Did I say reading Understanding Power was having an effect on me? One of the results is to look a trifle more critically at the acts of my own Home and Native Land. Peter Gzowski is such a gentle-spoken man on most occasions that I think I'd like to have heard the interview with Chomsky covered in Understanding Power just to hear him go off the deep end.

Apparently, Chomsky called Pearson a War Criminal and Gzowski went ballistic so that the 15 minute interview had to be cut back to 10 minutes. Then the switchboard lit up. Not with people complaining about anything Chomsky had said but taking issue with Gzowski's outburst. That would have been a scream.

He makes several points, though, about Canada as an American colony, that America doesn't really want to absorb Canada outright, that Québec is better off within Canada than they would be alone: alone they'd be an even bigger target for colonization by the US than they are as part of Canada etc. etc.

There's a habit of thought here that needs to be more widely pursued. This is a kind of prophet we could do with more of today. But if you're thinking of filling the bill, beware: prophets like that lead very lonely, marginalized lives.

Something fell on Saskatchewan in 1885
Where is it now when we need it in this century of jive?
The axe falls as if through water: it never leaves a trace...