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Foreword

It is customary to introduce a volume of speeches with an apology and this is a useful exercise in humility. Even if the addresses in this book served a purpose when delivered, why should they be embalmed in print? But if their publication can be defended, it is because of the importance of the subjects treated, rather than what is said about them. They deal with certain aspects of Canadian life about which we all should be concerned. If the book should encourage the reader to ponder such things, it will have achieved its object.

Comme il convient dans un pays bilingue comme le nôtre, ces discours, prononcés à l’intention d’un auditoire partiellement d’expression française, contiennent des passages en français. L’élimination de certains textes anglais et français est venue de la nécessité d’abréger un peu ces discours pour fins de publication.

I should not wish this volume to be printed without expressing very sincerely my warm thanks to those who listened to these speeches and to many others which did not appear in this book. I am very grateful to the audiences I met on these occasions for their interest, their patience and their friendliness.

V. M.

Government House

Ottawa

July 1959

Canadian Clubs and Their
Functions

Address to the Canadian Club of Vancouver

I am delighted to have the pleasure of forgathering today with the Canadian Club of Vancouver. I am particularly happy to be able to address you in this year when Canadian Clubs throughout the country are celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of a movement which is at once peculiar to Canada, and of unique importance in Canadian life.

Sixty years ago this country had been passing through what may be termed a prolonged crisis. Such an expression may appear to be a contradiction in terms—crises in the nature of things should be of short duration—but most of us who read the newspapers are all too familiar with the situation it describes. Canada’s prolonged trial of the eighties was founded on world-wide depression, exaggerated by the country’s courageous plunge into the transcontinental railway needed to secure transcontinental union. It is perhaps unnecessary, and in this province even a little tactless, for me to labour this last point. To return to the crisis; it was embittered by sectionalism, and by acrimonious party strife. There seemed, in a sense, to be a division of love and a multiplication of hate. The Maritimes, for example, might not be deeply depressed by the financial problems of British Columbia, but the growing pains of Manitoba were quite capable of producing dangerously high temperatures in Ontario and Quebec.

It was at this time, a year or so after the death of the very great Canadian who was praised alike by those who loved him and by those who did not, for his faith in the Canadian nation; it was at this time that a few Canadians met one evening in an office in the city of Hamilton. These men lived in an industrial town which had suffered severely from the depression but did not assemble to discuss their business problems—such matters as production or export; nor were they launching an annexation movement or founding a revolutionary club. Their concern, as they expressed it later, was with “the deep importance to Canada of the cultivation of a spirit of patriotism in the hearts of her people (and particularly of the young men upon whom will rest the duties of the future)” and their object was “to deepen and widen the regard of Canadians for the land of their birth or adoption, and to increase their interest in matters affecting the welfare of their country”. As a result of their efforts there was formed the first Canadian Club in Canada. Its object was “the encouragement of the study of history, literature, art, music and national resources of Canada, the recognition of native worth and talent, and the fostering of a patriotic Canadian sentiment”.

But it would be unjust as well as inaccurate to designate this event, without qualification, as the beginning of the Canadian Club movement. I spoke just now of a prolonged crisis in the years preceding 1892, but the truth is that this country has almost never been without its crises. We thrive on them. Fortunately, in economic trials as in political ones, we have seldom if ever been without leaders to whom Canada is more than an economic unit, more than a mere political entity. This was true of the seventies, when W. A. Foster and his friends did much to arouse their contemporaries from a state of apathy and apparent indifference to everything Canadian.

Most Canadians, I think, have heard of the generous enthusiasm of this Canada First movement. Perhaps not all are aware of the feelings which moved its members. Foster was inspired by the often-quoted words of D’Arcy McGee, one of the greatest of Canadians: “You have sent your young men to guard your frontier; you want a spirit to guard your young men; thus only can you guard your frontier.” He was, on the other hand, revolted by the fortunately less-quoted words of one of our visitors from Scotland who referred to Canadians as “the untutored incorrigible beings that they were when, the ruffian remnant of a disbanded regiment or outlawed refuse of some European nation, they sought refuge in the wilds of Upper Canada, aware that they would find neither the means of sustenance, nor be countenanced in any civilized country”. And, with the Dominion less than seven years old, but already financially embarrassed, and distressed by divisions and scandals, Foster was alarmed at the assertion of an English writer that “the belief in the possibility of a separate future for Canada is steadily lessening among Canadians.”

