To quote one of my very favourites, K'naan, "until the lion learns to speak the tales of hunting will be weak".

Well, the lion may not be speaking yet, but with the video below, it sure is discovering cadence. Thunder Bay is a gem in the rough of northern Ontario. It has, for far too long, been a sleeping giant at the foot of the Sleeping Giant. Still, those who call it home are fiercely proud and loyal. It might well "learn to speak some day", and take its place as more than a middling city in the near north of the True North.

So it is that with the flourish of a ceremony distinctly Canadian, our podium season has come to an end. We stood proud, we stood tall, and perhaps most important of all, we surprised ourselves and the world. High was our resolve, and high was the result of the same. To create a policy categorically dedicated to excellence was audacious. The questions were obvious. What if we fall short? What if we only get to own the podium in the sense that we provide the softwood that goes into building it? Those questions certainly came early, and came hard. Still, the truth is that to refrain from dreaming is to stagnate. Own The Podium was about well placed audacity, and at the close of it all, stagnation was far from Vancouver, records had instead been broken.

What then, is the lesson we must take from our athletes? I would hazard that there are many. From triumph over adversity to the psychology that simply says "giver 'er"; from never shying away from a face-off to having the temerity to battle back from the brink; from knowing that your best if often far above the point pegged in your mind to taking on mountains, our athletes have thought us to set high bars and then take them on.

The scope of what we are yet to achieve as a nation is breath-taking, and we can achieve all of it through a culture that mixes excellence with humility, aplomb with compassion. Ours is the true north, strong and free, and there is strength and freedom enough for much good within and beyond our shores.

It's amazing how actions can truly have unintended consequences. According to at least one commentator, the result of Jean Chretien's party and election financing reforms, in which he replaced corporate donations with a tax-payer funded subsidy, has been increased acrimony in out national politics.

The logic goes something like this: the tax-payer funded subsidy has been a boon to political parties, with higher amounts granted compared to what they typically got from corporate donations, and the result is that they can now staff full, standing war rooms, and launch adversarial advertising, regardless of whether we are in the middle of an election or not. In other words, in the new world, the spin is constant, and it is crowding out debate on real issues.

According to that logic, what was intended to eliminate reliance on corporations and the resulting pressure to act in their interests has merely resulted in cheap access for corporations (who hire lobbyists in any event), and an atmosphere of constant spin and acrimony.

The result of all that spin and acrimony is our season of discontent. According to one study, which I believe very few people will argue with, the level of trust in our politicians and in the institutions within which they function is in steep decline.

Canada needs a new political culture, an approach to government that is truly "good", and truly vested in the interests of citizens rather than of politicians and the current approach to politics. We need citizens in Ottawa, not politicians; citizens interested in fashioning a bold new reality; citizens unwilling to buy into the perspective that one party is always right and the other is always wrong; citizens determined to fashion a Canada that will be a beacon of peace, order and good government for all the world.

At the end of our season of discontent, for it is but a season, must come a greater Canada - the dominion of the citizen.

Work-Week: Monday, January 18 to Thursday, January 21, 2010

Perhaps there is a reason words like "fate" and "serendipity" exist in language. After all, who would have considered that Haiti would face its darkest hour at a time when Canada's Governor General is of Haitian extraction? It is surely a good footnote to a harrowing narrative that she can urge, in the interest of humanity, the bringing to bear of the tools of state. The heart of many, including mine, go out to those suffering through the aftermath of the earthquake, and so I must make a small departure and urge the giving of donations to preferred charities aiding in the relief effort.

In this instance, serendipity has had the side-effect of bringing to the fore an ever-present but unspoken question within the Canadian mosaic. For, when the full scale of the destruction in Haiti sunk in, Canada's Governor General was in the midst of performing her duties, and duty dictated that she give a live, televised address. As a person of Haitian extraction, Michaelle Jean cried on camera for a beloved country, and in so doing she sparked a bit of a debate, for that country was not Canada.

The debate, of course, revolves around that earlier-mentioned ever-present but unspoken question within the Canadian mosaic - with regard to their adopted country, how should the affinity of immigrant Canadians lie?

Notice the intentional use of the word "how". It is clear that the affinity can lie in various ways. There are those who would assert that all must be Canadian singly, only. Others would assert that all must be Canadian first, everything else second. Yet others would assert an open duality - Canadian and anything else that defines you, placed free of strata.

The beauty of Canada, of course, is that it's all possible. In all frankness, Canada's "live and let live", Canada's "welcome and be happy", is more a unique strength than a basic norm on this planet.

Carefully considered, we are a strong confederation, made up of many identities, some ages old, others relatively younger, all striving for dignity in a peaceable kingdom at the end of the earth. We are Dene and Metis and English and Japanese and Quebecois and Zulu and Anishinabek and Jewish and Newfoundlander and Italian and  Arabic and Ashanti and Finnish and so much more.  We are the planet enfolding itself in grace. We have three founding strains - English, French and Aboriginal - and many later strains besides. Some identities occupy an entire province or territory, others are enveloped within them; some are concentrated geographically, others are dispersed over great plains and across the Canadian shield and throughout the rockies and the tundra and all over the maritimes. 

The question asked above, then, is one that is only relevant when identity calls upon a Canadian to consider an affinity that isn't fully, entirely, expressed within the geographic confines of Canada.

That is, it is a question that can only be asked of immigrants, and those who actively identify as the children of immigrants.

It highlights a difference that is the point of departure between the Canadian with an affinity towards the lands of the Akaitcho in the north of this northern land, and one with an affinity towards Haiti. It truly underscores a point at which the idea of identity comes into contact with the idea of sovereignty.

In essence, the question asked is this: if a Canadian can point to elements of identity nestled under a different sovereign, do we have a problem or is our confederation stronger yet for it? I would argue the latter. Further, what if that Canadian is in fact the closest Canada has to a resident sovereign? I would argue we then must be strongest of all, for we must have in some measure transcended the parochial ties that have for long made a ruin of much of the earth. Perhaps a precarious transcendency in a number of ways, and for reasons beyond the object of this mini treatise, but transcendency nonetheless. Michaelle Jean did not abdicate her Canadian identity because she wept for Haiti. It can in fact he asserted that she affirmed it. Such is the strength and the beauty of Canada.

Ultimately, what Canada fosters is choice in identity, which must be secured against the bedrock of an affinity towards Canada itself. It is an affinity towards an idea, expressed geographically, and given utterance in the spellbinding ideals of "peace, order and good government". All those who exercise that secured choice can rejoice in this, our peaceable kingdom, without let or hinderance, without retort regarding loyalties.

Finally, while I will assert that Michaelle Jean is as free as any other Canadian to navigate her identities and exercise her "secured choice", I must indicate my own, very personal partiality towards the idea that my affinity must strongly lie with the land that has opened up so much to me by way of opportunity. My exercise of the "secured choice" makes me overwhelmingly Canadian, with all else occurring by default, but occurring nonetheless.