Photo illustration by Dave Donald

A growing number of teachers and parents say Ontario’s current school  curriculum will graduate scores of children who are 21st century illiterate. Inside the fight for more technology and social media in the classroom.

Every school day from September to June at 3:30 p.m., Aerin Guy meets her nine-year old daughter at school. On this particular Thursday in February, Guy bundles up in a green duffel coat to shepherd her daughter and the family pet spaniel through their busy east-end Toronto neighbourhood. With only seven short minutes before they reach their semi, Guy launches her standard volley of questions toward the fourth-grader. That’s just enough time to probe for satisfactory answers to that question asked by parents everywhere: What did you do in school today? Guy wants to know if something memorable engaged Scarlet’s attention—besides the fact her tooth fell out. Most of all, she wants to know that she didn’t spend the day tethered to a desk, filling out yet another paper handout.

Scarlet’s grade four classroom has only one or two  computers— that she’s rarely invited to use—and a smart board that mostly serves as a projection tool. There are no mobile phones, no iPods, no laptops (though the grade six class has recently received a few of the latter). For Scarlet, and many of her classmates, it’s a bit like living in the Middle Ages. Here is a girl who can spend hours parked at the dining room table, MacBook Pro resting at her fingertips, a Yamaha keyboard on her right. With easy flicks of her slender fingers, she deftly scrolls through a website that she lovingly planned and designed herself, with a little help from Mom. She’s only too happy to showcase a digital resume of blogs, slide shows, Bitstrips comics, videos (made with a Flip camera and iMovie software), a podcast, and websites. One site promotes a dog hotel; a second focuses on launching a dream restaurant to be managed with friends. Scarlet reports she’s currently at the hiring stage.

Guy and her husband moved into their home in the spring of 2011. They were drawn to the eclectic mix of neighbours, and the proximity to restaurants and shops. Guy was confident the local school’s French Immersion, enrichment programs, music string instruments, and an annual musical would be a good fit for her daughter. Excited, the family packed their belongings, left Fernie, B.C. and crossed the country to resume life in Toronto, where they had once lived. What the digital strategy consultant didn’t bargain for was the divide between her technology-rich home and a school that doesn’t show the same appetite.

Guy is among a growing faction of Ontario parents, teachers, and education specialists who believe kids need more technology in the classroom, from blogs to Facebook, mobile devices and beyond. Without it, they argue, children’s education will become woefully irrelevant in today’s fast-changing world—think of it as 21st century illiteracy. These educators know it’s increasingly difficult to engage today’s student, whose life outside of school is inextricably linked to technology. A grassroots movement of teachers —who are starting to sound more like techies—has mushroomed on Twitter, and now a global network of educators openly share new learning strategies, and spread the word that technology promotes critical thinking, investigation and collaboration. “Without technology,” says Halifax-based Paul W. Bennett, a long-time educator and a senior research fellow with Society for Quality Education, “there’s a real risk that students’ curiosity will be suffocated and their education will be stunted.”

Last September, Guy joined the school’s Parent Council in search of allies in the push to integrate technology into the classroom. Instead of encouragement, Guy says she received blank stares from teachers, a litany of excuses about priorities, such as curriculum and test scores, and apologies. In a school with one computer lab, she was told, everyone had to take a turn. The Parent Council was (and continues to be) more interested in fundraising ideas and lengthy discourses on how to spend fundraising dollars—not rabble rousing for revolutionary education. Short of becoming antagonistic, Guy isn’t sure how to push technology into the classroom as a tool for long-term learning. “There’s just no will,” she says. For too many parents, technology is still considered a toy—and a potentially dangerous one.

Guy isn’t alone. There are many towns and cities in Ontario where parents are not joining the debate about the role technology should serve in the classroom. Some parents don’t even know a gap exists. While some classrooms are transforming into digital classrooms, many school boards continue to agonize over the decision to install WiFi, uncertain how to manage classrooms and control student access to the Internet, and fearful that student devices will compromise network security.

Parents feel powerless to incite change when principals say they are just following board policy. Across Canada, each provincial ministry of education is responsible for creating curriculum, while school boards are given the discretion of deciding whether to install Wi-Fi and to permit the use of Personal Electronic Devices (PED) in schools. Depending on where someone lives, a school may have: Wi-Fi and allow mobile devices, allow Wi-Fi and ban mobile devices, or allow neither. Ontario alone has 72 district school boards, made up of 31 English-language public boards, 29 English-language Catholic boards, 4 French-language public boards, and 8 French-language Catholic boards, and is home to 4,020 elementary schools and 911 secondary schools. With the exception of Quebec, the provinces delegate the tracking of Wi-Fi implementation to the school boards, therefore rendering it next to impossible for parents to gage progress—or challenge the status quo.

To date, change has mostly come at the hands of visionaries. Take Ron Canuel, now CEO of the Canadian Education Association (CEA), a Toronto-based group of Canadian leaders in education, research, policy, non-profit and business committed to education that leads to greater student engagement. In 2003, as director general of Quebec’s Eastern Townships School Board, Canuel launched Canada’s first-ever 1:1 laptop initiative. The $15-million project—mostly bank loans with almost no government money—put 6,000 laptops into students’ hands. Canuel was driven by twin goals: Engage kids in learning and enhance the teaching environment. Five years later, drop-out rates in the Quebec Eastern Townships lowered from 42 percent to 21 percent, and its overall ranking rose from 66 to 23 (out of 70 school boards). Despite his success, trustees from other boards were not persuaded to introduce a similar initiative. “That’s what made me think,” says Canuel, “about what is it that really impedes change? It’s that issue of courage, moving forward, challenging the norm.”

Only an hour east of Guy’s neighbourhood, the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) is doing just that. On the second floor of Dundas Central Public School, room 208 boasts one board-sanctioned computer, five refurbished computers, one Dell Notebook, one flip camera, one iPod touch, 10 iPad 2s, one digital sound system, one green screen, and a plucky teacher who decided three years ago that something in the classroom had to change.

