Two recent developments this past week are a reminder that we live in a time of change.
The first is the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Regardless of what you think about the monarchy or the royal family, the fact that the Queen has been a symbol of the Canadian government and the Commonwealth as a whole for 70 years means her death is definitely a change.
The queen’s life stretched from the Second World War, the Cold War and into the recent decades, with all the dramatic changes that accompanied those events. The fact that she provided a sense of continuity through those many upheavals is significant. Never that important in practical terms, she instead served as a symbol. And in the tradition of defining periods of time with the life of a monarch, the epoch she symbolized has seemingly passed completely.
The period of history the Queen reigned through was defined, in Canada at least, as good times for a large part of the population (though not for many Indigenous people, minorities and other groups). It was a time that saw economic development, rapid technological change, social mobility and social progress. But those things going forward are by no means guaranteed, regardless how much we associate our society with them.
Things that have been taken for granted in countries like Canada since the end of Second World War can no longer be; with climate change, pandemics, economic monopolization, financial bubbles, deindustrialization, lowering societal trust and more all conspiring to turn the clock back.
The other development this week indicative of these changes is the landslide election of Pierre Poilievre as the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. Regardless how you feel about the selection of Poilievre as leader or the Conservative Party in general, the selection of the freedom convoy supporting populist (rhetorically at least, he is also a career politician and former federal minister) to the party that traditionally has been the one of “law and order” and deference to institutions signals a significant shift. The idea that someone who employs that rhetoric would be the head of one of Canada’s two traditional governing parties would have been unthinkable twenty years ago.
And with the almost guaranteed exchange of power between the Liberals and Conservatives that our political system creates (and that Liberals seem determined not to change), Prime Minister Poilievre is a real possibility in the coming years.
All this is to say that we live in unpredictable times. We have for a while now, and maybe always have. But there is certainly a sense that there’s no one’s hands on the steering wheel at this moment, a sense which last week’s events added to. What we make of that can either be positive or negative.
The death of the Queen represents a symbolic change. Whether or not we judge this medieval institution as the optimal one to bind our increasingly complex and diverse society together will become a more important question now that someone with the popularity of Queen Elizabeth is no longer the head of it. The British royal family is scandal ridden (especially Prince Andrew) and the concepts of monarchy don’t necessarily conform to the democratic and equal society that Canadian politicians love to claim we are.
Time will tell if something comes out of the Queen’s death beyond a change of the face on the money.
Poilievre arguably represents a more important shift. Whether he represents the same old Conservative politics with just a shift in rhetoric or something more may have a dramatic effect on our society given his proximity to power. It’s an open question whether or not the federal Liberal’s and NDP have an answer to him. Again, only time will tell.
Regardless, be skeptical of anyone who is sure of what’s going to happen. If this week shows anything it is that we are living in history, and we can really get a good idea of what happened in hindsight.
Brett Thoms
