Shulgan.com

Globe Review and Initial Response

There is an interesting backstory to this blog post, and it involves me driving around rural southwestern Ontario this morning in an obstacle-fraught quest to find the Saturday Globe and Mail, where Amy Knight's take on my book is the cover review of the paper's Books section.

First, I should mention how grateful I am for the close reading provided by a scholar as well known as Knight, who agrees with the book's main points. One, that Yakovlev was integral to Gorbachev's reforms of perestroika and glasnost, and, two, that a key period in Yakovlev's evolution from communist to democrat happened in Canada, during the ten years Yakovlev spent here as ambassador to Ottawa. I'm particularly gratified by her generous praise--she calls The Soviet Ambassador a "well-researched and thoughtful biography of Yakovlev." Later, she says, "Christopher Shulgan has done an excellent job in documenting Yakovlev's career in the Soviet government and describing his exceptional role in the events that caused the collapse of the Soviet Union." 

Toward the end of the review, as any reviewer must, Knight mentions several criticisms. One deals with the book; another deals not with the book but with Knight's problems with Yakovlev's performance in what would prove to be his life's final crusade. First, the book criticism. Knight faults the book for "skirting" Yakovlev's controversial chairmanship of the Commission to Rehabilitate Victims of Political Repression. I think this criticism unjustified because it happens after the body of my book ends. Knight is apparently labouring under the misconception that my book is a full biography of Yakovlev's life. In fact, as the subtitle suggests, this is a "making of" biography--it chronicles Yakovlev's ideological development; in other words, his pre-perestroika life. It's about his evolution from an ardent communist into an enthusiastic democrat, which happened from 1941 to the summer of 1983, when Gorbachev rescues Yakovlev from his decade-long exile in Canada. The two men go on to enact the reforms of perestroika and glasnost during Gorbachev's 1985 to 1991 leadership of the Soviet Union. One day I'd love the opportunity to chronicle Yakovlev's life during perestroika and afterward. And if I get that opportunity, I will delve in-depth into Yakovlev's stint as Commission chair, which began five years after my biography concludes, in 1988. Knight's criticism, then, is a little like slagging Gibbon's history of the Roman empire for not including a chapter on, say, the fall of Troy. That's not what the book's about!

Knight also criticizes Yakovlev, which is fair--Yakovlev is a controversial figure. That's why he's so fascinating. But in this case I think the substance of Knight's criticism is wrong. She faults Yakovlev's work as the Commission chair because she says he failed to examine the Communist Party's repressions in the '60s. And she implies that Yakovlev didn't examine those repressions because he was wary of implicating himself. That's nonsense. Yakovlev was impressively candid throughout his life in discussing his culpability in the Party's crimes of the '60s, and I go over his culpability at length in the second part of my book. One thing I didn't mention in my book is that such victims of repression as Andrei Sinyavsky felt that Yakovlev had absolved himself of his crimes--in fact, Sinyavsky and Yakovlev would go on to become friends in the latter years of Yakovlev's life. If Sinyavsky can forgive Yakovlev, Knight should, too.

Finally, I'll mention one last point from Knight's review. In her last line, she says, "[Yakovlev] was one of the reasons democracy in Russia ultimately failed." Well, maybe, but that's a point that should be couched with plenty of qualifiers, including one that Knight, as an expert in KGB history, well knows--that KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov and others prevented Yakovlev from completing perestroika's revolution. In fact, I'll try to address this one in more detail at a later date, when I'm not thumb-typing on my BlackBerry in a tent in the midst of a rainstorm in southwestern Ontario. I'll finish by pointing out that while Yakovlev does bear some responsibility for perestroika's failure, he bears more responsibility for the fact that perestroika's democratic reforms ever started in the first place--and that's why the tale of his evolution is so important. (Now back to Lawrence Wright's history of al Qaeda, The Looming Tower, and the waiting out of this rainstorm.)

Back Alley Confrontation

My front yard, So many trucks have run over that corner that we've had to pull out the first bush, so that when this blog post begins we only have five healthy yew bushes. This will be important information in about four paragraphs.

