Alberta politics

Yes, Schools are Molding Your Kids. But Not Like You Think.


With the exception of kindergarten and my undergrad years, I attended Catholic schools my entire life. Religion. Religion. Religion. Even in university, I fulfilled my humanities requirements with religion classes. As a result, I am pretty well grounded in the ideas that motivate a lot of conservatives.

In the Canadian province where I live, the government turned over from 40 plus years of conservative rule to a social democratic government a few years ago. One would have thought – given the wailing and gnashing of teeth – that end times were upon us. The concern came from a somewhat genuine place as the province was sliding rapidly into an economic downturn that pounded the province financially and conservatives, being who they are, never feel safe even in good times with “lefties” at the wheel, so the angst was raging at eleven most of those early days.

But, the new provincial government went with the tested and true method of taking on some debt and not drastically cutting anything and now, nearly three years on, things are really looking up.

Looking up is never a good thing for conservative parties who are out of power. They don’t have much to offer citizens in good times. So, they fall back on what they do best – social issues. And understand, when I say “do best”, I don’t mean they are offering great ideas. I mean they are incredibly efficient at stirring up bitterness, bigotry and outrage because say what you will, those things absolutely work with the disenfranchised, ill-formed and people who get all their talking points from a pulpit.

Where I come from in the US Midwest, and was a teacher for many years, curriculum updates are normal and slightly boring for non-educational wonks. They are undertaken at regular intervals to little fanfare.

Here, they are seen in the farther reaches of conservative-land as communist agendas made flesh. Zombie flesh that will devour the souls of good little future conservatives by distorting the cold hard facts of life with unicorns, rainbows and puppies. Children who might have entered a solid trade are rendered useless university students by a social studies curriculum that doesn’t spend significant man hours on Bahamian British troops sacking the White House during the War of 1812 or the importance of Canadian soldiers being used by the British as cannon fodder at Paschendale. Important factoids, don’t misunderstand, but less important than children understanding that we live on treaty land, our obligations as a society and how our parliamentarian system works and what our Charter Rights actually are and how they differentiate us from our southern neighbor.

The feeling among the “concerned” conservatives is that the provincial government is using the curriculum update to instill thoughts and feelings in students that will keep them from voting conservative as adults. It’s brainwashing for future votes.

I attended a school system where “brainwashing” was a primary mandate. In theory, I should be a Catholic rather than an atheist and militant feminist, so anecdotally, I roll my eyes a bit. Even my school mates who still consider themselves Catholic are cafeteria at best. Having gone to  agenda laden Catholic grade school and high school, I am super dubious about the brainwashing potential of social studies or science.

When I look back, I can pinpoint the moment I began to doubt and my usefulness as a future member of the Women’s Conservative Auxillary probably ended. It was grade two. I announced I wanted to be a priest. I was told, “But you’re just a girl, so you can’t.”

The beginning of the end.

We like to believe children are blank slates, and what fills them up is what we actively write on them, but that isn’t true.

My Dad sent me to a Catholic school because he wanted me to be a conservative really. Like he was. But if he’d truly wanted that, he’d have lived a conservative life and been more aware that he really wasn’t as conservative as he thought he was and with his own upbringing, never really stood a chance at being one anyway.

Yes, he was a sexist and voted against the ERA. He was hurt by my anger when I found that out because he never  thought that his vote would impact me because he raised three daughters to be independent and able to take care of themselves. He never told us we couldn’t do things because we were girls. He expected us to do well in school. In math. He didn’t think we needed to marry and never offered his opinion on our dating or living arrangements. He thought in his Depression Era influenced way that this was enough.

He taught me the basics of politics during the Watergate crisis, and when I was 12 and wanted to volunteer at Jimmy Carter’s campaign headquarters in our town, he drove me there. He was proud as hell of me. When Carter won, he assured me that my volunteering had mattered in that win.

