酷我-北美枫

[ericcoliu]

My Canadian friends and I decided to post a series of articles based on the "through-the-lens" metaphor, one which enables simultaneous explorations of the life-world we live in and of the literary worlds we travel around and ponder over. We hope this dual vision will help broaden our horizon of literary awareness in general and of poetic awareness in particular.

Mr. Barker’s PROPOSAL FOR A FUNDATION FOR PEOPLE’S POETRY is the first strike at our “Literary Wok,” posted at http://www.coviews.com/viewtopic.php?t=35960 . My revised piece about Lu Xun’s conversion to writing is the second one, posted at http://coviews.com/viewtopic.php?t=34623 .


The third strike from Mr. Barker is a review piece which reflects upon the “revolutionary legend” of socialist, public health-care pioneer, poet, and artist, Dr. Norman Bethune in the contexts of Canadian domestic politics, the Canada-China, Canada-U.S. relationship, and People Poetry’s movement. What follows are two excerpts from his 2006 book, Beyond Bethune: People’s Poetry and Milton Acorn’s Metaphor for the Canadian Fate. The first one is a poem entitled Bethuniverse by Mr. Barker’s late friend, Milton Acorn, Canada’s People’s Poet. The second one is an excerpt from section II of Chapter 6: Bethuniverse Revisited.


The Poetic Lens


Poem Lyrics of Bethuniverse by Milton Acorn


Does a man three decades dead walk and make facial expressions
Among us? When we’re shaving do our eyes stray from the mirror
And suddenly in vision’s discarded corner
Do we see his face? Surely there’s a reasonable explanation …

A strong old man gets on the elevator. He
Even has a red sweatshirt -- tam tilted at that old angle.
If I could see his eyes I’d know;
But his eyes are screwed shut
as if in anguish:

Like many eyes -- opening, closing -- record anguish …
One sees him again; in many sizes; at many ages;
Suddenly I realize there are many Bethunes.
From many candidates, fate chooses
Both its victims and its heroes
Often one and the same …
Another necessity, another Canuck, and there could have been
another Bethune.

So many of us live in anguish
Because we were spared his anguish …

Let there be a Bethune Oath
Improving on that of Hippocrates
To make curing to routine but wars against disease;
Strengthen health, increase and lead it
Into all which must be done, all which must be felt, meant and seen.

What are we doing? Brave Canucks:
After four hundred years still a colony?
Supplying the basic armstuffs
To conquer a world which includes us?
Since one of us swerve time from its course
There’s been no rest.
Why call it peace?



Section II of Chapter 6: Bethuniverse Revisited by Terry Barker


Like many urban Canadians, I periodically like to return to my roots (both real and imagined) in the hinterland. For me, this means Gravenhurst, Muskoka, about 100 miles north of Toronto, where my mother took me as a child when she emigrated from Britain in 1952. This town, laid out in casual fashion among the lakes, rocks, and trees of the hard, but good, Canadian Shield, is, as they say, to me “forever Canada.”

It also happens to be the birthplace of the internationally known revolutionary socialist, public health-care pioneer, poet, and artist, Dr. Norman Bethune, and the site (at his family’s former home) of the Bethune Memorial House and Museum which, over the last thirty years, has become virtually a shrine to millions of people in China.

Of course, passing the house every day on my way to school, or playing next door in the home of a friend (that is now the Bethune Hose Visitor Centre), I had no notion of what the house, or Gravenhurst, were to become. In those days, the house was the United Church ministry’s manse and Gravenhurst was a two-industry town (railway and Rubberset Brushes Ltd.); or perhaps, three-industry, for in the summer it was full (or so it seemed to me) of American tourists.

