Life’s three certainties? Death, taxes and change. Well, Mark Twain coined the first two. I might have added ‘change’ but hey, who among us can’t relate. And it’s relentless as well, sometimes smooth and easy in the transition, other times convulsive and tectonic but always, always change. At least as I reflect back upon my path.

I was into my 20’s by the early ‘70’s and we had our generational issues; the women’s movement was at the leading edge of a tsunami of social change which was about to wash over our entire society. Women had only been allowed to vote in Canada since 1919, and the property rights of women and married women were narrowly restricted throughout the first half of the century. Gains were made haltingly, slowed by a series of events, the depression and the Second World War softening any broad based appetite for change. But the post war children grew into adulthood in the late 60’s and the young women of that time bristled at the widespread inequality they had been born into. They were ready for change and they would redefine the role of women in Canadian society, on every level. As I look back the women’s movement and the status of women was one of the most significant generational issues.

The Kinsey Report on Human Sexuality had been released in the early 60’s, revealing in ‘shocking’ detail the sexual behaviour of everyday people. It was presented as a scientific study of human sexuality and sexual interests and it stripped away the mystery which had hidden our intimate lives from public view, quantifying all manner of taboo behaviours. The Kinsey Report changed everyday conversation and vocabulary, injecting words like ‘anal sex’, ‘blow job’ ‘69’ and ‘homosexual’ into our conversations and prying open candid discussions about sex between consenting adults.

In these times it is difficult to understand the impact of a single publication but the Kinsey Report triggered an extraordinary change, freeing a generation to embrace a sexual freedom that had been unthinkable even a generation before. It also stripped bare the common notion that women were not sexually active and sexually inquisitive. It may seem strange reading this from such a distance but until women were sexually liberated they would be unable to free themselves of the social and cultural ties that had bound them so tight for centuries before. Just imagine how threatening that must have seemed in a hierarchical male society, challenging all of the basic notions of men, women and sex that had underpinned social control and mores for the generations of women who had come before.  The Kinsey Report was enthusiastically embraced by Baby Boomers, as the intellectual fodder for the sexual revolution of the times. It must be difficult to imagine the social and cultural constraints that had been imposed on women. To reject those constraints didn’t come through quiet polite dialogue, it came through a revolutionary moment in time when millions of young women and men turned their backs on it and made up a whole new set of rules. Those rules continue to evolve but the master plates were forged in the sixties and seventies by feminists and Baby Boomers. I am being pedantic but only feel it necessary to talk about because it must be so difficult to imagine a time when men and women were so constrained by social, cultural and sexual convention.

“It’s been a long time, a long time coming. But I know a change gonna come. Oh yes it will.” Sam Cooke ‘A Change is Gonna Come’, 1964

Social engineering was engaged at the highest levels to force structural change. When I arrived in first year law in 1970 quotas had been imposed: The UBC Law Class of ‘70 was one third Caucasian males, one third female and one third indigenous. And bang! There it was. A fundamental change in the world I had been born to inherit. Until then, most seats in a law school class had been given to ‘the ruling class’ of young white men, the future of law, politics and business. And then, all of a sudden, two thirds of those seats were being redistributed. I was largely unaware of the impact it would all have, I just remember bearing witness in that first year law class.

And of course, we have all stood witness to the incredible change that followed. Women took positions in law and as judges, in boardrooms and as advocates for change. The women’s movement now had intellectual leaders dispersed throughout society. And it was just the beginning as successive generations have shown. Bill Wilson, a First Nations hereditary chief, graduated with me in the class of ‘73. He was the father of Jody Wilson-Raybould, who went on to become Canada’s first indigenous Minister of Justice in 2015. Social engineering would prove to be impactful beyond expectation.

