Jun. 09, 2010 - Issue #764: Hot Summer Guide 2010

Queermonton

Upsetting the rhythm

As I drove through village after village in Nova Scotia last week getting reacquainted with real donairs (sorry, Albertans), taking impromptu and cold dips on deserted beaches, and reading bilingual road signs (English and Gaelic, that is), Jean Chrétien was on my mind. In 1999, he sat on a stage at Pier 21 in Halifax and officially opened Canada's Immigration Museum. I sat at the back, a member of the band meant to impart feeling and regality to the ceremony, but this time we fell short. During our song, one trombone player dropped his mute to the floor with a very loud clang, so loud that someone else dropped their mute as well. With that, our section fell apart, lost our places in the music and scrambled to get back on track. Did Jean Chrétien notice the band's heartbeat waver? Not a chance.

Years later, as I return to this complex of buildings through which over one million immigrants arrived to Canada from the 1920s to 1971, this mundane mishap seems instructive. The stories many of us like to tell ourselves about Canada are indeed, and often justly, beautiful music, but those jarring sounds, those moments when everything is dropped, happen nonetheless, even if their sounds don't always rise above the persistent, easily distinguishable and hummable melodies of nationalist narratives.

At 11 years' remove, the underlying discord of Pier 21 caused more than a buzz in my ears. Buses of schoolchildren played immigration role-play games. To the left is a pile of suitcases, each marked with a sticker depicting the fate of the cases' owners: "Not wanted.” And who, in friendly Canada, is "not wanted?" As a display at Pier 21 suggests, Canada "in the 19th century barred those who were 'feeble-minded' or had a 'loathsome disease.'" During the Holocaust, Canada had one of the worst records for allowing Jewish immigrants to find refuge here, reportedly with the fulsome support of then-prime minister Mackenzie King.

Why did things change­—or perhaps, how much have they changed? Only with post-Second World War labour demands would Canada partly relax its immigration policies by allowing people of "non-preferred" ethnicities (Central, Eastern and Southern Europeans) to qualify. Literacy, wealth, mental health and occupational plans were all on the list of standards by which potential new Canadians were (and are) judged. Yet another display, this one tucked in a corner, admits a detail that is not at all suggested in the pro-inclusion rhetoric of the museum: that Brits were the most-admitted group through Pier 21. In evidence around the museum is the fact that immigration is a well-managed business.

Why should this matter now? A truncated list of relevance includes the increased racial-profiling that many fear will result from Arizona's new immigration bill (SB 1070); the case of Yaser, a self-identified gay man from Iran recently denied his refugee claim by Vancouver's Immigration Refugee Board for not being convincingly gay, as Xtra.ca reports; a negative HIV-test remains an immigration requirement; and the ongoing debates over Bill C–11, which, as it is currently written, would deny the appeal process to refugee applicants who are moving from countries designated as "safe" by the Government of Canada. As of Monday, the Liberal party remains undecided on whether to support this legislation, despite pleading from gay groups that such a provision would mean unfair treatment for applications made by LGBTQ people.

What better time to scrutinize the white noise that floods our airwaves? What does "queer" do if not demand that we cast off the privilege of assuming the conversation-defining authority to "include" or "welcome" others? Why set the rhythm of the band when we might do well to use our mutes now and then? As I cross the causeway from Cape Breton back to mainland Nova Scotia and eventually back to the Prairies, I tap my foot to the Rankin Family and think hard about how better to create and to hear the all too necessary avant-garde cacophony of Queermonton. V