But all this has changed. And August 30, 1996, marked that change in a quite dramatic way. For on that day, Parks Canada, which manages Bethune House, recreated their 1976 opening of this memorial to, and exhibition of, the life and works of a once-ignored Gravenhurstian, now considered to be a national her (albeit still a somewhat controversial one). Present were Bethune’s niece, Mrs. Betty Cornell, the Spanish and Chinese Consults-General, and the Chinese Ambassador (Bethune provided innovative front-line medical aid to the forces fighting Franco in the Spanish Civil War and he died assisting Mao Zedong’s Eighth Route Army in their fight against the Japanese in 1939).

The events of August 30 were part of a continuing effort to bring the life and work of Bethune to a wider public, and to meet the challenge of government funding cutbacks. However, these newest circumstances have perhaps catapulted Bethune, even in death, into a further complex of controversy.

For, as Maryellen Corcelli, the director of visitor activities at Bethune House explained to me, its administrators have been forced by the new fiscal realities to develop a marketing plan, with several areas of focus, including a scheme to encourage sponsorships and partnerships by business and industry. Included among the latter is the possibility, currently being explored, of a partnership with a small Canadian pharmaceutical company. This would entail the marketing of medicines carrying the Bethune House logo in China. As Ms. Corcelli put it, “It seems to be a natural fit; the tie-in between Canada’s medical hero and medical companies.”

I’m not sure what Bethune, an extremely sharp critic of the medical establishment and industry of his day, would have thought of this. As a believer in the uncertainties of the “dialectical” interpretation of history, and a student of the anomalistic style of Surrealist founder Andrè Breton, Bethune certainly would have been prepared for some surprises. But the greatest surprise, could he have seen it, might not have been the linking of his name with capitalist enterprises exporting to China, or even the shape of modern China itself, but the emerging character of his hometown, led by the metamorphosis of the house of his birth.

For the age of Norman Bethune’s childhood in Gravenhurst is being revived; and this is occurring as the age of my childhood there dies. Rubberset Brushes, an American branch-plant established in the early 1920s, closed a few years ago, a victim of continentalist consolidation and Free Trade. The railway has gradually faded, and the troops of American tourists come no more. As these mainstays have disappeared, the lumbering and lake navigation town of Bethune’s boyhood has been resurrected as a new economic and spiritual focus. As Ms. Corcelli expresses it (referring to the town, with Bethune House as its dynamic core), “We’re revitalizing by looking backwards.”

Now “uptown,” where once Sloan’s Restaurant (with booths and bakery, 1950s-style) and the playhouse and movie theatre were the main attractions, large outdoor murals depicting Gravenhurst and Muskoka’s lumbering and navigation days at the end of the nineteenth century grace the walls of prominent buildings, many of the stores have a decidedly “arts and crafts” atmosphere, and Sloan’s has become Logiammers. The railway/bus station has a “Heritage Lunchroom” where travelers can enjoy history along with healthy homemade food. And, most impressive of all, Muskoka Wharf, the starting-point for the steamboats that once plied the Muskoka Lakes, long abandoned and rotting, has been recreated as Sagamo Park, with government dock, marine museum, art gallery, children’s playground, cruises on the refurbished steamer Segwun and motorized yacht Wanda, “Boathouseburgers,” and great Polish sausage.

The “jewel in the crown” of this new/old Gravenhurst is Bethune House, however. On tree-lined John Street, near the old Brown’s Beverages bottling plant (where I used to hitch rides around the lakes with the pop-truck drivers as a child), the house has been restored, as closely as possible, to its appearance in Bethune’s day. Furnished in the style of a late-nineteenth-century Presbyterian minister’s home, with many Bethune family mementoes, and extensive displays of historical materials related to Bethune’s life and career, the house can be explored with a well-informed guide for a small admission fee. The Visitor Centre has more displays, literature, and souvenirs (in the Gift Shop run by “The Friends of Bethune House”). It also has a viewing room where once can see a reproduction of one of Bethune’s murals and watch fascinating historical footage of Bethune’s life and times.