UBC Law School was an incubator for many who would later become leaders in the women’s movement. I didn’t know of course but men like me were part of the problem. I had always viewed women through a sexualized filter and in my 20’s that was not about to change much. Well not without a little kicking and screaming. I still remember the law school tricycle race in second year, an event covered by CBC TV National oddly enough. It was a traditional midterm way to blow off steam in the pressure cooker of law school. The future leaders of the nation would dress up in silly costumes, drink a lot, bet on their favourite and roar around the law school library on tricycles over a chalk lined course. It was a riot!

When it came time to wager on my favourite I went to the ‘ticket wicket’ and was stopped in my tracks. The young woman taking the bets across the counter was topless, bare from the waist up. “Hi Tony, who do you want?”. Now what the hell was I supposed to do with that? I had been in a property law class with her discussing common law riparian rights just one hour earlier. And it was not salacious, nor was it designed to arouse the carnal desires of a young Tony Peyton. It was political, a feminist statement intended to confront men just like me.  “See me as a person. Get your head out of your ass, you bloody fool.” might have worked just as well but it would have at the very least stripped me of a great story going forward.

I see it now as a clarion call to men just like me. ‘We like you, we think you’re a good guy, you have potential but we need you to pick up the pace here.  Change is coming and we are the change. You’re not dancing fast enough. Now who do you like in the tricycle race?”.

So there it was, the first big generational issue for Baby Boomers. Generations of women have come before and generations will come after but this was a defining issue of my time. With the force of a generation the status of women and all that means has changed, affecting the life of every woman to follow, a legacy my granddaughter Bailey inherits and those who come after. It is for her and her generation to honour.

“If your time to you is worth savin’ then you better start swimmin’, or you’ll sink like a stone. For the times they are a-changin’.” Bob Dylan, ‘The Times They are A-Changin’.’ 1963

There is always so much to do and it is easy to get bogged down and overwhelmed. As it was then, so it is now. But it does sort itself out.  Baby Boomers chose three major issues for their time: the women’s movement, racism and the environment.

We are born into our racism and at such a young age we are not to know. When I first landed in this country I was holding my treasured bow and arrow given to me to “fight the Indians”. It was my pride and joy and it went everywhere with me. How was I to know that bow and arrow reflected my family’s post colonial values. It is easy to see from a distance and I’m sure for some of you a shocking story but it was not so visible at the time. It was just the coolest gift I had ever been given. That memory though has always been instructive for me. It has helped me to understand how otherwise good decent people, raising children with good values can be racist. That is why it can be so insidious, hiding in plain view behind white picket fences and church going families. But for me, landing in this strange fascinating country in 1958, it was just a treasured bow and arrow.

In the Kelowna I arrived in as a young boy, native ‘Indians’ literally littered the sidewalks of the town, scorned for their drunkenness and indolence, seen as they were through the eyes of a post colonial world. That was 1958. As I write today it is 2022. Much has changed.

The Westbank First Nation is one of six tribes in the Okanagan Nation, and one of the wealthiest bands in the country. A succession of chiefs, many of whom were educated at UBC Law School, have guided the band members into the 21st century.

In the South Okanagan the Osoyoos Indian Band is now the region’s largest employer of native and Caucasian workers. The proud heritage of the First Nations is on display throughout the valley.

Self-government is real, with the power to tax their land, run the First Nations Health Authority and the indigenous Westbank Police force, which has engaged band members with traditional community policing methods. When we attend hockey games we are reminded that we are on the traditional lands of the First Nations people of the Okanagan. And all of that in sixty three years. I would not have believed it possible had I not been a witness.

We have all been asked to play our part, to dance as fast as we can. My wife Mac tells a story of her path which I think is instructive; change is real when it is adopted by everyday people. She was a Nurse Manager at Kelowna General Hospital. It would have been around 2010. Hospitals are places of healing and grieving, providing for decades onsite rooms and space for worship and prayer in the Christian, Jewish and Muslim tradition. But that world had changed by 2010 and institutions were being asked to change with it. Mac was approached to find a solution to facilitate traditional First Nations smudging ceremonies, to provide comfort to the families of native patients. It was not without its practical challenges, not the least of which was ventilation, the removal of smoke from the hospital environment. But she did it, a conspicuous example I believe of real change. In many respects for me, Mac is the change that has swept over us. She was humbled after she took a course on systemic racism, learning just how racist we are.

