Shaugnessy-Cohen Prize Speech (I never got to give).

SMiS was one of five shortlisted books for the Shaugnessy-Cohen prize for political writing.  I tied for second.  The prize was won by John English for his biography on Trudeau.  this is the speech I never got a chance to give.  always the bridesmaid….

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thank you to writers trust, in particular don orevac and amanda Hopkins, both of whom made it possible for the finalists feel, regardless of outcome, like winners from the moment we touched down in Ottawa.  my thanks to the writers trust board, and to it’s founders, people who took an idea, and with it, made it more possible for writers across the country to give life to their words.

to the many generous sponsors without whom this celebration of the intersection between politics and art would not be possible, my gratitude.  our country is better for it.

my respect to the other nominees for making the shortlist feel so crowded.

my thanks to the jury for taking on the difficult decision of deciding a winner.

my gratitude to my editors for their patient and gentle counsel as I worked on this book, still recovering from whatever bits of sudan that were still burning brightly when i got back.  thanks to my publishers at doubleday for their belief that they were worth sharing from the beginning

I would like to reserve particular remark for those who considered my book worthy of nomination as “political writing”.  of course, it is charged with politics.  the context in which it was written made that unavoidable. it informed our actions, our decisions, was our breakfast conversation, our lunch one too.  our patients suffered from disease, yes, poverty too, but as true as these, they suffered a lack of political agency.  that people from around the world gather to show solidarity for people like this in sudan, or Zimbabwe, or congo, or burma, or Colombia, or sri lanka, requires a sophisticated understanding of the politics of these places.  more than this,  it proves an appreciation for greater political questions that transcend national particularities.

what tools have we made?  are we capturing their best use?  is there a duty to share them so that they might reach their full potential?  or does our responsibility to pursue parity, or peace, diminish the further we are from a fallow field or a rifle’s report?  if not, to whom do these tasks fall?  our government?  or to your sons and daughters?  and in these questions, perhaps, the most interesting one to me:  who are we, really, beneath our fancy clothes.

a single answer is as opaquely unavailable now as it was millennia ago.  we do understand some things better, though, since then.  one of these is our connection to one another in a finite ecosystem.  this is seen not only in political fora, but in economic  and ecologic ones.  i suspect, like all lessons, it will be repeated in greater intensity until it is learned.

i had a chance the other day to teach a student a lesson about connection.  i was working in the emergency room, during a very busy day, and across the room saw a woman who was about to die.  after a while, you can just tell.  some of my colleagues call it “the knack”.

this woman was on a stretcher, and in the last minutes of her life.  as she was pushed past, i took the notes from the ambulance attendant and read in them that it was her dying wish not be resuscitated, that this was to be the natural end of her life.  we set about doing our best to prepare her.

i left the room to find the medical student i was supervising, tapped him on the shoulder, and told him. “in bed three, there is a woman who is about to die.   you should go wait with her.”

i didn’t want him to be there for her sake.  she was unconscious, and i don’t think it mattered to her.  nor did i just want him to see, as a doctor-in-training, during the final minutes, how the breathing went fast, then stuttered, then stopped, or how the heart went fast, then slow, then flattened, so when he saw this in a fifteen year old, he could intervene.  what i wanted him to see was that after the breath stuttered, then stopped, and the heart beat its last, that the machinery was still there…all of it…the blood, the electrolytes, the pituitary hormones and the adrenal glands, but after that last moment, life was gone.

what is that thing?

it’s your bloody duty to take care of it.

he didn’t go into the room.  i suspect he was afraid.  i hope he will learn that lesson, because it’s an important one.  caring for life is congruent with its goals.

it is the same about this as it is about Sudan, as it is on the streets of Ottawa when confronted something uncomfortable like poverty or homelessness, if you turn your head, you fall in your own estimation and there is never a more serious capitulation.  it can be one from which you might never recover.  It does not mean you need to take every stranger in, or take an oath of poverty.  all it means, to look that person in the eye, or be with someone as they die, is to know the world you live in.  you have one chance to know it.  and to understand that people suffer in sudan, or thrive elsewhere, or that your shit flows into lake Ontario, does not diminish your experience of life, it IS experiencing life.  you have one chance.  and like the woman’s in the emergency department, it will pass.

