PHOTOS: Justin Trudeau addresses supporters in Montreal last night in this screen shot from the CBC’s broadcast of the prime minister elect’s victory speech. Below: the Trudeaus, son and father.

Justin Trudeau’s victory speech last night touched a gracious note of tribute to the losers, especially the evening’s principal loser, Stephen Harper, as such speeches must.

But it was tough-minded nevertheless, recognizing that we all have a lot of work before us to repair the damage done by the divisive and destructive Harper Government Canadians so decisively repudiated yesterday.

TRUDEAU_2-JPGSurely it was no accident Mr. Trudeau borrowed a line from Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Speech, delivered on March 4, 1861, when the greatest American president still had hopes of binding up his country’s great divisions. “We are not enemies, but friends,” Mr. Lincoln told the people of the seven states who had seceded from the Union in his famed appeal to “the better angels of our nature.”

“You can appeal to the better angels of our nature and you can win while doing that,” said Mr. Trudeau, while he too strove to disavow the divisions sown during the Harper Era, which is thankfully now at an end.

This sent a chill up my spine for reasons that should be obvious to any person who has thought about the hard lessons of the 19th Century. For, alas, the Harper Era may be over, but the divisions that were created and exploited for electoral gain by Mr. Harper and his collaborators are nevertheless bound to remain, and it will take good will and hard work to make them fade.

So while the PM- elect thanked Mr. Harper for his years of service, he did not shy from acknowledging that we have yet to confront the reality that will be that prime minister’s troubled legacy.

“You and your fellow citizens have chosen a new government, a government that believes deeply in the diversity of our country,” Mr. Trudeau said, as if addressing a Muslim mom he told of meeting during his campaign. “We know in our bones that Canada is a country built by people from all corners of the world, who worship every faith, who belong to every culture, who speak every language.

“We believe in our hearts that this country’s unique diversity is a blessing bestowed on us by previous generations of Canadians – Canadians who stared down prejudice and fought discrimination in all its forms. We know that our enviable, inclusive society didn’t happen by accident, and won’t continue without effort …

JUSTWATCHME-JPG“Have faith in your fellow citizens, my friends, they’re kind and generous, they are open minded and optimistic, and they know in their hearts of hearts that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian. …”

Where I watched the CBC’s broadcast, in a movie theatre in the Edmonton Strathcona riding, the crowd was heavily weighted toward disappointed New Democrats. Still, at this moment in the speech, they cheered Mr. Trudeau’s words lustily. They may have been disappointed by the NDP’s lack of success, but they were far more relieved to see the back of the Harper Government at last.

“My friends, we beat fear with hope, we beat cynicism with hard work, we beat negative, divisive politics with a positive vision that brings Canadians together,” Mr. Trudeau said. And whatever the reality of the Trudeau Government turns out to be – and of course there will be some broken promises – that is not a call to do business as usual, or anything but a tough and direct condemnation of the way Mr. Harper and his minions ran our country.

Was it just me, or did I hear an echo of the last Prime Minister Trudeau’s tough “just watch me” interview in mid-October 1970 in Justin Trudeau’s Oct. 19 victory speech 45 years later?

Surely if there are any lessons from last night, they are that politicians (and karate black belts) underestimate Mr. Trudeau at their peril, and that if they try to create wedges among voters to divide and conquer, they also underestimate Canadians!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

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8 Comments

  1. It’s a great victory for Canada! To see the end of the fascist pig harper is a singular victory itself. But you are right David, the battle is won but the hard reality of the war rages on.
    Perhaps we can start pushing back with the Leap Manifesto soon.

  2. That we’re seeing “the back of the Harper Government at last” is indeed, a relief.
    Some observations though…..the Liberals used, or, for me, imitated, a successful ‘Jack Layton’ style of campaign, i.e. many of the words, i.e.my friends, hope, optimism, love, etc., the raised arms when entering a room and the even the timbre of the voice used in the speeches….all very much reminded me of the Jack Layton campaign in 2011 and left me, feeling somewhat conflicted.
    So now, for me, as an older voter, will be watching closely to see if the Liberal tradition of campaigning from the ‘left’ will now be a governing from the ‘right.’
    Many promises have been made and there is much that needs to be fixed.

  3. With the Harper PMO out of business, who will tell the opposition MPs what to think and say? Question period should be interesting. Will we see more words of wisdom from Pierre Poilievre?

  4. Ten years in the repressive and regressive dark ages of the Harpercons. Finally, the age of enlightenment is upon us.

    That’s ten years I’ll never get back. How long will it take us to reverse all the damage Harper did?

  5. As always, not everything about this Liberal win is necessarily cake and pie. Here is an interesting quote from
    Maude Barlow, Council of Canadians:
    “There are a number of fronts where you and I will have to be particularly on guard, including on trade, where the Liberals support the Trans-Pacific Partnership and its European counterpart, CETA, both of which contain the destructive investor-state dispute settlement mechanism; on water, where the Liberals support flawed public-private partnerships for our water utilities; and on climate, where they support pipelines such as Energy East. We need to send the new Liberal government to the Paris climate talks this December with a clear mandate for swift and meaningful action on climate change.”

  6. Thank the gods – Robspierre is gone and the Reign of Terror is over!

    Actually, it has been an annus horribilus for the conservative movement in 2015: the fall of the Fords in Toronto, the end of Sun News Network, the election of the NDP in Alberta, and the ousting of the Harper Conservatives. It just goes to show that the whole conservative ‘movement’ that the likes of John Ibbitson writes about is not much more than a Pontemkin Village when someone dares to look up close.

    If only the Manning Centre would file for bankruptcy and the Fraser Institute swallowed by a climate-change-created Tornado…

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