Former prime minister Stephen Harper gestures to the artist after he unveiled his official portrait during a ceremony in Ottawa, on Tuesday.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Just before the ceremony in downtown Ottawa in which Stephen Harper’s official portrait as Prime Minister would be unveiled on Tuesday afternoon, huge screens all around the room displayed a more ephemeral photo record of his time in office.
The images highlighted what must have been most meaningful to him about that 2006-2015 chapter: the far north, the Canadian military, his family and political teammates. The images had that strange quality of capturing what seem like very recent events but then revealing just how much time has passed.
The small children Mr. Harper walked to school in one photo are now adults, and a few of the political confidants who appear at his side in others (finance minister Jim Flaherty and chief of staff Nigel Wright among them) are now deceased.
Harper continues call for national unity at portrait unveiling
It’s been 20 years since Mr. Harper’s newly united Conservatives formed government, after all. And it is around that anniversary that the portrait unveiling and other commemorative activities were planned this week, drawing countless Tories to Ottawa for a sort of homecoming celebration.
A formal painted portrait - Mr. Harper’s is by artist Phil Richards, who also painted Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee portrait - is all about turning the now into posterity. Most of the speeches took on an appreciative eulogy quality as a result.
People praised Mr. Harper’s focus on Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic - an interest that now looks both prescient and darkly necessary - his capable stickhandling of Canada’s economy through the 2008 financial crisis, and his deep appreciation for Canadian history.
The Canadian Press
Prime Minister Mark Carney said that it was fitting that a prime minister who often reminded Canadians of the lessons of their past was about to “join a historic pantheon” himself.
“Mr. Harper - Stephen - your portrait will soon take its place alongside those of Macdonald and Laurier, King and Diefenbaker, Trudeau and Mulroney,” Mr. Carney said. “Builders of our country in the past, examples to our country for our future.”
After he’d pulled aside the House of Commons-green curtain to reveal the portrait, Mr. Harper was nostalgic and expansive in his own speech. Forty years ago, when he was an eager 26-year-old assistant to an MP, he said he would have been “in utter disbelief” if anyone had told him he’d be standing on that stage one day.
He paid tribute to his family for making his political career possible, and he thanked the thousands of Canadians who had welcomed him into their communities for a decade.
His parting thought - repeated in French and English - was on the scale of history, reflecting both the legacy-building event of the day and the strange and dark moment Canada finds itself in.
Harper, Chrétien call for national unity to confront Trump
“I sincerely hope mine is just one of many portraits of Prime Ministers from both parties that will continue to be hung here for decades and centuries to come,” Mr. Harper said. “But that will require that in these perilous times, both parties, whatever their other differences, come together against external forces that threaten our independence and against domestic policies that threaten our unity.”
Those same ideas permeated an event where Mr. Harper spoke the previous day, too.
On Monday, he was at the Royal Canadian Geographic Society to receive the organization’s gold medal for public service, followed by an on-stage chat with former prime minister Jean Chrétien. Here were two of the only 24 people in Canadian history to date who know what it’s like to run the joint, offering their personal reflections at one rather loaded moment.
The broad historical lens of the conversation shrunk the current state of geopolitics down to a scale it doesn’t often have. Neither of the former PMs suggested that the rift in Canada-U.S. relations wasn’t profound and difficult, but in their chat, it became just one more big event in this country’s long timeline.
“I’m not discouraged at all,” Mr. Chrétien said. “I think that we live in a very important time in the world. It’s a big shift. It is probably what I would call the beginning of the end of the American empire, and it has to come.”
Mr. Harper is recognized from the gallery after Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill on Tuesday.Patrick Doyle/Reuters
The moderator, RCGS president and CEO John Geiger, asked Mr. Harper whether he stood by his previous comments that Canada must be prepared to accept any sacrifice to defend itself. The former PM said he wouldn’t suggest that we should swallow “unacceptable costs,” but when a thing really matters, it has a price tag.
“The fact of the matter is that the country’s worth preserving, that I think there are costs that are going to have to be paid under the current circumstances to do that,” he said. “But there’s also enormous opportunities - it’s not all costs.”
And then, sounding for all the world like Mr. Carney, he rhymed off the to-do list: making ourselves more competitive, wealthy and connected to the world.
Mr. Chrétien, too, detected a silver lining in the Trump hurricane: a “mood” in which Canadians have never been so proud to be Canadian.
“The desire to have a referendum is very low in Quebec,” he said. Then he paused for half a beat, glancing over at Mr. Harper and then out at the crowd, before finishing off: “I don’t know what the hell is going on in Alberta.”
The crowd roared with laughter, and Mr. Harper made a gesture in the air like he was asking a restaurant server for his bill. “I didn’t sign the petition,” he said.
Above all, what came through from listening to these two former prime ministers, a generation apart in age, was the sanguine calm that comes of backing up a bit.
From thinking on your feet in the House of Commons to reciting scripted answers for trained-seal applause, from the advent of radio and TV to 24-hour news cycles and social media, they described unimaginable change over the half-century of their collective political careers.
That wider view of history offers the same lesson about permanence and transience as an oil portrait intended to hang on Parliament Hill forever. We’re stuck in a distressing and enraging moment right now, but this too shall pass.