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What we've lost (3): Friendship

Barbara Kay: When I grew up, politics was not the threat to friendships it is today

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The last 10 or 15 years have not been kind to Canada. Along with a decline in prosperity has come an erosion of the things that made our society great, a decline of what held us together and made us the envy of the world: things like resilience, friendship and service. In this series, National Post writers consider What We’ve Lost.

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My first vividly-remembered friend was a boy my age, maybe six or thereabouts. Paul’s family cottage adjoined ours in a small summer colony on Lake Simcoe. We must have spent a lot of time together, because we were a source of amusement to both sets of parents, who joked that we’d end up “under the huppa” (getting married). I took the prediction literally. Why not? In my innocence, a forever best friend was an appealing prospect.

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That summer colony, as well as the schools and summer camps I attended, had in common a total lack of cultural diversity. All were homogeneously white, upper middle-class and predominantly Jewish. Small fishbowls, to be sure. But socially speaking, those fishbowls provided calm, protected water for learning to swim with confidence and trust. By the time I realized there were diverse social........

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