Heidi Siwak, 47, is the first to admit she was not an ideal candidate to become an early adopter of technology—“I was the Luddite in the family.” But something big had been nagging this teacher with 21 years of practice: the students were no longer engaged. They were just “going through the motion of school.” Siwak recalls days when students showed waning interest in the curriculum, and days when she lacked the luxury of time to indulge student-driven learning. She finally conceded the world was changing. “I would have to learn what technology meant to kids,” she says, “I needed to understand the genres. I needed to be using them myself as writing tools, as thinking tools, as reading tools.” So in the fall of 2010, Siwak changed everything.

This year’s eager grade six students who inhabit the large classroom with majestic ceilings don’t know how many hundreds of hours Siwak sat in front of her home computer preparing for the shift in education. They are, however, thrilled they no longer need to rely solely on textbooks to find answers. Now when they need to research, Siwak is more apt to lecture on good web search practices or, better yet, suggest they Skype an expert and ask their questions directly. Siwak has watched the world become the new classroom: students are immersed in digital citizenship and good practices for working in an online environment—all components of the 21st Century Fluencies program promoted by the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board.

In her new role, Siwak has morphed from teacher to coach. Rather than stand at the front of the class spouting content, she teaches thinking and encourages students to find opportunities where they can produce meaningful, original work that adheres to curriculum standards. They haven’t done away with paper and pen, but students are encouraged to record their stories, and to produce video posts on personal blogs that are shared with peers and parents on a board-supported social media platform. Last year’s class even made headlines after collaborating with a New York digital media artist, an Australian app designer, and a developer in Finland to plan and produce content for an augmented reality tourism app that promotes their town of Dundas.

The door to principal Barry Morlog’s office at Dundas Central Public School is wide open. He and vice principal Jennifer George (who has since been promoted to principal of another school) banter back and forth, finishing off each other’s sentences like a married couple. “I’m a computer dinosaur,” he says. “You were,” George says, placing emphasis on the past tense. “But I’m getting better,” he says. “And it doesn’t matter. My skills are not that important. It’s the people we have in this building who rolled this out for Jennifer and me.” He’s right: Morley has been blessed with a techie staff. He also works in a school board that was quick to recognize how students would benefit from the integration of technology.

The floodgates opened to this new way of doing school seven years ago when Morley’s district unveiled a plan to introduce Wi-Fi into their 94 elementary and 18 secondary schools. To date, only a third of the schools have Wi-Fi, evidence that implementation is a costly process that requires time to fully roll out across a school board. John Laverty, the superintendent of student achievement at the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board believes they have been successful, because the people coming into the board share a vision to make teaching relevant on three levels: at the student level, teaching level and board level. Their philosophy is to create an environment where students and teachers working in groups can access mobile devices, rather than interrupt the work flow to access technology stored in a separate lab or library. “We’ve been able to personalize instruction,” says Laverty, “without losing that contact with the teacher.”

Despite such successes, however, training Ontario teachers to leverage technology in the classroom remains a formidable task. Jim Hewitt, an associate professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, describes the Siwaks of education as “maverick teachers” who are creative and resourceful enough to experiment with technologies in the classroom—and who are also among the minority. “We are currently not doing a great job of training our teachers to use technology in educationally effective ways,” Hewitt says. He adds the Ontario government is exploring the idea of mandating longer teacher preparation programs, which would allow for more in-depth study of critical topics such as educational technology, among other things.

Zoe Branigan-Pipe, a seconded teacher in the Hamilton-Wentworth district, pre-service instructor and co-hort advisor who trains student teachers at Brock University, champions technology’s potential to help elementary and secondary students learn, especially those who typically rank in the bottom half of the class. Thanks to audio and video, for instance, students can learn without relying completely on text. It should be mandatory, she says, for teachers to learn how to teach literacy using technology. Yet even her enthusiasm is tempered when she considers that some teachers, though comfortable with technology, may not be confident with using it effectively in education—even if they do have access to it. Others may not be able to use it at all. “It worries me,” Branigan-Pipe says, “that we are encouraging students to use tools that we ourselves [the profession] are not proficient at.”

Take Robert Bell, who teaches a split grade 4/5 class just down the hall from Siwak’s. “The problem is that I’m learning five minutes ahead of my class,” he says. “I’ve taught older grades and I’m about five minutes behind them.” And while the introduction of technology has been an adrenaline boost for Bell, he has his reservations. He believes technology is a good tool for teaching literacy and math skills, but also that it’s not that simple. Technology will not make a bad teacher shine. Ultimately, he says, it is a teacher’s energy and enthusiasm that will engage students.

Yet, if teachers do not use technology in the class, can they realistically prepare students to meet tomorrow’s workplace challenges? Geoff Roulet, a Queen’s University education professor with a specialty in information and communications technology, says no. Roulet tells parents: “You’re training students for irrelevant and unpaid work if you restrict their learning to memorizing things and doing very basic skills that can be programmed.” The question is: Are parents listening?

Annie Kidder is the executive director and co-founder of Toronto-based People for Education. Her organization talks to parents every single day—sometimes up to twenty a week—and fields even more questions online. The organization was established in 1996 to engage parents, school councils, and communities in matters about public education policy and funding changes in schools. It also does research, provides support to parents, and works with policy-makers. Kidder says there are parents calling and fundraising for technology in the classroom, and feels that many parents care about the role technology should play in school.

If you talk to enough parents, most concede that technology is so pervasive in society that it cannot be ignored by schools. Many, such as Whitby-based father of three, Derek Marsellus, however, attach a caveat. “We shouldn’t be using it just because we have it,” says Marsellus. “We should look at it and say, ‘What kind of educational benefit is there to using it?’” Like many administrators and educators, he is cautious and wants to know what long-term impact technology will have on learning. Sometimes, he says, it seems like educators grab hold of these things and do not thoroughly ask a vital question when it comes to technology: Is this really going to help?

