A Pilgrim's Journal

You can find the original podcast MP3 here and you can find more on that day's episode at the CBC's website here.

The italic emphasis throughout is to try to reproduce the same verbal emphasis that I heard in the interview.

Anna Maria Tremonti: Ursula Franklin is a Canadian giant: a world renowned physicist, feminist, Quaker, author, pacifist, professor, holocaust survivor, public intellectual, mother, and mentor.

When she was 22 and studying in Berlin, she was forced out of school and sent to a Nazi labour camp because her mother was Jewish. Ursula Franklin survived the war, emigrated to Canada, and has been making waves ever since.

She is a companion of the Order of Canada and a recipient of the Canadian UN Association's Pierson's Peace Medal. And these days she has turned her formidable attention to the issue of our Canadian democracy. She says Canadians have work to do.

Ursula Franklin is with me in Toronto. Good morning.

Ursula Franklin: Good morning and thanks for having me.

AMT: You have been working for peace and social justice for decades. You have lived through a World War, through the rise of nuclear weapons, the end of the cold war, the spread of polutants. What is your primary concern as you look around you in 2010.

UF: It's really the future of my grandchildren, of everyone's grandchildren, that all we have done (and it's not a question of whether I have done it) is to make the world a livable, civil, just, and peaceful place. The world has changed, and I'm not convinced that it has changed into the direction that it would indeed make it more livable, more peaceful, more joyful, for all of its inhabitants. And that continues to concern me profoundly, because it's not a private affair. Peace is not divisible or commodity that one buys, and some have more and others, because of that, have less. Peace is indivisible, and in fact, the very nature modern law (?) as well as modern commerce makes it necessary to care for all, and to understand that nobody can survive at the expense of anybody else. And that has been a very difficult lesson, both to teach and to learn.

AMT: Well, we can't talk about that without talking about democracy. What concerns do you have about the state of democracy?

UF: I am profoundly concerned not just about the state of democracy, but about the absence of democracy, of the erosion of democracy. For somebody like me, who grew up under Hitler, parents keenly aware what was coming on. Intellectuals who understood this argued with their friends abroad to say, don't you see what's coming? How easily fascism can take place, can take hold. I'm super sensitive to the erosion of democracy. I came to Canada by choice because it is a democratic country. And I see how our parliamentary institutions are more and more eroded and in fact I came here because I thought I would introduce you, Anna Maria, to a new word. And that word is "scrupling." Just as we make in our daily parlance a verb out of "google" and say we are "googling", there is of course a word "scruple". And way back during the debate and struggle of slavery, the old Quakers used the word "scrupling" which in that time was of real currency, and they meant they went scrupling with their neighbours, sitting down and saying: "We have a horrible problem! Many of us think it is not right to own people. We better scruple about that."

AMT: Scrupling. So in other words, if you have scruples, you talk about scrupling.

UF: Yes. You do something. If you have the need for clarity beyond your own and private things, you'd better scruple. That is, talk with people, and make it clear: it's not my problem, it's not your problem. It's a problem that is bigger than all of us.

AMT: Let me pick up on something there, because you talk about your experience in Nazi Germany. And in the holocaust, you make that connection, then you talk about slavery, and in the same conversation, you're talking about our democracy in parliament in Canada. Can you connect those things? Some people would be offended that you connect those things.

UF: I would say, indeed, not only can you, but you must connect these things. You cannot look at the tree and not look at its fruits. Things don't come in a plain brown envelope. Things grow. And you need to look both at the soil, and what is planted in the soil. Our activity turns over, day in, day out. What are the things that grow? What are the things that shrivel? And I say, Democracy shrivels. And it shrivels at the institutional level. And it's not whether you or I vote, or for whom I vote. It's not firing the coach, or getting a better player. It's looking at the game. What has happened to the game?

AMT: And what has happened to the game?

UF: What has happened to the game is that the game is a ritual. It is not doing what it is supposed to do. And the players know it. And that's why in that scrupling session a month or so ago, we invited three sitting members, one of each party, people who wanted, and got, the job to represent us, to scruple with them. Saying, we feel unrepresented, and we know from our contact with some of you that you feel severely constrained in representing us. What stands in the way? Let's not have a debate, not something to blame, but be concerned about the structure that we need, to enable a representation in that institution that we have, which is the House of Commons.

AMT: So you point a finger at the institutions. What responsibilies does a citizen bear in either the growth of democracy or the erosion of democracy? An individual citizen.

UF: I would think the first obligation is clarity. I find one of the real contempts of parliamentary democracy right now is (???) the discussion of the coming immigration bill, in which the minister went to press conferences about a proposal discussing the pros and cons of something which to this point has not been voted upon. Now the citizen cannot stop this, and many people who feel strongly about it want to talk. But they have to preceed that, by saying to the minister, "Listen, this is not the place." We have to have hearings. There is a process. When you have ideas of change, introduce them in the House, let the members go back their constituency, have first reading, have hearings in committee. And there's a lot of difference between consultation, which [is] having tea with your friends, and hearings, which I would call listenings if I could. And the ordinary citizen cannot produce hearings, but the ordinary citizen can remind the minister that he has an obligation to due process.

AMT: Take us to your life, your early life, in Germany, so that we can understand how your views were shaped. What happened to you and your family during the second World War?

UF: My mother is Jewish, my father came from a long German family. I was the only child. Had wonderful parents in a wonderful atmosphere of the pre-Hitler Berlin. My parents, particularly my mother, were intensely aware of what was coming up in terms of the assaults on human rights and social justice. (unknown word) ... and it was very very difficult. Both my parents and I were in different camps but survived partly by luck, partly by the kindness of people. I went back and it was a post-war Germany that taught me how mindful one has to be of the roots of democracy. And because of having survived war in Berlin, and having known totally, intellectually and viscerally, that violence is pointless, leading only to more violence and more hatred, I wanted the involvement in the citizenship of another country that had firmer groundings... so that I accepted a post-doctorate fellowship to the University of Toronto.

