The Ottawa Citizen from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • 14

The editorial page A14 THE OTTAWA CITIZEN TUESDAY, MARCH 17, 1998 Opportunity knocks on national unity nwi.iiiHi.iN.ui luian.Liia ili A CHANTAL HEBERT OVAL OFFICE 1 A Pleawashyour hands upon leaving. ill Once again and probably for the last time this century, opportunity knocks on Canada's national unity front. Tory leader Jean Charest's widely expected jump into the Quebec political arena is either the country's best chance to step back significantly from the brink of Quebec's secession or is it a gesture as futile as throwing oneself between two trains just as they are about to collide. It will be the latter if other Canadians figure they can just sit back and wait for Mr. Charest to wrestle the so-called dragon of Quebec nationalism on their behalf.

For to see Quebec nationalism as an evil to be eradicated is about as helpful as rushing out to tilt at windmills. Nationalism in Quebec will remain a driving force long after Lucien Bouchard, Jean Chretien and even Jean Charest, as young as he is, have gone from the political scene. The rest of Canada, could it only see the richness that Quebecers' pride brings to the national texture, should not want to have it any other way. Quebecers, for their part, have shown time and again that they will not close the book on sovereignty unless they have a tangible sign that they don't have to leave their aspirations on the doorstep of the federation in order truly to belong to Canada. Call it "distinct society," as the drafters of the Meech Lake Accord did and as the Prime Minister solemnly promised in the dying days of the last referendum, or call it "unique character" as in the Calgary Declaration drafted by nine premiers last fall, constitutional recognition of the Quebec difference remains an unavoidable pit stop on the way to a lasting national unity settlement.

For Mr. Charest's move to Quebec to be something more than a flash in the federalist pan, the rest of the country will have to put substance behind its current good words, and the only substance in sight happens to be the Calgary Declaration. Since the referendum, Mr. Charest has declared himself the keeper of the promises then made on behalf of Canada. Once he is a Quebec leader, logic and consistency dictate that he undertake, as premier, to take the lead in enshrining the province's distinctiveness in the Constitution.

If he promises to do so, Quebec voters would have a choice between a leader who is committed to risking a modest but real step on the constitutional front and one who promises a referendum that the vast majority in Quebec do not want. To most Quebecers, the Calgary De- 93 Haltta Mly Newi mouOhfKntws.KMJlhim.ca claration is not an impressive achievement. Still, polls show that a majority would find it an acceptable step on the road to reconciliation if only it was in the Constitution. Such a plan need not precipitate a new and potentially damaging constitutional battle in Canada. At first, only a commitment in principle would be required from the rest of the country, as there would be no action at all if Jean Charest did not win the election and little time for more than that, in any event.

Moving on this front would be in line with the Prime Minister's oft-repeated commitment to work to en-, shrine Quebec's distinctiveness in the Constitution just as soon as there is a federalist government to work with in Quebec. Much of the preliminary work has been done. By summer, all provinces will have endorsed the Calgary Declaration, even British Columbia, where public consultations showed support for a gesture of this kind to be much higher than expected. While it is true that the Declaration would lose some support once there was talk of enshrining it, much of the opposition would come from Western Canada, a region that both Reform leader Preston Manning and Alberta premier Ralph Klein would have a stake in bringing on side. The two may soon be vying to lead a national alternative to the federal Liberals.

Each sorely lacks support in Quebec, a problem that can only cripple them in Ontario. Each therefore has a pressing interest in playing a key role in any scheme designed at national reconciliation. By choosing a federalist premier determined to start resolving their longstanding difference with the rest of the country, Quebecers can only once again signal their preference for a Canadian solution. But other Canadians, who currently see Mr. Charest as a potential saviour of their country, are the ones who have the power either to help him, succeed or to turn him into a modern-day Don Quixote instead.

Chantal Hebert covers national affairs for La Presse. All Celts now I here's a Pogo cartoon I from some bygone St. Patrick's Day in which the three bats see a parade going by. "We can't was, "Aye, and England is noted for the fine quality of its horses." Today we can admire that riposte without worrying whether we are English or Scots, let alone whether the Scots are Celts. The Citizen's recent story about the doubtful lineage between the original Celts and the modern version led to the predictable attacks on this English plot against the op-pressed nationalities.

