A decade in Toronto - 26

Let’s continue with the film theme for the last post for 2015. I saw The Best of Enemies at Bell Lightbox; a documentary that’s a feast for political junkies and students of journalism. It’s a documentary on the epic television battle between the conservative William F Buckley Jr and liberal Gore Vidal; a debate that shaped television journalism for the next five decades.

Pico Iyer has moulded global consciousness in many ways, and it was an absolute delight to hear him speak at the launch of Ratna Omidvar’s Global Diversity Exchange. Iyer gave us The Global Soul, a treatise that has shaped our understanding of the immigrant culture that is slowly taking over the world, even if the phenomenon is causing tremendous heartburn in large swathes of Europe and North America, causing political upheavals that has brought the extreme right wing to power in many countries in the developed world.

But the inexorable decline in the population in these parts of the world, and the continuing rise in Africa and Asia will see the "great unwashed" showup at the airports and on the shores, and it’ll be difficult to stop their flow for long.

Pico Iyer believed then that Canada, and especially Toronto, understands immigration.  
He says,
“I came away with a sense of possibility I hadn’t felt as I’d traveled to other of the globe’s defining multicultures, whether in Singapore or Cape Town or Melbourne, on the one hand, or in Paris and London and Bombay, on the other. On paper, at least the logic was clear: Toronto was the most multicultural city in the world, according to the UN’s official statistics and it was also, statistically, the safest big city in North America and, by general consensus, the best organized. Put the two facts together, and you could believe that a multiculture could go beyond the nation—states we knew and give a new meaning to that outdated term, the “Commonwealth.” Add further my sense that Toronto had the most exciting literary culture in the English-speaking world, and you could believe that it not only offered an example of how a country could be even greater than the sum of its parts, but presented visions of what that post-national future might look like.”

Two performances that I saw that year stay etched in my memory – the Swatri Group’s Gujarati play કાય પણ ઍક ફૂલ નુ નાં બોલો તો and the other was a two-part dance ballet Woman: A Search by Mrudanga Dance Academy. 

And in addition to Akshya Mukul’s important book Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India, I read MG Vassanji’s masterly memoirs, And Home was Karikoo. It’s an insider’s perspective that has an outsider’s objectivity.

Here’s a passage that is especially relevant to most first-generation immigrants:

“…I left the country after high school; therefore, I missed the hardships that others endured in the years that followed. What right do I have to show this outrage? It is easy for me, the comfort of my situation in North America, to condemn the nation’s reliance on foreign aid. To which I answer that leaving a place does not sever one’s ties to it, one’s feeling of concern and belonging. We are tied to our schools, our universities, our families, even when we’ve left them – then why not to the place of our childhood, of our memories? Surely a returnee has some claim to the land which formed him – which is not in some godforsaken corner of the globe but in the centre of one’s imagination. And surely distance lends objectivity, allows one to see a place as the world see it.”

The series Literature Matters was launched in 2015 by Smaro Kamboureli, the Avie Bennett Chair in Canadian Literature. The first program featured Thomas King and Naomi Klein, and the subject was climate change. Klein’s epic This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. Climate Change is a book that will continue to remain relevant for a long time, and will become the basis of policy when young people (such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal) take power away from the three generations that have destroyed our home planet’s environment.

Humanitarianism versus national interest

A continent whose prosperity is largely based upon the exploitation of its colonies for over four centuries is today unwilling to give shelter to people without hope. 

Europe today in the throes of xenophobia the likes it last witnessed during the persecution of Jews. 

The critical value at stake in the ongoing refugee crisis is humanitarianism versus national interest, and all of Europe (perhaps with the exception of Germany) appears to be favouring narrow national interest.

Dr. Khalid Koser

Dr. Khalid Koser is the Executive Director of Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund in Geneva, Switzerland. Among many other things, he is the editor of the Journal of Refugee Studies. He is an expert in many spheres including global migration, refugees, internal displacement, governance, human security, community engagement and counter-radicalization.

