Buoyant blog of septuagenarian (78) Kanadian poet and haikuist Chris Faiers/cricket. People's Poetry in the tradition of Milton Acorn, haiku/haibun, progressive politikal rants, engaged Buddhism and meditation, revitalizing of Callaghan's Rapids Conservation Area, memories of ZenRiver Gardens and Purdy Country LitFests (PurdyFests), events literary and politikal, and pics, amid swirling currents of earth magick and shamanism. Read in 119 countries last week - 75,777 readers in September.
When the leaves turn red and yellow, and the intense blue sky signals a coming cold wind, I think of the Adams Mine near Kirkland Lake. On Thanksgiving weekend in 2000, a ten-year battle to stop the biggest waste project in Canadian history came to a head on the road leading to the abandoned mine.
Adams Mine
A blockade by locals shut down access to the mine and all rail traffic on the Ontario Northland Railway. Tanker cars from the smelters in Rouyn and Timmins backed up, causing a serious economic crisis.
As Thanksgiving weekend approached, hundreds of people were gathered in a makeshift tent city on the rail tracks. Over 700 kms away, chaos reigned at Toronto City Hall as powerful financial interests tried to push this reckless project ahead despite growing opposition.
It all came to a head on Thanksgiving weekend.
Faced with mass arrests, people responded with pumpkin pie, turkey, and ham. We held the biggest Thanksgiving celebration the North had ever seen. That act of community defiance broke the stranglehold of backroom power and killed the environmentally dangerous Adams Mine dump project.
Adams Mine Blockade, October 2000
First Nations, farmers, and miners hold the line on the Adams Mine Blockade, October 2000
Standing on the road that weekend changed my life. Up until then, I was a musician, part-time journalist, and handyman. I had trusted the “system” and the “process” to do the right thing.
But watching the police come down the road to arrest my neighbours made me realize that trusting the power wasn’t good enough. You needed to organize and make those with power accountable to the people.
I’ve carried the lessons of that weekend with me ever since.
On this Thanksgiving, I would like to share with you an excerpt from my book Unlikely Radicals: The Story of the Adams Mine Dump War
Thanksgiving on the Road
The blockade on the Adams Mine Road was entering its 9th day.
Every day more and more people were coming to the blockade – First Nations, farmers, miners – people from both Ontario and Quebec. The cookhouses and sleeping quarters had grown into a small tent town. People were preparing for a potential winter occupation.
On the Thursday before Thanksgiving, I received an anonymous call from someone in the local Crown Prosecutor’s office.
“Premier Mike Harris is freaking out. He wants 100 people arrested and held without bail until after Thanksgiving in order to take the pressure off the Toronto council vote.”
“Will the judge grant this injunction?” I asked.
“Not a chance.”
My source said that the judge took the position that as long as there was no violence on the blockade, there wasn’t a judge in the region who would sign the order. Our rag-tag group of activists had built a reputation as the good guys in what had been a very ugly and dirty fight.
On the Friday evening, a large crowd gathered in the tent town that had grown up along the tracks. Joseph Gold held a Sabbath prayer service, and then people began to bring out musical instruments around the large fire near the railway tracks. Folks were coming in from as far away as Toronto and Thunder Bay. A couple from Florida ventured down the road and decided to spend the evening.
It was a festive night. The feeling in the air was electric. The evening seemed remarkably lighthearted until Toronto Sun reporter Alan Cairnes took me aside and gave me the heads-up that the police were moving against the blockade.
“The cops are coming before dawn tomorrow to arrest you people. You guys are fighting the good fight. You have no idea how much damage you have done to the other side. No matter what happens, you have to be still standing here when the voting resumes in Toronto on Tuesday.”
The voting at City Hall on the dump deal had been suspended over the Thanksgiving weekend. But to hold the line until next Tuesday with the growing pressure of the backed-up rail traffic seemed like an impossible task.
Night fell dark on the surrounding bush, but an eerie light appeared just beyond the curve in the road behind the police lines. It was the headlights of a growing number of police cars and vans lining up for a raid on Saturday morning.
I was standing with my wife watching the ominous lights. My wife was holding our youngest daughter, Lola, who was only two. Grand Chief Carol McBride came up to us and said simply,
“It’s either a really good sign or a really bad sign to see a mother with a baby on a blockade.”
Either way, we were about to find out.