“I see that it makes it very exciting for the kids,” says Nadia Heyd, a Scarborough-based mother of three, who volunteers at her children’s school. She describes her first impression of watching a grade two class draw with their fingers on a Smart Board: “The way the teacher used it was very interactive. The kids are right in there. They’re very physical and they want to be part of it.” But Heyd, whose children are not plugged in excessively at home, is unconvinced that technology is essential: “If you have learned how to learn, you’ll learn whatever technology you need to know.” Neither Heyd nor Marsellus believe limited technology in the classroom puts their children at a disadvantage.

Branigan-Pipe is not surprised by this reaction. The new generation of teachers she trains for the classroom also cling to a back-to-basic mantra, because that is how they remember school, and—more importantly—they thrived in that environment. “They see tech as scary and bad. They’ve always been told, ‘No computer in the school. Don’t go on the internet. Don’t put your picture on the internet.’ Now I’m coming in and saying, ‘Do it.’”

There are pockets across Canada where this urgency and excitement is resonating. But outside these pockets, administrators and educators’ vision for school hasn’t changed dramatically. The call for action is still very new and many are unaware of the sophisticated tools that are transforming classrooms elsewhere. In communities where school boards and administrators are resisting change and guarding policies, teachers sense there’s no support. Sometimes lone teachers advocate for change, hoping principals will appeal to school boards, but as one teacher says: “It’s really a stressful thing to do. The easiest thing for a teacher to do is to pick up the chalk and ask the kids to open their textbook”—especially if parents are not demanding change.

Unfortunately, many parents, and even kids, still think of technology as a toy—and toys are major distractions, not assets, in the classroom. Few realize the power behind technology’s potential to teach. Once, Branigan-Pipe had a parent complain her child wanted to blog every night as part of their homework. When Branigan-Pipe tried to explain the blogging was an authentic way for students to express their voice and share their ideas with peers, the parent told her, in unequivocal terms, “No, it’s a game.” Parents, she adds, need to become familiar with the tools and discover what technology can do for their child’s learning. “If parents are not shouting for it,” Branigan-Pipe says, “and we’re not saying that our students must have these things, it won’t be on the top priority of funding. And change will come slowly.”

In many ways, this tiny classroom was just like any other: rows of young students looking up at their teacher, the day’s lesson displayed on the dusty chalkboard overhead. But this day was not about grammar or arithmetic. It was about the long fight for freedom. In South Sudan, it is rarely about anything else.

I watched as a small boy walked to the front of the room. “This is the Leer Primary School Drama Club,” he announced, unexpectedly firm for a child. “I hope you will enjoy.”

Then the teacher took centre stage, behind him, a chalkboard cluttered with notes on the local harvest, Jesus, and salvation. In his hand he grasped the long wooden stick that would act as his conductor’s wand. He thrust it upward and the children rose at its command. The call and answer was about to begin.

An invisible border split the class, forming a group of students on either side. The teacher pointed his wand to one section. “Yes!” the children cried out. Swung now to the other, his wand signalled the reply. “Yes for what?” the students boomed. This time in unison, each child rang the final call. “Yes for separation! Yes for the independence of Southern Sudan!”

The mood was hopeful, but solemn. The children seemed so young and I wondered how much they could possibly understand about the words they dutifully recited. To see a primary classroom charged with nationalist emotion was jarring at first, but in context, not surprising. In late 2010, the same sentiment permeated the entire region, spreading far into remote villages like this one, touching young and old alike. It was a sentiment that had been building for decades.

Starting in 1983, civil war between the central government and the southern-based Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) persisted for more than 20 years, resulting in nearly 2 million deaths and one of the largest and most gruelling displacements of refugees imaginable. A peace agreement ended the war in 2005, but six years later, as its terms came to a close, the South remained one of the most undeveloped regions in the world, and relations with the North had not improved.

Though the roots of Sudan’s problems are complex, for Southerners the solution became clear—secession from the North, independence, and freedom. In hopes of growing up in peace, these children sang for a nation of their own.

On July 9, 2011, that nation arrived. Following a referendum on January 9, 2011, in which a reported 99 percent of South Sudanese citizens voted for their independence, the Republic of South Sudan was born. Celebrations in the new nation’s capital of Juba lasted for days.

Still, the trials are not over for North or South Sudan. Leading up to the split, discourse in the South left room for little more than a simple separatist cry—a resounding Yes for independence. Now, unresolved issues of oil-sharing, citizenship, and border demarcation loom while the Northern government has started a new campaign of violence in its state of Southern Kordofan. The Republic of South Sudan may have gained the independence for which its children sang, but for North and South Sudanese, separation does not yet mean peace.

Tamara Dawit. Photo by Nabil Shash.

Tamara Dawit co-founded the 411 Initiative for Change, a non-profit public education program, to tackle the problem of community disengagement among young Canadians. Through 411 she produces and tours 90-minute school assemblies on social issues such as human rights, HIV/AIDS, and girls’ empowerment to encourage students to learn about and get active in their communities.

Unlike some adults who bemoan the apathy of “kids these days” and put the blame on trash TV, rap music, and social media, Dawit embraces pop culture as the spoonful of sugar to make her educational message go down. Her assemblies are a mash-up of TV talk show, newsy video clips, and musical performances featuring an impressive roster of artists and personalities (past tours have included the likes of K’naan, Eternia, Anita Majumdar, and Masia One). But Dawit’s successful formula is no fluke, but a method she says she learned “through trial and error.”

As one of only four black students at her Ottawa-area high school, Dawit, now 30, found herself bullied because of her Ethiopian heritage. “I just felt that people were really ignorant about me—who I was and where I was from,” she explains. She decided to put together a Black History Month assembly to set the record straight. That first year featured a local academic and an African drummer. The show bombed—so she went back to the drawing board.

The following year, she packaged her message in contemporary music and dance, and brought in younger speakers. Fourteen years and 400,000 students later, it’s still the basic model she says works best to create an engaging, safe space for students to learn some tough messages. In fact, Dawit was reminded of how powerful the experience remains for audiences just last month during the girls’ rights tour, when a young woman stood up and confessed to the group that she was thinking of killing herself because she could no longer deal with bullying from her classmates.

