Happy Charter Day! And the importance of an "s"

Today's the 30th anniversary of the formal adoption of the 1982 Constitution Act and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. A lot of ink has been recently devoted to the Harper government's non-observance of this day. I could add to this, but instead I'd like to draw your attention to the text of the formal statement issued by Heritage Minister James Moore and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson which was originally posted here. I say "originally posted" lest the initial text be changed.

The full statement reads:

Statement by the Honourable James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, and the Honourable Rob Nicholson, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, on the 30th Anniversary of the Proclamation of the Constitution Act of 1982

OTTAWA, April 17, 2012 - Today marks the 30th Anniversary of the Proclamation of the Constitution Act of 1982, which was formally signed by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on April 17, 1982, in the presence of tens of thousands of Canadians on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

This anniversary marks an important step in the development of Canada’s human rights policy. Building on Diefenbaker’s Canadian Bill of Rights of 1960, the Constitution Act of 1982 enshrined certain rights and freedoms that had historically been at the heart of Canadian society into a constitutional document known as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Constitution Act of 1982 empowered our government to amend every part of Canada’s constitution, for the very first time.

As we look ahead to Canada’s 150th Anniversary in 2017, we encourage all Canadians to commemorate the milestones that have built our nation and made us the great country we are today.

There are all sorts of things that can be critiqued about this statement, starting with the omission of the Prime Minister and architect of the deal, Pierre Trudeau. But because I'm in a peculiar mood, let me instead draw your attention to paragraph 3 of the statement. There's a rather important little "s" that is missing from the end of the word "government". Because as any constitutional expert worth their salt knows, most parts of Canada's constitution cannot be amended by any single government. In some cases, it takes at least two, in most it takes eight (seven provincial governments representing 50% of the population, plus the federal government), and in a few key areas it takes eleven governments to amend the constitution.

So unless there is a super-secret plan by the Harper government to start unilaterally amending the constitution, his ministers' staffers did a terrible job proofing that mediocre statement.

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Canadian Language Portal

I've been incredibly busy this term, hence the dearth of posts. But my husband, a translator by trade, pointed out this cool new resource to me: Nos Langues/Our Languages is a new language resource tool from the government of Canada. Of particular interest is Termium, which is a major translation database used by the government of Canada, and might be of use to anyone struggling to find that mot juste in their second official language.

Also of interest, speaking of official languages, is the release of volume two of John English's biography of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Just Watch Me covers the period from 1968-2000. I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of my copy - the first volume was compelling, and I expect the second one will be as well.

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Nino Ricci, Pierre Elliott Trudeau

Over the past year, Penguin Books has published eighteen books in its new Extraordinary Canadians series. Edited by John Ralston Saul, the series attempts to provide readers with a series of accessible biographies of well-known and significant Canadians ranging from Stephen Leacock to Big Bear to Emily Carr. Saul has selected a diverse array of authors, most of them popular writers, although with a few historians in the mix, largely on the basis of their writing abilities and their personal connections to their subjects.

Given the task of covering Canada’s highly controversial federalist prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau is novelist Nino Ricci, author of the Governor General Award-winning The Origin of Species (a compelling read itself, although I don’t generally blog on my fiction reading). Ricci grew up in the Trudeau era and lived in Montreal in his twenties in an (admittedly unsuccessful) effort to embrace bilingualism. Beyond this, Ricci poignantly observes in the closing pages of the book that his own life was clearly marked by Trudeau’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms on the day he served as best man at a the wedding of two close gay friends.

Personal anecdotes regarding how Trudeau shaped Ricci’s own lived experience enliven this lively narrative of Trudeau’s life. For those who have read much of the academic work on Trudeau’s life, much of what appears here will be familiar. Ricci draws heavily on recent books by John English and Max & Monique Nemni to examine Trudeau’s childhood, adolescence and life to the age of 40. Other chapters cover the major political highlights of Trudeau’s political career, including the October Crisis, the 1980 Quebec referendum, and the patriation of the Constitution. Although Ricci tends to side with Trudeau’s detractors on both his handling of the FLQ crisis and his dealings with René Lévesque, he provides a generally even-handed approach to these events, noting Trudeau’s reluctance to impose the War Measures Act even when Robert Bourassa pleaded for it, and acknowledging that it was highly unlikely that Lévesque would ever have signed a new constitutional arrangement. One may quibble with Ricci’s account of the formation of the Kitchen Accord that led to the 1982 constitution, but his is not a polemical account of Trudeau’s years, which I suspect will make it palatable to both Trudeau’s detractors and admirers.

As with any biography, Ricci was faced with choices of what to emphasize and what to exclude. There is little here about Trudeau’s foreign policy or his post-1984 life (except for a few brief pages on the 1987-92 constitutional battles) or – perhaps most notably in light of the fact that he included a detailed chapter on Margaret Sinclair and his three sons – the fact that Trudeau fathered a daughter with Deborah Coyne. Those omissions aside, Ricci provides a lively and highly readable narrative on the significant issues he did choose to address and provides a good introduction to the highly complicated man who served as Canada’s prime minister for sixteen years. Those seeking richer detail should definitely check out John English’s Citizen of the World which covers the period of Trudeau’s life up to 1968, and the forthcoming second volume of this biography. But for those seeking a quick introduction, Ricci’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau is a highly engaging read. I read it on my flight from Calgary to Kitchener, and even as a historian of the Trudeau period, I found little to object to and much to praise in his treatment of the man’s life.

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