We put the call out to everyone through our immense phone tree to pack their cars and head to the road. We told them that the showdown was coming.
Just before dawn on October 7, the police set up their own blockade at the entrance to the Adams Mine Road. Any cars attempting to come down to the barricade site were told to go home.
None of the cars left. They parked along the gravel shoulder of the highway.
People began to get out of the cars bringing turkeys, ham and pumpkin pie. They moved in and around the vast array of police and paddy wagons as if the police weren’t even there.
The message had gone out through the region – the police are coming and rather than bringing placards or balaclavas, bring food and supplies because arrests or no arrests, we were going to celebrate Thanksgiving on the road.
One frazzled officer who was trying to turn the vehicles back received a stern lecture from an older couple from Kirkland Lake.
“George Mangotich is roasting the Thanksgiving pig. If you don’t make room for his supplies, he’s not going to be able to have the pig ready in time for the supper.”
At first light, the police came down in a phalanx to the railway tracks. We were already lined up on the other side, locked arm in arm. A police officer stepped out and read the injunction ordering us to leave. Terry Graves, who was our key negotiator, went forward to meet the officer, who tried to serve him with the injunction.
Graves looked it over and noticed that the official seal was missing.
“Wait a minute, this isn’t a legitimate injunction. It came off a bloody fax machine. Where’s the original?”
The original copy was nowhere to be had because the police couldn’t find a local judge to sign it. They had been forced to rely on a faxed injunction from another jurisdiction.
“You can’t arrest us with a faxed injunction,” Graves declared.
The officer repeated his ultimatum. Graves turned his back on the police.
“I refuse to be a participant in an illegal act.”
The police officer was now thoroughly confused. Tensions were running very high. A young activist from Timiskaming First Nation began waving the Warrior flag.
The police might be waiting for the better part of the day for an enforceable injunction to arrive. At this moment, officer Jim McDonnell, the lead commander for the Ontario Provincial Police, stepped forward. He was all brass and serious business and had been sent from the North Bay detachment to bring the situation under control.
McDonnell was a tough cop. I knew McDonnell, and I knew that both he and Terry Graves shared a deep love of the music of alt country legend Fred Eaglesmith. In a break from their intense arguing, I explained to Graves that the OPP lead was a fellow “Fredhead.”
Terry came back to the police line and began to talk music. Officer McDonnell was confused at first, but then they found common ground.
McDonnell had a problem on his hands. He could easily fill the paddy wagons with Thanksgiving families, but that could lead to a troublesome backlash. Throughout the region, there were many rural and First Nation loners willing to take matters into their own hands.
Both sides feared the possibility of a lone actor causing damage or hurt.
McDonnell and Graves struck a compromise: the tent city was to be moved back fifty feet and days of backed-up freight allowed to move. The tents, cookhouses, and so on could stay on the road, leaving a de facto occupation of the Adams Mine Road intact while the trains could proceed.
McDonnell barked out the orders to push everything back fifty feet. Our volunteer army sprang into action. We couldn’t believe we were still standing.
As Graves and McDonnell finalized their negotiations, people began pouring down the road with supplies for the single largest Thanksgiving supper Timiskaming had ever seen. Large temporary dining halls were built with two-by-fours and tarps to provide some protection from the increasingly cold temperatures.
The event began with prayers of Thanksgiving from the back of a pickup truck. Yellow birch leaves fell from the trees and swirled in the cold air as Rita Stanger sang a haunting a cappella version of “Amazing Grace.”
And then the feeding of the people began. In true rural style, the gathered community came together in shared food and fellowship. The Thanksgiving meal on the Adams Mine Road was the highlight in a month of tension and conflict.
Over 1,000 people were fed with multiple supplies of pumpkin and apple pie left over.
But as families celebrated their continued control of the road, the Adams Mine leadership realized we had come to another dead end.
The Toronto vote was within three days, and we appeared to have run out of tools for maintaining the pressure. With an injunction against actions on the rail line, our pressure points had been severely limited.
Grand Chief McBride listened quietly to each idea put forward. She then said emphatically,
“Load up the school buses; we are taking the fight to Toronto.”
There was a flurry of protests as to why this wasn’t a good idea. But she was resolute.
The very next day, a short public meeting was held in the upstairs of Earlton Arena, which was about 30 kms south of the mine site.