Admissions like this girl’s might not be the norm, but they’re far from rare and, most importantly, they spark dialogue and promote understanding between youth. In the end, Dawit says, “those are the things that lead to change.”

Participants in a recent Next Up training session. Photo courtesy Next Up.

It was the sort of sectarian self-destruction that’s sadly all too common in left-wing movements. After winning strong majorities on Vancouver City Council, the school board, and the park board in 2002, the Coalition of Progressive Electors alliance split in two just a couple of years later. This paved the way for the right to retake city politics in the 2005 election.

Kevin Millsip was one of the COPE school board trustees during that tumultuous term, and the meltdown spurred him to rethink how best to channel his energies and skills. “It was kind of a low point,” he says, “but it led me to think carefully about leadership, unity, and how we build long-run capacities in our movement.”

Fortunately, within a couple of years Vancouver’s left got its act back together, and a united progressive coalition (composed of Vision Vancouver, COPE, and the Greens) handily won the 2008 municipal election. In the meantime, Millsip had co-founded Next Up, an amazing new initiative that has the potential to make an even greater contribution to the next incarnations of social and environmental activism than any single election victory ever could.

Next Up was co-founded by Millsip and Seth Klein (who works in the B.C. office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, which still co-sponsors the initiative). Millsip also tapped into other networks he’d been nurturing through the “Check Your Head” high school education project in Vancouver that he had been organizing since 1998. The group has cleverly leveraged other partnerships with the Columbia Institute, the Gordon Foundation, the Parkland Institute, and other established organizations, rather than trying to go it alone.

Next Up began operations in 2007 in Vancouver, and has now expanded to offer its program in Calgary, Edmonton, and Saskatoon. The core of the program is an intensive leadership development course for young adult activists aged 18-32. Each cohort meets one night a week for six months, plus five full-day Saturday sessions. Participants must apply for the program, and are selected based on leadership qualities, demonstrated activist commitment, and a short written assignment. They learn activist, organizing, and communication skills; hone their political analysis; and undertake hands-on activist projects. The program is free.

“We need to learn from how the right has put a deliberate, sustained focus on nurturing and launching a new generation of talented, connected leaders,” Millsip argues, pointing to efforts by groups like the Fraser Institute and the Heritage Foundation to identify and recruit young leaders, train them, and support them as they go out to foment change (change of the wrong kind, that is). In contrast, on the left Millsip believes there is an absence of structures through which progressive young leaders can consciously develop their skills, connect with like-minded activists, and build networks. It’s that void that Next Up aims to fill.

One of the most impressive aspects of Next Up is its deliberate strategy to maintain close networks among the alumni who have gone through the program. Annual alumni conferences (called “gatherings”) are a chance to reconnect with graduates from all years, discuss current issues and organizing strategies, and strengthen networks. The Next Up alumni community already includes 100 talented, inspired, and inspiring young leaders, and that number will grow like a snowball as Next Up offers more courses in more locations.

Millsip himself embodies an impressive combination of hard-nosed organizing savvy and strategic analysis, with the soft-spoken touch of a new-age West Coast activist. He is refreshingly realistic and concrete about the skills and discipline that will be required for us to successfully combat and roll back the juggernaut of the right. But he performs his work with an inclusive humanity that effectively welcomes and encourages new activists, and respects unity and partnerships. (Think back to the bitter disunity that sparked his plan in the first place.) He connects perfectly with the young leaders he is helping to mentor; he has big plans for Next Up and, more importantly, for the activists who experience it.

Next Up is carefully considering further expansion to other parts of Canada, though Millsip is careful not to bite off more than the shoestring operation can chew. The program is already making a difference to the power and capacity of our broad progressive movement, and there’s much more to come.

Berend McKenzie

Nggrfg. For most people, the title of Vancouver actor and playwright Berend McKenzie’s play is nearly unsayable. But for McKenzie, naming his one-man play after the two slurs that plagued his childhood is the best way to understand and neutralize hatred. Audiences seem to agree: his play was a hit at the Edmonton and Vancouver fringe festivals and has since toured Vancouver high schools and even, with tweaks, elementary schools, where McKenzie talks with students about racism, homophobia, and bullying.

Extended Q&A

This: Where did the play debut?

McKenzie: It premiered at the Edmonton fringe, and then came to Vancouver and did a run at the Firehall arts centre. We garnered a Jessie Award nomination, which is our theatre award here for original script, and then we’ve done a run in Halifax for the Queer Acts theatre festival. Then the Vancouver School Board has picked it up, and I’ve done 14 secondary schools in Vancouver. We’ve adapted part of the story to work with elementary students, kindegarten to Grade 4, and another adaptation for Grades 5 to 7.

This: Really? How has it been adapted?

McKenzie: The last story in the play is called “Tassels,” and it’s based on the first time that I saw the miniseries Roots, and the subsequent bullying I received growing up in High Level and Valley View, Alberta. So we call for the Elementary schools it’s not called nggrfg, it’s called Tassels. It’s about me and my character, “Skip,” and he has a skipping rope that’s pink and he loves it and knows how to skip really well, and it has sparkly metallic tassels on each handle. A girl on the playground dares him to skip with the girls, and so he does, and then the schoolyard bully uses it as a whip and chases him around the schoolyard. So for Kindegarten to Grade 4 adaptation, we’ve taken out the words “nigger” and “fag,” because they don’t really understand it—we’ve put in “sissy” and boy and girl and cowgirl. For the Grade 5 to 7 show, we do the full thing. The story is still called Tassels but we haven’t changed any of the wording. I’m called “nigger” and some of the slave names from the show. We have some fairly lively talkbacks afterward.

This: So there’s a talking session after?

McKenzie: Definitely, a debrief after.

This: What kind of responses do you get from the kids in elementary school?

McKenzie: Everything from shock to a sense of almost relief that they can actually talk about it.