Since 1972, when, because of changes in international politics, the Ontario government began the process of rescuing Bethune from obscurity and putting his birthplace “on the map,” I have revisited not just the house, but what the late Canadian People’s Poet, Milton Acorn, called “Bethuniverse,” or the social and political association surrounding the life of this man (the “legend,” if you like), a number of times. In 1996, the following lines by Acorn came to mind:

Suddenly I realize there are many Bethunes.
From many candidates, fate chooses
Both its victims and its heroes
Often one and the same… (Acorn, 1973, p. 9)

The formal part of the commemorative event on August 30, 1996 was short: an hour of five-minute speeches of praise and good wishes by administrators, special guests, and the mayor and local politicians. The most substantive announcement was made by federal M.P. (for Parry Sound-Muskoka) Andy Mitchell, representing the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Sheila Copps; namely, that Bethune House had that day been designated a national historic site (in advance of the planned October date), a rare distinction in this country. Perhaps this declaration was not too much of a surprise to those gathered at the house that Friday afternoon, as less than a week earlier Prime Minister Chrétien had visited Bethune House and rededicated the Wanda at Sagamo Park. Had Canada’s great revolutionary socialist hero (or villain, depending upon your point of view) of the 1930s through the 1960s now joined the pantheon of Canada’s great liberal-capitalist heroes? A sort of “Mackenzie King in a hurry”?

Of course, the truth is bound to be not quite that simple. The Canada-China link, and the Canada-U.S. relationship, have both undergone metamorphoses since the time of Bethune and, for that matter, since the time of the Social Gospel mission of James Endicott and Robert McClure, with its concern to “serve the people” in company with Chinese socialism. What is the nature of the new “Bethuniverse” that seems to be being formulated at the global intersection of “market socialism” and corporation capitalism?

The day following the ceremony at Gravenhurst the business section of the weekend edition of The Globe and Mail carried a small item which offers a clue. It noted that MDS Health Group Ltd. of Toronto had signed a multi-million dollar joint venture agreement with the Chinese government to set up a drug research facility in Beijing, Scientific China Incorporated. In the Globe piece, Edward Rygiel, vice-president of corporate development for MDS was quoted as saying:

In the joint venture, we are creating the infrastructure and services that are necessary for multinational pharmaceutical companies to utilize in order to get registration of their drugs in China. (Rygiel, 1996)

Wilma Jacobs, in charge of corporate communications at MDS, was able to provide further details concerning the deal. Scientific China incorporated was set up three years ago to negotiate an agreement with the Chinese government. According to Ms. Jacobs, it is “U.S. –based” and its managers are “retired executives from American pharmaceutical companies.” A recent MDS acquisition, Harris Laboratories, was chosen to “carry” the joint venture and, as Bob Schlegel, chairman of SCI explained, “We needed MDS to help us become a major player.”

In the “pitch article” accompanying the MDS press release, “Canadian Expertise Helping With Monumental Task in China,” it is made clear that MDS thinks of itself as “the first multinational” to enter into a fully cooperative arrangement with the Chinese government in this area by providing “clinical research services,” rather than just “supplying the Chinese market with existing pharmaceutical products.” Is there an echo here of “Bethuniverse,” alchemically transformed?

The Gravenhurst town council has voted to raise a statue to Bethune, but what will the image be? For as Milton Acorn suggested, there are indeed now “many Bethunes.” Will it be the Red Bethune of the Communists, the pink Bethune of the liberal humanitarians (and the movies), or perhaps the “Red Tory” Bethune of other commentators? Or maybe it will be none of these heroes, but a victim more expressive of Bethuniverse’s fate.



