Chalk of Fame

Abstract

In the spring of 2011, the leader of Canada's New Democratic Party, Jack Layton, led his party to Official Opposition status in parliament before succumbing to cancer. An outpouring of elegiac tributes followed, creating a national media moment as stories, images, and information about Layton were shared via a range of social media and widely circulated by mainstream media outlets. However, the most powerful medium – and the one that became the focus of news coverage – was the impromptu chalk messages left by thousands of citizens on the main square outside Toronto's City Hall. The ephemerality of the chalking produced in this pseudo-public space made the communicative medium all the more compelling, drawing even more citizens to the memorial. This ‘media moment’ was captured with iPhones and BlackBerries and circulated via Flickr and Facebook, illustrating a symbiotic relationship between ‘new’ and ‘old’ media. This paper contends that the symbiosis Layton himself sought between new and old technologies to reach a wide range of citizens, including those traditionally underserved by mainstream media, was achieved by the chalk tributes and their second life in social media.

Keywords:

• Jack Layton
• social media
• Facebook
• old media
• citizenship
• commons

Notes on contributors

Sandra Smeltzer is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies (FIMS) at Western University. Her areas of research include communication in transitioning and developing countries, the ethics of activist research, ICTs for social justice, and the scholar-activist dialectic. She has been awarded the USC Teaching Honour Roll Award of Excellence for every year she has taught at Western and is the recipient of the FIMS Undergraduate Teaching Award. Dr. Smeltzer was awarded Western's inaugural Humanitarian Award for her international work as a faculty member, named one of Canada's Top 25 Most Influential Women by Women of Influence Magazine, one of Western's Top Newsmakers, and is profiled in the Winter 2014 issue of philanthropy magazine, Lifestyles.

Ian Rae is an Associate Professor in the Department of Modern Languages at King's University College at Western University. He is also Coordinator of the Canadian Studies programme at King's, a position which draws on his experience as Acting Programme Director at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada and Visiting Assistant Professor in the North American Studies Programme at the University of Bonn, Germany. His areas of expertise are contemporary Canadian literature, poetics, and the role of the arts in creative economies. He is the author of From Cohen to Carson: The Poet's Novel in Canada (2008) and editor of George Bowering: Bridges to Elsewhere (2010).

Notes

1 Jack was selected Newsmaker of the Year by 90% of Canada's news directors and editors (Canadian Press 2011b).

2 This is not to suggest that the Liberal party is devoid of social democratic elements, but as a more centrist party, they have not prioritized to the same degree the issues that fundamentally are of concern to the NDP.

3 This article focuses primarily on Layton's legacy in Anglophone Canada. The province of Quebec, where Jack was born and raised, and which elected 59 of the 103 NDP Members of Parliament in the 2011 election, has an entirely different political landscape than the rest of Canada because of its majority francophone population and history of separatist politics. The NDP's rise in Quebec came largely at the expense of voter dissatisfaction with the separatist Bloc Québécois, the dominant party in previous federal elections. For a general assessment of Layton's reception in Francophone Quebec, see this in-depth profile of Layton created by the publicly funded national broadcaster in French, Radio-Canada: http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/Politique/2011/05/12/001-layton-accueil.shtml. For a scholarly appraisal of Jack's legacy in Quebec, see Guay's (2011). At the time of writing, Chow is the MP for the federal riding of Trinity-Spadina in Toronto.

4 The surge in mainstream media coverage of the Nathan Phillips Square events can also be partially attributed to the fact much of Canada's Anglophone media is headquartered in downtown Toronto.

5 Nathan Phillips Square is currently being retrofitted with green space to address this imbalance.

6 Likewise, it is important to note that the federal Conservative Party won a majority government in the 2011 election which means that, despite the political counterbalance of the NDP, the Conservatives can easily pass legislation, which is a source of anxiety and mobilization for left-leaning Canadians.

7 Note that Layton held a PhD in Political Science from York University and taught at Ryerson University, both in Toronto.

8 Madden (2010, p. 189). Fittingly, as a direct reclamation of this pseudo-public space, Bryant Park became the rallying point for Occupy Wall Street's 28 October, 2011, march to protest the billions of dollars allotted by the United States government to bank bailouts instead of social programmes.

9 This is far from unique to the Occupy movement, as demonstrated by media coverage of the Battle in Seattle against the World Trade Organization Third Ministerial conference, citizens protesting the Summit of the Americas (FTAA) in Quebec City and the G20 protests in Toronto (which resulted in serious human rights violations against citizens).

10 Valverde (2005, p. 50). However, citizens do organize demonstrations in the square, likely because (1) according to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, citizens have the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly (within ‘reasonable limits’); and (2) the municipal government knows that public gatherings usually only last for a couple of hours and are, for the most part, peaceful (or citizens face immediate arrest).

11 Comparisons can be made here to the ephemerality of International Expositions (World Fairs) that attracted millions of citizens to a geographically bounded site to be a part of a media event. Of particular note is the 1933 Century of Progress fair in Chicago, built primarily of Plaster of Paris and thus designed to be an experience that fetishizes time (see Rydell 2006). For a Canadian reference, see Walden (1997).