Mark Bulgutch - Inspiring Canadians: Forty Brilliant Canadians and Their Visions for the Nation

Mark Bulgutch
with a foreword by Peter Mansbridge

Forty Brilliant Canadians & Their Visions for the Nation

Copyright 2022 Mark Bulgutch

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, .

Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd.

P.O. Box 219, Madeira Park, BC , V 0 N 2 H 0

www.douglas-mcintyre.com

Edited by Peter Norman

Text design by Libris Simas Ferraz / Ona Design

Printed and bound in Canada

Photographs courtesy the contributors except where otherwise noted

Cover insets of contributors, clockwise from centre top: Santa Ono (photo courtesy of UBC Brand & Marketing); Paulette Senior; Perry Bellegarde; Helen Kennedy; Katie Ward; Natasha Henry (photo by Sandy Nicholson); Ali Ghorbani; Marquis Haines; Najma Ahmed

Printed on 100 % recycled paper

Douglas and McIntyre acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Inspiring Canadians : forty brilliant Canadians and their visions for the nation / Mark Bulgutch ; with a foreword by Peter Mansbridge.

Names: Bulgutch, Mark, author. | Mansbridge, Peter, writer of foreword.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210384948 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220155216 | ISBN 9781771623148 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771623360 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH : CanadaForecasting. | LCSH : Social predictionCanada. | LCSH : CanadaSocial conditions21st century.

Classification: LCC HN 108 . B 85 2022 | DDC 303.4971dc23

If you were to ask me how to make Canada even better, I would fumble around before stringing together some semi-articulate academic answer. But if you were to ask me how to make every Canadian life even better, I would have an immediate and confident answer. Have a family like mine.

My wife, Rhonda, my daughters, Melissa and Jessica, and my granddaughter, Reid, love me. And I love them. Theres no stronger foundation for any life.

Journalists see a lot of things. Some they wish they could unsee. But many events open our eyes to the real world around us and leave us knowing that we are so lucky.

Of the many moments I remember, my mind often settles on this one. It was June of 1979 and I was in Hong Kong doing a mini-documentary for the CBC program Newsmagazine on the exodus of the Boat People from Vietnam. These were ethnic Chinese who were fleeing post-war Vietnam because they felt persecuted and they doubted their children could be raised there safely. As a result many paid outrageous sums of money to unscrupulous people who put them on overcrowded boats headed for uncertain futures starting in the South China Sea. Those who survived the horrendous journey wound up in temporary refugee camps hoping some country, somewhere, would take them in.

It was in one of those camps that I had my never-forgotten moment. We were filming and talking to some of the refugees when one woman, holding her months-old son, jumped up from the area in which she had been squatting and tried to thrust her child into my arms. She wanted me to take her son away from this hell. It was a desperate act, but one she felt was the only way she could be sure her son would have a chance in life. She had heard that we were from Canada and for her Canada meant freedom, and hope, and space, and a future. She was in tears. And she was one of many in that state. Of course, I couldnt do what she had asked but I made sure she knew there was a process that offered hope, and tens of thousands of those refugees did come to Canada, and perhaps she and her family were among them.

Oh, we are so lucky. Thats what was written on her face: You are Canadian. Yes, we are Canadian and sometimes you need to see up close what that means to so many in the rest of the world, to appreciate just how lucky we are.

But our work is not done. We are good but we can be better and thats the message of this book. My long-time friend, colleague and co-author of our 2020 national bestseller Extraordinary Canadians, Mark Bulgutch, discovers how we could make those improvements by talking to a knowledgeable and forward-thinking group of our fellow citizens. Successful in their very different careers, and all proud of their country, this incredible group of inspiring Canadians shows us how far weve come as a nation, while bringing into sharp focus the work still left to be done.

Peter Mansbridge
Stratford, Ontario

If you have chosen to read this book because you are expecting page after page of what is wrong with Canada, amounting to an indictment of the countrys past, present and future, then you will be disappointed.

This book begins with the premise that Canada is a wonderful country, blessed as few others are. You can look it up. There isnt unanimous agreement on the number of countries in the worldsome say 193, some add a few morebut its impossible to find any credible statistic that portrays Canada as a terrible place. If you were comparison shopping for a country to be born in, choosing Canada would be the best decision of your life. Of course, we dont get to choose. Which is why I have never bought a lottery ticket. I dont have to hit a multi-million-dollar jackpot to make me realize how lucky I am. I was born in Canada, which made me a winner on day one.

The United Nations Human Development Index puts Canada at number sixteen. The OECD Better Life Index says were number four. The World Happiness Report says were number eleven. A U.S. News & World Report survey, which measures several metrics, says we are the most socially progressive country in the world, have the best quality of life in the world and, overall, Canada is the best country in the world. On the other hand, Canada is nowhere near the top when you look at national rankings of maternal death rates or under-five mortality.

So many people in the world are forced to struggle to overcome the circumstances of their birth. I have tried to live a life worthy of the advantages I was gifted by the circumstances of my birth.

I wasnt born to luxury. My parents came from immigrant families, didnt go very far in their schooling, could read only well enough to get through the newspaper, never a novel. They could sign their names on the rent cheque every month, but my sister Linda wrote the cheque. Once Linda married and moved out, my sister Sharron wrote the notes to my school to explain why I had been absent the day before. We were a one-income family; that income derived from my fathers manual labour at the Redpath Sugar refinery. I never had a silver spoon in my mouth. I sometimes wondered why other families had cars and flew away on vacations while we didnt, but I never really thought I was hard done by. As I grew up and began to follow the news, I came to appreciate that being born in this country was no small thing.