I find none of this depressing, though I have heard more than one person say they can’t read my book because they would find it too sad.  I marvel at that.  Sad?  It’s not sad.  It’s just the way it is.  Like Kafka said, you are free to hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, but maybe this holding back is the one suffering you can avoid.

so who are we?  we get to decide. every day, by how we walk down the street, or share the best things that we know. or horde and hide.  we get to make it up as we go along.   are we rapacious apes, with as Stephen pinker once put it “an aberration of the frontal lobe that is in the process of correcting itself”.  or, like we are able to recognize our reflection in the mirror, are we able to see the soul in our fellow man and woman, and recognize there a familiar beauty.

though mine is a biased picture, I know what i see. students who i talk to both understand the world better than I did at their age and recognize their agency in effecting change.  organizations like MSF, even in times of recession, still receive support (but they want to do more, so please continue to donate).  more and more of us, are getting the picture of the world we live in, living less in the shadow of myth and legend than before.  as that happens, our response becomes greater and at the same time, the dissonance of living in contradiction lessens.  the youngest Canadians have the potential to be a truly powerful force in the enunciation of social and environmental justice.  look at the tools they have at their disposal.  dizzying ones, less blinded than any generation before it.

this is a particular challenge for Canada, and our current government, to engage these people.  every year, hundreds of impassioned, politically minded young men and women, are leaving the country to pursue issues of social justice elsewhere.  this is a national loss of the best and the brightest.  they realize that their ability to effect the change they want to see in the world is greater in Kenya, or Uzbekistan, than it is in their constituency.  their ties to a national identity becomes more tenuous, as they find themselves part of a large and growing community of people from all over the world with similar ideas, changing the world through political, but non-governmental means.   the best, and the brightest, with the greatest sense of social responsibility, become citizens of the world and never come back.  they need to be engaged.  they need to be inspired not only by our country’s capacity to respond, but our consistent will.  decreasing foreign aid, paying only lip service instead of feet on the ground to places like Sudan, or Congo, or Myanmar, will only foment this net loss to our beautiful and free country instead of strengthening it. it means targeted, results based contributions at a local level.  it is there, particularly, where the world needs more Canada.

this is overlong, but who knows when again you might get a chance to address a group of politicians?  i will end this now, though, with a few words about  Sudan.   I had two goals when I finished my book, two besides telling the truth of those months the best I could see it.  the first was to connect with a girl who was abandoned on the steps of my hospital, a girl who i had considered taking back to Canada with me, but never did. when the war came, and that place was burned down, I struggled with that choice.

because of my book, I found her.  she’s alive, not far from Abyei, the place where I worked.  when i told my mother, she said “well, you’ll have to go see her”.  so I plan to and do what i can to make sure she is included in the 10% of women in South Sudan who can read.  perhaps, with that, she will be able to choose better the conditions of her freedom.

the second goal was to come to the political capital of my country to talk about Sudan.  it was this prize that made it possible.  if you want to know more details, read my book, or find me after. or paul dewar.  this year, 2010, is a crucial one for the country as they enter their first parliamentary elections in 24 years, and the buildup to a referendum in 2011 that might break the country in two.  both have the chance to re-ignite the chaos of africa’s largest civil war.  the conditions for both are very fragile and each will need considerable attention to be fair and peaceful. i did mention that 10% of women in south sudan can read?  Canada can offer its support diplomatically and economically to maximize the chance for peaceful outcomes, and if there is a transition to autonomy for the south, should offer targeted support during the first fragile years.  peacekeepers are not enough.  they move in circles, at the privilege of governments whose interest is sometimes less in fairness than its own stability.  there are more effective ways, through health or education, to increase capacity.  i would encourage this conservative government to be transparent and vocal about their peaceful assistance, decreasing the chance of armed conflict and galvanizing an impassioned Canadian electorate about its willingness to be a leader in the effort to foment peace.

be sure, if the war starts in Sudan again, east Africa will be drawn into the chaos, and the world will become a more dangerous place not just for the Sudanese, and not just for eastern Africa, but for everyone.

so that’s it for me, and the politics and the pen. at least for tonight. thanks to all for listening, and to  those of you who have read my book, for reading. allow me to finish by offering an answer as to whether the pen is truly mightier than the the sword.  it is the same one in Canada as it is in Sudan. it depends, finally,  on how many get to read the words that it writes.

peace to you, and on and on.