It’s likely uncharitable, given the cloying year-end imprecations to be “nice”, but I choose to be “naughty”. I draw your attention to my annual dose of Nembutal – the year-end “Happy Holidays” letter from the dentist to her patients.

I should qualify that she is not my dentist. I ditched her for a different tooth-borer in the clinic  after suffering from a too-hurried jab of an anaesthetic needle. That wasn’t her chief offense, however: it was the stage-whispered offer of “a Shiatsu massage to take my mind off the pain”, whereupon she summoned a dental assistant to throttle my toes. This, friends, is “wellness based dentistry”: the astonishing marriage of dentistry and shamanism  (with the emphasis on “sham”), something that “embraces a yoga- based approach to exploring the connections between [sic.] oral health, whole body wellness and longevity…”.

I kid you not.

Each December I await the ‘Dharmic Dentist’s'  Happy Holidays letter to her clinic’s patients with schadenfreudic glee. Each edition brims with its own brand of solipsistic hilarity, but this year’s was especially rich.

It featured the launch of her “empowering book from which we can celebrate and embrace a deeper quality of life”; surely the wish of every new dentist-author. Allegedly this doorstop also “helps others reframe the importance of their mouth”, or at least to the same extent as she has. The newsletter heralds her new website, which includes “a video on facial muscle releasing exercises which will also help us to achieve my favourite mantra, ‘lips together, teeth apart, tongue in place’….” Coincidentally, she shares that mantra with reputable escorts in Toronto alleys.

But her year included more than just dipping her Shiatsued toes into the media pool. The Dharmic Dentist also travelled to Brazil on a spiritual meditation trip (India is apparently oh so “September 10th”…). There she brought home something called “a crystal bed” that she welcomes all to experience. “It is available in the office, on Mondays, Fridays and every other Saturday”, which presumes that mid-week is an inappropriate time to recline on a quartz mattress. Sleep Country buyers take note.

The newsletter finishes with sentimental notes on the arrivals, departures and pairings of the clinic’s staff, as well as a final poem on the meaning of “Shalom”, which “means more than peace”.

As my Great Aunt Gert used to say “well, we laughed and laughed…”

My respirologist, Dr Bob Hyland, is recuperating from surgery.

” They work with herbs
 and penicillin.


They work with gentleness
 and the scalpel.


They dig out the cancer,


close an incision


and say a prayer


to the poverty of the skin.


They are not Gods


though they would like to be;


they are only human


trying to fix up a human.
..”

from “Doctors” by Anne Sexton

I’ve been a patient of Dr. Robert Hyland for nearly half my life, first in cramped offices at the old Wellesley Hospital and more recently in the Respirology Clinic at St. Michael’s. My chart is the width of his fist, and my gratitude for his care is the depth of my deepest breath.

Early in December 2011, Dr. Bob underwent surgery, and will be in recovery for several months. I know this because he told me about his pending journey under the knife when I last saw him in October. This was just before we chatted about watching cheetahs on his Tanzanian safari,  and not long after he gave me hell for messing around with my medicine dosages. That’s the kind of man and doctor that he is – empathetic, aware and open.

For many years he served as Physician-in-Chief at St. Mike’s and for many more on the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. His peers laud him as a superb clinician, outstanding teacher and fine scientist. His patients would agree, especially the ones in the Philippines who benefit from the clinic that he helped to establish and where he has worked during his holidays  for many years.

But now this excellent doctor and even better man is a patient, just like me and the others who rely on the skills, diligence and compassion of the health care system. I worry, as a patient and as a friend, how he will fare after his surgery as he experiences the fragility of his corpus, the frustration of healing and, as Anne Sexton puts it so beautifully, “the poverty of the skin”.

I, and all of his patients both in Canada and abroad, wish him “the wealth of health”.

