Among the great Liberal prime ministers, Sir Wilfred Laurier stands out for the clarity of his virtues, values and vision.
Friend and foe alike attested to his grace, temperance, good temper, truthfulness and wittiness in the political arena.
His political courage was tested in his defence of Canadian autonomy from the British Empire; he once notably resisted a cold-blooded but alluring seduction by the elegant and attractive Lady Cunard intended to compromise his stand at an Imperial Conference in London.
His righteous indignation revived his faltering political career in 1885 when Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald hanged Louis Riel.
Laurier valued tolerance of minorities as the essence of liberalism.
He valued justice as "the most noble of all human perfections".
He valued patriotism which he thought to be "the most noble of social virtues".
He valued the free expression of the human spirit.
Laurier's policy was for a sound economy above blind loyalty to British economic interests that reduced Canada to a colony.
Autonomy from Britain became part of the Liberal brand.
As a young MP, the tubercular Laurier had no taste for the rough and tumble of parliamentary democracy.
He seemed most comfortable reading in the House of Commons library or sitting in the House of Commons by his leader, Edward Blake, passing him reference materials during debates and ensuring his glass of water was replenished.
It was a time when, as eminent British diplomat Lord Bryce wrote, in Canada: An Authentic Democracy, that "ideas are not needed to make parties, for these can live by heredity, and by memories of past combats."
But Laurier surprised everyone, exceeded his own limits and had ideas that changed the Liberal Party.
However, as French historian Fernand Brudel has written, "men do not make history: history makes men".
His friend and confidante John Dafoe wrote of Laurier's tenure that, "parties often begin their term in office as masters of their fate and captains of their country, but as they stay in power they develop internal hierarchical rigidities and petty jealousies; they lose initiative and become the victims of circumstances," said Dafoe.
"This hardening of the party's arteries continues until the electorate 'by a sure instinct' turn against the group and if this were not so the country would be in the grip of a degenerate dictatorship."
The Great War destroyed both the so-called Great Parties: Liberals and Conservatives were replaced by a Union government for the duration of the conflict.
In peacetime new Liberal and Conservative parties evolved, but the Laurier lesson of virtues, values and vision as the basis for successful policy endured.
At the zenith of 20th century Liberal power and privilege -- from Mackenzie King to Lester Pearson -- Canada, was a materially different country than it is in 2012, economically, culturally, socially and demographically.
The mixed economy, in which the state and trade unions shared power and influence with private corporations, generated and disseminated prosperity, and the middle class thrived.
The arts, publishing, higher education, broadcasting, were focused, centralized and self-consciously elitist.
We were a nation of two languages, two dominant religions, two social milieus that counted.
The quasi-colonies provinces and territories of the northwest were subservient; Aboriginal Canadians were silent.
Generation gaps defined our demographics and the perquisites of age and experience prevailed over the unbridled energies of youth and new ideas.
A broad Liberal political coalition believed in values that were vibrant and contemporary -- prosperity, opportunity, stability, capitalism, and the hegemony of Western democracies who had won the Second World War and preserved the peace.
In the 1960s, the Liberal Party of Canada's hold on power faltered, overtaken by change: The emerging Boomer generation, Quebec's Quiet Revolution, and political and economic self-determination around the globe.
Pierre Trudeau saved it.
His political virtues are summarized in the iconic phrase, " raison avant passion'.
His political values earned him the sobriquet of "Philosopher King".
His vision -- a Just Society based on equal opportunity -- and his eagerness to push political boundaries were more compelling in 1968 than the cautious security offered by the Progressive Conservatives.
Trudeau practiced gritty pragmatic politics, however he became a Liberal icon and his ideas a Liberal liturgy.
After he departed, the Liberal treasury of values, vision and policy was not renewed.
The party was decimated by Brian Mulroney.
It owed its return to power in the 1990s to the fracturing of the Conservative movement, which split its vote and allowed the Liberals to return to power "up the middle".
The one Liberal accomplishment of the decade -- balanced budgets and debt repayment -- was stolen from the playbook of the new Western conservatives, Alberta Premier Ralph Klein and Reform Party founder Preston Manning.
