Canada's charter - 25 today

I was there, twenty five years ago, on that day when Canada got its own constitution - not the British version from 1867, the BNA act, but one of our own making... the one whose centrepiece was the new Charter of Rights.

It was a rainy, rainy day, and there were a few tens of thousands of people on Parliament hill. CBC had at least one tower erected with cameras pointed at the main stand. I could kind of sort of make out the central figures of this drama, the Queen, Trudeau and a handful of other luminaries.

It was a grey and grim day. Speakers chimed out with the words of the luminaries, whose voices echoed like Parliament hill was a canyon (it always sounds like this, which anyone who has attended the sound and lights show can tell you.) The Queen spoke in both English and French, with a palpable sense of the history she was involving herself in.

They signed it. And then a squadron of F-18s did a roaring flyby. I pointed my camera up, up and got a picture of the metal birds soaring by. I tried to take a picture of the signing itself, but all I got were pictures of the crowd.

I still have these photos. I will cherish them and pass them down.... I stood at the presence of history, a silent witness to it. I think it will be good for my ancestors to know that when history happens, and you get the chance, go and see it unfold.