Leftover food from the Thanksgiving dinner, including hundreds of slices of pumpkin pie, was laid out on the tables. The room quickly filled with hundreds of people, and the opp stood along the walls of the hall. They seemed relieved that they didn’t have to arrest us. We had developed good and respectful relations with the police.
The mood of the hall was energized.
Carol McBride stood up and made a simple pitch.
“There are school buses outside. We are leaving in one hour. We want you on those buses. Go home; get your toothbrush and your sleeping bag. We’re going to take this fight right into the city of Toronto.”
And with no idea of where we would stay or what would come next, northern folks grabbed their toothbrushes and sleeping bags. We were off to Toronto for the final showdown.
We were going to shut this dangerous plan down once and for all.
If any photos or images on this site are under copyright, please let us know and we will provide appropriate credit. This content is used in accordance with applicable copyright laws, including “fair dealing” under Canadian law and “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act, for purposes such as criticism, comment, and news reporting.
The Resistance is a 100% reader-supported publication. If you enjoy the work as a free subscriber, we hope you’ll consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Thank you.
When is the right time to compare US politics to the Nazi era? This expert on Christian nationalism says: now
Robert P Jones argues that declining white Christian influence has fuelled an alliance with Trump, and warns it is reshaping US democracy
Robert P Jones thought long and hard about whether to go there in his latest book. But the more he studied US demographic numbers, considered the rise of Christian nationalism and heard Donald Trump use the language of racial purity, he found the conclusion inescapable. “This is our 1933,” he writes.
Jones cites Martin Niemöller, a Lutheran pastor imprisoned for opposing Hitler, remembered for the poem First They Came. But for the first four years of Hitler’s reign, he notes, Niemöller did not fully oppose the Nazis. He later regretted that he and the Protestant German church did not speak out sooner.
Backslide returns to the analogy in its epilogue. He writes: “Just as God asked Niemoller where he was between 1933 and 1937, God will ask us where we were between 2025 and 2028. Just as Germans who backed Hitler and the Nazi Party after 1933 were fully aware of what they were joining, so Christians who have backed Trump and the MAGA movement a second time know and bear responsibility for what they are now endorsing.”
Sitting in his downtown Washington office, the president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) contends that US democracy is experiencing a severe “backslide” that is directly aided and abetted by an “apostate” white Christianity, including Trump’s language on the campaign trail.
“This dehumanising language, talking about immigrants as vermin, and this racial purity language, like they’re ‘poisoning the blood of our country’. What does that mean? If they’re poisoning the blood, what’s the pure blood? We know where that story goes,” he said.
Trump has repeatedly used the concept of genetic inheritance. In 2020, addressing a mostly white crowd in Minnesota, he declared: “You have good genes, you know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it, don’t you believe? The racehorse theory, you think we’re so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.”
Normalisation is a perennial danger.
“If don’t want to live in a place where we have a thuggish police force that’s kidnapping people off the street in masks and killing US citizens in the streets, now’s the time to speak up,” Jones said.
Backslide cites historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt’s 1950 The Aftermath of Nazi Rule report for Commentary magazine based on interviews with postwar Berliners: “A great number of Germans, especially among the more educated, apparently are no longer capable of telling the truth even if they want to.”
In international political science, “democratic backsliding” has become the established academic term for the systematic erosion of democratic norms, judicial independence and voting rights. Yet Jones recognises that the term carries an even older resonance.
“In the evangelical world I grew up in, backslide was a word we heard all the time – a theological word about the fear of falling away from the faith,” he says, tracing the word’s history back through the Oxford English Dictionary to the 16th-century Protestant reformer John Knox.
In Jones’s diagnosis, white American Christianity has committed a profound act of apostasy by trading its spiritual core for political dominance. By endorsing anti-democratic tactics, white Christian institutions have become the primary engine behind the country’s autocratic slide.
Backslide: Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation After the Christian Turn Against Democracy by Robert P Jones. Photograph: Macmillan Publishers
To understand how a major religious tradition arrived at this moral impasse, Jones turns to the arithmetic of demographics. When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, white Christian Americans still constituted 54% of the US population. By 2014, that figure had dropped to 47%. Today, white Christians account for 41% of the country.
The decline among white evangelicals, long considered a bedrock of conservative politics, is even steeper. At the turn of the 21st century, white evangelicals represented a quarter of all Americans; today, they make up barely 13%. The Southern Baptist Convention, the country’s biggest evangelical denomination, has lost more than 3 million members since its 2006 peak.
