Mawlana Hazar Imam addresses prestigious LaFontaine-Baldwin Symposium in Toronto/ 15 October

Mawlana Hazar Imam addresses prestigious LaFontaine-Baldwin Symposium in Toronto
Mawlana Hazar Imam addresses the 10th annual LaFontaine-Baldwin Symposium in Toronto. Photo: Moez Visram
Mawlana Hazar Imam addresses the 10th annual LaFontaine-Baldwin Symposium in Toronto. Photo: Moez Visram

Toronto, 15 October 2010 — Mawlana Hazar Imam addressed the prestigious 10th annual LaFontaine-Baldwin Symposium in Toronto this evening. He was accompanied at the event by Prince Amyn and Prince Rahim.

Speaking at the invitation of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, Hazar Imam was warmly welcomed by former Governor General of Canada, the Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson, and her husband, the prominent Canadian essayist and novelist John Ralston Saul, who together co-chair the Institute.

“What the Canadian experience suggests to me is that identity itself can be pluralistic,” said Mawlana Hazar Imam before a packed audience at the Royal Conservatory’s Telus Centre for Performance and Learning. “Honouring one’s own identity need not mean rejecting others. One can embrace an ethnic or religious heritage, while also sharing a sense of national or regional pride,” explained Hazar Imam.
Mawlana Hazar Imam and John Ralston Saul enjoy a light moment during the “armchair discussion” that followed Hazar Imam`s formal address to the 10th annual LaFontaine-Baldwin Symposium. Photo: Moez Visram
Mawlana Hazar Imam and John Ralston Saul enjoy a light moment during the “armchair discussion” that followed Hazar Imam`s formal address to the 10th annual LaFontaine-Baldwin Symposium. Photo: Moez Visram

The theme of pluralism was well suited to a lecture named for Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin, whom Saul said “set in place everything that [is] best about Canada today.” Known as the 19th century architects of responsible government, their Great Ministry of 1848 was described by Saul as the “first democratic government of Canada.”

“It invented, really, the organised ethical idea of Canada, and the pluralistic idea of Canada,” extolled Saul — “Canada at its best.”