Canada's Sesquicentennial is the greatest political and cultural opportunity in a generation. Peter MacLeod's TEDxTO talk explains what we can learn from the Centennial and describes the demographic pressures that are shaping Canada's 'next great year' in 2017.





TEDxTO: Imagining 2017: Canada’s Next Great Year

Peter MacLeod

Maybe some of you recognize this emblem. You'll find it stamped into literally thousands of kilometres of sidewalks across the country.

And honestly, it's the reason that I really feel like I'm in a rush these days. Whenever I pass one of these on the sidewalk, I speed up. And it's a funny thing because the reason I'm rushing is still eight years away.

The story I want to tell this afternoon is the story of how as Canadians we are going to celebrate the 150th birthday of Confederation -- Canada's Sesquicentennial -- and what we can learn from what Pierre Berton famously and maybe a bit mischievously called Canada's last good year, the Centennial in 1967.

The reason I care about it and the reason I hope I can convince you to care about it too is that 2017 may be the best opportunity we’ve got over the next decade to do some important work in this country.

So I want to do four things...

I want to talk about 2017 in political terms.

I want to talk about 2017 in historical terms.

I want to talk about 2017 in terms of our sense of public imagination.

I want to talk about 2017 in generational terms.

But let's go back a second: Because it's important to ask why Berton called 1967 not just a good year, but the last good year.

It's a title that got him in trouble and when the book came out in a second printing the subtitle had been changed. 1967: The Last Good Year became 1967: Canada's Turning Point.

Which itself is a provocative title -- but its certainly not as pessimistic nor perhaps as poignant as his first.

Now partly it helps to know that Berton was writing in the mid nineties -- the book was published in 1997. So Berton wasn't just writing in the immediate afterglow of the Centennial Year. He was writing it retrospectively -- and casting back thirty years later -- just two years after the trauma of the quebec referendum and in the midst of the most serious cuts to public spending in a generation.

And so in comparison to the nineties, the Centennial era shone even brighter — as period of enormous political energy and public purpose. 

1960: Bill of Rights, First nations given right to vote

1961: Transatlantic phone system inaugurated, and the Queen gave our Prime minister a call

1962: Third country to send a satellite into space

1964: Social insurance cards are issued

1965: We saluted a new flag, Toronto built a new City Hall

1966: CBC broadcasts in colour, Canada Pension Plan, Bloor-Danforth line cuts across Toronto, Montreal gets Metro, and Canadians get Medicare

1967: We sang a New anthem, we built a National Library, we awarded the Order of Canada, we attended one of the great world’s fairs Expo,  and 1000 people came to see 8 acts at Toronto’s first Caribana

1968: Homosexuality is decriminalized, Divorce reform, Canadian Forces, Go Transit

1969:  National Arts Centre, Official languages act came into effect

As a country we started and ended the decade in very different places. It was an era of metamorphosis and reinvention. By the end of the decade you had public health care, a pension plan and social insurance. You had new national symbols, institutions and awards. You had better infrastructure. You could travel more easily, and communicate more effectively — in two official languages.

Little of this was because of Centennial. But what Centennial did was establish a milestone, a goal post. It was powerful because it focused everyone's attention on three questions: At one hundred, Where are we, Who are we and Where are we going….

In this way, Centennial was a useful device… it had a political effect,  it was a catalytic because it gave us a public occasion to ask these questions in an open and free way — outside of the sort of public crisis that normally spurs these debates about radical change. Instead the spirit of Centennial allowed us to propose some new ideas about how, as a society, we would live together.

Or at least, I think, this was what two people, Roby Kidd and Freda Waldon, may have had in mind.

Roby and Freda probably did more to shape the spirit of Centennial than anyone else -- though I'm sure they'd refuse the credit.

Roby was the first Canadian to get a Ph.D in adult education. He was what you might call a proto-social entrepreneur. Waldon ran the Hamilton Public Library system and she saw firsthand the transformative power of literacy and education.

Kidd and Waldon each understood the value of what today is called lifelong, self-directed learning. And they shared the belief that a good society is one that encourages curiosity, self-discovery and improvement.

Together they were among the first people to recognize the opportunity that a Canadian Centennial might contain -- and I believe that in doing so they helped to set the stage for what would follow.

Ten years before Centennial, in 1957, they organized a conference that drew together 32 different organizations. A year later they met again, and soon after the Canadian Centenary Council was created. It was voluntary organization whose purpose was to get people thinking about 1967 and press the government to get moving.

Because it wasn't government that lead the way to 67. it was citizens like Roby and Freda.

And they managed to embed this idea that Centennial didn't belong to the government. It belonged to Canadians and it would be up to Canadians to decide just how they intended to celebrate. Encouraging curiosity, self-discovery and improvement was what they hoped Centennial would help to do.

The envisioned a Centennial that would be about the excitement of learning. It would be about learning about oneself, one's neighbours and one's country. And you could do this without ever taking out a textbook.

What's so extraordinary is that when Canadians by the millions took up this invitation -- exceeding anyone's expectations in Ottawa -- and staged thousands of community events and initiatives, they began to see for themselves that despite their differences, from one region to the next, what they shared was this desire to celebrate.

And for Canadians in 1967, it didn't matter if your way of celebrating was to build a UFO pad in St. Paul, Alberta,

…stage a bath tub race in BC,

…launch a Caribbean festival in Toronto or

a historic re-enactment in PEI. The point was the people were taking charge. They were spontaneously, joyously rip, mixing and burning their own Centennials clear across the country.

And if it was Expo -- that extraordinary and visionary fair-- that created the most artifacts and affection and drew the most media attention, and lodged in our minds this idea of global citizenship, citizens of the world with passports in hand, it was these community initiatives that created the real sense of belonging, to the country we call home.