Faced with shrinking numbers and cultural marginalisation, white evangelicalism embraced not spiritual renewal, but existential panic – creating fertile ground for Trump’s demagoguery.
“Trump loves to talk about the art of the deal and, in many ways, there’s been a massive quid pro quo deal struck between a declining white evangelical population and Trump,” Jones observes. “His big appeal to them was less about policy and more anti-immigrant: I’m going to restore an America that looks like you, and I’m going to restore power to the Christian churches.
“He was literally saying on the campaign trail: this is a quid pro quo deal. Give me your votes and you won’t even have to vote again. I’ll fix it so you don’t have to vote again.’”
This transactional alliance marks a complete departure from the religious right of the late 20th century, which wrapped its political ambitions in the language of morality.
“You don’t hear those words any more,” says Jones, contrasting today’s movement with Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority or the “Values Voters” summits of the George W Bush era. “What we have now is an overtly anti-democratic Christian nationalism flying under the banner of: ‘We believe this country belongs to us, and we’re going to use the power we can to claim it.’”
This Faustian bargain relies purely on power rather than shared theology – a dynamic starkly highlighted by the contrast between Trump and his running mate, JD Vance. While Vance recently discussed the End Times with 22-year-old evangelical podcaster Bryce Crawford, awkwardly reflecting on his evangelical upbringing and subsequent conversion to Catholicism, Trump operates largely without theological pretence.
Jones continues: “He makes straight appeals to self-interest: if you’re for me, I’ll be for you. Evangelicals are willing to forgive a whole host of sins for the idea that he is going to bring them back into power as their numbers are dwindling.”
The real world manifestation of this transaction plays out every Sunday across thousands of congregations. While high-profile megachurches such as First Baptist church in Dallas make their political allegiance explicit, Jones contends that overt political sermonising is rarely needed.
“Once you have churches that are largely segregated by race and increasingly segregated by partisanship, all you really have to do is keep out any critique. It’s reinforced by Fox News, Christian radio and going home to people of like mind. You don’t have to overtly teach Christian nationalism; you just keep it from being critiqued.”
PRRI’s extensive empirical data undermines the widespread belief that religious attendance automatically fosters civic tolerance or democratic values.
Jones says: “Particularly among white evangelicals, on several measures around Christian nationalism, anti-immigrant views, anti-Black views, and anti-Muslim views, going to church actually makes your views more extreme. It’s not the case that more church is the answer to democracy.”
The dangerous potential of this theological radicalisation materialised dramatically during the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. Christian symbols were displayed prominently throughout the insurrection, including wooden crosses set up on Capitol grounds and rioters holding “Jesus Saves” banners alongside Confederate flags.
Yet official investigations largely overlooked this central element, influenced in part by political figures like Congresswoman Liz Cheney on the House select committee. “I was stunned to see very little of it in the House select committee report,” Jones recalls. “It was a huge loss and a huge skewing of public perception that we didn’t take those Christian symbols at the riot seriously.”
Today, this blend of Christian nationalism and military authority reaches into the upper echelons of the national security apparatus. The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, sports tattoos featuring Crusader iconography – including the medieval battle cry Deus Vult (“God wills it”) next to a Jerusalem cross – while renaming the Department of Defense as the “Department of War”. Hegseth has welcomed vocal Christian nationalists such as Pastor Doug Wilson to lead a worship service at the Pentagon.
Jones comments: “I can’t imagine much more dangerous than somebody who thinks, ‘I am the instrument of God, I alone understand how the forces of good and evil are aligned,’ while holding the power to deploy the most powerful military force the world has ever seen. While George W Bush took care after 9/11 to explicitly state that the US was not at war with Islam, today we are making radicalisation propaganda films for extremists by presenting ourselves as a Christian nation at war with Islam.”
Behind the public spectacle of rallies and political theatre, ideologues such as Russell Vought, a key architect of Project 2025 and advocate of the “unitary executive” theory, are laying the groundwork for a government rooted in Christian nationalist principles. “They are building an apparatus designed to institutionalise this worldview across the federal government,” Jones warns. “It is an intentional, long-term project to reshape American democracy in their own image.”
Despite the alarming trajectory detailed in Backslide, Jones resists total pessimism. The central message of his book is that “backsliding is not irreversible” and that national recovery remains possible through honest confrontation with history and sincere repentance.