Boy, I've had an eventful morning, one that demonstrates to me the enormous complications inherent in relations of all kinds. As I read the papers this morning I must admit I was feeling a little sanctimonious. It was the news about North Korea that got me. To recap, back in 2002, North Korea was one of three nations in Mr. Bush's "axis of evil," toward which the Bush administration was going to take a hardline, confrontational approach. In other words -- no talking. Relations between the two countries were broken off.

People like me, who preferred diplomatic engagement to Bush's isolationist tactics, criticized this decision. And in fact, while Bush employed the silent treatment against Pyongyang, the North Koreans went off and developed enough raw materials to create 6-10 nuclear weapons.

Bush changed his tactics during his second term. American diplomats started talking with North Korea again. Probably this about-face came from listening less to Vice-President Dick Cheney and more to more diplomatically-minded figures, such as Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. Whatever the reason, the change in tactics worked. Yesterday came the news that North Korea had agreed to a set of regulations that would halt its ability to create the raw materials for nuclear weapons. And today, North Korea detonated a cooling tower for a nuclear reactor, a mostly symbolic gesture that nevertheless made for some entertaining theatre. 

So around 8:25 a.m. I was feeling pretty good about the power of engagement in solving diplomatic affairs. I had a live interview scheduled for 8:30 a.m. with CKCU's Sue Johnston, and I was killing time as I waited for her call -- reading in the Globe about a giant ecstasy bust in BC, actually, which police said was good because drug-producing labs are really bad for the environment. Pretty funny angle, I was thinking -- social acceptance of a drug like ecstasy being so entrenched that police have to resort to saying its bad for the earth to get people upset about its use. And then, outside, I heard a truck turning into the alley next to my house.

I stood up and watched. My house is immediately next to an alley, and the turnoff from the street is pretty tight, so there's a risk, if the truck driver isn't careful, that the truck's rear tires will run over the hedge that edges my property. This truck driver demonstrated he wasn't careful. He ran over the edge of my lot, completely smushing one of the five yew bushes that grow there. I rushed out my front door and headed down the alley to stop the driver, who at this point was trying to make another turn -- and this time, on that turn, he crunched into the corner of my back shed. 

The driver got out. I recognized him -- it was the stepfather-in-law of one of my neighbours, who is moving out today. "Hey," I said, "you just ran over my hedge." He looked crestfallen. "Did I?" he asked. "Apologies for that -- these U-Haul trucks are hard to maneuver."

"Not only that," I said, "but you crunched the back corner of my shed here."

"Oh no," he said. "I didn't do that."

"I heard you," I said. "I saw it happen." And I pointed to the crumpled section of the corner, immediately at the level of the U-Haul truck's bumper. 

He looked at it. He said, "That was already there." 

I guess the escalation started there. I told him I thought he was being ridiculous, given that I had both seen and heard the collision, and the fact there were fresh scratches at the same level as the U-Haul bumper. And he said that I would regret it if I kept saying he was being ridiculous. "Geez Louise," I said. "You don't have to be a dick about it." And then he said, "Who are you calling a dick?" And somehow through all this we had stepped toward each other until we were chest to chest. I watched his eyes. The way that you can with some people I realized he was considering throwing a punch. Shoot -- at that moment, it wasn't all that far from my mind.

Two things happened simultaneously. My cell phone rang, and his wife appeared from the back door of my neighbour's house. "Come inside, _______," she called out, speedwalking toward our little Cuban Missile Crisis. "I'm sorry for this," she said to me as she pulled her husband away. "He's under an enormous amount of stress, we're trying to move, we've got to get the truck back." 

"He ran over my hedge," I said, stupidly. And then I realized the cell phone calling must be Sue Johnston from CKCU. "He should be more careful." 