Dad was a democratic socialist by actions. He believed we had a duty to our communities via taxes and volunteering. He helped found the first credit union in our city. He was on the board of directors for 40 years, and I remember going along with him when he went to talk with people who’d fallen behind on their loan payments. He was helpful and understanding. His family was wiped out during the tulmultous years leading up to the Depression. His baby sister died in childbirth because they couldn’t afford a hospital birth and they grew up shuffling from one relatives farm to another. Charity cases. He understood being that poor, and what a credit union represented to people and could do for them.

He sent me to a Catholic school believing that it would teach me to be a Christ like person and conservative. In school I heard one thing and watched the nuns and priests be something else.

And all the while I had a front-row seat for hypocrisy in school, I had a Dad who volunteered for church groups, pray lines, tutoring at the alternative high school, Meals on Wheels, read the newspaper from front to back to stay informed and modeled a commitment to casting his ballot in every election long after he stopped believing in partisan politics because he believed his vote could add up with others and matter. Not every time but enough times to make a difference over the long haul.

If a person is worried that their child might not grow up to think, behave or vote in ways they’d prefer they didn’t, it’s not the schools they showed be worried about.

Dad could never figure out why I wasn’t conservative  but of course I wasn’t because he didn’t raise me to be.

Schools don’t raise children. Parents do.

It’s 2018. Where is Armageddon?


2017 arrived on a sleigh of smoking turds pulled by the four horseman of biblical fame, and still, we made it to 2018. Don’t ask me how. Last year was a blur. The world reeled, staggering from one shallow foxhole to the next with the various status quo in flames all around.

It reminded me of my favorite scene from that stink bomb of a psycho-drama The Birds.

Crows have just attacked the school, and the adults are huddled in a bar (kinda fitting) discussing a complete and terrifying turn of the table by Mother Nature (well played by the way) as though there was something rational to be found, if they just used their indoor voices, with town drunk – the only rational voice in the room – punctuating the discussion with occasional “It’s the end of the world”.

Is it though? Really? The end of the world.

Probably more reasonable to take our cultural reference cue from REM. It’s the end of the world … as we know it.

Because that happens throughout history, and if we are really ready to be honest, it’s happened more than once in living memory.

Someone on Twitter today had a list of all things that didn’t exist in 2003. On that list was pretty much the entirety of the internet as we use it today. Certainly most of our communication devices. The way we interact socially has been completely altered by social media.

Generation Zed knows nothing about an existence before hand held devices. They’ve literally been born and grown along with them. Our world is basically a teenager entering the end stages of puberty. And that, explains a lot.

So it makes sense that a political and economic world that our great-grandparents would still recognize and feel comfortable with simply can’t adapt. Things are giving way. It’s not like there are other options.

And okay, I will grant that the nuclear code rattling by America and North Korea could maybe sort of bring about an Armageddonish crisis, but I am going to throw caution to the wind and bet on us still being here in a year. What I will not claim is that the world will have settled down much. The current version of Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it won’t transform itself in a couple of years anymore than the last Rome did. Change takes time even when it feels like the exact opposite.

Happy New Year then. Congratulate yourself if you aren’t a Nazi or one of their enablers, yet, and remind yourself that whatever is coming, you are not the only one going through it. Look around your neighborhood, workplace, gym, school, community and find those like-minded, who are out there, and connect a bit more than you currently are. There is safety in numbers, but also laughs, joys and fiendish plots to thwart those bags of dicks who thrive in the chaos of change.

Bring it 2018. If the world could survive 2017, it’s ready for you.

The NeverEnding Election


Outside of election periods, most people scarcely give politics the slightest thought. Well, except perhaps to frown or sigh heavily at the antics elected officials always seem to be up to. Antics that never seem to be simply doing their damn jobs.

And people these days have a right to sigh or frown or furiously pound out the odd rant or two on Fort Informed or in one of the other community groups that link us as surely as hockey or soccer matches, Paint Nites at the Bear’s Den and the Trade-show at the Dow. People have, correctly, surmised that some of our elected representatives seem far more fond of the thrill of political gamesmanship and the quest for votes than of the actual jobs that result from the winning of an election.