Recently my friend, John Bracken, loaned me a old paperback called “Room 3603″ by H. Montgomery Hyde.  This book, published in 1962, chronicled British espionage activities in North America during the war, focusing on the propaganda, intelligence and counter intelligence efforts of Sir William Stephenson (a.k.a. his codename “Intrepid”).

Hyde’s book included the following sentence, which interested me greatly:

“…Station KGEI, owned and operated in San Francisco by the General Electric Company [was] the only station broadcasting to the Far East at this time…material put out by Stephenson and broadcast by KGEI…was picked up and rediffused by the Malaya Broadcasting Company in Singapore and the Australian Broadcasting Commission…”

Naturally I looked up the station’s call letters on the Internet and found a link to the Bay Area Radio Museum, where I found a photo of the KGEI transmitter circa 1960. The building still stands, though it now houses a church. Incidentally, “KGEI” stands for “General Electric International” [the "K" is the standard first letter for all radio and t.v. stations broadcasting in the western United States]. That link also led me to a lot of other information on wartime broadcasting  in Japanese to civilian and military audiences across the Pacific, with which Hugh was involved directly.

Without going into the messy bureaucratic mechanics of military intelligence (which I will unravel in my book) Sir William Stephenson, a Canadian, recruited Hugh to join the team of British/Canadian and American experts who were waging “psychological warfare” against the Japanese. This involved a variety of strategies and tactics (including military deception, pamphlet drops, analysis of enemy messages and broadcasting news and commentary to Japanese listeners).

I’ll have more on this in the manuscript. For now, this is one of those little victories that make writers and researchers excited.

First, however, some brief context: In 1925, three churches merged to become the United Church of Canada. The Presbyterian Church in Canada was one of them, but that caused a schism in the Presbyterian Church; several congregations chose to stay in the old church, despite the fact that the church’s leaders had committed to union. Most of the foreign mission fields became the responsibility of the new United Church of Canada (such as missions in Japan and Korea), but the mission in north Formosa (today’s northern Taiwan) stayed with the existing Presbyterian Church in Canada. For two years my grandparents and the other missionaries in Taiwan waited for the dust to settle from the merger, even as the months of delay bled staff to other places. And so we move on to the first meetings of the North Formosa Mission Council in January, 1927:

The minutes of the North Formosa Mission Council meetings were written in a factual but never fulsome manner. Much, however, can be gleaned between the lines of the hundreds of carbon copied, onion skin pages. For example, at the January, 23, 1927 meeting the minutes said that the home church’s Foreign Mission Board was sending a Commission to investigate the needs of the mission. The Council responded that it “records pleasure in anticipation, but expresses its hope that the Board will not wait for the report of such commission before making provision to fill vacancies being created by withdrawals.” The minutes, delicately written though they were, indicated the palpable suppressed frustration as well as not a small amount of anxiety about the continued hemorrhaging of 3/4 of the staff to Korea, Japan, southern Formosa and other places.

When the home church’s three-person Commission finally arrived in the fall of 1927, it held a surprisingly frank meeting on November 23 with Hugh,  Dr. George Gushue-Taylor and Miss Mabel Clazie. Hugh chaired the discussion and opened by saying that he and his colleagues had “waited impatiently for this visit for guidance as to new plans, policy etc., and now await [a] message from the home base.”

The commission consisted of Mr. C.S. McDonald, Mrs. Daniel Strachan (of the Women’s Mission Council) and Dr. McOldrum. The chair of the commission, Mr. McDonald was a retired businessman who had served as the defacto administrator and fundraiser of the anti-union movement within the Presbyterian Church. He stated rather bluntly (which seems to have been his habitual style)  that “speaking for the three and [for] many of his church… they would not have felt antagonistic if all the mission fields had gone to the [United Church of Canada].” He further stated, “Foreign workers are not so easily provided… he was glad that the United Church missionaries were carrying on for a time and would hope that they might do so permanently if possible.” This latter message was aimed directly at the three in the room, who had expressly supported union but who had also indicated their intention to stay in the Presbyterian field of North Formosa. The home church was clearly uncomfortable with having ‘Unionists’ running their mission, but finding replacements for those who had left had become a challenge. McDonald went on to add further insult to injury, advising the mission council not to “use up manpower in Theological College work and sacrifice evangelism”; this despite the fact that the whole reason for establishing the theological college, of which Hugh was the Principal, was to increase the numbers of indigenous clergy to do the work of evangelism!

