Stop ignoring our past, Saul begs

Diane Campbell

The Ottawa Citizen 6.3.00

"It will not serve them well over the long term, because that kind of utilitarian training -- with the change in technology every five or 10 years -- it's all obsolete overnight," John Ralston Saul said in an interview.

"By training people in this narrow way, you're training them to be unemployed in the long term.

"In order to know what to do in society as a citizen, you have to have an understanding of your history. It will even help you in your job."

Mr. Saul's comments place him in a growing camp of educators, intellectuals and others who are speaking out against a belief -- championed by people such as Ontario Premier Mike Harris -- that the workforce needs more scientists and engineers and fewer academics.

Mr. Saul, who is married to Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson, says Canadians are more than willing to learn about their history, but are turned off by the way it's taught.

"I think that it's not true that they're not willing to. I think it hasn't been presented to them," the noted author says.

Mr. Saul and the Dominion Institute, a national organization that promotes an understanding of Canadian history, want to start remedying that on March 23 at a lecture they hope will become an annual event.

Mr. Saul will present a talk and lead a public discussion at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum on future options for Canadian civic culture.

He will speak on 19th-century politicians Louis LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin, who championed the cause of bilingualism and are known as the architects of responsible government.

Mr. Saul hopes people will be able to look beyond the facts and learn from the ideas and words of not only LaFontaine and Baldwin, but of other Canadian political leaders as well.

"If you go back and read LaFontaine and Baldwin -- or (Sir Wilfrid) Laurier, (Georges-Etienne) Cartier or (D'Arcy) McGee -- you find this fabulous stuff, because they were extremely interesting political figures, intellectuals, poets, most of them.

"That, then suddenly, makes people realize that what happened in the 19th century in Canada was not just some sort of colonial accident, that the country was a choice, put into place by people who wanted it to exist," he says.

Mr. Saul says he hopes the lecture will become an annual event -- with each lecture taking place in a different city -- to showcase innovative Canadian thinkers and to inject ideas into the national debate through "different languages, different attitudes, different approaches, and yet getting to the whole country."

Dominion Institute executive director Rudyard Griffiths says such a lecture series is very much needed and that Canadians should look to their past to steer the country in the right direction in the future. "We think Canadian history is filled with ideas and principles that animate our civic and cultural life," Mr. Griffiths says. "People like Baldwin and LaFontaine are fundamental in terms of the visions of Canada that they had.

"If we don't make the connections between Baldwin and LaFontaine, the strength of our own institutions is called into question."