×
Convivium was a project of Cardus 2011‑2022, and is preserved here for archival purposes.
Search
Search
Remembering Lougheed's contribution to CanadaRemembering Lougheed's contribution to Canada

Remembering Lougheed's contribution to Canada

“Canada has not happened,” Rex Murphy told his Manning Centre audience. “It has been built. And you are the inheritors.”

Peter Stockland
1 minute read
It’s always heartening for Central Canadian transplants like me when a fine western institution brings fresh reason to the glutinous cacophony that Ottawa serves up as thought.
 
It’s even more delightful when the source of refreshment is himself a transplant, albeit from the far side of the country. Such was the case last weekend when the Calgary-based Manning Centre for Building Democracy gave the stage at its annual networking conference in the national capital to Rex Murphy, that proud and famous son of Newfoundland.
 
Murphy, of course, does not need anyone to give him a stage anywhere. He is a crackerjack columnist for the National Post. His weekly TV commentaries give bite even to CBC’s The National, that Sargasso Sea of torpid journalistic self-regard. And anyone who wants to learn the art of the deceptively gentle but firmly directed interview need only tune in to his Sunday master classes as host of Cross Country Checkup.
 
Yet there he was on the Manning conference platform, nursing a cold, yet still the Jesse James of jawboning: a stage being present, his artful duty was to take it.  Indeed, his topic, as it happened, was duty. Patriotic duty, in the example of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, the young soldier murdered last fall while standing guard at the National War Memorial. But also political duty — not to party or single cause, but to Canada, whole and complete.
 
Here Murphy pointed beyond even institutional incubators of broader political duty such as the Manning Centre, and named two individuals who embodied it as perfectly as anyone in our recent history, namely Peter Lougheed and Pierre Trudeau.
 
The two, he said, were surface adversaries in deep commonality. They appeared to differ on everything. Yet they were avatars of a regionalism so intense and profound, its only true object could be the country as a whole.

Read the rest of this article at the Calgary Herald website.

You'll also enjoy...

A Cloud of Gas

A Cloud of Gas

A story on the Calgary Centre by-election reported, to cite a representative example, that Liberal hopeful Harvey Locke "took a slim lead" over Conservative candidate Joan Crockatt but that the "Tory MP moved ahead soon afterward" and never again relinquished the victory margin ...

Shadows and Light on Palliative Care

Shadows and Light on Palliative Care

Rapid expansion of Medical Aid in Dying and forced closure of a Vancouver-area hospice have raised alarm among palliative care providers. But Peter Stockland finds vital positive signs, too.

Indigenous Women Ascending

Indigenous Women Ascending

Peter Stockland sees the appointment of Mary Simon as GG, the election of RoseAnne Archibald as AFN National Chief, and Jody Wilson-Raybould’s political courage as hope for Canada.