There are very few occasions when words spoken in the Legislative Assembly move me to tears. The remarkable sharing of former Lieutenant Governor, the Honourable James Bartleman was one of those occasions.

Part native, Mr. Bartlemen has been a tireless advocate for first-nation children of northern Ontario.

Here is part of what his Honour shared with members of the Legislative Assembly.

“Growing up as a member of a mixed white-aboriginal family in Ontario in the 1940s and early 1950s, I witnessed first hand the terrible poverty of native people, their lack of political rights and the racism to which they were subjected.

But it wasn’t until I became Lieutenant Governor and began to travel to northern Ontario, in particular to the 50 communities of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation located in the vast northern two thirds of our province, that I saw how far we still have to go as a society. 

My first trip was a revelation. As my aircraft landed and taxied down the runway to park, another aircraft waited for clearance to take off. The distraught chief told me that the outgoing aircraft was carrying out to Thunder Bay for an autopsy the body of a 14-year-old-girl who had killed

herself. “Why?” I asked the chief. “She had no hope” he told me.

Last year, three young people, including a 12-year-old-girl hanged herself on a tree in front of her school just as her classmates arrived to start their day. “Why did they do it?” I asked the chief, teachers and parents. “Because they lacked hope”, they all said.”

Why do these children lack hope? They lack hope because they have few job prospects. They lack hope because they often do not know how to read and write. They lack hope because they live as spokes in a seeming endless cycle of poverty. They lack hope because they see on television the relative wealth of their fellow Canadians and believe they will never share in that wealth. They lack hope because they hear stories of racism from their friends and relatives who visit the outside world. They lack hope because they lack self-esteem. They lack hope because they believe that no one cares about them. And they kill themselves at rates 10 times the national average, out of sight and out of mind of their fellow Ontarians. 

Today there seem to be two classes of people in our Ontario – the lucky and the left out. The lucky are hopeful

while the left out too often know the despair of isolation, loneliness, debilitating poverty and a fear of tomorrow.

As we move through the Christmas season and into 2008, let us do two things; count our many blessings and commit to working thoughtfully and collaboratively at the task of building a stronger and more caring Ontario.

Moving from despair to hope is no easy task. It will happen when we understand that being the best as a people requires that all Ontarians be given the opportunity to be the very best they can be.