“A century ago, a great banquet was held just a few blocks from Parliament Hill.  It was a different time,” Prime Minister Martin said.  “The walls were decorated with Union Jacks.  The air was thick with smoke from cigars and pipes.  The women in attendance wore white gloves.  And Sir Wilfrid Laurier was at the rostrum. 
The Governor-General stood, the Leader of the Opposition stood – everyone stood and applauded when the great Liberal prime minister boldly declared that the 20th century would belong to Canada. We are one hundred years removed from that night and those words, but the sense of national optimism is no less grand in our time.”

Then, after outlining his own vision for Canada, Martin turned to Laurier again in closing his address. 

“When Wilfrid Laurier stood before the nation in 1904, he could not have known the success Canada would achieve in the century to come, the progress it would realize, nor the valour it would demonstrate,” he said. “But he was a man of great vision, and he embodied the progressive beliefs that have been integral to our national accomplishments. ‘I am a Liberal,’ he said early in his political career. ‘“I am one of those who think that everywhere, in human things, there are abuses to be reformed, new horizons to be opened up and new forces to be developed.’”

“Laurier knew,” Martin concluded, “as we do today, that new horizons are not opened up overnight. Thus, the realization of our goals lies ahead. But the vision is now. A nation able to meet the challenges of an uncertain time. A people who followed a path of change to an ever-strengthened nationhood.”