Among the Pillars

Principles for Survival and Success

AMONG THE PILLARS

Principles for Survival and Success

A Lecture by John A Campion

1. Carpe Diem …

2. Life is a Long Song …

3. Ask Not What …

4. Wagons and Stars …

5. Lightness of Being …

6. When the Darkness Descends …

7. Brook no Interference …

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Part 1: Carpe Diem

In April of 2014, I was in Vancouver on business. As is my usual, I

stayed at the Hotel Vancouver.

I checked myself into the hotel on the Gold Floor. Only one other

person was in the private lounge when I arrived. It was Robin Williams.

He looked older, distracted and delicate. Wishing to respect his privacy,

but also desiring to acknowledge his stardom, I simply said “Hello, Mr.

Williams.”

I went to my room and hand wrote a note to Robin Williams to

acknowledge how important he and his work in cinema had been to me,

and my children and family. I did not receive a reply. Robin Williams

committed suicide three months later.

Upon hearing of his death, I turned back to my favourite Robin Williams

movie, “Dead Poets Society”. Let me refresh your memory of the script

by replaying a short excerpt.

Robin Williams is playing the teacher, Mr. Keating. He walked into

class and looked at his students discussing significant poetic issues,

including “Captain, My Captain” coming from the poem by Walt

Whitman about Abraham Lincoln. The teacher, Keating, then turned to

a student, Mr. Pitts. The script reads as follows:

KEATING: Now, Mr. … Pitts, that’s a rather unfortunate name. Mr.

Pitts, where are you? (Pitts raises his hand while everyone

around him snickers).

KEATING: Mr. Pitts, would you open your hymnal to page 542 and read

the first stanza of the poem you find there?

PITTS: “To the virgins, to make much of time.”?

KEATING: Yes, that’s the one. Somewhat appropriate, isn’t it?

PITTS: “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, old time is still a-flying, and

this same flower that smiles today tomorrow will be dying.”

KEATING: Thank you, Mr. Pitts. “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.”

The Latin term for that sentiment is carpe diem. Now, who

knows what that means? (Meeks immediately puts up his hand)

MEEKS: Carpe diem. That’s “seize the day”.

To those readers under the age of 30, carpe diem will have a familiar

ring. I will put it somewhat differently. The difference between you and

me is approximately 2,000 Saturday nights. It seems a long time when

you are 25 … it seems no time when you are 65.

In order to understand what 2,000 Saturday nights may mean for you

and your career, I recommend that you decide where you would like to

be in 1,500 Saturday nights and devote time and attention to figuring out

how you might get there. The first step is to imagine the career and life

that you would most like to have if there were no impediments of any

kind. Once you have fixed your imagination on that dream, pick a path,

find a model, choose a mentor and brook no interference in achieving

your dream.

I can assure you that you will not reach your dream. Your life and

career may be much greater than you could have ever imagined today. It

will certainly be very different. Opportunities will present themselves,

modifications will become necessary, disappointments will have to be

overcome but if you do not imagine it I can assure you that you will

have no chance of achieving it.

The second point attaching itself to carpe diem and your 2,000 Saturday

nights career is that you will want to have some vague notion of what

might be available for you to accomplish when as the Beatles plead

“Will you still love me when I’m 64?”. It is my experience that in your

profession, in your family, among your friends, and to your society those

who follow their dream, make contributions as best they can and act

with honour and integrity will have opportunities to contribute long past

the time when the workaday world would have you retire and fade into a

private life.

* * * * *

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Part 2: Life is a Long Song

Jethro Tull sang a song of the same name, and said: “ if you wait, your

plate I will fill, don’t you fret, don’t you fret, I will give you good

cheer”.

