September 29, 2005
YOUR MOST EXCELLENT EXCELLENCY
Jean's siren song of freedom (Andrew Coyne, National Post, September 29th, 2005)
After the oath of allegiance, after the musical numbers, after the Prime Minister's introduction, I settled in to hear the new Governor-General deliver her first address to the nation, expecting to hear the usual banal bureaucratese, or worse, the coded appeals to regional and racial chauvinism -- sorry, diversity -- that have become the official language of Ottawa. Indeed, given her own past, I half expected some sly reference to the independence of small peoples or the like.I had not expected to hear the full-throated song of love to this country that in fact followed, a speech of heartbreaking sincerity and jaw-dropping boldness -- the most ringing endorsement of undifferentiated pan-Canadianism, I'm willing to guess, that the capital has heard in years. Nor could anyone have anticipated precisely how she would choose to convey her message, the points she emphasized, the words she preferred. The gesture of renouncing her French citizenship had been welcome enough. But the speech was note-perfect in tone, and transformative in content.
It was uplifting without being Pollyannaish, tender yet tough-minded, vigorous, audacious, even bellicose in spots.
In place of the usual gooey cliches of Canadian nationalism, the obsession with minor differences, the nursing of ancient grievances, the exaltation of some supposed national predisposition to statism, we heard an invocation of a different Canada, and a different Canadianism -- an older, meatier variety, before the Liberals and their bureaucratic accomplices went to work bleaching the life out of it. It was a speech, perhaps paradoxically, that only an immigrant could have given, or could get away with, for it spoke from and to the reality of the immigrant experience, of what immigrants really see in this country, and cherish about it. It is why they come here, and it is worlds away from what the mythmakers would have us believe about it.
The headline-making passage was, of course, her firm declaration that "the time of 'two solitudes' ... is past." This wasn't a fond hope. It was a brisk directive -- not only to the traditional divisions of French and English, but to "all the solitudes." We must learn, she said, "to see beyond our wounds, beyond our differences, for the good of all." Beyond our wounds? Beyond our differences? But, but ... what about the mosaic? What about the community of communities? What about the Canada "whose strength is its diversity," the Canada that issues weekly apologies for centuries-old slights, that spent 40 years turning itself inside out trying to meet the latest revision of Quebec's "historic demands"? Balls to that, said this descendant of slaves. Get over yourselves. "We must eliminate the spectre of all the solitudes and promote solidarity among all the citizens who make up the Canada of today."
It was quite the show-stopper, as one might expect from a speech that began: "My own story begins as a young child in another country, one 'draped in barbed wire from head to toe’...” In one week, this supposedly feckless and trendy journalist with putative separatist leanings has slammed multiculturalism, renounced her French citizenship and told the whole country to grow up. It reminds one of what completely escapes the anti-immigrant lobby–that without the energy, patriotism and clarity of vision born of near-spiritual gratitude of our immigrants, the Anglosphere would be atrophying like Europe.