Our values, not our leaders, define our nation
The future of Canada is in good hands.
The best assurance we have, as we celebrate the country’s 148th birthday, is our consistent record of rising above our political leaders. When Ottawa and the provinces lock horns, bureaucrats balk and public officials tell us the nation’s problems are too big or complex to solve, we get to work, building from the ground up. When politicians sow division and animosity, we reassert the values that have kept Canada on track for almost a century and a half.
Sometimes it takes a while, but our self-correcting instinct always kicks in.
Since Confederation the face of the nation has changed from predominantly white to multiracial. The economy has gone through multiple cycles of expansion and retrenchment. We have become a wireless urban society. The institutions of the postwar era — churches, charities, unions and service clubs — have given way to the mainstays of today: coffee shops, arenas, community hubs and social media. But each generation has responded with the same can-do attitude.
Best of all, we can see it in our kids. They launch social enterprises with their digital devices. They crowd-fund. They mix business and altruism. They set up foundations and befriend younger kids struggling to navigate the obstacles they overcame.
Let me introduce you to three millennials who will make you proud to be a Canadian and renew your faith in this land. Each has turned adversity into opportunity. All three are working to transform lives and serve their country.
I didn’t pick them. They were selected by an international panel of their peers as Queen’s Young Leaders. Last week they, along with 57 other exceptional young people, were honoured by Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace.
Melissa Kargiannakis grew up in an abusive household in Sault Ste. Marie. She learned to fend for herself and protect her mother and siblings. She worked her way to university, convinced education could unlock the cycle of violence. She became president of the student association in her faculty and graduated with an honours degree in health sciences from Western University.
Now 24, Kargiannakis is combining a master’s degree with a project using the Internet to promote literacy and make interactive education accessible to all kids.
Star readers are already familiar with Rosimay Venancio. Her family fled the civil war in Angola when she was 9. But life in Canada brought new challenges. She was abandoned by her parents as a teenager and grew up in foster care. At 17, the children’s aid society told her to move out. Depressed and suicidal, she struggled to survive.
An empathetic hospital worker helped her get back on her feet. Venancio became not only a survivor but a mentor to other Crown wards, linking them with young adults who’d made the transition from foster care to independence. Now 25, she is studying health sciences at York University and working part-time at the University Health Network.
Venancio couldn’t attend last week’s award ceremony in London. Federal immigration officials refused to expedite her citizenship so she could get a passport. Heartbroken, she cancelled her airline ticket and relinquished her hotel room.
She cried till she had no more tears, then got on with life. While the other Queen’s Young Leaders received their awards in London, she recited the oath of citizenship at a ceremony in Mississauga along with 57 with other immigrants. Venancio’s million-watt smile lit up the room.
The youngest member of the trio is Aaron Joshua Pinto. Not yet 20, his list of achievements is enough to fill the rest of this page. He has travelled the world, volunteering on projects that held the disadvantaged from the streets of Mumbai to the indigenous hilltop villages of Colombia. At home he set up a non-profit corporation that delivers food hampers to survivors of abuse, struggling migrants and elderly people who can’t get out on their own.
He is vice-president of the Canadian Youth Think Tank, co-chair of Canada’s International Youth Council, a youth ambassador for World Vision Canada, a Young European Society Fellow, a Junior Research Fellow at the NATO Council of Canada and the former co-chair of the Mississauga City Youth Council. He is spending the summer as an intern on Parliament Hill and aspires to become a foreign service officer.
There are, as the prime minister constantly reminds us, violent young offenders and hardened teen criminals. There are kids who don’t care about their country or their community. Every generation has those.
It’s the young people with vision and hope and drive — you probably know a few — who will shape the future.
Happy Canada Day. Carol Goar’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.