Foster approached the subject with idealism, but with an honesty that extended even to bluntness. “Unless we intend to be mere hewers of wood and drawers of water until the end, we should in right earnest set about strengthening the foundations of our identity; unless we are ready to become the laughing-stock of the world, we had better not lose sight of the awful possibility of sinking under self-imposed burdens of territory. . . . There are asperities of race, of creed, of interest to be allayed, and a composite people to be rendered homogeneous. [And, after referring to the queer people in the Maritimes and Ontario, and after a glance at the half-breeds in the interior] . . . Then again, across on the Pacific Coast there is a motley collection of English, Irish, Scotch and Canadian, with all their varied peculiarities”.

Foster’s movement died away for reasons adequate enough, but for reasons which had nothing to do with his fundamental ideas. Canadians would, I think, see in him today two limitations. His broad and sweeping Canadianism was almost too sweeping. If he did not fail to notice, he did fail to appreciate the immense variety of the Canadian scene, and the advantage of cherishing it rather than wiping it out in a vast homogeneity. And—in this place I dare to say it—he was a little too much the pure Easterner. With all his earnestness and imagination he could not picture the Canada we know today. He saw it rather as a united and an extended Ontario. But in spite of his limitations he left behind a noble ideal and he suggested, without knowing it, a fruitful idea—an idea which took form twenty years later in the Canadian Clubs.

This idea, as it happened, however, seeded itself and took root during the next decade, not in Canada but in the United States. It is, of course, not at all odd to find a Canadian Club in the United States. The odd, the extraordinary thing, is the thing we have learned to take for granted, to find a Canadian Club in Canada. I shall return to this later. We are still in the eighties, and in the United States.

Early in 1885 someone mooted the idea of a Canadian Club in New York. The notion was at first dismissed as absurd. There was no Texas Club, there was no Missouri Society, there was no Oregon Association. Why should there be any such organization as a Canadian Club? Why indeed? Except, perhaps, to provide an answer to such questions as these. Whatever the reason, there were Canadians convinced that they and the rest of the six thousand Canadians then living in New York, most of them quite unknown to each other, could organize a society pleasant to themselves, and useful to their country. They did organize what, in the words of one of them, became “a great national institution for the furtherance of a more complete knowledge of the affairs of the Dominion, and for the encouragement of her art, literature and commerce.” The club house became, it was said, a centre of information on Canada and on Canadian affairs. It was particularly hospitable to exhibitions of Canadian art, the members of the Club—and no doubt, the artists also—recalling that certain of the inhabitants of New York were in a position to buy pictures as well as to admire them.

Once Canadians had dispelled the confusion between the position of Missouri, Oregon and Texas on the one hand, and that of Canada on the other, nothing could be more natural than a Canadian Club in New York—or in London, Paris or Moscow, for that matter. The achievement of the little group at Hamilton was something quite different. They were able to see, as Canadians have so often seen, that Canadian problems may require solutions which seem to others eccentric or even pathetic. In this time of discord and depression they founded the first of a series of clubs, designed originally to attract young men. In order to enlist their interest and enthusiasm for the duties of citizenship they were invited to learn to know and to understand their country, its achievements, and its resources. There was no powerful emotional drive, no thought of revolutionary remedies. The principle on which the Clubs operate is a belief in study with a view to loyalty based on understanding. Canadian Clubs are not the equivalent of Burns Clubs or St. George’s Societies, which properly flourish abroad rather than at home. They are rooted in Canada, and they thrive in Canada on certain things which together make up the very nature of Canadianism.

I must reassure you immediately. I should not think of trying to define Canadianism, even in circumstances much less impressive than those in which we find ourselves today. But I would like to suggest three aspects of the Canadian outlook which in my view are characteristic. I am thinking first of the deep-rooted individualism which shows itself in the variety of our ways of life of which I have just spoken. Secondly, I have in mind our complete, but rather quiet and unemotional acceptance of the fact of our national existence. Emotion there has been in our common life but it has generally flowed in quite other channels. Here again, we are true to our history. We are not born of the passions of war or of the fervours of revolution. And we grew quietly into the realization that, set as we were in a great wide land, with all our differences, there were certain traditions and ideals which we had in common, and which could best be preserved in a distinct society of our own.

