The Fall of the Wall....

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I remember the day well. While news of the challenges facing governments behind the Iron Curtain was daily, no one really expected the wall to come down in the way it did. By Christmas, the governments of the entire communist bloc of countries were being changed. The way we viewed the world and our place in it changed faster than we could realize what it all meant.

I have frequently mentioned in speeches my conviction that students of history, a few centuries from now, will include 1989 as one of the key transition points of history, just as we remember the Protestant Reformation and 1517 or the French Revolution of 1789. While there are symbolic acts that define these events, in reality it is a series of changes that take place over a few decades that need to be understood. In fact, just twenty years out from this event, I am not sure we are in a position today to evaluate the full significance of this event. It is still sorting itself out.

Living in the midst of a significant time in history is like being in the midst of the forest -- all you see is trees and the shape of the landscape is hard to make out. But the trees of freedom and the decline of communism, represented by the events of November 9, 2009, are trees worth celebrating and remembering.



A portion of the levelled Berlin Wall, with five copper remembrance plaques. The photo was taken this summer during our family trip to Berlin. For those who did not catch my reflections on Berlin, I wrote an op-ed in the Calgary Herald at that time.