Nick Noorani Website

The Society of Difference
I’m honoured to be delivering the 8th annual LaFontaine-Baldwin Lecture–a lecture which commemorates the two great reformers of Upper and Lower Canada, Louis Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin. These two men lived through the tumultuous decade from 1837, when the rebellions in both parts of Canada happened, to 1848 when the reforms actually took place. These reforms changed the way in which our society developed. These two men were French-Canadian and Anglo-Canadian and they managed to assert the right of people elected to do the governing and to put through democracy in place.
As John Ralston Saul pointed out in his first lecture eight years ago, “1848 was the moment when the very legitimacy of our society was switched from the colonial elites to the citizens.” That initial establishment of what we now call “responsible government” was not perfect by any means–the population were largely illiterate and poor. Women did not participate in the franchise. However, it was a start for something which was so critical to our history, happening at exactly the right time for us.

We could think perhaps that it was simply the union of reformers from English and French Canada. And in a superficial way, that is how it looks. But these two men were foresighted and determined. They looked into the future and saw what Canada could be if it took on its proper destiny. In his speech to the electors of Terrebonne (his riding in Quebec), he said in 1840 before the achievements of responsible government that there was a principle that would define Canada in the world: that immigration was and is first about citizenship. Because the ongoing creation of responsible government was an exercise in the creation of a civil society which implies the deepest meaning of the exercise of the powers of the citizen. LaFontaine said this:
“Canada is the land of our ancestors; it is our country as it must be the adopted country of the various populations which come from diverse portions of the Globe, to make their way into its vast forests as the future resting place of their families and their hopes. Like us, their paramount desire must be the happiness and prosperity of Canada, as the heritage which they should endeavour to transmit to their descendants in this young and hospitable country. Above all, their children must be like ourselves, CANADIANS.”
In that small paragraph are enunciated all the principles by which we as Canadians live in an immigrant society. It has never been enunciated better. Look at the key words in it–”adopted country”, “diverse portions of the globe”, “the future resting place”, “their paramount desire for the happiness and prosperity of Canada”, “this young and hospitable country”. When you parse that paragraph, you have everything that we have continued to live for in the next hundred and fifty years. It was never stated better and it should continue always to be our guiding light as we move further into the 21st century and see the logical evolution that has taken place because of our fundamental belief in what was first enunciated by Louis LaFontaine.
http://www.lafontaine-baldwin.com/speeches/adrienne-clarkson-vancouver-2007/