The third essential aspect of Canadianism that I observe is that every Canadian, because he is a Canadian, is also an internationalist. His internationalism is not a result of any inborn moral sense but is a natural product of Canadian geography, history, economics, and politics. These three aspects of Canadianism first called Canadian Clubs into being, and it is they which have given to the Clubs their threefold interest, and their threefold responsibility.

Canadian Clubs build, first of all and very properly, each one on its own foundation. Each one represents its own Canadian tradition, the tradition of the town or the city, with its own legends and history, its own soil and resources, its own people or peoples with their often varying origins. All these things, associated with the typical scenery, the architecture, the planning of the streets, give to every place its own special character and atmosphere. French-speaking Canadians, referring with natural pride to the fascinating old city of Quebec in which indeed all Canadians take particular pride, say that it has “du cachet”, that is, a special character, a seal and a sign of its own. That is indeed true, as all Canadians who have been fortunate enough to visit Quebec will agree; but it is also true that all our cities have “du cachet”—their own sign and seal, which they are forming and moulding in their own way and according to their own tradition.

On my last visit to Vancouver, I was engaged in a task which brought this truth before me very clearly. In looking at the development of Canadian arts, literature and science and in trying to see what they have meant to Canadian people, I learned much that I had not known before about our differing ways of life. In my present position I am learning much more. May I remind you again that each Canadian Club represents the Canada of its own community. Canadian Clubs are not engaged in any self-conscious creation of Canadianism; they are following the natural instinct to promote accomplishments in the arts and in architecture, in literature and in history, in civic affairs and in social institutions. They are thus engaged in weaving a Canadian tapestry.

But Canadian Clubs by their very name show that they exist to carry their interest and their contribution beyond the community in which they grow. With an immense variety of tradition and of viewpoint, each one brings its experience to bear on Canadian affairs as a whole. As I have suggested, in Canada we do this deliberately, and we must do it deliberately. This is, I think, the time and place for frankness. Emotionally and traditionally there is much to divide us. We can very easily find ground for criticism of others, and for genial complacency about ourselves and our achievements. We do need to make a conscious effort to understand each other’s ways. Forty years ago a Canadian who had been privileged to travel and reside in the neighbourhood of Hudson Bay, and to learn something of the viewpoint of the Canadians who lived there, brought these frank comments back to his fellow-members of the Hamilton Canadian Club:

I observe from this short extract that for at least forty years Canadian Clubs have been following the admirable policy of helping Canadians to try to understand each other’s undoubted oddities. And may I add that the fact that a conscious effort is required is no drawback, but quite the reverse. Lord Bryce, as I learn from yet another Canadian Club speaker, found the law of human progress not in the victory which follows strife, but in friendly co-operation. It is hardly necessary to add that friendly co-operation is rarely spontaneous, but grows from sustained and conscious endeavour. We must expect to be called on for a constant intellectual effort to see the other viewpoint, and occasionally for a moral effort to sympathize with and to accept it. Canadian Clubs exist, I believe, to inspire and channel these efforts through the calm non-political, non-partisan exchange of views, and through hearing and meeting the same speakers, speakers who are themselves at once judged and informed by the varying experiences of those who hear them.

A calm contemplation of ourselves, our common problems and our differing viewpoints is the best possible means for the preservation of unity and freedom. An emotional good fellowship is not in our tradition; nor is a wiping out of differences. We even further our unity and the depth of our understanding by maintaining differences without strife, for thus truths that one may overlook will be marked and noted by another.

A third and an increasing concern of Canadian Clubs has been the study and understanding of international affairs. This, I have already suggested, is a necessity for Canadians. As a part of the North Atlantic triangle Canada east of the Rockies has been internationally minded from her earliest colonial infancy—or I should say, infancies. As the greatest Canadian maritime port, as the only very large Pacific port, as the gateway to the Orient, Vancouver has always seen its Canadianism in international terms, and its citizens have given very material evidence of their interest. It is true that Canadian interest in international affairs has in the past perhaps been too exclusively concerned with our immediate needs—our need for survival, for example, or our hope of increase of power and of control over our national life. Now and in the future we are invited to consider more seriously what we have to give to others.

I am not thinking at the moment of material wealth, but of the significance of a recent pronouncement by a well-known Canadian historian. He suggests that in our new and complex international system Canadian experience may usefully be placed at the disposal of other powers. Canada can show others, so he says, “how to lack sovereignty gracefully” and also how to be a reasonable partner. Canada will, we may hope, continue to be at once graceful and reasonable in her international dealings. And Canadian Clubs we must also hope will continue to work for the knowledge and understanding essential for the maintenance of these most desirable qualities.

