History and Fun: Oil and Water?

My memories from history class have little to do with history. Far more than the King-Byng Crisis or responsible government, what stands out is my grade 10 teacher’s vigorous pacing and his rock-hard gel hairdo. He seemed unable to stay in one place for more than a moment. As a class, we were like the audience of a tennis match, our eyes going back and forth as we followed our tennis-ball teacher.

History class is a hard sell to the present generation of students, and it’s not hard to see why. Traditional approaches rely heavily on memorization of facts and dates, both of which are instantly available to anyone with a smart phone these days. What format would make Canadian history engaging? Well, today I want to share just one answer from an unlikely source: board games.

My wife and I love board games. One of our favorite dates is to go out to a café called “Snakes and Lattes” – Toronto’s first board game café. It’s a wonderful place, and I urge you to go there immediately. During our visit yesterday, we discovered a game which re-enacts the contest for North America. “A Few Acres of Snow,”(1) as it is called, places you and your opponent in command of the Thirteen Colonies and New France. As it won a prestigious Golden Geek award in 2011, I had high expectations.

We sat down at our table and eagerly opened the box. I asked one of the helpful staff to teach us the rules, but he said “Ooh, sorry... It’s a real niche game. There’s a small group of people who love it, but I’ve only played it once.” Not discouraged, we opened up the manual and began to unravel the rules of play. About two hours later, my voice was hoarse from reading 12 pages of rules, and Jess had a look of despair and protest on her face.

The rules were complicated because, well, running a colony is complicated. On any given turn, you can choose from 21 actions, including different types of expansion, attack, and money-making. It was tough going for us unseasoned n00bs to learn the game, but its complexity is also its strength. The game leads you to see the economics of scarcity and choice in the history of the colonies. The different strategies in the game are analogies of the real choices that were available to the British and French. Of course, playing a board game is not the same as learning the real story, but is has the effect of making the real story more interesting. The game shows that our history came from choices – things didn’t have to turn out this way, as there were countless other choices available to those with power. Add to that innumerable contingencies and chance events, and our history is transformed from a bore into a tense drama.

(1) The name came from a quote of Voltaire, who dismissed the loss Quebec in 1759 as just "a few acres of snow."
All photos taken from: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/79828/a-few-acres-of-snow

Winter in the Prairies

Last month, I was walking through Seneca College when I stumbled across the motherload – library clearance sale! I had to sift through piles of deadwood, but my persistence was rewarded. I came away with an anthology titled The Prairie Experience and a very promising Canadian historical atlas. Being an Ontarian, I was surprised and delighted to learn that Canada has provinces west of Manitoba (which the atlas confirmed), and they even have a unique literature of their own. Boldly, I steered the birchbark canoe into uncharted waters.

The anthology was a rewarding read. It includes poetry, short fiction, memoirs, and a one-act play, all written by prairie authors. Central in their writing is the landscape, fruitful at times but more often harsh and uncompromising. I want to share one poem that captures the mood:

PRAIRIE IMPRESSION

By Margot Osborn

The world is a silver penny

Impossibly large

And I am in the middle of it,

A penny reaching from rim to dull grey rim of sky

That curves above my head, a lustreless bowl.

There is nothing but the snow and I.

The snow in shadowed hummocks is its superscription

But I cannot read the language nor make out the design.

I am alone in this white desolation.

Though I move, it travels with me,

Featureless,

And still I remain in the middle. (1)

Saskatchewan in Winter, outside Prince Albert.

I like how the author begins by casting the prairie as a silver penny. A penny is as flat as can be, and it’s not worth a whole lot. In 1971, around the time that this poem was written, the average Saskatchewan farmer made a net profit of $4,616. As the speaker surveys her surroundings, the snow covers any variety in the “Featureless” landscape. Even the “dull grey” sky offers no landmark. I had to look up “hummocks” – it’s a small hill, or a mound. In this case, I gather that it would be a snow drift, casting a shadow on the ground before it. The line “I cannot read the language” is interesting. I think it speaks of the expectation to see traces of design in nature: order, harmony, balance, beauty, &c. But the design in this prairie landscape is either buried under the snow, or it is absent altogether. I think the second interpretation is supported by the following line, as speaker calls the plain a “white desolation.” I love the image of the speaker traveling, yet always in the middle. The lasting impression of this poem is that the prairie landscape is as vast as it is bare, and the speaker finds herself, in the words of another poet, “Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea.”(2)

Sources:

(1) Terry Angus, Ed. The Prairie Experience. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada Ltd., 1975.

(2) "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by S.T. Coleridge

A Brief History of Football in Canada

1823 was a year that would pass into infamy. William Web Ellis was playing a typical soccer match on his school field when, feeling bored and deeply frustrated, he picked up the ball and ran. Seeing this, his school chums chased after him and tackled him into the mud amid hoots and raucous laughter. His mischief soon turned into an accepted variation which turned into a whole new sport. Rules were developed to accommodate the new style of play called “Rugby football.”

As the graduates of Rugby spread throughout the empire, they took their game with them. In the 1870s, a hybrid form of Rugby became popular in Montreal among the local garrison and students at McGill University. In 1874, a key year in this story, McGill was invited to play a game of “football” with Harvard University. Upon arrival, both teams were surprised to learn that they understood “football” differently, with the Harvard squad playing the kicking version, and McGill playing rugby football. They resolved to play two games, one under the McGill rules and another under Harvard’s rules. The rugby game was a hit with Harvard, and they immediately persuaded the other Ivy League schools to take it on.

