A party game for Boxing Day

For those of us old-fashioned enough to think that it might be more fun to hang out with friends and family rather than shop on Boxing Day, I offer a bit of a party game.

The game is an end of the year review, and it works like this. Attempt to find agreement with any five people about the five seminal events that capture the essence of the year that was 2006. Note that at least one event/feature/phenomenon must be local. Seems easy enough, eh?

Before beginning, note that history is these days, a contentious area of studies. The history classes that many of us enjoyed were based, for the most part, on a linear recollection of the actions of putatively great (white) men and their putatively great battles. This sort of history is somewhat out of vogue these days, challenged by the notion that we should also tell the story of our times from the bottom up, not just the top down.

We need to find, say in the French Revolution, not just who the main players were or even why the Regime Ancien collapsed as it did. Nor is it sufficient merely to add in the great works of the times, in literature, music, painting, science, or philosophy. Instead, in the new history, -- practiced by authors such as Robert Darton, whose The Great Cat Massacre is an interesting read -- we reveal the truth of the times by looking at how ordinary folks lived and experienced the world in their time.



Study the powerless



This turn in historical studies is also found in political studies. Here it is thought that to fully understand power, we should pay less attention to the powerful, more to the (relatively) powerless. Both shifts in the perspective of social studies are democratic, as, in this light, it is the lives of us regular folks that is privileged. So the challenge is this: What five events/features/phenomena would make your group’s list, both from the top down and the bottom up, both local and global, as the history of 2006?

My list? For the first, and these are not in any special order, I would note the remarkable effect of those local parents who stood up for the continued provision of French Immersion in the Valley, against the sort of education policy that would keep our sons and daughters at home forever, bound to an industrial conception of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The success of this resistance is a revealing indicator of how far we have come in the Valley in transcending our parochialism.

My second item would be the opening of a new restaurant/club in Wolfville, On the Verge, that—in surroundings better than the best jazz clubs in Manhattan, Toronto, or even Montreal—runs a nearly nightly fare of sparkling “downtown� music in a sleepy, rural, university, retirement town. And which serves a hearty meal to the needy on Monday mornings.



Local initiatives



When this sort of endeavour succeeds, we know that a new future is upon us, where local initiative and increasingly progressive culture and education provide for the thinly populated hinterland a life hitherto reserved for the metropolis.

I have a buddy, an accomplished musician, who has argued for years that the future of music is not the grand orchestras of the 20th century, but small groups of talented players making a go of it locally, in first rate chamber groups, folk, jazz, and the like. This vision of the 21st Century is being realized right here in the Valley, in music, literature, art, and athletics.

My third entry is George W. Bush’s drubbing, which has shown, hopefully for all time, where those who are neither bright nor morally well wired will lead us.

My fourth would be the tragedy at Dawson College, a grim reminder of how the proliferation of guns and the culture of fear and violence lead to unspeakable deeds, where women remain the objects of hate from those men too weak to see the truth of our equality and the beauty of our common humanity.

Finally, I would cite the re-greening of Canada, for reasons too obvious to state, a source of hope and initiative, in a global world gone awry.