Madam Speaker, before I get into what I want to say about the bill let me comment on what the previous speaker said. I have no problems with the Bloc not supporting the bill. I am not sure whether my party will either. Her first remarks perturbed me a little because she mentioned that it would perhaps entice poets from English Canada more so than poets from French Canada.
There have been some tremendous French writers and poets and perhaps it will take a poet to create a vision of Canada in which members of the Bloc, members of the House and Canadians can find a home where we all feel we are part of this great nation as equals, because as we always say, the pen is mightier than the sword. Maybe we should not cut off our nose to spite our face, as the saying goes.
When the bill was first brought to the House on April 24, I believe, when I spoke on the bill I delivered my speech in what some people might call poetry. I am not sure whether it was or not, but it was in some type of verse. There were two interesting things about that.
One was that because I did it that way I got more coverage than I ever did on any other topic I spoke about in the House. We have raised many topics that are important to my district, important to my province and important to my country. However, perhaps because I did something different, more media were interested in it than they were in the more important topics. I am not sure what that says about the poem, on the one hand, or on the other hand about what the press is really interested in.
At the time it was spring. It was a time, as people say, when a young man's fancy turns to love. I am not trying to say I am a young man, but perhaps my colleague from my party would be considered as such. It was a time when we were approaching summer, a time when we walked out of here and grass was turning green and the flowers were blooming. We thought about the upcoming summer and we thought about sharing it with our families. Everyone seemed to be in a good mood so we could take some time to write such a poem and to be a little trivial in the House. It was a time when we met our friends, smiled at them and said hello. It was also a time that when we met strangers we smiled and spoke to them. It was a time before September 11.
Since that time things have changed. Today I thought about again speaking in verse to the bill, but it is extremely hard to be trivial when we are living in such serious times. I just cannot bring myself to think about things that do not seem important when there are so many important issues. Perhaps like my colleagues from the Bloc who do not support the bill, I am not sure it is a very appropriate time to be talking about something which perhaps is not very significant in the order of things as they appear before us every day.
I talked about looking at our friends last spring when we could smile at them and talk to them. We did not look at them with suspicious eyes to see what colour their skin was or where they were going or what they had in their pockets. Times have changed tremendously since we first talked about this bill. One might ask this question: because of what happened on September 11, do we need a poet to capture the events so that we will always remember them?
I do not think we do. I think of a poem written by a great Newfoundlander poet, E.J. Pratt, who wrote some wonderful stuff. He wrote one poem called Erosion . I may not have every word correct but it went something like this:
It took the sea a thousand years, A thousand years to trace The granite features of this cliff, In crag and scarp and base. It took the sea an hour one night, An hour of storm to place The sculpture of these granite seams Upon a woman's face.
We all know the power of the sea and the losses that occur in a storm. We can imagine what happens to a family who is told it has lost its loved ones at sea.
I asked if we needed a poet to recall the events of September 11. I do not think we do because all of us will have forever indelibly etched on our brain the picture of that plane crashing into the towers in the United States, the picture of those two great towers crumbling. These visions will last forever. No poet could ever capture such memories for us.
Whether there are other events that poets would do a better job of recording, I am not sure. Undoubtedly poets have over the years been instrumental in preserving historical events. In fact a lot of our history has been recorded in poetry, but do we need to designate one individual to do it? We did not have to designate Pratt. We did not have to designate Robert Service. We did not have to designate John McCrae when he wrote In Flander's Fields . These people responded to the challenge, to the events of the time that for them were so important. They penned poetry so that they and we could always remember it.
There was a British poet, Seigfried Sassoon. Reading one of his poems today, I saw that it ties in with the events of September 11 and the memory of war and what happens and the shock that will always be recalled. In part of his poem called The Dugout , which was a place in which soldiers huddled during the war, he says to a young soldier:
And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder; Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head.... You are too young to fall asleep forever; And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.
These are very powerful words that send chills down our spines. We remember the horrors of war because of poems like this and because of poems like John McCrae's and those of Robert Service, who wrote many other great poems besides his great poems about the Yukon.
Out there in society we have a tremendous number of poets who rise to the occasion and when a special event occurs they will respond without having us tell someone that they cannot be the poet laureate for this occasion, that we have designated someone who has to do this job. I think, as someone said, that we might be infringing upon the rights of poets, of private enterprise, if we want to say that. Poets now have the opportunity to rise to the challenge.
I mentioned at the end of my original poem that our jury is still out. At the final hour of debate we will decide then whether we will support the bill. I think we have great poets in Canada and I am not sure whether we have to select someone for special occasions when we have someone who may respond in a greater way. We should not inhibit the great abilities of these people.
