Senator Anne C. Cools shares her thoughts on the importance of family

Since 1984, I have been in public service as a member of the Senate of Canada, so summoned by then Governor General Edward Schreyer, on the recommendation of the late Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. This summons simultaneously made me Canada’s first Black senator and the first Black female senator in North America. As a senator, I have participated in federal politics and faced many daunting challenges, striving to meet them by calling up what my Methodist mother described as the ‘courage of one’s convictions.’

As a child in colonial Barbados, in the then British West Indies, I was raised in the British intellectual tradition of criticism and self-criticism. I was taught the importance of family and the principles of civic responsibility, duty and service to fellow human beings. I was taught to emulate those recognized as the fathers of social justice, such as 19th century social reformer Lord Shaftesbury, who toiled to end barbarous child labour practices in England’s industrial factories; and William Wilberforce, the Evangelical Anglican abolitionist, who laboured and persevered toward the abolition of slavery and the slave trade.

In 2002 in Washington, D.C., I was invited to address 2,000 mostly Black Americans, who were engaged in working with and healing fragile Black families. My subject was Voices of Women in the Fatherhood Movement. I spoke to the centrality and importance of children having meaningful and continuous relationships with both their mothers and fathers.

In recent years, with the ascendency of certain ideologies, it has been admitted that children absolutely need their mothers, but not necessarily their fathers. In fact, misguided public policy has contributed to the alienation of fathers, and to dispossessing children of their fathers. Certainly, men and women are equally capable of being bad or good parents, as virtue and vice are human characteristics, not gendered ones. My speech moved the audience, who as Black Americans were concerned with the stability of the Black family, fathering, the diminution of Black men, and the social condition in which one in three Black men will spend time in prison.

After my speech, and its considerable applause, the host organization’s president, Dr. Jeffery Johnson, thanked me. He said that my speech was a special moment for him and for the audience. He stated that it was rare for Black people in the United States to be addressed by a Black senator, particularly a Black female senator. His words gave me pause, and caused me to reflect deeply on the fact that a national, federal Black senator was and still is a very rare creature in the United States.

As Canada’s first Black senator, I attended Mr. Trudeau’s funeral on Oct. 3, 2000. Each fall, I reflect on him and his bold action in making me a senator. He chose me because of my work with people who were in pain, wounded and damaged in the most vulnerable of all human relationships — the intimate ones between spouses, and family members.

Mr. Trudeau admired my work to end domestic violence, to mend broken families, and to bring healing and reconciliation between loved ones. In fact, I had promised him that I would never cease my commitment in this area of human need. On the next day, we paid tribute to him in the Senate.

In closing my tribute, I said: “Mr. Trudeau’s greatest legacy is a personal one that resonates with all Canadian parents who struggle, sometimes in the face of adversity, to raise their children. His greatest legacy is that of being a parent. His greatest contribution to Canada has been his achievement as a parent and his contribution to fatherhood.”

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