Pop 89: Somewhere? Or Anywhere?

By Madonna Hamel
madonnahamel@hotmail.com

I just reviewed Dale Eisler’s sweeping examination of Saskatchewan history - “From Left to Right, Saskatchewan’s Political and Economic Transformation” - and huge chunks of the book still resonate with me. One aspect I especially appreciate is Eisler’s attempt to explain the many faces and meaning of “populism.”

“For populism to ignite,” he writes, “two things are needed: something or someone to focus their anger and alienation on, and somebody who articulates their emotions in compelling and emotional language.” It’s a good definition, but it also seems to be a term that could be applied to just about all of us across the political spectrum. Indeed, the populism of today focuses on a variety of culprits: the rich, the educated “elite,” the East, immigrants, the media, corporations, the government … basically everyone. And, as Eisler quotes from an essay called “Why Populism? by a sociologist situated in Los Angeles: “if populism is everywhere, then it is nowhere in particular.”

So says the professor. And that is where the discussion breaks down for me. Theories, hypotheses, and theses about a movement formed far from the universities, and the cities are just that, theories. They do not speak from experience or empathy for the folks down on the farm where, as Eisler articulates, prairie populism was born. I’m sure everybody remembers CBC’s contest to vote for the greatest Canadian in 2004. Despite how unpopular both the CBC seems to be in these parts, choosing the social gospel preacher-politician Tommy Douglas says something about who we are as Canadians. (We believe in taking care of everyone when they fall ill, and we know the difference between greatness and notoriety or celebrity.) And it says even more about who we aren’t. ( A year later, Americans voted for the greatest-ever American. Ronald Reagan won, edging out Abraham Lincoln.)

While Douglas no longer wears a halo for many Westerners, he did give us universal health care, and he did, by doing so, elevate Saskatchewan to as close to being a shining city on a hill as it has ever risen.

Douglas was influenced by the social gospel of the Religious Left, a movement rarely spoken of over the roar of the Religious Right Christian nationalists south of the border these days. The term “Beloved Community,” made popular by Martin Luther King Jr., seems to me to react best to King’s brilliant blend of Christianity and democratic socialism, a marriage rarely, if ever, heard of anymore. A marriage built on inclusivity.

But where the Left leaves me cold and distrusting is its over-reliance on academic theory. So often, when academics, who mean well, speak on behalf of the poor and the displaced, they speak from the comfort of tenure in their urban offices. Often they patronize, or even worse, romanticize, rural folk. And yet I doubt any visit the country, and National parks don’t count. Nor, I doubt, do they know anyone who lives in the country. This approach is as alienating as aligning oneself with the plight of the poor when you pull in a six-figure salary and live in a gated community or in a six-bedroom house. Frankly, professing about poverty from campus just keeps poverty invisible.

Then there are those of us who have lived all over the place - from the heart of the nation’s largest city to this village of under a hundred. It’s hard to be “placed,” a term the poet and essayist and student of Wallace Stegner Wendell Berry coined - when you move every seven or so years. While I have been guilty of taking the geographical cure, I also have been drawn to alluring places across this country for a variety of reasons, among them: employment, friendships, relationships, a hunt for my roots and longing for forests, ocean, quiet, cultural stimulation and vocational callings.

The British journalist David Goodhart, in his book “The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics,” sees the political division in his own country as a division between two groups: “The Anywheres” and “The Somewheres.” Eisler writes: “Goodhart says one reason for the rise of populism in current times is that the more educated, mobile educated and often political class - the Anywheres - lacks the group attachment to place of the Somewheres, who are more rooted, value group attachments, place and stability and are uneasy with rapid change.”

By Goodhart’s reckoning, I would be an Anywhere by virtue of the fact that the longest I lived in one place was in Quebec City, for eleven years, and even then, I moved three times within the city. And yet I had a deep attachment to that place - the home of my ancestors going as far back as the early 1600s. And if “peeps” is another way of saying “group attachment,” then I have always found a home among writers, artists, contemplators and readers and our home base, or “place,” has always been libraries, coffee shops and stages. Also, these people and places have provided me the stability I find equally on the land that surrounds me here in Val Marie.

Perhaps I am just responding to the genetic disposition given me by my courier-du-Bois and Metis ancestors: an urge to move, to hunt for a living while soaking up the various environments of this enormous country, and in so doing, develop an empathy for us all.

One thing I do know - I don’t take anyone’s “word for it,” no matter how many credentials are behind his name or how much money she earns. As someone who spent twelve years in the halls of higher learning (and even then, I alternated between nose in books and hands deep in soap suds, or slinging beer, flipping burgers and mopping up after drunks), it’s disheartening to have lost almost all faith in the findings of academia. As both Somewhere and Anywhere, I try to speak from where I stand because physical presence is what’s important. That’s what my village has taught me.