By that point, they were in their backyard. And I speedwalked into my house to call Sue back on my landline. Twenty seconds later I was in a live on-air interview before the Ottawa radio audience of CKCU. Which actually went really well -- maybe the effects of the adrenalin. Much of the interview was spent talking about The Soviet Ambassador, and the way Yakovlev's story is a case study demonstrating the power of engagement. I even brought up current events in North Korea to argue my case. 

However, my little neighbourhood confrontation helped me to learn an important lesson. The Bush administration's mistake in North Korea wasn't necessarily breaking off diplomatic relations when it did. Sometimes, breaking off relations is a good thing -- as it was today, during my little diplomatic imbroglio. Perhaps the Bush administration's real mistake was to bring absolute, black-and-white thinking to diplomacy. I should wrap this up -- we're heading out of town for a camping trip, today, and I need to get packing. So what's my conclusion? Not exactly sure. Something about the value of flexibility in relations of all kinds, and the damage that can be wrought by black-and-white, confrontational thinking. Clearly this is a theme that requires some return consideration.

Soccer diplomacy

Photo credit: Radiospike

Interesting idea in the New York Times op-ed pages today about how to influence the situation in Zimbabwe. Despite the opposition winning a plurality of votes in an election in March, 84-year-old Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe and supporters of his Zanu-PF party have clamped down on the country as an additional electoral hurdle approached, the run-off this Friday between Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and the opposition (because no party won a majority in March's election, Zimbabwe's electoral regulations require an additional run-off that limits the electoral pool to the two front-running parties). In recent days, Mugabe has raided opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's headquarters, beaten opposition party members and forced Tsvangirai himself into hiding in the Dutch embassy. 

What to do about all this? The UN Security Council can condemn Mugabe all it likes. And the West has pushed Mugabe to allow a free and democratic run-off for months. As the region's most powerful country, South Africa exerts a strong influence over all matters in Zimbabwe. But the South African leader, Thabo Mbeki, has displayed a troubling reluctance to condemn Mugabe and his death squads. Today, the Zimbabwe-born writer Peter Godwin suggests a fascinating way to pressure Mbeki into pressuring Mugabe to step down. 

South Africa hosts the next World Cup, in 2010, Godwin notes. "That may seem like a long way off, but South Africa is already investing huge amounts both financially and politically, for what is supposed to be its triumphal coming-out party. Maybe Zimbabwe should become to the South Africa-hosted World Cup what Tibet has been to the Beijing Olympics — the pungent albatross that spoils every press conference and mars every presentation with its insistent odor."

Speaking of soccer, did you see Russia's insane win over the Netherlands on Saturday in the Euro Cup? I can't help but draw analogies between the team's performance and the character of the country. Again and again Russia pulls off feats like this. Underestimated, they start out rough, then they endure difficult conditions, they never give up, they employ a remarkable resourcefulness, and they scramble and improvise and cobble together just enough to eke out a victory. Good luck for that rematch against Spain on Thursday, guys. 

Return to Witch Mountain

The cover of a file I found at Library and Archives Canada, in the External Affairs document fond called RG25. Researchers aren't allowed to photocopy the documents, because they're too valuable. So the LAC's reading room is full of researchers shooting pictures of the documents, James Bond-style. Click on the photo to expand the image -- it's a pretty cool file.

I spent several days in Ottawa this week conducting a round of interviews about the book that saw me, among other things, placed on the local affiliate of Rogers TV, on a mid-day show called Daytime with hosts Derek Fage and TL Rader. The green room had exactly three occupants: Me, my Ottawa publicist (Jennifer Tiller) and a woman in a shiny blue and silver Lycra outfit that looked like a superhero costume. Before she went on the woman was rehearsing a routine that involved a sparkly striped hula hoop, which she slung around herself as she contorted into about a minute's worth of painful-looking positions. "Cripes," I thought. Would people really be ready to talk about my book after this number?

