We moved to 108 Mile Ranch, British Columbia, in 1981. I was seven, my older sister 15. Mark Carney would have been 16, one province over, in Edmonton, Alberta, sharpening his goalie skills and finalizing his Harvard application.

He was already 10 years removed from Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, and likely had little memory of his years there. I have little recollection of my first seven years in Maple Ridge, BC, where we lived at least for a time in view of a generational family dairy farm (still in operation, its current proprietor my elementary school classmate).

I would never say I was from Maple Ridge. Unless, of course, like Mark Carney and Fort Smith, I continued to claim it as my home for decades after leaving because of the cache it brought in certain circles. It is true Mark Carney is the first PM from the NWT, but he’s not really from the north.

But I do get the desire to claim a community as one’s own, especially if you’ve moved around while growing up, as an adult, and the nomadic life leads you to feel untethered to land that is your own. So let’s say Mark believes he is from the north, because he has claimed it in his mind and heart. Even if he likely lacks the true memory of experience.

Mark was at Harvard, according to the bio, from 1983 to 1987, at about the time I have memories of my father baking bread. That tended to happen whenever he was laid off from the Weldwood lumber mill, which in my memory went on for long stretches of time.

But memory, as I’ve just admitted, is unreliable decades after the fact. He did indeed work at Weldwood. The mill would indeed shut for periods and then reopen. And in November of 2025, the mill, now owned by West Fraser, announced its permanent closure.

It was 1988 when we moved to Prince Rupert, British Columbia. I was starting 9th grade and about to turn 15. Rupert seemed big compared to the 108, and I was excited to go there. Until I lived there.

Rupert is an isolated, rough place. It is the territory of the Ts’msyen (Tsimshian) people and over half of the town’s population (then and now) is First Nations. Unlike me and Mark, the Ts’msyen do not suffer from nomadic-looking-for-a-community-to-claim-syndrome. They know where their home is. They never left.

Rupert is also a place where the earth has been victorious. The sheer size of the cliffs that frame the highway (16) between Rupert and its nearest neighbour, Terrace, are humbling and just too massive for any kind of industrial development — and there’s been plenty — to overtake. Being there, you can almost hear the earth whisper, “I am stronger than any of you.”

In about 1990, I was cutting photos out of Rolling Stone magazine to make collages and flipping through my treasured copy of The Andy Warhol Diaries, which Wikipedia tells me was released the year before. I was reading a lot of Sylvia Plath. I was that kind of teen, studying for exams an hour or two before I sat them, getting an A every time.

That same year, Mark and Tim Hodgson were joining the ranks of investment bankers at Goldman Sachs. It’s a bit unclear, or not a matter of public record, when and how the men met.

So we’re left to make up a story, one that seems to fit: Hodgson an army brat Canadian, Mark a not-quite-elite-despite-the-Harvard-credential-he-was-born-in-Fort-Smith-after-all, maybe became fast friends and drinking buddies. They likely bonded out of that need for a professional ally, since financial service firms, like law firms, can become all-star seasons of Survivor.

Mark and Tim would stay close, with Hodgson eventually rising to the rank of CEO of Goldman Sachs Canada in 2005, leaving in 2010 to become special adviser to Mark Carney when he was governor of the Bank of Canada. Hodgson was board member of an oil sands producer and chair of Hydro One. His first entry into politics was to run under the Liberal banner in 2025.

(This I do not make up. This I take from the Wiki, which feels accurate).

In 1992, while Mark was musing at a graduate studies level about economics at Oxford, I graduated from high school in Rupert. I started at UBC that fall and returned to Rupert the following summer.

That summer, in 1993, I worked at the fish cannery. For three days, or maybe two. With memory, it becomes fuzzy, but the main details that stand out are the essential ones: the noise. The isolation of standing, ear protection blocking the steady scream of machinery, chopping fish into pieces.

It’s not clear in my memory, what laid in front of me, or what I was doing. But I was promoted to the end of the line, where the job was to gently feed a slippery mass of whole, dead fish along the conveyer belt. It was only slightly easier on the body compared to chopping, the standing, repetitive movement. The blood, the smell, the noise.

