Canada and the Future

Michael Frederiksen, MA, MEd, Vice-Principal, Toronto School Board and Vice-Chairman, The Royal Commonwealth Society, Toronto Branch; Stephanie Dixon, Student, Mayfield Secondary School; The Rev. Dr. Laurence Barber, Area Minister, Toronto Association of Baptist Churches; Derek Burrow, Student, MacLachlan College, Oakville and Class A Winner, 2002 RCS Essay Competition; Molly Killingbeck, Athlete Services Manager, Canadian Sport Centre, Ontario, Coach, Canadian Sprint/Relay Team, 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England and one of Canada's most successful athletic competitors; Daniel Minchen, Director, Public Affairs and Corporate Relations, Xerox Canada Ltd.; MGen Bruce J. Legge, CMM, CM, KSt.J, ED, CD, QC, Honorary Life Chairman, The Royal Commonwealth Society, Partner, Legge & Legge and Past President, The Empire Club of Canada; Larry Stout, Business Anchor, CTV News Net at The Toronto Stock Exchange and Honorary Director, The Empire Club Of Canada; Travino Betty, Project Manager, Retail Advertising, Sears Canada and Silver Medal Winner, 1998 Commonwealth Games; Ann Curran, President, The Empire Club of Canada and President, Curran Corporate Advisors Inc.; The Hon. Sinclair Stevens, PC, QC, Chairman, Georgian Bancorp Inc. and President, Royal Commonwealth Society Foundation; and Farsad Kiani, President, Ensil International.

Introduction by Ebert Hobbs

It is my pleasure to introduce our guest speaker.

It is like introducing someone we all know and who has been in our living rooms almost on a daily basis.

He brings us news and information and through his insightful interviews helps us to understand what is behind the daily activities and decisions of those in power.

He is also a person who may begin his day in England and end it by bringing us news and information the same night.

Peter Mansbridge, as you know, is the Chief Correspondent of CBC Television News and anchor of CDC's "The National." He covers CBC News Specials and is the host of "Mansbridge: One on One" that airs on CBC Newsworld. He was discovered in Churchill, Manitoba in 1968 as he was making airport public address announcements. He later helped to develop the CBC Radio's News Service in Northern Canada.

He has received many awards including the Gemini for Best Anchor six times, the Gemini for Best Overall Broadcast Journalist, the prestigious Gordon Sinclair award on two occasions and has been given several other honours in the United States and England, including the gold medal for Best News Anchor at the 2000 New York Festival, in a competition of television networks around the world.

As a person who has elected to stay in Canada even though he has been offered more lucrative positions elsewhere and one who recognizes the power and the unifying influence the media has on a nation, we believe that Peter Mansbridge is the perfect guest speaker at this joint Canada Day Luncheon of our two organizations--The Royal Commonwealth Society, Toronto Branch and The Empire Club of Canada.

Ladies and gentlemen, will you please join me in welcoming Mr. Peter Mansbridge.

Peter Mansbridge

Let me start by thanking The Empire Club of Canada and The Royal Commonwealth Society for their invitation

today. It's an honour for me to speak here--to share some of my thoughts on this your annual Canada Day luncheon. I want to speak today about Canada and why we should feel confident about the future.

As you know a lot of people weren't confident about the future last fall. This country, this continent, in fact most of the world was shaken by the events of last September. They affected us all and made us worried and concerned about the future. Some of us still are.

It is almost impossible for me to appear at an engagement these days and not be asked about September 11. And while I intend to talk mostly about Canada and the future it's not very difficult to link the two themes.

Let me begin by reading you part of a passage from a magazine. It starts this way: "Calamity, awful and complete, overwhelmed a modern city in one searing instant. Thousands of people died terrible deaths. It was more sudden, more spectacular and far more dreadful than the San Francisco Earthquake or the Chicago Fire." That sounds like a vivid description of New York City on September 11, 2001. But it is not.

It is a description of Halifax on December 6, 1917. It is from Maclean's magazine. It is a description of the Halifax Explosion. Two ships collided in the harbour that day--one of them loaded with tons of explosives--ammunition meant for the front line of the First World War.

The New York disaster was, of course, a work of treachery beyond human understanding. Halifax was an accident--caused by a ship turning the wrong way. But there are some remarkable similarities.

In New York, the planes hit and then a mad evacuation began--a frantic race to get out of the towers before they imploded. In Halifax, the ships hit--and again there was time to run. The ammunition ship didn't explode for 22 minutes. But just as in New York, there were heroes running towards the trouble--not away from it.

The people of Halifax saw a horse-drawn fire engine moving toward pier 8 that morning. No particle of those firemen or their horses was ever seen again. A horse collar--stamped with the letters HFD--was later found on the roof of a building three kilometres away. The fire chief of Halifax and his deputy chief were killed when the explosion lifted their car from the road and then smashed it back down.

