[instrumental piano music]
Well, I was about 18 when I first came to London
It was the first trip I took to Europe
I'd saved up money for a whole year to travel through Europe for a few months with some friends of mine
It was the age of London that really struck me, because I had come in from Western Canada and hadn't traveled much at that point
And of course Western Canada - the town I grew up in was only established in the 1930s, really
And to walk into pubs that had been around for five or six hundred years was...
...something unheard of in Canada
The magnificence of the architecture and the fact that things were built to last...
The Parliament Buildings are remarkable and the castles.
And the depth of history and the stability of the country all of that - and the freedom
It's all an amazing achievement, as far as I'm concerned.
One of the things that we learned in the West, and one of the things that's part of the great English journalistic tradition is that
Journalists in particular, have the freedom to say what they want and think what they want and that keeps everyone
including the journalists - honest and on track
And we sacrifice that...
...especially at the feet of the idea that no one is to be oppressed by anything anyone else says.
We sacrifice that at our complete peril.
It's the Cardinal right...
...because when people speak freely they're able to think.
And people orient themselves in the world by thinking
and they re-update the state by thinking and they...
...conquer unknown lands by thinking
and if you put restrictions on their ability to speak freely...
...then you put restrictions on their ability to think and all of those other processes grind to a halt...
...and then everyone suffers for it.
[inaudible conversation]
I started reading George Orwell when I was a kid - about 13 or 14
And I read "1984" and "Animal Farm", of course because that's the books that everyone starts with.
And then later in my life...
...I became aware of how prescient George Orwell was with regards to the dangers of totalitarianism...
He was one of the first intellectuals in the West to sound the alarm about what was going on
especially in the Soviet Union.
Orwell is definitely one of my intellectual heroes from the 20th century.
He's been a hero of mine
He's been a hero of mine consistently.
Britain holds a special place in the hearts of Canadians...
...and for good reason, you know
You guys got so many things right:
English common law tradition, and the parliamentary tradition...
It's been a great gift to everywhere in the world, as far as I'm concerned.