Inspired by Roby and Freda, the government got this. They understood that their job wasn't to lead but convene. Let me show what I mean. You know we're so used to living with the syntax of the government as a mildly patronizing provider -- Brought to you by the Government of Canada. Taking care of you and your hard-working family —  that we’ve forgotten what simple, sincere communication can look like

Take a look at this ad...

You see what Centennial had was this DIY,  sixties "Steal this Book" ethos.

In fact, the government actually took out ads asking people to steal, or rather use the Centennial logo for anything they liked. It was open source.

Wear it. Hang it. Stencil it. Carry it. Wave it. But above all, please Use it.

Just try that with the Olympic rings.


You see I think that the real legacy of Centennial was that it gave Canadians permission to be imaginative and to do their own thing —just as the same time, and so together.

You know, Last year we watched an election in the US, where the president challenged Americans to have the audacity of hope. But I don't know if this scans as well in Canada. By and large, Canadians have hope. What we sometimes forget is the audacity of our imagination.

Because it's this sense of imagination, our commitment to fair play and our hard-headed northern attitude to mucking in and solving problems that makes Canada what it is.

And as Canadians I think we're at our best when we follow the logic fair play -- and allow it to carry us to radical conclusions — when we use our imagination to push beyond old divides and create new conventions and commitments.

I'd like to argue that in the run-up to 2017, we need to give ourselves permission to really get imaginative as a country again.

And I'm a bit stunned to give you this next example, because it comes from a bank.

Not exactly your usual source of wild-eyed, aspirational thinking...

You know it's a bit startling to realize that a grey 1960s bank has something to teach us today about thinking not only big, but about how we frame and imagine our collective aspirations.

And today as then, there is no shortage of opportunities and injustices to address. Some are in our backyard. And others are going to require wholesale political change and new institutional settlements. But my point -- like the Bank's -- is that the Sesquicentennial is a good excuse for going after them.

I want to quickly show you some posters.

In part because they're gorgeous, but also because they do a good job conveying this energy.

And finally this ad -- which is earnest almost beyond belief.

There's just this incredible enthusiasm and tenderness about it all.

And you know, I think its important to reject the idea that having any affection for this syntax, for this way of relating, or describing public goals or shared purpose is somehow nostalgic or out-of-date. Instead, I think it's a challenge to us -- to take this syntax and make it our own.

You see, we might already have a flag and an anthem. In our first one hundred and fifty years, we assembled all the pieces and built a country together. Not a perfect one. But one that's ours and ours to shape.

And by saying this I'm tipping my hand to my final point.

When I say that we need to think about 2017 in generational terms, I don't mean just a handover from baby boomers to their kids. That's happening and it will, I hope, accelerate.

What I mean is that for Canada, in our first one hundred years, geography was often destiny. But since, demography has been king and continues to reshape this country more radically than any other force.

Just look at the growth of this country over the past 150 years.

We’ll be ten times larger 150 years later.

Each year, a quarter million new citizens make Canada their home.

We are now adding 1 million new Canadians to this country in the time it takes to get a university degree.

Since 1967 fully one third of the country was born abroad.

And today, 8% of our population lives abroad. That's twice as many per capita as any other G8 nation. (It's also more than the size of atlantic Canada or the population of Manitoba and Saskatchewan)

Demography is destiny – but its combining with our love of geography in radical new ways. We're the one country where when you recite the names of towns and cities, across the length of six times zones, hearts flutter.

Whitehorse. Edmonton, Thunder Bay. Rimouski. Gander.

You feel something.

And yet, we now live in a time when to say the words

Mombasa. Beirut. London. Hong Kong. Mexico City.

Stirs Canadian hearts as well.

My point is that demography is actually expanding our geography -- and with it our sense of public imagination. It is changing how we will define citizenship in the 21st century — and we are absolutely the right country to take this next step forwards.

As it was in 1967, it may well be again. Global immigration and multiculturalism were once radical and new. And so it made sense to look more closely and discover and learn from where and how Canadians were living from one side of the country to the other. That was the Centennial’s overarching theme.

But the reality of this legacy fifty years later is a new Canadian citizenry -- and a growing Canadian diaspora. Our citizens live and work abroad as never before. Circulation and  multinationalism may seem as radical and foreign today as multiculturalism did in the sixties -- but I'm willing to bet we will come to recognize them as a source of strength.

And so, as in 1967, in 2017 we need to look again, at home and abroad and rediscover and learn from where and how Canadians are really living today.

Or at least, it's a place to start.

So what next?

Well, we need to get this show underway. Next March, we've booked the National Arts Centre for two days and are inviting 300 public servants, business leaders, scientists, artists and writers -- and we're going to get to work. It's the first major initiative to begin imagining and planning 2017 — and believe me, you're all invited.

If you can't make it, the steal a page from the Centennial and today. Create a 150x Conference right here in Halifax


Just remember three things.


One: Centennials belong to citizens. Together, we should use the Sesquicentennial to ask those three powerful questions:   Where are we, Who are we and Where are we going….

Two.

Without culture, politics is a spent force. You can't achieve anything meaningful in politics unless you've got people singing or stomping for it, because culture is the wellspring for our political imagination -- and in 1967, culture and politics were fellow travelers. They can be united again.

Third and finally...

Too often societies are forced to make their biggest decisions in a time of crisis. And crises can be useful. This is why Rahm Emmanuel called the current economic crisis in the US a terrible thing to waste.

But what I'm talking about today is the exact opposite of a crisis -- Our anniversary can be a catalyst.

If we roll up our sleeves and get started now we can make 2017 Canada's next turning point. It can be Canada's next great year.

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