Dr. Koser was in Toronto recently to deliver the Global Diversity Exchange Annual lecture on the refugee crisis that Europe is grappling with, and evidently not doing too well for itself. He is a keen and articulate advocate of permitting refugees from Syria into Europe. His perspective on the perceived enormity of the crisis and its resolution is simple: Europe should not lose sight of its democratic and humanitarian traditions that go back many centuries. He believes that there is a strong dissonance at present between the perception and the reality of the crisis.

The three solutions that he offers to overcome the present paralysis on the refugee question are extensive education of both the European population and the refugees, a proactive political leadership (exemplified by Germany Angela Merkel, but lacking everywhere else), and a more responsible media that is constructive in dissecting and discussing the issue. He advocated for an objective debate on the subject where nobody is expected to change their views, but understand what the other side brings to the table.

Dr. Koser believes that better solutions will emerge if and when the private sector and administrations of cities are involved in finding solution to the crisis. European governments are not coping with the crisis because of lack of political will. As an example of this absence of political gumption, he states that in comparison to Canada’s decision to permit 25,000 refugees from Syria, the United Kingdom has announced that it will permit 20,000 refugees over a period of six years. There is a clear disconnect between the short-term goals of political parties and the long-term benefits of immigration.

He is highly critical of European governments, and believes that European governments have lost all moral rights to criticize Pakistan and Iran, the two countries who have accommodated millions of Afghan refugees within their boundaries for more than 15 years.  

Dr. Koser also believes that there is clearly shrinking space for a more constructive dialogue on migration. Contrary to popular perceptions, which political leaders accentuate for narrow political gains, migrants don’t compete for jobs, they contribute more to the economy than what they get initially, and they are definitely not terrorists.

The refugee crisis has global dimension, and he argues that proximity should not be equated with responsibility. However, this is easier said than done. At present Turkey is bearing the brunt of the crisis with over two million refugees from Syria within its borders, and though it has recently closed its borders, Dr. Koser predicts that it would be cajoled by the European Union to reopen the borders.

He warns that the challenge the influx of refugees from Syria and North Africa pose to Europe has only just begun. Compared to a million refugees in 2015, the numbers will be substantially more in 2016 and 2017. In a startling revelation, he said in 2015 more than 3600 refugees trying to reach European shores illegally were drowned in the Mediterranean Sea.

He lauded Canada for allowing 25,000 refugees in 2015, but said it could do more. 

Here's a video recording of Dr. Koser's speech:

Pico Iyer in Toronto

Pico Iyer redefined travel writing with his Video Nights in Kathmandu. Nearly three decades ago, he was among the first to help us know the evolution of a global culture, its fluidity, its impermanence, and its seeming rootlessness even though the American pop culture appeared to be its fountainhead.

By far, his most influential work, of course, is The Global Soul, which laid the foundations of understanding how immigration was shaping the world, and was shaping its new identity. In this book, Iyer argues, “in the modern world, which I take to be an International Empire, the sense of home is not just divided, but scattered across the planet…I begin to wonder whether a new kind of being might not be coming to light – a citizen of this International Empire – made up of fusions (and confusions) we had not seen before: a “Global Soul” in a less exalted (and more intimate, more vexed) sense than the Emersonian one.”

Iyer came to Toronto early May to deliver the inaugural lecture at the Global Diversity Exchange (GDX), “the think and do tank based at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University and funded by Maytree. Under the leadership of founding Executive Director Ratna Omidvar, GDX identifies and amplifies the links between prosperity, diversity and migration and anchors these in policy, research and practice.”

Iyer expanded upon the themes that are dear to him, and which he has discussed in his works during the last three decades. Migration, he said, has transformed the world gradually, and in the 21st century, in some respects, we are all migrants and we are all minorities. The new reality is that soon migrants would constitute the third largest nation in the world, although they would be dispersed across different countries, and it is these migrants who are shaping global consciousness.

He cautioned that although immigration has changed the world, it is not in a position to bring about an end of some inherent characteristics that determine identity. For instance, tribalism isn’t going to go away. If globalism has made some walls disappear, people have created new ones. He emphasized that it would be simplistic to contend that the new globalism was making the world homogenous and flat; in fact, the world is becoming more complex. Referring to the McLuhan ‘Global Village,’ Iyer contended that it “is a consoling term;” however, “we’re living in a global city…where the sound is gangsta rap.”

