Globe and Mail Update Published on Thursday, Apr. 16, 2009 7:45PM EDT Last updated on Friday, May. 15, 2009 2:03PM EDT
Why would Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff say this about one of Canada's great nationalists — his own uncle, George Grant? Read Michael Valpy in Saturday's Globe — for the whole story. Until then, read the short excerpt below from Mr. Ignatieff's new book, True Patriot Love.
"He made the mistake of believing that the differences that separated the culture of liberty in Canada and the United States were vestigial and doomed to die away. But they were more stubborn and substantial differences than he supposed, and the defence of them has proved successful.
America and Canada are both free nations. But our freedom is different: There is no right to bear arms north of the 49th parallel, and no capital punishment, either; we believe in collective rights to language and land, and, in our rights culture, these can trump individual rights. Not so south of the border. Rights that are still being fought for south of the border — public health care, for example — have been ours for a generation. These differences are major, and Grant's conclusion that they were minor misunderstood Canadian history and our enduringly different political tradition.
... He gave up on his country at exactly the moment when it roused itself to action. At the moment of Lament's appearance, Canada went through the most extraordinary reinvention of its identity in history. And to no one's surprise but his own, much of the impetus behind this was inspired by the party he detested ...."
From True Patriot Love by Michael Ignatieff, published by Penguin Group (Canada).
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