It is here that I wish to refer to my own career to put some of the pieces

into perspective. As an economic partner in the law firm and as a lawyer

serving society, I have 300 reported and public decisions dealing with

public issues and private disputes. I have been handsomely paid in

some,such as the $8 billion defence of Nesbitt Burns over the Bre-X

Minerals Limited gold fraud and the 23 year multi-suit case against

Atomic Energy Of Canada Limited over the construction failure of two

nuclear reactors and the $1.6 billion supply of medical nuclear isotopes

and acted pro bono for others. I taught as an adjunct professor for 20

years in University of Toronto and Osgoode Law Schools, and have

spoken at many law schools in Canada. With my co-author, Diana

Dimmer, I published a book and have given over 100 lectures and

written papers across Canada and around the world. I have acted in

public inquiries before the United Nations, before the Gomery Inquiry

and elsewhere. I have acted for public bodies like the Ontario Energy

Board, Financial Services Commission of Ontario, Federal

Commissioner of Competition and Department of Justice. I have acted

in cases dealing with assisted suicide, poverty, disabilities, criminal

matters and family matters. My work in teaching has taken me around

the world. I have had the privilege of being elected to office within the

law firm and four times a Bencher of the Law Society of Upper Canada.

I have been President of Federation of Law Societies and the Empire

Club of Canada, a speaking club televised and broadcast across Canada

on a weekly basis. In politics, I have been a loyal member of the Liberal

Party of Canada and Ontario, acted for two Prime Ministers, four

leadership candidates and written the Rules for the selection of

candidates in the party. All of this was done as a back-drop to the

creation and raising of a family, the passion and enjoyment of friendship

and the constant search for personal well-being.

I give you the elements of ‘life as a long song’ in order to put into

context what next follows.

For you, in this lecture, I ask myself what was the central theme of all

this activity. I can identify some themes : I did not want to be bored, not

for a single moment; I was ever curious; I craved intimacy with my

family and friends; and I felt injustice very strongly whenever it crossed

my path. I wanted to set things right.

What follows in the remaining five points are observations about

success, contribution and well-being. These are not meant to be

proscriptive, but are observations for you to incorporate into your own

philosophy and actions.

* * * * *

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Part 3: Ask not What

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for

your country.” This is one of the most quoted phrases from a modern

political speech. Jack Kennedy spoke those words in his inaugural

address as President of the United States of America in 1961.

Let me take you to October 1995. It was a Monday night at 10:00 p.m.

I received a telephone call from Federal Cabinet Ministers Brian Tobin

and Sergio Marchi asking if I could raise $15,000 by noon the next day

at the request of the Prime Minister. Without having a clue how, I

responded ‘yes’. They said that the Cabinet would make a decision that

evening and get back to me by midnight. I received no return call. The

next day on Tuesday, I was in Montreal on business and attended with

Francis Fox at the Paul Sauve arena what was to be the last public

speaking engagement of Prime Minister Chretien in the 1995

referendum in Quebec on that province’s decision whether to separate

from Canada (the “yes” side) or not separate (the “no” side) . The polls

indicated that the “Yes” side was ahead 14 points and the country was

lost. There was simply no way to make up 14 percentage points in the

few days left. I flew back from Montreal that evening deeply depressed

and personally distressed. From 1967, I had been involved in the debate

about Canada’s future. I had been a guide at Expo ’67 and there had two

weeks taking care of Premier John Robarts as he celebrated Canada Day

at 100, welcomed Her Majesty the Queen, met with Prime Minister

Pearson and the premiers of all provinces. Premier Robarts later

commissioned the Federation of Tomorrow Conference on the future of

Canada. We Canadians engaged in the confederation debate through

the election of the Parti Quebecois in 1977; the first referendum; the

repatriation of the Constitution in 1980 to 1984; the creation of the

Charter of Rights and Freedoms; Meech Lake Accord; Charlottetown

Accord; and now, the country stood again at the brink. On Tuesday

night at midnight, Ministers Tobin and Marchi called again and asked

me to raise the$15000 by noon the next day. In the next 36 hours,we

raised $186,000. It was used to fund the Montreal rally held in Montreal

on the Friday, three days before the referendum vote. As you know, the

rally took place and the vote was taken. Canada was preserved by less

than a 1% differential in the votes between the ‘yes’ side and the ‘no’

side. For a fleeting moment, I had been given my chance to make a

major public contribution. I am sure that my position as Director with

the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, made later that year, arose

because of these efforts.

This opportunity did not just arise out of thin air. It arose because I

became seriously interested in politics in 1967, flirted with politics until

1977 and then became intensely involved in local electoral politics with

Jim Peterson in 1977; with Bill Graham in 1984; with Paul Martin’s

leadership bid in 1990; as counsel to the Liberal Party and the Prime

Minister and various cabinet ministers in 1992; which continues to this

day. Person by person, convention by convention, and job by job, I

made my sometimes thankless contribution in the political backrooms

through fundraising, offering my legal services on a pro bono basis, and

being available to complete tasks, big and small-- until I was offered an

opportunity to make a difference.