Iyer is a self-confessed admirer of Canadian experimentation in globalism. “No country is looking at globalism more honestly than Canada,” he asserted. He reiterated some of the contentions he had originally made in the 2001 lecture he delivered at the University of Toronto (Imagining Canada:An Outsider’s Hope for a Global Future).

I quote two representative passages from the original lecture that captures the essence of his position about the triumph of globalism in Canada, and Toronto.

“Now, as I walked around what seemed to be a concrete, physical version of what Wired magazine, in honour of Marshall McLuhan had called “mosaic thinking,” I felt I was seeing in some respects, a liberated England and an elevated America that seemed ideal for an Indian who came at once from everywhere and nowhere. I recognized the skepticism I heard in many voices, but it seemed free of the bitterness it might have carried in England. I responded to the earnest optimism and hopefulness of the place, but it didn’t feel as heedless of the past, and of grounding realities, as California often did. History was a given here, I suspected, as it was in The English Patient, but it didn’t have to be a confinement. I found myself exhilarated, too, by the quick wittedness and intelligence of a culture that seemed free of the competitive bustle and noise. I might expect to find in New York. Here, I thought, was all Manhattan’s software without so to speak, its hard drive.

I came away with a sense of possibility I hadn’t felt as I’d traveled to other of the globe’s defining multicultures, whether in Singapore or Cape Town or Melbourne, on the one hand, or in Paris and London and Bombay, on the other. On paper, at least the logic was clear: Toronto was the most multicultural city in the world, according to the UN’s official statistics and it was also, statistically, the safest big city in North America and, by general consensus, the best organized. Put the two facts together, and you could believe that a multiculture could go beyond the nation—states we knew and give a new meaning to that outdated term, the “Commonwealth.” Add further my sense that Toronto had the most exciting literary culture in the English-speaking world, and you could believe that it not only offered an example of how a country could be even greater than the sum of its parts, but presented visions of what that post-national future might look like.”

Among the two other observations Iyer made, and which must have resonated with the audience were:

·   I want to be defined by my passion and not by my passport

·   Home is where I’m going, not where I’ve come from

Subsequent to his lecture, Doug Saunders, the eminent Canadian journalist, chatted with Iyer.

Here's Pico Iyer's interview with Ratna Omidvar:

Five Good Ideas

Working for a not-for-profit organisation has its charms as well as challenges. 

Among the positives, there are considerable more opportunities innovate, to choose a different path, and even do something audacious.

On the flip side, there’s never enough money, enough people, enough resources, enough anything.

Moreover, the pay sucks.

For the same results, the corporate and the government sectors pay more.

On the balance, I think, those who prefer the not-for-profit sector do so because of the freedom it offers.

Running a not-for-profit requires better skillsets than running a private or government sector organisation because you’re expected to do everything.

But there are few, if any, opportunities for training.

The Toronto-based Maytree Foundation’s 5 Good Ideas is a training program for those who work at not-for-profit organisations.

It’s simple, effective and free.

I’ve attended a few of these sessions and have always benefited from them – both from the main speaker as well as from the exchange of ideas that emanate from the group that I sit with.

But with all such workshops, there’s always a problem of retention. There’s a lot one learns, but not everything stays with you.

And there’s never enough time to compile notes from the workshop and keep them handy for reference.

With the publication of Five Good Ideas, Practical Strategies for Non-Profit Success that problem is solved.

Edited by Alan Broadbent, founder chairman of Maytree, and Ratna Omidvar, President of Maytree, the book is a manual for all professionals working for not-for-profit organisations.

The scope of the book is exhaustive. I doubt if any aspect of a not-for-profit is left uncovered. 

But instead of a tome full of treatises, the book is an easy-to-read compilation of five good ideas on seven issues that a professional working for a not-for-profit organisation encounters daily.

These include:

• Leadership & Vision
• Organisational Effectiveness
• Human Resources
• Resource Development
• Communications
• Advocacy and Policy
• Governance

All the contributors are stalwarts in their chosen field of expertise. 

If you have anything to do with a not-for-profit, read this book.