Where is civility going?

 Save Your City: How toxic culture kills community & what to do about it
by Diane Kalen-Sukra

Toronto: Municipal World (5^th Edition), 2024
$34.95  /  9781926843421

Reviewed by Ron Dart

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Cultural, religious, educational, and political wars are not new to our all too human journey. Sadly so, with the rise of instant media, cancel culture, wokism, trendy and simplistic ideological posturing, a rather crude notion of polarization has come to define trendy progressivism and reactionary conservatism—in the process, healthy civic virtues and civility in the midst of the fray have been, mostly, banished. The evocative and compelling beauty of the fifth edition of Save Your City is the way Diane Kalen-Sukra, drawing from the best and wisest of political thought and activism, overcomes the toxic culture that kills community.

In short, this bounty of a missive both reflects on our contemporary crises and what, practically, can be done to bring health and healing to local communities again. Needless to say, such insights can be also applied to higher levels of cultural and political life.

Save Your City is both a short and a large book. It is short in length but has a library of information packed into it. The missive is divided into three parts with an appendix worth the sitting. Part 1: “Welcome to Bullyville,” rightly named, walks the curious and attentive reader through the “City Gates” and “Surviving Uncivil Society.” Part 2: “Journey to Sustainaville” points the way out of the malaise, in a positive direction, to “Sanctuary,” “Join the Renaissance,” and “One Ship, One Destiny.” “Part III: Sustainable Culture” ups the challenge to yet higher and more significant levels, “Global Call for Values Education” and “Love is the Greatest Civic Virtue.” The timely and timeless appendix, holds the reader and offers a path, in a mature and maturing way, to a “Roadmap To Renewing Civic Culture.”

Is Save Your City, a naively optimist manifesto as some hard realists and cynics might argue (the position of such skeptics leading to impotence and paralysis) or does this book provide a pathway and opening forward to engage the tough issues in a demanding yet thoughtful manner? Diane has been in the thick of the fray for many a decade, hence her book is acutely aware of the low culture that often dominates much public discourse – she is realistic enough to know if such toxicity continues, communities, in time, will be no more. So, such a book is realism at its most focused and engaged. Save Your City, for those with a background in a Classical education, draws from the lessons learned from such a heritage and the lessons learned, both for good and ill, of the wisest women and men of the past. History, in short, is replete with many tragic and sad tales, for those who ignore both Cassandra and Tiresias, and Diane knows of what she speaks because of where she sees from. We do well to heed her vision and committed activism.

I would not hesitate, for a moment, in warmly and highly encouraging one and all to purchase, inwardly digest, and be shaped and massaged in mind and imagination, soul and body by Save Your City—the future of meaningful civic virtues and public civility hinges on understanding what needs to be, at a deeper level, understood to overcome toxic culture at many insidious and acrid levels.

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Ron Dart has taught in the Department of Political Science, Philosophy, and Religious Studies at the University of the Fraser Valley since 1990. He was on staff with Amnesty International in the 1980s. He has published 40 books including Erasmus: Wild Bird (Create Space, 2017) and The North American High Tory Tradition (American Anglican Press, 2016). [Editor’s note: Ron Dart has recently reviewed books by Don Munday, Susan Leslie, Torbjørn Ekelund, Jan Zwicky, Jan Zwicky & Robert V. Moody, D.L. (Donna) Stephen, for The British Columbia Review. He has also contributed four essays: Canadian mountain culture and mountaineering, From Jalna to Timber Baron: Reflections on the life of H.R. MacMillan, Roderick Haig-Brown & Al Purdy, and Save Swiss Edelweiss Village.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-25: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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