I just wrote this for a class, but I thought it was pretty cool and decided to post it.

Thumbing through a copy of Macleans, a popular Canadian magazine, published in 1983 at first seems no different than thumbing through a copy today. The same news and letters, the same advertisements… oh wait; an advertisement for Commodore 64? Suddenly it feels like we are looking upon a relic of the past. I realized that where a web address would be there is nothing. Publishing quality is less glossy. In less than 25 years, so much has changed. Something that strikes me in the face of the Atkins diet is a commercial endorsing the health qualities of bread and its benefits toward weightloss. Take a step back into a time that I do not remember: the date is Thursday, October 13, 1983.

The #1 song in America is “Total Eclipse of the Heart? by Bonnie Tyler. Sean Connery is the new Bond. The latest cinematic release is The Big Chill starring Kevin Kline. Britney Spears is still in diapers. Michael Jackson is considered a heartthrob and had only unveiled the “moonwalk? five months prior. Dallas is the top-rated television show. The first cell phone company, Advanced Mobile Phone Service by Ameritech (later Cingular), is launched on 12 October 1983 in Chicago. The Prime Minister of Canada is Pierre Elliot Trudeau, the premier of Nova Scotia was John Buchanan, and Ronald Reagan is president of the United States. And the Cold War is still going on.

While contemporaries had unpleasant things to say about Trudeau as he was nearing the end of his second term, a 21st century attitude implies that he was a great Prime Minister. The patriation of the Canadian constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms from the previous year were in the recent memory of Canadians. The question being asked is if political decisions are now at the mercy of the Supreme Court and not the government leaders, and now that citizens are more aware of their rights, there is fear that Canadians will become litigious like their American neighbours. Trudeau was awarded the Albert Einstein Peace Prize for his effectiveness in reducing tensions and nuclear arms in affected countries. Many Canadians considered his policies regarding the Cold War “soft?, and instead favoured British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s ‘call to arms’ on her Canadian tour the week before . President Reagan seemed to also be thinking along those lines as his ‘Star Wars’ proposal was still generating much controversy from its March debut.

Atlantic Canada is still considering separation from Canada as the cure to its economic ills. J.K. Bell, the secretary-treasurer of the Nova Scotia Federation of Labour, is particularly of this opinion, as the Chronicle Herald reports. Unemployment is still considered the nation’s worst economic problem. Along with Bell, many of are of the opinion that Nova Scotia is underdeveloped because of mismanagement at the federal level, including Alexa McDonough, leader of the New Democratic Party. The Federal government proposes a new scheme to hopefully reduce unemployment, the ‘Buy-a-Job’ voucher program. The progress in the offshore oil deal Venture is being set back by environmental concerns and fiscal ownership is being disputed over Atlantic Canada and Ottawa. The high rates of inflation that have been afflicting Canadians for the past few years are starting to decrease, with 1983 having a Consumer Price Index of 69.1 for all of Canada and 70.1 for Nova Scotia, a rise of only 5.8 (half the increase of the previous year). More women are starting to become entrepreneurs, as the 1983 figures are 448.7 women out of 1,543.2 total self-employed persons in Canada.

The MacDonald commission, which later lead to a free trade agreement with the United States, advised for resources for poverty-stricken women who made up 1/3 of the poor in Canada. Apparently, it was surprising that delegates for the resource industries (such as the fishery) were absent at the commission’s sojourn in Halifax , which is odd considering that the resource industries play a major role in the economy of the Atlantic provinces. The Nova Scotia Employees Union submitted a brief to the status council (which was printed in the Chronicle Herald) detailing all the areas in which women were being cheated out of rights they deserved in the employment sector. Tourism figures are low for Yarmouth, Nova Scotia this year, meaning less revenue and more dependency on federal fiscal transfers. Premier Buchanan spent some time travelling to tell other nations about the investment opportunities that await in Nova Scotia.

Some of the issues that were on the minds of Canadians were homosexuality, abortion, and helping the poor. Laws banning both homosexuality and abortion were considered unconstitutional after the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was developed. Police in New Brunswick were lobbying the government to have mandatory blood and urine tests to crack down on drunk drivers. Glace Bay is also concerned with a recent outbreak of violence, when a young girl is raped and two elderly citizens are attacked.

For a small middle-class family in rural Nova Scotia, most of these changes affected us very little. My father was operating an Irving Oil service station. My mother was in between jobs, but shortly after having me she found a waitressing job close to home. Upon asking my parents if any of these issues affected them, the answer is a resounding no. The only comment that my father offered was that “Trudeau got us in debt,? while my mother proclaimed he was “the best we’ve ever had!? The Cold War had little effect on our quiet, country existence. My parents’ prime concern was the new addition to the family.

Besides the ending of the Cold War in 1991, little has really changed for Atlantic Canadians. Unemployment is still high. The region is still dependent on fiscal transfers from the federal government and fluctuating resource industries. Even the view of the administration has changed, for Trudeau’s popularity was much higher after the nation was subjected to Brian Mulroney than while he was still in power. It is as the old saying goes ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’. The revolutionary spirit has never been inherent in Nova Scotia, not in the time of the American Rebellion, and not now. All talk of economic revitalization and regional separation has been just that: talk, and nothing more. In order to turn things around, a more radical approach must be taken, but it difficult to which policies will acquire the desired effect.