A news event is powerful because it transforms a political narrative -- the story about what we are and what we are becoming.

In 2015, the political backdrop was a weak economy, plunging oil prices, a war in Syria and Iraq and our own colonial history.

Against this, Canadians chose new paths, showing courage and confidence.

It started with the May election of Rachel Notley’s Alberta NDP.

In March, oil had fallen below $50 a barrel, down from $110 in mid-2014.

Jim Prentice’s Alberta Conservatives, now cynically joined by some in the opposition Wildrose, tabled a budget with a massive deficit and cuts to health care and education, with plans to hike more than 60 taxes and fees.

The Alberta Conservatives arrogantly expected re-election.

But Notley offered to protect health care and education and share the tax burden more fairly.

Albertans took a leap of faith, giving a majority to her social democratic offer.

Notley’s election shook Canada’s Conservative foundation. She annihilated Stephen Harper’s narrative about Canada growing more conservative.

She proved Harper was beatable. She ended Canada’s history as a climate change denier.

Very little in the remainder of 2015 did not reverberate from Notley’s impact.

In June came a report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission describing the “central goals” of federal aboriginal policy as “cultural genocide”.

It included terrible stories of child abuse, death and systematic cultural destruction.

Those stories resonated with calls for an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and the shocking murder of Winnipeg teenager Tina Fontaine.

Canada may have become a country in 1867, but that didn’t end the colonial mindset.

The last residential school was shut down less than 10 years ago.

In stages, Canada had been ridding itself of a persistent and ugly colonial narrative about moral superiority.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission opened a door to a truer history of Canada.

And Canadians have chosen to walk through it.

In late August, mid-point in a long election campaign, a Liberal u-turn on fiscal policy offered another dramatic change.

Previously a candidate committed to balanced budgets, Justin Trudeau rebranded as a man with a deficit plan. Think what you may about the political manoeuvre, Canadians responded positively.

They turned away from the Harper orthodoxy that deficits are always wrong and spending is always bad.

This change offers the opportunity for a new discussion about the services we want and how we pay for them.

In September came the shocking image of three-year-old Alan Kurdi. Face-down, washed up dead on a Turkish beach.

He and his family were escaping war in Syria in hopes of uniting with family in Vancouver.

In his image, the frightening and politically potent story of “Islamic terror” now had a competing symbol with an entirely different political narrative.

In Canada, almost every family includes someone who escaped war, dictators or fanaticism.

We are aware of the religious or cultural discrimination that often greeted them – or us – here.

Those personal histories, the Harper-Tom Mulcair niqab debate and the image of little Alan Kurdi combined into a powerful counter-narrative to anti-Muslim xenophobia.

We were offered niqab-banning and snitch lines. We said no.

Canada is not a perfect country. But at the end of 2015 it is a better one.

Canadians made choices, took chances, relearned our history and recreated our identity.

Not bad for one year’s work.