Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord pondereth the hearts. —Proverbs 21:2

Charlie Chaplin’s The Immigrant, Thomas Ospital, Maison Symphonique, 23 March 2024

It is high time that we address the problem of certain immigrants to Quebec, as it appears that Mr. Trudeau seems powerless to do so.

I’m not talking about asylum-seekers or people displaced by war and conflict beyond their control. I’m talking about those who come here unwilling to adapt to our culture, to speak our language, who feel entitled to access our services, our schools, our hospitals, our courts, without so much as a thank you.

I’m talking about immigrants who expect Quebec to bend to their way of life, rather than the other way around, immigrants who refuse to integrate and get along. We should return these ill-informed, ignorant, ass-backward people forthwith and en masse by the busload to the shithole country they come from.

I’m talking, of course, about Americans.

Nadah El Shazly, with Saudade, Centre PHI, 21 March 2024

Immigrants built Canada. Yet, it’s not the immigrants that we typically think of.

The English, the French, and the Dutch colonized Canada by robbing it from Indigenous folks. But the Irish, the Scottish, Italians, Chinese, Ukrainians, Poles, the diaspora of Jews, and Arabs did most of the heavy lifting.

We bought stolen land, and upon it, built a nation. We are the cultural mosaic that Trudeau Sr. spoke of when he spoke of multiculturalism. We are Canada.

Future generations of immigrants will look back on us to see how well, or poorly, we welcomed them. How will they remember us?

The Things We Cannot See, SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art, 22 March – 11 May 2024

I am in love with the silence of the image. The world can be a noisy place, and cities, especially, are brimming with cacophony. Sirens. Horns. Loudspeakers. Busses, trucks, and cars with booming stereos. People shouting in every language. Even our own minds are almost always filled with the din of a thousand simultaneous thoughts.

When I find myself before an image, the first thing I notice is its silent fury. Images don’t need to speak. They say everything they need to say simply by way of exhibition. There is a profound honesty in the ability to communicate without words, to show rather than tell, to implant an idea as if by telepathy. Images broadcast on another frequency.

Janet Werner, Spiders and Snakes, Bradley Ertaskiran, 21 March – 4 May 2024

When I interviewed Janet Werner for NicheMTL back in December 2022, I thought that her work was about juxtaposing two images against one another or cutting an image in two and rejoining the splice. But it has evolved to represent the entirety of its mediumicity: the tape that holds two images together; the canvas folded over on itself. It’s as if the artist has once again taken a step back and incorporated herself viewing her own distorted images.

There is still a sense of violence to Werner’s new body of work. But in this collection of recent paintings, what comes into focus is an artist at peace with her risky vision. Werner has achieved a new plateau of confidence in her signature schtick, which takes it beyond a gimmick and into the realm of a bona fide post-modern art vernacular. It is both refreshing and challenging to witness an artist progress in real time. It forces the viewer to progress, too.

The Right Honourable Brian Mulroney (20 March 1939 – 29 February 2024)

An old adage espouses that if you’re not a radical in youth, you have no heart. But if you’re not a conservative as you come of age, you have no wisdom.

The late former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney introduced some deeply unpopular initiatives during his tenure, not least of which was the Goods and Services sales tax, otherwise known as the GST.

In 1991, when the GST came into effect, many Canadians saw it as a grab for cash, punishing citizens for spending their hard-earned money. But it was also necessary to come up with some sort of innovative revenue stream to fund government operations, one that would stimulate the domestic economy while keeping Canada competitive in an increasingly global marketplace.

Nobody likes taxes. But taxing people on what they spend rather than what they earn is a smart and fiscally conservative manner of doing both of those things, and Mr. Mulroney possessed the foresight to enact this particular tax and do it at the tail-end of his time as Prime Minister, effectively falling on his own sword for the sake of our nation’s future.

Brian Mulroney understood that good leadership is about service — a concept that seems lost on today’s politicians who are more concerned with their immediate public image than with long-term priorities that will outlive their political careers. Canada is in desperate need of a return to Mulroney’s brand of conservative wisdom.

It is not every day that you have the opportunity to pay your respects to a former Prime Minister. So, I braved the unseasonably bitter wind last Thursday and stopped for a moment at St. Patrick’s Basilica, where Mr. Mulroney was lying in state.

I wasn’t anticipating his family to be there greeting the public. But there they were, welcoming fellow mourners with gratitude and grace. Feeling a bit nervous in the presence of such a public figure, I shook Mila Mulroney’s hand and recited the usual formal niceties — that I was sorry for her loss.

Unexpectedly, Mrs. Mulroney held onto my hand for quite a while and spoke to me directly, thanking me for taking the time to come. And I realized that this was not just a formality for her. So, I told her that her husband was a good man who served our country with honour and dignity and thanked her and her children for their commitment to him.

Their commitment to him enabled his commitment to us.◼︎

_{Cover image: Janet Werner}