Terry Barker studied political theory at McMaster and Oxford Universities. He currently teaches Humanities at Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Toronto, and Canadian studies and Ethnics in a Market Economy at the Business School of Humber in the Ningbo, China Program. He is the author of two collections of essays on the People's Poetry tradition, After Acorn (Mekler and Deahl, Hamilton and Pittsburgh, 1999) and Beyond Bethune (Synaxis Press, Dewdney, British Columbia, 2006). He is currently working on a sequel volume, Continuing Chesterton.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

My Canadian friends and I decided to post a series of articles based on the "through-the-lens" metaphor, one which enables simultaneous explorations of the life-world we live in and of the literary worlds we travel around and ponder over. We hope this dual vision will help broaden our horizon of literary awareness in general and of poetic awareness in particular.

Mr. Barker’s PROPOSAL FOR A FUNDATION FOR PEOPLE’S POETRY is the first strike at our “Literary Wok,” posted at http://www.coviews.com/viewtopic.php?t=35960 . My revised piece about Lu Xun’s conversion to writing is the second one, posted at http://coviews.com/viewtopic.php?t=34623 .


The third strike from Mr. Barker is a review piece which reflects upon the “revolutionary legend” of socialist, public health-care pioneer, poet, and artist, Dr. Norman Bethune in the contexts of Canadian domestic politics, the Canada-China, Canada-U.S. relationship, and People Poetry’s movement. What follows are two excerpts from his 2006 book, Beyond Bethune: People’s Poetry and Milton Acorn’s Metaphor for the Canadian Fate. The first one is a poem entitled Bethuniverse by Mr. Barker’s late friend, Milton Acorn, Canada’s People’s Poet. The second one is an excerpt from section II of Chapter 6: Bethuniverse Revisited.


The Poetic Lens


Poem Lyrics of Bethuniverse by Milton Acorn


Does a man three decades dead walk and make facial expressions
Among us? When we’re shaving do our eyes stray from the mirror
And suddenly in vision’s discarded corner
Do we see his face? Surely there’s a reasonable explanation …

A strong old man gets on the elevator. He
Even has a red sweatshirt -- tam tilted at that old angle.
If I could see his eyes I’d know;
But his eyes are screwed shut
as if in anguish:

Like many eyes -- opening, closing -- record anguish …
One sees him again; in many sizes; at many ages;
Suddenly I realize there are many Bethunes.
From many candidates, fate chooses
Both its victims and its heroes
Often one and the same …
Another necessity, another Canuck, and there could have been
another Bethune.

So many of us live in anguish
Because we were spared his anguish …

Let there be a Bethune Oath
Improving on that of Hippocrates
To make curing to routine but wars against disease;
Strengthen health, increase and lead it
Into all which must be done, all which must be felt, meant and seen.

What are we doing? Brave Canucks:
After four hundred years still a colony?
Supplying the basic armstuffs
To conquer a world which includes us?
Since one of us swerve time from its course
There’s been no rest.
Why call it peace?



Section II of Chapter 6: Bethuniverse Revisited by Terry Barker


Like many urban Canadians, I periodically like to return to my roots (both real and imagined) in the hinterland. For me, this means Gravenhurst, Muskoka, about 100 miles north of Toronto, where my mother took me as a child when she emigrated from Britain in 1952. This town, laid out in casual fashion among the lakes, rocks, and trees of the hard, but good, Canadian Shield, is, as they say, to me “forever Canada.”

It also happens to be the birthplace of the internationally known revolutionary socialist, public health-care pioneer, poet, and artist, Dr. Norman Bethune, and the site (at his family’s former home) of the Bethune Memorial House and Museum which, over the last thirty years, has become virtually a shrine to millions of people in China.

Of course, passing the house every day on my way to school, or playing next door in the home of a friend (that is now the Bethune Hose Visitor Centre), I had no notion of what the house, or Gravenhurst, were to become. In those days, the house was the United Church ministry’s manse and Gravenhurst was a two-industry town (railway and Rubberset Brushes Ltd.); or perhaps, three-industry, for in the summer it was full (or so it seemed to me) of American tourists.

