And the things you can't remember
Tell the things you can't forget
That history puts a saint in every dream.
- Tom Waits
Absolute bullshit, you say? You may have a point. Look, for example, at recent history and the futile little wars presidents Truman (Korea), Kennedy (Vietnam) and George W (Afghanistan, Iraq) had involved their countries in. All of them had the best of reasons (stopping the spread of Sino-Soviet communism, thwarting Islamo-terrorism, securing the energy supplies and keeping the lights on in the Gore mansion); all of them had the cream of the Ivy League - men presumably conversant in the lessons of history - advising them. But what happened? Needless deaths, debts and a decided lack of human improvement. It's as though we are drawn irresistibly towards policies we know haven't worked in the belief that our very modernity gives us leave to second guess our forbears. Perhaps a more pertinent aphorism might be the one about history repeating itself.* Although it really never does - at least not exactly. Mark Twain may have been closer to the mark when he aphorized, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." I prefer Voltaire's, While history may never repeat itself, man always does. Which harks back to the dog and its vomit. Specifically: As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly. (Proverbs 26:11).
Which is just what the inquisitor said to Joan of Arc who, after a period of fearful denial, restated her original claim that the voice of God had instructed her to gather an army and wage war on the filthy English. But that's another story.
*It seems inevitable that every adage is countered by its opposite. Absence makes the heart grow fonder v. Out of sight, out of mind; The race goes to the swiftest v. Haste makes waste; A penny saved is a penny earned v. Penny-wise, pound-foolish; Look before you leap v. He who hesitates is lost; etc.
Medieval history is on my mind because at I am back in Ted Byfield's shop writing and editing for Volume 8 of his 12-volume series, The Christians. The scaffolding job with Hokanson had become sporadic. As luck would have it, Byfield had just raised enough cash - from a 
group of moneyed supporters he called "the 12 apostles" - to print and mail out Volume 7 (pictured; the title refers to The Crusades) to the 10,000 people who bought the previous volumes. Thus the series has been resurrected after a four-year hiatus. What's left of the apostolic infusion, along with the money that's starting to come in from those who have Vol 7 should, Ted prays, keep us going through the 6 months needed to write, produce and mail Vol 8. "Prays" is the operative verb in that Ted begins each day in the office with a prayer, calling on God to help us turn out compelling copy and to keep us from going broke. One shouldn't underestimate the power of prayer as regards Byfieldian enterprises. Somehow Alberta Report struggled along for thirty years, surviving several near bankruptcies, with Ted praying hard all the way.
Unlike Alberta Report, which when I worked there in the Eighties paid wages competitive with those at the Edmonton Journal, the Christian history does not. It in fact pays about the same as what I was paid when editor Michael Cooke hired me at the Journal back in 1994 - but without the medical, pension and other perks that Southam (aka "the velvet coffin") provided for its workers. This means that in order to support hearth, home and my middle daughter's orthodonty bills, I must continue to work part-time for Hokanson, as I did for three six-hour evening shifts this past week, demolishing the washrooms in the Alberta Treasury Branch headquarters (which are undergoing minor renovation). For Hokanson's little company does not restrict itself to scaffolding, taking what it can in an economy that, even in Alberta, appears in decline.
I suppose we writer/editor types should be adopting a similarly pragmatic attitude these days. With the recession accelerating the damage done to it by the internet, print journalism is rapidly entering its buggy-whip phase. I see that the Chicago Sun-Times, where the aforementioned Mr. Cooke was until recently editor-in-chief, is among the many American newspapers foundering in red ink. In fact both major papers in Chicago, the Sun-Times and the Tribune, are currently in bankruptcy protection. In February Cookie leapt from those burning decks and followed his long-time sidekick, publisher John Cruickshank, to the Toronto Star. Canada's highest-circulation paper is faring better than its American counterparts - and better than many of its Canadian counterparts - in that its circulation increased slightly in 2008. The Star nonetheless experienced a 7% drop in earnings in the fourth quarter of last year, due to advertising declines, and is in the process of laying off 500 people - a practice to which Cooke brings his expertise from the Windy City.
