Issue No. 601
Culture
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29 August - 4 Sept. 2002 Issue No. 601 Culture |
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Plain Talk
I have always enjoyed reading about the lives of great men, be it in autobiographies or biographies. And what I mean by great men are those who are not only remembered by history but who made it, who have left indelible marks, not only on the history of their countries but on that of the world.
Winston Churchill is one such great man. Reading the books he wrote or the books written about him one cannot but admire him in spite of his flaring colonialist sentiments.
Another leader who will go down in the annals of history is Pierre Elliot Trudeau, the Canadian leader who won the federal premiership three times from 1968 to 1984.
I had the pleasure of meeting him twice, the first time at the end of 1979 during a congress in Ottawa and Montreal. I had an opportunity of hearing him over three days as he explained his concept of "a just society", the motto of his election campaign. And during his years in power Trudeau managed to make his motto a reality.
The second meeting with him was in 1986 at yet another congress, this time a PEN Congress convened in New York Trudeau was a guest of honour and in his speech he expressed his support for the Palestinian cause. In reaction to his remarks a number of American writers walked out of the meeting. Again I had a chance to talk with him during the week of the congress, mostly about Palestine and Egypt.
During a recent visit to Canada I had the opportunity to see for myself the workings of the just society of which Trudeau dreamed. I was assisted in this journey of discovery, as it were, by a wonderful collection of essays, co-edited by Thomas S Axworthy, principal secretary to Prime Minister Trudeau from 1981 to 1984, and by Trudeau himself.
"History is never neutral," the editors write in their brief introduction. "Values are prisms through which are refracted events, personalities and causes. 'Historical facts,' Carl Becker writes, are not out there in the world of the past, but in here, in the mind of the historian... what is true for the historian is doubly so for the engaged participants."
The contributors to this book were engaged participants, collaborators who had important roles to play, as cabinet ministers, public officials or political advisors. The book is a biography, not of a leader, but of a period of change in Canada. It describes a voyage that the contributors made together.
I like one quote in the book that describes Canada's international role. "We began," wrote Trudeau, "by reminding ourselves that we are, perhaps, more the largest of the small powers, than the smallest of the large powers. We shouldn't be trying to run the world, we should be trying to make our country a good place."
Trudeau believed that change has an overwhelming impact on peoples' lives and that every politician in every society has to adjust to change. What Trudeau's book tries to demonstrate is "that we tried to be a government of ideas".
In the years between 1968 and 1984 Canadians witnessed the changing international balance of power, a transformed economic paradigm, an information explosion of global proportions, the emergence of a new definition of the role of women, the birth of environmentalism, the rise of multi- culturalism, the sustained impact of the baby boom in education, jobs and housing. It was a turbulent era in which to govern.
"For ourselves," Trudeau ends his introduction, "the goal of a just society -- a humane, caring, freedom loving society of many peoples, traditions and beliefs -- it still a beacon that compels us forward. Our hopes were perhaps too vast. Our hopes were perhaps too high. Our abilities were perhaps too limited. But we say along with Robert Browning that 'a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what is a heaven for?'
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