McDonald’s colleague, Dr. MacOdrum, tartly urged the missionaries on the mission council to “forget unpleasantness and get at constructive work”, adding that he “would want even more workers than ever to go to the savages…” Dr Gushue-Taylor rose to this bait complaining of  “bitter and misleading remarks by Presbyterian Church leaders…”.

The minutes note blithely that the meeting ended with a benediction from Hugh.

Much more drama to come…

Dick Cavett, one of my heroes.

I read Dick Cavett’s occasional blog in the New York Times.

He included this maxim/couplet in a September 2011 column, and I liked it:

“A man convinced against his will,

Is of the same opinion still.”

Earlier this year I read this article by Martin Petersen (former Deputy Executive Director of the CIA), which bears the awkward title “What I Learned in 40 Years of Doing Intelligence Analysis for US Policy Makers”. I think it’s a vital primer for all analysts – whether they work in intel or not – in the public, private or non-profit sectors. It’s also a reminder that, despite its very public failures and the concomitant decline in public trust, the intelligence community remains filled with diligent and ardent people like Mr. Petersen. His “rules” are worthy of memorization.

NOTE: “DI” stands for the Directorate of Intelligence, a branch of the CIA that provides research and analysis for a variety of US government clients; Mr Petersen worked in the DI. It should not be confused with “DIA” which is the Pentagon’s “Defense Intelligence Agency”.

It's always good to read the instructions before assembling a Muskoka chair....

I put together a Muskoka chair last week. The kit was manufactured by a company called The Bear Chair, located in South River, Ontario. The resulting chair withstood both my limited carpentry skills as well as this week’s tornado that streaked over my property (I own a trailer, so I guess I can expect a tornado to visit me once in a while…).

The instructions opened with a section dubbed “Before Assembly”, which included my favourite line: “#3 Give yourself plenty of space, making sure that the complete chair can be removed from the room”

Now, isn’t that just brilliant, pragmatic, uniquely Canadian advice! Make sure your assembled chair can be removed from the space in which you are assembling it, before you start stabbing screws into the wood. Also, though it wasn’t stated as overtly, one should read the instructions before getting to work….

Sometimes I just love this country.

Jack Layton at his July 2011 presser.

[NOTE: I wrote this just after Jack Layton's press conference in July 2011. He died on August 22, 2011. Rather than re-write it in the past tense I have decided to leave it as it is.]

Jack Layton, Canada’s Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition and leader of the social-democratic New Democratic Party, gave a press conference last week.

Layton had completed treatment for prostate cancer earlier in the year, but had risen, phoenix-like, during last spring’s federal election campaign. His party managed to elect enough Members of Parliament to soar from third place into second, making it – for the first time in its history – Canada’s Opposition Party; essentially, the government in waiting.

Last week Layton appeared before the media looking thin and wan. His doctors had found a new, unspecified secondary cancer, and he was taking a leave of absence from his position as party leader and Leader of the Opposition to begin renewed cancer treatment.

I don’t know Layton well, but I met him years ago through his dad, Robert, who was a Cabinet Minister in the government of Brian Mulroney (for which I eked a flack’s living in the late 1980s). Jack’s politics are not mine, but we both love cities, politics, Canada and a good speech. We’ve also both been touched by cancer.

Cancer can be a good thing. That’s a paradox, but I think it’s true, especially when the disease gets laid bare to the public with Layton’s characteristic honesty and forthrightness. Cancer exposes the truth of life’s ending, rather than the macabre japes of the Deathly Hallows or the ersatz blood lust of the Twilight Saga. Even as cancer makes death real, it also makes people appreciate the glories of each breath and the miracle of each birth, even as they witness the decline of vitality.

