The sign on the pot dispensary across from the Times Colonist building says it is “now accepting new members.”
Well, gosh, this is exciting stuff. Should I shine my shoes, comb my hair (both of them), try to make a good impression?
While part of me suspects the dispensary’s membership barrier is closer in height to that of Costco than of, say, the Union Club, the phrase “now accepting” nonetheless implies an exclusivity that is hard to ignore.
With rare exception (Groucho Marx: “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member”) the notion of inclusion is enticing. I knew a guy who would cheer every time he saw the Victoria Golf Club flag at half-mast, figuring he had just moved up one spot the waiting list.
Conversely, exclusion sucks. No one wants to be banished to the kids’ table at Christmas, or stuck on the wrong side of the doorman’s velvet rope, or banned from the old Crystal Garden pool because of skin colour (yes, Victoria, that used to happen), or barred from full Union Club membership because of gender, as was the case until 1994.
Gender is still an issue, as Donald Trump reminded us last week (ed note: more like every week) when he said of Hillary Clinton “the only thing she’s got going is the woman’s card.” He used the term “woman’s card” as though hitting from the ladies’ tees offers a big, unfair advantage in U.S. politics — a bit of a head-scratcher, seeing as four in five members of Congress are male.
At least the Twitter response was clever, ranging from comments on political reality (“The #WomanCard is so overplayed. All the female presidents have used it”) to references to the pay gap (“Tried to use my #womancard at an ATM to pull out a $20 — got $15.60 instead”).
Which brings us to Friday, when the Bank of Canada named a dozen women whose image could be carried on a banknote. Included on the list are two former Victorians, artist/author Emily Carr and activist Nellie McClung (whose old Victoria Daily Times columns are reprinted weekly in the Islander section).
An advisory committee (four women, two men) will pare the list to three to five candidates, one of whom will be chosen by Finance Minister Bill Morneau for a banknote due in 2018.
It’s worth noting that this probably would not have happened were it not for Oak Bay historian Merna Forster, who drove the campaign to get more women on Canadian currency. (As it is, the Queen, who graces the $20 bill, is the only female on the A-side of a Canadian bill. Her Majesty used to be on all our notes until 1969, when she was punted in favour of four dead prime ministers: Sir Wilfrid Laurier on the $5, Sir John A. Macdonald on the $10, William Lyon Mackenzie King on the $50 and a man who appears to be from Downton Abbey on the $100.)
Now a member of the Bank of Canada’s advisory committee, Forster demurred when I asked about any negative reaction to her efforts. Basically, there wasn’t enough of it to get excited about, she wrote.
Good, because that certainly hasn’t been the case elsewhere. The Internet blew a fuse in April when the U.S. Treasury announced abolitionist and former slave Harriet Tubman will elbow slave-owner Andrew Jackson out of his spot on the $20 bill in 2020. A social media petition essentially declared it un-American to have anyone but a former president depicted on a U.S. bank note, conveniently (or ignorantly) forgetting that incumbents Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin never filled the role.
In 2013, Britain’s Caroline Criado-Perez was bombarded with abuse — including rape threats and death threats — after leading the successful campaign to have author Jane Austen featured on a Bank of England note. Two of the trolls — a man and a woman — were jailed.
No such reaction here. Maybe Canadians get less worked up, one way or another, by what some dismiss as symbolism at best and tokenism at worst.
Or perhaps they appreciate a public declaration that a heretofore exclusive club is now accepting new members, and that everyone is welcome to join.