The reps that came around on our breaks who tried to get us to join the union. “They can just fire you,” we were told, as enticement. I was sort-of fired either the next day, or the day after that. I asked to come off the floor because I felt sick. Instead of going home, I was sent to an office where I was asked many questions by a female employee. Was I pregnant? She eventually said if I came back tomorrow, there was work for me. If I didn’t, then to not bother coming back again.

The last of the fish canneries in Rupert closed in 2015. I know this not because I stayed connected to the town (my parents divorced, one ended up on central Vancouver Island) but because I watched this episode of Still Standing on the CBC. The cannery depicted in the episode does not exactly match what’s in my memory, but it’s close enough. It’s close enough to bring back those sensory memories: the smell, the aching wrists, the noise. The mf-ing noise.

In 2015, when the last of the canneries in Rupert closed, Mark was, of course, governor of the Bank of England. Tim Hodgson was god knows where, waiting for his old friend to call him up for a plum political job.

***

This ends the biography section of this blog post. It was necessary to help explain why the Memorandum of Understanding between Alberta and Canada is so politically stupid. It’s just plain dumb.

It’s almost as if two guys from Goldman Sachs, who know a lot about energy and economics, but absolutely nothing about retail politics, got together in secret with Danielle Smith, who was kind of dumb about the whole thing too, thinking it would make her look good.

Oh, Danielle. I’m not even in Alberta, and I know three things for sure: your political days are numbered; your base doesn’t want you making deals with Canada, it wants you fighting with Canada; no one wants a pipeline. This doesn’t help you, at all.

But here’s a scenario: Mark (and Tim, but mostly Mark) was worried about another premier going rogue, a la Doug Ford with the Reagan ad. So he decides he’ll talk to Danielle, to keep her on side. Maybe he thinks he can put in clean energy clauses into an agreement, so he’ll have something to point to that “justifies” even hinting at the idea of lifting the tanker ban.

Let’s remember the pipeline Danielle wants to build would exit at the Port of Prince Rupert. Where the Ts’msyen (Tsimshian) have always been and where I had my first taste of real labour.

The idea that Mark Carney from Edmonton and Danielle Smith of the notwithstanding clause would unilaterally decide that lifting the tanker ban might be ok invoked a singular reaction in me: Fuck you, motherfuckers.

And I don’t even live there anymore.

When you don’t understand politics, like Mark and Tim don’t, you don’t understand that the visceral reaction is everything. I won’t read the MOU just like I never finished reading Values. I won’t come to your Goldman Sachs briefing because you clearly know nothing about my area of the world. It’s a dot on a (colonial) map to you.

(Side note: I hesitate to type the word “colonial,” but I’m opting to do so.)

Elizabeth May is heartbroken, and Steven Guilbeault resigned from cabinet. You stupid motherfuckers.

I know, Mark. I know you made the calculation that the pipeline will never get built and the tanker ban will never be lifted. So you thought, it’s ok to pretend that it might happen, for the expediency of placating Alberta.

But it’s not ok, because you’ve sent a signal you’re ok with a pipeline. You’re ok with a tanker ban getting lifted. And once you start getting people used to an idea, it’s easier than you might think for those roadblocks to come up.

I don’t think the pipeline will happen either. But it’s still politically dumb, all of it. Because your governing coalition was always fragile, and it could start to break apart.

***

When I first started to write this post, I wanted to make the point that Carney was never the environmental champion people thought he was. He is a pragmatist and has always discussed climate change in terms of its economic impact.

If Elizabeth May wants to turn Mark Carney into a tree hugger, I suggest she invite him to an area in her riding, the Gulf Islands Reserve. I spent two fabulous days on Mayne Island not too long ago, in a pristine, quiet part of the earth where I felt I understood what we give up when we subjugate her to our own selfish ends.

For now, remember this:

The Ts’msyen (Tsimshian) have always been here.

The earth whispers, “I am stronger than any of you.”

The MOU was politically very, very stupid.

Previous titles for this post:

Mark Carney is not awesome. But he never lied about who he was.

Who the hell is Tim Hodgson and why does he have so much power?

The final title comes from the idea that Carney is on the defensive because of this MOU, and he’s no longer friendly and charming. He’s what he was rumoured to be when he was governor of the Bank of Canada: respected, but not particularly well-liked. Politics should be a lesson in humility. If one doesn’t take that lesson, the fragile governing centre coalition that we so desperately need could collapse like a house of cards.