“A Fair Country” - part 2
Part II of John Ralston Saul’s A Fair Country is titled Peace, Fairness, and Good Government.
It’s a play on the phrase Peace, Order and Good Government which appears in the Confederation-enshrining Constitution Act of 1867. The phrase — an eminently pragmatic aspirational ideal — appears in many Commonwealth Independence documents.
A major point of Part II is Saul’s argument that the phrase was originally and consistently Peace, Welfare and Good Government. That’s the welfare-of-the-people, as in the English wellbeing, the French bien-etre, the classical Greek eudaimonia. Saul notes this spirit is reflected in First Nations expression of the common bowl — an earthier analogue to the English term of the ‘commonwealth’.
I wish I could include vocabulary from the local First Nations — as they surely (like all cultures) had expression for such ideals — but I can’t. Which is unfortunate in light of Canada’s innate Metis (Aboriginal & European) nature.
A passage from chapter 61 of the Tao Te Ching also seems relevant. Using the Mitchell translation,
If a nation is centred in the Tao,
if it nourishes its own people
and doesn’t meddle in the affairs of others,
it will be a light to the world.
More so than any other country, Canada embodies this Tao-centredness — though in past decades our elites have been dismantling the social support systems which allowed us to nourish the vulnerable among us. While other countries (the Nordic ones come to mind) do a better job of “nourishing” I’d still give Canada the advantage because of our openness to immigrants, most (3/4) of whom aren’t skilled people poached from the majority world, or “developing countries” as they’re often paternalistically referred to. And over 80% of our immigrants become citizens, which must mean we’re doing something right. And indeed, that the world’s races and peoples can all come together co-operatively in Canada, in a diverse mosaic of human tradition and culture — is a beacon of hope for the future of a populous world.
Facts from Part 2 that stood out for me included that:
- Canadian suffrage rates were higher in the 19th century than Britain; we were more democratic than the mother country!
- the concept of Social Equality was central to the Fathers (and Forefathers) of Confederation, as evidenced by Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine’s Address to the Electors of Terrebonne:
“…Social Equality must necessarily bring us our Political Liberty… No privileged caste, beyond and above the mass of the people, can exist in Canada.”
The Gracchi would’ve been proud — LaFontaine linked political liberty with social equality four times in that speech. 
- as noted in an earlier blog entry, Black Loyalists from the US eventually left Nova Scotia to resettle in Sierra Leone — decades before American blacks went to Liberia.
- when the Ku Klux Klan tried to organize on the Prairies in the 1930’s its target weren’t African-Canadians, but immigrants — and particularly pacifist groups like the Mennonites (!!)