Not Dead ... Not Yet (A Father's Day Reflection)

My father’s friendship with Lester Pearson was reflective in nature, and sporadic.  A relationship that began in the Second World War ebbed and flowed over the ensuing years, yet was remarkable for its tenacity.  Being young during most of his visits to Calgary, I sadly can only recall some faint whispers of the conversations that were as entrancing as they were difficult to fully comprehend.  It was never politics they discussed but diplomacy.  Lester Pearson tired easily of the political shenanigans in Ottawa and found in my father someone, not of equal mind, but of a shared sentiment for Canada’s emerging greatness in an increasingly polarized world.  Looking back on it, I don’t think Dad was ever in Lester’s league, but in reality they weren’t playing a game.  They found consolation in meaningful conversation.  It was enough.My father never really recovered from the war.  Wounded in battle in Italy, he returned to Canada and endeavoured to find a job, while my mother minded my brother and I in Scotland until it was time for us to be rejoined as a family.  It took over five years.Every weekend Dad and I camped in Banff, or Jasper, or the Okanagan, or Shushwap or Waterton Lakes.  But he was always quiet and I was astute enough to comprehend that the war still ate away at him – his wounds, the friends he lost, his trouble reconnecting with Mom.  He found rest in his solitude but never peace of mind.  Being young, I just assumed he had been overwhelmed by war and was experiencing difficulty in getting back to a normal life.And then one weekend we camped on a tiny sliver of beach in Penticton, B.C.  Late at night we watched the stars and were shocked by a steady movement across the sky. He got up and watched it arc across the heavens until it dropped below the horizon.  “It’s the Sputnik,” he declared.  As if it were some kind of celestial signal, he began describing to me why the war affected him so much.  It was the closest moment we were to ever share, save for his final week of life.In short, he missed the grandeur, the belief that this farm boy from Saskatchewan was caught up in events that were world-shaping.  Though lacking in education, he had the mind and the spirit for this kind of engagement.  And it was through that world conflict that he came to love his country – not because he sacrificed for it, but because he viewed it from afar and found it awesome.  But in the years following his return, amid all the burgeoning middle-class adventure and the plentitude of money, he was never to rediscover that spirit again.That’s why Lester Pearson meant something to him.  Through Lester he touched bigger things again, occasionally permitting himself to be drawn in to the creation of medicare and a rustic pension system.I am a child of my father, and I can’t help thinking there a millions of Baby Boomers just like me who comprehend what I’m rambling about.  Wherever we grew up in this country, it was a land of potential, of worldwide influence, and above all of peaceful cohabitation and international intervention.  We were ennobled by the sheer thought of it and many of us sought to continue the legacy as we grew up.  But where are we now?  The greatness of the Canada we knew has become lost in our self-preoccupation and our pressing need for material advancement.My Dad would be shocked if he knew I had become an MP, but would have been proud.  He left us in 1977, his ashes spread on a BC lake.  But he’s not dead, not yet.  My struggle in Parliament is a mere extension of his desire for Canada’s greatness.  My fight to take Canada back into the world is merely the embodiment of his blood through my veins.  To all those out there who instinctively understand my feeble words, I ask that we once again rediscover that thrill of our youth.  That Great Generation is not dead, not yet – not as long as we remember and arise to take our country back.