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New Orphic Review, Vol. 9, No. 2, Fall, 2006 Editorial
www3.telus.net/neworphicpublishers-hekkanen The New Orphic Review New Orphic Publishers 706 Mill Street, Nelson, B.C. V1L
4S5 Canada Led Astray by Idealism Ernest Hekkanen IN THE SPRING, 2006 issue of The
New Orphic Review, I mentioned that
the Our Way Home Reunion would be taking place at the Brilliant Cultural
Centre in Castlegar, B.C., and in this editorial I would like to follow up
with an evaluation. In past editorials such as “Feats of the Imagination,”
“The Power of a Good Hoax,” “Ruling Fictions,” and “Heretic & Infidel,” I
discussed the impact that ‘story’ has on human behavior – how story can play
upon our gullibility on the one hand and how it can lead us to accomplish
great things on the other. I suggested in those editorials that we can be
enslaved or liberated by story, and I think the Our Way Home Reunion – an
experiment in alternative social engineering if ever there was one – is a
practical example of what I’ve been trying to address over the years. Ever since the initial Our Way
Home press conference took place on September 7, 2004, I have been amazed by
how contentious ‘the practice of peace’ can be. Most of us are willing to pay
lip-service to the idea that peace is a fine, noble endeavor; indeed, a Nobel
Prize for Peace is handed out by the Nobel Foundation nearly every year, and
the recipient of that prize is lauded in newspapers and on television around
the world. In colleges and universities, courses are offered in Peace
Studies, which seems to suggest that society does pay the idea of
peace at least a modicum of sober reflection. However, if we take ‘the
subject of peace’ out of the classroom and attempt to put it into ‘practice,’
peace becomes extremely controversial. There is no better example of
what I’m talking about than the response to the Welcoming Peace Sculpture.
Conceived of as a monument that would honor Vietnam draft evaders from the
States, it immediately became a focus for antagonism by those on the political
right. The negative outburst by those who think of themselves as patriots was
so ferocious, Isaac Romano shelved the monument for over a year; perhaps, in
hindsight, it would be more accurate to say that it was kept under wraps. In
early 2006, Larry Ewashen, the curator of the Doukhobor Village Museum in
Castlegar, asked Isaac if the sculpture was available for placement, and
Isaac reported that it was, with the result that a news conference was held
in early May at the Doukhobor Village Museum. There, a joint communiqué was
issued to the effect that the Welcoming Peace Sculpture had at last found a
home. Unbeknownst to the board of the
museum, which voted in favor of placing the sculpture in its Peace Park, the
City of Castlegar had a final say in the matter, and the city chose to nix
the idea. The Our Way Home Reunion committee wasn’t informed that a decision
made by the museum board had to be endorsed by city council and neither was
Larry Ewashen, apparently, because city council had never before interfered
with the decisions of the board. Rather than being flummoxed by the city’s
decision, the Our Way Home committee decided to turn the defeat into a
triumph, by traveling to Vancouver and holding a press conference there,
outside City Hall, where we announced that the Welcoming Peace Sculpture
would be erected outside the New Orphic Gallery – coded language for my front
yard. The press conference on May 23,
2006 resulted in news coverage across the country – on television, in
newspapers such as The
National Post, The Vancouver Sun and The Globe and Mail and in newsmagazines such as Macleans. John Dooley, the mayor of Nelson, responded by saying in print in the Nelson Daily News that I should be served with a business license, with the result that
the Nelson City Building Inspector came calling at my door. My response was
to publish a letter of reply in the Daily
News, in which I concluded by saying:
“Please send the following message to John [Dooley], will you, Bob [Hall]?
I’m not going to charge anyone to look at the statue that will be placed in
my front yard, and therefore I’m not required to have a business license.
