A Canadian Vocabulary for the Year Ahead
Four Virtues for a Time of Transition
Hello,
I suspect this may catch you as you emerge sober eyed from the wonderful, disorienting haze between Christmas and New Years. But all good things must end, and as our eyes clear, we turn to another year and look back at the one that has passed.
As T.S Eliot writes:
“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning."
Eliot reminds us that beginnings are not clean breaks, but acts of transition, new words spoken with taste of old ones still in our mouths.
I wish you all the best for the New Year. The beginning of the year naturally lends itself to action, but also some reflection. Today I leave you with four virtues, those of courage, peace, art and community, and reflection on each by four great Canadians.
The Virtue of Courage
In his final remarks, Ambassador Bob Rae reflects on his experience, the global condition, and more poignantly his own life in public service. In doing so, he offers lessons that extend well beyond diplomacy.
Bob Rae’s Final Remarks as UN Ambassador - November 13 2025
Courage is such an important virtue because it the one virtue that makes the others possible. Courage can be difficult. It means stepping out. It means standing up. It means trying to persuade people who do not agree with you. But the thing we know about courage is that it is infectious. If some stand up then others will stand up, and thats why it is so critical for us to truly appreciate the importance and value of courage.”
The Virtue of Peace
Pearson’s Nobel Lecture examines peace through four lenses: peace and prosperity (trade), peace and power, peace and policy (diplomacy), and peace and people. Each is worth revisiting. He opens, however, with a reflection on the source of discord one that resonates as clearly today as it did nearly seventy years ago.
The Four Faces of Peace - Lester Pearson - December 11 1957
"During my lifetime greater and more spectacular progress has been made in the physical sciences than in many centuries that preceded it. As a result, the man who lived in 1507 would have felt more at home in 1907 than one who died fifty years ago if he came back to life today.
A great gulf, however, has been opened between man’s material advance and his social and moral progress, a gulf in which he may one day be lost if it is not closed or narrowed. Man has conquered outer space. He has not conquered himself. If he had, we would not be worrying today as much as we are about the destructive possibilities of scientific achievements. In short, moral sense and physical power are out of proportion.
This imbalance may well be the basic source of the conflicts of our time, of the dislocations of this “terrible twentieth century”.
The Virtue of Art
In the midst of technological forces that continue to shape our lives, how do we nurture, protect, and sustain our imaginative, creative, and emotional capacities? Max Wyman offers reflections on the virtue of art. The languages and mediums that once allowed us to dream, connect, and express what is deeply human feel more important now than ever. As we prioritise efficiency, have we forgotten the power of reflection? Overwhelmed by consumption, have we forgotten what it means to create? When confronted by the artificial, do we lose sight of the human?
The Compassionate Imagination: How Arts are Essential to A Functioning Democracy - Max Wyman
When we talk about access, we also need to rethink our assumptions about how we assess the quality of the artistic experience. In a society in which we expect everything to have measurable value, we are conditioned to prefer professionalism in the arts we support. When we buy a ticket to listen to an orchestra or to see a play, we expect a return on our dollar in terms of performance quality. The training and experience of the performers — their professionalism — promises the likelihood of quality; their work is monetized, and constellations of awards exist to let them know how much it is appreciated. But by putting professionalism on a pedestal in this way, we set art at a distance from our daily lives.
The unfortunate effect of our eager adulation of the professional is the loss of respect for the amateur. The root of the word is in the Latin for love; it originally signified an individual who indulged in a particular activity (not necessarily artistic) but had no formal training and did not practice it professionally. Its modern usage implies inferiority, dabbling, activities of no monetary value. Yet it is in the non-professional world of the arts that many find their greatest satisfactions. Being an amateur is more about the journey than the arrival: the gratification lies in the process itself, not the end result, whether it be performance or publication or exhibition. You may not be able to sing or paint worth a damn, but you’re likely to appreciate singing or painting more if you spend time enjoying the doing of it.
The Virtue of Community:
We cannot encounter transition, conflict, or a new year alone. We need each other. Humans are social animals; we lean on our communities for support and meaning in times of joy, mourning, and celebration alike. In a world that makes retreat into familiarity easy, how do we live with difference? Beverley McLachlin offers lessons from the Canadian experience.
Remarks of the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C. Chief Justice of Canada - Globalisation, Identity and Citizenship, October 6 2004
In Canadian terms, individual identity is a multi-layered thing. The values of inclusion and tolerance expressed in what I have called our common national space do not establish a constellation of mutually exclusive communities, each isolated from the other. Rather, our history is the story of citizens who belong to multiple communities at once. We all share membership in communities that accept the possibility of multiple allegiances. The presence of others, even many others, who are different from me does not require me to abandon what I hold dear….
In that sense, part of the solution to the predicament of difference, at least in Canada, lies in the recognition that diversity is not a phenomenon that is external to our selves, something that is around us. Diversity is within each of us, not just around us. The distinctively Canadian formulation of the principle of equal respect and dignity of each individual is one which neither obliterates nor glorifies difference. Rather, we think of equality as the natural by-product of the ties that bind each of us to multiple groups, from the family to human kind…
In a country of diversity, successful communities are those that serve both as refuge and as springboard – those communities that are the “anchor for self-identification and the safety of effortless secure belonging,” Much like a family, successful communities and institutions should push us to encounter the world, while remaining shelters of comfort and warmth.
These virtues are not resolutions. They are orientations. They do not tell us what will happen this year, but inform how we might meet it steadier, attentive, and less alone. If last year’s words belong to last year’s language, perhaps these are a few worth carrying forward as we learn to speak again.
Thank you for reading, and if I could make one ask of you it is that you please share this with one other friend.
FK
ps: When to stop wishing others “Happy New Year”