What Harper did on his summer vacation
Colin Powell, George W. Bush’s secretary of state, has confirmed hacked emails from his personal account published this week were genuine. Although U.S. media focused on his marked disdain for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, for Canadians there was another compelling tidbit. A July email Powell addressed to former Canadian attorney general Peter MacKay reveals Stephen Harper was invited to the Bohemian Grove this year. “Peter, I am back from the Bohemian Grove. Surprise, surprise, I sat next to Stephen Harper a couple of times and had a nice discussion,” he wrote. The National Post’s Tristin Hopper explains what Canada’s former Conservative leader was doing at one of the U.S.’s most mysterious political gathering places.
WHAT IS BOHEMIAN GROVE?
“That’s where all those rich Republicans go out and stand naked against redwood trees” is how former president Bill Clinton described it to a heckler in 2007. The place is secretive, but it’s known to be a hyper-exclusive, men-only luxury compound in a remote section of California. It hosts a two-week “encampment” every July attended by some of the U.S.’s most powerful. Past attendees include Ronald Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt, the Bushes George H.W. and George W. Business discussions are forbidden. The few written accounts from reporters who have penetrated the sanctum reveal participants generally get extremely drunk, stage plays, pee on trees and engage in the “Cremation of Care,” a hokey ceremony in which a mannequin representing “care” is burned.
WHAT ELSE GOES ON?
The images of powerful men peeing on trees and burning effigies have sparked conspiracy theorists. They include the belief the Grove is a place where the elite pledge allegiance to the occult. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, one of the few people to capture any of the rituals on camera, photographed the “Cremation of Care” in 2000. “George Bush is … nothing but a Luciferian twit!” was his summing up of the experience.
WHAT WAS HARPER DOING THERE?
He was probably invited by a member. The only alternative is to get on a 20-year waiting list (and pay a US$25,000 initiation fee). It’s likely Harper saw quite a show. One source told the National Post this year’s version featured Powell and Henry Kissinger performing a sendup of the history of American humour.
IS THIS HARPER’S FIRST VISIT?
Almost certainly, yes. Every Conservative insider contacted by the National Post confirmed for a sitting prime minister, slipping across the border to attend an American tree-peeing meeting was a strict no-no. “No political upside in the Canadian arena for being outwardly associated with the GOP,” wrote one.
DOES THE GOP LOVE HARPER NOW?
The ex-PM’s first documented public event after his October 2015 defeat was at the home of Republican donor Sheldon Adelson. Essentially he got a luxury weekend in Las Vegas in return for giving “Unite the Right” tips to the Republican Jewish Coalition. Ex-prime minister Brian Mulroney, similarly, seems to have used his retirement to curry favour in U.S. conservative circles and has been seen with political donor David Koch. However, U.S. demand for former Canadian leaders only goes so far. Jay Nordlinger, author of a 2013 glowing profile of Harper in the conservative National Review, has examined Harper’s U.S. appeal. Nevertheless, Nordlinger suspects he is among the few Republicans to harbour a fondness for the stoic, comparatively pragmatic Canadian. “He ought to be regarded by American conservatives as a model and hero. And yet, we are in a time of Trump,” wrote Nordlinger in an email to the Post.