Riley Brandt

Giovanna Lambert, 9, watches Obama’s inauguration with her mother Sheryl at the U of C

It’s 10:05 a.m. on inauguration day, and even in Calgary you can feel the sense of release when George W. Bush’s presidency officially ends. The hundreds of people jammed into the food court at the U of C’s Mac Hall start cheering, clapping and laughing when the CBS anchor announces that for a few minutes, Joe Biden is technically the U.S. president since Bush’s term just expired but Barack Obama hasn’t yet taken his presidential oath. Nearly everyone here is grinning.

And why not? I can imagine my 80-year-old grandmother sitting in her living room right now, TV hearing aids jammed in her ears, intently watching CNN like she did throughout all of Hillary vs. Obama. She’s eagerly followed Obama’s rise to power like so many of the people in this room watching the projector screen. “It’s the culmination of eight years of angst,” says Mare Donly, co-chair of the Calgary chapter of Democrats Abroad. “This is like a lifting up. We’re finally feeling some real hope for the future. Literally, for the last eight years, I was beginning to just give up.”

Whenever the camera cuts to a somber-faced Bush, people around the room snicker in relief. He’s done. (As an aside, no wonder Georgie’s not smiling. The United Nations’ special torture rapporteur chose today, of all days, to publicly call on the U.S. to prosecute him and his pal Donald Rumsfeld for authorizing torture at Guantanamo Bay.) “Somebody who’s intelligent, after Bush, is so refreshing,” says Donly. “And the fact that he’s our first African-American president is icing on the cake. It’s just fabulous.”

The same people who clustered around TVs in September of 2001 are now gathered around the screen to create another, better memory. “This is kind of one of the watershed moments of our lives,” says Vikram Karnik, an 18-year-old neuroscience student watching the ceremony. “Experiencing something like this is pretty crazy.”

Of course, the usual small club of cantankerous commentators — many of whom defended and enabled the Bush disaster as it unfolded — snort that this is all a bunch of insubstantial hoopla, that Obama’s really nothing to get excited about. That Canadians, especially, shouldn’t devote too much celebration to Obama’s presidency. (Presumably, we should save our enthusiasm for our own icon of hope, Prime Minister Stephen Harper.) That narrow cynicism doesn’t fly here. “The fact that he’s African-American — it’s a big deal,” says Calgarian Sheryl Lambert, who’s watching the ceremony with her husband and two children.

Lambert says her kids, ages 7 and 9, are happy to see a leader who looks like their dad. “It does matter,” she says. “We’ve really been helping them to understand the significance of this.” The Lamberts even pulled the kids out of school for the day so they could watch the inauguration live, together as a family. “We wanted the children to be here to experience history in the making, and we didn’t want to miss a moment of it,” she says.

Clearly, both Obama’s story and his bipartisan, co-operative style resonate with many Canadians. “At a time when the economy’s bad, when the headlines have just been filled with the war in Gaza, I think there is really a kind of hunger out there for a very positive message of political leadership,” says Frank Towers, an American citizen and professor of U.S. history at the U of C. “Obama provides that.” The guy even honoured John McCain, his election opponent, the day before the inauguration, calling him “an American hero.” (Are you taking notes, Steve-O?)

Of course, plenty of questions remain about Obama’s policies — and their effects on Canada. “What will Obama’s take be on all these bank failures and rising unemployment?” says Towers. “That’s a big question.” And how will he treat Alberta’s oilsands? That’s another important question in these parts. But today, this week, people are simply savouring the moment. “I don’t have false expectations that he’s going to be able to turn everything over,” says Donly. “The country is run by corporations. That’s just fact…. He can’t change that kind of thing that quickly, but he can certainly stop the bleeding and stop some of the immediate damage — and begin the healing.”