Reporters meet a lot of interesting people. It’s kind of par for the course with the job. We can’t really be reporters if we don’t talk to anyone.
This past summer I met just such a person. An interesting and unique individual who had a unique and original request, one that in my 26 years in the news business I had never received before.
It started with an email in July from Ashley Bertrand, the director of the Sudbury Hospice Foundation**. If you’re unfamiliar, the hospice is the only palliative care centre in the district. It is an amazing place.
People might go there to spend their final days on this planet, but the hospice is not a sad place; it is a place that is a celebration of life and a celebration of human dignity. It is the kind of place we should all be able to access when our time comes.
Unfortunately, palliative care services aren’t well funded in Ontario, which is why it is so important to support Maison McCulloch by supporting its fundraising efforts, like the annual gala and the butterfly release that happens every summer.
If you can, support the hospice for yourself, for your loved ones and for your neighbours. We are all worth it.
So anyway, I got an email from Ashley.
“I have a bit of a different request today,” her email to Sudbury.com began. “We have a resident at hospice, William, who has a bucket list, and one item is that he would like to publish something in a newspaper. He would like to have a contest, and the ‘winner’ would win $10,000.”
Hmm, I thought. Yep, that qualifies as different, for sure. So I called Ashley to get the full story. She said William is a big fan of Canadian history and wanted to encourage more people to learn about the history of the country.
While open to the idea of somehow exploring Canadian history, I expressed concern about attaching a monetary aspect. That would entail lawyers and contracts, and the attendant problems money always provokes when it enters the picture.
Could I come meet William and learn a little more about his idea, I asked. “Of course,” Ashley said. “William would appreciate that.”
So, one day in July I drove over to meet William at the hospice, nestled on beautifully manicured grounds on the shores of Bethel Lake in the South End.
William was propped up in bed when I met. His handshake was firm, his blue eyes sharp and clear, smile warm. I asked him why he wanted to do this, why he wanted to give away $10,000 for answering history questions.
He is a big Canadian history buff, William told me, but he is troubled by how little the average Canadian seems to know about the country’s history. For instance, he asked if I knew why Canada was officially bilingual and how that came about? Did I know why the federal government no longer paid half the cost of health care? Was I familiar with the details of the Sponsorship Scandal?
I confessed I knew precious little about the answers to his questions. He smiled knowingly.
“People should know their own history,” he said.
I couldn’t agree more. It’s well-nigh impossible to understand the present if a person has little knowledge of the past. So much of what we know is built upon things we’ve already learned. If we know little of our shared history, if we don’t know how we got where we are, how can we possibly navigate the challenges of the future — how can we know where we need to go?
I must admit, William got me thinking. Not only about the things he said about history and its importance, but about him. Here was a man in his final days, on the cusp of leaving this mortal coil behind. One might expect people at the same point in their life would turn inward, would retreat into memory, reflect on the road behind them.
Not William. William was looking outward and forward, not behind. He wanted to leave something behind for his fellow Canadians, a touchpoint, a lesson in history, citizenship and shared values.
History is the act of looking backward in order to move forward, to progress. William wants Canadians to look at the footprints behind them so they have a better idea of which steps to take next.
That’s a lesson we can all use.
He understood my reticence of having a monetary prize and accepted that I wouldn’t be able to be part of a money giveaway. Sudbury.com couldn’t give away money, but we are in the information business, and we could certainly inform.
From William, I received a document with six questions he was hoping we could get answers for and then share those answers with our readers.
Not being a history expert myself, I needed help. So I reached out to J.P. Rains, the director of communications at Laurentian University. I explained the idea and asked if he could connect me to the history department to get answers.
To his credit, J.P. was all over that request. He loved the idea. It might have been deep in the depths of summer at the time, but the big brains at the university were all over the request, too.
Todd Webb, an associate professor of history at Laurentian, led the charge, looping in colleagues from the history department and the law and justice program to get the answers William wanted to share.
Todd said the questions provoked quite the discussion among the academics, who had to do some digging to get the answers.
“We had a good discussion about some of the questions and, for what it's worth, I don't think any of us would have won the $10,000 prize!” Webb told me in an email.
His modesty aside and for what it’s worth, I think the LU crew would have earned the money.
So what were the questions William wanted answered? They are:
- How exactly does a language in Canada become official?
- Are official languages in Canada a federal or provincial jurisdiction? How do we know this?
- Name the three Prime Ministers who asked which three Ontario Premiers to make French an official language in Ontario.
- Quote Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's definition of his Official Languages Act.
- Medicare began with Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson's federal government paying half the cost. Why is the federal government no longer paying 50 per cent of Medicare and what is the federal government's share (percentage) payable for Ontario?
