Read an excerpt from Moral Disorder.
CL: Throughout your career, you've spent a lot of time paying a lot of attention to the lives of Canadians, women in particular. Is there anything you thought would change for the better in our lives over the last several decades that hasn't changed, or things that have changed that you didn't expect?
MA: Better footgear. Much better footgear. Beginning in about -- oh, I would say the '60s. Definitely more comfortable shoes. A big plus.
CL: What about in terms of working lives?
MA: Well, working lives, I mean -- usually the pattern is that young women don't understand any of this stuff until they have kids. Then they realize they're between the door and the wall. That on the one hand, they want to be with their children, and on the other hand, they need to make money; on the one hand, working life can be very tiring, and on the other hand, so can staying at home. It's just a set of choices that seem very stressful to people of that age and that situation.
CL: One thing that's been changing is being expected to get married and have children. That's not quite such an expectation anymore.
MA: Expectations. I think as an expectation, [starting a family] is something that everybody always thought that you should and would do -- that went out the window in about 1970. But it's coming back.
CL: You think?
MA: Oh, I think so, to a certain extent. Everything is cyclical. And what it usually is is that a certain number of people in every generation reject whatever it was that their mothers did and go back to whatever it was that their grandmothers did. And then they try that for a while, and then the cycle flips over. And people are then doing the same thing, except that those who were the mothers are now the grandmothers.
CL: If we gave you a magic wand and you could make one change to Canadian society, what would it be?
MA: One change in Canadian society. Big or little?
CL: It could be either. It could be political, it could be social...
MA: OK. I think the most important question facing all of us right now is whether we are going to continue along the road that we're on and choke to death, or whether we are going to make changes in the way we produce and consume energy. So I think if I could make one big change, we would all get solar panel roofing and get off the grid, or even give back to the grid, because in Ontario, anyway, we can now feed back energy. And that would make a huge difference. And while we're at it, let's ban gas-powered leaf blowers. And throw in gas-powered lawn mowers. There's no need for these. You can get electric models if you have to blow leaves off your sidewalk. I'd also say get a rake, but there would be a rebellion if I said that.
CL: Do you see people changing? And, I mean, a lot of the changes that we're supposed to be making are things that I know my grandparents did naturally, like growing food.
MA: Exactly. This is what I'm saying, you go back to what your grandparents did. I think it's moving. But if we could ban gas leaf blowers it would move a lot faster.
CL: Get more money for public transit, maybe?
MA: Well, that's not enough. It's really not enough. It's a good idea, but it's not enough.
CL: Why do you say that?
MA: Because people will still choose their car for convenience. So it's got to be better cars. We went to diesel, which is a lot less consumptive and gets much better mileage. And also to a hybrid, which we use in the city. That's several years old now. I think probably the ones they have now are even more efficient. The beauty of them is that when you're stopped at an intersection, nothing comes out the back.
CL: And what do you think about electricity issues?
MA: Well, there again. We've constructed our whole house so that we don't have air-conditioning. You have to think about it. You've got to put out and draw in the awnings. The awnings make a huge difference. Skylights that open at the top of the house make a huge difference. All of those kinds of things, which people used to do as a matter of course. And then air-conditioning was invented, and they just forgot about it. But it'll all come back. So, the electricity issues. Well, there's Bullfrog Power. There's solar-panelling your house and feeding it back onto the grid. So it's going to be a combination of use less and think of other ways of making it.
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