearlier time by telephone, now by text messaging. Oureconomic/commercial project is about subjecting the natural environment,not about contemplating it. We idealize i��de��al��ize?v. i��de��al��ized, i��de��al��iz��ing, i��de��al��iz��esv.tr.1. To regard as ideal.2. To make or envision as ideal.v.intr.1. the Group of Sevened woodlandsfrom the verandas of our wired second homes that have, until recently,used those majestic lakes as sewers. Imposition then is what Vance chronicles, whether in the form ofrural telephone systems or grandiose provincial capital buildings,broadcast networks or swollen commercial hotels. A nation founded as ahinterland to an overseas imperial metropolis, Vance shows, in turnconstructs a series of communications systems that get sold togovernment and taxpayer with the argument that phones and electricitywill keep people down on the farm. Of course, that argument has beendemolished time and again by people voting with their feet and U-Hauls. That fact has caused no inconvenience to metropolitan interests;they only ever cared about locking the hinterland into the grid. Thisissue was power, in many senses of the word. Rural electrification didnot necessarily "empower" the countryside; rather, Vancedemonstrates, it allowed rural interests to be increasingly containedwithin commercial urban drives. A powered countryside is even moreimportant to agribusiness than it is to the fabled family farm. No reader will find every chapter of this book of equal interest.My own curiosity led me to engaging with two chapters, one on sculptorEmmanuel Hahn and one on the boom in big-time provincial capitals. Ifyou have a caribou Caribou, town, United StatesCaribou(kâr`ĭb), town (1990 pop. 9,415), Aroostook co., NE Maine, on the Aroostook River; inc. 1859. quarter in your pocket, then you hold an example ofHahn's work. He did more than that, and Vance covers his careerwell. Grain elevators once towered over our prairies. They proclaimedthat a town had made it. Now their cultural function resembles that of atoxic waste toxic wasteis waste material, often in chemical form, that can cause death or injury to living creatures. It usually is the product of industry or commerce, but comes also from residential use, agriculture, the military, medical facilities, radioactive sources, and sign. They bespeak be��speak?tr.v. be��spoke , be��spo��ken or be��spoke, be��speak��ing, be��speaks1. To be or give a sign of; indicate. See Synonyms at indicate.2. a. To engage, hire, or order in advance. a prosperity siphoned off from the localinto the global. Not all the news from our nation-building site is good. At its best, Vance's overall viewpoint seems fresh andengaging. It offers a prosaic counterpart to the soaring poetry ofOndaatje's lyrical, fictional account of material structures andtheir birth. Both books emphasize the inner meaning of structures we tooeasily consign consignv. 1) to deliver goods to a merchant to sell on behalf of the party delivering the items, as distinguished from transferring to a retailer at a wholesale price for re-sale. Example: leaving one's auto at a dealer to sell and split the profit. to blueprints, and the heroism of the anonymous crowdswho put those things up. Vance's dedication of his book to the"numberless workers" who actually built the network thatprovided our national buzz aligns itself with that broadly populistspirit. Saint George Eliot put it better than anyone else has: For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. Building Canada takes us on a visitation to those tombs. Dennis Duffy's current project has for its working title"Reinventing Canada by Stealth: Mackenzie King as PublicArtist."