The economy, culture, society and demography of Canada meantime has been transformed and the Conservatives do the preeminent job now of speaking politically to these changes.
Social democrats, Quebec separatists and Liberals have been marginalized.
Canada in the 21st century is post-Boomer, multilingual, multi-religious, socially diverse, culturally decentralized.
It is a looser federation; political and economic power has shifted West; Aboriginals are experimenting with self-determination; Quebec is exploring the terms of post-separatist nationhood; income disparity has eroded the middle class; the debate over domestic versus foreign investment has been subsumed by the global economy.
Overarching these changes is the transformation of the digital revolution in communications and electronic data management.
The near-obliteration of the Liberal Party in the election of 2011 is also, paradoxically, its door to the future.
“More so than any other political party in Canada, you have an opportunity to reinvent yourself and become Canada’s first 21st-century political institution,” Don Tapscott told the party at its biennial convention in January.
Tapscott, Canada's new communications guru is a perennial, bubbly optimist and the rightful successor to Marshall McLuhan, whose impact on Canadian media, academic and cultural life was seismic.
When you talked of Canada's identity and place in the world, in the 1960s, you spoke of McLuhan in the same breath as Pearson, Trudeau, Northrop Frye, Leonard Cohen, Glen Gould and Oscar Petersen.
Liberals took McLuhan seriously as they sought the values, virtues and vision that defined their best years.
Similarly, they should listen to Don Tapscott as they build a future that is competitive with other political choices in Canada.
Tapscott's 21century reinvention includes rethinking liberal virtues, values and vision as well as the process transformations that the members approved at their recent convention.
One Liberal devotee of Marshall McLuhan in the party's halcyon days was Jim Coutts, private secretary to Lester Pearson and principal secretary to Pierre Trudeau.
Coutts, Alberta born and Harvard-educated, wealthy businessman and back room operative, earned his political spurs by participating in the renewal that lead to the defeat of John Diefenbaker in 1963.
Listening to Tapscott at the convention brought to mind a remarkable book that Coutts authored when he aspired to make the transition from political aide to elected MP and weighed the idea of seeking the party leadership.
A Canada That Works For Everyone was written before the election of 1984 when the Liberal Party was reduced to 40 seats in the House of Commons.
Remarkably prescient, the small volume is a glimpse of what the Liberal Party of Canada could have become.
"1984 is a pivotal year for Canadians to re-think their nationals priorities, a time to focus on strategies that will produce more wealth and create a fairer distribution of that wealth," Coutts wrote.
No Liberal was more-closely tied to Trudeau, or more loyally, but he recognized that the end of the Trudeau leadership was also the end of an era.
"The time has come to make changes. Canada, indeed the world, is on the brink of a new age and government must adapt to the impact of these changes. It is our job to define new goals and strategies which are consistent with today's demands and shape government to achieve it," wrote Coutts.
"The need today is to reform government, not to dismantle it."
The book goes on to present social and economic policy to renew the Liberal Party for the final years of the 20th century and the threshold of the 21st.
Entrepreneurial, tough-minded, wealth-creating yet concerned with social justice and individual opportunity: a merging of ideas and ideals that closely resembles the new conservative centre in Canada leavened by authentic Liberal compassion.
Regrettably the party did not heed Jim Coutts.
In 1990, Trudeau and another of his former aides, Manitoban Thomas Axworthy, attempted to rally Liberal thinking with a heftier book Towards a Just Society.
Instead of using it as a springboard to renewal, Liberals clung to the book as a piece of comforting history.
Failing to thoroughly rethink itself, the party began its slow descent into fratricide, irrelevance and ossification and, ultimately, the humiliating defeat of May 2011.
The Liberals can contest the commanding heights of Canadian federal politics again.
They can reinvent themselves and articulate their political virtues, vision and values in a contemporary idiom that resonates with the energies and synergies of the new century.
They can find common ground with a winning share of the electorate.
It will take time.
However, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
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