The Varsity: I just wanted to start off by congratulating you on almost four years in this office.
David Onley: Four years, yes. Well, three and a bit now. I don’t like to use the “four years” just yet.
TV: Why’s that?
DO: Well it’s just hard to believe that so much time has gone by. It really has — even to say three years is amazing to me.
TV: It must be all sort of a blur now, but what was it initially like to get that phone call from the Prime Minister?
DO: It was an amazing moment. There is a process that you have to go through when you realize that you’re on the short list and you’re actually interviewed for the job. So the last Thursday of June of 2007, just prior to the Canada Day weekend, I was called by the Prime Minister’s office, [and they said] that they wanted to interview me. […] The interview was scheduled to go on for 45 minutes, but the way [the interviewer] was sitting, every once in a while I would catch a glimpse of his watch, and [the interview] was 10 minutes shy of 90 minutes. […] [On] Wednesday, it was 20 minutes to 5 and this gentleman called. And the first thing he said was the Prime Minister needs to talk to you. […] I was driving, at the top of the Don Valley Parkway. And I thought to myself, Lord don’t let me hit anybody, just keep it straight in this lane.
TV: The Governor General, in his installation speech, mentioned three pillars he wanted to address during his time in office: families and children, learning and innovation, and philanthropy and volunteerism. At the onset of this journey, what were the goals that you personally set for yourself?
DO: The primary one is the whole concept of accessibility within our society. And it’s an issue that I’ve been promoting through my whole term in office. It is something that is more than just for people with disabilities, who [constitute] 15.5 per cent of our population. When you take into account the immediate family members, the mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children of those disabled people, it is now comfortably over 50 per cent of the population who are affected. And with the aging boomer population, who just by virtue of aging will be encountering more issues, accessibility is no longer an option, it’s mandatory. […] I’ve made a series of good allegiances and alliances and contacts with a range of communities, whether it’s the Black History association or the Monarchist League or children’s hospitals. [It’s important to] reach out to many different ethnic communities who have come to Canada and to whom the monarchy is a new experience.
TV: You mentioned your father’s faith. What’s been the role of spirituality at this stage in your life?
DO: Well for me, as a Christian, it’s been a fundamental part of my life. There are issues and there are problems in life that you just simply can’t answer with traditional mathematics, chemistry, physics, languages. The issues of suffering, the randomness of bad events — as the title of that famous book many years ago said — bad things do happen to good people. And why is that? When I got polio at three and a half, I wasn’t a bad person, but it happened. And why was the police officer killed a week and a half ago? And why was the congresswoman shot in the US? And ultimately the questions we all wrestle with are where do we come from, why are we here, and where are we going. And I think it’s important in life to not ignore those questions.
TV: Obviously being visibly disabled comes with its own burdens and pain, but I was wondering what advice you’d offer those who feel emotionally trapped or inadequate or discouraged?
DO: I think somehow, within ourselves we have to realize that there’s no one that’s perfect. Society can airbrush all they want and present images of perfection. But even if you don’t have any immediate imperfections, it doesn’t mean you won’t get cancer or be struck down by MS or get hit by a car. I saw a picture in the newspaper today and there was a gentleman in an electric wheelchair speaking at the TTC hearing about the changes to bus routes. When I saw the picture I thought, “well, good for him.” He’s out there, doing more than so many people. He’s making his voice known and his opinions heard. I think that, regardless of your religion, we are made in the image of God, and some of us have issues or difficulties. If you’re judging a person’s value or worth based on what disease they’ve encountered or on a birth defect, these are not descriptions of character.
If there’s any overall criticism of the way our society markets things, it’s that we put a ridiculous overemphasis on the peripheral and on imagery. Far too little on the core values of what it is that makes a society unique, why we have the quality of life that we have, despite its imperfections, and its heartache, and its miscarriages of justice. In comparison to just about any other country in the world, we’re doing very well. I like to tell the students in elementary school that these things didn’t come about by accident, that slavery had to be done away with. We had slavery in the province of Ontario in 1791 until the first lieutenant governor took the steps to get rid of it and create the court system that we have. Such a fundamental concept of freedom happened in 1791; it didn’t happen in the States until a war was fought over it. There’s a quality of life and values that didn’t happen by accident and those values are far more important than any transient image.
I know I’m combining two elements together in terms of motivation, and I don’t expect that someone struggling will be motivated because of the experiences of John Grave Simcoe in 1792. But at the same time, it is possible. There are more opportunities here than anywhere else.
TV: What’s been a particularly poignant moment from the past three
and a half years?
DO: I have an enormous sensitivity to basically any time I’ve presented a memorial cross to the families of soldiers who have died in Afghanistan. That’s been just really powerful. […] [Furthermore] the three police funerals I’ve been to. One for the OPP officer in Ottawa, Officer Czapnik; Officer Hack, who died in a car crash in pursuit of a suspect; and most recently, Sergeant Ryan Russell. I was the only person not affiliated with the police who spoke. Those were deeply moving moments that I’ll never forget. […] On the positive side of things, [there have been] just amazing moments: meeting the Emperor and Empress of Japan and having them here in the suite [of the Lieutenant Governor]; having Queen Elizabeth visit there, the first monarch to visit since before the war; meeting Hu Jintao; meeting Prince Charles when he came; and people in the world of entertainment like Dolly Parton and Don Cherry. Probably the mot significant memory I have that I’ll always take away with me would be at the Prime Minister’s dinner for the Queen, held at the Royal York. […] She made eye contact with me, came over and started to talk about what a wonderful evening she had, and how she’d be seeing me tomorrow and how she rather looked forward to it.