This: These are things that are present on the playground already?

McKenzie: Yeah. They’re words that they hear all the time, but they’re told “Don’t say them.” Well, to a child, I know from myself as a child, if you told me not to do or say something, and didn’t give me any sort of reasoning behind that, I would do it all the time, just because you told me not to.

These students, they hear it in music and on TV, they hear it everywhere, but they’re told “just don’t say the words.” We got a comment from a Grade 6 blonde girl at the end of one talkback—her teacher who had a Grade 6 and 7 split class, so he got permission from all the parents to bring them to the show at a high school—and in front of 300 strangers, she asked me how does the word “nigger” affect me now. And she didn’t say “the N-word,” she said the word “nigger,” and it was really awesome, because I thought: when will she ever use this word in this context ever again? When will she feel safe enough to use it? The only time she will ever probably use this word—if she chooses to use it—will be probably in a confrontational, possibly violent way.

This: How does the word affect you now? Obviously it affected you negatively when you were younger and that’s what led to the themes in the play. How does it affect you now when you hear it?

McKenzie: It depends on the context. Often, in writing the show, I had to come to terms with how I felt about the words. I kind of had a feeling about how I felt about the word “faggot,” but I didn’t know how I felt about “nigger,” because I had shut down a lot of those memories. I never used the word, I hated the word, and at one point I thoght the word should be banned and that we should get rid of them and that would take their power away. But I sort of talked my way out of that. Now, performing the show, it’s a day-to-day thing for me: some days I can say the title nggrfg without hesitation and depending on who it’s in front of, say it without shame. But sometimes, depending on how I’m feeling and who I’m talking to, I’m a little apologetic about the title, I will not say the name, I’ll spell it out, N-G-G-R-F-G. It depends on how I feel about the word on that specific day.

I think there are still better words in the English language to say hello to a brother or a sister, or a friend, or a loved one. The word “nigger” doesn’t need to be used. As for “Fag”—gay culture, we’ve really been known to take what’s used as weapons and flip them around, put a feather boa and some sequins on them and maybe some high heeled shoes, and then throw it in your face, and say, “You think that’s a fag? This is a fag.” And then we use it on each other.

It depends on context. I’ve sat in movie theatres, and I still cringe when I see same-sex couples kissing, not because it makes me uncomfortable to see them kissing, but I wait for that often-heard mumbling of the word “faggot.” We’re in the dark, no one knows who’s there, but it feels like it’s directed towards me. And that makes me feel unsafe. The words make me feel unsafe often, and this play has allowed me to feel safer using the word “nigger.”

What I’ve realized is that it’s not the word. It’s not the words themselves that are the negative—it’s the people and the reasons why the words are being used and in what context. It’s a different thing when a young student says I hear the word “nigger” all the time in the hallway, or I was called “faggot” last year all the time. When Aaron Webster was being chased through Stanley Park being beaten to death, being called a faggot, or blacks being called “niggers” all the time in the South in the U.S., it’s a different thing.

That’s all that we’ve understood up to this point, that’s all we’ve heard are the negatives about the words. If there are any positives—which I don’t know—it’s that the words have shown us where we have come from. And the words show us that if we’re not careful we could be back there very, very easily. And now the word “nigger” is being replaced by “Muslim.” Or “terrorist.” Anything that’s different is deemed unsafe or something to be scared of.

This: There’s a lot of debate, obviously, about what words we should be allowed to say. Can you give me some thoughts on why censorship misses the point in this case? If no one said “nigger” or “fag” again, some people would make an argument that that would be a great thing.

McKenzie: Yeah, it would be a great thing. I think we would find something to replace it that would be just as evil. I think the words “nigger” and “fag” exist for a reason. I don’t believe in accidents. I believe that everything here is here for a reason, and that’s my own way of being in the world. I grew up believing that God made a mistake with me, when It or He chose to make me. I was put up for adoption. I was adopted into a white family, so I was the only black child. And being the only black child in many of the small towns we lived in, I felt alone. Even though there were a lot of us in the family, I still felt alone. And when I realized that I was gay, which was at a very young age, I thought that God hated me. And through living now—I’m 42, I never thought I’d live to see 42, I didn’t think I’d live to be 12, let alone 42—I’m starting to realize that the words are here for a reason.

Language is not something to be feared. Language is delicious. I don’t necessarily believe that the word “nigger” is delicious, but I think that what happened within the school system here in Vancouver, and will be happening in Toronto in the next year or two, what’s happening with the students is delicious, because for the first time they’re able to exhale and tell their experiences and their fears, and their experiences with the words and what those words have done to them. That’s delicious to me, there’s nothing better than listening to a group of kids, students, discussing.

After the discussion they walk away with written commitments saying that we will stop homophobia and bullying and racism in our school. In places like Surrey. Surrey has a reputation, a Surrey Girl is easy, it’s kind of trashy, and low rent, and you know, I went out to the schools with my own ideas and notions of what Surrey was, and was blown away by how accepting [they were.] They had one of the largest Gay/Straight alliances that I’ve seen in all the schools I’ve been to—like, 20-strong, where queer youth can be themselves and walk through the hallways without fear of being beaten. Or if they are harassed, they feel safe enough to go to someone to get help.

I have my own prejudieces around the words. I used to think that black people smelled—I don’t know where I got that from. But I had somebody tell me that black people smelled differently than white people. That was a drag queen doing my makeup, believe it or not. And I was like, “Oh, Really?” And he’d kind of said what I’d always thought, and I’d always thought that black people smelled. But I’ve been around a lot of black people in my adult life, and there’s no difference, unless you don’t wear deodorant—we all smell if we don’t wear deodorant.

This: That’s an odd thing to hear from someone who’s doing your makeup.