In fact, it went really well. And it made me think about the strange skill set demanded by the job of a daytime talk show host. Derek and TL shifted smoothly from hula hooping to discussing the collapse of the Soviet empire. In fact, they asked some excellent questions--questions that indicated readers are correctly interpreting the themes I'd hoped the book would get across. They're getting that the book isn't about Soviet politics or even the Cold War, necessarily. That in fact, the book's a case study about the sort of tactics that work when attempting to end a conflict--a conflict that in the book happens to be the Cold War, but could just as easily be a dispute between businesses, or friends, or a couple. The book's about the sort of approaches to use when you want some other entity to come around to your way of thinking. And it turns out that the best approach to use is a set of attitudes that Canadians have come to consider national traits. I guess my point is that if the themes got through to these two daytime talk show hosts, who read the book under the pressure of deadlines and discussed the book amid the after-effects of one serious hula hooping session, then hopefully the book's themes will penetrate with other readers as well.

Actually, I'd forgotten how much I enjoy Ottawa. It's been about eight years since we lived there. I visited the town a lot as I was researching my book, granted. But each one of those research visits was an anxious affair that saw me spending every available moment digging through Canadian government archives. On those trips, I gobbled my meals, I slept poorly, I walked rapidly and drove faster, all so I could devote as much time as possible to finding Yakovlev-related documents in the fonds compiled by External Affairs, the Privy Council Office and Trudeau's staff. (Such as the one seen in the photograph that begins this blog post.)

Ottawa is a completely different town when you're not freaking out over whether you'll find enough background documentation about, say, the 1978 Soviet spy scandal. This time McClelland & Stewart put me up in a nice hotel -- the boutique residence, Arc. I had about a dozen opportunities to talk about my book with engaged, intelligent listeners (including my friend Peter Simpson, the Culture editor at the Ottawa Citizen). And I ate in some of Ottawa's excellent restaurants, including Flipper's, in the Glebe, and Fresco, on Elgin. 

To me, the best part of the trip was the quick run I took on Wednesday morning. At the recommendation of my publicist Jennifer Tiller (a new friend, and a runner herself), I went north from downtown to the gate that leads to the Rideau Canal's final system of locks. Then I turned against the stream and ran along the Ontario shore of the Ottawa River, passing islands, rapids, tunnels and bridges. Once I turned back I opted to take a different route up to downtown and ended up almost immediately alongside the former locus of all my stress, the building that houses Library and Archives Canada. This time, however, it just prompted fond memories of discovery and exploration. Like I said, Ottawa's a completely different town when you're not stressed out.

Pratfalls, Early Reviews, Fun w/ Master T

The Media team at the NXNE Media v. Musicians soccer game at BMO Field. I'm in the back row, fourth from the right.

Check out this review from the Montreal Gazette. Oh heck, it's such a good review I can't resist including a quote from it: "Christopher Shulgan's fascinating biography of Yakovlev... traces [Yakovlev's] gradual transformation from an ardent Marxist-Leninist to a man who devoted himself to righting the wrongs of the Communist system. ... Yet, perhaps, the most fascinating and intriguing aspect of Shulgan's book is the "Canadian Connection," the role Canada played in shaping Yakovlev's vision of future reforms..."

The Winnipeg Free Press ran another review. Also great is this piece, which appeared on Saturday's front page in the Windsor Star, my hometown newspaper. Great article, Grace. And the Ottawa Citizen reprinted the piece in a slightly shorter version.

Playing soccer on BMO Field in the NXNE Media v. Musicians game was head-exploding fun. Rick the former Much Music VJ known as Rick the Temp -- he passed the ball to me. And I passed the ball to Master T, who is simultaneously older than you might expect, and has better ball-handling skills. I had to leave the pitch at half-time to high-tail it to an afternoon tea at the King Edward hotel for Nicholas Hoare books, a fun event where I met Katie Hafner (cool), where I spoke, and where my turn at the lectern was followed by a literary critic, John Metcalf, who pontificated about his book in the following manner: Chapter one is about X. Chapter two is about Y. Chapter three is about Z. Up until the end of the book. It's kind of like, big whoop, but then Metcalf criticizes other writers for being boring. Perhaps he could work a little harder on avoiding same. After the tea I was signing a copy of my book for someone who had assisted in my research when I looked down expecting to see I had written "Thanks for all your help." When, in fact, I had written, "Thanks for all your health." 