It is not intentional of course, few of us strive to be racist, but we all are. That notwithstanding we have shown through real measurable action just how much impact one generation can have if we put our minds to it. Much remains to be done; as I write this for example, there are over sixty remote First Nations communities in Canada which have not had potable water EVER! We can deliver bitumen from Alberta to British Columbia through thousands of kilometres of pipeline, but we can’t deliver potable water to over sixty First Nations communities?! Of course we can, we have chosen not to. Imagine that were the case if those sixty remote villages were populated with white people. Of course you can’t, that would never happen. Embedded, systemic racism runs deep and it will take generations ahead to remain vigilant. Mac and I have witnessed significant change as individuals and in society more broadly but we still have friends who will mock Indians in a faux native voice. As often as not they’ll add with a laugh, “Oh I suppose that’s racist isn’t it”.

“Yes” is the answer, “It is!”

Our son Jono, Professor Jonathan Peyton, was featured last year (2021) along with others in a Knowledge Network series ‘British Columbia: An Untold Story’. It is a riveting description of our embedded racism and an historical indictment of our treatment of indigenous and non-white ethnic population. I am proud of Jono and the path he has taken, ever more so as he uses his knowledge to shine a revealing light on our history.  He is lending his intellect and his voice to the historical reckoning which is upon us.

And if most change is incremental and absorbed over time, sometimes change demands action. The recent discoveries of unmarked graves at residential schools across our country doesn’t for comfortable, incremental change. It is shocking and deplorable by any measure and it demands change. Change that begins with the truth: Our society adopted a legal, systematic and systemic process which saw generations of First Nations children stripped from their family homes and of their language, culture and sense of place, all of it in pursuit of official sanctioned policy to Anglicize those children. That many of those children ended up in in unmarked graves, not even to be returned to their families, just adds to our ignominy. And it was not them, it was us; it was not the federal government, it was us; it was not the RCMP or the Roman Catholic Church, it was us. And to us, should fall the reckoning and the accountability. That change will not be easy or comfortable but it is change long overdue.

Our embedded racism is visible now in a way that it wasn’t when we first began our generational trek. It is a good beginning, that’s all. It will not be easy but we have proven that it can be done. Make your choice.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. The time is always right to do what is right.” Martin Luther King Jr. ,1963

My former law partner Greg McDade is recognized as one of Canada’s top environmental lawyers combining First Nations and environmental advocacy as natural partners. And therein lies in my opinion the other great issue of our time for Baby Boomers, the environment. When we were at law school in the 70’s, Patrick Watson and Greenpeace were generating headlines worldwide for his anti-whaling activism, often putting himself, his crew and his ship in great danger as he navigated between whales and whaling ships. Open and violent conflict on the open seas was not uncommon. And once again a movement ignited by extreme activism announced profound change to come.

Demonstrations across the world and here in BC have dominated headlines to this day. The Sierra Club raised millions in defence of the environment, galvanizing grass roots support from hundreds of thousands of Canadians. Baby Boomers spent months protecting the beleaguered old growth forests of the Clayoquot and pipelines have been delayed and even abandoned in the face of relentless resistance, the work of a generation. Greg McDade and others like him have provided legal and political support resulting in legislative change and led to decisions in the Supreme Court of Canada which have shifted the power of First Nations and advocates for the environment.

And of course as with all of these major issues there is much left to be done. There is an urgency in the current debate with regard to the environment, climate change and the survivability of our planet. Sexism and racism, income inequality, gender equity and other issues are on the rise and may become the issues of your time. Others are yet to surface. No generation owns any particular issue. We typically inherit them from those who came before us as some sort of continuum through the ages. Feminism and racial equality for example are not time stamped, they will always need to be tended through each successive generation.