AMT: So you're telling me that all that you learned from the traumas that you faced, when you came to this country, this was not solely about your personal space and what you might want to learn. You came to this country to speak out.

UF: And mostly to act out. Not to tell, but to do what I think good citizens are supposed to do and can do to nourish democracy.

AMT: And so you became the first female professor and the University of Toronto's department of metallurgy and materials science. How difficult was it to be a trailblazer in those days? We're talking about the late 1960's.

UF: It's awfully hard to say. You know, I met personally a great deal of helpfulness courtesy, and since I knew what I was doing, and I was prepared to work hard, I found my lot far easier than that of other women who met far greater discrimination. You know, it was more difficult collectively than individually.

AMT: Well you took on the issue of pay equity. What happened? Why did you do it?

UF: There were women who retired before the law forced it equal pay on the university. So they retired with a final salary substantially lower than that of their colleagues, and it was necessary to address that as a group. And since there were so few, there were only 5 of us who could be the representative claimants in a lawsuit, and so as in all these things you do it because there is unfortunately nobody else.

AMT: That goes back to the issue of the responsibility of the citizen.

UF: It does. Except I do not think that everything is everybody's business. I think we do have developed a structure of sharing work and sharing a responsibility. And it is the strengthening and not the shortcutting of the institutions that we have that concerns me at the moment, profoundly. Because our basic parliamentary representative democracy is so curtailed by variety of shortcuts and factors, that I see that with great fear. Because they're not working, at times, one thinks, intentionally, coreography to not work is the invitation to fascism, is a dream of the strong guy who cuts through all this nonsense and gets things done. And that's where it links to my past experience of my parents' horror about the social unrest, inequality, inflation, lack of loans, in Germany, that produced the situation that cried out for the strong decisive male. And totally wrong, and totally authoritarian (age?). And I see this far closer to the Canadian reality than many of my friends.

AMT: Don't you think we have enough checks and balances in our democratic system here?

UF: We have them. We don't use them. And one of the big ones is the opposition, both parliamentary and extra-parliamentary. I was horrified to hear the Prime Minister say that members of the opposition couldn't be trusted. If people elect a representative and they happen to be from a party that is not the Prime Minister's that does not mean they are not trustworthy. We don't want a country in which people who may oppose this or that are considered untrustworthy. They make a contribution. They make a contribution that we may not like, but they make it out of good intent.

AMT: And a lot of this debate, as it were, is happening against a backdrop of increasing political apathy. There are a lot of people who will say the public doesn't care, the public doesn't care about these issues, they don't affect the public. Do you agree with that first of all...

UF: No.

AMT: ...and do you see apathy out there, and does it...

UF: Yeah, I see apathy out there, but I also see reasons for apathy out there. And that is the known response of governments. The cure is a bit of response. Any teacher knows, if you want any engagement of your students, you have to involve them. And you involve them not by saying, "Put a lot of work in, but I'm sure not going to read your paper." You read it, you make marginal notes, and you show that in your conduct in what you teach you have heard what was said. Kids are intelligent. Kids learn. They just often learn the wrong thing. And these kids have learned that they can intelligently work with other people provided it's a voluntary, often temporary, association. They do all sorts of things. But the idea that as citizens our instrument as a policy of our government has been so discredited by the inaction of the government that the young think, "We aren't stupid, why should we work you guys? You have to can the word for us."

AMT: And what does that tell you about how you see the future? I mean, you're basically saying they've learned, you say kids learn quickly, but they've learned that government isn't something to be involved in or to get interested in.

UF: Then we have to change. And that's a scrupling. That's why I say, Look at the process. It's not impossible to change. You can give power to parliamentary committees that really make a difference.

AMT: How do you define peace?

UF: I define peace, not as the absence of war, but as the presence of justice and the absence of fear. There is peace when people don't have to be afraid. And people don't have to be afraid when there's genuine justice. Period. It seems to be so, so difficult, although it's so, so obvious.

AMT: Do you think many people who actually agree to go to war understand what you just said?

UF: Those who go to war do so because they have no more attractive or more available choices for what they want to do with their lives.

AMT: And I should clarify, when I say "those who go to war" I'm not necessarily talking about soldiers, I'm also talking about the people who send soldiers to war. Who make a decision to go to war.

UF: I think these are totally different things. The people who make decisions, who go to war has what I consider evil intent. They have no feeling, either of alternatives, or of responsibility to what happened, not only to those whom they send but to everybody else.

AMT: But they would argue with you that they are going, for example Afghanistan, they are going in order to uphold the very democracy that you say is threatened.

UF: Well, good luck. You know, this is not without historical examples. And in fact I think, there are a good number of eloquent people who will say if they want to do nothing but uphold democracy, there are good deal easier ways and better ways of doing it.

AMT: Given all of this, what kind of society do you dream about for future generations?

UF: I used to say, and I have it in the forward of one of my books, that the dream of a peaceful society, to me, is still the dream of the potluck supper. The society in which all can contribute, and all can find friendship, that those who bring things, bring things that they do well and bring a variety of things. Those who can't cook can still organize, help clean up, and all belong. And that, however archaic (?) it might sound, is still the society that I dream of, not that everybody runs everybody's business, but that we create conditions under which a potluck is possible.

AMT: Ursula Franklin, thank you for sharing your thoughts.

UF: Thank you for having me and listening.

AMT: Ursula Franklin is a celebrated physicist, author, and activist. She spoke to us from our Toronto studio.