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COMMENTARY
July 2, 2011
Look into the faces
Yesterday was the 44th anniversary of the 100th anniversary of the Dominion of Canada. Confederation itself I missed, through having failed to be born in time, but Centennial year I well remember, for I was then a strapping lad of 14.Among my strange habits at the time was delivering newspapers, which I did chiefly for the money. An even stranger habit was collecting newspapers: those reporting "historical events," and a representative sampling of papers from distant and exotic places, often obtained by request through the mail. I had a whole cupboard full of them, as my ancient but still living mama can attest: meticulously shelved by title and date. (And this was not my only hobby.) Forty-four years is a long time, from a narrowly human perspective, wherein much is lost and gained. Only the tiniest fragments remain of this collection, but one item is the Globe and Mail, for Saturday, July 1, 1967. The rest of the bundle was delivered, but there was always one over, and this copy I kept for myself. I retain the most vivid memory of sitting on our porch, on Edith Street in Georgetown, Ont., on that "gladsome, midsummer" Saturday afternoon, looking through it carefully. "PM says it for all of us: 'This Day is Canada's', " ran the banner headline. A reprint of the four-page Globe from the very first Dominion Day was bound into the second section. The whole issue was awash in patriotic themes; and, since this was the sophisticated Toronto paper, patriotic ironies, too, such as Richard J. Needham's celebration of the great Canadian custom of queueing patiently, on exhibition throughout Expo 67 in Montreal. ("O Canada, we stand in line for thee.") But not jaded, for he is overwhelmed by the experience of that world's fair, at which he found not only long lines for everything, but happiness everywhere, and incredible excitement, as he visited the many pavilions. The whole world, nay the whole universe, was presenting itself at Montreal. The fair was an astounding accomplishment - a Canadian accomplishment - and we were very, very proud. Not proud simply, in being Canadian, but proud of what we had done, against the odds, in pulling together what was quite possibly the greatest world's fair ever, in the nick of time, after years of jaded predictions that it would open late, wickedly over-budget, and in tears. And proud because we were honoured: because the whole world was looking at us on that day of days, and we were damn well worth looking at. For what I (often) try to remember is not a chronology of events, merely, but the atmosphere in this country, at that moment. I was myself in the swell of this patriotism, for a Canada which has itself passed on, as all countries do. No one, in 1967, could envisage the Canada of 2011, nor what would happen to remake us. Indeed, that issue of the Globe contained an article predicting what Toronto might be like in 2067, and what a "period piece" it now seems. That, "the past is a foreign country," is true and unarguable about all countries. To read the letters of our parents, and then of their parents, is to encounter attitudes foreign to our own contemporary views. To the wise, it is to be brought short, by our own parochialism, as we begin to realize in the comparison that we are creatures of time ourselves. So many of our own complacencies belong, not to us, but to our time and place. And what we take entirely for granted, as natural, inevitable and immortal in the world around us, will have perished when our children's children occupy this land. To them, our own expressed thoughts will seem foreign. Yet the world gets up fresh each morning, and as another summer unfolds, in this latest year of grace, it is as new as it ever was. Nature is there, in its renewal and continuity, to show background conditions have not changed, and mark our "progress" - to the better, or to the worse. Can I say that the Canada reflected in the pages of this old newspaper has become, in the balance, a better place? In some respects, of course, it has. In some respects, of course, I cannot judge, standing as I do within the procession. But let me put it this way. When I look into the faces of those who are 14 years old today, do I see hope as I did in my generation? Do I see, in the balance, greater kindliness and decency, greater common sense, greater curiosity and alertness, greater sense of right and wrong, greater purpose and resolve and courage, greater happiness with life, greater trust, greater love, than I saw in the faces of my own generation? I only ask this question: because the answer to it is so desperately important. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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