In my political life, I was largely known as an able lawyer. That single

base allowed me to befriend and assist political operatives like Senator

David Smith, party presidents from across the country, Cabinet

ministers, political advisors and assistants, bureaucrats at Department of

Justice and other departments, and Prime Ministers Chretien and Martin.

These are heady contacts. They came while giving legal advice and

raising money. It gave me an opportunity to talk policy. More than

anything, it allowed me a sense of excitement and breadth of

involvement that is not available through any other means. It gave me

personal expression to celebrate and participate in the delicacy and

extraordinary potential of our great country.

Those of you interested in networking and making contacts in law,

business, bureaucracy and all walks of life, politics is a great vehicle.

There is still no greater calling than a public one.

* * * * *

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Part 4: Wagons and Stars

“Hitch your wagon to a star” was first written in an 1862 essay called

“American Civilization” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. He wrote “Now that

is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labour, to hitch his

wagon to a star and to see his chores done by the gods themselves.”.

Emerson was saying that wisdom came from a high purpose. In a more

modern context, ‘hitch your wagon to a star’ is a prescription for find a

mentor or a successful person with whom you can connect and learn and

associate.

If you are a young woman interested in the practice of law or becoming

a politician or becoming head of an international organization, follow

the career of the Chief Justice of Canada, the President of the

International Monetary Fund, female judges throughout Canada,

politicians from Judy LaMarsh to Michäelle Jean.

If you are a young man, there are an equal number of mentors in

Canadian and international life.

One such mentor whom I have had the pleasure of associating with was

Maurice Strong. He has a high school education, and no more. And yet,

he has more world university degrees than there are universities in

Canada. He has been honoured by more countries, Queens and Kings

and Heads of State than any other Canadian. He was variously President

of Power Corporation of Canada until 1966; designed and became the

first head of Canada’s foreign aid program, called CEDA and the first

deputy minister in Canada without a university degree; in the early

1970s was appointed Secretary General of the United Nations

Conference on the Human Environment; commissioned a report on the

state of the planet called Only One Earth: The Care and Maintenance of

a Small Planet which summarized the findings of 152 leading experts

from 58 countries in preparation for the first UN meeting on the

environment held in Stockholm in 1972, and which was the world’s first

“state of the environment” report; was Secretary General of the 1992

United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the

“Earth Summit”) held in Rio di Janeiro, took a leading role in

implementing the results from the Earth Summit; was asked by Prime

Minister Trudeau in 1976 to create Petro-Canada; was appointed CEO of

Ontario Hydro, then the largest utility in the world; President and

Chairman of the Extension Committee of the World Alliance of

YMCAs, was President of the University of Peace from 1988 to 2006,

an Honourary Professor of Peking University, Chairman of the Advisory

Board for the Institute for Research on Security and Sustainability for

Northeast Asia and, most importantly, served as under secretary in seven

different portfolios at the United Nations over several decades.

He is the father and grandfather of the modern environmental

movement. The world’s success in achieving an environmental

awareness and progress, including inspiring his good friend Al Gore, lies

at his feet.

Maurice has received numerous awards, including Officer of the Order

of Canada, Pearson Medal of Peace, the Swedish Royal Order of the

Polar Star, the first non-U.S. citizen to receive the Public Welfare Medal

from the U.S. Academy of Sciences and awards from across Canada and

around the world.

It was for Maurice Strong that I appeared to defend him before the

$90-billion United Nations Oil for Food Inquiry in New York. Paul

Volcker, the former Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal

Reserve system, was the Chair of the Inquiry. I did the work pro bono.

For ten years thereafter, I spoke to Maurice Strong at least once a week

and oftentimes daily. It was an introduction to and a chance to forge

connections with the international world of economics, United Nations,

heads of State, the environmental movement and heads of corporations.

I met with Maurice in New York, China, and Switzerland. Maurice

called me from just about every country in the world. My association

was and remains an education, an opportunity and an insight that was

only available through law, politics and a curiosity about the world.

