Commentary At a breakfast meeting in Toronto with the late George Jonas—an author of keen insight and perspicacity—I asked him what it was like to live under totalitarian rule in Hungary before escaping to Canada in 1956? I will never forget what he said: “I thought I was fleeing a disease. But … it followed me!” This was cause for instant sorrow, and I wept inwardly for my country. Canada’s freedom of speech, action, and thought, limited only by traditional bounds of law and custom, was at its high point during the pre-confederation period, when settlers might never see an agent of government their entire lives. It was lauded most poignantly in 1896 by Canada’s seventh prime minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, in words that rang throughout the unfree world like a proud and resounding gong: “Canada is free, and freedom is its nationality!” And that is why I wept. For we …