Canada’s Honourable Allan J. MacEachen: Nationhood and Leadership

12 Friday Aug 2011

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Allan J. MacEachen, Canada's Medical Care Act, Father Moses Coady, Margaret's Museum, President Bill Clinton, Sheldon Currie, StFX, the Frank McKenna Centre for Leadership

First elected into office in 1553, under the Liberal government of Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent, the Honourable Allan J. MacEachen was instrumental in designing Canada’s social programmes.

Although he was not reelected in 1958, his only political defeat, he did not leave Ottawa. He worked instead as a special assistant and consultant on economic affairs for the Right Honourable Lester B. Pearson, a Nobel Laureate.

Under Louis St. Laurent, Canada had begun putting into place social programs that would protect Canadians. For Mr MacEachen, this endeavour would culminate in the Medical Care Act, passed by Parliament in 1966, when Mr MacEachen served as Minister of National Health and Welfare (1965-1968). The implementation of Medicare was a major victory for Mr MacEachen and an enormous gift to Canadians. It was, in fact, an major historical moment. A nation was born.

Very few persons could have been as dedicated as Mr MacEachen in his role as Canada’s Minister of National Health and Welfare. Mr MacEachen had worked as professor of Economics at St. Francis Xavier University, which is home to the world-renowned Coady International Institute, founded in 1959 and named after the Reverend Dr Moses Michael Coady, a coöperative entrepreneur who created the Antigonish Movement. On 19 November 2009, during an interview with Steve Sutherland of the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), Mr MacEachen said he was a “disciple” of Father Coady who wanted to “enable people to get a vision of possibilities. (StFX Digital Archives, Quotes by Rev. Dr. Moses Coady) ”

Moreover, Allan J. MacEachen was born in Inverness, Cape Breton, the son of a coal miner. The coal miners of Cape Breton toiled painfully, and often died, reaping coal deep underground and bringing it to the surface. (Have you seen Margaret’s Museum, a 1995 British-Canadian film based on a story by Sheldon Currie, a former teacher at StFX? When interviewed by Steve Sutherland of the CBC, Mr MacEachen said that the miners of Inverness were “poor” and, that, when they had to retire, they did not have a “pension.” He had witnessed poverty.

The Honourable Allan J MacEachen had studied at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT), and became a professor of Economics. In his CBC interview, he said that people were not interested in what he knew. They wanted to know what he could do for them. They had needs which he understood and he was in a position to help his nation. He had the knowledge and the shrewdness to do so.

During the same interview, Mr MacEachen stated that, as a politician, he had learned that he had to “obey” his constituents. He had learned to “listen” to the people, to “serve” them, and to “take Canada into account.” That interview is a lesson in leadership and nationhood. Mr MacEachen cared for the people, as should all elected officials.

Former US President Bill Clinton is a recent visitor to StFX University. On 11 May 2011, President Clinton opened StFX University’s Frank McKenna Centre for Leadership. That Centre has solid foundations.

The Honourable Allan J. MacEachen was Minister of Amateur Sport, Minister of National Health and Welfare, Minister of Manpower and Immigration, Minister of Finance, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Secretary of State for External Affairs, Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, and a Senator. In this capacity, he was the Leader of the Government in the Senate.

For two decades, the Honourable Allan J. MacEachen was also my next-door neighbour in Antigonish, N. S. and a dear friend. I am honoured to say that he remains a dear friend.

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More on Education

09 Tuesday Aug 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Uncategorized

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Al Gore, StFX, The Assault on Reason. education

I had already and regretfully left StFX University (Nova Scotia, Canada) when Al Gore published his insightful and brilliant Assault on Reason (Penguin Books, 2007). In order to understand better the plays of Shakespeare, Corneille, Racine, many of which are historico-political in nature, reading Al Gore would have been very helpful.

The persons who write obscenities about President Obama after watching and listening to his online addresses may well have been endoctrinated and blinded. They may also be very afraid. Consequently, even in “the best of all possible worlds” (Leibniz, 1710), they are crippled and so are their duly-elected officials. They cannot use that essential tool called “reason,” and democracy is dealt a formidable blow.

Reason alone is not the surest of guides, but combined with a little common sense and “esprit de finesse” (Pascal, 1623-1662), reason is nevertheless the finest tool at hand. Hence the importance of an education that is not limited to job-training, is unbiased and, ideally, begins at home.

Although I had not yet read Al Gore’s Assault on Reason in 2002, I had read Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal, Montesquieu, Voltaire, etc. and had also been introduced to Plato and Aristotle and other great thinkers. Morever, in my course of seventeenth-century French Literature, I taught Descartes, Pascal and La Rochefoucauld.

In a later blog, I will write about students who had not examined the concept of freedom. Well, many of those students matured and there were other students. To my delight, Pascal became a hero to many of them. So, once initiation is over, there are StFX students who will not cease to amaze you.

All of the above to repeat that there cannot be a genuine democracy if the people who vote, not to mention their duly-elected officials, are blind and afraid. Could it be that we are witnessing the decline of the American Empire, a decline ushered in by fear.

My purpose is not to summarize Mr Gore’s Assault on Reason, but to invite you to read it, if you haven’t done so already. Education matters and it matters a great deal. Here is a quotation from chapter three: The Politics of Wealth, p. 78:

With no ability to test the propositions presented or explore the facets of policies not reavealed, the public is often persuaded to endorse and applaud policies that are actually harmful to its interests.