We are nearing the end of a strange and horrific year brought on by actions and conditions largely not of our own making.

For Canada, it has been a year of enormous risk and challenge.

We’re all ­feeling it, one way or another. The vast majority doesn’t experience it in a policy setting, but in cost-of-living impacts like ­rising food costs and rent or mortgage ­payments.

In other words, this has been and continues to be ­palpable, not theoretical.

Assuming we emerge successfully from this mess — I hope and believe we will — we are likely to find ourselves in a significantly different Canada.

Along with other effects, this year delivered a strong message about society.

From national to civic, it is a continuing ­experiment, not an everlasting condition and, as with other ­experiments, the only way to find out what works is to try.

Those of you who read this column know that my interest and focus are local.

I was raised civically, not nationally, and that ­perspective has stayed with me. I think it’s because democracy and citizenship are more rooted and reflex, more apparent, at the civic level.

It may also be because I grew up in New York City in the 1940s and ’50s, and in my kid’s imagination, New York was everything and all-powerful (I will always remember Paul Goodman’s book title,........

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