I woke up this morning, made some tea, ate my breakfast and opened my front door to see that the ex-mayor of Hamilton Larry Di Ianni was rifling through my mail. We exchanged pleasantries, and he forced a campaign handbill upon me. He asked me the manner in which i employ myself, and after mentioning that i had taught for Mohawk and McMaster, he tried to bond with me by discussing his past as a teacher of high-school english. We laughed and talked about student life. Despite the fact that in his hand ex-Mayor of Hamilton Larry Di Ianni was holding several of my financial statements along with a notification of an unsolicited offer for a pre-approved mortgage and credit card and a flyer suggesting that now is the season for me to get my roof fixed, the day had started off pleasantly enough. I noticed that the letter at the top of the pile which he was holding was a phone bill.
When I asked Larry Di Ianni about specific policies in which i am interested -- high-speed rail from Windsor to Quebec City, light rail for the cities; all using Hamilton steel and jobs from the province's shrinking automotive sector -- he brushed me off and referred to the bullet points on his campaign poster. I was indeed impressed, as it did clearly and emphatically state that "He can do more! He will do more!"
I then asked him to clarify his environmental policies, with specific regard to the transportation needs of working Ontarians. He reminded me that he built the Red Hill Creek Expressway. I reminded him that i had met a few very personable individuals who sat in trees seeking to block construction of another highway through part of Hamilton. I further reminded him that it was a rather undemocratic idea for him to have used city lawyers to make the protestors financially liable for the security measures required to "contain" them. I then reminded him that one Matt Jelly had invited him to a public debate over the issue, and that he had refused to participate.
At this point, Larry Di Ianni put my mail back into my mailbox.
He told me that while we might disagree on traffic concerns, that his record for obtaining provincial funding for municipal social services and job creation speaks for itself, and proves that he will be a force for change if he is elected federally. After all, he can and will do more.
I quickly realized that ex-Mayor of Hamilton Larry Di Ianni was campaigning without a platform, and would only listen to those points which might already agree with Liberal policy. I mentioned the concern that i had for the inherent problems of integrating an economy based on resource extraction and speculative trading (with particular emphasis on energy futures) with the real-world environmental depreciation of many of the biological processes which are fundamental to the continuation of modern civilization as we have come to enjoy it. Food prices are getting as out-of-control as our nation's oil inventory.
Larry Di Ianni then expressed the Liberal party's desire to invest in "green technology", such as biofuels. He elequently explained his enthusiasm for this emerging industry. I agreed, but wondered how we could rationalize the fact that biofuel trades land intended for food with land intended for energy development, and that the poor and working families will naturally suffer as a result of exponentially-rising food and fuel costs. I also said that my grandfather had been a wheat farmer in Alberta, and wondered whether growing a field of plants to make enough biofuel to allow the combine and other harvesting equipment to harvest the field of plants intended for biofuel was a winning strategy in the race to sustainability.
Larry Di Ianni mentioned that he himself was about to be a grandfather. He noted the importance of family life, then bid me a good morning after saying that i was remarkably well informed for a young man who introduced himself as a friend of Matt Jelly. "You should work for my campaign!" he stated enthusiastically. I told him that I would come to his thing if he would come to mine, and I began to relay information about the May 9th New Harbours performance with Michael Snow. He said that he was always interested in the arts, but could not attend. Using his Blackberry, Larry Di Ianni quite eloquently confirmed to me that he had two stag parties to attend that evening. Then, after reminding me of a pleasant Red Hill Creek Expressway drive which he and Matt Jelly experienced, ex-Mayor Larry Di Ianni left me to my porch and tea.
Which got me to thinking.
Larry Di Ianni, I will take you up on this offer. I will work hard to get the youth voters onside with the Liberal party. I will smile for grandmothers everywhere, and dance like a monkey in a suit for the continuing benefit of the federal Liberal party. The federal Liberals were an effective and socially-minded governing party forty years ago, and perhaps some prodding from the youthfully militant will aid to rid the Liberals of their more dogmatically conservative impulses. Red is not normally my choice for political colours, but I would love the chance to help bring some real issues to public debate.
Of course, this would mean that I would have to work for a self-described "Man for All Reasons".
If anyone wishes to contact ex-Mayor, federal Liberal candidate, and
enfant-terrible Larry Di Ianni, he can be reached at the following email address. Feel free to speak as liberally as possible when congratulating the ex-Mayor for his contributions to life in the city of Hamilton.
ldiianni@cogeco.ca
-----
Mr. Hewlett,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. As you may know, Mr. Di Ianni was selected by your local Liberal riding association to represent the Liberal Party in the next election. As such, he enjoys the full support of the Leader and the Liberal Party of Canada.
Having said that, I have shared your comments with Mr. Di Ianni in the hopes that he can address your concerns personally.
Regards,
Daniel Lauzon
Directeur adjoint des communications / Deputy Director of Communications
Parti libéral du Canada / Liberal Party of Canada
-----
Quintin,
Imagine my shock at reading your letter, as well as the slanderous blog fabrication of the conversation we had on the front porch of your home.