But all this has changed. And August 30, 1996, marked that change in a quite dramatic way. For on that day, Parks Canada, which manages Bethune House, recreated their 1976 opening of this memorial to, and exhibition of, the life and works of a once-ignored Gravenhurstian, now considered to be a national her (albeit still a somewhat controversial one). Present were Bethune’s niece, Mrs. Betty Cornell, the Spanish and Chinese Consults-General, and the Chinese Ambassador (Bethune provided innovative front-line medical aid to the forces fighting Franco in the Spanish Civil War and he died assisting Mao Zedong’s Eighth Route Army in their fight against the Japanese in 1939).

The events of August 30 were part of a continuing effort to bring the life and work of Bethune to a wider public, and to meet the challenge of government funding cutbacks. However, these newest circumstances have perhaps catapulted Bethune, even in death, into a further complex of controversy.

For, as Maryellen Corcelli, the director of visitor activities at Bethune House explained to me, its administrators have been forced by the new fiscal realities to develop a marketing plan, with several areas of focus, including a scheme to encourage sponsorships and partnerships by business and industry. Included among the latter is the possibility, currently being explored, of a partnership with a small Canadian pharmaceutical company. This would entail the marketing of medicines carrying the Bethune House logo in China. As Ms. Corcelli put it, “It seems to be a natural fit; the tie-in between Canada’s medical hero and medical companies.”

I’m not sure what Bethune, an extremely sharp critic of the medical establishment and industry of his day, would have thought of this. As a believer in the uncertainties of the “dialectical” interpretation of history, and a student of the anomalistic style of Surrealist founder Andrè Breton, Bethune certainly would have been prepared for some surprises. But the greatest surprise, could he have seen it, might not have been the linking of his name with capitalist enterprises exporting to China, or even the shape of modern China itself, but the emerging character of his hometown, led by the metamorphosis of the house of his birth.

For the age of Norman Bethune’s childhood in Gravenhurst is being revived; and this is occurring as the age of my childhood there dies. Rubberset Brushes, an American branch-plant established in the early 1920s, closed a few years ago, a victim of continentalist consolidation and Free Trade. The railway has gradually faded, and the troops of American tourists come no more. As these mainstays have disappeared, the lumbering and lake navigation town of Bethune’s boyhood has been resurrected as a new economic and spiritual focus. As Ms. Corcelli expresses it (referring to the town, with Bethune House as its dynamic core), “We’re revitalizing by looking backwards.”

Now “uptown,” where once Sloan’s Restaurant (with booths and bakery, 1950s-style) and the playhouse and movie theatre were the main attractions, large outdoor murals depicting Gravenhurst and Muskoka’s lumbering and navigation days at the end of the nineteenth century grace the walls of prominent buildings, many of the stores have a decidedly “arts and crafts” atmosphere, and Sloan’s has become Logiammers. The railway/bus station has a “Heritage Lunchroom” where travelers can enjoy history along with healthy homemade food. And, most impressive of all, Muskoka Wharf, the starting-point for the steamboats that once plied the Muskoka Lakes, long abandoned and rotting, has been recreated as Sagamo Park, with government dock, marine museum, art gallery, children’s playground, cruises on the refurbished steamer Segwun and motorized yacht Wanda, “Boathouseburgers,” and great Polish sausage.

The “jewel in the crown” of this new/old Gravenhurst is Bethune House, however. On tree-lined John Street, near the old Brown’s Beverages bottling plant (where I used to hitch rides around the lakes with the pop-truck drivers as a child), the house has been restored, as closely as possible, to its appearance in Bethune’s day. Furnished in the style of a late-nineteenth-century Presbyterian minister’s home, with many Bethune family mementoes, and extensive displays of historical materials related to Bethune’s life and career, the house can be explored with a well-informed guide for a small admission fee. The Visitor Centre has more displays, literature, and souvenirs (in the Gift Shop run by “The Friends of Bethune House”). It also has a viewing room where once can see a reproduction of one of Bethune’s murals and watch fascinating historical footage of Bethune’s life and times.

