Here is an interview with Bruce Cockburn published in early 2020 by an excellent Canadian poetry journal Contemporary Verse 2. The topics vary widely, but stay fairly close to poetry and writing. We spoke in August, 2019, before the pandemic and the lockdown and just a month after Maria and I saw Bruce with his band in the lovely Capitol Centre in North Bay, Ontario. That concert was intensely emotional for me as my father had passed away after a long illness just days before. The account of that concert and the healing properties of music are part of a lengthy project I am working on. Maybe one day it will be published, who knows? For now, this interview is quite impressive. Mr. Cockburn is funny and insightful as always. It is a companion interview to the article I wrote for Penguin Eggs Magazine  about Bruce's latest album, Crowing Ignites.  
          I hope you enjoy. Thank you, Mr. Cockburn, for your generosity and compassion.  

The city where I live is an ecological wonder. Built at the only natural outflow from Lake Superior, Sault Ste Marie is uniquely positioned geographically. Before Europeans arrived, the area was fertile fishing grounds and the site for the gathering of Indigenous people from around the Great Lakes regions. One can only imagine the relationships, trade deals, and peace agreements that developed here over the millennia.

European colonization brought European industry. For a time, this seemed to work out  just fine for some. Sure, the Indigenous nations were pushed out. Sure, generations of people grew up dependent on the vagaries of the steel and pulp-paper markets, riding an addictive cycle of boom and bust all the way to the cancer ward. Now, centuries after the beginnings of colonization, we have an economy that putts along, a failed pulp industry, a steel industry that employs a small fraction of the workers it had in its prime, and, to top it off, inter-generational illness. In fact, we have among the highest rates of cancer in Ontario.
       With all this in mind, the city is now courting a new saviour in the form of a small mining company called Noront. I am not an economist, but Noront's financial records scream volatility. This company wants to build a ferrochrome refinery on the Great Lakes waterway, in the centre of the city. I won't go into it here because there is lots of information available from more reliable sources, but ferrochrome smelting is lethal business. The nearest comparison to the mill proposed for my city is in Finland. The Finnish refinery, as i understand it, is located away from human settlement, at the edge of open ocean where emissions are difficult to measure. 
           City Council has already committed to a  partnership with this new industry, presenting the key administrators with personalized street signs. Stay tuned. 
      Below is a version of a letter sent to my councilors and the mayor of SSM It has been edited for this blog posting. If this issue is important to you -- if you live in the region or live downstream -- please consider expressing your thoughts and concerns. 


 
August 12, 2020
 
Dear Mayor and Councilors,
 
I hope that you and your family are well in these strange times.
 
I am writing to express my opposition to Council’s decision to option Sault Ste. Marie for the site of Noront’s ferrochrome refinery. In recent years, through your efforts and those of many young entrepreneurs and visionaries, the Sault economy has experienced a grassroots renewal focused on local services and products. While these endeavours are more modest than the “$100,000/year” jobs promised by Noront, community-based economic growth can be sustainable and environmentally sound in ways that Noront’s interests cannot guarantee. It is my contention that the opportunities found in community-based initiatives are more realistic than the promises made by Noront, which has no real connection to or investment in Sault Ste. Marie, its ecosystem, and the long-term health of its people.
 
Our history as an industrial centre will lead many to accept Noront’s interest as a grand opportunity. By force of habit, the Sault would accept Noront and its potential dangers. The promise of steady industrial jobs is seductive to many people in our community who have grown up in industry and believe that prosperity and well-being can be manufactured in a furnace. Partnering with Noront is an easy, temporary answer to our long struggle in creating sustainable employment. It is easy because we have always looked to industry for economic salvation. It is temporary because Noront is interested in Sault Ste. Marie for its infrastructure and access to transportation and would choose any community that met its technical demands and welcomed its ambitions. I ask that City Council look more deeply at Noront’s proposal and at the company’s history and track record for community development. Are they conscientious, proven partners? Or are they looking to make their reputation on St. Mary’s waterway?
 
There has been much debate over the safety of the ferrochrome refinery process City Council wants to bring to the Sault. Health professionals and environmentalists have addressed the very real possibility for inter-generational health effects from Noront’s proposal. I do not have the expertise to add to these arguments. However, the harmful effects of centuries of industrial activity on the health of our region are widely documented. We are now, again, at a turning point. We have the choice to break away from the old, default patterns of behavior that generate dramatic boom-bust economies in favour of a more egalitarian, sustainable community-based model.
 
