A Birthday, a Debate and an Election

Thanks to everyone who offered best wishes on my 80^th birthday last month. I am grateful for the cards, for those of you who lifted a glass to me in the University of Toronto Hart House Debates Room, and for those who ignored Pat’s directive and gave me a present. (I now have a lifetime supply of excellent scotch!) 

Thank you so very much. Getting to 80 in one piece does help to focus the mind more than any other birthday I have experienced, except perhaps when I was six and got a Royal Canadian Air Force uniform for my birthday. That was 1942, the year of the York South by-election, by the way. 

My life with Pat, my work with committed colleagues in the practice of labour law, my great relationship with my kids, their spouses, my grandchildren, my sisters and their families, friends of long-standing as well as friendships with many people a generation or two younger than I am -- all this has, I think, kept me from obsessing about the passing years. 

At 80, however, one can no longer completely ignore the sound of the clock ticking. But I find it doesn’t bother me at all to know that the years ahead are fewer than the years behind me. To be 80 is to be very aware that each day is a privilege. I notice the wind blowing in the trees. I look forward to the snow this winter. I am eager to meet Spencer, my first great-grandchild, who was born the day after my party. There will be many of life’s lessons to share with him in a great-grandparental way, as my grandchildren explained in their birthday videos.

One lesson came to me as I looked around the Hart House Debates Room last month. In 1957 I was a member of the Hart House Debates Committee. On a rainy night in November that year, Senator John Kennedy was the guest at one of our debates. Because Hart House was a men-only institution at the time, the 400 students and faculty in attendance were all men. Outside, in the rain and listening over a loudspeaker was a small band of women, including my sister Margaret Brewin (Wilbur) and our friends Ruth Dowds (Grier) and Gretchen Mann (Brewin), protesting their exclusion from the debate.

In the end, the event is properly remembered more for the protest than for the debate between Senator Kennedy and a young Stephen Lewis. The victory belonged that night to the women who made the injustice visible and undeniable. They broke through a significant barrier to the full participation of women in university life by first breaking open the hearts and minds of men like me -- their brothers, friends, fellow students and teachers.

Social change is not an event. It's a continuous process. Hart House began as a male bastion in 1919 but today it is open to women and men. Political debates were once the express purview of men, but today woman are on the stage and not only in the audience or outside the doors. And yet the struggle for equal access to the highest political offices continues.

To the south of us, the campaign winds down. All signs point to a Clinton win, perhaps even one that sweeps the nation. The Senate is leaning Democratic. If a Clinton landslide occurs, the House could go to the Democrats as well. Best bet, a continuation of divided government. The ground underneath this democracy has shifted by the unprecedented nature of the campaign. The voices of sexism, racism, xenophobia, and authoritarianism are getting louder and more forceful. They issue a challenge to everyone who holds and professes democratic values.

This is not a new challenge but its return has shocked and shaken us at our core. If there is any good coming out of this election, apart from the Clinton Presidency itself, it is that the dark side of American political culture has been exposed. It can now be confronted more directly than at any time since the Civil War.

How will the world respond? More about that when the election is over in November. Let’s talk then.