An Advocate Institute / SocialCanada.org  Project

Talking with my boomer friends, I hear anxiety about the future; uncertainty, perhaps social guilt (as we structure our estates to avoid taxes). We were not bystanders. When we and Bob Dylan were young, we proclaimed that the times were changing. Our parents and our politicians better get on board. We would put the world on a better, fairer, path.

Did we do that? Or did the baby boom consume the future of its children and the planet?  Could we have seeded the end of the social contract, and possibly, democracy? And if so, for what – sex, drugs and rock and roll?

From now until we’re finished, we present a serialized examination of the behaviours, attitudes, successes and failures of the baby boom generation to improve on the world we inherited. We take a “first persons” look at the evolving social and political choices and institutional behaviour in managing the welfare of society – what non-cynics, if there are any left, might call the welfare state.

This project is sponsored by The Advocate Institute, conducted by SocialCanada.org, and led by Terrance Hunsley (1). David Newman is the editor. The work combines analysis of collective data with the lived experience of people involved. We talk with people who were close to decisions that were made.

To follow or to contribute your own experience or analysis, visit SocialCanada.org and subscribe.

Foreword

“Alfred Nobel – with a whimsical touch – once said: I would not leave anything to a man of action as he would be tempted to give up work; on the other hand, I would like to help dreamers as they find it difficult to get on in life.”  – Lester Pearson, 1957 on accepting his Nobel Prize for Peace

“Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.”     – The Fool to King Lear

We “had the whole world in our hands” – the baby boom, born between 1946 and 1966. We inherited a world at peace and moving toward economic equality, social justice, and the spread of democracy; with new post-war international institutions to ensure peace and share wealth and knowledge. How did we create the multi-dimensional crises that we suffer today?

Every person has their own reality – their own life-path and experience, their own view of the world around them. We are leading actors in a novel of our lives. Our narratives frame our interpretation of reality and our role in that reality. Most of us want to do something worthwhile, big or small, with our lives – to help the world or to help our community or to help our family. Our footprints on the world may be large like Pearson’s or we may not leave a trace. But collectively we made a difference. We were not bystanders. My story touches the edges of what happened. If you are a boomer, so did yours.

I choose to talk about our generation because we not only shared our experience of the world from a common perspective, but we also dominated it. Our world was built around us and our needs, guided by the values and aspirations of our parents. When we took over, it was all about our wants, visions and desires, our perceptions of what is right, and our whims.

I grew up in Nova Scotia in the post-war years, in a small town and a fishing village. Our culture and our daily routines reflected our times, with all of the strength of small communities and all of the divisions of society. As children we are sponges. We soak up the good values and the harmful prejudices indiscriminately.

I was not aware at the time that the organization that I would have the privilege of steering many years later, then called the Canadian Welfare Council, was engaged nationally with federal proposals for the construction of the welfare state. But that work, paralleling what was happening in the UK and the US, would set up an infrastructure that would frame my own life journey: hospital services, vaccinations, public schools, family allowances, social assistance, universities and community colleges, student loans, Medicare, the Canada Pension Plan, RRSP’s, and human rights.  All of these preceded and supported my generation. Now our successors and many of us are saying we screwed up the world we inherited.

Analysts and writers tend to blame the problems of our day on large impersonal forces like capitalism, neoliberalism, globalization, or information technology. Although I understand that large-scale processes can build up and sweep us along, those forces and their effects were not and are not inevitable. They were put in place or permitted by decision or indecision. We were part of those decisions or neglect of duty, even if we didn’t fully comprehend them or their implications.

And frankly, most of those decisions were not about implementing neoliberalism or unleashing capitalism. They established specific policies , regulations or institutional arrangements that have had positive and negative effects. It is in the distribution of those effects that we find unanticipated or disguised consequences, discrimination, or even good long-term results. As in criminal investigation, wherein we look for motive and follow the money, likewise we need to look closely at who benefits from decisions made, including the motives of decision-makers.

Because this story is being constructed as we go, we invite everyone, boomer or other, to make suggestions, ask questions, tell your own story. We can’t promise to use it but if we like it, we might….

Coming soon: Chapter One: The Evidence Against Us

1. Terrance Hunsley is a former CEO of the International Centre for Prevention of Crime, the Biotechnology Human Resources Council, and the Canadian Council on Social Development. He taught part-time at Queen’s U. School of Policy Studies,  and also worked for several years as a public policy consultant to municipal, provincial and federal governments. He was appointed to the Council of Science and Technology Advisors to the federal government,  and also spent three years on secondment to the Privy Council Office.  In retirement, he was a Senior Fellow of the Pearson Centre, edits SocialCanada.org., and has been active in the areas of seniors’ health and housing.