Are You Being a Good Citizen?
"Dad, I got 99 percent in math on my report card," crowed Bruce Langstaff more than 40 years ago.
To this day, Bruce remembers his father's response: "That's great. But are you also being a good citizen?"
Are you being a good citizen? Bruce's father, Dr. Jim Langstaff, valued citizenship -- the belief that our duty to society is as important as our duty to ourselves -- as highly as personal achievement.
Dr. Langstaff practised medicine for decades in Richmond Hill, Ontario, as had his father before him and his grandfather before that. For all the Langstaffs, the medical practice meant responsibility. One example of what citizenship meant to Dr. Langstaff occurred on a stormy winter day in the 1930s. Word had reached him that a woman who lived on an isolated farm was about to give birth and needed help right away.
Dr. Langstaff warmed up the car, loaded his skis, checked his medical bag, wrapped himself up well, and set off into the blizzard. The roads became so bad that he could not continue driving. He abandoned the car and strapped on his skis.
Snowdrifts on the road made skiing difficult, so Dr. Langstaff took to the fields alongside the road. Going down one long slope, he gathered speed but failed to see the top wire of a farm fence that had been nearly buried by the deep snow. The tips of his skis caught the wire, and he tumbled head over heels into a tangle of fence wire and snow. He was so badly tangled that he thought he might freeze to death before he worked himself loose.
Eventually, he did manage to free himself. He reached the farmhouse, helped deliver the baby, and waited for the weather to clear. He was driven back to his car on a heavy sleigh hauled by a team of horses.
Dr. Langstaff took missions like this for granted. He was needed, and he went to help a fellow citizen. Payment was secondary. Sometimes in the 1930s, no payment was possible. Other times, payment was in kind, perhaps a chicken or a cut of beef.
This anecdote from the life of one person is echoed every day by thousands of Canadians who recognize that the privilege of citizenship includes responsibilities. Sometimes, their actions are dramatic. More often, though, their actions are simply small acts of citizenship that people take for granted, just as Dr. Langstaff did.
At the same time, thousands of other people do not take citizenship seriously at all. Many do not even understand the meaning of the word. It is to both these groups -- the committed and the uncommitted, the active and the passive -- that this book is dedicated.
"Are you being a good citizen?
Alan Skeoch, May 2000
Civics: Participating in a Democratic Society,xi.