The 2009 BC Election: Becoming Ontario (A How-To Guide)
Growing up in the rainforested mountainous wilds of Vancouver Island, I would often sit with my friends on David Suzuki’s lap, smoking a fatty and stroking our pet Orca Whale Georgio. Oh how we would revel in our province’s booming tie-dye and gore-tex jacket industries; our adjacent Starbucks on Robson; our ineptitude at keeping our mills and fisheries open and profitable. Those were the Golden Years.
Indeed, there was a time when British Columbians could be counted upon to be the hippie socialists of Canada. My best friend in Grade 2 was Filipino and that was a non-issue in my community. Men were buttfucking up and down Davie St. and nobody cared. BC Elementary schools all decided at precisely the same moment to teach their students “Kumbaya” on the recorder, and that was OK too.
But fast-forward to this election year of 2009, and suddenly things don’t feel so…uh…groovy. The voting public turned out at the lowest rate since 1928; they re-elected a conservative movement that erroneously operates under the label “Liberal”; and they rejected electoral reform because, seriously, a system that drunken Irishmen can figure out is far beyond our intellectual ability. Then again, maybe if the Campbell government hadn’t consistently cut funding to education over the last eight years, our childrens could have learnd good too figger out the Single Transferable Vote.
Sadly, I fear that my beloved province is on the path to becoming—dare I say it—Ontario. In other words, the political equivalent of Ben Affleck. Dull, irrelevant and happy to maintain the status quo as long as there is a never-ending supply of money and clothing from The Gap. Ontarians vote-in anyone who keeps big business running, which in Ontario traditionally means the auto and auto-related industries. That’s what makes it so curious that British Columbians have followed the same strategy in voting-in El Gordo, the man who can be counted upon to protect BC’s primary industry of __________.
What is so tragic about all this is that not too long ago we were Matt Damon: interesting, substantive, talented, and with something meaningful to say to the world. Now I don’t know if we are just pulling a Talented Mister Ripley here, and are impersonating Ontarian tediousness, but the fact is that we are looking more and more Ben Affleck-like by the minute and this latest election has placed us squarely in Reindeer Games territory. BCers are becoming centrist hollow political animals: neither passionately leftist and progressive, nor stupidly rightist and moroni—sorry—Albertan.
It is not yet too late for BC to slap itself in the face and re-discover what made it such a gem in the first place. Environmentalists, Vietnam Draft-Dodgers, Aboriginals, Pacific Rim immigrants, stoners, hippies, outdoorsmen (and women, oh the women) and free-thinkers of all stripes populated the slopes and valleys of BC and created an unparalleled progressive forum for innovation and engaged citizenship. It seems to me that not too long ago we were producing David Suzukis, Emily Carrs, David Lams, Bill Reids and George Bowerings. But now all we can manage is…Seth Rogen?
That’s not fair. I actually like Seth Rogen.
The 2009 election may in the long run be naught more than a blip on the screen, an Ocean’s 12 in an otherwise commendable career. BC is still geographically protected from the inanity that dominates the political culture(s) of the rest of the country. There is certainly still enough time to turn this thing around. But it cannot be forgotten that it is a slippery slope from innovator to conformist, from citizen to consumer, from Damon to Affleck. And shit, folks, BC has a lot of slopes.
Rick Largesse writes for no one and has no impressive resume. He lives in Ottawa with his dog Richard.
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