So my conversation today isn’t supposed to be about politics. Well, yes it is, and no it isn’t. What it’s really about is humanity, compassion, decency, and the expectations we set for the people who lead us and for the people we choose to be.
Some of you know me through the stories I tell. I’m not a historian or a journalist, I speak from lived experience, from the people and places that shaped me. And today, even though I said I wasn’t going to talk about politics, how can I talk about how we treat other human beings without landing there?
With yesterday’s talk of requiring five years of social media history just to enter the United States, it became clear that many of us, myself included, won’t be visiting anytime soon. Honestly, I’m not sure I’ll miss it. I’ve been to Disney more times than I can count; I’ve walked New York; I can survive without Vegas.
What I can’t survive without is my sense of humanity, and today I was reminded of where it comes from.
I grew up in Moncton, a small city in New Brunswick. In the 60s and early 70s it looked overwealmingly white, like so many communities across Canada. The exception was the steady stream of students from around the world who came to learn to fly at my father’s flight school. That was my normal. As a teenager I was pumping avgas, dispatching flights, and working around those students. I grew up in a hangar full of languages, accents, hopes, and dreams. I didn’t understand then what a gift that was.
A few months after my father passed away in 2008, a letter arrived from one of those former students, Israel Ameh of Nigeria. I hadn’t known him at the time he trained in Moncton, I had already left Moncton, but his words captured exactly who my father was and what humanity can look like when lived fully and without prejudice.
Here is his letter, unchanged: “I came to Canada from Nigeria in 1982 to learn how to fly. Even before I got here I felt like I knew Mr. McClure as he tried to make my voyage to Canada as trouble-free as possible. When I arrived at the Moncton Train Station on August 2nd 1982, Don sent his Cool Station Wagon to pick me up. He made the MFC become like… a revolving family setting and as I needed to take different courses, I did not think twice about where to return for those courses. When I returned in 1988/89 and got my Flight Instructor rating, Don helped me get my First and second jobs. His recommendation also made securing a Work Visa easy. I ended up marrying from Buctouche making the Moncton area part home. In 2008, I found Don’s email address on the Internet and sent him a thank you letter which was unfortunately returned due to a bad email address. When I learnt of his passing, it was a sense of tremendous loss that I did not get to thank him for all he did in my life. Mr. McClure, I know you can still read this and I want to say THANK YOU for being such a wonderful person. You practised equality and globalisation with sterling vision before it became fashionable. To many of us, you were like a father. I still remember a talk you gave to me in 1985 about AIDS and why us young men had to be aware and cautious. Other students laughed at the time but it made me into a better man. From the provinces of Canada, Libya, Nigeria, UK, the Carribeans, Nepal, India, Pakistan and all other places that sent men and women to you to turn into Pilots, I think I speak for all of them when I say the world lost a Great Man. Rest in Peace Don, but I know that if they have airplanes in Heaven, you will be helping run an efficient operation and checking up on the airplanes and asking why they are not up flying just as you did to keep us on our toes; but most of all, thank you for changing the life of an 18 year old from an African village.”
That letter, especially that last line, tells you everything about my core. And it’s why, when I hear Donald Trump speak of Haiti or Africa or Afghanistan as though the people from those places are somehow lesser, it hits like a gut punch. It dishonours the young men and women I grew up around. It dishonours my father. And it dishonours that young man whose life changed because someone treated him with dignity.
Trump, born with every advantage, has no understanding of what it means to build your life by strength, opportunity, and gratitude. No understanding of being a guest in another country. No understanding of leadership grounded in humanity. This isn’t left or right. It’s about whether we widen the circle or shrink it until only people who look like us get to belong.
Most of you reading this already get that. But maybe someone, somewhere, will feel something crack open. Because there are cracks everywhere right now, cracks in the asphalt, cracks in the façade of cruelty-as-strength. But dear God, don’t let this be the world our children and grandchildren inherit. Not a world sliding backward into suspicion and hate toward anyone who doesn’t look like us.
If an 18-year-old from an African village could take flight because someone believed in him, then surely we can choose humanity.
Surely we can chart a better course, one where compassion, not fear, keeps us airborne.
Nancy's Notes 