No Tragic Hero

On Friday night, Conrad Black was stripped of his membership in the Order of Canada. Tim Harper writes:

Black is now one of only six Order of Canada recipients stripped of the honour and forced to return the insignia. And what a photo op that would be when he hands it over.

He joins a pack of fraudsters, a Métis leader who let loose with a string of anti-Semitic invective, and a one-legged kid who ran across the country, only to be convicted later of fraud, assault and drunk driving.

Black fought to keep the honour, at the same time claiming that the people who would review his case were anonymous nobodies.  They included Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and Clerk of the Privy Council Wayne Wouters. One presumes that you are anonymous if you don't travel in the same circles as Black.

Now the former Lord of Crossharbour sounds like the fox in Aesop's fable: “It’s really a sideshow. I’m not preoccupied with the Order of Canada. All sorts of people who should have it don’t. And frankly all sorts of people who do have it shouldn’t.’’

The Greeks held that tragedy generates catharsis. Despite the mistakes a tragic hero makes, one can still feel pity for him. However, Black is no tragic hero.

The Saga Of A Prodigal Son

Bob Hepburn argues, in today's  Toronto Star, that Conrad Black should be stripped of his Order of Canada:

Strangely though, the advisory council that oversees the Order of Canada once again failed to strip former newspaper owner Conrad Black, who was originally convicted in the U.S. in 2007 of fraud, of his cherished award.

Indeed, there’s a bad odour surrounding the panel’s stubborn refusal to act against Black.

Hepburn points out that only four people -- Alan Eagelson,  David Ahenakew, T. Sher Singh and Steve Fonyo --  have had the award taken from them. Each ran quite spectacularly afoul of the law -- which is one of the criteria for revoking the award. Hepburn notes that:

Under its own rules, the council “shall consider the termination of a person’s appointment” if the person “has been convicted of a criminal offence” (Black qualifies on this point) or if the person’s conduct “is seen to undermine the credibility, integrity or relevance of the Order” (Black, who gave up his citizenship when he became a member of the British House of Lords, meets this criterion, too).

It seems pretty clear that -- in the interest of justice -- Black should have his Order of Canada revoked. The case for not reinstating his citizenship is more murky. Lawrence Martin, in a recent column, notes that Jean Chretien's decision to revoke his citizenship remains questionable:

He brought back to life the 1919 Nickle resolution, a declaration without legal standing stipulating that Canadians could not receive British titles. Mr. Chrétien’s invocation of it left Conrad Black no choice but to renounce his citizenship to get the appointment. It’s a fact that needs to be remembered when he seeks to reclaim it.

I hold no brief for Black. His troubles are of his own making. Those troubles are the reason he should not be allowed to keep his Order of Canada. On the other hand, he was born here. That fact cannot  be erased -- something the present government needs to remember when Canadians find themselves in difficult circumstances abroad.

At the moment, Black is a man without a country. There is something deliciously ironic in that. But, despite his legal transgressions -- and the fact that they appear to have taught him nothing -- he should be allowed to return to Canada when he has served his time.

It is a longstanding Canadian tradition to grant the return of prodigal sons, even if they are unrepentant.

The Face Of The Conservative Revolution

Two stories this morning -- one in The Globe and Mail and the other in The National Post -- put the Conservative Revolution in perspective. In The Globe, John Ibbitson claims that the Conservatives still see themselves as underdogs. Their summer strategy is to shore up their beachhead around Toronto and to storm B.C.'s lower mainland, warning that the Liberals are coming. They hope to become "Canada's Party"

by convincing themselves and their supporters that the big, bad liberal elites are still Goliath and Mr. Harper’s Conservatives remain the underdogs, even if every shred of evidence suggests that it is the Tories who are the giants now.

Harper's Conservatives, born of Western alienation, arrived in Ottawa with a chip on their collective shoulder. That chip has grown bigger with their majority. But there is more than Western alienation behind the Harper Conservatives. There is a distinct world view which defines all Conservatives these days. That world view was best expressed by Scott Fitzgerald ninety years ago. "The rich," he wrote, "aren't like the rest of us."