I wonder why so few of us remember anything about the heroes of December 6, 1917. Vincent Coleman for example. Does anyone in this room know about him? Do any Canadian school children know about him? He was a telegraph operator in Halifax on December 6, 1917. He saw the ammunition ship "Mont Blanc" drifting toward the shore. He saw flames leaping out from its hull. And he knew what it meant.

But instead of trying to save himself, he began tapping out a message. "Ammunition ship is on fire and is making for pier eight." Those were the first words that reached the outside world of the impending disaster. They may have caused the first stirrings of the rescue effort. And if you doubt that Vincent Coleman understood the consequences of tapping out those words instead of getting away, you can erase those doubts. The last words he transmitted make it clear that he understood, the words "good bye." No one ever saw Vincent Coleman on this earth ever again.

His story and the Halifax Explosion story as a whole tell us a lot about our country. Because we don't know about them, we often fail to honour our past, which diminishes our regard for the present, and could cripple our ability to be confident about the future.

I want to get to that future in a minute. But first I'd like to take you back to the 20th century. Some would argue that for Canada, the 20th century began in 1896. That's when Wilfrid Laurier was elected prime minister. And it seemed to herald the end of a difficult economic period

and the start of a new prosperous period. It was, of course, Laurier, who uttered the prediction that has haunted us as Canadians for 100 years. "The twentieth century," he said, "would belong to Canada."

The general consensus is that he was wrong. The century did not belong to us. And because we did not live up to Laurier's vision, some reach the conclusion that the last 100 years added up to a failed century. But I wonder if our peculiar Canadian habit of seeing only the downside of things has clouded the picture. Because I don't think it was a failed century.

Imagine for a moment that this isn't June of 2002. Imagine that it is June of 1902--exactly 100 years ago. You'd be living in a country of fewer than six million people. The West, virtually uninhabited; Newfoundland, another country.

But you wouldn't be pessimistic. You'd have to be feeling that you were living in an age of wonder, a world of wonder, when so much was possible. Canada's first overseas war had just ended. The treaty to end the Boer War was signed in May. There is nothing happy about war of course, but the end meant the boys were coming home. There was a gold rush in the Klondike. A man named Marconi transmitted telegraphic radio messages across an ocean--from England to Newfoundland. Gauguin created "Riders on the Beach." Arthur Conan Doyle published "The Hound of the Baskervilles." Joseph Conrad took the world to the "Heart of Darkness."

Things were so progressive, so ultra-modern that the head of the U.S. Patent Office, a man named Charles Duell, was moved to observe that, "Everything that can be invented, has been invented."

He was wrong. Within a decade Canadians would hear about two brothers named Orville and Wilbur fulfilling the dreams of the ancients by building a machine to allow humans to fly. A man named Frederick Walker Baldwin would become the first Canadian to fly an aircraft.

Someone would complete the first crossing of North America by car in just 65 days. If you were really on the cutting edge, you could write your thoughts on paper using a brand new invention--the fountain pen.

Look at us 100 years later. Not radio messages across an ocean, but pictures and sound, instantly, around the world. Not a few metres off the ground for a few seconds, but constructing superstructures in space, conquerors of the moon and dreaming of Mars. Not 65 days to drive across a continent in an unreliable automobile, but the common car that has given us individual freedom of movement unheard of by our grandparents. Not a leaky fountain pen, but modern computers that let us send word to, and receive words from, anywhere on the planet.

We are vastly better off in material goods, in creature comforts and in the tools that allow us to explore our humanity. But what about that humanity? What kind of people are we Canadians in 2002?

Well, not too long ago, a beer commercial seemed to strike a certain chord among us. Joe Canadian going on a rant about what a terrific people we are, but able to do it only by comparing us to Americans--and by railing against their stereotypes of us. We aren't all loggers. We don't eat blubber. We're good at hockey.

Now I don't want to take this too far. I suppose the commercial was funny and maybe that's all there is to it. But the Minister of Heritage took it to a conference in Boston. And Canadians from coast to coast seemed to think it had really hit the nail on the head.

I think in some ways it was more sad than funny. Can you imagine a U.S. beer commercial making a big deal about not all Americans wearing 10-gallon hats, not all Americans singing Yankee Doodle and they're all really good at baseball.

Of course not. They'd be talking about their heroes. Their legends. Their heritage.

We should do that too. For example, 100 years ago Canada was molding some remarkable men and women. There was Emily Murphy. Thirty-four years old. Proving herself over and over until she would become the first female judge in Canada and the entire British Empire. Maude Abbott. Thirty-three years old. Studying and researching until she would be recognized as a world authority on congenital heart disease.

Clarence Hincks. Seventeen years old. One day he would visit what they called a "home for the incurable," a place of horrors for the mentally ill. He would be so appalled at what he saw, that he would create the Canadian Mental Health Association, dedicated to training doctors and promoting education on mental health issues.

