Gardening, Stewardship and Worn-out Metaphors: Richard II and Justin Trudeau

hakespeare's Richard II raises the spectre of a kingdom and an environment gone awry because of the failure of good management. 1 The royal gardener lays out the problem: "what a pity is it / That [Richard] had not so trimmed and dressed his land/ As we this garden . . .Had he done so to great and growing men, / They might have lived to bear, and he to taste, / Their fruits of duty (3.4.56-64).In this instance it is clear that the "garden" Richard has mismanaged is his subjects, but continued references to extravagance and land grabs to fund empty royal coffers throughout the play suggest that he has likewise mismanaged the "sea-walled garden" (3.4.42) of England, overtaxing what both the people and the land can give.Indeed, while there is little doubt in the play that Bolingbroke's invasion and subsequent coup is fueled by ambitious self-interest, the play has him frame his invasion as something very much akin to modern ecopolitical activism, on behalf of England (2.3.165-66).He arrives to set the garden back in order and return balance to the kingdom.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's ambitious adoption of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline in British Columbia raises concerns, I argue, that echo Richard II's preoccupation with eco-political balance.Trudeau and his government continue to represent this move as that of wise stewardship: balancing the needs of the environment against the needs of the economy. 2He appears to believe that his gift for the "common touch" with his citizens, as well as his optimistic, but relatively toothless, environmental gestures will lead his nation to accept or overlook his endorsement of conflicting initiatives like the pipeline.The escalating dispute over the pipeline between BC (who opposes it), Alberta (who stands to gain from it), and Trudeau's federal government, suggests that he, like Richard, may have critically underestimated the political climate when it comes to management of the nation.Canadian environmentalists and political commentators are watching the dispute over this pipeline closely, particularly in the wake of the ongoing Dakota Access Pipeline dispute across the border.The last time there was a major grassroots resistance to an industry project in BC (the Carmanah Valley Protests), in the nineties, the end result was a major political embarrassment for the BC government, and there is every possibility that the Trans Mountain Pipeline may be similarly politically disastrous for both the federal and provincial governments.Like Richard II and Bolingbroke before him, now S

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