Canadian Clubs have an honourable history. More important, they have a unique and valuable task. Nothing like them exists anywhere else. They are made possible by our national character; they are made necessary by our national need. Theirs is a great honour, and a heavy responsibility.

Ottawa, The National City

Address to the Canadian Club of Ottawa

I congratulate myself that I can now meet you as a resident of your own city. In the past few months, however, I have been an absentee—a traveller. I have had what might be called a post-graduate course in the most important subject for all Canadians—Canada itself. As I forgathered with Canadian Clubs here and there in this jubilee year of the movement, I could not help thinking of the contrast between the Canada of 1892 when the lamp of national feeling had burned so very low, and the self-confident, self-reliant Canada we live in today.

It is well that we should not forget what happened when the founders met in Hamilton just sixty years ago this month and discussed the state of the nation with that imagination which is not one of the commonest qualities in life. An Englishman observed at that time that, “whatever pride of country a Canadian has, its object for the most part is outside of Canada”. There seemed to be an indifference to everything Canadian. One of our historians said of this period “never before or since has Canada reached so low a state; never has there been so little evidence of national spirit.” It was the national spirit with which those young men in Hamilton were concerned. They, with a sure instinct, realized that without it no achievement in the future was possible, nor, indeed, was national survival itself. It was a time of economic depression but this group did not meet that evening to discuss production or export, but something both intangible and fundamental. Today, we would probably call it morale.

There are now about a hundred Canadian Clubs; their members approach 40,000 in number. One cannot appraise the part which the movement has played over the years—such things defy a close assessment—but we can be certain that Canada is profoundly indebted to this—the only national movement existing for the sole purpose of fortifying our belief in our own country.

You belong, gentlemen, to one of the oldest of the Canadian Clubs. This Club has had a very special part to play in the history of the movement and, as Ottawa grows in importance, nationally and internationally this representative body will continue to reflect and help to mould its widening activities. You, in a special sense, are concerned both with communal life and with the national scene.

As its master plan gradually unfolds, Ottawa becomes ever worthier of the natural beauty in which it was cradled. I have long enjoyed its individual charm, and now I become daily more aware of it. It has become a platitude with some to dismiss Ottawa with the comment that, like Washington, it is a synthetic capital, but that, unlike Washington, it was not planned or constructed for the purpose. Like so many platitudes this one conceals more truth than it reveals. It is not for me to instruct senior citizens in the history of Ottawa. You will, however, understand and sympathize with the enthusiasm of a new-comer if I mention some facts that have impressed me; facts that show Ottawa as the most Canadian of cities, with a marked personality of its own—its own cachet—and yet possessing a character which gives it a peculiar fitness as Canada’s capital. I remind you of these things with less reluctance because I believe that they have a special significance for this Club in the jubilee year of the Canadian Club movement.

Ottawa, although it must concede seniority to scores of Canadian towns and cities, was peculiarly associated, long before it became the capital, with the story and the development of our country. For one thing we may remind ourselves it stands on the great highway to the West travelled at the beginning of our tale by one of the most beloved of Canadian explorers, Champlain, and one of the most saintly of Canadian missionaries, Brébeuf.

The extraordinary beauty of its setting illustrates not only the charm of Canadian scenery, but, if I may be technical, the geological basis of Canadian life. As we have been told, the Canadian Shield, piercing, as it does, the heart of Canada’s agricultural country, has dominated the whole of our national development. It is an interesting and curious coincidence that Canada’s capital and its neighbour Hull should be the only large Canadian cities situated where these two areas meet and even mingle.

Moreover Ottawa, as Bytown, was, as we know, the centre of a great national activity at a most formative period of our history. Canada’s constitutional framework and political habits were taking permanent shape when lumber was beginning to rival fish and fur as a staple export of this great trading country. Ottawa was the centre of the lumber industry and it was in that capacity that the city had already attracted enough attention to be marked and ultimately chosen as the capital. Here devoted Loyalists and energetic Yankees, discharged soldiers, both officers and men, along with innumerable immigrants from the British Isles, had joined the French-speaking Canadians who had already arrived.

