Our way

It was 1964. August. Canada was a different place. A mother (mine) would allow her 15-year-old kid to hitchhike 500 km then go solo into the vortex of a bitter national debate.

Off I went. Hoping to live some history. Never anticipating what would happen.

That summer Parliament was an ugly, riotous, angry and divisive house. On one side Conservatives fought for tradition, heritage, continuity and identity. On the other, Liberals argued Canada should be modern, post-colonial, independent and open. At issue was a piece of cloth. The national flag.

Con leader and former PM John Diefenbaker thundered across the Commons that the flag should honour British roots and the Commonwealth, retaining a union jack – as did the red ensign then flying. Prime minister Lester Pearson was adamant the time for colonialism was past and the flag be designed so everyone could salute it. For six months the argument paralyzed government and gripped the nation – until it was finally decided by the draconian act of closure two weeks before Christmas, and four months after I walked under the Peace Tower.

In my pocket that night was a piece of paper with one name on it. Frank Fane.

My job was to find this guy when I arrived – a backbench member of the Conservative caucus from a backwater Alberta riding (Vegreville) that my father had befriended through his service club work (Rotary). Finally, I did. Knocked on his door in the West Block, and he agreed to be my guide. A squat, bespeckled man, Fane was a farmer-politician who had served as a Captain in the 10th Battalion of the Canadian army during the Great War.

He got me a seat next day in the public gallery overlooking the desks of MPs on the floor of the House of Commons. There was no television in Parliament then. Nobody played to the cameras. The place was packed. The speeches were passionate and profound. Dief and Pearson went at each other like unleashed dogs. I loved it.

On the third day Frank took me to lunch. ‘Let’s go to the Parliamentary restaurant,’ he said. And up we went in the Centre Block to a room with waiters in white gloves, patrons in business attire, rows of gothic windows and tables full of the very politicians I’d just watched doing battle over a flag. They ate together.

Then I saw Diefenbaker, with his jowls, white mane and hulking presence. Frank took me to his table. The 70-year-old leader growled, “Sit down, boy” – more a command than an invitation. And for an hour I heard about nationhood, patriotism, devotion, duty and the inherent evil that lurks and breeds in the bosom of liberals. “I would die for this cause,” he uttered.

Well, Dief lost. The final vote was 163 to 78 to adopt a red-and-white banner with a maple leaf in the middle. No coat of arms. No union jack. No fleur-de-lis, bison, fish, stalks of grain, mountains or flowers. Then new flag was proclaimed by Her Majesty a few weeks later and unfurled officially in mid-February of ’65.

Twenty-four years later I stepped onto the green carpet in the Commons and made my way to my desk (in the back row). Diefenbaker had died eight years earlier. Pearson passed eight years before that. I was an MP now. There was absolutely no debate about what the flag should be, yet we were enmeshed in a new crisis: free trade with the Americans.

Now the Liberals were protectionist, saying it would erase then border. Conservatives argued we needed to modernize, bury the past and expand the economy. And I was in the middle. Not in the public gallery, looking down. Thinking about duty. The Liberals were led by fiery John Turner (no relation). “This,” he said, his blue eyes flashing, “is the fight of my life.”

Now we have a flag nobody shuns. We have the prosperity and growth that trade brought. We go through elections that no one doubts, elect politicians nobody shoots at and a history of leaders who care far more about the nation than they do themselves. Past PMs do not get a lifetime Secret Service security squad and armada of black SUVs as former US presidents do. They’re just people who cared, stood up a cause and found a way to move on through compromise. Thus far we have resisted the toxicity of public life south of us.

Five years ago in the byzantine Path beneath Toronto’s financial towers, I came across John Turner. He was struggling to get his wheelchair up a ramp as throngs of office workers, unseeing, hustled by the 90-year-old. Once up, he turned to me and said, “Thank you, sir.”

“No, prime minister, it is my honour.”

Source: https://www.greaterfool.ca/2024/07/01/our-way/