On January 25 at Rideau Hall I had the honour of being inducted into the Order of Canada.
It was a marvellous day for Jane and me, and my daughters Meg and Katie , who joined us from Toronto. The actual event struck me as a perfect example of what Canada does best. The morning ceremony is uplifting, and makes you proud. Then, as the biographies of the other honorees are read out, you are humbled, and left wondering if you really belong with all of these remarkable people. They come from right across the country, like Vancouver’s Christine Sinclair, our superb soccer captain, or Newfoundland’s Indigenous Chief Mis’el Joe, an old friend from Adventure Canada’s cruise to Labrador. The Governor General’s staff cleverly arranged for us to sit together at the formal dinner that evening, for a happy reunion.

Thanks to Julie Payette’s warm friendliness — “Here’s Glenn Gould’s piano. Would anyone like to play it, after our two opera singers have had their fun?”– the formal dinner turned into a sort of house party, and at the end we all piled into the buses back to the hotel as friends.

When I edited MURTHER & WALKING SPIRITS in 1991 I paid little special attention to what Rob Davies had to say about the Order of Canada. Here’s what we find early in the book, as he describes a grand opening event for a Toronto Film Festival, where the Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario attends:

“He himself was resolutely democratic, but his hovering uniformed aides, and the splendour that attended his appearance, made it clear that he was indeed a grandee, though of course one who owed his place to the approval of the people — which meant, in effect, the government in office. A curious grandee, surely, for though he bore the democratic stamp of approval he was primarily the representative  of the Queen. The provincial premier was not present because he had to be two hundred miles away, warming up the voters in an important by-election, but his wife came, gracious in the highest degree but also unaffectedly democratic. Ontario wines, and especially Ontario champagne, flowed without stint, and were consumed in quantity befitting the occasion. They too were democratic — quite without affectation of superiority. The guests in the room were in evening dress, and those who possessed the Order of Canada wore their enamelled marks of distinction with pride tempered by democratic bonhomie, as though to say, “I wear this because I have been awarded it, but I am very much aware that there are many here more worthy of such meritorious ornaments than my humble self.”

AHA, you no doubt noted my use of “humble”!

Davies continues: “It was, indeed, one of those Canadian occasions where the vestiges of a monarchical system of government vie with the determination to prove that everybody is, when all is said, exactly  like everybody else. These disquiets are inseparable from a country which is, in effect, a socialist monarchy, and is resolved to make it work — and, to an astonishing degree, achieves its aim; for though an egalitarian system appeals to the head, monarchy is enthroned in the heart.”

As I said, all those years ago I paid no special attention to what Davies was doing here. But after my own happy experience in Ottawa, I heartily agree that we’ve come up with a system that “to an astonishing degree, achieves its aim”.

I’ll wear my “snowflake” with great pride.

GG05-2018-0023-161
January 24, 2018
Rideau Hall, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada 
Her Excellency the Right Honourable Julie Payette, Governor General of Canada, invested 2 Companions, 8 Officers and 37 Members into the Order of Canada during a ceremony at 
Rideau Hall on January 24, 2018.
Credit: Sgt Johanie Maheu, Rideau Hall, OSGG