Across the country, alternative Christian voices are beginning to organise against Christian nationalism. Figures such as James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian running for the US Senate in Texas, and Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton in Kansas are offering a pro-democracy theological vision.
“For a long time, mainline Protestants were taught propriety and politeness, leading to a reticence to speak out,” Jones notes. “If we don’t want the public and future face of Christianity to be only Christian nationalism, we have to present a public version of Christianity that is compatible with democracy – one that leans into care for the orphan, the widow and the immigrant.”
Ultimately, Jones argues, neither sacred texts nor historical precedents will dictate the future of US democracy. He hopes his book will make white Christians realise they face a decision similar to the one that confronted the establishment Christian church in Nazi Germany in 1933.
“It’s a wake-up call to see the bright lines that are being crossed, to be clear-eyed about how dangerous that is, and for those readers who are Christian – particularly white and Christian – to realise we have a particular responsibility to offer a different version of faith. Because it is our faith that’s been hijacked and used to legitimise this illiberal, anti-democratic, authoritarian movement that’s running rampant and taking over in the US.”
High-pitched calls...swans hurrying back from tundra --Yutaka Kitajima (Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture)
* * *
car license plates from north and south-- convenience store parking --Murasaki Sagano (Tokyo)
* * *
rest-stop coffee it may be lukewarm but it’s got caffeine --Barrie Levine (Wenham, Massachusetts)
* * *
a burger stop sparrows sing hoping for fries --Sherri J. Moye-Dombrosky (Liberty, South Carolina)
* * *
empty parking lot the lingering warmth where his car once stood --Fatma Zohra Habis (Algiers, Algeria)
* * *
the birds flew away from the bottom of the drawer McDonald’s figurines --Mariola Grabowska (Warsaw, Poland)
* * *
the black raven takes off her wings again a good little girl --Barbara Rybak (Zawiercie, Poland)
* * *
sudden overcast a blackbird pecking a shadow --Tim Dwyer (Bangor, Northern Ireland)
* * *
shared garden-- in the service charge overgrown weeds --Lori Kiefer (London, England)
* * *
the door latch shut holding on to the keys one last time --Shalini Gupta (Delhi, India)
------------------------------ FROM THE NOTEBOOK ------------------------------
bolt of fall lightning--geese pause their conversation --Laurinda Lind (Sackets Harbor, New York)
The haikuist listened to what Canadian geese had to say about newly named Lake America. David Watts sorted out international relations in San Francisco, California, not far from Google Maps headquarters. Jerome Berglund put things on hold, realizing that changing names and shapes on a map influences how the world is understood.
diplomacy separate countries in the map box
* * *
gulf of america the garage sale indefinite it appears
Having settled in Toronto, Ontario, Chris Faiers feels an uneasy distance from where he was raised in America. Shannon Wallace’s haiku tactfully describes the vibe of a mother-daughter relationship in Ontario, Canada. Honey Novick loves to be caressed on the Canadian side of Lake Ontario.
across this ocean of Lake Ontario-- a now foreign land
* * *
somber mom dropped peaches cut off the bruises
* * *
greet me at the shore to be comforted by your power rocking waves massage
Mona Bedi dreamily imagined a life with no countries, nothing to kill or die for. Marshall Hryciuk daydreamed of checkered purple bells and orange butterflies in Toronto, Ontario.
old battlefield-- a butterfly flit across the border fence
* * *
eyes closed vines hang in patterns of fritillaries
Sagano marveled at the massive migration of Australian blue tigers that swarmed southbound this month. Helga Stania froze at the sight of a breathtakingly beautiful scarlet tiger moth. Mauro Battini made the sign of the cross at Santa Croce, in Pisa, Italy. A rustling sound made Christina Chin stop in her tracks in tropical Sarawak, Borneo.
blue wings of butterflies animated world
* * *
freezing--a butterfly flashes its red hindwings
* * *
insects everywhere… on the soldier’s body a red butterfly
* * *
jungle terrain no one in sight could it be a tiger
Like clockwork each autumn, Chen-ou Liu watched as trees full of butterflies lifted off from Ajax on the Canadian side of Lake Ontario.
a child’s stare behind barbed wire-- golden arches
When millions of monarch butterflies take off at once, they produce a rustling sound as loud as Niagara Falls. Cornelia Rossberg headed home. The migrants are currently navigating from Canada, across Lake America into the United States and onwards to western Mexico. Carl Brennan admonished himself when they passed by North Syracuse, New York. Giuliana Ravaglia’s haiku compared unstoppable forces.
