I had the extreme pleasure of attending the Northern Medical Program Trust Gala last weekend at the Civic Centre.
Col. Chris Hadfield was the keynote speaker and as you can imagine his talk was "out of this world" (sorry I couldn't resist). There were two main thrusts of his speech and it will probably take me two columns to tell you all how his stories fit into a discussion about politics.
Col. Hadfield started the evening by expressing his thankfulness for the opportunity to travel across Canada sharing his story. He was appreciative of the community spirit that he witnesses and the (other) extraordinary people that he has met. I hope you had a chance to read Neil Godbout's editorial, "Stealing the Spotlight," about the "other" star at the Gala: third-year Northern Medical Program student Michiko Maruyama who is also inspirational and courageous.
During the preamble of his speech Col. Hadfield also said something that was, to me, profound. In fact, I grabbed a pen and a piece of paper and wrote down his words knowing that for sure his observation would be the subject of my column this week. He said, "Canadians have an expectation of stability." I shivered at the thought of all the places where this is not true. I know for sure that Col. Hadfield is aware of those who live desperate lives within our own country but I think he was referring to the expectation of a political efficacy which is part of our liberal democracy.
There is no doubt that Canada is an extraordinary country. Many of the stereotypes that describe us, polite, deferential etc. are, I think, true and those characteristics have shaped our political culture. The expectation of stability goes back, at least in part, to 1867 and Canada's "counter revolutionary" history. The United States was born from revolution and Canada developed its political institutions and structure as a response to the America Revolution.
I was particularly struck by Col. Hadfield's observation because I do teach political science and, as I have said here before, our discipline as well as others in the social sciences and humanities are fundamentally concerned with the question: "how should we live together?" I remember many years ago when I first arrived at UNBC, I had just come from living in Quebec and my main teaching assignment for the university was Canadian politics. It was so interesting to be "in the west" as I had grown up in Ontario and I had been living in Quebec prior to coming to UNBC. At that time "western alienation" and regionalism were critical parts of the Canadian politics curriculum and Canada had just lived through the 1995 Quebec referendum on sovereignty. Besides my academic training, I had a wealth of anecdotal knowledge about those pre-referendum days in Quebec. There were heated debates and conversations about all the potential outcomes of a sovereign Quebec. Moreover, these were the years (1993-1997) when the Bloc Quebecois was the Official Opposition in the House of Commons. I remember vividly the uproar when they won enough seats to become the opposition but I also remember how I was struck by the "expectation of stability." Despite the fears of Quebec separatism we had somehow found a way to deal with the crisis within the confines of our political institutions.
If you read my column last week, you will know that I had hoped that Quebecers would not only send the message that they are not interested in separatism (even if only for the time being) but also that they would send the message that they are not in favour of the Quebec Charter. It seems that democracy did its work and that, at least for now, the religious faithful will not have to choose between their identity and their job.
The British historian, Lord John Dalberg-Acton (1834-1902) who wrote The History of Freedom in Antiquity is famous for saying that: "the most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities." We have lived for a long time with policies of multiculturalism within a bilingual framework but we have also lived with an "expectation of stability." This stability is surely a measure of our freedom.