McKenzie: Yeah, from a Drag Queen who’s doing your makeup. From someone who’s experienced their own forms of homophobia. And racism and homophobia are so exactly the same, I feel. They’re exactly the same, what happens to the person who is the target of either, the same things happen to them, in identically the same way. You feel fear, you feel less-than, you feel, at least for me, unsafe, unvalued, not worthy, the list goes on and on and on. I think the blacks that were hanged, and slaves that were caught and tortured and whipped, feel the same things that Matthew Shepard did when he was tied up to the fence and left to die. It’s the same thing that women feel when they’ve been assaulted. Women feel the same type of thing. There’s another word for women that’s the identical word for the replacement for “nigger” and “fag,” and you know what that is and I don’t need to say it. It’s all meant to oppress.

This: You’ve personally reclaimed those two words; do you think that society could ever reclaim them the same way that queer groups have reclaimed “queer,” the way that the black community has, to some extent, reclaimed the N word? Do you think that these things are desirable or possible?

McKenzie: I think as we become, as a society, more enlightened—and in some ways we are more enlightened—I believe as we go on, we will be able to. But it’s a long road. We seem to be going leaps and bounds in Canada as far as gay rights and human rights—gay rights being a part of that experience, or women’s rights—and teaching in school about bullying and homophobia and Gay-Straight alliances, and gay marriage, and all that stuff. And then you read in the paper 15 kids in North America killing themselves because they’re bullied because they’re perceived as, or are, gay or lesbian. And so there’s a disconnect there, and it’s confusing. It was confusing for me to see that happen in such a short span, and I think here in Canada… I think Vancouver’s the first school board in North America, and I think the world, putting a show called nggrfg in front of students. I don’t know any other school board is doing that.

I haven’t been to a party before where they served pie, have you? But I guess that’s a silly question because of course you’d know the hosts, so you’ve probably— Anyway, it’s very good pie. It takes creative people to come up with a snack idea like that.

I said to Appollonia—that’s who I came with—“Would you have thought of giving out pie?” And she said, “Nope.” But of course Appollonia is not creative like you and me. Which she wouldn’t mind me saying, by the way. We all have our strengths and weaknesses.

Now me, I’ve got my chapbook. But put an equation in front of me and do you think I’d know how to solve it? Give me a break! I am a words person whereas Appollonia is a numbers person, which is a skill so many of us writers and publishers haven’t mastered. On the other hand, Appollonia is not a big reader. She has a subscription to Chatelaine, if that tells you anything. She also watches a lot of television. Let’s just say she has her shows.

By saying that, I am not saying Appollonia is a bad person. Far from it. She is kind, and holds a special place in her heart for society’s cast-offs. There are just some things she doesn’t understand—will never understand—because she is Appollonia, and she is a different person from you and me. A good person, certainly. But a different person. Let’s just say she is mainstream, and leave it at that. I mean, she’s one of my good friends, and I know her and she would not think the label “mainstream” was a negative thing.

Do you remember earlier, when “Panama” came on? She said to me, “Who sings this, again?” And I said, “It doesn’t matter, Appollonia—they’re playing it ironically.” But she started bopping her head to it anyway. That’s just the way she is. And she says the funniest things! What was it she said the other day—she’s no poet but she just comes out with the greatest turns of phrase. Oh, I remember. She was talking about her work—she works in an office, as in permanently—and she was explaining how she’d stood up to her boss about switching the complimentary coffee milk from two percent to one percent. Now, I’m sorry, but if you’re putting it in your coffee, you cannot tell the difference between one percent and two percent, it’s impossible. If you’re drinking the milk on its own, then maybe. But otherwise not in a million years. And these people were up in arms about it! So they had a meeting and Appollonia called for a vote for two percent, which she knew was the consensus, but none of her co-workers backed her up so it was just her against the boss. And do you know what she said to me at the end of her anecdote? She said, “They hung me out to frigging hang myself.” Isn’t that wonderful?

I asked her once for permission to write a poem about her work life. Because it is so unpoetic, there’s actually an irony at work there—ha!—that’s worth writing about. And Appollonia said to me, “Sure, what the hell. Immortalize me.” Isn’t that perfect? The things she comes out with.

Between you and me? Appollonia has lived a terrible life.

Her parents were gypsies, which is bad enough, but while at least most gypsies are known for their flair for performance, Appollonia’s gypsy parents were bookkeepers. And I’m not talking librarians, which would’ve been something, right? So, you know, they moved around a lot. Up until she started kindergarten, Appollonia was uprooted I can’t even tell you how many times. Over and over again, suffice it to say.

But she is not a complainer. Never has been. I met her in Grade 1, we were in the same class, and the other kids would throw blocks at her and she wouldn’t say boo. That’s what first intrigued me about her, actually. She also has that voice—you must know her voice, where it always sounds like she’s about to burst into tears, like “Huhhh, huhhh, huhhhn,” all the time, but she’s not, it’s just the way she sounds.

So we became friends. I’d make up the games and she’d just go along with whatever. And I would tell her stories on our walks home from school—I was a storyteller even then. Appollonia of course enjoyed being entertained. Our friendship grew and grew. Then we lost touch for about 20 years. She went her way and I went mine, and isn’t that the way it goes, though, so often. With friends.

I bet you can guess how we found each other again! The thing of it is, I only really got on there in the first place to promote my chapbook. You must do that with your press too, I’m sure. Anyway, do you know what Appollonia said, when she got in touch with me? She said, “This Internet thing is the wave of the future!” I know. Adorable.

The funny thing was, I didn’t remember her at first. Her name rang a bell, but it was such a long time ago. So I looked through her friends list to see if I recognized anyone, and of course I saw you, and so many of the other guests here, and I thought, What a small, small world we live in.

Soon after that we met up for lunch and got reacquainted. I took her to that place, what’s that place called. You know, the restaurant that’s loud, with the salad they make from things that fall out of trees? Anyway, that’s where we went. And it all came rushing back to us. Grade school. Playing. Our story-time walks. And I told Appollonia about my chapbook and she said—if you can believe it—“What’s a chapbook?” Oh dear. So I explained it to her, and she was thrilled for me and asked me could she buy it in the bookstores, and I said no, she could only buy it directly from me. Poor thing, she has no idea how it all works.

