Grace MacPherson had all the credentials she needed to become an ambulance driver in the Great War. The first woman in Vancouver to earn a driver’s licence. The first woman to purchase a car in that city. When war broke out in 1914, she even paid her own way to Britain offering her skills as a driver to the Red Cross ambulance corps.
When she gained an audience with Sam Hughes, Canada’s minister of militia and war in 1917, to plead her case, however, he turned her down.
“I’ll stop any woman from going to France,” Hughes blustered.
“With your help, or without it,” Miss MacPherson said, “I will serve.”
Then, when Hughes was suddenly demoted from his position later that year, Grace got her wish. And remarkably, she said her proudest moment was not defying Hughes. “I was proudest when I wore that ‘Canada’ patch on the shoulder on my uniform,” she wrote.
Just about every veteran I have ever interviewed – probably 6,000 of them in my 50 years as a journalist, broadcaster and author – has told me that nothing meant more to them than the privilege of being Canadian. Nothing.
The past few months I’ve thought a lot about Grace MacPherson’s determination and pride at being Canadian, particularly I think in the wake of several misguided pronouncements made by some of this country’s provincial premiers – Smith of Alberta, Moe of Saskatchewan, and Ford of Ontario.
Almost a year ago, the Alberta government of Danielle Smith used its majority (27 to seven) to pass the Alberta Sovereignty Act, which in simple terms gives the province the right not to abide by any federal legislation it doesn’t like regarding such things as energy development, health care or pension benefits.
The dean of the University of Calgary’s law school, Ian Halloway, told CBC, “The premier is engaging in a game of political chicken.” And in recent weeks, Smith has made the first move in that game of chicken – campaigning to pull Alberta out of the Canada Pension Plan. She claims Albertans pay disproportionally more than their share into the plan, and that they’re owed 53 per cent of its assets (or $334 billion).
Now, I lived in Alberta for a decade when times both boomed and went bust. And during those economic downturns, nobody in B.C., Ontario or Newfoundland demanded repayment of their contributions to unemployment insurance, health care or equalization to western provinces when their citizens were have-nots.
Smith has also forgotten about the negative rants made by one of her Conservative predecessors, Ralph Klein; at the height of the National Energy Program dispute, as mayor of Calgary, Klein said, “Let those eastern bastards freeze in the dark.”
Grace MacPherson would not be amused by either Klein’s or Smith’s anti-Canadian remarks.
As well, just last month, the Saskatchewan Party used its majority at the Legislature in Regina to pass Bill 137, which will prevent children under 16 from changing their names or pronouns at school without receiving parental consent. Whether parents needed such protection or not is clearly debatable, but Premier Scott Moe didn’t just use his majority in the Legislature to pass the law.
No, his distaste for Ottawa precipitated his use of the Notwithstanding Clause of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to ram it through. To stop already vulnerable young people from choosing their identity, really? Do you know how many letters of concern over this issue the government of Saskatchewan received? Exactly 18! One NDP opposition politician called Bill 137 Premier Moe’s “show trial” against Ottawa.
Once again, I’m inclined to think veteran MacPherson and her comrades would consider Premier Moe’s use of back-against-the-wall legislation abusive, if not un-Canadian.
Then, amid his self-inflicted Greenbelt fiasco, Premier Doug Ford is blaming his troubles getting infrastructure and housing built on the federal government. Despite the auditor general’s report about placing developers’ interests over the public interest and the integrity commissioner’s condemnation of Conservative political hacks determining policy, Ford says his pet projects – Ontario Place and Hwy 413 – are being stalled by Ottawa’s environmental legislation.
He wants the federal Impact Assessment Act reviewed, claiming development is being “held up because of confusion caused by the federal government.”
If Grace Macpherson were still around and aware of Premier Ford’s track record on development, Premier Smith’s “Tell the Feds” attack ads or Premier Moe’s partisan use of the Charter of Rights and Fredoms, I think she’d wonder whose interests they are serving – their own or Canada’s?
And with Remembrance Day upon us, she might remind them how much Canadian blood was spilled gaining those rights and freedoms.