Forty-five years ago today, Ian Curtis took his life.

I was in Calgary, and getting ready to start at Carleton and later – I figured – a journalism degree. In Calgary, I had been involved with the punk scene for many years. I had my own record label, I put on shows with my great friend Nasty Bob Haslam, and I was a member of a seminal prairies punk band, the Hot Nasties.

Punk rock had started to break my heart, however. Skinheads were showing up at our shows to start fights and to promote neo-Naziism. The violence and destruction at gigs was insane. Ras Pierre Schenk and I led the Nasties, and we had had enough.

Punk rock, too, seemed to have lost its way. The Pistols had broken up, the Ramones were getting over-produced by Phil Spector, and the Clash were starting their bizarre dalliance with Rockabilly. It felt like the punk scene was dying, or dead.

Then, along came this band from Manchester that was totally and completely different than anything we had ever heard. Joy Division were dark and (seemingly) despairing, but nobody had done before what they were doing. Their sound, their songs, their words: it was all just so unprecedented. Unknown Pleasures was their first record, and listening to it, for me, was like listening to someone’s soul. A lost one.

The lost soul at the centre of Joy Division was Ian Curtis, a young and married civil servant who was the antithesis of every rock star that had preceded him. He struggled with epilepsy and many demons. On the eve of their first tour in North America, however, he hanged himself in his kitchen. Shortly afterwards, the group’s second and final record, Closer, was released. It is still one of the best records ever made.

Joy Division had a huge, huge influence on me. One of Curtis’s lyrics – from the final song he performed with the band, Ceremony – is tattooed on my arm. “Lean towards this time.”

I still do that, and I remain so sad that he did not. Gone, too soon, too young, 45 years ago today.

Comments (6)

Comments (12)

New one.

This is in Israel, directly across the road from kibbutz Be’eri and just up from the Nova site. This is where I was with Amit, a young man – a boy, really – who was shot twice by Hamas on October 7 and got away. He told me his story. This is where they shot him: right here.

Bleeding from two bullets in his leg, he somehow got away at the bottom of that field, on the right. Later, when Hamas had left the area, he found his phone in the wreck of his car on the road to the left – it had been hit by an RPG – and he called his brothers to say he loved them and to say goodbye.

“Men are stupid,” he said to me. He was weeping. “We don’t tell each other we love each other.”

So I painted this today, in a rage. I get lots and lots of hate mail, you see, and today someone – she called herself Jennifer – went after me for supporting Israel. For being a “Zionist.” Whatever, but today it fucking enraged me. Not sure why, but it did.

So, I dedicate this painting to you, Jennifer. It’ll remind me of the strength of my friend in Israel, and how he will always be so much better than pieces of shit like you.

Comments (2)

Meet the new boss, worse than the old boss.

Apologies to The Who, but the misapplication of their song lyric is apt: on all matters related to the Jewish state, former Global Affairs Minister Melanie Joly was bad. But her successor, Anita Anand, has already shown herself to be far, far worse. That is no easy thing, but the Toronto-area MP has pulled it off.

This week, reporters approached the newly-appointed Anand for a pro forma comment about the Hamas-Israel war. This is what she said.

“We cannot allow the continued use of food as a political tool … Over 50,000 people have died as a result of the aggression caused against the Palestinians and the Gazan people in Palestine. Using food as a political tool is simply unacceptable,” Anand said, before a cabinet meeting. “We need to continue to work towards a ceasefire. We need to ensure that we have a two-state solution, and Canada will continue to maintain that position.”

She then turned on her heel and stalked away. Jewish Canadians – and the many who support the Jewish state – registered genuine shock.

There are several factual problems with what Anita Anand said. Here are the big ones.

• “Over 50,000 people have died.” The source of that figure is Hamas, which runs the health authority in Gaza. Multiple agencies have stated that Hamas – which, all but the likes of Anita Anand recall, is a designated terrorist entity that broke the ceasefire and killed 1,200 people on October 7, 2023 – has promoted casualty counts that are deliberately, provably false. Even the Gaza authority now acknowledges as much. Zaher al-Wahidi, the head of statistics at the health ministry, told Sky News last month that thousands of individual deaths had been reclassified. “We realized a lot of people died a natural death,” Wahidi said. “Maybe they were near an explosion and they had a heart attack, or [something] caused them pneumonia or hypothermia. All these cases we don’t [attribute to] the war.”

[To read more, subscribe here]

Comments (0)

“There’s no such thing as a genius in politics,” said Jean Chretien – who then added that he had never actually met someone who is a genius at politics. He went on: “There are only human beings, some better than others, who rise or fall on the challenges they meet.”

True enough. But the ones who tend to do better at the political game? They are either lucky, or experienced.

Mark Carney had better hope that the 24 (24!) newcomers he selected for his cabinet on Tuesday are lucky – because they sure aren’t experienced. None of them have helped to manage an organization as big as the Government of Canada before. Not one.

That is why the Liberal Prime Minister’s cabinet seems more like an actual change in government than a cabinet shuffle. The sort of changes ushered in by Carney will mean lots of uncertainty, for him – and for Canadians. We simply don’t know enough about these newcomers to evaluate how they will do.

Thirteen of the new ministers are new to being a Member of Parliament, as well. So we don’t even have their record as an MP to examine, and predict how they’ll do.

The jobs that have been handed to the (relative) new kids on Centre Block aren’t inconsequential, either.  Consider:

 

[To read more, subscribe here]

Comments (24)

Comments (15)