Since 1972, when, because of changes in international politics, the Ontario government began the process of rescuing Bethune from obscurity and putting his birthplace “on the map,” I have revisited not just the house, but what the late Canadian People’s Poet, Milton Acorn, called “Bethuniverse,” or the social and political association surrounding the life of this man (the “legend,” if you like), a number of times. In 1996, the following lines by Acorn came to mind:

Suddenly I realize there are many Bethunes.
From many candidates, fate chooses
Both its victims and its heroes
Often one and the same… (Acorn, 1973, p. 9)

The formal part of the commemorative event on August 30, 1996 was short: an hour of five-minute speeches of praise and good wishes by administrators, special guests, and the mayor and local politicians. The most substantive announcement was made by federal M.P. (for Parry Sound-Muskoka) Andy Mitchell, representing the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Sheila Copps; namely, that Bethune House had that day been designated a national historic site (in advance of the planned October date), a rare distinction in this country. Perhaps this declaration was not too much of a surprise to those gathered at the house that Friday afternoon, as less than a week earlier Prime Minister Chrétien had visited Bethune House and rededicated the Wanda at Sagamo Park. Had Canada’s great revolutionary socialist hero (or villain, depending upon your point of view) of the 1930s through the 1960s now joined the pantheon of Canada’s great liberal-capitalist heroes? A sort of “Mackenzie King in a hurry”?

Of course, the truth is bound to be not quite that simple. The Canada-China link, and the Canada-U.S. relationship, have both undergone metamorphoses since the time of Bethune and, for that matter, since the time of the Social Gospel mission of James Endicott and Robert McClure, with its concern to “serve the people” in company with Chinese socialism. What is the nature of the new “Bethuniverse” that seems to be being formulated at the global intersection of “market socialism” and corporation capitalism?

The day following the ceremony at Gravenhurst the business section of the weekend edition of The Globe and Mail carried a small item which offers a clue. It noted that MDS Health Group Ltd. of Toronto had signed a multi-million dollar joint venture agreement with the Chinese government to set up a drug research facility in Beijing, Scientific China Incorporated. In the Globe piece, Edward Rygiel, vice-president of corporate development for MDS was quoted as saying:

In the joint venture, we are creating the infrastructure and services that are necessary for multinational pharmaceutical companies to utilize in order to get registration of their drugs in China. (Rygiel, 1996)

Wilma Jacobs, in charge of corporate communications at MDS, was able to provide further details concerning the deal. Scientific China incorporated was set up three years ago to negotiate an agreement with the Chinese government. According to Ms. Jacobs, it is “U.S. –based” and its managers are “retired executives from American pharmaceutical companies.” A recent MDS acquisition, Harris Laboratories, was chosen to “carry” the joint venture and, as Bob Schlegel, chairman of SCI explained, “We needed MDS to help us become a major player.”

In the “pitch article” accompanying the MDS press release, “Canadian Expertise Helping With Monumental Task in China,” it is made clear that MDS thinks of itself as “the first multinational” to enter into a fully cooperative arrangement with the Chinese government in this area by providing “clinical research services,” rather than just “supplying the Chinese market with existing pharmaceutical products.” Is there an echo here of “Bethuniverse,” alchemically transformed?

The Gravenhurst town council has voted to raise a statue to Bethune, but what will the image be? For as Milton Acorn suggested, there are indeed now “many Bethunes.” Will it be the Red Bethune of the Communists, the pink Bethune of the liberal humanitarians (and the movies), or perhaps the “Red Tory” Bethune of other commentators? Or maybe it will be none of these heroes, but a victim more expressive of Bethuniverse’s fate.