And, still in the same period, the era of Ottawa’s birth, there was constructed on this site the entrance to the great defence work which gave to the town its first name, and its first period of rapid expansion. I need not speak of Colonel By or of the town which he planned. I am interested rather in the fact that the great canal so intimately associated with Ottawa’s early years was constructed immediately after French- and English-speaking Canadians had for the first time fought side by side in defence of their own communities and of their common life. Its construction, long contemplated, set the seal on their successful resistance. It also signified that it was the policy of Britain to continue to help Canadians to maintain a separate existence.

I must add that Canadians even went so far as to consider making a contribution to the expense of the project, but that ultimately they renounced this rash idea. Such a prudent practice of economy, of course, belongs to the Canadian tradition and it reminds us of a number of other Canadian traditions which are in Ottawa’s early history. I think of land reserved for years but not occupied; of enterprising individuals who were checkmated by a sudden change of policy on the Olympian level; of the familiar Canadian story of costly and elaborate defence-works built just as peace (unknown to the builders) was becoming secure and permanent.

Yet another tradition was the one which did much to give Bytown the rather special reputation which it enjoyed in early days as a place possessing high spirits. Lord Elgin went so far as to refer to its being “at the centre of an unruly population”. A public meeting called very early in the history of Bytown agreed on the need to curb some of the activities of a community “whose varied interests often bring danger to the peace of the inhabitants and the property therein”. Ottawa has represented our need in Canada to reconcile and to harmonize what are here so courteously referred to.

For some little time Bytown continued to experience considerable inconvenience from its “varied interests”, especially on Saturday afternoons when the streets were full and the taverns open. In 1849 much damage had been done to government buildings in Montreal by a rascally mob. That disorderly city had no doubt forfeited the privilege of being the seat of government. What place could be more fitted to succeed it than Bytown? What place indeed? But the sad story is soon told. Lord Elgin was to visit Bytown in the autumn of this fateful year of 1849 for the purpose—among others—of enjoying the scenery. The citizens were overjoyed. They would demonstrate to him as much by their peaceful demeanour as by the warmth of their welcome that in Bytown at least the operations of civil government could proceed in peace and security. Alas! In the elaborate preparations for this important occasion, the “varied interests” somehow grouped themselves into two rival committees. The upshot was that one fine September day the two committees approached each other—each one numbering over a thousand men, generously armed with muskets and even cannon. The joint meeting was happily prevented by the determined intervention of a company of Militia armed also with muskets and cannon, and with cannon in position and ready for business!

Elgin did not enjoy the beautiful scenery of Bytown that autumn. With the prudence characteristic of those who hold this office, he postponed his visit!

This very hearty demonstration was, we are told, Bytown’s last fling. In the desire to be a capital, “varied interests” united, as such interests have united in other Canadian cities. Bytown moved into the sound Canadian tradition of assuming that the impossible is not only possible but obvious.

May I return to my original view, presented with all the diffidence of a new-comer, that Ottawa is not a synthetic capital, but the most Canadian of cities, and that the transformation of Bytown on the Ottawa River to Ottawa, the capital of Canada, is entirely typical of Canada’s habit of discovering in meeting Canadian problems that the unexpected solution is the right one. But Ottawa’s own character and history are revealed today in all her delightful and harmonious incongruities; nineteenth-century Gothic elbowing seventeenth-century French on a rugged outcropping of the Canadian Shield; a major defence work translated into the charming motif of public parks and pleasure gardens; and above all, in the river, the logs of the Ottawa Valley, the very symbol of all that is primitive, still drifting and glancing as they pass at the windows of the Supreme Court of Canada and at the dome of that venerable sanctuary of learning, the Library of Parliament. How can anyone think of Ottawa as a prefabricated, a synthetic capital? In its past history and its present situation, it is a part of the very stuff of our story—the essence of our national life.

It is with this national life that all Canadian Clubs are concerned. But I am convinced that it is no service to the nation for any such Club to forget the roots of its own city or of its own community. For this reason, I have spoken much of Ottawa. We can best serve the cause of Canadian unity and understanding by living first in and through and then beyond our own immediate traditions.

In this anniversary year, I would suggest that it is important for Canadian Clubs to examine their origin and their place in the past as a kind of stock-taking, a necessary preliminary to making plans for the future. As I have already said, the Clubs were born in an era of depression and of discouragement. They were born of the conviction that Canada’s well-being rested not merely on economic forces beyond Canada’s control; or even on the ability of Canadian statesmen; but on the knowledge, understanding and loyalty to Canada of all Canadians. Canadian Clubs are a unique Canadian achievement. There are no English Clubs in England or French Clubs in France. Canadian Clubs in Canada were the natural answer to the problem of a young and somewhat disjointed country faced with acute and complicated problems of world trade and world depressions before its people had had time to take stock of themselves and of their destiny. It was begun with the express purpose of reminding young Canadians that Canada meant more to them than a place in which to do their buying and selling.

