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Editor's Note: To submit your nominations for The Globe's Nation Builder of the Year for 2007, use the "comment" function on this article.
Edward Greenspon, editor-in-chief of The Globe and Mail, wrote recently as he announced the kickoff of our annual search for the Nation Builder of the Year:
"Two weeks ago, I received an e-mail from Maher Arar, who last year shared with Sergeant Patrick Tower of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry the honour of being named The Globe and Mail's Nation Builder of the year.
"For some, it might have appeared odd to group together a victim of the war on terror and a soldier on the front lines of that war. But after sifting through hundreds of nominations and discussing it among ourselves, the editors felt that, beyond his personal valour, Sgt. Tower was taking up arms for the very rights and freedoms that Mr. Arar was so brutally denied.
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"A year later, the time has come to ask you, our readers, to help us select the Nation Builder of 2007 . . . "
"So let's hear from you. We want to have a big, rollicking conversation about who over the past year has best exemplified the leadership and values that make Canada a great nation."
Two years ago, former NDP leader Ed Broadbent won the award for being an island of civility in a mean-spirited House of Commons and for his intelligent advocacy of electoral reform.
Previous winners include Paralympian Chantal Petitclerc, the Ontario Court of Appeal panel that finally swept away the last obstacles to same-sex marriage in Canada and entrepreneur-philanthropist Mike Lazaridis, the man behind the BlackBerry.
So who is in the running for this year?
Will it be Jim Balsillie, Mr. Lazaridis's partner-in-arms at Research in Motion, who, when he isn't either running the business or trying to buy a hockey team and bring it back to Canada, is seeding think tanks with big donations.
Or perhaps Arctic activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier, a contender last year who was nominated for a Nobel Prize this past year for her work on global warming.
Maybe University of Alberta medical researcher Jeffrey Carroll, whose family carries the gene for Huntington's disease and is putting his mind to trying to cure it.
Or Paul Pritchard, the onlooker who stuck out his neck to retrieve his video from the RCMP that depicted the final agonizing minutes in the life of Robert Dziekanski.
The country is made up of great people large and small and from far and wide.
If you want to make sure they gain their due recognition, submit your nominations by using the comment function on this article.
We will publish the best suggestions online in the weeks to come.
Edward Greenspon
Editor-in-chief
