A rchive Date
[ 07-10-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[Who is Canada's visionary for the future?
By LARRY CORNIES - London Free Press
October 7, 2000
To hit the high notes in a soaring aria, a soprano must first hear them in her mind. To float over a high bar, a pole vaulter must first visualize the feat mentally. To create a mural or painting, an artist must first be able to see the finished work in a blank wall or canvas. Visualization and imagination are everything. We cannot accomplish what we cannot imagine.
So, too, with a nation.
The massive outpouring of grief and tribute this week over the death of former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau was due largely to this simple fact: He was able to imagine and describe for Canadians a country just beyond the opaque veneer of reality, the way a sculptor can see a masterpiece in a crude block of granite.
Trudeau's remarkable ability to envision is what sheathed the swords of partisanship, at least temporarily, among politicians in Ottawa this week. It is why thousands of Canadians of all creeds and persuasions visited the Hall of Honour on Parliament Hill, why they lined a lonely railway track bridging the solitudes of Ontario and Quebec, why they packed into Montreal's old city hall and crowded Notre Dame Basilica. He elucidated a picture of Canada, which, even if unachieved, managed to inspire.
Always passionate about politics, Trudeau opposed the Union Nationale government of Maurice Duplessis with the fire of a zealot, parting ways with many of his closest acquaintances over issues such as rising Quebec nationalism and the province's use of the Catholic Church to do its political bidding.
Instead, Trudeau welcomed the Quiet Revolution, Vatican II and imagined a Canadian federation in which English- and French-speaking populations would co-exist equally.
By the time he became justice minister in Nobel Peace Prize laureate Lester Pearson's government, Trudeau had painstakingly put the flesh on the bones of what he termed the "just society."
While the Trudeaumania of 1968 was as much about personal style as political substance - a flamboyant bachelor taking the reins of the Liberal party from the aging and stuffy Pearson - the new prime minister's ideals and resolve were quickly put to the test during the October Crisis of 1970. Trudeau's speedy and spirited defence of the country he loved through invocation of the War Measures Act and, a decade later, during the first referendum on Quebec separation put forward by political arch-enemy Rene Levesque, endeared him to all who shared his vision of Canada as a welcoming, bilingual nation. He signalled a willingness to enjoin the scrappiest of street fights to the equality of provinces and citizens guaranteed by a strong federal government.
In succeeding years, Trudeau continued to envision - and reinvent - Canada's role on the world stage. Spurred by the success of Canada's peacekeeping role during the Suez Crisis, Trudeau revised the notion that middle-power countries allied with the U.S. had to move in lock-step with America in international affairs. He discussed hemispheric affairs with Cuba's Fidel Castro and recognized China as a trading partner long before other western nations. On peace and disarmament, he solidified Canada's reputation worldwide as a credible international peacekeeper and used his powers of persuasion with world leaders to move them toward arms reductions. To try to bridge the growing gap between rich and poor countries, he undertook his controversial "North-South Dialogue."
No doubt Trudeau's record shows significant failures. He flip-flopped on wage and price controls and downplayed the long-term cost of ballooning federal deficits and runaway debt. He launched pork-barrel job-creation schemes, alienated westerners with the National Energy Program and cared too little about the problems of Prairie farmers. But Trudeau had an outstanding capacity to imagine a better Canada - even a better world - and to bring Canadians along, if not by logic and persuasion, then sometimes by the sheer force of his passion.
The elevation of Pierre Trudeau this week to mythic figure occurred largely because Canadians asked themselves: Who, today, elucidates a compelling vision of a new Canada? They came up with few answers.
With Trudeau gone, one of the world's finest democracies has lost a visionary for the role of Canada in the world community and a champion for the cause of bilingualism and multiculturalism.
Who is doing the critical task of imagining our next century? Is it our rapids-shooting prime minister, trying now to carefully calculate how the fleeting combination of a federal surplus and revived Trudeaumania could help give him another mandate? Is it our watercraft-riding Opposition leader, with promises of flat taxes and anti-crime measures? The Progressive Conservatives? The NDP?
During the 1988 U.S. vice-presidential debate, Republican Dan Quayle tried to boost his image by comparing his own limited experience with that of John Kennedy in 1960. In response to the Kennedy analogy, Democrat Lloyd Bentsen quipped: "I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."
At the moment, sadly, none of our federal party leaders looks anything at all like Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
Larry Cornies is Associate Editor of The London Free Press. His column appears Saturdays. He can be e-mailed at lcornies@lfpress.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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