BRANDON CRILLY (Ottawa)

Lesson for Someday

…You’d probably expect that such an event would start another dark period in our history.

Of course, if that were the case, the title for this lesson would be much grimmer than “The Last Blip on the Path to Progress.”

Under that sort of regime, it would’ve been easy for people to lose hope, since

Fear and despair combined with oppression and ignorance are breeding grounds for – Yes?

…Unfortunately, the mechanisms to prevent his inauguration lacked enough strength to succeed without causing more chaos.

Change is slow in the absence of dramatic events, as we’ve already seen, but thankfully this particular election proved sufficient to – Yes? That’s fine, go ahead.

…Kill him? No, we weren’t that barbaric! You were paying attention to our previous lessons, right?

I’d like to get to my point: yes, the twenty-first century was a time of great uncertainty, but

No, the voices of reason weren’t extinguished. No, most people didn’t fall for the easy distractions, the glib lies, and the hate-filled rhetoric.

Gone was faith in the establishment, perhaps, but not faith in humanity…

Don’t think I missed you rolling your eyes.

It’s easy to sit here in this room and think, “Clearly it all worked out because we’re still here” and “Clearly things couldn’t have been that bad, and the old man is just using his gravitas again.”

Clearly you’ve forgotten one of the key points about our history: in the moment, no one knows how things will turn out.

Knowing the future has always been beyond our grasp, and the world back then was much more chaotic than it is now.

When we saw those election results roll in, many of us almost lost hope, at least at first.

And then enough of us spoke up to remind the others of one of the most important lessons that carried us forward to today:

Do not ever lose hope. Not for an instant.