- Who ran the Sponsorship scandal? Were they ever charged?
As you can see, not exactly simple and easy questions to answer. As Todd said, he and his Laurentian colleagues went back and forth on the answers. For my part, I think the academics did a fantastic job answering the questions. Certainly better than I would’ve done.
So now, without further ado, here are the answers Laurentian’s faculty came up with.
1) How exactly does a language in Canada become official?
At the federal level: an act of parliament. It was the Official Languages Act, 1969, that established French and English as Canada's two official languages. Note, this only applied to federal institutions. The Manitoba Act of 1870, which was an act of the federal government, established French and English as official languages in that province. At the provincial level: an act by the provincial parliament. This is what New Brunswick did. A provincial act only applies to that province, of course.
2) Are official languages in Canada a federal or provincial jurisdiction? How do we know this?
Both. Section 91 of the British North America Act enables the federal government to pass legislation affecting federal jurisdiction and Section 92 enables the provinces to enact legislation within its jurisdiction. This division of powers enabled the federal government to pass the official languages act in 1969 and New Brunswick to do the same in its province. It is also worth noting that Quebec, in passing Bill 101 (Charter of the French Language), declared Quebec unilingual French.
In terms of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the story is a bit different. Language is in Section 16 of the Charter and educational rights (language of instruction) are in Section 23. Section 16 suggests that only the federal government and New Brunswick actually have constitutionally entrenched official languages.
3) Name the three prime ministers who asked which three Ontario premiers to make French an official language in Ontario.
No one is very confident about this one. One educated guess, based on the Official Languages Act passed in 1969 and the heightened tensions between Quebec and the rest of Canada, would be prime ministers Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien in discussions with premiers Bill Davis, David Peterson and Bob Rae, respectively. Another colleague suggested that part of the answer might be Pierre Trudeau asking John Robarts.
4) Quote Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's definition of his Official Languages Act.
One of my colleagues suggested this quotation from Trudeau: "To build and maintain a strong and united country, it is essential that both French and English speaking Canadians should be able to feel at home in all parts of this country, and that their right as members of our major language groups should be respected by the federal government. That is the objective of the Official Languages Act and of our policy of bilingualism."
5) Medicare began with Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson's federal government paying half the cost. Why is the federal government no longer paying 50 per cent of Medicare and what is the federal government's share (percentage) payable for Ontario?
Through various cuts, the federal government's share in paying for medicare has gone down. The 1997 budget under the Liberals was one of the most severe cuts to all social programs.
As for how much the federal government contributes to Ontario today, no one was sure, percentage-wise.
One colleague suggested that it was in the vicinity of 20 per cent. Another calculated that it was between 17.5 and 25 per cent. Everyone agreed, however, that this question is difficult to answer because the federal government transfers money to the provinces through various programs, for example the Canada Health transfer, equalization payments and health accords. Recently the federal government and Ontario signed an accord whereby the former agreed to transfer $3.1 billion to the latter for health-care costs over three years.
6) Who ran the Sponsorship Scandal? Were they ever charged?
The Liberal government under Jean Chretien. The purpose of the program was to convince Quebec to stay in Canada. Plan A, as it was dubbed by the government and political scientists, was Chretien's response to the 1995 Referendum on Quebec Sovereignty.
Chuck Guité, the former administrator of the program, was charged and convicted for his role in the scandal. Jean Brault, president of Groupaction, was also charged with fraud. Other people imprisoned for their roles in the scandal included Paul Coffin (an ad executive), Jean Lafleur (another ad executive) and Jacques Corriveau (a Liberal official).
Prime Minister Paul Martin also fired two former ministers involved in the scandal once he took office: Jean Chrétien's chief of staff, Jean Pelletier, and the minister of public works, Alfonso Gagliano.
A big thank you to J.P. Rains, Todd Webb and all the faculty at Laurentian University who answered my call for help. This story couldn’t have come together without their assistance and their incredible knowledge.
A big thank you as well to Ashley Bertrand, the executive director of Maison McCulloch Hospice for reaching out to us about this story and giving Sudbury.com the opportunity to do a good turn for a member of the community.
And finally, the biggest thank you in all of this goes to William, the man whose love for this country and its history was the catalyst for this whole story. Every once in a while in life, we run into a person whose personal perspective has the power to alter the perspectives of those around them.
William is one of those people and the world could certainly use more like him. So, thank you, William. This was truly a special experience for me.
Mark Gentili is the editor of Sudbury.com.
**Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly listed Ashley Bertrand as executive director of Maison McCulloch Hospice. That has been corrected.