liking his face

I think of those movies where a subjugated people are freed from tyranny and emerge, dazed and disbelieving - are we actually free? And then - were we actually prisoners that long? That's how Canada feels to me today. I think of Narnia under the spell of the ice queen, and how, when she was finally vanquished, spring returned. I know, Justin Trudeau as Aslan is a stretch ... but you get the idea. We live in a different Canada today.

It was not just any victory - it was a monumental victory by a party that had been completely undone. But more importantly, the victorious leader is someone we have known all his life - at least, those of us old enough to remember his birth on Christmas Day 1971. We remember the love affair of his parents and its painful dissolution; we remember his father's canoe trips and overseas junkets with Justin and his brothers. We remember, with great pain, the tragic death of his brother Michel and the subsequent death of his devastated father. If I ever want to conjure up a portrait of grief, I need only think of Pierre Trudeau's drawn and haunted face the day of Michel's funeral, and I weep.

We Canadians have watched this man grow up, and now I feel a maternal pride at what a fine upstanding man he has turned out to be. And - to tell you the truth - I feel something more than maternal, because he's a treat to look at. But so are his gorgeous wife and their children. It's like the early days of Barack Obama's administration, when we felt liberated from the ugly shroud of the Bush years and rejoiced to look at idealism and beauty, intelligence and accomplishment.

I wrote once here about seeing a photo of Harper with his mother - he was trying to hug her, but he couldn't actually touch her, his arms were sort of hanging nearby uselessly. There's something seriously wrong with that man's heart. But not with this man's.

Justin and his mother last night.

I know there are tough days ahead, and that a certain disillusionment - as with Obama - is inevitable. But right now, we Canadians have our version of Camelot. And as the days grow cold and dark, that sunny face is a most welcome sight.