* * * * *

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Parts 5 and 6: Lightness of Being and When the Darkness Descends

Lightness of being is derived from the book of the same name written by

the Czech writer, Milan Kundera. Sabina, one of his main characters,

celebrates lightness, originality and individuality.

I choose to dwell upon the lightness of being for a moment, because it is

my observation that those who are happily willing to take on tasks big

and small, who treat their colleagues with honour, frankness, collegiality

and joyfulness are sought out for friendship and for important career

tasks and public obligations.

It follows from the Old and New Testament prescription to honour your

father and your mother. That phrase is a Commandment and is repeated

often in the Old and New Testaments of the Jewish and Christian bible.

It goes well beyond religion. It goes well beyond your parents. It calls

for reverence of your fellow human beings. It calls upon you to value

personal relationships as of each person you meet and work with as if

they were part of your own family. It calls upon you to respect merit

and rank. It calls upon you to be as kind to those who work for you or

provide services to you as you would to those for whom you work and to

those whom you aspire to associate with.

In the legal world, you need only look to two former law professors of

mine, former Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Frank Iacobucci;

to our present Governor-General, David Johnson; or to the Chief Justice

of the United States ,John Roberts; and to Christine Lagarde, the

president of the International Monetary Fund. Each one of these people

has an impeccable academic background, an extraordinary work ethic

and a degree of accomplishment that has taken them to the top of their

worlds. What is common among them is a personal lightness of being, a

friendliness, a desire in action and word to value every person who

comes into their orbit.

It is my observation that those who can envision and act with a lightness

of being are the ones sought out for advancement at every stage of their

careers and ultimately to positions of high responsibility. We like to

promote and reward those whom we like. It is not how impressed

people are by your accomplishments but it is how you make people feel

about themselves that should most guide your approach to everyone you

meet.

Let me turn to “darkness descending”.

For this discussion, I would like to refer to the horrible time and place

when one lies between “… the devil and deep blue sea”.

The phrase comes from the punishment meted out for sailors on the

High Seas when they have been found guilty of serious misbehaviour.

The guilty sailor is drawn by ropes under the hull of the ship. If he

survives, that is the end of the matter. The bottom of the boat, at the

keel, was called the “devil”. When the sailor was between the ‘devil’

and the deep blue sea he was at the most dangerous point of his life,

when his very existence hung in the balance. He was between the ‘devil

and the deep blue sea’.

Each one of you will experience among your friends and family, among

your colleages and by yourself, a moment when confidence recedes,

when the world feels dangerous and when you are so exposed that there

is an open window to your heart.

There are two points I wish to make about the time when darkness

descends.

Firstly, you must know that darkness is coming. It will surprise you,

and will come quickly from internal sources or because of external

events out of your control. The prospect of the darkness descending

demands that you keep a balanced and healthy awareness of your own

physical and psychological well-being. It demands that you be aware

that your friends and family will be suffering in the same way at some

point. You should learn skills to keep a healthy sense of balance and

compassion and assist others-intimates and strangers alike-when the

darkness decends and the way ahead is seems hopeless.

Secondly, when darkness comes to you, it is then that you will be most

tested.

You will rely upon the principles upon which you have lived your life

and treated others. One of the key tests of life’s principles is what

decisions you make about life and career when nobody is looking and

nobody will know the result.

More importantly, you should not try to solve the problems alone, in

anger or in haste. If it is a public matter, one cannot answer allegations

of wrongdoing or solve personal problems alone.

My message is to embrace the lightness of being whenever you can and

be prepared for the descending darkness whenever it comes.

* * * * *

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Part 7: Brook No Interference

This phrase, “brook no interference” has its origins in Olde English and

first appeared in the 1540 poem by Roesslins: Byrth of Markynde. The

poem said: “ if she refused or cannot brook meat”. This ancient phrase

has a modern Canadian equivalent, “beavers when damming , brook no

interference”.

At the outset of my conversation, I encouraged you to create a dream.

In the center, I have given you some observations about my world, my

work and my intimates and the principles that guided me.

At the end, I encourage you to create your own set of principles and find

your own dreams. You have but 2,000 Saturday nights in your career.

At 25, it seems forever. At 65 it seems no time at all.

But, whatever, you do, brook no interference in the realization of your

dreams with honour and joyfulness. Foreswear short-term gains for life

as a long song , live life in all its complexity in the light; being always

prepared to defend against the darkness.