Rex Murphy: A PM that apologizes for our past sins should also celebrate our good

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during the exoneration for Chief Poundmaker event at a community ceremony at the Chief Poundmaker Historical Centre on the Poundmaker First Nation, Thursday, May 23, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Liam Richards

Something surprising, now we see a Prime Minister who apologizes for our past sins should also celebrate our good. Likewise, we have observed Prime Minister Trudeau wandering the country speaking in the accents of the atonement, but also not executing public gratitude with a comparable frequency

So, it could be said that Trudeau has demonstrated his ability, overcoming the enthusiasm and tendency to habit, to provide an autopsy of all the sins of Canada perpetrated before his reign and having discovered and highlighted them, to make a public apology. It would be on behalf of all the other Canadians for the failures, pranks, perceived crimes, and follies of our ancestors.

It is necessary to emphasize that there are many who praise him for this, even in the absence of a counter-effort to investigate acts of virtue perhaps better and more numerous than all generations before his entered the national registry, or met without registration: the great mass of everyday decencies that remain outside written history. Combined, these contributed so much to promoting the construction of what many of us, without the impulse of mere chauvinism, believe that it is one of the best countries of this 21st-century world.

Unusual and curious

It is no secret to anyone that Trudeau does not execute public gratitude on a comparable frequency, for all the great and good things accomplished by the past Canadians. Consequently, it could be said that this is at least curious in light of his marked inclination to roam the country speaking in the accents of the atonement.

Whereas recognizing the previous greatness, whether of character, person or fact, whether of affection, value or intelligence, has a totally different quality. Here there is nothing vicarious and second-hand. Saluting the past is worth citing virtue as a present example.

It is a necessary scale of our present against the past, by which we recognize how much of our current achievements and comforts, everything we are in the arts and sciences, in fact, our way of being in this country as it is today, receives Benefits. There is no doubt that what is good in the Canadian way, in the evasive but quiet spaces of the Canadian temperament, is our “true heritage”. The same in part has been created by greetings from leaders, writers, statesmen, captains, and inventors.

Source: Rex Murphy | National Post