“What?” I ask.

Michael cocks his head and adjusts his hold on the bag of charcoal.

“There are no lines on the road. That’s what I’ve noticed since we got back.”

“There have never been lines on the road.”

“Yeah, but I just noticed it. There are lines on the road in Ontario.”

“There’s money in Ontario.”

“But how are people supposed to drive around here? There are literally no lines on the road. I just got off Campbell Drive and it’s an asphalt free-for-all. No lines.”

“There have never been lines.”

“Once there were lines.”

“Yeah, I suppose there were.”

“I don’t understand why there aren’t any lines.”

“That’s what poverty does. Personal poverty sends you to school without a new coat; provincial poverty can’t afford regular maintenance.”

“Yeah, I guess. We gotta move.”

“Uh-huh.”

“To a place with lines.”

I know, weird name. It’s a play on the Province of New Brunswick’s motto, Spem Reduxit, Latin for ‘Hope Restored’.

They’ve been blogging for a couple of months now on the goings on in the Legislative Assembly and it is a fun little read. A couple of weeks ago they started what I think will be weekly audio podcasts.

The blog along with the pair’s individual Twitter posts – here’s where you’ll find Jacques and Dan in the Twittersphere – and CBC NB’s twitter feed (maintained by Dan) have become my daily source of New Brunswick political news.

The guys have got a good thing started here. I hope the CBC continues to build on the talents of individual journalists by allowing more of them to stretch their wings online – including allowing them to offer an opinion or two.

I think if media organizations are going to make the jump from old to new media they are going to have to redefine the role of journalists. News gathering is the baseline these days and offering a glorified headline service won’t get an audience. That’s the old media model.

In the land of bloggers and tweeters, those who can offer strong analysis and context will be the ones to gather and hold an audience.

Just about anyone with an Internet connection can answer the first four W5 questions – who, what, when and where.

The real money – and influence – is in being able to answer ‘Why’.

I think we need to get that out on the table because sometimes it feels like our national media companies think they can make up for their lack of news coverage beyond the Montreal-Windsor corridor by featuring alt-country musicians in their programs.

Try as they might, I don’t think putting “I Wanna Be in the Calvary” in regular rotation will enhance our understanding of contemporary Prairie culture or politics.

Its the same old story set to a slightly different tune. Those big companies – CBC, CTV, Global and its print arm CanWest – have all recently argued that they have to scale back their operations because of economic pressures. In other words, centralize. Slough off all those expensive-to-operate regional stations, staff ‘em with a minimal number of journalists and direct the news out of Toronto and to a lesser extent, Ottawa.

They say they’ve made these tough choices – the Orwellian term for massive staff layoffs – because they are losing ad revenue because (a) major advertisers, such as car companies, have got their own cash-flow problems and (b) advertisers with money are following audiences online.

The clearest evidence of this switch can be found in corporate job postings. There’s a bunch of new job titles out there – content developer, content strategist, social media marketer – that suggests the money isn’t coming back to traditional media companies until they change the way they produce and deliver content.

Content, that’s a fancy word for news.

People want more content, or more specifically they want a wider selection of content that they can tailor to their own interests.

The response of Canadian media companies? Scale back and employ journalists in small packs in big cities and then send them all out to cover the same story with a bunch of different bylines.

The media equivalent of spraypainting the side of a rock with “I was here.”

I quite literally see it every day.

I use Twitter as my newsfeed and this week the Globe, the National Post and CBC have all posted updates on the Oliphant inquiry and Brian Mulroney’s testimony within minutes of each other.

Its even more pathetic when it comes to entertainment news because the blogs beat large media organizations every time – and usually by hours, not minutes.

I get that media organizations aren’t making as much money as they used to and so naturally they have to reduce operations.

I know traditional newsroom are going to get smaller, in fact I think some of them do need to shrink.

But in the rush to reduce costs, media organizations have forgotten one of the oldest guidelines of our craft: Show don’t tell.

The best stories are told by those who were there to witness it. Telephone (or email) journalism will never equal in quality or influence the stories told by those on the ground.

At the end of this month CBC brass will begin to lay off journalists across the country. Here in Saint John, NB, the number of journalists is being cut in half, taking the station down to less than 10 people. Its the same story in Moncton, Sydney, Sudbury and a bunch of other medium and small markets.

Meanwhile, CBC has announced plans to expand its online presence and CBC.ca was spared in the layoffs.

That’s a smart move – I get all of my CBC content online now.

What I don’t understand is why CBC brass aren’t tapping into the knowledge and skill set of its existing journalists to make that conversion.

The websites for the CBC national shows are great – I love Radio 2 and 3 in particular and the Radio 1 podcasts. The same can’t be said for the regional stations, which are little more than news aggregate sites that list the latest headlines.

Its pathetic that in 2010 I can’t get a podcast of any of the shows produced in New Brunswick.

CBC’s regional cuts will limit the amount of news being produced locally. The journalists who will remain won’t have the time to explore leads and develop interesting stories. Local news is going to become even more boring.

News organizations shouldn’t be centralizing their staff; they should be dispersing staff, employing small, well-run groups across this country and telling them to go out and find original stories that no one is telling.