On both sides of the border, Canadian and American clubs began adapting the game to their fancy. They mixed and swapped rules as they played each other, incorporating what they liked and learning from each other. The Americans began to develop quickly in the 1800s, making the game more recognizable to the football we see today. In 1905, Canada caught up with the publication of the Burnside Rules, put out by the Ontario Rugby Football Union. They dictated 12 men per side, the “snap back” from the scrimmage line to begin play, and the requirement to make 10 yards in 3 downs or turn over possession. Surprisingly, the forward pass was not allowed until 1931.

In 1909, Lord Earl Grey, having already left his mark on the world of tea, further immortalized his name with a new trophy. Lord Grey’s Cup was to be awarded annually to the champion football team in Canada, and it has been a Canadian institution ever since. As the game developed in popularity across Canada, it came to be praised as a symbol of national unity. In 1962, Parliament decreed that all Canadian television should air the game to make it available to viewers in every region.

I want to close by sharing a description of one play that captures why the CFL is great fun to watch. This play happened on July 1, 2012, in the Argos vs. Eskimos game in Edmonton. With 2:45 on the clock in the second quarter, the Toronto center snaps the ball to #15 Ricky Ray, QB for the Argos. Ricky drops back as his receivers sprint their routes; his eyes scan the field for a split second; he sees #2 Chad Owens open and throws a bullet pass, which is so low that Owens actually to has catch the ball and roll on the ground. Owens picks himself up in a hornet’s nest of four defensive backs and begins to sprint toward the Argos endzone. He jukes left around one defender, evades another, stuffs his tattooed arm in the face of a third, and runs all the way to the 5-yard line, finally pushed out of bounds by a desperate Eskimos defender. It was a brilliant display of speed and athleticism (1). For a full season of such performance, Chad Owens was named the league’s Most Outstanding Player this past week.

Chad Owens in action against the Edmonton Eskimos
(Photo Courtesy of Nathan Denette / The Canadian Press)

Tomorrow, the Argonauts crew goes into battle against the Calgary Stampeders in the 100^th Grey Cup game (2). I invite all readers to join me in celebrating this great Canadian tradition!

(1) You can watch the above play on the CFL website. Fast forward to 02:32.

http://www.cfl.ca/video/index/id/75417

(2) The Grey Cup was not played from 1916-18 because of World War I, and a dispute over rules cancelled the game in 1919.
Source Consulted: The Canadian Encyclopedia - "Football," "The Grey Cup"
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com

Remembrance Day in Retrospect

 Remembrance is important – that’s no topic of debate. The real question these days is how we remember, and if the white poppy campaign is any evidence, that question is far from settled. What kind of words should we use on Remembrance Day? Should we emphasize honor, heroism, and bravery, or tragedy, loss, and devastation? I’d like to focus here on WWI, as it began the remembrance tradition and stands as the first overseas crucible in Canada’s young history. I want to suggest that our remembrance should look on WWI with two lenses: epic and tragedy. Like a pair of glasses, we need both of these lenses to see the war’s meaning in the Canadian memory.

First, the epic lens. In literature, an epic has several qualities: it’s a serious narrative, it has a grand scale, and the plot centers on great acts in battle. With these, the epic also narrates the birth of a nation, which is especially important for our discussion here. When Lieutenant Gregory Clark went over the top in the Battle of Vimy Ridge, he surveyed the scene before him:

As far as I could see, south, north

along the miles of the Ridge, there were

the Canadians. And I experienced my

first full sense of nationhood.

Clark was not alone in his feeling. Both on the day of battle and in the countless remembrance ceremonies afterward, everyone agreed: Canada came of age at Vimy Ridge.

When Canada entered the war with Great Britain, it was a young country of 8 million, where the English speakers thought of themselves as British first and Canadian second. The quality of Canadian troops was in open doubt. In one infamous event, when the movie tent at their training camp showed the same film twice, one incensed soldier said “Right lads, let’s burn it down” – and they did. By the war’s end, however, a combination of savvy leadership, esprit de corps, and creativity had transformed them into an elite fighting unit. As a lasting testimony to its arrival on the world stage, Canada signed the armistice for itself on November 11, equal to Britain and France.

Now, if we only look at WWI as the Canadian epic, we could give a stirring Remembrance Day speech, but we would lose touch with reality. We need to balance our perspective by also seeing the war as a tragedy. In literature, tragedy presents a hero’s progression from happiness to misery, brought on by his tragic flaw. And the important thing is that the hero’s suffering is totally disproportionate to his flaw. In 1914, the tragic flaw that swept Europe was a lethal concoction of militarism and nationalism. The general feeling was well described by Pierre Berton: “war was all dash and color, evoking words like ‘gallantry,’ ‘courage,’ and ‘daring.’ War was men in brilliant costumes galloping about on splendid horses. War was an arm temporarily in a sling.” Now imagine the experience of the Canadians, most of them teenagers, when they were shocked into the reality of war in the trenches of France and Belgium. Of the 420,000 Canadian men in uniform, 60,000 died. And every single death sent waves through a network of human relationships.

The Brooding Soldier - St. Julien, Belgium

As Canadians, we need to see WWI with double vision. It’s a historical fact that the war lifted Canada to prominence on the world stage. For a young nation without any military history, the epic story of Vimy Ridge unified Canada with national pride. Moreover, the story met the human need for meaning in the face of suffering. At the same time, the tragic story brings us to reckon with the human cost. War is horrible, full stop. We must not celebrate Victoria Cross stories alone – we need to remember what war does to people, lest we ever pursue it recklessly.