But these lacked the edge of Baltic attacks on Eaton's for implying that the Baltic States are small, obscure, and have flags no one recognizes. The Scots aren't nervous about their ethnic position. They didn't besiege Eaton's for suggesting using old jeans for a haggis cosy. Perhaps we should emulate the Boston Celtics, a basketball team whose members (like the "Fighting Irish" of Notre Dame University) seem to have rather more recent African ancestry than the term Celtic normally conjures up in the popular imagination. They take pride in the various desirable characteristics that being Celtic might convey, ignore the negative ones, and generally just play basketball as hard as they can.

So march, march. In this country everyone's Irish today. Even the Lithuanians. Maybe. Complete genealogical records are lacking from the Dark Ages, never mind pre-Roman Britain.

Still, the conventional story is that after erupting out of Salzburg in the 7th century B.C. and taking over Europe north of the Alps, including the United Kingdom, "The only Celts who preserved their own culture were those of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, southwest England, and Brittany in northwest France." Other sources are less committal, saying only that Celts were (a) the ancient warrior people who whomped the Picts, and (b) anyone whose fairly immediate ancestors spoke some variant of a Celtic language, that is, the Irish, the Welsh, Highland Scots and Hebrides Islanders, Cornishper-sons, inhabitants of Brittany and of the Isle of Man. But it is not clear that there is any connection between the two. So maybe we are all Celts today and every day. Fortunately, in this country (unlike, say, Ireland), we tend to laugh about our ethnic identities rather more than we fight about them.

When Dr. Johnson observed that the English feed oats to their horses and the Scots feed them to their people, the withering response march," says one of them. "We're Ukrainians or some such." "March, march," says one of his brothers. "In this country everyone's Irish today." But at least one academic now says there are no Celts or, rather, that there is no real connection between the original Celts mounted warriors from southwestern Germany, armed with iron weapons, who ravaged Europe in the 6th and 5th centuries B.C. and the modern people who consider themselves Celtic.

The Celts, according to F.A. Tout's 1944 history of England, were a tall, fair-haired warrior people. That might surprise any Celts who are short and dark, as many are, and believe their forbears were oppressed by tall, fair-haired Anglo-Saxon warriors. Maybe such people are Picts (from the Latin "picti," meaning painted or tattooed). Or maybe they are descended from the Iberians, a long-headed, dark-haired people who were horrified to look up one day and see Celts with iron swords riding down on them.

THE CONTENT OF THEIR CHARACTER The California Civil Rights Initiative said simply this: "The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, colour, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting." The initiative won a huge victory at the polls on Nov. 5, 1996. Why? One reason may be that there is more natural (i.e., the opposite of state-mandated) diversity in California than any other place in the world. Driving the freeways of Los Angeles on any given day, we see hundreds of billboards advertising business in foreign languages. Walking the streets of San Francisco, we see men and women of every colour representing every nation The passage of CCRI makes me optimistic that someday soon we will be a nation in which our children are judged, as Reverend Martin Luther King envisioned, "not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character." Ward Connerly, chairman of the CCRI, in Imprimis Reports premature Ottava Citizen Slap-able Reverence can be an ennobling feeling, but if it's misplaced, it can be disastrous.

Consider Kathleen Willey's insistence that "You can't slap the president," even when his hand is groping your breast. It's classic American reverence for the presidency, which stems from its role as symbolic head of state. Public reverence for any politician is an invitation to abuse of power. In Canada, the Queen, happily, is head of state. The prime minister remains perfectly slap-able.

Forty-three years ago, on St. Patrick's Day 1955, Mon-trealers rioted after NHL president Clarence Campbell benched their hero, Maurice "The Rocket" Richard, for having punched a linesman. Today's festivities will be quieter, in part because Montrealers are mourning the news that their hero, now 76, is sick with cancer (though, contrary to a story on Monday's front page, he is not gone yet: Mr. Richard was one of the most intense hockey players ever to don a jersey. He is certainly the fiercest competitor ever to wear the Montreal Canadiens' bleu, blanc et rouge, an association that inspired Roch Carrier's famous children's story, The Hockey Sweater.