She doesn’t know anything about the “scene,” either, but I guess why would she? Just because she knows all these people through— How does she know all these people? She’s really kept that to herself. Although she’s never even heard of sp@cebar, which is amazing to me. To be that out of touch with what’s going on in the world. You put out his last flipbook, didn’t you? She said to me, “Well, what does he do?” And I said, “He engages with the absence of sound. He communicates his poetry through gestures and facial expressions.” And she said—now, you’ll get a real kick out of this—“Isn’t that what a mime clown does?” I said to her, “Appollonia, sp@cebar is not a mime clown. He is a soundless poet.” She really doesn’t have a clue. I mean, I’ve never seen one of his performances, but at least I know. You know?

Appollonia is an accountant now, and she’s married to a man named Bob who’s in one of the trades, I can’t remember which, and they’ve talked about children and they just bought a condo, but not a loft condo, it’s one of those postage-stamp cookie-cutter high-rise ones, which she is going to have a very hard time selling, but still, it’s property and you’ve got to believe that owning any property in the city is an achievement these days. I said that to her too, and she said, “Do you really think it’ll be hard to sell?” I said, “Appollonia, none of us has a crystal ball.” Well, maybe some of us do. Appollonia’s parents might! But anyway, I said she should be proud of her accomplishments.

And she’s going to be a mother someday! Which is the last thing I’d want to be, but who am I to judge? The second-last thing I’d want to be is a homeowner. The Appollonias of the world are welcome to it. I explained to her that renting is the way to go if you’re an artist, and I told her, “Appollonia, you are so lucky you’re not a creative person. You are so free!” And do you know what she said to me? She said, “Well yeah, it’s true, I guess I am pretty lucky that way. None of those pesky thought bubbles overhead to weigh down my empty noggin!” I’m telling you, she says things like that all the time! It’s hilarious. But of course also very sad.

The thing about me is, I think about other people. Other people are always at the forefront of my mind. And I worry about Appollonia, I really do. She’s a bit of a loner, so she’s not the best with crowds, which is why I said I’d come with her tonight and keep her company. Okay, I’ll come clean and admit that there are people at this party who I would like to meet, of course there’s that. But really I am here for Appollonia.

I wasn’t even going to come over here but Appollonia said I should. One of her favourite sayings is, “Why not go out on a limb, because that’s where the fruit is.” Priceless, I know. That’s what she said to me earlier, when I happened to mention that it might be nice to talk to you about my chapbook and about poetry in general. So here I am.

There are people who might say to me, “What are you doing with a person like Appollonia?” And I would say to those people, “Hold on, back up, please. Appollonia is my friend. Don’t tell me what she’s like—I know what she’s like. But she is my friend who I care for very deeply.” That’s what I would say.

You know, I’m so glad I met you, you’re so easy to talk with. And you’re enjoying the pie too, I see! Oh, I’m sorry. Strudel. And here I thought it was pie all this time. Now isn’t that funny, because I’m normally very observant. I can even show you right here in my chapbook, it has all these observations I make every day, transformed into verse. I’ve got this acrostic series on yearning, let me just find that page… You do? No, no, of course, I know how it goes. You’ve got people you need to—sure. It’s a party! I really should be getting back to Appollonia, anyway, she’s starting to look pretty lonely over there. You mean that’s where you were— Well, perfect, the three of us, then! Oh. Really? No, sure, I understand completely, I don’t mind at all. I was just on my way to the bathroom, anyway. Where is the bathroom, do you know? Of course you’d know. Could you please just point me in the right direction before you— You don’t know? Well, that’s fine. I’ll find my way there eventually.

Every year as another school term ground to a close and the spring air hinted at the summer to come, our negotiations would begin in earnest. Like many liberal-minded parents, mine believed the modern family should behave as a model democracy. I knew better, though. Our annual discussions were less like the equitable entente of two elected powers, and more the kangaroo courtship of a peace treaty foisted upon a bitter, humbled nation. It was 1919 all over again and I was the crestfallen Kaiser. But the stakes were far greater than rejigged borders and post-war reparations: We were deciding where I’d go to summer camp, and that road could only lead to trouble and tears.

In Canada, summer camp ranks in our national iconography somewhere between the Last Spike and the ’72 Summit Series. Decades out of short pants, CEOs and middle-aged memoirists still get misty eyed at the mention of their golden summers along Lake Wannagoupchuk: learning the J-stroke, communing with nature, losing their virginity. It was in the hot kiln of camp that the mushy clay of youth was finally forged into rigid citizens of the world.

Trading freely in this coming-of-age myth, Canada’s two happiest campers happen to be Americans. After boyhood summers in Algonquin Park, Motor City refugees Michael Budman and Don Green recycled nostalgia for ersatz camp life back to the country that had taught it to them and built the lucrative Roots empire on the embers of their Camp Tawakwa weenie roasts.

For Canada’s vast middle class, summer camp has long held a similar aspirational mystique: one part rite of passage, one part finishing school. And so it was with my parents. My mother is a retired grade-school teacher, with a devout faith in the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bookshelves alchemy of eternal education. Public schooling was fine for the fundamentals. But if your kid hoped to get ahead, there was still some extra-curricular spit polishing to do.

And so, as we negotiated my summer itinerary, my parents would present a catalogue of camps that held forth the evangelical possibilities of secular self-improvement. First, they would suggest I be shipped off to a remote Quebecois village for French immersion camp. A shy anglo kid from the deep suburbs of Ottawa, I would exercise my one veto. After that, a compromise camp would be imposed.

I did my first tour of duty at an arts-and-crafts day camp. The counsellors may have oversold the market prospects of the glue-glitter-and-macaroni medium in which we laboured, but it seemed harmless enough. The next year, though, I was drafted into Sports Camp, where more urgent physical pursuits were supposed to firm up my frail body and confidence. They did neither. Instead, before a jury of truculent peers, the succession of phys-ed ordeals only provoked one empty epiphany: Not only was I inept at all the major status-building school sports, such as soccer and softball, but I discovered I was hopeless at the obscure ones, too, like fencing, squash and archery. I could no longer even pretend that I might be an undiscovered prodigy at some arcane but noble sport. I’d botched them all.