Each generation has a recognizable impact; I think for example that our children Jono, Niffer, Toby and Sophie and their generation are sensitized to the global impact of centuries of environmental decadence which Baby Boomers only latterly began to address.  I suppose that we are blameworthy as a generation but be careful in your condemnation, for it is coming your way from those who follow in your footsteps. Blame and fault are, in the big sweep of history, easy to assign but less important than recognition and accountability.

“If you change how you look at things, you change what you see.” Me and many others, 2022

Change will only ever happen if the issue can be seen. That is the role of protest, to make the issue visible to ordinary people. That was as true of a young naive, cloistered Tony Peyton listening to Jerry Rubin, a radical American anti Vietnam war protester when he came to UVic in the late 60’s, as it will be of any of you. We couldn’t have been more different; he was a radical political activist and I was a shirt and tie wearing politically conservative middle class white boy growing up in Victoria BC . In fact, his great success was not in riling up the anti war believers who were with him at “Hello, my name is Jerry Rubin”, it was in speaking to young men and women just like me, good people who just couldn’t ‘see’ yet, in helping me to ‘wake up’.

And that is the trajectory of most social change. It is often born of violence in a cauldron of activism and in due course adopted broadly across social, cultural, economic and political borders. I tell you what though, that Jerry had me dancing the two-step of change before I knew what hit me.

In 1958 NDP Premier Tommy Douglas introduced universal health care to Saskatchewan, a public welfare policy which was roundly condemned by Liberal and Conservative alike as the leading edge of socialism which had no place in Canada, a policy which they forecast would no doubt bankrupt our country. It was radical social policy by any measure.  Fast forward sixty-four years and try finding a politician today who doesn’t embrace Canada’s universal health care as a singular example to the world of Canada’s social and public welfare greatness. Born of political upheaval, universal health care is now woven into the fabric of the Canadian experience. Change in whatever form it arrives is disruptive. Time is the balm that makes it work.

In 1978 I was in Ottawa waiting for my case before the Supreme Court of Canada to be called. Mr. Justice William McIntyre sent word that he would like to host us (Ed Horembala and myself) for dinner. Inside Tony couldn’t believe it.

“A Supreme Court Judge is asking us to dinner?! Good Lord.”

And there we were. Mr. Justice William McIntyre, his wife, Ed and Tony Peyton, a callow, brash young lawyer from Kelowna BC. After about an hour and the fortification that often accompanies a couple of glasses of wine, I decided to press the judge on one of the most divisive issues of the day, the legalization of marijuana. I mean how many times was I going to break bread with a justice of the Supreme Court of Canada?

“Sir, why doesn’t the Supreme Court legalize marijuana?” I asked, one part blunt, the other part impertinent.

“Tony, it is not our place to change the society, it is our job to support what the society wants. And this issue is still unsettled. We know there is protest, loud protest across the country but loud protest alone is not enough. The legalization of marijuana will bring change to our country and it will be profound. We must be slow to force that change. I know it will happen but not because of us. It will happen because of you.”

I will never forget that evening and that conversation and I’ve come to understand that he was right. Change is impatient and it can be volatile but change, profound change will happen. If you intend it. Never at the pace you seek but always things will change. You just need to put your mind to it.

And the last word to the over quoted Confucious.

“Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.” I’m pretty sure he meant no insult, he just wanted to make sure to include all of us.

Well, enough of me and the idle ramblings of my muddled mind. Besides, there’s this. After living for sixty-two of my seventy-two years in Kelowna we now find ourselves in Nanaimo on BC’s Vancouver Island. That just happened and just when I was finally feeling settled in Kelowna. I’m off to deal with it.

Change. Good Lord, do you ever stop?