A lesson in the national character

Awaiting a verdict in the Conrad Black trial, as the jury sweated through its deliberations, the Globe and Mail’s Lawrence Martin took the opportunity to point out that the conservative author, publisher and accused racketeer was not really Canadian.

While the “elites” might be disposed in his favour, he wrote, “Canadians” would not be overly distressed to see him go to jail. In part this was a matter of his personal style -- he lacked “a sense of good old-fashioned Canadian moderation” -- but for the most part it was a matter of “his ideology.”...

“He stood apart from the Canadian mainstream, not only because of his wealth, lifestyle and power, but because he was an arch-conservative in a land where that breed is uncommon... His views were an ill fit ... We hardly viewed him as one of our own. He was cut from a different cloth.”

As a line of inquiry, this is far from unusual, and not only with regard to the present subject. In other countries it is permissible for public figures to hold sharply diverging political views without anyone thinking it remarkable, but in Canada it is necessary to establish just who agrees with “Canadians,” and who does not.

To be sure, the first Lord Black of Crossharbour has had a famously complicated relationship with his country of birth, even renouncing his citizenship when forced to choose -- a peerage for a passport. But if he has sometimes sounded angry with his country, these were clearly the cries of a wounded lover. We disappointed him, and he was not too shy to let us know it.

And, equally clearly, Canadians have a complicated relationship with him, equal parts admiration and loathing. I’d bet that if you asked Canadians to name Canada’s richest man, many if not most would name Conrad Black. Yet even at his height he was nowhere near, a drop in Paul Desmarais’s bucket.

But Canadians prefer their tycoons to be discreet, reclusive, not given to public expressions of opinion. They should have made their money in a respectable, regulated industry like cable TV, where business is done quietly over lunch in a tony Ottawa restaurant, not in some shouting, sweaty trade like newspapers. Above all they should not be intellectuals.

And yet in spite of it all -- in spite of the curling lip, the four-dollar words, the extravagance, the conspicuous enjoyment of the extravagance -- he had attained a kind of sneaking regard, I think, even among those not given to his particular view of the world. Indeed, in a country without a peerage, he has been extended a curious sort of honour: people who have never met him will often refer to him simply by his first name. Of who else in Canada can this be said?

It isn’t only notoriety. This newspaper, his baby, is regarded in much the same light, with something approaching affection, even by those who most detest its politics. It is a respect for achievement, for quality, yes, but perhaps more than that, for personality. If not, shall we say, conventionally likeable, he is who he is, without apology or equivocation, and there isn’t a soul alive who does not, somewhere deep inside, admire that. Yes, even in Canada.

Will there be schadenfreude, then, at his conviction? Of course there will. But not unmixed. Opinion was noticeably divided even before the trial -- if you were sympathetic to him you dismissed the prosecution’s case as a travesty, if not you speculated on where he would serve out his sentence. So it will be now that the verdict has been returned. How you feel about the result will reflect how you feel about Conrad, and how you feel about Conrad will in part reflect how you feel about Canada.

For those who see criticism of the “Canadian way” as disloyal, of course, Conrad has always been problematic. But even more so has been his larger than life persona, the outsized virtues as much as the obvious faults. (Has there ever been a case of an accused man finding the time, while under indictment in a complex fraud trial, to write a 1000-page biography of a US president?) He simply outgrew the country, at least in his own mind, and it hurt and bewildered him as much as it did us. And so, in his blustering, unpleasant way, Conrad came to represent those who wished for a bigger country, a country in which people could lead larger lives.

It wasn’t always pretty -- the “envy” he decried was hardly better replaced with disdain. But I had far rather live in a country with a Conrad Black than without him, and now that he has been found guilty -- pending appeal -- I confess I will be one of those hoping for a light sentence.