To Heather Moulton
Dear Heather,
I wonder where I might be today without Longfellow House. I discovered this special place during the autumn of my first year at Harvard. I had a severe case of homesickness in the fall of 1959. Mine wasn’t a longing for home; it was more a deep apprehension that maybe I wasn’t good enough for the Ivy League, that maybe a working-class kid from a small town in northern Ontario didn’t belong at such a prestigious institution of not merely education but also American thinking and culture. Then I found Longfellow House. I happened across this house one block from Harvard Square when I noticed a bronze plaque that read “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet, writer, Harvard professor lived and worked here. Open to the public.” So I went in.
I read there about his famous poem “The Song of Hiawatha.” I learned it was a paean to the place where I was raised and featured characters that arose from the same territory as I did. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s mythic, romantic verse reminded me that I came from a real place, with a distinguished history and richness of experience that are meaningful to even the most sophisticated and erudite. This revelation grounded me, gave me confidence, and filled me with the sense that I was wanted and appreciated even though I was hundreds of miles from my hometown. So I send thanks to you – and to your predecessors – as president of Friends of Longfellow House.
Once gained, I never lost the feeling of belonging I discovered at that historic place, and it is rekindled every time I journey to your welcoming country. I have visited the United States countless times since my years as a student there ended in the early 1960s – as a tourist, educator, and public official. One of my more memorable visits was as a father and grandfather: When my daughter, Alex, was waiting for the birth of her daughter Sadie. Alex and I drove many, many hours through a snowstorm from Toronto to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and back again to bring her daughter home safely. Best road trip ever!
My connection to the United States involves another human link – an all-important one. My mother was born in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, where her father worked as a supervisor on the American locks along the St. Mary’s River, which joins Lake Superior and Lake Huron. I’ve always thought these five locks – engineering marvels first built in the late nineteenth century – symbolize the relationship between our two countries: they may be separate, but they run parallel, operate in harmony, and open the Great Lakes basin to the world. In fact, at $5.5 trillion, after the United States and China, the Great Lakes region represents the third-largest trade entity in the world.
I grew up on the Canadian side of the locks in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. As a child, I would spend hours watching the huge lake freighters float majestically through the locks and along the river, bringing ore and grain from deep within the continent to the industrial cities of the Great Lakes, the Eastern seaboard, and even Europe. Growing up in the Soo – a physical part of the Great Lakes region and its huge commercial and transportation network – made me feel I had as much in common with people in Duluth, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland as I did with my countrymen in, say, Thunder Bay, Windsor, Toronto, and Montreal.
I’ve been incredibly lucky to be a citizen of this trans-border region. Don Peddie, an executive at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, recruited me to attend Harvard in my second year of high school. Don was an alumnus and legendary recruiter of scholar-athletes from throughout the region on both sides of the border. Yet my journey to Cambridge almost never happened – Longfellow House notwithstanding. My high school principal – a good man – refused to write me a reference letter. He thought talented people should stay close to home and serve their community and country. His was a well-intentioned thought but a woefully short-sighted and misguided one, for I had every intention of returning to Canada. Thankfully, two other men thought differently than he. One was the dean of admissions of Harvard College – Bill Bender – who decided the school must be a meritocracy and not an aristocracy, so he dispatched recruiters such as Don Peddie across the continent. The other was my high school football coach, who eagerly gave me the vital reference my principal had refused.
My studies in the United States were a formative part of my life. I learned so much; my debt is so great that I have continued my association with Harvard throughout my life, becoming the first non-American to chair its board of overseers. Many Canadians have stories similar to mine – of having our lives enriched and enlightened by time spent in the United States and with Americans. These experiences highlight the fact that people – individual men and women – matter. We tend to get all tied up into thinking that big departments and agencies and organizations drive growth and prosperity on autopilot. Yet anything positive in life is spurred by two or more people getting together to achieve something much greater than they could do alone.
