Michael Ignatieff greeting residents in Kamloops, BC. Photo: Georges Alexandar
There’s a code among speechwriters; we don’t take credit. Ted Sorensen, whom John F. Kennedy called his “intellectual blood bank,” still refuses to claim authorship of JFK’s inaugural address. (“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” and all that.) Try to get a confession out of Sorensen, and he replies, “ask not.”
In my case, I’m just being honest. This summer, my title has become something of a running joke on the Liberal Express; Michael Ignatieff hasn’t read words off a page in months. It’s been great for me, though — not having to write also frees up my time for other pursuits, like blogging and snacking.
All of this is to say that I was caught off-guard by Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s cameo appearance on the B.C. leg of the Liberal Express tour. In speech after speech, Michael Ignatieff has described Sir Wilfrid’s visit to British Columbia, which took place 100 years ago this week. He went to Vancouver Island, opened the PNE in Vancouver, and then arrived in Kamloops, where on August 25th he met with the Chiefs of the Secwepemc, Nlakpamux, and Okanagan peoples. They presented him with a Memorial — a vivid retelling of the preceding century, from the Aboriginal point-of-view.
First thing this morning, when Michael Ignatieff waded into the crowd at Cowboy Coffee in Kamloops, a local First Nations leader handed him a copy of Laurier’s reply, which Michael Ignatieff quoted in his speech a few minutes later. (See? No speechwriter required!)
“Loyalty must be reciprocal,” Laurier said, a century ago. “It is not enough for the subject to be loyal to the Crown. The Crown must also be loyal to the subjects.”
Michael Ignatieff then picked up where Laurier left off, with an appeal to fairness for all Canadians. He talked about closing the gap in Aboriginal education, about lifting the cap on Aboriginal post-secondary funding, and about giving more young people the opportunity to go to colleges and universities like Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops. We still have a promise to keep, he said, a promise that is now 100 years overdue.
“The Liberal Party of Canada, the party of Wilfrid Laurier, has to keep that promise,” he said.
I couldn’t have written it better myself.
- A.G.
Adam Goldenberg, Michael Ignatieff’s speechwriter, will be blogging from the Liberal Express (almost) all summer. For up-to-the-minute reports from the bus, follow him on Twitter. Email him at adam@email.liberal.ca.