After six decades we are not struggling with a depression, but with problems which are complicated by a prolonged international crisis. And we have suddenly discovered that we are a rich and powerful nation. But may I suggest that there is still a function and an increasingly important function for Canadian Clubs. In an altered setting, they still have need of the missionary conviction that brought them into being. In opening and conquering a country great and wild and rich—a country indeed not yet fully known or conquered—we have still to learn more about ourselves and each other. In the pressure of other business that essential task must not be neglected, and that task remains the special obligation of Canadian Clubs.

I need not remind you that Ottawa, as a city, has a particular interest in this matter. Ottawa was not the home of the first Canadian Club, but it was the home of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, one of the greatest of Canadians, who, through friends and followers, was associated with the movement called “Canada First”, which made so moving an appeal to all Canadians to realize that Canada was an idea seeking expression and an ideal in need of realization.

And, while all Canadians are now proud of their capital; and while those who read the history of Bytown and visit the Ottawa of today are not only impressed by its functions and dignity and moved by its charm, there must still be a feeling that much more can happen here in the future. Ottawa is more than a pleasant and picturesque Canadian city.

It is more than the site of parliament houses and government offices. It is more than the catering establishment for a vast number of more or less transient guests. It is the capital, and is becoming increasingly the centre of a nation with growing power and influence in this complicated world. All travelling Canadians now—and we are indeed a travelling people—sooner or later come to Ottawa. All the more important visitors who arrive from abroad, and they come in increasing numbers, regard Ottawa as an inevitable port of call. From this come both challenges and opportunities. Let us meet them both.

A Southerner in the North

Address to the Board of Trade and the Yellowknife Branch
of the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy,
Yellowknife, N.W.T.

In the past few months I have travelled many thousands of miles in the ten provinces of Canada. I convinced myself that I was really seeing our country. This visit “north of 60” was to complete what might be called at least a preliminary survey. I arrived here and realized that my survey had hardly begun. If I thought that I had “done” Canada, I see now that I have been merely touching the fringes.

I came here, as I am sure others have come, with two pictures in my mind—both pretty clear, but differing. One picture is that of the romantic Northland and the other the Northland of the realist. The visitor with a romantic point of view sees in his mind a splendid panorama of snow, broken by ice hummocks; overhead a blue-black sky studded with stars and across it the bright, moving curtain of the northern lights. Against this lovely and mysterious background he places a gay set piece—groups of Eskimos and Indians gazing, perhaps, at the antics of a team of huskies; out in front a trapper, a missionary and a Mounted Policeman. It all makes a splendid Christmas card.

The realist gives us no Christmas card. He paints his own picture of this country in the cold light of what, he points out, is a very short day. He does not dwell on the northern lights. The romantic figures of Eskimos and the pranks of the huskies alike fail to charm him. He speaks bluntly of the real perils and privations of life in the north; of the biting, menacing cold.

I confess that I approached this country in a mood which might be described as one of romance touched with realism. I did assume, however, that on arrival I would be clad in a colourful parka and placed in a waiting sled drawn by a team of huskies whose high spirits would, I trusted, be adequately controlled by a skilful driver.

Forgive me if I suggest that my arrival was a bit of a let-down. I have been driven in the most modern of cars, I have seen sidewalks, street lights, well-filled stores, and people in very normal winter clothing such as we see in the south. No one has offered me a parka; I have not seen an Eskimo or a dog sled; the most obvious symbol of the north came with me—an officer of the Mounted Police!

I have spent my time here learning, and fitting into my delightful and vivid experience, many things that I had read about but had never really known.

First, this land that we vaguely refer to as “the North”, this vast country has, to those who know it, its clearly marked divisions, each with its own character. The Yukon Highlands, the Mackenzie River Valley, the Arctic Islands, and the northern Canadian Shield all belong, it is true, “down North”, but each has its own character and its own life in spite of all the preconceived ideas of the uninitiated from “up South”. The trapper has been joined by the fisherman, the miner, even the farmer, as well as by representatives of the countless secondary industries that follow in their train. The missionary and the policeman in their lonely journeys now meet doctors, nurses, teachers, scientists and administrators of all kinds who are carrying into every corner of this still sparsely inhabited country the benefits of civilization.