rumbling thunder astonished looks up to the sky sound of taiko drums
* * *
Butterfly wings I dismembered as a boy the lawn’s healthy glow
* * *
ideas are butterflies you can’t take their wings away-- they are mothers’ voices
Searching the skies overhead Lapeer, Michigan, Dorna Hainds asked where all the butterflies had gone.
day moon the butterfly far from clouds
Milkweed plants are a good spot to look for butterfly eggs, caterpillars and chrysalises. John Richard Stephens followed their flight path through Maui, Hawaii.
garden afternoon-- butterflies flutter by an empty bench
As soon as the distinctively patterned orange and black migrants arrive in Mexico, they alight on a high-altitude Oyamel fir forest patch. Anne Marie McHarg gave the spectacular sight all As.
A thousand shades A host of butterflies scatter A whirlwind of thoughts
Covering entire trees, they settle down to hibernate until spring. Feeling sleepy on a spring afternoon in Osaka, Teiichi Suzuki craved a sugar boost. Gordana Vlasic gripped a railing in Oroslavje, Croatia.
an afternoon slump... a first butterfly frolics canola flower
* * *
Tomorrow is a new day the butterfly from my balcony isn’t coming back
Masumi Orihara listened to an ornithologist who interpreted a songbird’s chirps as meaning “come, let’s fly together.” Erin Castaldi traveled a little farther at midday in Mays Landing, New Jersey. Humans migrate, too, and go walkabout, noted Martina Matijevic in Vidovci, Croatia. Rather than drinking one for the road, Biswajit Mishra prudently waited until he got home to Calgary, Alberta.
bird linguist shares in their truths titmouse family
* * *
somewhere new for lunch migrating grosbeak
* * *
migrating bird-- grandad’s slippers on the front steps
* * *
nightcap-- the migrating geese make a pitstop
Alexander Groth empathized with war migrants in Berlin, Germany. Patrick Sweeney’s two lines described the feeling of never having lived in peacetime.
bird migration from war back into war
* * *
yearling crows are glad to be in this war-torn world
Haiku has migrated far from its Japanese niche to become a global literary phenomenon practiced by haikuists everywhere. Robert Hirschfield is a journalist in New York. Mel Goldberg watched lines form in Ajijic, Mexico. Symbolizing protection in English folklore, Robin Rich handwove a circular wreath in Brighton, England.
Indian family on train to Chile silence salts an egg
* * *
refugees looking for a place to rest raindrops
* * *
hazel branch shaped like a crown illegal alien
Perhaps irked by residents who snitch on employers hiring undocumented foreign nationals getting cash rewards from the Ibaraki Prefectural government, Soumya Mukherjee suggested that “the concepts of nations and foreignness have always seemed to be an illusion.”
gaijin one to the other
A wandering tomcat made himself at home on Ivan Georgiev’s porch in Gottingen, Germany. Jeremy Haworth spent countless sunny days on the garden patio in Dublin, Ireland.
a chilly morning on my mother’s garden chair-- unacquainted cat
* * *
a fresh hole in the striped deckchair first autumn rain
Antonio Mangiameli raised his head in Lentini, Italy. Stoianka Boianova heard rustling on a leaf-strewn path in Sofia, Bulgaria. In Accra, Ghana, Justice Joseph Prah watched the city roll up the sidewalks.
wheat field the scarecrow watches the sky
* * *
toads jump in the autumn evening-- dry leaves
* * *
beetles... resting their dung for a night streeters
James Penha in Bali, Indonesia, and Tracy Davidson in Warwickshire, England, respectively, got through rainy days.
