Letter to Harper

To Stephen Harper,
Prime Minister of Canada,
A book from an Island rev­o­lu­tion­ary,
From a Canadian writer,
With best wishes,
Yann Martel

Dear Mr. Harper,

Growing up, I was aware of the title that was pop­u­larly given to Milton Acorn: the Peoples’ Poet. I assumed that this was because his poetry was down-to-earth, the lan­guage plain, the mean­ing reach­ing into the acces­si­ble depths of com­mon expe­rience. What I hadn’t real­ized until much later was that the People’s Poet also had a polit­i­cal edge. That edge is made abun­dantly clear in the book that accom­pa­nies this let­ter, Acorn’s The Island Means Minago, a var­ied col­lec­tion of poems, per­sonal essays and short plays. If you turn to the last pages of the book, you will find infor­ma­tion on the publisher:

 

nc Press is the Canadian Liberation pub­lisher. It is truly a people’s pub­lish­ing house, dis­trib­ut­ing books on the strug­gle for national inde­pen­dence and social­ism in Canada and through­out the world.

 

On the next page, towards the bot­tom, there’s also the fol­low­ing information:

 

nc Press is the largest Canadian dis­trib­u­tor of books, peri­od­i­cals, and records from the People’s Republic of China.

 

An address is given for the orga­ni­za­tion behind both nc Press and its com­pan­ion news­pa­per, New Canada:

 

Canadian Liberation Movement
Box 41, Station E, Toronto 4, Ontario

 

Was a rev­o­lu­tion­ary Canada ever a real pos­si­bil­ity? Well, some peo­ple, way back in 1975, thought it was. Since then, I imag­ine the Canadian Liberation Movement has van­ished, at least for­mally under that name, or if it still exists, that Box 41 is a peep­hole onto a lonely place.

 

But any rev­o­lu­tion that uses poetry as one of its weapons has at least one cor­rect thing going for it: the knowl­edge that artis­tic expres­sion is cen­tral to who and how a peo­ple are. I won­der if the Fraser Institute has ever thought of pub­lish­ing poetry to make its point, and if it hasn’t, why not?

 

The por­trait that Milton Acorn draws of Prince Edward Island, his native province, will likely be unfa­mil­iar to you, as will be his read­ing of Canadian his­tory. Let that be a reminder to you that the past is one thing, but what we make of it, the con­clu­sions we draw, is another. History can be many things, depend­ing on how we read it, just as the future can be many things, depend­ing on how we live it. There is no inevitabil­ity to any his­tor­i­cal occur­rence, only what peo­ple will allow to take place. And it is by dream­ing first that we get to new real­i­ties. Hence the need for poets.

 

So Milton Acorn was, of neces­sity as a poet, a dreamer (a tough one, mind you). He dreamt of a Canada that would be bet­ter, fairer, freer. He could not abide what he felt were the American shack­les of cap­i­tal­ism and eco­nomic colo­nial­ism that held us down. He was an Island rev­o­lu­tion­ary. One might be inclined to smile at the extent to which some people’s dreams are delu­sions. But bet­ter to dream than just to endure. Better to be bold than just to be told. Better to imag­ine many real­i­ties and fight for the one that seems best than just to shrug and retreat fur­ther into oneself.

 

The Island Means Minago rep­re­sents yet another thing a book can be: a time cap­sule, a snap­shot, a museum shelf of old dreams — that is, a reminder of a past future that never became (but is per­haps still worth dream­ing about).

 

I’m mak­ing it sound as if Minago (Minago is the name the Mi’kmaq gave to P.E.I.) were noth­ing more than a polit­i­cal tract, which it is not. It is a book of poetry, a cry far richer than a tract. So I’ll fin­ish this let­ter the proper way, with one of Acorn’s poems:

 

Bump, Bump, Bump Little Heart

Bump, bump, bump, lit­tle heart along this journey

we’ve gone together,

you pip­ing all the fuel.

You’re fist­size, and fistlike

you clench and unclench,

clench and unclench

keep­ing this head upright

to bat­ter its way

through the walls of the day.

 

Yours truly,
Yann Martel