Thank God 2016 is finally over. Let us work to find a better world in 2017 - Michael's essay

Well, thank God 2016 is finally over and done with.

It was a terrible year, truly an annus horribilis, a plague year, a Lord of the Flies year, a time when political pestilence and death seemed to cover the earth, a second ozone layer of fear and distrust.

It was a year of lying and shouting. A time when what was factual was distorted until reality and its first cousin, truth, were as rare as snow in August.

In November, the prophetic warnings of American warrior president Dwight Eisenhower about the dangers of a military/industrial complex in the United States found fulfillment in the election of a Donald Trump administration.

The government of our closest neighbour will be firmly controlled by generals and Wall Street, specifically the all-powerful Goldman Sachs.

World-wide, the year claimed whatever remnants of public civility remained. Political opponents became enemies who had to be destroyed.

And while politics was becoming a toxic fog, we lost so many good and important people: Gordie Howe, Leonard Cohen, Harper Lee, Elie Wiesel, Warren Allmand, Mohammed Ali, Neville Marriner, Gwen Ifill, David Bowie, Brian Bedford, so many more.

There were some benign patches of good news here and there; people continued to fall in love; poverty in many parts of Africa declined; children were born and stayed healthy; the Queen, bless her, turned 90 and the number of tigers in the world increased for the first time in 100 years.

That was then, this is now and new. Surely the coming year can't be worse than its unlamented predecessor. 
There will be four roller coaster years of the Trump ascendancy of course, and Europe will continue to wrestle with its conscience.

We will have wars and hunger and the wretched of the earth will continue to cross artificial boundaries looking for safe haven. And many times will be turned away.

Nevertheless, there is a nagging sliver of hope that perhaps Canadians will have something approaching a good year.

We've never had a civil war or even come close. We kill each other at the rate of about 600 a year which isn't very much. In fact we have low crime rates across all sectors.- Michael Enright

In 1971, the academic and politician William Kilbourn wrote a book about Canada. He called it A Guide to the Peaceable Kingdom.

The title was apposite then and it holds true almost half a century later. We are still a peaceable kingdom.

We've never had a civil war or even come close. We kill each other at the rate of about 600 a year, which isn't very much. In fact, we have low crime rates across all sectors.

We try to be decent toward one another; we readily apologize even when apologies aren't necessary.

We try to take care of each other when we're sick. We have one of the most generous and envied immigration programs in the world. We try to accept people as they are.

Politically, we seem to have a government whose policies run against the tides of protectionism, rabid nationalism and xenophobia.

Which is not to say we are perfect. Our treatment of Aboriginal people in the years after we stole their land was and continues to be, appalling.

There is racism is our culture. There is anti-Semitism, religious bigotry, ethnic hatred in pockets of our society.  There always have been, there always will be.  

But as a society we don't do hate very well. Hate takes hard work. It consumes energy. It becomes the centre of a person's life. Canadians don't like the idea of giving themselves over to constant driving hatred.

The World Happiness Report for 2016 records Canada as the sixth happiest country in the world, inevitably behind the Scandinavians.

How do we maintain our peaceable standing in 2017, and work to find a better world?

In a year-end essay, the novelist Zadie Smith compared the turmoil in the world to dissonant orchestral music, mean, banal melodies redolent of another era conducted by demagogues.

"Those of us who remember a finer music must try now to play it and encourage others, if we can, to sing along."

Click the button above to hear Michael's essay.