Serré: Leadership lessons on the French River

“Sometimes, you have to know where you’ve been to see where you’re headed.”

I learned that lesson years ago from a wise old guide who was helping me paddle my way through the West Arm of Lake Nipissing. It’s a beauty place — one of my favourite places in this whole beautiful country — but it can be tricky.

The endless bays, islands and channels of the headwaters of the French River can be bewildering, and it’s easy to lose one’s way. And that’s why I’m choosing to open this first column to you during this election campaign of 2015 with the old black-and-white photograph you see above.

That’s my father, Gaetan Serré, on the right. The year was 1972, and my dad had just delivered a petition from the riding to the government, seeking to have the CBC/Radio-Canada establish a station in Sudbury.

My dad had been elected as Nickel Belt MP in 1968, swept into office on the great wave of Trudeaumania, which broke across the land that election year. He was just 30 — the youngest Francophone MP from Ontario, and the second youngest MP in the entire Liberal caucus. Since when did youth become a liability in the legislatures of this land?

I’m hoping to channel where we’ve been to where we’re going, to help flow this country back to the nation we once were—a place of civility, tolerance and inclusion that punched above its weight in the community of nations. This desire, this vision, flows through me like a river. It is, quite literally, in my DNA. It is, even more literally, my middle name — the “G” stands for Gaetan.

I fully expect that with the leadership of another Trudeau we’ll no longer be regarded as a laggard nation when it comes to issues like global climate change or the thorny policy issues of the Middle East. We were leaders once, a country that could boast of vibrant, youthful leadership that made us a beacon of hope to the world.

But now, it seems, we’ve lost our way. Now, it seems, we’ve become a fearful nation. Fear of terrorism, fear of crime, fear of change, fear of risk, even fear of youth, and always the lurking fear of the other. Fear in many forms is used to divide us, and has become a top-of-mind issue in our political discourse.

Or at least that’s what our current political leadership in Ottawa would want us to believe, and it’s how they’ve chosen to open the 2015 election campaign.

But I just don’t buy it, and I’m betting the Canadian electorate and the electors of Nickel Belt won’t, either.

Something about my dad evidently caught Pierre Trudeau’s eye. It might have been because he was so fresh, but for whatever reason Prime Minister Trudeau appointed the fresh-faced rookie MP for Nickel Belt to any number of important positions, including the Chairmanship of an Ad Hoc Committee on Broadcasting, which spurred my father on to organize that petition drive to bring a publicly-owned broadcaster to Sudbury.

That drive succeeded beyond his wildest dreams — 20,000 Sudbury and Nickel Belt residents signed on. Of course, there was no internet, no digital, back then, so everything had to be done on paper. The signed petitions were transported to Ottawa on the CPR in fifteen heavily reinforced plastic garbage bags, and my father had to rent a small delivery van to lug them from the train station up to Parliament Hill! But he did it, the Secretary of State listened, and the rest, as they say, is history.

And it shows what can happen when Nickel Belt has a strong voice in Ottawa that’s part of a strong government team — within just three or so years Radio-Canada established its first television news bureau here, the forerunner of the full blown CBC/Radio-Canada broadcasting station that’s still in operation downtown.

Since dad’s day that station has brought dozens of high-paying, stable, unionized jobs to Sudbury. It has cemented our city’s position as the media hub of Northeastern Ontario, along with CTV and Eastlink, where I’m currently employed as District Manager of Sales

And that’s just one reason I’m proud and happy to look back, to see where we’re coming from and where we could be headed after Oct. 19.

It’s my hope to follow the path pioneered by my father, and by Pierre Trudeau and Samuel de Champlain, and Lasalle and all the rest.

And if you’ll just give me the chance to be part of yet another strong Trudeau government, then I’m confident that, like the mighty, but meandering, French River we’ll find our way west through the torturous maze and burst free, safely and triumphantly at last, into the great, shining sea.

Marc G. Serré is the federal Liberal candidate for the riding of Nickel Belt.