Conrad Black: Canada has come a long way

[PRC]

Conrad Black's recent article.

Most interested in Languish's opinion on the last few paragraphs in particular.

NATIONAL POST

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/06/08/conrad-black-canada-has-come-a-long-way/

Conrad Black: Canada has come a long way
Conrad Black | 13/06/08 | Last Updated: 13/06/07 3:25 PM ET

As one who spent his very enjoyable undergraduate years in Ottawa 50 years ago, it was an uplifting experience to return to Ottawa this past weekend for the Governor General's Awards for the Performing Arts. Of course, I have often been to Ottawa in the intervening years, but had never seen so vividly there the progress that Canada has made in the project, begun in 1867, of making a success of the world's first and only trans-continental, bicultural, parliamentary and federal democracy.

That project was considered a long shot at the start, by many Canadians, by many British colonial officials, and by our American neighbour. The Americans had urged the French Canadians and British Nova Scotians to join their Revolution; and narrowly missed seizing the territories that became Canada in the War of 1812. In 1867, the United States had just suppressed a southern insurrection and suffered 750,000 dead in a population of 31-million, smaller than Canada's today, and had the greatest army and the greatest generals in the world, and was not at all pleased by the British government's kindly disposition to the Southern insurrectionists and slave-holders in the late war.

John A. Macdonald, joined by the Quebec Conservative leader, George-Étienne Cartier and the normally inflexible Liberal leader in Toronto, George Brown, proprietor of the Globe and Mail, with a number of other very able men such as Montreal industrialist Alexander Galt and Quebec Irish leader Darcy McGee, formed in 1864 what was called the Great Coalition of the then unhappily United Province of Canada. (Quebec and Ontario had combined into one jurisdiction after the Mackenzie-Papineau uprisings of 1837 with the declared and fatuous aim, both unjust and impossible, of relieving the French Canadians of what was presumed to be the intolerable burden of being French.) This coalition essentially was united by the conviction that if something coherent and imbued as a project with some sweep of grandeur were not attempted, the scattering of settlements along the northern border of the United States would fall into the lap of the United States, either from inertia, or following a twitch of the mighty and restored American state, now deprived by an assassin of the sage and humane leadership of their country's saviour, Abraham Lincoln.

Macdonald in particular convinced a largely, but not entirely, skeptical Colonial Office in London that unless this were done, with the support from the London financial community to endow the new entity with the instances of a state, including a trans-continental railway soon, the Empire's premier colony would vanish into the embrace of America.

British official opinion, having strenuously resented the American exit from their Empire (after the British had evicted France from Canada to assure American security and at great expense to the home country; and after watching the long struggle with slavery in America with no great sympathy for those who claimed America was the beacon of liberty for the world), were now resigned to America's permanence. Moreover, by 1867, it was obvious to the more perceptive British statesmen, including Benjamin Disraeli, that Bismarck's artfully aggressive leadership of Prussia was about to shift the balance of power in Europe. The German Empire, as it was soon to become, would be too strong for Britain to assure the balance of power it had promoted and manipulated among the major European states since the time of Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey more than 300 years before, and the goodwill of America could become necessary to the British national and Imperial interest. It was time, at last, for Britain to conciliate America.

Yet at the same time, the British were not willing to let Canada slide into America's control. This, at least, was something they could help prevent by empowering Macdonald and his allies. And so Confederation was enacted. There has not been an aggressive American threat to Canada ever since.

But it was a very long time before the bicultural aspect of Confederation had any observable consequences outside Quebec and a few neighbouring communities. And we should be proud of the distance we have come in this area. Indeed, what I saw in Ottawa sharply reminded me of how strong and effective the original official character of Canada as a country of two official languages has become (notwithstanding the hackneyed allegations of tokenism that now are common).

When I was an undergraduate there, Ottawa still had the ambiance of a colonial city. The Union flag (Great Britain) or the Red Ensign were on the masts of the capital, and next to the Chateau Laurier, the Lord Elgin (the name originating with a distinguished colonial governor instrumental in the achievement of responsible government in the 1840's) was the most prominent hotel. There was no National Arts Centre, nor much else to indicate biculturalism, or, apart from the rather imposing Parliament Buildings, which looked down on the belching saw and pulp mills of the E.B. Eddy Company in Hull, anything to inform the visitor he was in the capital of a serious country.

In the decades since, the great world capitals of that time, Washington, London, Paris, Rome, Tokyo, and others, have continued to be so. But Ottawa, though hardly comparable to those immensely historic cities, has become, visibly, the capital of an obviously important country, true at last to the original raison d'être of the founders of Confederation. The only other cities that have made any comparable progress on a similar civic mission are Brasilia, and in special terms of restitution and extension of former and interrupted greatness, Berlin and Beijing.