And this morning, in The National Post, we have an illustration of that observation. Affidavits, filed by U.S. prosecutors, suggest that time behind bars has not humbled Conrad Black:

“Black initially demanded special treatment, expecting counsellors to prioritize his requests over those of other inmates,” said Tammy Padgett, the unit manager of Lord Black’s prison ward. “During the time that Black was at Coleman, I observed that he gathered a following of inmates who performed services for him, acting like servants,” she said in a two-page affidavit filed by U.S. prosecutors in advance of a June 24 re-sentencing hearing.

“These inmates cooked for Black, cleaned for him, mopped his floor, ironed his clothes and other similar tasks. This is not at all frequent at Coleman.”

Conservatives are convinced that class matters -- and that class distinctions, which have been fudged by the welfare state, need to be re-established. It's time, they proclaim, to reassert privilege.

Lord Black and Captain Ahab

Canadians have never felt much sympathy for Conrad Black. Perhaps that's because he never displayed much sympathy for them. Black's disdain for what he viewed as the Canadian inferiority complex -- which he felt made Canada an economic backwater and a land of limited opportunities -- was well known to his countrymen.

But, as the Lord of Crossharbour found himself a convicted felon last week, it is safe to say that Canadians were not above feeling a sense of catharsis. For, like a Greek or Shakespearean tragic hero, Black's tragic flaw was hubris. The problem was that he clearly was no Oedipus or Othello -- because, in the end, Sophocles' and Shakespeare's creations were self critical enough to at least acknowledge their flaws. Lord Black appears to be much more akin to the classic American tragic hero Captain Ahab, in Melville's Moby Dick. And perhaps that is fitting, given the fact that Black frequently extolled the virtues of Canada's southern neighbour, going so far as to write admiring biographies of two of its presidents, Franklin Roosevelt and Richard Nixon.

Like Ahab, Black felt that he was the constant target of lesser creatures who insulted his intelligence. And, like Ahab, he exhibited a heightened sense of injury. When Ahab was told by Starbuck, his first mate, that it was "blasphemy" to hunt an elemental -- a force of nature -- Ahab responded, "Speak not to me of blasphemy, man. I'd strike the sun if it insulted me." And, like Ahab, Black appears to feel no sense of remorse. Ensnared in a tangle of legal harpoons -- some of which he threw himself -- his raised middle finger is a gesture of defiance. He will go to the bottom, refusing to acknowledge that there are some fates which should not be tempted.

For, unlike Black, most Canadians live in the shadow of fate -- or of a natural environment which can seal one's fate. This is a land where prairie farmers have been known to tie ropes from the back doors of their houses to their barns -- as life lines to prevent their getting lost in a blizzard. Perhaps, because Mr. Black grew up a child of privilege, he knows little of the life of a prairie farmer and the elementals which are the axioms of his existence. Canadians tend to side with Starbuck. They know that one does not do battle with white whales or the Great White North. Admittedly, such an attitude is not very heroic -- to my knowledge the only legacy Starbuck has left behind is the bequest of his name to a chain of coffee shops. But at least one survives -- and saves one's soul.

None of us is qualified to analyze the state of Lord Black's soul. But, for many Canadians, when Black renounced his Canadian citizenship he was, in effect, cutting the rope from the back door to the barn. And they watched, knowing instinctively that Black was going to be caught -- snowblind -- in the storm.

This is not to say that Canadians would not allow Lord Black to return to Canada -- although his conviction makes his application for citizenship somewhat problematic. However, Canada has a long tradition of accepting refugees. They would insist, though, that he serve his sentence in a Canadian jail -- unless that sentence were overturned on appeal. We may not be a very heroic people (in the sense that we do not go in search of monsters to slay) but we are a tolerant people. In the end, I suspect that Canadians would be willing to give the Lord of Crossharbour a second chance. But they would insist that he acknowledge he made a mistake when he cut that life line.