Last week I read Elijah of Buxton, a novel for kids, or anyone, by African-American writer Paul Christopher Curtis. It’s set in 1860, in the small Southern Ontario town of Buxton, a terminus of the underground railroad, built by escaped slaves. Elijah, 11, is its first freeborn person. He narrates. It conveys the atrocity of slavery simply by not assuming that a lifelong status as chattel results in diminished emotional capacity. Slaves grieve as any parents would, over the hell awaiting their kids. I thought of it, watching Barack Obama and his family walk to the front of the stage Tuesday.

It would be hard to fully describe the challenges overcome by people who survived slavery to reach such a point, and we rarely try. It’s easier to celebrate and acclaim. "A dream fulfilled," blared the Toronto Star, alluding to Martin Luther King’s speech. But think of Dr. King himself. He could easily have been there that night; he’d only be 79 now, had he not been murdered.

I don’t just mean the victories are costly; they also contain perils and dangers to the very goals pursued. In his campaign, for instance, Barack Obama visited many churches and synagogues but no mosques. It was seen as politically risky, given the slurs about him being secretly Muslim — made not just by racists, but by John McCain and Hillary Clinton. He probably made the right decision; I think you run for president to win, not to make a point. But the danger is that you end up bolstering stereotypes and attitudes you’re in it to overcome — and Muslims get to be the new blacks. In effect, as someone put it: "Okay, now you’re it." Colin Powell took on this issue, arguing that while Barack Obama is not a Muslim, there would be nothing wrong with a Muslim president. Good for him; he partially redeemed himself for fronting U.S. lies at the United Nations in 2003, to justify the war on Iraq. Partial redemptions count.

And what of Canadians, with our proud history of welcoming ex-slaves, embodied in Elijah of Buxton or, a century later, U.S. war resisters, or avoiding their war on Iraq? Two words, as Barack Obama might say: Omar Khadr. All it would take to remove him from his Kafkaesque nightmare in Guantanamo Bay is a call from Stephen Harper (or Paul Martin before him) to the White House, the way Germany’s Angela Merkel or Australia’s John Howard, not to mention Tony Blair, extricated their citizens, leaving us the sole Western nation with an âeoeunlawful combatantâe incarcerated there. He has been tortured, the evidence on him has collapsed, the legal procedures are a joke and he was only 15 when captured in 2002 in Afghanistan. But this week, Stockwell Day said no call will be made. Do we tell the school kids touring museums in the Buxton area that we won’t even try to repatriate a kid who wasn’t much older than Elijah at the time he was caught?

In this way, we undermine our own heritage. Canada is the land of milk and honey, say the fleeing slaves in the Curtis novel. They’ve been caught by "paddy-rollers" and chained for the return journey south. They are stunned when Elijah says Canada, that beautiful concept, is just an hour down the road and across the river. Elijah’s mother told him that her mom said she’d kill any child of hers who had a chance to reach Canada and didn’t try. In Auschwitz, the least deathly part of the camp, where inmates had at least a slim chance to survive, was called Canada. You can read about it in Tadeusz Borowski’s This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. In Poland in the 1980s, people still sometimes referred to good fortune as "getting Canada."

Historical victories are always hard won, tentative and ambiguous. There’s always more to do and it’s easy to get distracted. Relax your standards for an instant and you might do exactly what you’ve been puffing yourself up for having escaped. Two words: Omar Khadr.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.