People talked about Canada coming of age after a loss of innocence after learning about the horrors of the Residential School era. Loss of innocence usually happens during our teenage years or earlier. This suggests to me that facing how horrible we have been in the past offers Canadians the opportunity to attain greater maturity.
The Churches, represented by archbishops, were talking about how spiritually arrogant they were behaving at the time.
For what seems like six months before the election, the Conservatives funded a TV campaign that vigorously attacked, now Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as immature (using patronizing words) but with nice hair (male objectification, if that's all they noticed about him).
There is something mature about what Trudeau did, based on compassion, today - wanting to befriend those of us from First Nations and bring about justice by adopting all the almost 100 calls for action.
To become friends people have to earn each others' trust. There is no trust where there is injustice.
Trudeau showed the essence of leadership - empowering individuals to bring forward the most they have to offer society. We cannot contribute fully in a social system that we do not trust, or that is not empowering.
He did a lot to combat ongoing talk of terrorism and fear of Islam last week when he looked deeply and with compassion into the eyes of Syrian refugees arriving in Canada, and reassuring them that they has a future here.
The fear that some of us feel about how the world is changing is very real.
It seems in retrospect that the Conservatives pushed away at any political opposition for months in an immature manner based on fear. It is good that we have people able to show us another way based on compassion and justice.
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