TORONTO - With a coterie of RCMP officers, campaign buses, a motorcade of black sedans, bomb-sniffing dogs, security guards in bulletproof vests, and the national media in tow, Stephen Harper went to his high-school reunion.
The prime minister delivered a speech to over 1,000 graduates at a ritzy reception-hall gala for the 50th anniversary of Harper's alma mater, Toronto's Richview Collegiate Institute.
Harper was described by old friend Ruth Scully as the smartest kid in school -- one who not only pulled down great grades and participated in the Reach for the Top TV quiz show, but who had other interests as well.
She said he ran for the cross-country team, helped other kids with their homework, and also helped one recent immigrant student learn English.
If Harper's high-school experience was not quite ordinary, his reunion with former classmates was even more unusual.
He was followed by a large entourage. People pulled out cameras to snap photos. And there was at least one heckler, a man who toward the end of Harper's speech shouted lustily: "What about the environment?"
Like most political leaders Harper rarely writes his own speeches from scratch, and usually just edits off a computer from the early drafts penned by his full-time speechwriters.
But the prime minister plugged away at his Saturday speech over several days, pulling out his laptop between campaign stops and putting on the finishing touches as he flew in from Calgary this week.
It was probably one of the more pensive public addresses of his prime ministerial career, but Harper started it off with a wisecrack.
"I guess you're not wondering what happened to me after high school," he told the crowd.
"Look, things have worked out pretty well. Except that at this point in my life, I thought I'd have a permanent job."
People laughed. And while most people paid attention and offered polite cheers, the response was decidedly more muted compared to the partisan campaign rallies that Harper has been speaking to.
About a third of the people in the ornate, candle-lit hall continued chattering away with old friends while the prime minister spoke.
Harper told fellow graduates that he wanted to share a few impressions of his current job.
He said when people ask him what's the best thing about being prime minister, he usually just replies that his favourite thing is getting to run an entire government.
But Harper said that to be honest, his favourite thing so far has been the travel. He said he's been fortunate to see every corner of this country in a way few Canadians ever will.
But it's the foreign travel, he said, that has opened his eyes to just how fortunate Canadians are.
Before he took office two years ago, Harper had almost never been outside Canada and the U.S.
It was even raised as an issue in the last election by the Liberals, who questioned how a man who had hardly seen any more of the world than a Mexican vacation would handle foreign policy, international aid, and commercial trade in an increasingly interconnected world.
Harper noted Saturday that he's now had at least a glimpse of every continent except Antarctica. He has toured the capitals of South America, the palaces of Europe, and seen violence-ravaged places from Uganda to Afghanistan.
"I've been to many beautiful and wealthy places -- and to countries and neighbourhoods that are poor and dangerous beyond imagination."
He said the things he's seen are a reminder that Canadians have no reason to be cynical -- about politics or anything else -- in this country.
He said the one thing that bothers him is the apathy he sees, especially among young people. He said he understands that kind of teenage sentiment, having himself joked in his 1978 yearbook that he spent five years "active in the apathy movement."
But he called it a misguided sentiment. He compared Canada's boundless potential to the struggles he has seen elsewhere.
"Some of you may have heard that we are in a national election campaign," he joked.
"I want you to think for a moment about what that means. The outcome of this election will reshape political power. Some will be up and some will be down and political power could even change hands and all of this will happen peacefully. That is a rare and precious thing.
"For instance, as prime minister I do not fear that, were I to lose, that my family or associates would be imprisoned. And my opponents are not afraid to criticize me. And it has been that way in our country, for almost a century and a half, one of the longest unbroken periods of peaceful, democratic rule ever in human history."
That line drew the loudest cheers of his speech.