However, I do appreciate the low-level threat.” When the Paragons of Patriotism
find it impossible under the law to deny freedom of speech, they often resort
to the fallback measure of trying to tax it out of existence. It’s an old
story, and I wasn’t going to buy into it. Early on during the controversy,
when Isaac was thinking of permanently shelving the Welcoming Peace
Sculpture, I advised him that it was not only the fuel which powered his
campaign, it was the engine that drove it. In reality, the sculpture is quite
inoffensive; it depicts a young couple crossing the border into Canada and
being welcomed by an older gentleman. Without being told what one is looking
at, it would be difficult to fathom the sculpture’s infrastructure of
meaning. Indeed, the sculpture itself verges on being innocuous, which leads
me to conclude that what people see in it is a matter of projection – or, if
you will, a matter of story. In my editorial, “Feats of the
Imagination” (vol.7, no. 1), I stated that human beings “seem to be imbued
with a fatal flaw, one which expresses itself as a willingness to believe the
most absurd claims . . . Feats of the imagination have driven the history of
humankind from the time we stood upright and started walking across the face
of the earth (in pursuit of what, we have yet to discover), and I suspect
feats of the imagination will continue to drive us for a very long time to
come.” The Welcoming Peace Sculpture is
one such feat of the imagination. Dreamed up by Isaac Romano and executed by
Naomi Lewis, it moved from the realm of ideas into the world of substantive
artifact. However, it barely got out of the conceptual stage, as a clay
maquette, before people with entirely different motives and imaginations
tried to kill it – both here in Nelson and across North America. There ensued
a battle for dominance by two vastly different imaginations, one of which,
until now, has reigned supreme – it being aligned, of course, with power,
patriotism and war, the latter of which is financed to the hilt by big
business, oil, and the banks. The Our Way Home Reunion has
been in trouble from the very beginning. Attacked by the Political Right and
undermined by the Professional Left, which, for financial reasons of its own,
tries to eliminate competitors before they get out of the starting gate,
Isaac’s campaign lurched along, ran into countless roadblocks and nearly
expired due to lack of financial resources. To employ a handy metaphor, Our
Way Home was a dark horse that eventually crossed the finish line, despite
the odds against it doing so. That metaphor encapsulates a story that is dear
to this author’s heart. For decades now, my existence as a writer has been an
extremely precarious one; the more I was told to give up the notion of ever
becoming a writer – by family, friends and publishers alike – the more
determined I became to succeed. You see, for me, writing has always been a
matter of rebellion, of defiance, a matter of saying ‘no’ to the prevailing
rules, regulations and mores. In other words, my personal story and the story
of the Our Way Home Reunion were a perfect match, with the result that I
allowed my idealism to lead me vastly astray. I plunked $30,000 down on Our
Way Home to cross the finish line, knowing full well that I’d probably end up
in debt. Why did I feel compelled to take such a foolish risk? Because I’m in
the habit of defying the predominant social order, which insists on the game
being played according to a set of rules that amount to little more than a
kind of fiction. It is an unexamined fiction we are taught to live in
obeisance of all our lives, and it is having a terrible effect on us and the
world. Thirty thousand dollars is a
pittance compared to the trillions of dollars being wagered by banks,
corporations and nations that desire Man of War to perpetually come in first
across the finish line. As I have said repeatedly to
newspeople in the print world and to interviewers on television and radio,
“As long as you make sure the middle class remains relatively comfortable,
you can commit just about any crime you want on its behalf and get away with
it.” That was the story behind the Vietnam War, and that is the story behind
the Iraq War. People are dying so that we in the West can continue to drive
SUVs. People are dying so that America can prop up the Yankee dollar, which
is now pegged to the oil standard rather than the gold standard. People are
dying so that we can continue to consume commodities made of plastic, a
derivative of oil. Every day, whether we like to think so or not, we bet
millions of dollars on Man of War to be first across the finish line. This
wager is being placed in every community across North America. It is the
reason why the Our Way Home Reunion in general, and the Welcoming Peace
Sculpture in particular, ran into so much opposition by those who insist on
maintaining the status quo. In an article entitled “As Iraq
Burns, Haunted by Vietnam,” published online at The Tyee website, Bill Metcalfe reports that “Ernest Hekkanen, a Nelson writer who
came to Canada to escape the Vietnam draft, has offered to display [the
Welcoming Peace Sculpture] in front of his home, which doubles as a small art
gallery. . . . Hekkanen says he has been surprised by the reaction of some
people on the left. ‘They ask me if I’m worried that my house will be
fire-bombed. They are expressing a fear that the American right wing has
somehow managed to inculcate in them. The left in Canada had better get some
backbone. Every time the right wing in the States growls and barks, [the left
wing] hightails it out of town.” I would also contend that the
Left here in Canada and in the United States is so badly compromised by the
economics that further the cause of war, it is disinclined to bet on peace,
which it views as a bad investment. That’s the real story behind the Our Way
Home Reunion. A bunch of little guys who didn’t fully understand the
economics arrayed against ever pulling off an event devoted to peace and
reconciliation managed to nevertheless ride their dark horse across the
finish line. How much impact our efforts have had on the status quo is
difficult to say. I know I came away extremely moved by many of the workshop
participants I had exchanges with – men who belong to the Vietnam Veterans
for Peace, for instance. I know that many people lined up to have their
pictures taken beside the bronze Welcoming Peace Sculpture on display at the
Brilliant Cultural Centre, and I know that the fear and paranoia the right
wing tried to instill in the local population was successfully defied, as it
must be defied elsewhere in the world, in the United States in particular –
that is, if we intend to survive beyond the year 2010. However, you’re probably
wondering whether I managed to recover my $30,000 investment? Not all of it. Which only goes
to prove that peace doesn’t pay, I guess. However, that might change. We’ll
see. |