Which seems like an odd reason to thank someone.  

Next was a cab ride to the CBA Libris Awards, where I was to present the award for best non-fiction work. When I arrived the event organizer, Emily, handed me a sheet of paper with my script on it -- a sentence or two about the difficulty of making captivating prose out of non-fiction narrative, followed by the three books, their authors and publishers. "You're the fourth presenter," she said, and then went off, presumably to provide the same service to other presenters. Some limited shmoozing ensued, coupled closely with canapé nibbling, napkin face dabbing and napkin disposing into trash can. Soon I was sitting up in the front row with the other presenters (Joseph Boyden included) as things got underway -- Bill Richardson, the CBC host not the New Mexico governor, was the moderator. He is funnier than you might expect. A writer named Tish Cohen, the presenter for something like the eighth award, was next to me, sheet of paper in hand, running through what she was supposed to say. Lips moving silently, that whole bit. Which prompted me to wonder whether I should go over my spiel one more time. I reached in my pocket to find the sheet that had my little blurb on it. I checked the next pocket. I went into my blazer and checked the inner breast pocket. The back pockets of my jeans. Then I went through and tried again. Next was a round of pocket contents emptying. And it was at that point, as the second presenter mounted the stage, that I concluded: I was fucked.

Because I couldn't find the sheet that had my script on it. There was a moment or two spent rehearsing the usual symptoms of panic—increased heart rate, temptations toward flight. Could I wing it? Just make up the blurb about writing non-fiction? Nope -- I was blanking on the title of the middle nominee. Monologue of uninterrupted curse words. I spied the event organizer, the kindly, the benevolent Emily, sitting to the right of the stage. With the third presenter already onstage, I duckwalked before an auditorium of hundreds of publishing executives, made it to Emily mostly unseen, explained that idiot me must have thrown out the script sheet with my canapé napkin, and waited, my life in her hands. 

"No problem," she said. She produced a binder, unsnapped the clips and produced a second copy of the script sheet. Seconds later I was up on stage presenting the award before an auditorium of people oblivious to my averted disaster. Naomi Klein won. Her publisher gave the acceptance speech. The awards that followed progressed with a single disappointment -- I wanted Type Books to win bookseller of the year, and they didn't. After, as I shared a cab ride with the lovely Vanessa from my agent's office, I considered the feasibility of naming my next child Emily. Regardless of the child's gender. As a gesture of thanks.

Please sign the online petition

Notice the new link to the left of this post, to an online petition I've created to encourage the nice folks at the Ontario Heritage Trust to put a historical marker at Eugene Whelan's home. It's my bid to honour Canada's role in the Cold War's conclusion. For more background, go to the petition, or see this earlier post.

Launch week: The Soviet Ambassador

Me with Natasha Lobanova, Yakovlev's grand-daughter, who lived with Yakovlev during much of his time as Ambassador to Canada. Lobanova was an enormous help to my research.

(Above and below) Signing your own book feels a little odd the first couple of times you do it. Then the trick is managing to hold a conversation with the person who is nice enough to ask you for a signature, while also figuring out a warm message to scrawl—or at least something that makes sense. I manage this trick maybe 50% of the time.

Natalie and I outside the University Club, after the dinner.

So The Soviet Ambassador officially went on sale on Tuesday and the last couple of days have been a heck of a lot more fun than I anticipated. It started on Sunday night with CBC Newsworld anchor Brian Stewart's remarkably insightful half-hour documentary about my book on Yakovlev -- he hit on all the important themes, in a manner both accurate and concise. As we watched the show, Myron kept pointing at the TV screen and saying, "Daddy, daddy." I think he was proud of me.