Terry Barker studied political theory at McMaster and Oxford Universities. He currently teaches Humanities at Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Toronto, and Canadian studies and Ethnics in a Market Economy at the Business School of Humber in the Ningbo, China Program. He is the author of two collections of essays on the People's Poetry tradition, After Acorn (Mekler and Deahl, Hamilton and Pittsburgh, 1999) and Beyond Bethune (Synaxis Press, Dewdney, British Columbia, 2006). He is currently working on a sequel volume, Continuing Chesterton.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[anna]

Thank Eric for posting Terry's work.

He will be very glad to share his view with many Chinese.
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[[星子安娜]]

Thank Eric for posting Terry's work.

He will be very glad to share his view with many Chinese.
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]

[ericcoliu]

Milton Acorn's Bethuniverse is one of the epigraphs for Mr. Barker's book, Beyond Bethune: People’s Poetry and Milton Acorn’s Metaphor for the Canadian Fate. Mr. Barker chose this poem from Acorn’s poetry book, More Poems For People, a poetry book which was dedicated to Canadian poet Dorothy Livesay and which was consciously living out of People’s Poetry tradition that Dorothy Livesay was committed to and grounded in.

"I suppose all my life I have fought against obscurantism! For me the true intellectual is a simple person who knows how to be close to nature and to ordinary people. I tend to therefore shy away from academic poets and academic critics. They miss the essence."

-- Dorothy Livesay

"Dorothy Livesay began in this book[Poems for People] in the tradition of Canadian poets who dedicated their poems and their lives to the working class."

--Milton Acorn
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

Milton Acorn's Bethuniverse is one of the epigraphs for Mr. Barker's book, Beyond Bethune: People’s Poetry and Milton Acorn’s Metaphor for the Canadian Fate. Mr. Barker chose this poem from Acorn’s poetry book, More Poems For People, a poetry book which was dedicated to Canadian poet Dorothy Livesay and which was consciously living out of People’s Poetry tradition that Dorothy Livesay was committed to and grounded in.

"I suppose all my life I have fought against obscurantism! For me the true intellectual is a simple person who knows how to be close to nature and to ordinary people. I tend to therefore shy away from academic poets and academic critics. They miss the essence."

-- Dorothy Livesay

"Dorothy Livesay began in this book[Poems for People] in the tradition of Canadian poets who dedicated their poems and their lives to the working class."

--Milton Acorn
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[christine]

Milton Acorn wrote:

Does a man three decades dead walk and make facial expressions
Among us? When we’re shaving do our eyes stray from the mirror
And suddenly in vision’s discarded corner
Do we see his face? Surely there’s a reasonable explanation …

From a Canadian perspective, what's a reasonable explanation for the Chinese adored hero "three decades dead walking and making facial expressions among us?"

[[christine]]

Milton Acorn wrote:

Does a man three decades dead walk and make facial expressions
Among us? When we’re shaving do our eyes stray from the mirror
And suddenly in vision’s discarded corner
Do we see his face? Surely there’s a reasonable explanation …

From a Canadian perspective, what's a reasonable explanation for the Chinese adored hero "three decades dead walking and making facial expressions among us?"

[dundas]

[[dundas]]

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]

[dundas]

[[dundas]]

[christine]

On CBC Archives, there is a compiled program, 'Comrade' Bethune: A Controversial Hero posted at http://archives.radio-canada.ca/IDD-1-74-1345/people/bethune/ , which includes nine audio clips. After having finished listening the whole program, I got a more nuanced undersanding of Norman Bethune in the Canadian context.

[[christine]]

On CBC Archives, there is a compiled program, 'Comrade' Bethune: A Controversial Hero posted at http://archives.radio-canada.ca/IDD-1-74-1345/people/bethune/ , which includes nine audio clips. After having finished listening the whole program, I got a more nuanced undersanding of Norman Bethune in the Canadian context.

[星子]

Thanks for sharing.

When we visited his hometown and watched the viedo of his story, we knew how different we viewed from Canadians
_________________

[[ANNA]]

Thanks for sharing.

When we visited his hometown and watched the viedo of his story, we knew how different we viewed from Canadians
_________________