in Sydenham, Ont. -- 'ON Jan. 1, 1968," said Peter Aykroyd, "I woke up with a nagging question:

'How will Canada celebrate the next big anniversary . . . the year 2000?' " As director of public relations for the Centennial Commission supervising Canada's 100th birthday in 1967, Mr. Aykroyd had invested a lot of time and effort into understanding how people celebrate. In the 31 years since then, he has also tackled the questions of why and when they do it.

In the process, he has quietly carved out a niche as one of the world's foremost experts on the coming millennium and as a social anthropologist who understands, as well as anyone can, two mysterious but deeply rooted human compulsions: celebration and gift-giving.

"In every culture, gifts are associated with passages birth, bar mitzvah, weddings, anniversaries, even death," Mr. Aykroyd said at his lakeside home in this small Ontario town 20 kilometres north of Kingston. You would be hard-pressed to think of a ritual, ancient or modern, from Passover to Mother's Day, from Halloween to Ramadan, that does not involve presents. And this gift-giving is not frivolous, it helps define individuals, their belief systems and their communities.

The author of The Anniversary Compulsion (a must-read for anyone planning a mega-celebration and a delight to those who fondly remember Canada's 100th birthday) is particularly proud of his role in helping Canadians mark the country's Centennial.

Because it was a political anniversary, the government did most of the giving in 1967, spending $359-million on celebrations and Centennial gifts to communities. The money went to projects of national significance such as the Confederation Train and the National Arts Centre; to provincial projects of a lasting nature such as the Ontario Science Centre, Le Grand Théâtre de Québec and the Winnipeg Concert Hall; and to hundreds of other municipal projects such as hockey arenas and parks.

For Mr. Aykroyd, the bottom line is that the initiatives helped the soul of the country to grow.

This time around, believes the chairman emeritus of the Millennium Institute, a non-profit organization promoting peace and sustainable growth, it is the soul of the humanity that will grow. The leap to the third millennium will be a time of evolution, metamorphosis even.

The arrival of the 21st century has already spawned much soul-searching and an intense need for celebration, and it would be a shame if we contented ourselves with champagne and pyrotechnics, Mr. Aykroyd said.

"Fireworks are a cop-out. When we don't know what else to do, we get drunk and make noise, but that accomplishes nothing. What needs to be offered is an opportunity to celebrate by making a difference to the community you live in during the third millennium."

What Mr. Aykroyd conceived was a gift-giving program called Our Millennium, a "nation-wide program to encourage Canadians to come together in our communities and contribute special gifts to the future."

Launched two weeks ago, the program is being sponsored by the Community Foundations of Canada, an association of local endowments that have assets in excess of $1-billion.

"The millennium has an undeniable mystical significance. It has an emotional impact on people that creates a need to respond," Mr. Aykroyd said. The Our Millennium campaign does not have a specific fund-raising goal -- in fact, the foundations stress that they are not asking for money. The idea is to capture the emotion and the energy unleashed by the millennium and channel it into philanthropic gestures, big and small, from now until well beyond the year 2000.

A register of gifts (be they cash, time or something else) will be created to record results. And for those who want to do something but are unsure what, Community Foundations of Canada is publishing a "catalogue of possibilities," that features hundreds of imagination-triggering gift ideas.

Mr. Aykroyd's imagination was twigged some four decades ago when he became involved in the citizenship movement and a variety of non-governmental groups that were promoting the now popular concept of civil society, of creating a space outside the bureaucratic and the corporate realm where citizens can interact and build their communities. He went on to become a federal government mandarin -- of the dynamic generation of public servants that blossomed in the era of Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau -- while cultivating an interest in futurology and, of course, celebration.

Today, he sees a seemingly sinuous course having come full circle as community-based groups embrace and prepare to celebrate the millennium, just as they did with such great effect for the Centennial.

After so many years of musing on the topic, what will Mr. Aykroyd do to celebrate the millennium? He will eschew the pomp and circumstance and head to Iceland to mark the 1,000th anniversary of the country's legislature -- a celebration of democracy he helped design.

As a retired civil servant (downsized from his deputy minister's job in 1979), he is not a wealthy man, but nonetheless has many plans. He will work closely with the Kingston Community Foundation and with the Millennium Institute to dream up gift ideas.

And if some exciting entrepreneurial ventures in which Mr. Aykroyd and his sons are investing pan out (the details are hush-hush), he hopes to become a big-time philanthropist himself.

His sons are Dan Aykroyd, the comic actor and writer, and Peter, a Hollywood producer. Dad's influence can be seen beyond the boys' creative talents: Dan is a big supporter of community foundations, both in Kingston and Los Angeles. One of his recent movies, Blues Brothers 2000 had a millennial twist, and brother Peter's production, the TV series Psi Factor, is decidedly futurology-driven.

Mr. Aykroyd senior also has a pet project.

He sweeps a hand to the landscape around him -- the shimmering lake, the sweet-smelling cedars, the home of a couple married half a century, the pictures of the children and grandchildren. "Gifting is so pervasive yet we fail to reflect on it," he says. "Everything around us is a gift. The trees, the rain, the land, the family, the children, the community." He wants people to marvel about that ineluctable reality the way he does. He wants to create an education campaign called Give Thanks that will teach school children about the joys of giving and kindness, about appreciation and celebration.

All he needs is a sponsor . . . one interested in creating a more civil society in the 21st century.

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