All this, however, is nothing in comparison with the completely new knowledge and new understanding of this vast land, and of the part that it must play in the future. The Territories and Yukon together comprise, as we know, over one-third of the total area of the world’s third largest country; they have been compared to a mighty giant, now stirring in his sleep. Their possibilities have long been well understood by the experts. They are now under the eager scrutiny of this country, of the continent and of the world.

The recent war, and the increasing international tension which has been its unhappy sequel, have, as we all know, forced attention on the strategic significance of the Northland. Lying as it does across the great air routes of the world, it must always take on increasing importance. When we observe that it lies adjacent to the Arctic area of the only other great Arctic power in the world; and when we recall also that our relations with that power are of the first importance to ourselves and to our allies, there is no need to explain why the eyes of every Canadian with any understanding of international affairs, turn constantly northward.

I am happy to think, however, that we are not exclusively, or even principally, concerned with matters of strategy and defence, important though these may be. Increasingly we of the southern fringes are being invited, and compelled, to realize the infinite economic and social possibilities of this land. Like every other part of this great country, at first sight mysterious and even forbidding, it is now revealing itself as a land where it needs only energy, determination and ingenuity to build large and thriving communities.

Until the last few decades it has been agreed that whatever might be the possible wealth of the North it was safely sheltered from human enterprise by vast and terrifying distances. No one who knows anything of the history of this land can forget the heroism, the endurance and too often the ultimate sacrifice of the white men who first passed over it, the men who discovered and mapped the apparently endless wastes. The dreams of these men are now fulfilled in a manner that could never have occurred to them, even in their dreams.

It has been well said that the history of the Canadian North must be divided into two eras, before and after the aeroplane. The aeroplane has solved an apparently insoluble problem.

Canada and the North Country have much cause to be proud of the pioneers of the second period, the famous bush pilots whose names no doubt are familiar to many of you. These men by their skill and daring gave to the North a new concept of romance, and—for the benefit of the realist—they made this country one of the pioneers in commercial aviation. Canada, I learn, for many years held first place among all the countries of the world for the quantity of freight carried by air. Less than a generation ago, the simplest trip north involved long preparation and heavy toil almost comparable to the toil of the early explorers. Now, I am told, such is our knowledge of the country and so admirable is the co-operation of those who own and operate planes, that there is no part of the country that cannot, at need, be reached in a few hours by air.

This now accessible country, as we all know, holds out many enticements, new and old. The determination and endurance of the trapper carry on the oldest tradition and recall historic associations which are closely bound up with the history of the entire country. The devotion of the missionary, the doctor and the teacher recall another Canadian tradition even older, and even nobler. They carry on the determination of our first missionaries to live in friendship and on terms of mutual benefit with the earliest inhabitants of the country. The fisherman who represents a relatively new and rapidly growing industry here, also has his roots deep in Canadian life. It is heartening to learn that even though farming has no great future here, the produce of the Yellowknife market gardener is outstanding in respect to both quantity and quality.

But it is none of these callings which attracts the chief interest today. Canada’s century is very closely linked with mining and metallurgy; and it is now obvious that in the second half of this century the North plays a vital and essential part. I cannot help observing that the aeroplane, the key which has opened the difficult doors to this land, also in one sense is its product. As we all know, the tough, light metal necessary for its construction represents one of the great twentieth-century triumphs of the miner and the metallurgist. It has led us into a country where we are seeing, and may expect to see, many more such triumphs. It is not for me, before such an audience, to speak of present operations here in gold, base metals, uranium and petroleum, or of future possibilities in those products, and in such others as sulphur, tantalum and columbium. It is sufficient for me to say what you know, that Canada and the world now look to the Canadian North increasingly to meet the ever-growing demands not merely for essential defence materials, but for the foundation of peaceful and civilized life.

In my few days in the North I have done much to correct and broaden and deepen my understanding of the country. I shall be very happy when I return to the South to tell my fellow-Southerners that it is possible to maintain life, preserve health and even acquire wealth in this tremendous area which spreads like a gigantic umbrella above their older settlements. I do not, however, pretend that as yet I really understand you. I know only that this is a country of contrasts unbelievable until they are seen and experienced. May I, before I leave—and I leave with the determination to come back—tell you something of the impressions that I now have of the North, and of Yellowknife.

