O•S•C•A•R© Fida's Pizza Changes Hands - Old Ottawa South

MAY 2010
By Mary Anne Thompson
The wider world has discovered
what a gem Old Ottawa South
possesses as The Mayfair
Theatre hosted most of the 2010 Spring
Edition of the Ottawa International
Writers Festival.
The opening day, Earth Day, began
with a discussion of the movement
toward local food with Sarah Elton,
author of Locavore: How Canadians
are Changing the Way We Eat. She
discussed the need to understand the
true cost of the industrial food system
we have been supporting for more
than 50 years. She also highlighted
the difference between organic and
sustainable farm practices. To counter
the critics who say that local food is an
elitist movement for the wealthy, Sarah
spoke of the many local initiatives
across Canada working to provide local
food at low costs, with some programs
for Food Banks. She underlined the
need for the creation of infrastructures
to link growers and consumers.
The OSCAR - OUR 37 th YEAR Page 41
The Mayfair Theatre Hosts Ottawa International Writers’ Festival
Jeff Rubin, former Chief
Economist and Chief Strategist at CIBC
World Markets and author of Oil and
the End of Globalization, spoke with
some urgency about the soon to come
high oil prices. He pointed out that our
life style of cheap goods is maintained
by cheap labour costs in China and
other countries and this is propped by
cheap transportation, aka oil, costs. A
staggering 90% of all oil sold is used in
transportation -- plane, ship, truck, and
cars. Even while the sale and use of
cars is falling in North America, sales
are rising rapidly in China and India.
As the world is running out of cheap
oil the appetite for it is rising.
Rubin argued that as the price of
oil rises we will have to change and that
might not be such a bad thing. As an
example, we now ship raw materials,
like iron ore from Brazil, to China,
where cheap labour makes steel, which
is then shipped back across the world
to North American markets. Rising
oil costs from expensive methods of
extraction like the tar sands and ocean
Pearls of the Antilles ... Cont’d from previous page
reading on their capabilities. Year after
year, I struggled to get the “experts”
to envision my daughters’ brains as
a place filled with lightbulbs, not yet
turned on. I explained that it was all our
responsibility to inspire, to find all the
ways and means to turn on the lights,
not to label or to limit them. It was so
frustrating.
The “authorities” tried hard to
pigeonhole the older of the two sisters,
No learning disability could be found.
Six years of starvation doesn’t go
unnoticed. I wanted to scream, “Don’t
use that fact to limit her potential, the
potential that we do not know.”
The lightbulbs eventually turned
on. And lit up the immediate world
around them, in so many ways I cannot
count the colours.
They not only survived. They
flourished.
A year or so after our family
doubled, we all went to a Haitian art
exhibit at Les Beaux Arts in Montreal.
I was not prepared for the drama that
occurred when my Haitian daughters
saw the paintings. The subject was
voodoo.
Both girls became so excited,
pointing at the “houngan,” shrieking
and giggling nervously. They looked
frightened. Then they danced around
each other just like the people in the
picture were dancing in circles. And
they sang in Creole.
On a couple of occasions when
I had to deny the youngest sister an
unreasonable request, she rolled her
eyes back, stared hard at me, pointing
two fingers in a V straight at me. Hex!
Voodoo clearly was part of their
life.
As time passed, the older sister
gradually let go of her feeling of
responsibility for looking after her small
sister, who had been in her exclusive
care for two years. First, she alerted
me, and waited to see if I would take
care of the requests, all the little needs,
untied shoelaces, unbuttoned sweaters,
wet beds, hunger, tiredness, tears and
“hexs.”
One day, near the end of the first
year in Canada, all the girls were playing
together and having a little tussle. Baby
sister had snatched the tea party away
from the others. “I hate you!” said the
older sister. I could hardly believe my
ears. Most mothers would be horrified
to hear these words. But I sent up
a “Hallelujah” in thanks for such a
normal sentiment coming from a sixand-a-half
year old “little mother”
who had finally become able to just
be a child, playing, getting angry and
not concerned for every moment-tomoment
need of her sister.
It’s amazing how much the human
body can endure. It’s amazing how
well it can heal. Wounded hearts and
spirits, not always as straightforward
or complete.
Today, I see that my children have
created fulfilling lives. Not always
easy. But rich. They have big hearts
and are very much alive.
floors will return manufacturing to
North America. This will change our
travel habits, the distances we drive,
and where we live and the way we
organize our homes. Rising oil prices
will also impact the food we eat:
buying local will not only be healthier
but cheaper than imported food.
To make the future playing field
fair, Rubin insists that China must have
the same carbon penalties that western
producers might face, otherwise China
would be able to greatly increase its
dependence on dirty coal and keep their
costs relatively low, thus competing
unfairly with a carbon taxed west.
Joe Laur, the last speaker of the
first day and one of the authors of
The Necessary Revolution, repeated
once again that the status quo was
unsustainable. In order to change he
said that we need to change the way
we think. Right now, we have a worldview,
or paradigm, where the economy
encompasses everything else, including
society and the environment. In order to
usher in change, we need to have a more
rational view where the environment
encompasses the economy and society.
Without the environment there is
no society and no economy. Laur
is involved in programs to usher in
infrastructures in the US that would
see the reuse of everything that is
produced. As Laur asked, when we
throw something away – where is
‘away’?
Saturday’s event included Harvey
Cashore with his book, The Truth
Shows Up, a presentation of his fifteen
year voyage investigating the links
between Brian Mulroney, Airbus and
Karlheinz Schreiber and the media’s
complicity in keeping it secret.
On Saturday afternoon, The
Mayfair Theatre was completely full
of people listening to Andrew Potter,
author of The Rebel Sell, who presented
his views on authenticity from his new
book The Authenticity Hoax: How We
Get Lost Finding Ourselves.
There are more events scheduled
at The Mayfair Theatre as part of the
Post Festival Special Events. Go to
writersfestival.org for complete details.
OSCAR invites readers who
attended any part of the Writers’ Festival
to submit to oscar@oldottawasouth.ca
your discussion, reviews or comments
on any of the speakers, their topics or
their publications. The deadline for the
June issue of OSCAR is May 14.
Tell OSCAR Readers
about your travel
or your interests.
Send text and photos to
oscar@oldottawasouth.ca