Have we learned … that courtesy ranks with courage? Do we know how to be good losers? Do we know the power of kindness, the joy of work? Do we appreciate the influence of example, the worth of character?Sounds positively Canadian, doesn't it? As if the person who said it came from a country and tradition that celebrates peace, order, and good government. A country with an international reputation for politeness, multiculturalism, dependability.
Only it's not Canadian at all. It was written by a real all-American boy, a sixteen-year-old from rural Illinois.
It's from my father's high school valedictory address--Odgen, Illinois, 1933, a small farming community in the middle of corn and soybean fields. And this quote pretty much describes his approach to life. As the twig is bent and all that.
My mother was the one born on this side of the border, in what was then Port Arthur and is now Thunder Bay. But perhaps I'm also "Canadian" from my father.
The photo below is one of my favorite pictures of my father. Extended family assembled in Oklahoma to celebrate his 90th birthday. It rained.
Theodore Lee Agnew, Jr.
December 21, 1916 - April 15, 2007
He was a gentleman and a gentle man. Smart. Methodical. Reliable. Always aware of the example he set, and he set a fine example most of the time.
And best of all, he could irritate me exponentially: his behavior could annoy me beyond all proportion to his actual crime. But not only that, other people thought he was uniformly fabulous--so cute, such a sweetheart, what would we do without Ted?--and that made me feel bad about being irritated while exacerbating the irritation.
He was a real person, living proof that courtesy isn't unknown in the U.S., just as it is not a uniquely Canadian trait.
So yeah, I'm half Canadian. On both sides of the family.
