Spoken words and
explosive goods

Montreal’s Poets Against War get on
the bus against Ottawa’s weapons fair

LYRICAL WARRIORS: (l to r): Sandra Stephenson,
and Ralph de Smit, Erika Wright and Hugh Hazelton

by MATT JONES

There’s more to Ottawa than skating down the canal, chowing down on a beaver tail at the ByWard Market and brooding over the ominous lack of litter on the city’s streets. This June 2 and 3, you’ll also be able to stock up on laser-guided missile systems, as the world’s leading gun runners show off their wares at CANSEC, the country’s largest defence and security trade show. Over the two days, a six-foot fence will surround Lansdowne Park, on the banks of the Rideau Canal, as government representatives browse different firms’ diversely spectacular methods for blowing things up.

“CANSEC exhibitors make everything from air-launched missiles and high-tech electronic components for the world’s deadliest warplanes, to offensive armoured battle vehicles, multi-million dollar gizmos for the militarization of space, and down-to-earth automatic weapons,” says the website of the Coalition Against the Arms Trade (COAT), a group organizing a protest against the convention.

COAT coordinator Richard Sanders says most Canadians are unaware of how big a role Canada plays in producing and exporting military hardware. “We consistently rank in the world’s top 10 weapons exporters. Between 2003 and 2006, Canada exported at least $7.4-billion to 88 countries.”

If this makes Ottawa a synecdoche for the country’s increasing militarization, it is an irony not lost on local poets. Montreal-based Poets Against War (PAW) is currently recruiting a battalion of bards to lay siege to the convention with an arsenal of metaphor and allusion and a panoply of obscure rhetorical devices.

“Poetry is powerful because it puts a lot in a capsule and fires it off. The effect of a good poem can be long-term,” says poet and PAW founder Sandra Stephenson.

“There’ll be poems denouncing militarism, there’ll be poems more concentrated on a peaceful vision of the future,” says local poet Hugh Hazelton. “All these poems will be trying to say something about the increasing militarization in Canada.”

Stephenson’s been poetically protesting the convention since the 1980s, when it was known by the less euphemistic moniker ARMX. After the 1989 convention, Ottawa city councillors passed a motion that banned arms trade exhibits on city property, though the exhibition continued to take place in the more low-key Ottawa Congress Centre, run by the provincial government. The 20-year ban was overturned in 2009 when city councillors argued that the transfer of ownership of the park from the City of Ottawa to the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton nullified the ban. Stephenson says you don’t have to look far to find the motivation for the change in the law: “The current Ottawa mayor [Larry O’Brien] is founder and director of Calian.”

Calian portrays itself as a “technology service provider” specializing in “defense and aerospace.” Sanders describes it as “one of [the most] lucrative Canadian military industries. It supplies software, training, personnel and high technology components and support services to the world’s biggest institutions of war.”

Even as Stephenson gets ready to bring her verse to the barricades, she acknowledges that political poetics are tough to pull off.

“The thing about poetry is, it’s not supposed to be cut and dried; if there’s ambiguity, it’s fascinating. So how do you talk about unambiguous things like ‘War is bad for children and other living things?’ It’s the most difficult poetry to write.”

THE POETS WILL ASSEMBLE ON
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 2 AT NOON AT
THE GATES OF LANSDOWNE PARK. TO
PARTICIPATE, E-MAIL ADMIN@POET
SAGAINSTWAR. CA. FOR DETAILS,
SEE POETSAGAINSTWAR.CA AND
COAT.NCF.CA.