Remembering tea with Ursula
Scientist, feminist, pacifist and teacher, Ursula Franklin inspired everyone who knew her
I often wondered what people meant when they called someone a “thinker” — until I met Ursula Franklin. She inspired me every time we talked. Actually, I would ask questions and listen and usually take notes.
“Tea with Ursula” became the most therapeutic entry in my schedule. Being with Ursula was like plugging into an energy source. She would magically insert titanium in my spine. She was unflinching in the pursuit of social justice. She was an amazing teacher as she could extract parallels and examples out of history, science and everyday relationships.
She would ask the “wicked questions” that got to the root of problems because she took nothing for granted as to why things had to be the way they were. She was a hard marker!
In 2000, we held an essay competition in the high schools in St. Paul’s on citizen engagement: “democracy between elections.” The winner came to job-shadow me in Ottawa for a day, but the top 10 essay writers were invited to “Tea with Ursula” with me. She asked them how they got their news. She wanted to know if they were using technology to learn more about the world. Did they read The Guardian? Le Monde Diplomatique?
Saturday, when I learned that Ursula had died, I wanted to find those students and ask them what they remembered; if meeting her had changed their lives as it had mine.
I first met Ursula 20 years ago at a women’s breakfast at a downtown law firm. I was excited that I was finally going to get to meet this icon — scientist, feminist, pacifist, teacher. She was so little. Her soft voice and German accent totally disarming. Her wise words riveting.
The room went quiet, the women almost straining to listen. I have been quoting Ursula Franklin ever since: Governments and good governance has to be “fair, transparent and take people seriously.” Feminist theory was not only about women’s rights — the “what” but also the “how”: getting rid of hierarchy, flattened structures and inclusive decision-making.
She gave the example of a PD day at the school that had been named after her. She’d been asked to moderate a day focused on identifying youth at risk. She was told only the faculty would be coming. She balked and said all the staff had to be there. She had asked them if they understood how much the school secretary knew.
She then described the first intervention — the caretaker told them he knew the kids from violent homes because they arrived at 7 a.m. when he opened the school. Next, the cook said she knew the kids who were hungry because they offered to help clear the plates in the cafeteria and then would be eating the scraps on the way back to the kitchen. She said the teachers were in awe. They suddenly saw the other “staff” as part of their team. The school was a kinder, safer place.
“Tea with Ursula” became a trustworthy antidote to the vagaries of political life. During rough waters she was a rock of wisdom, vision and values.
In the numbness following 9/11, I heard her on CBC Radio saying that we were not at war. She said that peace, however, is not just the absence of war, it is the presence of social justice. She said we were definitely not at peace. I called her to help me with my speech in the House of Commons, and as always, her analogy was surprising and inspiring.
“Last night Ursula Franklin called upon me as a physician, someone who is trained in healing and well-being. We should look upon our situation as an enormous injury, an infection. She wants us to help build up the antibodies, the antibodies of justice and caring.
We must cultivate the antibodies. We must work to create the body politic that resists infection. We need to find interventions that produce resistance. We need an effective immune system in every part of this tiny planet.
Hatred is virulent. It is learned. It is like an acquired infection. It should not be compared to a cancer. There is no gene for hatred.
We must commit to improving the caring, education and justice that will immunize the world against the collective weakness that allows terrorism to flourish. We must begin with our children, the children in Northern Ireland, in the Middle East, in Bosnia.
We must work to support good government around the world which is fair, transparent and takes people seriously. We must use our brains and our technology to deal with this modern lack of justice. We must remember as we seek a solution that will last 100 years, that we ensure that our sons and daughters and grandchildren will live to see it.”
Ursula was truly upset with the Harper government. She invited me to a “scrupling” event at the Quaker House. She explained that “scrupling” was what Quakers did when they were worrying about something everyone had in common.
They had scrupled about slavery; they were now coming together to scruple about the erosion of our democracy. She had really wanted a Royal Commission on the state of our democracy in Canada. She was worried that Canadians had become so cynical about government that they weren’t paying attention. During those years, we scrupled many times, including many different people in many different places.
In the fall of 2014, I went to see her during the harassment crisis on the Hill. I told her that a journalist had emailed all the women MPs asking if we had ever been harassed. She said immediately: “He is asking the wrong question. He should be asking the men if they have ever harassed, ever crossed the line with inappropriate behaviour.” That was Ursula. The great people in our lives are the ones who seem to be able to look at the issues and realities on our plate at any time and turn the plate around, so that we can see it from a different angle or perspective. They have the ability to create “aha” moments, epiphanies that change one’s way of thinking and knowing forever.
She is gone now. I will cherish my well-thumbed copies of Ursula Franklin Speaks and her Reader forever on my bedside table with that impish smile on the cover. It will help the emptiness a little.
I feel we all now are deputized to carry her torch. The easy “wicked” question will be “What would Ursula think?” For the answers, we’ll have to dig deep and hope that she will live forever in all of us.
She would ask the “wicked questions” that got to the root of problems