Next was Tuesday's dinner lecture at the University Club. We arrived just after six and the pre-dinner cocktails seemed like a maelstrom of introductions and handshakes. Natasha Lobanova, Yakovlev's grand-daughter, who lives outside Toronto, attended with her daughter, Anna. I also met a diplomat-turned-U-of-Toronto-prof, Doug Wright, who knew Yakovlev. Dinner was rack of lamb (very tasty) and then the speakers started.

Doug Pepper introduced George Cohon, who in turn introduced me. Cohon's introduction was a remarkable reminiscence of his relationship with Yakovlev. He started off describing meeting Yakovlev in 1976, then mapped out the ups and downs of Cohon's eventually successful quest to open the first McDonald's behind the Iron Curtain. He summed up by describing the role of mentor and consigliere that Yakovlev played throughout Cohon's 14-year quest. What especially came through during Cohon's talk was the warmth of Yakovlev's personality. Once he got to me he graciously talked about the fact that both Cohon and I (as well as Cohon's wife, Susan) are graduates of Northwestern University. Then it was my turn.

My nerves weren't as bad as I had feared. I started with a couple of conversational anecdotes -- one about how Cohon helped in the early days of my book research, another about the friendship that has developed between Natasha and I as I researched the book. From there it was onto my thesis, which argues that because Yakovlev over the course of his life evolved from a communist supporter of a totalitarian dictatorship into an enthusiastic advocate of freedom and democracy, his life forms a case study we can examine to discover clues about how to create other Yakovlevs inside other totalitarian groups -- the Taliban, Myanmar, North Korea, for example. So what worked for Yakovlev? I argue that what worked was the prototypically Canadian approach used by such figures as Trudeau, Cohon and Eugene Whelan during Yakovlev's 10 years in Canada as the Soviet ambassador. The Canadians engaged him in a non-judgmental, open and friendly manner that encouraged Yakovlev to learn by our example of stable democracy. Basically the speech amounts to an argument about the power of a prototypically Canadian approach to diplomacy.

There was more public speaking at the Pravda book launch on Wednesday night. Maybe 20 people were already in there when we arrived and the club's upstairs grew steadily more packed until it topped out at maybe 120 people -- far more people than I expected. It's good to have supportive friends and family, and I was impressed to discover that some attendees didn't have any personal connection to me; they came because they were interested in the book. Attendees you might know: Anne McDermid and Martha Magor (my agents), Chris Bucci (the book's editor), Andrew Westoll, Robert Wright, Linda McQuaig, Alex Shprintsen, Ben Kaplan, Jose Lourenco, Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall, Chris Nuttall-Smith. A great turnout.

This time McClelland & Stewart's associate publisher, Susan Renouf, introduced me -- she's also Farley Mowat's longtime editor, which makes her 20% cooler. Pravda has an elevated area at the back where we were going to do our speaking, except it wasn't elevated enough -- no one would have seen Susan. So we ended up standing on the bar at the front. Susan was really kind with her introduction, and then I whizzed through a five-minute description about why people who aren't interested in Soviet history still should read the book -- it's a parable about diplomacy, and what works in ending conflict, regardless of whether the conflict is between people, between nations, or between businesses. It could be about anything, in other words. It's also a really good story.

After, a bunch of us went out to dinner. Pretty swanky. Jeremy Busch, Mike Koen, Rob Bose and my brother, Mark, picked up the tab. Thanks boys. I really do have nice friends. Next up is the airing of a segment I taped for the Michael Coren Show, the public affairs roundtable, and next week there's a segment on Business News Network that will see Amanda Lang interview Cohon and I about Yakovlev. That should be a tonne of fun. Sunday I'm playing in the Media vs. Musicians soccer game at BMO Field for the NXNE music festival. Then a speaking thing at Nicholas Hoare Books' afternoon tea at the King Edward hotel. I'm also presenting the non-fiction book of the year at the CBA Libris Awards Sunday night. Next week I'll get back to Ottawa, and then I round out this little spate of publicity with a weekend in Windsor. Then things should calm down -- and I'll be able to return to working on the proposal for my second book.

Finally, a non-book-launch shot of Myron, not quite Tony Hawk, but possibly on his way.

