The first thing I did in 2007 was file into the United States Capitol’s rotunda to say farewell to Gerald Ford, the only president ever to have lain in state while I was on the East Coast. The entire experience lasted only about an hour. The line was short and was hardly a line of “mourners”; most in line were in good spirits, dressed as if headed for an amusement park, and joking about things like squirrels and coffee withdrawal. As I made my way into the building, two Capitol guards were laughing heartily on the western steps, casually holding their scoped rifles and gazing across the National Mall. And of the sixty-odd people in my part of the line, only one paused for even a short moment of reflection when passing the casket and catafalque. That person was me, and my aberrancy attracted the attention of an armed officer, who drew up behind me and then followed beside my shoulder as I made my way to the rotunda’s southern exit.

I was born a month into Jimmy Carter’s presidency, and so I missed Ford’s tenure as chief executive. He was the first president to appoint a board for the Legal Services Corporation, taking nearly a year to do it after the LSC was created in July 1974—one of the last bills Richard Nixon signed before resigning that August. Many conservatives hoped and expected that Ford would appoint a board hostile to legal aid. But Ford’s LSC appointments, just as his one Supreme Court nomination (John Paul Stevens), ultimately frustrated conservative expectations. Not until Ronald Reagan began his presidency in 1981 did the federal legal aid framework begin to be grievously gutted.

Ford was also—and I thank the Globe and Mail for learning me this—a decent friend of Canada’s. Most significantly, Canada credits Ford with getting it a spot in the G7 (now G8) and world recognition as a global economic power. Ford also began the move towards forgiveness for Vietnam draft dodgers, who mainly ran off to Canada. On the same day that he pardoned Richard Nixon, he announced that draft evaders could gain amnesty by swearing allegiance to the United States and pledging to complete two years of atoning community service. From the (merely anecdotal) evidence I’ve collected north of the border, however, I get the sense that most who fled conscription to Canada stayed.

I go back there tomorrow.