While residents of communities wonder where the promises of elections have wandered off to, representatives from councilors to MLAs to MPs seem stuck in the moment just before they won. A time when selfies and throwing shade at opponents was the only job.

In Parliament, Question Period is talking points only. English or French.

The Alberta Legislation often most resembles a junior high class when the teacher steps out of the room for a few minutes too long.

And the Fort Saskatchewan city council?

It suffers from a chronic case of side-eye and shade.

From chickens to bees to common-sense regulations to keep liquor stores from literally becoming the alcoholic beverage equivalent of a Starbucks on every corner, the Fort city council hasn’t met a proposal that at least one councilor can’t find a reason to dismiss with dramatic effect. Never mind that residents have made requests and councilors have responded with actual initiative – there’s an election coming! In October.

And if anyone is wondering why the library suddenly has a gate? What would the lead up to an election – months from now – be without an issue worthy of gating?

Library-gate, a completely manufactured outrage wherein the all volunteer library board, using money it raised itself, had the audacity to purchase a vehicle outside the city limits. Much like many Fort residents do when the vehicle that best suits their needs and budget can’t be obtained locally.

At last night’s council meeting, the library board chair attempted to set the record straight – with actual facts – after the city’s only newspaper deemed the truth not newsworthy.

She read from her prepared remarks but was cut off by the Mayor when she mentioned one of the councilors by name.

How the record can be set straight without mentioning the names of the councilors involved – though she was allowed to name the councilor* the Mayor doesn’t seem as fond of – is a mystery. And after a few minutes of back forth, the library chair finished her remarks and left the council chambers clearly angry**. Not an emotion that city councilors or the Mayor should want to foster in volunteers who step up and run important boards like the library board.

Fort Saskatachewan has an understanding reputation for volunteerism and publicly smearing  volunteers is a good way to kill community appetite for stepping up and pitching in.

And that’s the current state of good governing in Fort Saskatchewan. Volunteers and volunteer initiatives like the library board are sacrificed to petty politics.

Days, and sadly sometimes weeks,  worth of drama follows every trumped up incident while no one mentions the elephant lurking in the corner. It’s an election year.

A year when council members – instead of going to constituents to remind them of all the good things that have been achieved and asking, “What can I do for you now?” – decide the best course of action is make the person sitting next to them at a council meeting look bad. And if that can only be accomplished through creating outrage where none exists, well, that’s politics. What were people expecting?

When citizens go to the polls to cast ballots for a candidate, generally they have an issue or two on their minds. Water bills, a new bridge, the puzzling overgrowth of strip malls that never seems to yield more than a new liquor store, take away pizza joints or a walk-in clinic that won’t be open on Sundays.

They’ve probably made a connection or two with new faces running their first campaign for office or reaffirmed commitments to sitting councilors who proved their mettle over the previous years.

Voters are reasonable people. They have wish lists. They have grievances. They expect to be heard and taken seriously. They are looking for representation and people who understand that serving at any level of government is service on behalf of the people. Not self-service.

Too many elected officials anymore – at every level of government – are still laboring under the assumption that governing is ruling like the feudal lords in Medieval times. They treat their time in office as though it was a rousing game of Catan or an episode of Game of Thrones. As if their actions don’t have real world consequences that can adversely affect the lives of real people. The people they are supposed to be serving, and the people they are serving with on council, in the legislature, and in Parliament.

Politics might be a game, but life is not. Voters are tired, but not so much so that they don’t see what’s going and aren’t taking notes. But whether this coming city election is a long and brutal House of Cards knock off or a responsible, thoughtful campaign where adults behave as though they are familiar with the idea of adulting, is almost entirely up to those who step forward to run. For the first time or again.

*Disclaimer – I know the Bosserts. Our daughters are school friends.

**Edited after speaking with Renetta Peddle, the library chair who assured me she was happy to get a chance to speak and furious at being silenced in her attempt to set the record straight and clear the reputation of the library board.