Gwynne Dyer lecture

Journalist, broadcaster, and historian Gwynne Dyer returns to UPEI for a lecture on the return of nationalism as a movement around the world. Dyer will present “The Populist Revold: its causes and cures” at 7:30 pm, Thursday, September 13 in the Dr. Steel Recital Hall at UPEI. The lecture is free and is presented by The SDU Institute for Christianity and Culture. Nationalism is back, argues Dyer, and it’s very angry. Populists have already come to power in two major countries, and some people even fear we are seeing a re-run of the 1930s. We all know how that ended.  In Europe, the populist revolution is mostly driven by immigration. In the larger EU countries, mainstream parties have contained the insurgency so far. In the United States, it’s more complex: job losses are really the big issue. Even the “immigrant threat” is mostly expressed in terms of lost jobs. Dyer says Donald Trump can’t “bring the jobs back”, because most of them never left the country; they just vanished because of automation. The US official unemployment rate is 4.5 percent, but almost one-third of American men over 20 years old are not gainfully employed. There is a plausible forecast that automation will destroy 47 percent of existing American jobs by 2033. What got Trump elected, says Dyer, more even than racism and immigration, was the anger that comes from the misery and humiliation of joblessness. The key votes that pushed him over the top came from the Rust Belt, where the automation started destroying assembly-line jobs 25 years ago. Trump has no solution for automation. More extreme populists may come after him unless the anger is extinguished. But at least his election has focussed our attention on the problem. Automation really will kill the jobs, and not just in the United States. The main political task for the next generation (post-Trump) will be to ensure that those without work have an income they can live on, and don’t lose their self-respect. One way that is already being widely considered is a Universal Basic Income (UBI). It would put money in everybody’s pockets with no strings attached, whether they are working or not—and and since everybody gets it, there would be no stigma involved. The anger that drives the populism comes as much from the humiliation that people feel when they are unemployed as from the actual financial pain they are suffering, so any solution must treat both aspects of the problem. UBI might be the answer, although there is still much research to be done. Various basic income pilot programmes are already running in Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, California, and Ontario. UBI may turn out to be the least revolutionary answer to the revolutionary change that is coming in the amount of work available. Everybody would be free to top up their UBI with earned income, and half of today’s jobs will probably still exist in 2033. Indeed, there may be a lot of mix-and-match, with most people working at least part of the time. There would still be millionaires, too; UBI is a floor, not a ceiling. But big change is coming, and big solutions are needed. Gwynne Dyer has worked as a freelance journalist, columnist, broadcaster, and lecturer on international affairs for more than 20 years, but he was originally trained as a historian. He received degrees from Canadian, American, and British universities, finishing with a PhD in Military and Middle Eastern History from the University of London. He served in three navies and held academic appointments at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and Oxford University before launching his twice-weekly column on international affairs, which is published by over 175 papers in some 45 countries. Gwynne Dyer’s newest book, Growing Pains: Surviving the Populist Wave, was published in April 2018 by Scribe in Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.  Dr. Dyer lives in London. In 2010, he was made an officer of the Order of Canada.

Winter's Tales presents Steve McOrmond and Chris Bailey

Two Island writers, Steve McOrmond and Chris Bailey, will launch their new books of poetry on Monday, September 17, at 7:00 pm in the Carriage House at Beaconsfield Historic House on Charlottetown’s waterfront. McOrmond’s poetry has captivated readers across Canada since his first book, Lean Days, in 2004, while Bailey, from a North Lake fishing family, is a newcomer to the literary scene. Bailey, a recent UPEI psychology graduate, has been living in Toronto and Hamilton, earning a master’s degree in creative writing. He comes home during the summers, working on the family boat. Many of the poems in What Your Hands Have Done (Nightwood Editions) focus on the lives, work, and relationships of fishing families. This is the first major poetry book by an Islander to honour, at length, the realities and lore of PEI’s fishing community. Bailey’s interests also range beyond the traditional land/seascape and livelihoods of PEI. His influences vary from Elmore Leonard, Warren Zevon, and Charles Bukowski—the “laureate of American lowlife” wrote Time—to Neil Gaiman and Lorna Crozier. Just as the wider culture’s zeitgeist pervades the Island, Bailey’s poems take readers on lively trips beyond the decks, wharves, and fishers’ homes. McOrmond’s imaginative takes on experience, and his satirical wit, are evident in his other book titles: Primer for the Hereafter and The Goods News About Armageddon. With ironic perceptions in “Come Play on the Island,” he contrasts touristic summers with our winters, and in “The Lobster” he reveals the sardonic “second thoughts” of a PEI restaurant cook. In a bittersweet voice, he evokes Maritime outmigration in “So This Is Goodbye”: “The story of the Island is the story of paradise: / we have always had to leave.” A 1995 UPEI graduate, McOrmond has lived in Toronto for two decades, returning yearly to the Island. His metropolitan experiences and computer software business career ingeniously permeate his new book, Reckon (Brick Book): “And we felt fortunate to live in the afterglow of Steve Jobs” and though “the air smells like burning tires...I love it here, I really do”. His new poems reflect and critique the growing domination of our lives and consciousness by digital platforms and realms: “Deep in an offshore data centre, my vagaries / are tracked, time-stamped, mined / for meaningful adjacencies.” A special guest poet, Annick MacAskill from Halifax, will give a short reading, followed by McOrmond’s and Bailey’s featured readings, a book signing, and a reception. The evening is sponsored by the UPEI Dean of Arts and Department of English, with generous support from The Canada Council for the Arts. All are welcome.

Quartet for the End of Time

For classical music aficionados, the UPEI Department of Music's Clarinet Specturm Series will present one of the seminal avant garde works of the 20th century—Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time—on Saturday, September 8, 2018 at 8:00 pm at the Dr. Steel Recital Hall. UPEI Clarinet Professor Karem J. Simon will collaborate with Jennifer King, piano; Karen Graves, violin; and, Natalie Williams Calhoun, cello in the presentation of this monumental masterpiece. The evening will proceed with a brief introduction followed by the performance of this fifty-minute piece in its entirety. Admission, at $20 adults and $10 students, may be acquired at the door.
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