CanWest Global (née Southam) is, as most of you will know, tottering on the rim of the toilet. Seems like that curse I threw CanWest's way in 2003 when those spineless cocksuckers at the Herald fired me for upsetting the Indian industry is having its effect. With CanWest's share price down to around 25 cents (from $20 in 2000), a debt-load of $4 billion dollars, and the creditors unlikely to extend the latest deadline for repayment beyond May 5, it looks like curtains for the house that Southam built. Good on Conrad Black for unloading that turkey on Izzy Asper when it was just an egg for $3.2 billion. Conrad's bloviations in Saturday's National Post notwithstanding ("...the great newspaper trademarks and some of the long-ingrained habits of newspaper reading, should prove to be durable..."), it is obvious that he read the writing on the wall that the late Izzy missed. Izzy's sons and heirs, who bought Alliance Atlantis' specialty TV channels (Showcase, History. Food Network and a few others) for $2.7 billion at the peak of the market in early 2007, unwittingly multiplied the misery. One is only left to wonder which of the pieces of the doomed corporation will be picked up and by whom? Too bad that the National Post will probably be one of the unprofitable pieces no one wants (circulation is down 30% over last year and in a desperate move to cut costs, it is planning to reduce publication frequency from six to five days a week). It was nice to have at least one conservative newspaper for those whose lips don't move when they read. Not that the Suns are doing much better. Quebecor laid off 600 in December, recently jettisoned the Canadian Press news service, and when I contacted the editor of the Edmonton Sun a few weeks ago about work, he laughed bitterly and suggested he might be looking for work himself before long.
All things considered, then, the 1994-sized pay-cheque from The Christians doesn't seem quite as inadequate as it might have two years ago (though try telling that to my wife). I must consider myself lucky to have writing work at all. And I do still - touch wood - have my health. I just got an email from my old partner CFF. He has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and says the doc gave him three to five years to live. As mentioned in an early posting, CFF told me not very long ago, vis-a-vis his cigarette smoking, that he didn't care if he died before his time as he'd seen it all, done it all, and life just seemed to be repeating itself. Wonder if he still feels that way now. Anyway, the news came as a shock to me - as I'm sure it did to him. I'll have to go over and commiserate. Although somehow the word commiserate doesn't seem to cover it.
Byfield's health seems relatively okay, although he did recently suffer a recurrence of the pneumonia he'd had earlier in the year. 
While Ted - pictured here during a recent mandatory Friday afternoon beer session at Ray's Sports Bar - claims the antibiotics put paid to it, I still hear him in his office, hacking away.
The Christians quarters are a modest but not horrible second-floor affair in a cinder-block building in Edmonton's light-industrial west end. We're not far from Alberta Report's old HQ, but the ambiance is decidedly different. The Alberta Report I remember was a collection of young, hard-drinking guys (and the occasional girl) working long hours on weekly deadlines with much bantering, profanity and mordant wit. There were photographers, advertising salesmen and women, a layout department, and room full of telephone sales people who attempted to sell subscriptions in the evening hours. Ted would emerge from his office periodically to "ratch" - the word we used to describe his rasping bellow - about this or that "fucking asshole" who had somehow stood in the way us getting a story or had otherwise thwarted production. Occasionally he would throw a typewriter or put a fist through the drywall. On Thursday nights he'd buy the whiskey and beer at the bar and regale us with old newspaperman stories. It was a lively place.
The Christian history operation is not. There are only five full-time employees: Ted and myself; a middle-aged female writer called Liane (a pro-lifer who once wrote a book about a noted anti-abortionist from Winnipeg); a young, spectacled and rather reserved receptionist/order taker called Veronica; and Ted's doughty wife Virginia - aka Ginger or Gin - who is still writing strong, but who suffers from emphysema and carries with her an oxygen dispenser whose regulated hissings suggest the proximity of Darth Vader.
Despite being in his 81st year, despite the persistent pneumonia, and despite a hip that slows his climbing of the stairs, Byfield retains much of the enthusiastic procrusteanism of yore. The book is his book, just as the magazine was his, and therefore the style, tone and form of the chapters must be what he wants them to be: which in its ideal is a sprightly ménage of Henry Luce, Barbara Tuchman and G.K. Chesterton (Barbara's in the middle). Ted prepares what he calls a "schematic" for the entire volume, and ones for each of the 12 chapters, outlining how one is to lead off , where one goes from there, what should be covered in each of the ensuing sections, how many words are to be devoted to each section, suggested transitions, and how one might conclude the chapter. After reading a couple of books to orient himself on the subject, the writer obtains the specific information to colour in his chapter from in an assortment of photocopied history books and original accounts on the subject. A box of three- by four-inch cards, prepared by researchers, guides the writer through these sources, listing the facts therein in chronological order. It's a bit like paint-by-numbers, though harder - the hardest part being the compression of a subject to which long books have been devoted into 5000 to 8000 words. There is also the matter of incorporating the religious angle - for this is a Christian history.
