A rchive Date
[ 03-04-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
|
[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/mansur.html
Trudeau changed Canada
By SALIM MANSUR -- For the London Free Press
April 3, 2002
Over Easter weekend the country was treated to a television movie biography of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Canada's 15th prime minister.
It brought alive the sound and fury of a country caught in the crosscurrents of momentous changes and whose undertow is still with us.
It reminded us that Trudeau, more than any other political leader, defined a period in this country's history so we may speak of a Canada before him and after him.
History, as it is mostly taught in universities, is conceived as science to unravel causes behind events or to analyse, as Sir Herbert Butterfield noted, "all the mediations by which the past was turned into our present." Hence what is obscured, if not entirely lost, is the drama of men and women as actors who made the world we inherit.
But history is, in its most dramatic sense, the story of remarkable men and women, who were not merely passive representatives of social forces or classes in movements altering the environment, but actors shaping these forces with results that otherwise would have been quite different. Hence, the appetite for history as biography is never satiated.
Trudeau's biography makes for compelling reading. Here is drama, as in the biographies, for instance, of Charles De Gaulle or Mahatma Gandhi, since the destiny of the country is in the making and the biography of a man becomes the destiny of a nation.
Others will have to pick up the pieces, a Pompidou in France, a Nehru in India, but the country will never be the same because of the men who preceded them.
Historians will debate the legacy of Trudeau for a long time to come, evaluate him differently, praise him or fault him in relation to their own political inclinations.
What they cannot do is minimize Trudeau's influence, as Canada was greatly altered during the years he was prime minister.
After Sept. 11, the issue with which Trudeau's name is most closely associated has become one of compelling importance.
Trudeau sought to complete the journey of Canada from a colony to a sovereign country. He succeeded by patriating the Constitution and by keeping the federation united in the face of the separatist challenge.
The great Canadian dilemma has been, how does this country, as a North American attic, in the apt description of Trudeau's biographers, Stephen Clarkson and Christina McCall, maintain its evolving identity as a sovereign entity given the tremendous pull of the great republican behemoth to the south.
During the Cold War years of rough military parity due to the nuclear weapons of the United States and the former Soviet Union, Canada, as a middle power, sought some limited but distinct role in world politics.
Trudeau's Canada may not have been quite successful in this role, but there was a sense this country represented something different and noble as he engaged with the world and opened doors to it unlike anyone before him.
Demographically, Canada changed. More Canadians in its largest city, Toronto, were born elsewhere and speak a native language that is neither English nor French.
Canadians became increasingly assertive and less constrained by traditions as their country was made more open and democratic under a Constitution with a Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Since Sept. 11, in a world where one superpower is dominant like no other power in history, the Canadian dilemma has been more or less globalized. Canadians are not alone in asking what does it mean to be sovereign when sovereignty is more permeable or vulnerable to external forces than ever before.
Trudeau left office when today's graduating high school students were not yet born. His years as prime minister, watching the movie, seem quaint and distant.
And yet, as we contend with our dilemmas, it is best we understand the Canada after Trudeau for we cannot return to the Canada before him.
Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario. His column appears alternate Wednesdays. Letters to the editor should be sent to letters@lfpress.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
|