It seems as though David Johnston likes to take quotations from the Kennedys. Last night when he introduced Justin Trudeau at a talk in Hagey Hall he spoke of a “torch being passed to a new generation of Canadians.”

That, of course, is from JFK’s inaugural address in 1961.

Back in january at the launch of Waterloo’s (the university’s) 50th anniversary celebrations he talked about a line from a play by George Bernard Shaw. In his play Back to Methuselah the serpent says to Eve:

You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’

At the celebration Dave said that since he was Irish he likes to change it around and say “Some see the world as it is and ask why; I dream things that never were and say Why not.”

This modified line is most famously attributed to RFK. At RFK’s funeral, Edward Kennedy, Roberts’ younger sibling, closed the eulogy by quoting his brother (who, it seems, was modi-quoting Shaw):

As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him:

“Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.”

The Kennedys are of Irish descent as well and Johnston (Shaw was Irish too) who went to university in Boston. How about that?

It may be interesting too that after Ted Kennedy’s eulogy for his brother he was encouraged, by some, to run for president just as after Justin eulogized his father, many saw a future in politics for the eldest Trudeau son. That future in politics has arrived.