GLIMPSES of how Canada worked: a writer's memoir.

1. The who, what, when, where, why, and how

copyright © 2015 WandaS All rights reserved

DURING THE SECOND HALF OF THE 20th CENTURY, Canada's population grew from about 12 million to more than 30 million. Along the way Canadians dealt with issues and events like ones that make headlines today: gender politics, climate change, racial and religious prejudices, Royal visits, pornography, strikes, corruption on Parliament Hill, armed robberies, murders, suicides. For a couple of decades, nuclear war was a real threat looming every day, so scary that construction of survival shelters became a lucrative business. Canada was trying to regain its grasp on normality after World War II, but new technologies and products appeared so fast that nobody could pin down what "normal" meant any more.

In a nutshell, the second half of the 20th century was similar to the times we live in now. (And today the business of building survival shelters is bigger than ever!)What was very different then was how we felt living through those days, especially how we treated each other.

As a journalist from the 1950s until the early years of the 21st century I either wrote for or edited daily, weekly, or monthly newspapers, newsletters, magazines. I volunteered a lot, taught journalism to high school students. By the mid-'80s I was managing major public affairs projects (often ones I initiated or at least designed) for employers such as Canadian National Railways at its Montreal headquarters, or for the United Nations Development Program in Warsaw. During all those years I accepted only a couple of full-time jobs, briefly, because freelancing suited me far better.

I want to share, through GLIMPSES of how Canada worked, experiences I had and texts I wrote or was responsible for that taught me noteworthy life lessons, not merely details of something I reported about. I want especially to share stories about where, when, why, and how work came my way. In rare days when no one gave me an assignment I followed my curiosity wherever it led me, usually to a story worth sharing, and then found someone who wanted to publish it.

As the years whizzed by I was, without realizing it, recording an amazing era, not only in Canada but throughout what's known as 'the West'. All nations were affected by the deaths and damage caused by World War II, after which some were trapped for more than 40 years behind what Winston Churchill in 1946 dubbed an "Iron Curtain". That was the year when the Baby Boom began, an international population explosion that lasted about a decade and is still reverberating.

Merely surviving events in the first half of the 20th century — from the 'war to end all wars', then a flu that killed 50% of some populations, then Spain's Civil War, then World War II — challenged humankind to practice cooperation and respect for one another. In the century's second half Canada, no less than the countries whose soil had actually been bloodied by wars, was consciously and demonstrably grateful for peace. It welcomed immigrants from less fortunate lands, and eagerly supported visionary political leaders who enacted social programs that built a strong middle class with generous social supports.

After about 1950 Canadians enjoyed an extraordinary sense of security in a psychosocial cocoon so remarkable and enviable that the word "Canada" became an international synonym for the best things life could offer.

I kept copies of almost all texts I was responsible for — at least a million words. (Toronto's Globe and Mail alone bought 60 articles from me.) Scanning the collection in 2010 I was surprised by the range of topics, did not recall writing at least a third of the articles.

As I read them, however, with no sense of urgency but instead the luxury of hindsight, the broad context of each piece or project came to mind clearly. I relived days spent with the people, the attitudes, clothing, even the cars and buildings we were in, especially the technologies we used. There were significant turning points I hadn't always recognized as such at the time, nor always handled correctly if I did. There were moments when life speeded up dramatically. There were unexpected events which changed everything about life in a trice.