Athletic monogamy is a rare thing these days. Most modern hockey players wear several teams' sweaters in their career. We do favour a player's being able to control his own career, in a way Mr. Richard was not allowed to, but the child in us misses the days when heroes and their teams were one and inseparable, now and forever. William Watson, Editorial Pages Editor Susan Armstrong, Vice-President of Reader Sales Deborah Bennett, Vice-President of Human Resources Patrick Brennan, Vice-President of Manufacturing Edward Zebrowsld, Vice-President of Finance Published by the proprietor, Southam at 1101 Baxter RA, Box 5020, Ottawa, Russell Mills, Publisher and President James Orban, Vice-President of Sales and Marketing and Assistant to the Publisher Neil Reynolds, Editor Scott Anderson, Chief News Editor Don Butler, Executive News Editor How the 20th century has been driving us crazy JohnRobson habits.

The Pill did indeed have profound effects on those in due course, but as soon as there were family cars in the 1920s it was impossible to chap-erone young people. The First World War also had an impact: Young men who had been under fire and expecting to die were not intimidated by social conventions or the disapproval of flabby, middle-aged bank managers. But they drove to Lover's Lane and then did it in the rumble seat. The automobile also affected things like crime, as well as more wholesome forms of social mobility. (And, as my colleague Dan Gardner reminds me, without the decisive role of the automobile in the "Miracle on the Marne" that saved France in 1914, the First World War would have been a quick, rails-and-steel I9th-century-type war.) What, then, of television and movies? They have had an extraordinary impact because they have shrunk time and space.

Indeed, TV can bring you Algeria faster than a car can. But the car has still done more to shrink time and space, because TV only shows it to you whereas the car gets you there. It also takes you to the movie theatre or video store, and the actors to the studio. So it transforms the place in which you live as well as allowing you to visit other places. Overall, the ability of humans to travel vast distances quickly, easily and in comfort for just pennies a kilometre has altered social conditions more than anything since at least the Black Death.

The impact of the personal computer and the Internet will be enormous, because the Internet doesn't just show you distant places, it lets you interact with them. The software, reports and images you can download are real and valuable, and E-mail isn't just cheaper than snail mail, it can move at speeds that are literally physically impossible using a horse or, for that matter, a car. True, one can exchange descriptions of things by phone. But one can exchange the things themselves by E-maiL But that's something to worry about in the 21st century. The most important thing in the 20th is still the automobile.

Don't leave home without it. John Robson is the Citizen's Deputy Editorial Pages Editor. living in "urban" areas (2,500 people or more), while that of 1921 is the first to show a majority of Canadians in towns of 1,000 or more. Socially the effect of living in communities too large to know everyone is surely the oddest thing about the 20th century. Nothing remotely similar has ever happened before in history.

And the mass-produced automobile made it possible. Automobiles include trucks, of course, and as the truckers say, "If you have it, a truck brought it." Trucks and cars let large numbers of people live close, not only to farms, but also to other large numbers of people: not physically close, but close in the sense of taking as little effort to reach by motor vehicle as something only a few miles away takes by foot. The concentration of population that made possible both modern factories and the suburban bedroom communities that house their workers also created the modern economic ferment in which huge numbers of small, innovative firms flourish (and perish), exchanging products, ideas and employees. Cars also revolutionized courting The other night, while channel-surfing, I came across a very interesting TVO panel discussion between John Duffy, Robert Fulford and Janice Stein on who had been the most important people of the 20th century. But my thoughts on that must wait, because in the final minute of the show they were asked what was the most important thing of the 20th century.

One picked movies and television, one the computer and one the Pill. With all respect to the panelists, surely they are wrong. Surely it was the automobile. True, the automobile was invented in the 19th century, whether dated chronologically (1801-1900) or historically (from Waterloo in 1815 to the fateful Christmas of 1915). But it had its real impact in the 20th, just as the computer, invented in the 20th, will surely have its major impact in the 21st.

In 1904 there were only 15,000 cars in the United States and no paved roads for them to run on. By 1920 there were half a million registered vehicles in the U.S. and by 1929, when they passed cotton as the leading American export, there were 23 million. That's an astounding figure given that the total U.S. population was just over 100 million people.

Even given multiple registrations (for farmers as well as the rich), nearly everyone who didn't have a car was expecting to get one. As Will Rogers observed during the Depression, the U.S. was the first nation in history that could go to the poorhouse in a car. True, the automobile is as inextricably entwined with assembly-line mass production as the computer and the Internet will soon be. But the car made the assembly line possible by making massive urbanization possible.

Consider that the 1920 census is the first to show a majority of Americans 1 i.