A young woman, flushed rosy-cheeked with gin and birthday cheer, was asked the other day what she had learned in the last year.
"I'm this little," she said, holding her thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. "But I can make this much change." And then she threw her arms wide and beamed a big smile.
It's a happy thought that's fitting this week as Canada mourns one of its eternal optimists, NDP leader Jack Layton, who died of cancer Monday at the age of 61.
Layton, by definition and deed, was a pugnacious champion of the little guy, the underdog. He was an unabashed populist and, as such, even in death, his politics must be looked at with a wary eye.
But cynicism aside, he lived and embodied that young woman's idea, along with this saying of his NDP predecessor Tommy Douglas, which Layton included in all his emails:
"Courage my friends, 'tis never too late to build a better world."
The NDP leader took Douglas at his word. Just four months before his death, he was carrying his party through arguably the most important federal election in the history of the NDP.
His famed moustache bobbed up so much across the country the only place it didn't appear, ironically, was the one place everyone thought it belonged: a spot marked by three consecutive Xs. And to the Hall of Fame facial tuft he added his now signature cane, which he waved like a man who had learned to walk again and used to electrify voters across the nation.
Before May 2, only two parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives, realistically held a chance of forming government. The day after, Canadians awoke to a country Jack Layton had fundamentally changed as the NDP elected 103 MPs, the most for the party in half a century, and vaulted past the moribund Liberals into Official Opposition status.
The effort probably helped kill him, but if Jack Layton didn't build a better a world this past year he no doubt laid a foundation for a profoundly altered Canada.
And perhaps his most intriguing legacy are the unlikely corps of MPs, in their late teens and early 20s, who never dreamed of winning at the polls but are now full-fledged lawmakers by virtue of Layton's charisma.
They face a daunting struggle ahead, not least a governing Conservative Party that probably views them as a veal-cutlet buffet. But Layton's death, according to the Canadian Press, has forced many of them to embrace their roles with as much diligence as idealism.
Good luck to them.
And regardless, their very existence, like Layton's life, offers a rebuke to those who trade in the second guesses of the status quo, ambivalence and conventional wisdom. It's a rebuke that's been getting louder lately and, in the most unlikely places, from Tunisia to Libya to Egypt and Syria.
It's a rebuke that's among Layton's final words to Canadians: "Don't let them tell you it can't be done."
So thank you Jack. Thank you for talking about tomorrows and different days.
Thank you for reminding us that, as small as we all are, there is so much we can change.
-- Prince George Citizen