I am the pilgrim finding sanctuary in a raincoat
* * *
forever hopeful a floppy sunhat squashed under my rain hood
Hifsa Ashraf held on tight in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
last boarding call the silence we share in one hug
* * *
autumn drizzle the lingering warmth of his hugs
Slavica Mileva wrote goodbye in Skopje, North Macedonia. After the farewell, Sagano looked down forlornly onto an interior central courtyard in Toledo, Spain.
one tear spells out your name farewell
* * *
swallows leave for the south El Greco’s balcony
C.X. Turner left something behind.
homeward bound one tent peg still in the sand
Maxianne Berger wrote a raincheck in Outremont, Quebec.
added cost of travel insurance purse umbrella
Julie Ann Lebitania packed up in Sorsogon, Philippines.
ceramics wrapped in bubbles move-out day
Writing from Lafayette, Louisiana, Al W. Gallia recalled when horse-pulled wagons headed West.
rainswept prairie... by the old wagon trace an unmarked grave
John Hamley reminisced about a road trip from Canada to the United States, where he careened his Morris Garage roadster into a motel parking lot. The engine sputtered and hissed a cloud of steam into the twilight air, leaving him sitting in the light of a neon sign buzzing overhead. Sandip Chauhan didn’t stay for long in Great Falls, Virginia.
Six bucks a night at Motel Six-- MGA
* * *
mini-mart that box of brightness we circle and leave
During the inhospitable summer months, the town of Quartzsite, Arizona, appeared to be little more than a gas station and fast-food stopover halfway between Los Angeles and Phoenix. Tired from driving, Pitt Buerken’s better half began “sharing burgers with a dog.” Caleb Epps parked. Shalini Gupta wrote a haiku to say goodbye in Delhi, India. Turner knew the moment the “holiday truly came to an end.”
truck stop fast food with TV and country music
* * *
truck stop midnight the shower key warm from his hand
* * *
the door latch shut holding on to the keys one last time
* * *
cottage key the warmth leaves my hand
Sagano never got it back.
spare room key asked him to return summer’s end
Q-town, as it is called by the tens of thousands of retirees, nomads and seasonal workers who winter there, is located near a stretch of interstate highway that passes through the northern reaches of the Sonoran Desert. When his water ran out on a hike, John Daleiden “began to see things that were not real.”
desert shrubs march toward my destruction windmills of the mind
Mariola Grabowska marveled how teenagers enjoyed carefree nomadic lifestyles in Warsaw, Poland. Dejan Pavlinovic boarded a car ferry on his way to Cres Island, Croatia. Mircea Moldovan recited a line from an incantation in Letca, Romania.
mom’s youth her hitchhiking trips for a single smile
* * *
hitchhiker-- a spider on the side mirror
* * *
hitchhiker’s chant--splashes on the hot asphalt
Jennifer Gurney penciled this haiku on the back of a pay envelope at a red light in Broomfield, Colorado.
riding in the space behind the backseat of Uncle Alan’s black bug my cousin, my brother and I
At this autumnal time of year, cyclists, bikers, recreational vehicle drivers and truckers head for Q-town intending to camp there as a community. Leon Tefft hiked alone through a South Carolina State Park. Mike Fainzilber kept up the chase. Boryana Boteva pointed toward a southerly compass direction. Rich zipped up his windbreaker. Mark Meyer boarded a bus on Mercer Island, Washington.
lonesome trail… perhaps if I answer the wind
* * *
the wind still chasing your footsteps
* * *
her smile... as if I’m a stranger asking for the route
* * *
wave goodbye the summer turns to a cooler tide
* * *
parts unknown-- America departs on a Greyhound bus
The smell of rain-soaked apples can still lead Marion Clarke home to Warrenpoint, North Ireland. Sweeney was welcomed back.
orchard mist tasting my way back
* * *
long journey home, offered a beer and my father’s chair
~. ~. ~. ~
Thanks David,
Always a treat to get a new Asahi Network! Both Honey Novick and and John Hamley were regulars at the annual Purdy Country Litfests I organized for eight years at my
Zenriver Gardens retreat. I didn't know John was also an MGA fan in his youth. I had a 1960 MGA I painted powder blue and rolled and pleated the interior in black leather. Reversed the rims and put about 10 layers of chrome paint on them. It was a showstopper car and I used to dream I still owned it until maybe a decade ago.
It is skive Friday at http://www.asahi.com/ajw/special/haiku/. The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network will appear Oct. 16 and 30. Readers are invited to send haiku about the fear of being watched or surveillance cameras, on a postcard to David McMurray at the International University of Kagoshima, Sakanoue 8-34-1, Kagoshima, 891-0197, Japan, or e-mail (mcmurray@fka.att.ne.jp).
* * *
David McMurray
David McMurray has been writing the Asahi Haikuist Network column since April 1995, first for the Asahi Evening News. He is on the editorial board of the Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku, columnist for the Haiku International Association, and is editor of Teaching Assistance, a column in The Language Teacher of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT).
