Toronto Journal
The Butterfly Effect*
"A butterfly's wings may create changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately alter the path of a tornado…"
Edward Lorenz in the Chaos Theory
We watched his campaign unfold across the border .At first, his name sounded strange and unfamiliar, the "Hussein" resonating perhaps uneasily, with many of us, but the mixture of vowels and consonants in the first and last name was disconcerting. We watched him speak, lead debates during the primaries and it was then that Torontonians as well as the rest of Canada began to take notice of this calm orator who had stood against the seasoned senator from New York .He was actually contemplating running for the presidency of the United States! A couple of our friends laughed and said "The Audacity of Hope, indeed-with that name? Sometimes, in North America, one cannot even go through Human Resources personnel for a job application with those syllables. Ha, president!" But my multicultural students in college were excited. "Can you imagine miss?" they said. "…What it would mean for all of us, you know, people like us, immigrants, even here in Canada." Mikhaela came home from school and told me the story of a lady on a bus who had to give up her seat because of the colour of her skin. "Is that fair, mommy?" she said.
It appeared that fairness was in the winds of change that blew on the other side of the border. On the night that he won the Democratic nomination, Torontonians were ecstatic-we watched the voted counted on CNN and CBC. We sat in homes, sport bars, restaurants and food courts and some of us prayed for this man who dared to hope. Advertisements crept up in television commercials in which his catch phrase was echoed, "Yes we can". The ripple effect of the butterfly's wings was spreading across the border, seeping into the hearts and minds of the people who heard him speak.
Single mothers who were raising difficult, unruly children dared to say "Yes we can." Immigrant parents who were struggling to survive and pool their resources for an education for their child began to say, "Yes we can". We began to fall in step with him, the local and national media covering the American election more than the local politics. Our politicians began to pale in comparison-American politics began to take center stage. Torontonians in all their diversity began to mutter, "Where is our Obama?"
The introduction of Sarah Palin into the position of the Republican ticket for the vice president lifted everyone's spirts. Here was a charming entertainer, whose sense of international politics was as informed as that of her sense of spatial geography. We, Torontonians began to watch the late night comedy shows with much gusto. Politics had never been so much fun, such hilarity in making fun of popular figures. It also helped that both Palin and the democratic candidate were such extraordinarily good-looking people. We cheered on Tina Fey in her comedy routines of Palin, suits and all. We felt a little sorry for Senator McCain, who was really, honestly, a bit too old for all these energized people around him and we appreciated his sense of humour and respect for his opponent at the end of the race.
Election night was electrifying as the votes were counted and Obama made his acceptance speech. Even Oprah Winfrey looked overwhelmed. For those who had feared that the Bradley Effect* would influence the outcome of this election had their misgivings put to rest.
The Inaugural ceremony was an uplifting experience that gripped Canada as much as it did the United States. The television networks across the United States vied to have the best coverage. Their Canadian counterparts were very much in the running as CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) and other networks gave it top coverage. Work came to a halt in Toronto at noon as the ceremony begun. People in offices, schools, hospitals, and banks huddled around television sets. Sports bars, restaurants reported a brisk business as lunchtime patrons came early and did not appear to want to leave as the ceremonies unfolded. Nathan Phillips Square, which has a humungous screen, used for rock concerts had the ceremony unfolding across it, much to the delight of the crowd that gathered around it. Women wiped away tears and strangers hugged each other after it was all over.
Canada was the first country that Obama visited after taking the office of the President of the United States of America. Although his visit was a short one (six hours long) a lot of his fans from Toronto decided to make the four hour bus ride to the capital Ottawa, just to have a glimpse of him. A news commentator remarked on the crowd that gathered around the high security area of Parliament Hill "It looks as if they are waiting for a rock star". President Obama spoke with Canada's Governor General Michaelle Jean (whose birth place is Haiti) and she told him that Canadians really loved him. He joked that if things do not go well in the States, he could always come to Canada. They laughed heartily and their pictures were all over the front page the next day. In his news conference he said, 'I love Canada" taking everyone by surprise and prompting our Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Conservative Party) to resort to equally informal language. When CBC's Peter Mansbridge asked Harper his impressions of Obama, the usually formal Harper gushed, "He is really an easy guy to talk to". So Obama came, saw and conquered figuratively as well as linguistically on our side of the border.
The economic tornado is spinning the United States and much of the world into a downward maelstrom. Canada, as the United States biggest trading partner is beginning to feel the effects of the recession, though our banks here are based on solid regulatory foundations. In Toronto, we see a lot of laid off friends and neighbours who are desperately looking for work. For many of them, a missed pay cheque or two would mean losing their homes. Their hopes seem to be focused across the border as they hope that Obama's plans for the United States may have a butterfly effect on us.
CBC's Peter Mansbridge asked an associate of Martin Luther King as to what Martin Luther King would say to Obama if he were here. He replied, "Martin Luther King would say- Know that you did not walk this way by yourself, that there were others before you. Also know that you have the hand of God on your shoulders."
*The Bradley Effect, less commonly called the Wilder effect, is a theory proposed to explain observed discrepancies between voter opinion polls and election outcomes in some US government elections where a white candidate and a non-white candidate run against each other. Instead of ascribing the results to flawed methodology on the part of the pollster, the theory proposes that some voters tend to tell pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for a black candidate, and yet, on election day, vote for his white opponent. It was named after Tom Bradley, an African-American.
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