Agnes Macphail. A 12 year old. She would become the first female Member of Parliament. And she would do that by overcoming some determined resistance. She would be heckled without mercy, but she would keep her wits about her and win most battles. At one rally, a heckler shouted, "Don't you ever wish you were a man?" and Agnes Macphail looked at him and said, "Yes, don't you?"

There was an eleven year old named Fred Banting living on a farm in Ontario with his parents and five older brothers and sisters. He would grow up to make one of the most important discoveries in medical history--insulin--which saved literally millions of lives.

And a five-year-old toddler in 1902. His name Lester Pearson. He'd grow up to win a Nobel Peace prize and become Prime Minister.

Not one of them--not one--contributed to a failed century.

In the last decade of the last century I had the distinct honour of covering the 50th anniversary of D-Day, and the 50th anniversary of VE Day. We did the D-Day anniversary from France. VE Day from Holland. On each occasion, I walked through cemeteries where Canadian soldiers are buried. Row after row after row. And I felt as if I owed it to each person buried there to read the inscription on their tombstone.

But after a while it became too difficult. Every tombstone had an elementary mathematical calculation staring at you. Subtract the year of birth from the year of death. Inevitably the answer was far too small. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen. Sometimes a little higher. You cannot help but choke with emotion.

I was as happy as the next person a couple of months ago when our hockey teams won gold at the Winter Olympics. But I find it a bit uncomfortable when we as Canadians choose the word "hero" to describe those players. If they are heroes for playing a game with a maple leaf on their sweaters, then what word can we reserve for those who lie in foreign cemeteries with a maple leaf on their headstones?

An American who anchors a nightly newscast, Tom Brokaw of NBC, wrote a book about Americans of the World-War-Two era. It's called "The Greatest Generation." There's one story that I find particularly poignant. It's the year after the war, and a veteran comes into the post office run by Tom's mother.

They get around to chatting about teenagers and the veteran has some observations about their rowdiness. Tom's mother says, "C'mon now. What were you doing at seventeen?"

And the veteran says, "I was landing at Guadalcanal." Thousands of Canadians could answer with similar sentiments. Some of them are in this room right now. They landed at Hong Kong. And Moro. And Normandy. And Apeldoorn.

Not one of them--not one--contributed to a failed century.

So in these new days of a new century, we must recognize the shining examples of our past and then build on our success. This country is nurturing a new generation

of innovators, humanitarians, even politicians who will make us better. To believe otherwise is to ignore what we have accomplished--and to surrender to a pessimism unworthy of a great nation.

My job and your job is to help the future arrive. We must recognize good ideas, give them room to grow and the encouragement and the support to grow as well.

Not everyone can find the cure for cancer.

Not everyone can invent the rocket that will take us to Mars and beyond.

Not everyone will build a shelter for orphans in Africa. Not everyone can develop a safer car.

But some Canadians can. And it is your job, and it is my job, to encourage them.

It is no sin to be what most of us are. Decent, hard-working, tax-paying Canadians. The sin is in believing that that is enough. That if you look after yourself, and your family, you have made your contribution.

I don't think it is enough. We can give more. We owe it to the society that produced us. I think we have to remain open to the greatness of others. To encourage and promote risk-taking. To recognize a person who has an idea that has potential--however slim. To be positive about our shared future--not negative or cynical.

After what happened on September 11, many of us have found it difficult to look ahead with optimism.

But we should look ahead with confidence. That is what human beings were meant to do. We were meant to have courage, and determination, and spirit. We were meant to teach our children that life is good. And we were meant to teach them that they can make it better.

Robertson Davies once said that Canada is not a country you love. It's a country you worry about. He was right. I certainly worry about it. I worry that we may become a timid people. I worry that so many of us are unaware of the greatness of our past, that we may be doomed to believe that we cannot be great in the future.

And I know how sad that would be. We have a country that has taken giant steps in the last 100 years. We have a country overflowing in riches. We have a country with no obvious enemies. It's likely that Canada can be destroyed only by the most unlikely of sources. By Canadians.

But I don't believe it will happen. I take heart in the fact that Canadians have always risen to the challenge. And I'm sure we won't disappoint those who have walked here before us.

In another 11 days it will be Canada Day. Let's remember our past, celebrate our present, and be confident about the future. Thank you.

The appreciation of the meeting was expressed by Ann Curran, President, 'The Empire Club of Canada and President, Curran Corporate Advisors Inc.

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, there is an interesting parallel between the Commonwealth Essay Competition and our speaker today.

The essay competition inspires thousands of young writers each year. It motivates and stimulates them to think about local and global issues and achieve high academic standards.

Mr. Mansbridge, your speech today was also very inspiring, motivating us and all our television viewers to think about local and global issues and achieve high journalistic standards. Thank you for sharing your views and helping us celebrate our Canada Day Luncheon.

Mr. Mansbridge, every year The Empire Club Foundation publishes a book of that year's speeches. We would like you to accept a copy of a book from a previous year as a token of our appreciation, noting that your address will be in this year's issue.