CBC, CTV and Global have all made cuts to local coverage, actions that show us what stories they think are worth telling.

It’ll be up to you to decide if you still want to listen.

The Schoodic International Sculpture Symposium.

The what where symposium?

Yeah, that’s what I asked too.

The Schoodic Peninsula is a granite shoreline located in what the locals call Down East Maine. Tourists would say its near Bar Harbor. Part of it snakes through Acadia National Park and it was here in the late summer of 2007 that a local group of residents, led by Jesse, brought six sculptors together to create incredible pieces of public art out of Schoodic granite.

The sculptors came from Poland, Germany, Sweden, Japan and Maine.

They set up outdoor studios in Acadia National Park and from late July until early September they created these magnificent contemporary art sculptures – and the public came to watch.

The pieces have since been installed in seven small towns in Hancock and Washington counties.

Jesse is speaking at the Saint John Arts Centre on Thursday, May 14 at 1 p.m. to talk about the Symposium and what it has meant for the arts in this rural area of Maine.

Wouldn’t it be great to do something like this in Saint John?

I’ve been researching the political history of New Brunswick and just finished Politics in New Brunswick by Thorburn, a Queens U prof, who wrote in 1961. His assessment of the province is laughingly and depressingly still current in far too many ways.

Below are some of my highlights:

New Brunswick has not been affected by the dislocating influence of a new immigrant population bringing different folkways with it. Instead, it has been bypassed by the stream of immigration and has continuously lost a considerable portion of its own you and vigourous population. Small wonder, then, that the province holds on to old ways in politics. It has not had change thrust upon it since Confederation. – pp 41-42

Anything you can do, ACOA can do better:

New Brunswick is in no way an economic unit; rather, it consists of several small regional economies that have few interests in common and tend to compete for government projects in their respective areas. p.45

The view from the 2nd floor bunker at the Centennial Building:

The responsibility of government to respond to a complex array of representatives of local, region and special interests each alert to claim the desserts of its principals, results in a rather negative introversion that emphasizes the smaller and more local interests. p.50

Who’s your father syndrome:

…[E]very citizen belongs in his own community through long association and general acceptance. He has his place, which is his pride or his cross, and others recognize it. His family and its social position dogs him through his lifetime. He will be recognized by his family name and by where he comes from…

And my personal favourite:

It is a society which offers few advantages for the energetic young men who have completed their secondary education or obtained university degrees. These are tempted to emigrate unless the opportunities offered by a family enterprise or the practice of a profession present the makings of a career. Many of the members of the notable families find suitable employment and so remain, as do most of the unskilled and uneducated, who can find labouring jobs or stay on the family farm.

It is the educated and vigorous young men without moneyed connections who find suitable employment opportunities scarce, and many of them are drawn off to central Canada.

Those who “kick against the pricks” are encouraged to leave; those who accommodate themselves to things as they are tend to remain.

Perhaps such conditions, existing over a prolonged period, account for much of New Brunswick’s charm, but they are also responsible for its static and traditional outlook, its strong local loyalties and its calm and resigned acceptance of things.

Kick against the pricks. Did that mean the same thing in 1961 that it means today? There’s a bumper sticker waiting to be printed, I think.

I’ve got a vase of lilies blooming beside me, the sun is shining on my keyboard and I came across this neat little web project yesterday, courtesy of bookninja, that go me thinking.

Project Bookmark Canada is going to mark the spots across the country that are imagined by writers and then described in their books and poems.

Michael Ondaatje & Toronto mayor David Miller will launch the initiative Thursday, April 23 by installing one of the bookmarks – a permanent marker that describes the book and the passage that references the area. The first bookmark is going in at the Bloor viaduct, which is referenced in Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion.

Its a cool idea. I just finished reading Old City Hall by Robert Rotenberg, which is set in Toronto and makes a point of mentioning Toronto landmarks, and – don’t laugh – I just read the Twilight series, and while it is a bit overwrought, author Stephenie Meyer, does make the Pacific Northwest region one of the central characters in her vampire love story.

Some other books that stand out for me are:

• Wayne Johnson helped me understand Newfoundland in a far deeper way than any history book with his novel Colony of Unrequited Dreams;
• Robertson Davies was inspired by Kingston for his Salterton Trilogy, Toronto for the Deptford Trilogy and U of T for his Cornish Trilogy – and I wanted to experience all of them;
• Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is a book I reread and which has sat on my desk, next to my computer since my early days in journalism;
• Elizabeth Hay took me way up north in Late Nights on Air and of, course,
• David Adam Richards has captured the poverty of rural New Brunswick in his ongoing study of Miramichi in his novels.

If I were to put up a bookmark in Saint John, I would put it in the deep South End, to mark poet Alden Nowlan’s place in Canadian literature with his piece “Britain Street”.

This is a street at war.
The smallest children
battle with clubs
till the blood comes,
shout ‘fuck you!’
like a rallying cry ––

while mothers shriek
from doorsteps and windows
as though the very names
of their young were curses:

‘Brian! Marlene!
Damn you! God damn you!’

or waddle into the street
to beat their own with switches:
‘I’ll teach you, Brian!
I’ll teach you, God damn you!’

