Michael Ignatieff certainly is correct in stating that the Harper Conservatives partisan political attack's on his parents and grandparents are unprecedented in Canadian history.
Within minutes of the release of the Liberal Party video describing the immigrant family experience of Ignatieff's family, the Conservatives launched a Twitter campaign and a website devoted to the notion that Ignatieff's claim is unfounded. The Liberal message is that the Ignatieffs came to Canada as refugees from Russia after the 1918 Revolution, escaping fear, tyranny and persecution and that Ignatieff's father worked his way up from scratch to serve his adopted country in the senior ranks of the public service. The Conservative spin is that the Ignatieffs were and continue to be a privileged family having nothing in common with the Canadians the Harper team claims to represent.1
I've looked at 3 sources of information: the Liberal video, the ravid conservative rebuttal website and a Government of Canada webpage profiling Michael Ignatieff's father as a model Immigrant. Presumably Jason Kenney did not know the page was on his department's website until this past weekend and I doubt it will be there much longer. The conservative website draws heavily on information from Ignatieff's book, The Russian Album, as if to prove Ignatieff is lying. In fact, It's all about the spin.
The Liberal video makes no mention that the Ignatieffs are descended from Russian nobility and that Michael's ancestor served as the education minister to the last Tsar. I don't think anyone can argue that didn't count for much after 1918. All sources agree the Michael's grandfather, his brother and their families settled on a farm in England after fleeing Russia. When that didn't go well, his grandfather moved on to Canada. Maybe the Ignatieff's upbringing in the Tsarist court didn't prepare them to be dairy farmers; I can live with that. What we can conclude is that they got out of Russia with some resources and that a good proportion of that was probably depleted during the unsuccessful English sojourn.
There is also agreement between the sources that the Ignatieffs arrived in Canada in 1928 to settle on a farm north of Toronto. The official government website tells us they lost what little financial resources remained in the stock market crash of 1929. That was, of course, two decades before Michael's birth. Through the subsequent depression, Michael's father scratched his way back up, including working on the railway, went to university, "married-up" as some would say in those days and eventually served as Canadian ambassador to the USA and president of the United Nations Security Council.
In an attempt to convey the notion that the Ignatieffs have always lived a life of privilege, the Harperites make much of the fact that Michael and his brother attended the prestigious Upper Canada College. The Conservatives don't mention this occurred three decades after their father George arrived in Canada because that is exactly the immigrant dream, to give their children the best education and start-in-life they can afford.
The Ignatieff's were once rich, they lost it all, they fought back and are grateful Canada gave them opportunity. The ancestors knew danger during the Bolshevik revolution. The Canadian family knew the discrimination that was very real for those in pre-war Canada with "funny names". If Michael inherited any advantage by way of birth, it's a family life lesson that you can have it all, you can lose it all and you can pluck your way back. Maybe there's a metaphor for his political commitment there..
However you look at it, the sources contradict each other; they are just selective. Perhaps unfortunately for Michael Ignatieff, he has written too much so there is a lot from which to be selective. In contrast, where are the books about Stephen Harper's middle class childhood in Toronto, his years at the University of Calgary and his career advocating for ultra-right wing causes?
Finally a bit of disclosure. My grandfather, a tenant farmer in England brought his family to Canada in 1927 on the Canadian Pacific SS Montrose. The Ignatieffs came a year later, 1928, coincidentally on the Montrose.
My grandfather's first employment was on a farm north of Toronto. My father (then 14 yo) and uncle found summer jobs on farms in the same area. Over a few years, they succeeded in saving enough to buy their own farm near Jarvis Ontario while holding multiple, concurrent jobs enabled the family to survive The Great Depression. As with so many in that era, it was WWII and military service that provided steady work until veterans benefits under the Soldier Settlement Act set my parents and our family on the road to fiscal stability and comfort.
Our families experience diverged; while my father farmed and drove trucks before enlisting, Michael's made it into university. George Ignatieff excelled as a diplomat and was able to send his sons to a good school in Toronto; mine was a successful dairy farmer and sent my sister and me to the local public schools. Michael went on the the University of Toronto and I went to York University. I'll stop before Michael Ignatieff's success in academia, journalism and politics contrasts too blatantly with my own life story.
At York U, I studied under some of George Ignatieff's peers from Foreign Affairs and I learned from them the meaning of public service. Michael learned similar lessons, It's why we both proclaim the same message today. This arrogant, anti-democratic Harper government must be expelled.
- I can't say ordinary Canadians because they are represented only by Jack Layton meaning, of course, that all the rest of us are extra-ordinary.↩