The Governor General's Award-winners included three English Canadians: Andrew Dawes, violinist; Eric Peterson, actor (and, as I discovered in conversation, a delightful person); and Sarah Polley, film-maker. There also were two French Quebecois: Jean-Pierre Desrosiers for voluntarism (apparently a social traditionalist); and Jean-Pierre Lefebvre, film-maker (apparently a Quebec nationalist). Also, an Acadian: Viola Leger, actress. Plus, a semi-Franco-Ontarian: Daniel Lanois, record producer for, inter alia, Bob Dylan, U2, and Peter Gabriel. And finally, a new Canadian: Menaka Thakkar, dancer and choreographer. To the extent that I am qualified to judge, they are all deserving recipients, but the point is that there was nothing like this 50 years ago. Canada Council grants had just started, but there were few and modest monuments or official buildings of any grandeur to imply the presence of the government of a great nation, and there was almost nothing official to pull together the official language groups of the country.

It was necessary to give Canadians the sense that they belonged to a country that appreciated and nurtured the talents of all; to show the cultural and entertainment communities that the government of Canada cared, noticed, and encouraged their efforts, and to give some effect and meaning to the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission's call for reciprocal bilingualism and not just French-Canadians feeling obliged to learn English to advance their careers. And for the country to flourish (or even survive) as a confederation, it was necessary in some measure to enact Pierre Trudeau's call for attention to individual rights instead of bickering about the jurisdiction of the federal and provincial governments, and to be able to say, as he did, to the French Canadians: "Maîtres chez nous, mais pour tout le Canada." ("Masters in our house, but our house is Canada.")

Never, before last Saturday have I been more convinced that that policy would succeed. Quebec has been placated by large transfer payments, to which even the nationalists there are addicted. The French fact is accessible throughout the country, especially in all aspects of the federal government, and it is no longer possible for the French Canadian nationalists to denigrate Canada now recognized by the world to be a successful country, as they were wont to do, as a pallid imitation, if not a mere excrescence, of the Anglo-Americans.

I predict that in the next 10 years, increasing numbers of Québécois will conclude that instead of milking Canada for all it can, as Danegeld for the avoidance of a separatist crisis, they will become convinced federalists, not just espousers of the lesser of evils or of a marriage of convenience. (That is why those ostensible federalists who would pander to the separatists, such as the NDP leader Thomas Mulcair, will fail, deservedly.)

It was good to be back, and in a very different Ottawa to the one I first knew.

[PDH]

It's pretty easy to ignore Canada, all tucked away down there.

[Grallon]

I see the man' stay in prison for large scale fraud didn't improve his judgement.  He still clings to the Liberal fiction brought forth by Trudeau - and seems oblivious to the changes operated by the Conservatives in the last 6 years.

As for Quebecers becoming convinced federalists...  that's a laugh.  They may not chose separation but embrace a foreign country?  Ludicrous.



G.

[Grey Fox]

The bolded quote : What?

[viper37]

The French fact is accessible throughout the country, especially in all aspects of the federal government,

Only an English Canadian who doesn't read the Commissioner of official languages report would say that.

[The Brain]

Why not just let them go? How much oil does Quebec have?

[jimmy olsen]

I see the man' stay in prison for large scale fraud didn't improve his judgement.  He still clings to the Liberal fiction brought forth by Trudeau - and seems oblivious to the changes operated by the Conservatives in the last 6 years.

As for Quebecers becoming convinced federalists... that's a laugh.  They may not chose separation but embrace a foreign country?  Ludicrous.



G.

Plenty of minorities throughout history have done just that. What makes makes Quebec so special that they won't.

[garbon]

I see the man' stay in prison for large scale fraud didn't improve his judgement.  He still clings to the Liberal fiction brought forth by Trudeau - and seems oblivious to the changes operated by the Conservatives in the last 6 years.

As for Quebecers becoming convinced federalists... that's a laugh.  They may not chose separation but embrace a foreign country?  Ludicrous.



G.

Plenty of minorities throughout history have done just that. What makes makes Quebec so special that they won't.

Pig-headed.

[Valmy]

Why not just let them go? How much oil does Quebec have?

I suspect it is because the majority of people in Quebec do not want to go.

[The Brain]

I see the man' stay in prison for large scale fraud didn't improve his judgement.  He still clings to the Liberal fiction brought forth by Trudeau - and seems oblivious to the changes operated by the Conservatives in the last 6 years.

As for Quebecers becoming convinced federalists... that's a laugh.  They may not chose separation but embrace a foreign country?  Ludicrous.



G.

Plenty of minorities throughout history have done just that. What makes makes Quebec so special that they won't.

Pig-headed.

I'm sorry but I keep reading this like Rick James.

[The Brain]

Why not just let them go? How much oil does Quebec have?

I suspect it is because the majority of people in Quebec do not want to go.

You know how people are let go? Ask Cal otherwise, but it doesn't have to be voluntary.

[Eddie Teach]

But then people from eastern Canada have to go through customs twice to drive to Toronto.

[The Brain]

If you form some kind of union maybe customs won't be necessary.

[mongers]

I thought he was Canada's greatest export?


In the sense that Canadians were greatly pleased when he left.

[viper37]

Why not just let them go? How much oil does Quebec have?

I thought he was Canada's greatest export?


In the sense that Canadians were greatly pleased when he left.

The Canadian government brought him back after a year in a US jail.  He got the VIP treatment.