"Canada's Obama"

First off, I'd like to apologise for the unbelievably long break between posts. First Christmas kept me busy, and then I came down with one hellacious cold that kept me off-kilter for most of January. The last month or so I've been kept quite busy with a teaching placement that runs through March. Between teaching, grading, and lesson planning I've found myself pretty drained and frankly couldn't think of anything interesting to write. But I'm back and I'm going to try and post regularly again.

One thing I've found challenging about teaching history to (mostly) first and second generation Canadian teenagers is how to make it relevant to their lives. Most of the things I'm talking about happened almost a hundred years ago in a Canada that looks drastically different from today. So in casting about for a way to explain why Wilfrid Laurier was such a transformational figure in Canadian history, and not just the dude on the $5 bill, I hit upon the idea of Laurier as Canada's Obama. Upon further reflection, I think that it's a fairly good way to explain both Laurier and major cleavages in Canadian history.

Like Obama, Laurier was an exceptionally sauve and debonair politician. He was a natural charmer who sought to elevate the tone of discussion - while Obama urged Americans to "be the Change you want to see", Laurier eschewed "stormy confrontations" in favour of "the sunny ways" of compromise.

[Laurier's "sunny ways" comes from the fable about the Wind and the Sun, who get into an argument over who is more powerful. They see a man walking down a path and they decide that whomever can get the man to remove his coat will be the strongest. The wind goes first and he blows as strong as he can, hoping that it will blow the coat off the man. Instead it only makes the man pull his coat tighter against himself. The sun's turn is next and he simply decides to smile on the man. As he smiles broader and broader it gets warmer and warmer and soon enough, the man takes his coat off. The wind had to concede that for all his bluster, he was unable to get the man to do what the sun did by being pleasant.]

Laurier also had the knack of being all things to all people. This no doubt was due to times in which he lived. Media not being what it is today, he could be the ardent defender of French Canada when speaking in Quebec while being the voice of reasonable accommodation to English Canada. Canada really was a nation of "two solitudes" at the turn of the 20th Century - the English and French were deeply suspicious of each other, a suspicion that was born of ignorance for the most part.

During the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary I read an article in the Globe and Mail (one that I cannot find online alas) arguing that the success of Obama and Clinton prove that the United States is actually much more progressive than Canada as all the major Canadian parties were led by white men. I felt then that it was a pretty unfair article, not only because women have led two federal parties in the last 20 years (Campbell, McLaughlin and McDonagh) and that visible minorities have made exceptional strides in Canadian elections since 1960 - when immigration from non-caucasian countries began in earnest, but because it completely ignored the historical differences between Canada and the United States.

Having an African American win the Presidency is a big deal not by the simple fact that he is African American. It's a big deal because of that country's history with racial tension. I'd argue that an African Canadian Prime Minister would be far less transformational - Canada's history simply doesn't have the same level of racial acrimony. Slavery was never much of an issue and there certainly has never been anything akin to Jim Crow in Canada. (Now an Aboriginal Prime Minister...that would be something)

Instead of race, the major social cleavages in Canada were language and religion. In both these instances, Laurier was on the wrong side of the equation. Being a French Canadian Catholic in 1900 very much meant that the odds for electoral success were stacked against you. Remember that this was a time when the Orange Order held considerable (and very public) influence. That Laurier was able to thread the needle and convince English Canada that he was not a Papist conspirator who would be beholden to Rome over Canada was entirely due to his skills as an orator and politician. Winning four consecutive majorities in this environment is astounding.

No wonder he's on the five dollar bill.