Case in point, when my wife, Gabriella, and I heard the news of Mr Layton’s illness (not on television, or on the ‘Net, by the way, but from a friend’s phone call), my first instinct was to hold her hand and to whisper. Gabriella was diagnosed with breast cancer three year ago this fall, and suffered through both a mastectomy and four months of agonizing chemotherapy. I stroked her palm and said stupid, loving things like “it’ll be okay”, fully mindful that cancer, like creation itself, is more about probability than sanguine phrases of affection. But Jack’s cancer made us connect for that moment.

It did different things for others. In the “person-on-the-street” interviews after Layton’s press conference people commented not on Jack’s evident decline, because that was almost too hard to speak about. Rather they sighed that “he’s such a nice guy”, as if only death comes to the misanthrope. Layton’s pallor drew the public’s attention, that reptilian vestige that responds to light, or to quick movements, or to collisions in the opposite highway lane. We slowed down for a glance at Layton’s sickened face, swallowed a taste of bile and prayed that we too were nice enough to defeat probability.

But while ‘thanatos’ may attract, it is ‘spiritus’ that engages; the vivacious “force that through the green fuse drives the flower” as Dylan Thomas wrote so beautifully. As I and others watched Layton’s Yorick-like visage, we watched the man’s eyes radiate an extraordinary presence. It made me, and maybe others, stop to watch the fire, and to ask, silently, for it to burn on.

Look after yourself, Jack.

Toronto city councillor and literary critic, Doug Ford

A quote this week by Toronto City Councillor Doug Ford made the news, but I think it deserves more reflection.

Ford was pilloried for his ignorance of Canadian literary icon, Margaret Atwood. Atwood had earlier criticized Ford and his brother, Mayor Rob Ford, for mooting the closure of city libraries as a cost cutting measure.

“I don’t even know her,” said Doug Ford. “She could walk right by me, I wouldn’t have a clue who she is.”

Mr Ford’s statement shows not his ignorance but rather his subtlety. He fancies himself a businessman, yet appears most economical with language. Indeed, what I see Ford as saying is, perforce, do any of us truly know Margaret Atwood.

In this sense, Ford could be pointing to the dichotomy between Atwood as feminist paladin or Atwood as science-fiction icon. Ford is clearly influenced by her early work (“The Edible Woman”, perhaps) but also pays homage to her celebrated meta-fictional efforts with “The Handmaid’s Tale”, which if he did not read, he may have seen on a plane.

Or, when Ford states that he wouldn’t know who she is, we can infer that he describes the paradoxically transnational sphinx that is Atwood; the Canadian cultural doyenne versus the international critic. Ford’s statement speaks for all of us, when he says that “she could walk right by me” – “me” signifying simultaneously (à la French intellectual, Yannick Dêchets) Canada as citizen AND Canada  as global ‘voyeur’ – and yet be unseen. Ford seems to suggest, therefore, that so skillful is Atwood, the protean writer, that the distinction between her critical and literary canon, not to mention her political and environmentalist causes, becomes virtually invisible. If Ford could say “synecdoche”, he would mean it here.

Or perhaps, when Mr Ford says,  “I wouldn’t have a clue who she is…” he, with the sylphlike subtlety that only a true fan can summon, is mooting that his enjoyment of Atwood’s literary oeuvre would be enhanced further, should the celebrated scribe move into the mystery genre. By saying “I wouldn’t have a clue,” Ford is clearly stating that while he does not, currently, have a “clue”, he would certainly like one. From Atwood. On paper. In a library.

It’s all painfully simple. Unlike the city budget process.

I invite you to check out his site. And, since I am Canadian, my apologies to him for treading on his space. May we both continue with our respective tiny revolutions.