Monday, January 15, 2007
by David McGuinty
Good evening. Bonsoir. Thank you for being here with us tonight. Merci d’être ici avec nous ce soir.
Let me begin by welcoming you all to Parliament Hill. It is truly my pleasure to host the second annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration on Parliament Hill. Of course this event could not have taken place without the hard work and dedication of the Canadian Martin Luther King day coalition.
Before we get going, let me take a minute to reflect on the man, who in no small way, has brought all of us together tonight: the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. of Atlanta, Georgia.
The former American president John F. Kennedy once said that in politics you have to be “an idealist without illusions.”
I can think of no better description of Dr. King than this.
Despite his youth – and it is hard to believe that Dr. King was only thirty-five years old when he won the Nobel peace prize in 1964 – he was a man of unusual wisdom. In 1967, Dr. King gave a speech in New York City to a gathering of clergy and laymen concerned about Vietnam.
I know that many remember this speech for its powerful denunciation of the war in south-east Asia. It was moving on that level alone.
But I have found that this speech, like so many of Dr. King’s messages, reveals an even larger picture – a vision that is both concrete and timeless. That day he said, “we must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. … true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. [we] will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. … The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.”
Several years ago, I had the good fortune to work on behalf of UNICEF in 23 west and central African countries. My time in Africa profoundly changed my life.
I recognized a depth of culture, a wisdom there that has developed over centuries. This is not necessarily the Africa that we see on our television screens in North America. But it is the strength of these roots that we feel in communities of African heritage here in Canada, here in Ottawa, today.
“The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.”
For far too long this arrogance was permitted to flourish. It gave a license to look down at people seen as foreign – some in other countries and some here in Canada. Thanks to the courage and the wisdom of Dr. King – a true “idealist without illusions” – and thanks to so many others, this arrogance has steadily eroded.
It remains up to us – all of us here in this room – to find ways build a “person-oriented” society.
A vision that we can share.
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