What we the people of Canada and the United States have accomplished together is remarkable. The proof in the form of trade, jobs, and investment is staggering. Many of our industries operate in harmony. And millions of Canadians and Americans not only work together but also raise families together. My parents are living proof. Right at the time I was at Harvard, a distinguished son of that school, President John Kennedy, addressed a joint session of Canada’s House of Commons and Senate and described impeccably the enduring ties that bind our two peoples. He said, “Geography has made us neighbours. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies.” Way back then, we defined necessity primarily as our shared need to safeguard ourselves, our friends, and our way of life at the height of the Cold War. I often ponder what chief need animates us today and take guidance and draw inspiration from John Buchan. One of my most illustrious predecessors as governor general, Buchan was also a novelist and historian. He used the final words of his biography of the Scottish patriot Montrose to press home humankind’s eternal duty to infuse old truths with new passion. “No great cause is ever fully lost or fully won,” Buchan wrote. “The battle must always be renewed and the creed restated.”
I think this rallying cry remains alive for us today. Canada and the United States are special. Our countries are the first two nations in the long history of civilization that have been built on an experiment: to test whether all the peoples of the world – regardless of origin, colour, religion, culture, class, and wealth – could live together and grow, build, and prosper. Over our histories, we have met that test with enthusiasm, deepening and accelerating our commitment to pluralism – so much so that many of us take our respective successes for granted. Such complacency is now our enemy. We have inherited a great legacy. We must now restate our creed with renewed passion. We have a responsibility to our citizens, to each other – Canadians to Americans, Americans to Canadians. That duty extends to future generations here at home and to people throughout the world: to work with growing determination to achieve greater security and prosperity, to improve the health of our people and our environment, and to tackle and overcome the most daunting challenges of our times – not just for ourselves but for all the peoples of the world.
My visits with Americans convince me that Canada and Canadians continue to be valued partners. The cross-border ties between friends, families, business people, and cultural associations are thick and strong. These people-to-people ties are vital assets for both our countries. Although our relationship is strong, we cannot take this relationship for granted and must attend to it continually. By fighting complacency and nurturing an ever-healthier rapport, not only are we better placed to address irritants, but we also equip ourselves to pursue unprecedented opportunities. Our scientists, researchers, investors, entrepreneurs, and business people must build the partnerships we need to regenerate rusted cities, rejuvenate physical infrastructure, move beyond the internal combustion engine, retool our schools for the economy of the future, and help those in need enjoy lives of dignity and meaning. To do so, we must deepen the existing bonds between our two nations. Not just by doing more of what we have always done, but also by searching to expand our relationships in wholly new ways. Not just between businesses, but also between businesses and schools and research organizations and philanthropic groups. We must broaden our partnerships beyond the conventional and into the truly extraordinary.
Insecurity was my enemy many years ago when I first walked through the doors of Longfellow House. That wonderful home that you now preside over dispelled my destructive sense of inferiority. Today, complacency is our shared enemy. Let’s defeat that adversary in the same way: by reminding ourselves that we come from this magnificent shared land which has given us so much; by reminding ourselves of our history – both sorrowful and triumphant – together on this continent; by reminding ourselves of the richness of our shared experience and the thick and strong bonds we have forged over many, many generations. Those bonds certainly include the verse of Longfellow, not only “The Song of Hiawatha” but also “Evangeline,” his epic poem about the Great Expulsion of the Acadians from New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. Let’s remember it all and use it to build the smart and caring world we dream of.
Thank you.
David
Heather Moulton was president of the Friends of Longfellow House – Washington’s Headquarters. Located one block from Harvard Square at the edge of Harvard University Yard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Longfellow House was the long-time home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the celebrated nineteenth-century American poet and Harvard professor. Longfellow acquired the stories from which “The Song of Hiawatha” is composed in Sault Ste. Marie, where Lake Superior flows into Lake Huron, from the local North West Trading Company manager. The manager was married to an Ojibwa princess, who recounted to him the oral history of Hiawatha in Ojibwa, which he transcribed into English and gave to Longfellow on a chance meeting while Longfellow was voyaging on the Great Lakes. Operated by the United States National Park Service, Longfellow House also served as headquarters for General George Washington during the siege of Boston in 1775–1776.