For over a year now Canadians have witnessed the sad spectacle of people appointed to the “Upper House” tumble into a quagmire of alleged criminal activity in the form of mismanaged expense claims and other unfortunate behaviours. A handful of entitlement-preoccupied prime-ministerial appointments have smeared the reputation of a Canadian institution: the Senate. What’s distressing about their shame-filled example is that in the midst of these headline-creating scandals, some of the remarkable work of their fellow Senators, past and present, is easily overshadowed. The “Senate Scandal” story moves quickly from “They are corrupt” to “It is corrupt” and finally to “So now it’s time to get rid of it once and for all.”

This blog item is not a constitutional appeal about the role of the Senate but a reflection on the importance of remembering the contribution of Senators whose work has indeed altered the national conversation in deeply significant ways. For example, the way that mental health issues have become a matter of ongoing policy discussion and thoughtful media attention is, in no little measure, the result of Senator Michael Kirby’s tireless work and commitment to this long neglected issue. He chaired the Senate’s Standing Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology and was responsible for its influential 2006 report:  Out of the shadows at last: transforming mental health, mental illness and addiction services in Canada. Here was a rare example of a government report that did exactly what its title suggests: transform a system by changing attitudes.

The senators I have encountered along the Inky Way have not had to scurry past journalists and push cameras away in fear and anger as they retreat down long corridors or jump into waiting limos. The late Senator Peggy Butts, for example, spent only a short time in the Red Chamber and was tireless advocate for social policy built on issues of social justice. When she retired at the age of 75, as all senators must, she donated all of her accumulated salary to charity. (Just as she required charity to take her Senate seat in the first place. The rule is that a Senator must own land in the community they represent. She didn’t, and in order to enter the Chamber a small parcel of land in Nova Scotia was “given” to her in trust.)   

And then there’s the indefatigable Douglas Roche, who from 1998 until 2004 was a member of the Senate, an appointment that built on his previous experience as Canada’s ambassador at the United Nations on the Disarmament portfolio. Although he was my Member of Parliament when I lived in Edmonton I never met him at that time (1972- 1984). Our paths crossed in 2002, that was when I was a commissioning editor and I received phone call from him. We began a conversation that would result in a trilogy of books published in 2003, 2005, and 2007.

The first was The Human Right to Peace. We scheduled our editorial work in between his frequent flights to New York, Geneva, Hiroshima and many places beyond – where he spoke at conference after conference on the importance of peace and disarmament – and Edmonton where he still lived. We repeated the same pattern with the books that followed. I soon discovered that this Senator’s commitment was matched by an unrelenting and unwavering determination to pursue the possibility of the creation of a culture of peace. I also discovered how much he valued working with an editor. Some author/editor dynamics can be competitive and tension-creating. Not this one.

The launch of that first book was in New York at the bookstore in the United Nations, during one of his many engagements at the U.N. Sadly, limited publishing travel budgets meant that I couldn’t be there to watch him speak with passion and compassion about the culture of peace.   

From 2004 to 2005 we worked together on a second title: Beyond Hiroshima. As we explain on the rear cover of this book:

When the first atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, it could hardly have been imagined that 60 years later more than 30,000 nuclear weapons would be in existence. The Cold War is long over, but half the world's population still lives under a government that brandishes nuclear weapons.

In this book, Douglas Roche, Canada's former Ambassador for Disarmament, exposes the myths about nuclear weapons and offers solutions that will help make global peace and political stability possible.

The third book in the trilogy, Global Conscience, appeared in 2007 and I did attend that launch. It was an event hosted by another inspiring member of the Senate, Romeo Dallaire, who also wrote a powerful Introduction for the book. Like Douglas Roche, Senator Dallaire has managed to engage thousands of Canadians with his passionate commitment to the eradication of the uses of child soldiers in global conflicts. To see these two Senators in action, each using their limited time in the Senate as an opportunity to create the circumstance for lasting change is an antidote to the easy cynicism that characterises the coverage of the Senatorial beat these days.

The now retired Senate Douglas Roche continues to write and speak on these issues. In 2011, James Lorimer published How We Stopped Loving the Bomb – An Insider’s Account of the World on the Brink of Banning Nuclear Arms. Okay, we didn’t work together on this one but it is still a good book!

I remind myself about these examples every time Peter Mansbridge begins The National  with “Shocking new developments today in Ottawa in the continuing Senate Scandal, here with the details….”