I understand that the challenges to build an environmentally sound local economy are many, and the temptation to sacrifice future health for apparently immediate prosperity can seem like a good deal. It is my fear that partnership with Noront in the contentious and environmentally devastating “Ring of Fire” project will lead us to deeper dependence upon limited resources and externally based industry. This is the time to be bold and to reject a return to old patterns. 
 
Batchewana First Nations has expressed its opposition to the ferrochrome refinery, and Sault Ste. Marie should follow its lead. The band’s opposition alone should give us pause.
 
Thank you for all that you do.
 
Best wishes,

         When I am feeling playful, I point out the bicycle lanes to cyclists who ride on sidewalks. I am careful not to make accusations or to give directives. Simply, I say, “Hey, look at that. We have bike lanes now.”
          Responses vary. Most riders ignore the comment, but I’ve had people tell me to copulate with myself and others stop long enough to give me a “what are you going to do about it?” ultimatum.  
           The answer is: Ultimately, nothing. 
         Today, a fella geared-up in new polyester, helmet gleaming, stopped to explain that he was breaking no laws by riding his fat tire, carbon-framed mountain charger in the middle of the pedestrian pathway. He’d done his homework.
           “I called the city police,” he said, hands flashing and waving between us. “I have every right to ride on this pathway. I don’t have to use the bike lane.”
            I began to remind him that I had said nothing about his rights, the law, or what I thought he should do, but had merely indicated to him the existence of a bike lane just a meter to his right, in case he hadn't noticed. But he didn’t want, or was unable, to listen. He was caught up in a performance of some kind. It was clear that he’d practiced the speech, perhaps in front of a mirror -- I may well be the first person to whom he has unburdened -- so I let him go on without interruption.
            He is harassed by pedestrians every day when he rides his bike along the sidewalk, and he has had enough. People film him with their phones. There’s one now, calling someone, likely the police. “One woman yells at me,” he said.
            After a while, I missed the sound of my own voice and tried again to assure this anxious man that I truly did not care if the law allows him to ride his bike on the sidewalk. It made sense in a way. The city has spent millions in recent years adding bike lanes in response to requests from  cycling advocates. Sections of the 22.5 kilometer system that weaves through the city and immediate bushlands is multi-use, with pedestrians and cyclists dodging each other. But a good bit of the trail, especially those that double as city sidewalks, are split with paths for walking and lanes for cycling. Yet, according to the man waving his hands in my face this afternoon, no law exists to bar cyclists from the sidewalk along a major street, although there are designated lanes for bicyclists.
           Curiously, I have just learned from the "City Trail Guide" that it is illegal for pedestrians to walk in the bike lane.
           But my purpose was not to debate the law or to exert control over a free-spirited cyclist who had clearly practiced for this moment. I was merely pointing to the path, acknowledging its existence, and hoping he might as well.
            Eventually, he revealed the true reason he chooses to ride within arm’s reach of pedestrians, the old, the young, the wobbly, the drunk. It is fear. “I ride on the sidewalk because I don’t want to get hit by a car,” he said.
            But isn’t that why the city made all these bike lanes? Look, there's one now.

An article about Bruce Cockburn's new album _Crowing Ignites_ and in which Mr. Cockburn talks guitar and a few players who have impressed him over the years. From Penguin Eggs Magazine, Fall 2019.

Wrote this after attending the first citizens meeting regarding the construction of a ferrochrome refinery in Sault Ste. Marie. 


Your Life For Money
 
Will you trade your life for money?
They say it’s just a little
bit of poison, nothing you can’t handle.
You might lose a hand, and keep the middle finger.
It will hurt a bit at first, but the pain is going to linger.
When you trade life for money.
 
            How far does the water flow?
            How deep does the poison go?
 
Will you sell your blood to vampires,
who dig up the wilds
who spread contagion building empires,
who solve their problems by writing out cheques?
They look you in the eye while they measure your neck.
When you sell blood to vampires.
 
            How far does the water flow?
            How deep does the poison go?
 
Will you trade your life for money,
to drive a big truck,
pay for your funeral, and keep pushing your luck
with the billionaires who make holes in the ground?
They got a grave dug for you when you finally fall down.
When you trade your life for money.
 
            How far does the water flow?
            How deep does the poison go?
            How far does the water flow?
            How deep does the poison go? 

Just when I thought no had read my last book, _Even the Weapons_ (BuschekBooks, 2014), poet and editor Laura Berry from BerryPoetryBookReviews drops this generous review. Thanks, Laura. 
 https://poets.media/dunn-s-poetic-work-intoxicates