Upon checking our records, my canvassing partner, who was standing just below the steps of your porch, recorded you as ‘possibly supportive’ after what I described to him as a friendly conversation. In fact, based on our exchange, I did ask you to volunteer during the election. I certainly would not have done that had I sensed your lack of support. So, I can only assume that your behaviour was duplicitous: pretending civility, while harbouring mischief. I have already asked my friend to alter our records, so we won’t bother you again.
I suppose when you told me that you were Matt Jelly’s friend, you were trying to give me a message. Because I have had very civil conversations with Mr. Jelly in our last encounters, I didn’t until now understand your true intent. I have no problems with people not supporting me. I do have problems with outright lies and fabrications. Your blog contains many of these untruths that reflect neither my statements to you or the tenor of our conversation.
You are correct on one count. My pamphlet is not a platform; it is a candidate card intended to introduce myself as a Liberal candidate for Hamilton East Stoney Creek to constituents. You will note that the card contains the following: My Experience; my community Involvement; my personal biography; some of my accomplishments in politics; and a testimonial assessment, from the local newspaper, on my abilities in office.
Nowhere does it include the Liberal Platform and the reason is simple. There is no election yet and the platform has not yet been released. At the doors, I do talk about the general themes that have attracted me to be a member of the Liberal Party and its candidate in this riding. These themes are: Infrastructure support for cities, Poverty Reduction, Manufacturing assistance, and Environmental Sustainability. Mr. Dion has talked about each of these over the past months, and details will be released at the appropriate time. Each of these is important to Hamilton and will be well-received when details are released.
Contrary to your exaggeration in the blog essay, I do recall your mention of rail transportation being important to you. I mentioned my support for this as well, and I have actually written about the need to improve in this area. Why you would mis-represent our conversation is mind-boggling.
What disappointed me most in your entry, however, is your slanderous lie about me taking your mail. How dare you? I know you stated in your letter to M. Dion that you had the intention of being ‘avec humour’, I see nothing humorous about accusing someone of such an intrusive act. I ask you out of decency to retract that allegation.
Common sense will tell everyone that I am knocking on doors to solicit support, not to pry into people’s private mail. The accusation is bizarre. My canvasser friend was flabbergasted when I told him about this allegation of yours, as was I.
In fact, as irony will have it, I have crossed paths with the local postman on more than one occasion as I knocked on doors in the neighbourhood and he and I joked about being on the same route.
Similarly, I have met with a good deal of support in your whole area, with people agreeing to take lawn signs during the campaign supporting my candidacy. I won’t reveal the number of signs to protect my campaign’s strategic position, but even on your street, I met with considerable success. I am sure that each of these residents can be called upon to summarize the content of our positive exchange, if need be.
In summary, Quentin, I have no problems with your support of someone else at election time. I do have problems with duplicity, exaggeration and mischief-making.
Larry Di Ianni, HESC Candidate
-----
Mr. Di Ianni,
In relation to the article which I posted on my blog, despite the funny title the heart of the matter is of course the number of political issues which I raised with you.
The matter of you "stealing my mail" was intended as humour, and was not intended to slander your reputation any further than what you yourself have done while Mayor of the city of Hamilton. I am fully aware that you had my mail in your hand with my phone bill on top simply because you were placing a campaign handbill into my mailbox.
Poetic exaggeration is key to satire.
After the strong-arm tactics which were used by yourself and your administration to push the Red Hill Creek Expressway into existence, I feel that you made yourself into a caricature worthy of some derision. With this in mind, I wrote that you "stole my mail". If I could draw a picture then you would have a big nose and funny facial features, but sadly I cannot do so. I hope you understand that no individual who read this post actually thought that you were stealing my mail for any devious purpose, and in conversation with them I did make it clear that you were just scattering handbills around the neighbourhood. My readers, as such, were more concerned with the fact that you did not have any adequate responses to the issues that I raised with you.
You suggest that since I disagreed with your statements, and yet was wholly civil during our conversation, that I acted in some way in a duplicitous manner. Well my mother ultimately taught me well: I believe that all humans deserve to be treated in a civil manner. You are a personable and generally friendly person, Mr. Di Ianni, and I do not wish to slander you as a person. Perhaps one day soon we could play chess together: as people. But you have to understand that politicians are not simply individuals. In their public function, the individual humanity of a public figure is abstracted into a more hybridized entity which shares an ontological space with creative enterprises -- the fiction of celebrity, if you will. It is with this "hybrid" that I dialogued when I wrote the piece on my blog. Words are words, Mr. Di Ianni. You have yours, and I have mine; we occupy the space in between our respective language. In transubstantive terms, neither of us is fully represented or constituted as individuals by them.
In my youth I was certainly more militant, and would likely have removed you from my porch with a litany of curses. Now that I have aged and grown a few beards, I have come to understand that change in civil society must come through peaceful and productive discourse. Of course, for this discourse to be productive, both parties in conversation must actually hear and understand what each other is saying.
It is with this last point that I believe my satirical article to have found its mark. Namely, you weren't listening to what I was saying, except for when it already agreed with aspects of your campaign. In your response you mention that we agreed when I raised the topic of light and high-speed rail to your attention. A clarification to your "agreement" is necessary. I must counter that I raised this particular issue at three different times during our brief chat, as for years I have been of the opinion that rail is the solution to Hamilton's highway problem. The first time I mentioned it, you started talking about your production as Mayor of Hamilton.
