Most of the mainstream media, with the help of the Mulcair and Topp campaigns, constructed the leadership battle at the NDP convention as a battle between those who wanted to move to the centre to win government and those who wanted to win maintaining the "traditional" social democratic values of the NDP.

I just got back from the biggest demonstration I've ever been on, maybe the biggest in Canadian history. Some of the signs said "Printemps Erable" (maple spring, a play on words in French), and it sure felt like it. In a massive show of solidarity, Quebec students not only said "no" to fare hikes but "no" to a neo-liberal agenda that says the poor, students and workers have to pay for the crisis of capitalism.  Estimates are between 200,000 and 300,000 marchers.

Madeleine Parent, one of our greatest activists, passed away last night in Montreal after a long illness. She was 93 years old.

Madeleine was a famous union activist in Quebec, having organized the textile workers in the 1940s and then battling with the anti-union forces of the ultra-right wing Duplessis government in the 1950s. Her fierce resistance to Duplessis resulted in five arrests culminating in a conviction for seditious conspiracy in 1948 for union organizing, believe it or not. She is a legend in Quebec and was probably more influential in the Quiet Revolution than many who have gotten the credit for it. The first time I met Prime Minister Jean Chretien, he told me that Madeleine was his hero.

After I visited Occupy Wall Street in mid-October, I wrote my publisher Penguin and suggested that they re-issue Transforming Power as an e-book since it covers a lot of elements that helped to build towards Occupy. They came back with the proposal of a special e-book that we could get out quickly with a mix of new material with some material from the previous book. They said it would sell for $3.99. What a great idea, I thought. Now five months later, the e-book is out and called Occupy This! You can buy it on Kindle, Kobo/Chapters and iBooks or you can find it in Google books and go from there. You can also try downloading it from Penguin.ca.  At the moment it is only available in Canada.  It should be available in the US in a couple of days.

It's hard to create a community based on love and compassion in the middle of a society based on greed and fear. The hippies tried it without much success even in the backwoods. We tried it in the women's movement but even in all-women groups, the training we received in a patriarchal society restricted our ability to achieve it. The Occupy camps are the closest I've seen to that beloved community that has so escaped our grasp.

"I've seen the glass ceiling and it's made out of golf balls," Nancy Riche told a women's conference of the Canadian Labour Congress in the 1990s when she was secretary-treasurer.

That combination of wry Newfoundland humour and telling it like it is was Nancy's trademark. She was a fierce fighter for women and for workers. She stood up against all odds to become a major figure in Canada's labour movement. Nancy died on Saturday in Newfoundland, her home. In typical Nancy fashion, she volunteered to do phoning for the NDP during the Newfoundland election from her hospital bed.

Almost everyone I've talked to since what seemed like the sudden announcement of Jack Layton's death had the same experience that I did. It hit me harder than I expected. I've lost other comrades, many closer than Jack was to my politics and my practice but his death hit me harder. I've been thinking about why.

Maybe it was because we all believed with him that he could beat the cancer. And it seemed so cruel that just at the moment of his greatest triumph, it took his life. Such an archetypal tragedy. It might have left us in despair except for his amazing open letter to us.

It is time to stop talking about what went wrong with the left that was so effective in the 20th century and identify the forces that are leading change in the 21st century. Primary among these, in my view, are indigenous peoples and movements.

In Canada, the most important new group is one that many readers may not even have heard of: Defenders of the Land. I will let them tell you who they are, as they explain on their website:

In an unprecedented protest Parliament page Brigette Marcelle (aka Brigette DePape) holds up a "Stop Harper" sign during the throne speech. Below is her explanation.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Friday, June 3, 2011

Senate Page disrupts throne speech Harper's disastrous agenda needs to be stopped with creative action and civil disobedience

Ottawa -- During the reading of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's throne speech today, a young page was yanked from the Senate Chamber as she tried to hold up a stop-sign placard reading "Stop Harper."

Travellers at Terminal 3 in the Toronto airport were astounded Tuesday morning to see Gandalf the Grey and several hobbits march their handcuffed prisoner Stephen Harper, dressed as the evil lord Sauron, into a Syncrude Ltd. recruiting meeting. They demanded that Synacrude take him back to Mordor aka the Alberta tar sands, "the hell on earth that he created."