When hope and history rhyme

“Human beings suffer/They torture one another.”

So observed the Irish Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney in his epic The Cure at Troy. And was it ever thus.

In the case of Canada’s persecution of and odious discrimination against sexual minorities, the suffering was long, deep and soulcrushing, a systematic attack on men and women considered “other.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s formal apology in the House of Commons for the injustice that LGBTQ2 Canadians endured over decades was an entirely appropriate and necessary thing.

From the 1950s to the 1990s, thousands of federal civil servants were fired because of their sexuality as part of a national security purge, and gay and lesbian members of the armed forces and the RCMP were discharged for their sexuality.

With unrelenting persistence, advocacy groups such as Egale Canada and the We Demand an Apology Network have documented that discrimination and sought first an apology, but also pardons for Canadians convicted of offences for consensual homosexual acts and compensation for those whose careers and lives were ruined.

On Tuesday, the prime minister went a good deal of the way to paying that debt.

“No poem or play or song/Can fully right a wrong/ Inflicted and endured,” Heaney wrote.

True enough. But acknowledging harms done, owning responsibility for it, and making amends in ways both tangible and symbolic is a proper step that merits praise.

Trudeau said: “It is with shame and sorrow and deep regret for the things we have done that I stand here today and say, We were wrong. We apologize. I am sorry. We are sorry.

“It is our collective shame that you were so mistreated. And it is our collective shame that this apology took so long.”

Again and again, Trudeau expressed the country’s sorrow and shame for the witch-hunt of LGBTQ2 citizens.

On the heels of an announcement Monday of $110 million in compensation to those whose careers were damaged and lives ruined (and $15 million more for a reconciliation fund), the government introduced legislation to expunge criminal records for people convicted of gross indecency and other charges targeting homosexuals.

“Over our history, laws and policies enacted by the government led to the legitimization of much more than inequality,” Trudeau said. “They legitimized hatred and violence, and brought shame to those targeted.”

Seamus Heaney wrote his famous poem as a tribute to Nelson Mandela and an indictment of apartheid in South Africa. But it fits anywhere that human beings have systematically divided themselves and despised others.

“So hope for a great sea-change/On the far side of revenge/Believe that a further shore/Is reachable from here/Believe in miracles/ And cures and healing wells.”

For many of those victimized, what took place on Tuesday must seem a miracle.

For the prime minister, it was faith in cures and healing made manifest.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s formal apology for the injustice that LGBTQ2 Canadians endured over decades was an entirely appropriate and necessary thing