Welcome Home, Canada

Update 10/20:  Speaking apparently on the theme of this column, Justin Trudeau said: "To this country's friends all around the world, many of you have wondered that Canada has lost a compassionate and constructive voice in the world over the past 10 years," Trudeau told jubilant supporters in Ottawa. "Well, I have a simple message for you on behalf of 35 million Canadians: we’re back."

In 1977 eminent and by no means radical Canadian author Robertson Davies told an audience, contrasting Canada and the US: "We have recognized that all nations of the first rank nowadays are socialist in their general political trend, and we act on that knowledge sometimes ruefully, but with a philosophical determination."

Down here we heard about that enacted fantasy of national health (the "single payer" kind we still can only dream about) but even a decade after Davies appraisal, I experienced different manifestations of the Canadian approach--the shockingly clean and quiet Toronto subway and a flight that didn't last long enough on Canadian Airways--with the same palpable sense of being in a wondrous dream.

But for the last decade, Canadians persisted in electing Stephen Harper as their Prime Minister, and permitting him to whittle away and dismantle the characteristically Canadian approach to good governance in favor of big oil money and other forms of corporate greed, and the attendant, facilitating hypocrisy and chicanery.

Today however Canada began restoring itself by voting overwhelmingly for the Liberal party and its leader, the young Justin Trudeau, son of the Canadian Prime Minister at the time of Davies speech.  Pierre Trudeau was first elected as a northern version of a Kennedy in 1968, and with one brief respite, remained PM until that fateful Reaganic-Orwellian year of 1984.

The full numerical dimensions of this victory are still being counted but appears tremendous--sweeping majorities among a much higher turnout of voters, with at this moment the CBC projecting an outright parliamentary majority for the Liberals, particularly impressive in a three-party race that had appeared almost even until recently.

Stephen Harper has resigned as head of his Conservative party, taken his defeat publicly with good Canadian grace, and Justin Trudeau is the next Prime Minister of Canada--just in time to be photographed matching smiles with President Obama over a North American solidarity position on the climate change negotiations in Paris, or at any rate, as general allies on the side of saving the world rather than the oil companies.  

Down here we're watching the early crazy days of a presidential campaign that would be unimaginable except that it's happening before our eyes: Donald Trump (whose policy prescriptions are on the order of ending Obamacare and replacing it with "something terrific") and millionaire speechgiver and author Ben Carson leading the down-flaming Republican polls, while the second-leading Democratic candidate is preparing a major speech on his definition of "democratic socialism."

Yes, socialism is mentioned--and cheered--in a US presidential campaign for the first time since the 1930s.  Perhaps only the brash Americans will name it, but the restoration in Canada will likely (and quietly) move back towards it (even if the New Democratic party might have been more forthright about it.)

And if that wasn't enough for Canada to cheer about, the Toronto Bluejays applied their own hefty majority on the Kansas City Royals to win their first home game of the ALCS.  Go, TO!