A mere 47 years ago I was sitting in Sir Isaiah Berlin’s office with a young American political scientist Joe Femia. A little awe struck to intervene much, we would both write short papers and discuss them. In one of our first classes, we were expressing some frustration in “getting Hegel.” Later we formed a study group called “Hegel United” where we would work our way through passages and try to figure them out.

Berlin, a warm, witty, and voluble man, must have felt he was dealing with two young guys with very little “candle power” as he called it. “Mr. Rae, look at the carpet in front of you. What strikes you about it?” I commented on the beautiful design, the fine craftsmanship. “Yes, yes, but the point is not so much that as something much simpler. Everything fits. It’s all within the lines, with answers to every question posed by the design. That’s true for Hegel, and it’s true for Marx as well. Do you think ‘everything fits’?”

I ventured an answer and said, “No, life is too unpredictable, there’s always the human factor ...”

“Life,” said Berlin, “is plural. It changes. Do not believe those who think there’s one big answer.” He then went on a riff about the hedge hog and the fox, one of my favourite pieces of analysis. The hedge hog knows one big thing. The fox knows many smaller and different things.

Some time later I had the opportunity to sit with Berlin at a University of Toronto convocation. I told him I hadn’t forgotten the business about the carpet. He remarked on the remarkable diversity of the student body. “I would probably fit in here in a way I never could in England. I’ll always be a foreigner there.”

Canada’s commitment to diversity and pluralism has become a critical feature of our identity. For many generations we were no such thing — a deputy minister of immigration in the 1930s was asked how many Jews would be admitted that year. His reply was devastatingly simple: “None is too many.” Chinese immigrants paid a head tax. Japanese and others were rounded up and lost all their property and livelihood in the Second World War. The litany of exclusion and discrimination is long — and we lapse into it still today.

A particular kind of brutality was imposed on the indigenous community. Children were rounded up and taken away to boarding schools whose mission was appallingly simple — “to take the Indian out of the child.” This was the policy of the government of Canada from the 1830s to as recently as the early 1990s. The Chief Justice of Canada has called it “cultural genocide.” This is the system a Tory Senator wants to defend and find the “positive parts of this experience.” This mind boggling comment has rightly set off a firestorm.

These past 10 days I have been attending, as an adviser to Forum of Federations, meetings in Myanmar/Burma, and listening to discussions and debates that have many parallels with Canada and other countries.