I can buy into this if it means ending precious localism while recognizing each part as equally valid:
"No more solitudes" is the motto Michaëlle Jean has chosen to launch herself as Canada's first black Governor-General, with a ceremony that turned the normally staid Parliament Hill into a lively street festival. Jean's installation and debut address to the nation yesterday left little doubt about the stamp she wants to put on her office — a governor-general with an edge, in a nation without borders, language or otherwise. Declaring that Canada is no longer a nation simply of the traditional "two solitudes" between French and English, Jean simultaneously fired back at doubters of her federalist credentials, and cast her eyes ahead to the kind of Canada over which she would like to preside for the next five years. And she called Canada a place where the dreams of millions of people have come true, including hers.One of the saddest moments for my country came when I was listening to someone well placed in Ottawa describe their embarassment and even anger with Newfoundland after the Meech Lake Accord failed to pass. Apparently, however, after they learned there was a French Acadian presence in the province, it somehow changed things for them. Only the discovery of that key duality legitimized the province as being Canadian. I was now embarrassed - that the fact of Acadian being where it is was unknown to the person until then and that it was somehow a key to national participation. But then again, in another moment of contact with duality based Canadian Federalism, I was told by a highly placed leadership-type on the phone from Ottawa that my part in a conference was to speak for the youth of one of the two islands of Nova Scotia...I think it was the southern one. I brought maps when I flew into the national heart of darkness later that day.
Comments
Hans - September 28, 2005 11:08 am
I think too much of the 90s and 00s were focussed on identity politics such as what you describe. The idea that, because you were a youth from Nova Scotia, meant that you were to speak on behalf of that perspective (and only that perspective), is so limiting for the representative as well as those being represented. A form of identity politics is, ironically, what has helped to allow the continued ascendancy of the "right" in the USA. As we wrestle with electoral reform in PEI, we have to be mindful of the anti-democratic pitfalls that go along with identity politics. If "Briser les solitudes" means an end to parochialism in all its forms, then I welcome the new GG.
David Janes - September 28, 2005 12:07 pm
I always have a good laugh over the Meech Lake thing. When the failure of Meech is being presented as a good thing, Elijah Harper did it; when it's a bad thing, the Newfs did it.
Alan - September 28, 2005 12:07 pm
You will have to leave the enchanted forest if you keep that up, Hans.
SayNay? - September 28, 2005 12:37 pm
Not to nitpick but I was somewhat startled that Jean would somehow attempt to compare the displaced of New Orleans to what's been happening to the people of Darfur, and Niger - but particularly Darfur.