To Canada's graduating classes of 2017 - Michael's essay

Some scattered notes to the graduates of 2017.

Jacques Cartier sailed into the mouth of the St. Lawrence River on June 9th, 1534, took one look around and pronounced the real estate "the land God gave to Cain."

Meaning, in the French, "get me outta here."

His countryman, Voltaire, the Gore Vidal of his time, went one further. Canada, he quipped, was just "quelques arpents de neige." A few acres of snow.

A couple of hundred years later, smarty-pants American writer and editor Michael Kinsley, christened the most boring headline in the history of journalism: "Worthwhile Canadian initiative." 

For 150 years now we have been called cold, boring, timid, unemotional and unfriendly.

We have come through these insults and more with a quiet, even deferential equanimity.

So perhaps as you step into our northern world, you might look into the national ledger and check the debits and assets.

It will fall to you to expand the asset side of the ledger. It is a never-ending job.- Michael Enright

A few things to feel good about:

We may dislike our politicians with a white hot  intensity but we don't shoot them.

And it is hard to buy a gun in this country, unlike in the U.S. where 19 children a day are shot.

We tend to take small things seriously and large things lightly.

We absorb in great numbers the wretched of the earth, whether boat people or Syrians.

In our major cities, you can jaywalk in front of a cop, smile and get a smile back.

People still read print books on buses and subways.

And when they come to visit in the winter, people take their shoes off.

Insulin and Christopher Plummer.

Motorcycle riders, except Harley owners, wave to each other as they pass on the highway.

Yes, we apologize when we don't need to but whom does that hurt?

There are only four International House of Pancakes restaurants in the country.

On the other side of the ledger, the debit side, here are some not so good things about the place.

We may profess our love for the environment but Canadians are in the top ten of the world's worst energy gluttons, year after year.

More than half the population is female, yet women continue to be underrepresented in government, big business, the military, science and technology.

Toronto drivers are the worst in the country.

Our treatment of First Nations people is a crime against humanity that cries to heaven for justice.

We don't vote in significant numbers.

Like every upstanding Victorian, we step around and over the homeless sleeping in our streets.

We are slow to organize, protest or demonstrate over issues like systemic racism.

We turn our heads from the appalling inhumanity of our prison system.

We can't for the life of us seem to be able to make a world-shattering movie.

In the coming years and decades after this graduation ceremony, you will be carrying out your own surveys of the good and bad in this country.

And it will fall to you to expand the asset side of the ledger. It is a never-ending job.

You are in effect composing a symphony which will never have a coda. Or building a house that will never be finished.

Over to you. 

Click 'listen' above to hear Michael's essay.