McMurray is professor of intercultural studies at The International University of Kagoshima where he lectures on international haiku. At the Graduate School he supervises students who research haiku. He is a correspondent school teacher of Haiku in English for the Asahi Culture Center in Tokyo.
McMurray judges haiku contests organized by The International University of Kagoshima, Ito En Oi Ocha, Asahi Culture Center, Matsuyama City, Polish Haiku Association, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Seinan Jo Gakuin University, and Only One Tree.
McMurray’s award-winning books include: “Teaching and Learning Haiku in English” (2022); “Only One Tree Haiku, Music & Metaphor” (2015); “Canada Project Collected Essays & Poems” Vols. 1-8 (2013); and “Haiku in English as a Japanese Language” (2003).
TORONTO — Mark Carney built a global profile in 2026 by standing up to U.S. President Donald Trump. If some prediction-market traders and prominent admirers are right, the Canadian prime minister could end the year with the Nobel Peace Prize and Time magazine’s Person of the Year.
Carney briefly became the favourite Monday for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize on Kalshi, a U.S.-based prediction market, when traders on the exchange put his chances at 14 per cent. His odds later fell, illustrating the highly speculative nature of the wagering.
There is no public evidence Carney is on the Nobel Committee’s secret shortlist for the prize that will be announced Oct. 9 in Oslo, Norway.
But the buzz about the Canadian leader possibly winning the esteemed peace prize reflects the message that has raised his profile: Middle powers should band together to defend sovereignty as great powers increasingly use economic and military leverage.
Whether that position resonates with the Nobel Committee is impossible to know. One thing is certain, though: the Nobel and Time’s annual award happen to be two honours Trump covets.
Trump believes he deserves Nobel honour
Carney and Trump are locked in an escalating trade war, with 50 per cent U.S. tariffs on billions of dollars of Canadian goods and Canadian retaliation. Trump also has told Canadian leaders to “fall in line” or face consequences “far WORSE” than existing tariffs.
Trump, who has twice been Time’s Person of the Year, has repeatedly complained about not receiving the Nobel, saying in July that he “should have won that award more than anybody.”
Trump already possesses a Nobel medal, just not one awarded to him.
Venezuelan opposition leader MarÃa Corina Machado, the 2025 Nobel laureate, presented Trump with her medal at the White House in January. Trump accepted it, while the Nobel Committee stressed the prize itself remains hers.
“Trump will be unhappy whoever gets the Nobel,” said Nelson Wiseman, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. “If Carney got it, it would make relations with Canada rockier than they are.”
Carney has strong case for Time award
Time already named Carney one of its 100 most influential people of 2026 and specifically noted his popularity increased as he stood up to Trump.
On Tuesday, Carney was the second choice on major prediction markets for Time’s Person of the Year, behind New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The winner will be announced Dec. 10.
Time has described Trump’s cumulative impact as helping create a “new global order” increasingly shaped “not by systems or institutions, but by the will of a single man.” Carney’s answer has been to urge middle powers to band together rather than bend one by one.
New York University professor Scott Galloway said Carney has it in the bag and called him “the leader that Europe’s been looking for for the last 20 years.”
“I believe, hands down, Time’s Person of the Year has already been decided and it’s going to be Mark Carney,” Galloway said.
On Galloway’s podcast, journalist Fareed Zakaria said Carney is winning admiration abroad and has given countries facing a less predictable United States “a kind of language and a path” to build new alliances rather than simply bend to Washington.
Carney moving to front of a new global order
Carney’s standing abroad took off in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he declared the old international order was not coming back and urged middle powers to work together rather than wait for its restoration. His speech came as European leaders were confronting Trump’s push to acquire Greenland and tariff threats.
“We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” Carney said in his speech, which received a standing ovation.
Carney has since tried to put the argument for a new global order into practice, pushing Canada closer to Europe and seeking new partners in Asia as Trump’s tariffs fractured the old Canada-U.S. relationship.
European lawmakers gave Carney another standing ovation this month as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed opening the door for Canada to become the European Union’s first associate member.
“Carney’s international profile has been driven by his standing up to Trump, unlike the Europeans and Asians who rushed to make deals with him,” Wiseman said. “Trump’s pressure on Canada has helped elevate Carney in the eyes of the world.”
(Illustration by Mitsuaki Kojima)