That isn't difficult at the moment. Volume 8 covers the period 1300 to 1500, a time when the Christian faith infused western society like - I dunno - television and the internet and the movies do today - or, perhaps more accurately, like the Islamic faith infuses one of those feudal middle eastern kingdoms. In the godless, secular world we in the West now inhabit, it is hard to imagine the religiosity of the medieval world. It is a place where God attends one's every step and misstep, where church is a daily devotion, where the angels and saints are our protectors, and where the priest - who baptizes, hears confession, grants absolution, provides education and gives the last rites - is the gatekeeper to one's life in this world and the next.
Then along comes the 14th century and kicks the Church square in the nuts. First came the the little ice age which ended a halcyon period of global warming (1000 to 1300 AD), wrecked the crops and turned plenty into famine. Then came the Hundred Years War which would see the English lay waste to France until Joan shamed the frogs into getting off their arses to fight. Meanwhile just 20 years into that war, the Black Death marches in from Mongolia and kills between one third and one half of all the people in the known world. Imagine that. Good people, bad people, priests, kings, innocent children - none of them immune to the bubonic plague that kills horribly in a matter of days. Mass graves like Auschwitz in every town. Pigs and dogs chewing on the bodies in the streets. The stink of rotting flesh everywhere. Children screaming in pain as they die, abandoned by mothers and fathers too afraid of catching the plague to comfort them in their final terror. And the Church and the Pope and all the priests, saints and angels cannot do a damned thing to stop it.
It makes you wonder how the Church survived. Though you could just as well wonder how the medical profession of the day - reliant as it was on bleeding, on astrology, on balancing the "humors" (plegm, bile, etc) in the body, and other utterly useless methodology - endured such an obvious assault on its credibility. The official explanation for the plague was God's wrath. As in the time of Noah, society as a whole had become sinful and society as a whole was punished and neither doctor nor priest could thwart God's will. Most of the people accepted this explanation. But some didn't. And among the latter there arose a questioning and cynical attitude that might be called the Birth of Modernity. Which is the working title of this volume.
* * *
And by the way, if any of you are interested in picking up any of the first seven volumes of this very readable and beautifully illustrated series, I invite you to visit the website or phone 1-888-234-4478. I leave you with Ted's introduction to the series from Volume One as an incentive to improve your library and yourself:
THE MOST DANGEROUS PEOPLE, said the twentieth-century Christian essayist G. K. Chesterton, are those who have been cut off from their cultural roots. Had he lived long enough, he would have seen his observation hideously fulfilled. At the time of his death in 1936, Germany, one of the greatest of the Christian nations, had been amputated from its Christian origins and was embracing instead wild doctrines founded on sheer nonsense. Thus deluded, the Germans set off the world's worst-ever war. People who don't believe in something, Chesterton also said, can be persuaded to believe in anything. How right he was.
Today, we are just such a people. That America, indeed the whole western world, is being wrenched away from its cultural origins has become a selfevident fact. For half a century, our literature, our popular music and drama, the visual arts, Hollywood and much of the film industry have been disseminating a genre of nihilism that debases almost every form of human virtue and exalts sensual gratification beyond anything the senses could possibly fulfill. Meanwhile, the liberal arts faculties of our universities work zealously to cut off the branch they are sitting on, diligently destroying the very foundations upon which the whole concept of higher education rests. The result of all this is a culturally dispossessed people, the very situation in which Chesterton saw such mortal danger.
What are our foundations? Though it has of late become intellectually unfashionable to even think it, let alone say it, the fact is that our cultural origins are almost wholly Christian. Our founding educational institutions, our medical system, our commitment to the care of the aged and infirm, our concept of individual rights and responsibilities, all came to us through Christianity. Our best literature, our most enduring music, our finest sculptural masterpieces and many of the greatest paintings in every age are those of professed and dedicated Christians. Finally, our concept of democracy came to us from the Greeks through Christianity. Is it by mere coincidence that all those nations that have best instituted and preserved democratic government emerged from Christian origins? I don't think so.
The purpose of this series is to describe these foundations, to say who we are and how we got here. That is, to establish our real roots. It has been a long journey, two thousand years, and neither it nor we have been uniformly benevolent. But this is our past, this is our family, and knowing who it is and what it has done is the first step in finding our way home.Ted Byfield
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