On this street
even the dogs
would rather fight
than eat.

I have lived here nine months
and in all that time
have never once heard
a gentle word spoken.

I like to tell myself
that is only because
gentle words are whispered
and harsh words shouted.

Where would you put a bookmark?

This in a country that once prided itself on excellent phone service. Sadly Bell, Aliant and Rogers can’t seem to get it together in the wireless world.

Interesting side note. Earlier this week I was sitting in on an MBA class at the University of New Brunswick Saint John campus (UNBSJ), which featured a discussion about the rise of NBTel as an innovative company in the 1990s only to be blasted into mediocrity when it was subsumed by that telecommunications deathstar that is Bell Canada around the turn of this century.

The class has a high percentage of international students and one South American student offered the opinion that he was disappointed and surprised when he arrived in Canada for school to discover that he had to sign a multi-year contract with Aliant for wireless phone service. In his country, the regulator won’t allow multi-year contracts.

His point was, with wireless phone technology changing every few months, phone users don’t want to be stuck with the same phone for two or three years – it would be obsolete a few times over before the contract was expired.

Tell me about it.

On my last trip to Toronto, I lost my cell phone while digging through a fabulous warehouse sale. Trust me, for the clothes I got and at 70 per cent off or more, I didn’t mind sacrificing the phone!

Anyway, I hadn’t had my plan long enough to qualify for an upgrade, but Michael did qualify for an upgrade. So off to mall we traipsed. Michael got his new phone – lovely touch screen – but it, of course, came with a three-year contract. I inherited his well-used flip phone, circa 2006.

Now I know why we call South America a developing region; it’s developing modern wireless service a hell of a lot faster than us!

The provincial Throne Speech was delayed Tuesday afternoon because the Premier and an assortment of his self-titled brain trust were down in Moncton with 4,000 other people for a noon hour presentation by former US president Bill Clinton, hosted by former NB premier and Canadian Ambassador to the US Frank McKenna.

Moncton is about a 90-minute drive from Fredericton, the supposed seat of power, but as the premier and his cadre illustrated in their morning pilgrimege down the TransCanada, the real power in the province on Tuesday was sitting in a pair of overstuffed green club chairs, relaxin’ and regalin’ a crowd of 4,000 people in an old hockey arena on the outskirts of town.

Two political stars soaking up the adoration of their fans.

And why shouldn’t they? McKenna and Clinton are two highly charismatic and fascinating public figures.

People, including Graham, wanted to be there to listen to the insight and wit Clinton and his host brought to their interpretation of the major political and economic issues of day.

It was a level of rhetoric not normally heard in this province and it was a stark contrast to the speech delivered a few hours later in the Legislative Assembly.

Allow me to illustrate the contrasting, ah, speaking styles.

Here is Bill Clinton talking about fixing the economy on The View with Whoopi Goldberg. (I can’t believe I just wrote that sentence)

Clinton on The View

Reasonable and engaged with the live studio audience whilst chatting with the ladies.

Here is the once-effusive Shawn Graham talking to reporters at the Throne Speech media conference:

Media conference

Getting……………..Very…………..Sleepy…………………

Sheesh.

Alex Sanchez, a popular Florida-based author who writes about gay teen issues, was booked to speak to two small high schools in southwestern New Brunswick, but then some parents complained – surprise, surprise – and so the principal backed down and the moved the venue to the United Church.
CBC paraphrases the principal as saying that allowing someone no one knew locally to speak to teens on such a sensitive topic would have been irresponsible.

Sadly typical response.

Isn’t a school supposed to expose students to people and ideas they might not be familiar with in their communities?

As of this year, there will be 45 laureates in the NB Business Hall of Fame and only one of them is a woman. Her name is Ruth Cook Wilson and she was inducted, posthumously in 2000. Ms. Wilson was the driving force behind the creation of what became Medavie Blue Cross, serving as its first executive director in 1944.

Yea Ruth!

But seriously, one woman? Eleven years and 44 names later the people who nominate and select these laureates couldn’t think of any other women in the history of New Brunswick to pick out of the crowd and say; “Hey, you’ve accomplished something impressive.”

The easy retort, and I’ve heard it, is to suggest that there might not be any women deserving of being inducted into the hall. To that I say, why don’t we have a look first and then decide.

The province is 224 years old.

New Brunswick holds tight to an orthodox vision of its history, particularly in its business and political circles. It has singled out some people and given them great praise and a lot of credit for helping to develop the province. The Great Man way of telling history is very strong in New Brunswick. But how can we be sure that these few tales of greatness tell the whole story? A little research might reveal a far more colourful and nuanced history than the one oft-repeated.

For instance, David Adam Richard’s novel River of the Brokenhearted, was based on the life of his grandmother, who ran the local movie theatre in Miramichi. She certainly wasn’t the only woman to roll up her sleeves and get to work.

Journalist Sally Armstrong released a novel last year based on one of her ancestors entitled The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor: The First Woman Settler of the Miramichi.

The Hall of Fame includes a list of many celebrated New Brunswick business leaders. High time it opened up the party to a more diverse group of worthy people.