Happy Heritage Day

This is heritage day in Canada. No, you didn't miss a paid holiday. This is not Good Friday. It's just a day.

But the day gives a chance to salute two organizations that have become part of the fabric of Canadian historical awareness.

One is the Heritage Canada Foundation (www.heritagecanada.org). Many years ago I actually worked for a few months for the Heritage Canada Foundation in a handsome old-house office in Ottawa's Centretown. But I mainly want to notice it for the extraordinary achievements it has made in making heritage conservation important in this country.

The foundation launched the idea of Heritage Day, for one thing. More important, it's been there on the ground in scores of towns and cities across the country, giving practical advice and pulling together expertise and money and citizen willpower. The Foundation has actually demonstrated that conserving heritage architecture is good economics, good public policy, and good cultural policy too. It has made a difference, and it deserves a good deal of the credit for the fact that we think differently about architectural heritage than we did 25 or so years ago.

The other organization is the Historica Foundation (www.histori.ca) founded a few years ago to promote knowledge of Canadian history. Its principal backers are the Bronfman Foundation of Montreal (originators of tv's Heritage Minutes) and Lynton "Red" Wilson, a Nortel millionaire with a powerful concern about the state of the country and its knowledge of itself.

Today Historica runs The Canadian Encyclopedia, the best online source of information about Canada. It runs the Heritage Minutes. It has a website full of historical stuff.

Mostly, Historica focusses on history education. Frankly, I'm not sure that is so wise a strategy for a history foundation. Not that education is unimportant. But sometimes Canadians fall into the error of thinking history is for kids and if we ram enough of it into them when they are young, the country will be saved. If we want to promote respect for our history, my sense is we need to work to ensure that adults respect history as an adult concern, a cultural richness to appreciate as much as music or sport or any other cultural pursuit.

Education is a $40 billion a year commitment in Canada. That's a big ship to turn around. Historica is the richest historical foundation Canada has ever seen, but I fear it could spend itself dry on the education system, and the next day the education system would be barely changed and hungry for more. A much smaller foundation, the Dominion Institute, has shown what a splash can be made by targeting lively history-centered campaigns at the public, the media, and the opinion-makers.

Maybe I'm wrong about the difficulty of influencing the educational system. Historica has certainly done some nifty things, and I'm glad it's there. This morning it was histori.ca that reminded me of Heritage Day, in fact.

So here's to Heritage Canada Foundation and Historica. Check them out.

History and the Harper Cabinet

Used to be, when an MP joined the cabinet, he (they were all men back then) resigned his seat and sought re-election. The theory was that an MP had been sent to Parliament to keep a wary eye upon the servants of the Crown, and if he became one, he should seek his constituents' approval of the change.

Something like that may be proposed again. David Emerson, elected by Vancouver voters as a Liberal candidate just two weeks ago, has turned up in Mr Harper's Conservative party cabinet. Harper says Emerson will not seek re-election, but some of those Liberal voters in Vancouver may well be suggesting their MP ought to come back and ask them.

I'm not sure how Harper squares the Emerson switch with his principles, but it's okay with mine. We would have a stronger Parliament if we could elect men and women as representatives of the people first and could worry less about what petty party label was attached to them.

Meanwhile, the appointment of the unelected Montrealer Michael Fortier to the cabinet and the Senate evokes the historical function of the Senate.

The appointment throws into question the sincerity of everything Mr Harper has conveyed about elected representatives and the need for an elected Senate.

But I've never approved of an elected Senate, and I'd say this appointment shows the Senate doing just what it was always supposed to do: namely, providing a reservoir of talent for the government and the country to draw on. Fortier will never be a political power without a seat in the House -- and that's as it should be. But sometimes a prime minister needs some special quality in his cabinet team. Historically, the Senate had been there to provide that, while the elected House provides legitimacy and representation.

I'd score it, good government and sound parliamentary history 2, Mr Harper's principles, 0.