Peace, order and rocky government

摘要

"Acautious case can be made that Canada is now rather cool," this newspaper ventured in September 2003. And it still can. At a ceremony in Ottawa in September this year, Canada invested a new governor-general, the queen's representative in Canada and therefore its de facto head of state. She is Michaeelle Jean, a glamorous black television journalist and former refugee from Haiti. In her investiture speech Mrs Jean declared that the old story of Canada being separated into the "two solitudes" of English-speakers and French-speakers was at last over. Newspapers gushed. A banner headline in the Globe and Mail greeted a "remarkable new governor-general who personifies the free and open country Canada wants to be".