If Sports Camp proved a bust, Computer Camp wasn’t much better. This was during the dawn of the personal computer, so the camp was equipped with only enough low-grade machines to occupy a handful of budding Bill Gateses at a time. I sat in an underlit classroom, learning to touch type, soldering circuit boards and mastering Boolean logic. Whenever our counsellors thought we looked too sallow and listless, they shuttled us to a nearby roller disco for “exercise.”

Since then, high-tech camps have become more sophisticated. Today’s kids can be nerded through a summer of digital filmmaking or video-game design. But I can’t read their glossy brochures without thinking of my own season soldering in the dark. If nothing else, Computer Camp taught me early that behind the gilded promise of the Information Age lay a thousand digital drudge jobs—for which I was amply trained.

The low point, though, was a summer stint at an institution that I will call (if only to protect the innocent from their own repressed memories) Camp Sylvania. Located on the bucolic grounds of the city’s most exclusive boys’ college, Camp Sylvania promised a rounded curriculum of physical and mental endeavours, including the prep-school privilege of private tennis lessons. This was the place, my parents felt, where I might get a toe up the social bunk ladder. Camp Sylvania, though, never lived up to its hoity-toity billing. The counsellors were absentee landlords, and aside from the school’s cavernous gym, the hallowed halls of academe were locked away from the summer herds. The only experience that resembled a tennis lesson was when our stewards reluctantly handed out racquets, like rifles to a troop of reserves, and let us hatchet a few balls for an afternoon.

Mostly, I spent my tenure on my back, staring at the sky. A bullet-faced fellow camper was so bored that he passed his free time between activities by pinning me to the grass, with his knees on my shoulders. He didn’t torment me. He rarely even spoke. “Isn’t there something else you’d rather be doing?” I’d ask after a half-hour of his silent treatment. Eventually, I just accepted my predicament.

This, then, seemed the experience of regimented leisure distilled to its metaphorical essence. To paraphrase George Orwell (and anyone who dreamed up Big Brother must have done time at self-improvement school), “If you want a picture of camp, imagine a sneaker stamping on a human face—for a whole summer.”

Months later, a package arrived from Camp Sylvania. I slit the cardboard sleeve, and a vinyl 45 rolled out. I placed it on my father’s turntable and heard an oom-pah-ing tune followed by a tinny choir of kids’ voices: “I love to go a wandering/ Along a mountain track/ And as I go I love to sing/ My knapsack on my back…” Where the familiar chorus should begin, they hollered instead: “Sylvan-yee! Sylvan-yah! Sylvan-yah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Who were these true believers yodeling their fatuous ode to our slovenly camp? Where was the recording studio in which they’d been sequestered to tout their lies? This was propaganda of the vilest sort.

My mother just smiled: “It sounds like you had a wonderful summer.”

“All Camp objects, and persons, contain a large element of artifice,” Susan Sontag wrote in her famous essay about an entirely different notion of camp. “Nothing in nature can be campy…. Rural Camp is still man-made, and most campy objects are urban. Yet, they often have a serenity—or a naiveté—which is the equivalent of pastoral. A great deal of Camp suggests Empson’s phrase, ‘urban pastoral.’”

My final summer-camp experience was a last-ditch effort to convert me to the Canadian creed of the urban pastoral. Maybe I’d just attended the wrong camps. Maybe I could make others’ experiences more uplifting than my own. And so I was enrolled in Leadership-in-Training, a touchy-feely boot camp for the awkward youth of socially conscious parents. We performed trust-bridging exercises, learned non-competitive games, talked about our feelings and the “meaning of leadership” among a circle of strangers. Its mid-’80s methods echoed the banal “team-building&rdquo
; ethos metastasizing through the cubicles of corporate North America, and it wasn’t exactly how a hormonally flustered 15-year-old hoped to spend his summer.

In the final two weeks, we had to put our training into practice. I was assigned to intern as a counsellor at the same recreational centre whose Sports Camp had doused my dreams of being an Olympic épéeist. I vowed that my charges would fare better. Then I met Kirby the Camper.

Kirby was a flame-haired dervish with the restless imagination of a comic-book super-villain. “Every summer, I pick one counsellor,” he told me, “and I make his life hell.” I’d been selected. But if Kirby hoped to break me with his anarchic mischief, I intended to break him, too, with my Zen-like patience.

We fought to a draw and a grudging respect by the camp’s final hurrah. For Sleep-Out Night, campers pitched tents in a wooded grove behind the rec centre—bordered by a shopping mall, a Revenue Canada tower and a hectic intersection. Here, counsellors tried to recreate the bonfire bonhomie of the more expensive cottage-country programs they’d rather be working at. I suspected Kirby would view this exercise in faux wilderness with his usual cynicism, but he seemed uncharacteristically excited about Sleep-Out Night. After the sun dropped, I found out why.

“Okay, now’s the time we go see the bums,” he said. At every Sleep-Out Night, Kirby explained, he’d steal away from the campsite, descend a nearby pedestrian underpass and hang out with the homeless men who kipped there. This, for Kirby, was an authentic adventure—the real face of the urban pastoral.

I was tempted. But then my leadership training kicked in. We couldn’t possibly do that, I insisted. It was too dangerous. It was against the rules. It would flunk me out of Leadership Camp. “Don’t you want to sit around the fire?” I asked. “We’ll be toasting marshmallows and telling ghost stories and…” I couldn’t believe what I was saying.

Kirby’s face shaded from disappointment to contempt. We both knew I was feeding him the same bogus camp song I’d been forced to listen to myselfevery summer. All that was missing was the Roots sweatshirts and the oom-pahband and that frantic chorus of campers pretending to have the time of their lives.

David Leach is an instructor in the Creative Writing Department at the University of Victoria; he is the former managing editor of Explore magazine.