It’s not every day that you’re serenaded by a genuine Motown master during an otherwise long, boring flight back from Las Vegas.

It was the day after the American election, and I was anxious to engage the man sitting next to me, wearing the Obama shirt and campaign buttons, in a discussion about his candidate’s victory and what it might mean to the nation’s future, particularly its health care.

“Health care should’ve been much more of a campaign issue,” he said. “We have over 40 million Americans without health insurance. Your health care system demonstrates much more compassion than ours. Someone gets sick in Canada, they know they can go to the hospital or to a doctor. I know there are problems with every system, but you’re decades ahead of us with regards to the humanitarian aspect of health care.”

The gentleman, with his naggingly familiar voice and megawatt smile told me how thrilled he was with the election night outcome. He explained why, having been born and raised in Harlem, it was so important for him to gather his children and grandchildren together in his current home in California to watch the historic results.

Then the 64-year-old man told me a bit about his fascinating family history. About his father who, after being born into a life of servitude in Barbados, fled to Cuba and then to New York City. My seatmate explained that his own first name was given to him by his father as a tribute to his adopted Caribbean country, and to his dad’s first wife who was tragically murdered there.

How he continued the family tradition by passing the moniker on to his own son, naming him Cuba Jr.

“You’ve probably heard of my son,” he told me. “Cuba Gooding Jr.?” As in, Oscar-winning Cuba “show me the money” Gooding Jr.

Of course, my flight partner, Cuba Gooding Sr., is a celebrity is his own right, having reached superstar status in the 1970s as lead singer of the soul group The Main Ingredient, after getting his start at the infamous Apollo Theatre in Harlem.

As a kid who grew up just outside Detroit listening to my transistor radio blaring Motown tunes, and watching Soul Train every Saturday afternoon, being serenaded to a live version of Gooding’s big hit Everybody Plays the Fool 35,000 feet above the Grand Canyon was quite a thrill.

Cuba Sr. continues to tour with his successful concert series – that’s what brought him to Toronto – and he’s just released a new CD. Meanwhile, he is developing a movie called Everybody Plays the Fool: The Cuba Gooding Story, which highlights the remarkable story of three generations of the Gooding Family and will feature two of his actor sons, Cuba Jr. and Omar.

Cuba says Barack Obama’s victory gives him “great hope that our burdens will be lifted; that politics will not be business as usual. That everything, including health care, will improve.”

Canada’s health-care system is not perfect. We sometimes face waits for treatment and hospitals never have enough money to provide every service they would like. But my decision to take my sick child to the doctor is never based on how much money I have left in my bank account this month. And the tests I receive in the hospital are based on what I need, not what my insurance company says I’m covered for.

I may not have won much in the casinos of Vegas, but an intriguing conversation with a stranger made me realize that I sure hit the jackpot coming home.

Suzanne Legue is Royal Victoria Hospital’s senior director of Corporate Communications