The “The Two Seasons” incident

This morn­ing, on the radio, the very first news sto­ry I heard was about how the provin­cial Eng­lish exam got post­poned^[1]Or can­celed, who knows. because they had, to use Man­i­to­ba Edu­ca­tion’s words, “an issue regard­ing nec­es­sary per­mis­sions to use mate­ri­als.” And I laughed.

It sounds like they haven’t learned about copy­right and licens­ing in, oh, at least 14 years, because they did some­thing like this to me back in 2010. I searched my blog, and found that I’ve only tan­gen­tial­ly men­tioned it, so here’s sto­ry as I remem­ber it.

In 1997 the Cana­da Sum­mer Games were com­ing to Bran­don. Among many oth­er things, the orga­niz­ers put togeth­er an anthol­o­gy of local writ­ing, titled Under the Prairie Sky. I sub­mit­ted a brief poem, titled “The Two Sea­sons”, and it was accept­ed for pub­li­ca­tion.^[2]It remains the high­est pay-per-word I’ve achieved in my writ­ing career. The anthol­o­gy came out and I got a con­trib­u­tor’s copy, which is some­where in my library at the moment. There’s also a copy in the Bran­don Uni­ver­si­ty library.

At the end of May, 2010, my aunt Moe—who was at the time teach­ing Eng­lish in a school in China—sent me an email.

Hi Pat,

Today was the first day of the grade 12 provin­cial exam and I hap­pened to be help­ing with super­vi­sion.  So I look into the book­let of read­ings and I see–“Two Sea­sons” by youknowwho!!! Quel surpris!!!

I’m not sure if this means you’ve made it to the big time–if you’re part of the mainstream–if you’re in dan­ger of fos­siliza­tion because an edu­ca­tion­al ‘insti­tu­tion’ has rec­og­nized your val­ue in ana­lyt­i­cal think­ing.  Or—none of the above–cuz you’re just a real­ly good writer and you’re work’s get­ting out all over the place.

It was a cool ‘gift’ in odd wrap­ping that had me smil­ing all day.  Thanks.

My first reac­tion was “What?” fol­lowed quick­ly by “Oh well, what can I do about this?” I assumed, since Moe was in Chi­na, that she was say­ing my lit­tle poem had end­ed up in a Chi­nese exam. There’s a well-worn stereo­type that copy­right is rou­tine­ly vio­lat­ed in Chi­na, and I could­n’t imagine—even if I’d “made it to the big time”—what kind of pow­er I’d have to seek any redress.

But after a bit of back-and-forth with Moe, it turned out that no, she’d been help­ing with the Man­i­to­ba provin­cial Eng­lish exam. I was sur­prised, because no one reached out to me to ask for per­mis­sion to reprint my poem.

Appar­ent­ly Man­i­to­ba Edu­ca­tion even had a lit­tle note in their exam book­let that they thought would absolve them: “Every effort has been made to acknowl­edge and com­ply with copy­right law. If cas­es are iden­ti­fied where this has not been done, please noti­fy Man­i­to­ba Edu­ca­tion. Sin­cere thanks to the authors and pub­lish­ers who allowed their orig­i­nal mate­r­i­al to be used.”

Except they did­n’t make any effort to reach me. At that point I’d had the same phone num­ber, print­ed in the phone book under my name, since at least 1997. My work email address, then as now, has been unchanged since 1994. No one reached out to me about this.

I checked the copy­right page in Under the Prairie Sky, which stat­ed that each piece’s copy­right was retained by its author. Mean­while Moe let me know that my poem’s bib­li­og­ra­phy entry in the exam read 

Johan­neson, Pat. “The Two Sea­sons.” Under the Prairie Sky. Ed. [redact­ed]. Brandon,MB: Bran­don 1997 Cana­da Games Soci­ety, 1997. 36–37. Repro­duced in accor­dance with the Access Copy­right Ele­men­tary and Sec­ondary School Tariff. 

…which, if noth­ing else, point­ed me at Access Copy­right. It also told me that they might have reached out to the anthol­o­gy’s edi­tor, [redact­ed], who was some­one I knew.

I reached out to the editor.

Did Man­i­to­ba Edu­ca­tion approach you about the use of a poem from the “Under the Prairie Sky” anthol­o­gy from the 1997 Cana­da Games? Specif­i­cal­ly, my poem “The Two Seasons”?

Appar­ent­ly it’s appeared in the Grade 12 provin­cial exams.

They replied:

No, nei­ther Man­i­to­ba Edu­ca­tion nor any­one else approached me. […T]he “fair use” pro­vi­sion allows copy­ing of up to 10% of any work for edu­ca­tion­al (i.e. non-resale) uses. 

While my poem was less than 10% of the con­tent of Under the Prairie Sky, the copy­right did­n’t apply (in my view, any­way) to the book; each piece was a sep­a­rate work, and they’d used 100% of my work.

Mean­while, Moe got some pho­tos to me, which I share with her permission.

Accord­ing to the bib­li­og­ra­phy, I shared space with, among oth­ers, Chan­tal Kre­vi­azuk and Richard Wagamese. I won­der if Man­i­to­ba Edu­ca­tion reached out to them?

I made con­tact with a vari­ety of peo­ple in my attempts to get a hard copy of the exam. Even­tu­al­ly Man­i­to­ba Edu­ca­tion pro­vid­ed me with one. I don’t have an email trail about their response to my complaints—I think I spoke to them on the phone, and so have no real record of it—but I remem­ber a sense that they could­n’t quite see why I was unhap­py with their use of my work. I want to point out that I was­n’t look­ing for any mon­ey here, just an acknowl­edg­ment that they’d messed up and a promise they’d do bet­ter in the future. My mem­o­ry is as fal­li­ble as any­one’s, of course; I remem­ber that I even­tu­al­ly got some­one to say they’d do bet­ter at copy­right check­ing in the future.

And maybe they did; I have no idea. But it sure sounds like they may have slipped up again, and this time some­one noticed before the exams went out.