July 2001
by Barry Stagg
I am not making this up. This week ( May21), Jacobs anchored a so-called congress of five big cities in Winnipeg. Here is her summary of the Winnipeg grand entente as reported in the Globe on May 21:
"Cities and their regions are far and away Canada's chief economic asset, but they are still being treated as country bumpkin villages. The present system makes infants of cities. They are wards, classed with taverns and asylums in terms of provincial responsibilities. This is very demoralizing to cities. It makes them behave like dependants and wheedlers and pleaders. It's ridiculous,"
I must beg to differ. The very idea of the cities of Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary and Winnipeg being downcast and blue over slights by the provinces seems more like poetic justice than political malice.
Of course my attitude, questionable at the best of times, is further blackened against Lady Jane when I look at her CBC Massey Lecture delivered to the cognoscenti some time ago (1979) but conveniently retained on the Internet for my viewing annoyance. There, Jacobs told of the gentle, civilized separation of Norway from Sweden, its colonial possessor. She recalled a chat with a member of the Swedish trade office in Toronto and chose to quote this fellow about the attitude of Swedes to Norwegians: "We make jokes," and he blushed. "The same jokes you tell in Canada about Newfies. "
So Jane Jacobs found a way to say Newfie to an audience of sophisticates while making her points about the problem of Quebec separatism. This speaks volumes about her ideas as far as this country bumpkin is concerned. Her theories about the organic economies of cities seem to be conveniences embraced by mayors with ridiculous designs on being appointed as the brains of these so-called commercial creatures named Toronto, Montreal etc. This seems like central planning with a fancy idea or three to dress up the nasty reality that the hacks from city hall are getting delusional with the tax rolls again.
Perhaps the self-promotional city boys should look at the cautionary essay Bowling Alone written more recently (1995) by American political theorist Robert Putnam. His focus on the decline of civil society in the United States contained this warning about the perils of over planning the lives of poor people: " In some well-known instances, public policy has destroyed highly effective social networks and norms. American slum-clearance policy of the 1950s and 1960s, for example, renovated physical capital, but at a very high cost to existing social capital. "
That Putnam quote reads as Resettlement to me. Just substitute that dangerous Newfoundland word for the equally pregnant American term 'slum-clearance ' and you have the recipe that sent families out of their homes on the whim of Smallwood's grand thinkers. Putnam and Jacobs should hold a debate over this down at the Town Hall in Burgeo. Come to think of it, perhaps they should invite Annie Proulx to be the moderator, just to make it three Americans, if nothing else. Proulx with her Shipping News has mined as much out of Newfoundland culture as any of the comefromaways who bilked Smallwood out of our dollars in the name of modernizing Newfoundland.
With out any doubt, the mayors of the C5 cities should take the boat to Burgeo for this one. I recommend the inside passage for them with a short stop in Grand Bruit along the way from Port aux Basques. There should be plenty of time for Jacobs to answer any questions about "country bumpkin villages". Maybe Jacobs can relate it all to Resettlement. They do not get to that topic much in the cappuccino caves of the Annex.