I know: I couldn't resist. But he can take it.
I came back to Ottawa in 1992 for Canada's 125th. My parents lived here at the time and I was working at Mount Allison University. The Queen was on the Hill, I was here with my brother, and we were literally moved up Parliament Hill by the crowd. It just felt very important. It felt like you were part of something bigger. I didn't go to the Olympics, but still, I felt that again. I hope that for a 25-year-old, for a 15-year-old, or for some of us who are older now, there is again an opportunity to have that feeling of being part of something bigger.
One of the things on our sheet talked about legacies. One of the beautiful opportunities of working at a place like the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 is that we have many people who are relatively new to this country. I'll tell you a little story.
Again, I apologize to Judy, because she has heard this before.
We had a young couple from Israel, Danny and Maria Dechtiar, who came to work at Pier 21. It was their first winter in Canada, and if you're from Israel that can be a little shocking. Coming in, they were bundled up to here...even in Halifax. They had taken the bus, and as I was going up in the elevator with them I said to them that they must have found it so awful. I asked them if they had to wait long at the bus stop. They said it was fine. “We love taking the bus here,” they said, “because it's a wonderful thing to do.”
Now, our transit in Halifax is not known to be the best of the best. Maria said to me, “One of the reasons we came here is because when you get on a bus at home, you look around to see if you feel comfortable, and if you don't, you get off at the next stop.” Her best friend didn't and was in one of the buses that was blown up by a bomb. Danny and Maria decided they didn't want their kids on those buses. They just wanted to go somewhere where they could be comfortable. Their first day here, they jumped on a bus just because they could. So that would be part of their story.
I think the legacy is to have youths being able to travel beyond these borders to reflect back. When people travel—when any of you have come from somewhere else when you've travelled—it makes you realize that the things we take for granted are not taken for granted: our human rights. Our basic human rights are not the basic human rights of the whole world. To go away as a young person and to come back...it changes you. It can enforce the great things of this country. It can make you realize that there are things we can learn from other countries. Sometimes it can just make you stand a little taller as a Canadian.
We hear it over and over from people who come to our eminent speakers breakfasts: Mr. Schlesinger, Madam Clarkson, and Rick Hillier. When they speak at Pier 21, they talk about being somewhere else and people coming up to them with maple leaves and saying “Canada”.
You see it best when you're somewhere else. You sometimes take for granted what we have here. So I think a legacy to consider is some means of getting more of our young people somewhere else for a while. It might sound a little odd at first, but the association of university presidents met last week, and one of their concerns is that there aren't enough university students leaving the country to come back and realize that. I think that's an important part of being Canadian.
It's a vast land. It's a huge land, as Meg knows, from the north, but to leave it and see it through the lens of looking back in can make you feel really strongly about the future here and about wanting to participate in that future.
Speaking of participation, I do want to thank you for this invitation and opportunity. It's an honour to be here. I look forward to your questions.