With Dalton Camp’s passing this week, many of hisformer colleagues and contemporaries have mourned thisincalculable loss to our nation’s political landscape.

But as every tributary in the country burbles withwords of praise for our wisest political commentator,one important aspect of his legacy has been lessremarked upon: the tremendous loss which his deathrepresents for a generation of Canadians who were noteven alive when he was making his political name inthe 1960s.

It was his abiding concern for the lot of youngCanadians, particularly in his home province of NewBrunswick, which forever endeared him to me.

Dalton Camp and I first met some four years ago. I wasfresh out of graduate school, and was cooling myheels, as only a late November in New Brunswick cancool them. Dalton’s syndicated newspaper columns were notwell-known to me, but somehow I came across oneentitled “The End of Education” which still graces myoffice wall to this day.

The piece was a scintillatingcritique of the “neo-conservative” ideological soupe-du-jour, which sought to serve up young universitystudents as “marketable commodities.”

By championing the broader social virtues ofaccessible, publicly funded higher education, DaltonCamp’s voice was redolent not simply of another era,but of an entirely different century. His wordshearkened back to the 18th century and to ThomasJefferson, the subject of my just-completed master’sdissertation.

Here was someone — older than mygrandfather — bringing forth even older ideasin defence of our youngest generation.

I decided to write Dalton Camp an unsolicited fanletter: Sharing some lines from Jefferson, which hadbeen written to Jefferson’s own mentor, encouragingthe latter to keep up the fight for publicly-fundedhigher education. I also found myself pledging to anold man I had never met, that his writing would be thepolar star against which I would chart my own careerpath.

It might as well have been a message in abottle. I expected no reply.

Nevertheless, some six weeks after writing that letter,a crumpled slip of paper was slid through my mailslot. It lay, as paper does in student lodgings, onthe floor for nearly two days before a roommatestooped to pick up what I myself had passed by onseveral occasions.

Unfolding it, I saw that it was adeposit slip from the Royal Bank of Canada, MainBranch, 504 Queen Street, Fredericton. On thebackside, a message had been scrawled: “Luke Peterson – Have been trying to get a phone no. but no listing -please call me in p.m. at 488-2942 Dalton Camp.”

I called. We spoke, and resolved to meet. Our firstmeeting was in the bar of Fredericton’s SheratonHotel, underneath a brass plaque which bore the name“Camp’s Corner.”

I was nervous, and drank rather a lot. Thisinauspicious beginning marked what would develop intoa unique friendship for me. Despite his publicstature, and the demands of writing two weeklycolumns, and a (sadly now uncompleted) memoir, healways had time to spare – offering wise advice,amusing anecdotes, or history lessons.

Over time, I would learn he was equally generouswith his time and encouragements for other young NewBrunswickers who sought out his counsel.

One evening as we made the short drive from hiscottage on Grand Lake, to his house outside ofCambridge Narrows, I tried to understand how an avowedConservative could hold views that were in such closesynchronicity with my own left-wing leanings.

It was a question I’m sure he had heard a thousandtimes, and my line of questioning was as ineffectiveas the headlights which bored impotently into the NewBrunswick night.

But, in his response, I came to appreciate that theexplanation lay, not in partisanship, but in the past.Two seminal events — The Second World War and theGreat Depression — shaped his outlook, he explained.

He was painfully aware that my own generation lackedall firsthand experience of these events; events whichinspired a post-war generation to fashion socialpolicies which would extend opportunities to those whohad never known them previously.

One of his deepest fears, in the twilight of his life, was the inevitable erosion, and eventualdissipation, of this historical memory.

In a speech atSt. Francis Xavier University in the autumn of 2000,Dalton Camp offered this lament for history:

“We are all learning for the present to live withoutit. We are no longer these days sustained or enrichedby experience and memory or even by nostalgia. Thereis no public memory alive of economic ruin or thedevastation of war. There aren’t very many people leftwho remember the depression, who remember the war, andwho were shaped by that experience that gave us thisremarkable sense of community and interdependence thatwe came to know in the 1940s, and the 1950s and the1960s.”

Possessed, as he was, with a long view of the pastcentury, Dalton Camp knew that where people likeOntario Premier Mike Harris and Alberta Premier RalphKlein were offering to take us, was a place we hadalready been; and we would not like it there.

Thus, it was this memory — of a harsher, less generouspast — which would make this eighty-one year old man one ofthe most articulate spokespersons that my owngeneration of twentysomethings would have.

Dalton wasindefatigable in his defence of those social programswhich had been designed by his own generation, used bythe subsequent baby boom generation, but denied to ayounger generation on the pretext that they were nolonger affordable.

At every opportunity, he used his own public platformto rail against the stripping of public assets in atime of unprecedented prosperity, and in so doing, heoften laid bare his solicitude for Canada’s youth. Ina column from December 1997, he wrote:

“The witless way our society is headed is in thedirection of mindless acceptance and compliance withwhatever world corporatism and consumerism have tooffer. One notes the frequent adjuration that all mustrespond to tomorrow’s challenges. No one, however,seems to know what they are. But loosely hinted at,they would seem to be further reducing taxes andleveling the debt.”

“It is not that one feels sorry for the young, for allthis platitudinous patronizing. Feeling sorry isitself patronizing. Still, one does feel for them. Andfor the weights and pressures of this restructured(and failsafe) self-serving global economy in whichonly the powerful are meant to survive as the publicwealth of nations is squandered among privateshareholders.”

Sadly, I’m not sure that my generation always took thetime to notice this learned advocacy on our behalf.Every generation has its own history to write afterall — lately ours has been written on the streetsof major world capitals.

To be sure, Dalton Camp wasenthusiastic about the so-called “anti-globalization”movement — it was, after all, a counterweight on the“self-serving global economy” — but he also viewedthis movement with some trepidation.

It was a movementwhich would just as happily throw out politicalinstitutions such as parliamentary democracy alongwith the dirty bathwater of globalization.

Not surprisingly, the aging conservative sage hadsounder advice for my generation. He knew what forcehad built the schools and the hospitals and theclinics which would comfort the afflicted of earliertimes.

“Don’t give up on government,” he liked to warn hisyoung friends, “It’s the only thing that you own.You’ll probably never own an airline or a refinery ora chemical company, so hang on to it.”