After the second time, when I explained the benefits to the Ontario manufacturing sector that such a project would entail, you mentioned that the Liberal party is the sole party which supports "Manufacturing Assistance". In my blog I mentioned that the only times in our conversation during which you seemed to be listening to the points that I was making occurred when my thoughts strayed into territory covered by the Liberal political platform. While I understand that the official platform is as yet unreleased by the Liberal party, you must agree that a certain political trajectory is quite readily visible to anyone who pays attention to federal politics.
The city of Hamilton is populated with a very high number of working-class families who will not be able to afford the oil required to transport themselves as gas prices continue to rise as oil supplies continue to fall (perhaps as a federally-appointed Liberal, you will come to see that oil production worldwide stagnated a few years ago and is now in decline). Perhaps if I had used the current buzzword LRT to describe my position on rail then you would have remembered the issue that I tried to have you remember. Rail development surely would have helped back in 2003, when Red Hill was peaking as an issue and Stelco was bottoming out. Plus, by taking on such a project Hamilton would have proved itself two years ahead of Al Gore's cinematic popularization of environmental issues.
Perhaps your confusion around the civility of my behaviour and the hostility of my actual statements to the ideologies which you represent is due to the fact that many of my opinions are frequently heard coming from the revolutionary left. Those who are forced closer to the margins of society -- including the protesters on whom you unleashed city lawyers to "recoup" the security costs of their containment -- do indeed make their ideas known in what can to more conservative eyes be described as "crazy". While I do believe that at times more vehement acts of political dissent are necessary, those times are only validated by larger social crises. I myself wish to take a more academic approach. It is with a certain perverse hope that, in the not-too-distant future, a legal team will be able to demonstrate your own financial liability in the matter, as the environmental costs of this development will be itemized as financial losses to the residents of the city of Hamilton.
Your support in the liberal party is assured; I can understand why you have been chosen as a candidate for Hamilton East as your success is a virtual inevitability. Right now the Liberals need some winners, and such is the life of party politics: pick the winners before the ideologies. For at least a few years, you will likely collect cheques as an MPP.
By the way Mr Di Ianni, I checked my own records, which due to my "single" status does not rely on a partner of canvases but rather my own memory. There was no canvassing partner present at the base of my stairs. You may indeed have been walking in the neighbourhood with one, but this person was not present during our conversation. Then again, I sat on my porch drinking tea for the next fifteen minutes and didn't see anyone catch up with you down my street. I assume that for the sake of expediency (not something for which the Liberals are known, by the way) your canvassing partner was busy canvassing a different street.
Perhaps we could test each other's memory: roughly three-and-a-half minutes into our conversation, there was a loud cheering sound in the neighbourhood. Pointing to a truck three doors down from me, I made a joke: "I trust that was from the school, and not the construction guys after having moved something heavy." You laughed then proffered your own joke. We laughed together. Mr. Di Ianni, having canvassed those houses, you had just come from that direction and your joke corrected my statement. They were not construction guys at all. Do you remember your own statement, which correctly described the work and the workers? I certainly do, and perhaps your response will authenticate which person's ability to remember allows a more "truthful" version of events that spring morning.
It may come to pass that I am wrong about your potential as MPP. Perhaps by then you will have come to understand such concepts as "sustainable development", "peak oil", and "suburban sprawl". Until then, your legacy remains tied to the Red Hill Creek Expressway which, while of short-term economic benefit to some people, will be a grey stain on the landscape of Hamilton for decades to come.
If such is mischief-making, then I stand properly accused.
q x
-----
Thank you for your reply. I am familiar with satire, Quintin, and still don’t find your headline humourous or satirical. Obviously neither did some of your friends who had to call to ask if I was really stealing mail. You sort of prove my point. At some appropriate moment, perhaps we can talk in detail about each of your assertions about the road, my motives and my legacy in the city, as well as the protesters and the role of the city in resolving that issue. It would require some time to do that.
I do appreciate civility and always return the courtesy. You are obviously a bright, educated young man and would be deserving of some time.
However, you have reached conclusions based on your own biases, not the record. And that can be the subject of our discussion. The only concern I would have is that you might again publish an exaggeration, or fabrication or satirical version of the conversation without giving me the opportunity to rebut on your blog. Perhaps we can invite some listeners to hear the conversation, just to keep it on the record. I say this without any implied formality…I would want it to be very informal.
A second point, I am running Federally, not provincially (so MP, not MPP). I hope to win based on a record of service, but ultimately, our voters will decide; and I’m ready for their decision and will respect it.
As for my canvassing friend. He is only there to keep records, so he doesn’t do other streets. I am going to every door myself in this pre-writ period and he was there, rest assured.
I will alter my approach, however, and bring him to the doors with me from now on.
Again, I appreciate your response and ask again that you alter your offensive headline on your blog, or at least make it obvious that you are taking ‘poetic’ liberties.
Thank you.
Larry Di Ianni, HESC Candidate