Globe Feature on Yakovlev and Canada

Trudeau and Yakovlev with Justin and Sacha Trudeau as well as Natasha, Yakovlev's grand-daughter. Photo source: Yakovlev family archives

In advance of the Tuesday, June 10, launch date for my book, the Globe and Mail's Focus section published today a feature I wrote that functions as a good summary of the themes that run through the Canadian section of the book. 

POLITICAL SCIENCE:
HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE HISTORY

Did the Cold War melt in the Great White North?

Politicians debate whether talking to one's enemies amounts to 'appeasement,' but Christopher Shulgan, in an adaptation from his new book, reveals how Pierre Trudeau's warm exchanges with a Soviet emissary planted the seeds of glasnost and perestroika

To continue, click here.

CBC Newsworld 6:30 p.m. Sunday

So on Sunday of this weekend at 6:30 p.m., the CBC Newsworld program Our World with Brian Stewart will be devoting an entire episode to the book I wrote that's coming out next week, The Soviet Ambassador. There's quite a bit of media coming out during the launch week. If you are able to see only one thing, however, the Our World show would be it. I taped the interview in mid-May. I was a little anxious about it, about the interview I mean, but it turned out to be no big whoop at all. Brian Stewart is one of CBC's big anchors, he's been a foreign correspondent for literally ever, but he turned out to be extremely nice and seemed to have actually read the book. And liked it. So after maybe one or two voice-quavers in my first answer, I relaxed and the interview turned into this natural conversation about my book's subject, Aleksandr Yakovlev. After researching Yakovlev's life in virtual solitude for two years, it turns out that I really enjoy talking about Yakovlev, and the remarkable story of his life. If you do check it out -- remember, CBC's cable news channel, Newsworld, at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, channel 26 in Toronto -- please do let me know what you think.

Is Our Big-Car Addiction... Cured?

I, like everybody else, couldn't help but feel excited by Obama's sort-of-victory speech last night, just like I couldn't help beaming ESP-messages toward the sort-of-confirmed-but-maybe-not-really-til-Denver Democratic presidential nominee DO NOT ASK HER TO BE YOUR VP PLEASE NO PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE NO. At the start of this nomination process I admired Hillary Clinton and thought she'd make a good president. Now I just want her to go away. PLEASE MAKE HER GO AWAY. I could get into specifics that explain my reasons for feeling this way, but why, when it can all be summed up by four words. She exudes bad vibes. PLEASE GO AWAY.

OK, enough with the all-caps. 

Even with all that excitement, however, I am puzzled by the absence-of-play given to yesterday's comments by General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner:

"In the last quarter of last year, we sold on average 102,000, 105,000 large pickups and utilities per month," Wagoner said. "Over the last few months that has dropped to 65,000 units... We at GM don't think this is a spike or temporary shift: we believe that it is, by and large, permanent."

The CEO of General Motors, a guy you could call the Grand High Pubah of Really Big Vehicles, just said he thought the North American marketplace had shifted from buying SUVs and trucks to smaller, more gas-friendly cars... permanently. And the New York Times didn't put this on the front page. The Globe and Mail did, but it led with a couple of paragraphs about the negative economic effects of the job losses. Actually, they led with CAW chief Buzz Hargrove complaining about the job losses.

"We are not going to allow this to happen," Buzz said. "... We have power and we're going to use every bit of it."

Which just sounds silly. Why lead with such silly comments? The issue here is the price of gas, which has doubled in this province in the last six or so years. Doubled! And it's as bad if not worse everywhere else in the U.S. and Canada. How can Buzz Hargrove do anything about that? Job losses are sad, I mean, I know that, they are disemboweling my hometown of Windsor, Ontario, but the real news here is that the GM CEO believes that gas prices and an overall trend toward environmentally less-harmful products is shifting consumer demand toward smaller vehicles. In other words, North America's addiction to huge vehicles... MAY BE OVER. (Sorry about the all-caps, again. BUT THIS IS HUGE.)