Last fall CBC ran a series called “The Greatest Canadian” and we, the public, picked who we wanted, and then voted on the final 10. As I sat and watched the cases made for which of these 10 was the one, the Greatest, person to represent what Canada is I saw a startling trend. While all the people in the top 10 accomplished many great and wonderful things, what became apparent was that every single person showed an amazing capacity for Compassion, lived with and in Humility, and was unbelievably Tenacious in whatever they tackled. Quite simply, they loved humanity and desired to better it in whatever way they could. The argument became, they simply were Canadian. Period. End of story.

For me I had my favorite, Terry Fox. All 10 are great, but Terry tips the scale for me. Maybe it’s the BC connection, I don’t know. I read an article written by Terry’s brother. He had wanted to experience a marathon, know just a taste of what Terry did;

- He trained for one year – ran one race – and had to recover for 6 months.

Terry did that every day for nearly 143 continuous days.

Doctors still claim that what he did was outright impossible. The human body is just not capable of that amount of activity and abuse. So how did he do it? I like to believe that a part of his ability came from being Canadian. That somewhere amid the love and life he experienced growing up, Terry got it, he understood the Canadian zeal that saw over one million men volunteer for the 1st and 2nd World Wars. He respected his fellow human beings and wanted, hoped, even prayed that he could somehow improve their lives. Not because he wanted to be great, or even thought that he was great, it was simply who he was and he couldn’t be any less than that. Terry had grown up Canadian.

It is my hope that more of us remember what it means to live this way and passionately instill these qualities in our children in the hope that they too, will grow up Canadian.

Use your voice, it can be worth it