First, I have not lost my romantic vision. This is a land of infinite romance, moving in its greatness, terrifying in its solitudes, amazing in its strange beauty. Second, my realist impressions have become concrete. This is a hard country, where the price of survival for many may be ceaseless vigilance and unending lonely toil. But ours has never been an easy country, and the frontier has always had to “take it”. Happily, it attracts the people who can “take it”.

Third, I have now felt, what formerly I had only been told, the spirit of a community, a unique community, in geographic terms the largest in the world. We have all heard the men of the North speak of “coming in” and “going out”. These are not phrases that I would dare to use. I am here as a mere tourist. The English have a name for him. They call him a “tripper”. But the true Northerner, the one who has wintered here, has had the unique and precious experience of belonging to this vast and hitherto closed community. People a thousand miles away whom you may never have met, are still your neighbours and even your friends. You belong to a fellowship, the great fellowship of those who have come in and have stayed. And when you, the members of this fellowship, do go out you feel, rightly, an immense superiority of experience over all whom you meet. You know what they know, and many things that they can never know. You do what they do, but you have done things they never have done or will do.

I should like to end with a special plea to the people of Yellowknife. This rapidly growing city, the centre of great and perhaps as yet unimagined developments, a communication centre, and an essential stage on the journey to the still farther North, represents in a special way the change from the old age to the new. This vast land is opening rapidly. More and more are “coming in”. It is increasingly easy to “go out”. You will soon be swamped with “trippers” and all that they stand for. All this is inevitable and, in its way, good. But may I urge you to keep alive, even in this modern city, at least the memory of the great days of “coming in” and of “going out”. May I beg you to recall, if you can, even while you add constantly to the amenities of life, the days when “the North” was more than a place; the days when it was a community, almost a person, sometimes loved, sometimes feared, but always mysterious and always apparently able to inspire a kind of grim devotion. This is the romance which is real. It is the great tradition of this country which must on no account be wiped out by the flood of us trippers from “up South”.

The Meaning of the Coronation

Coronation Day Broadcast

Tonight we all of us have in our minds a picture. We see a slight and graceful figure wearing a glittering diadem, emerging from the great church of Edward the Confessor, entering her golden coach and moving slowly away through the crowded London streets.

This was but one act of a superb spectacle which, in one fashion or another, has been enjoyed as a spectacle by millions everywhere. All the world loves pageantry, and we are happy to think that today so many have looked gladly and kindly at the solemnity by which the venerable and now truly venerated monarchy of Britain has renewed itself in the person of our young Sovereign. So great a pageant, reflecting so many centuries of history, speaks to every nation.

But to Canada, to all Canadians, it means much more than a spectacle. The Coronation is, indeed, the greatest and most moving historical pageant of our time. But to us it is something more than that—more even than the history which is our history. It is part of ourselves. It is linked in a very special way with our national life. It stands for qualities and institutions which mean Canada to every one of us and which for all our differences and all our variety have kept Canada Canadian. How much the Crown has done to give us our individual character as a nation in the Americas! It shapes our contribution to Western democracy. The Crown itself, as a golden object, may repose in London, but as a cherished symbol it plays and did play a unique role in our national life long before our Sovereign became officially The Queen of Canada. Great truths are brought home to us by what we have seen and heard today—the sense of continuity, of oneness with the past derived from our ancient monarchy; the unifying force which comes from that something in our Constitution which stands above all our diversity, and which every one of us can respect. This great and moving ceremony means for us, then, certain things which are blended, and set forth in the dignity and splendour of the Crown itself, and in the simplicity and the sincerity of the Person who wears it.

Many of us can say tonight that we have now witnessed in one way or another, four Coronations. These four occasions have marked a period of revolutionary change—one which has seen moments of the greatest peril for our nation, for the Commonwealth, and even for civilization itself. During these times of stress and trouble the Crown, unshaken by disaster, has been ennobled through trial. It has helped us to face the dark days; it has been with us to brighten the glad ones. And, therefore, as we have returned once again to this ancient rite, we have found it enriched with an ever deeper meaning. Each time we witness it, we see more clearly the true nature of our national heritage and its historic links with the Crown. I should like, as one who has the great honour of acting as the representative of our Sovereign in our country, to try to tell you very briefly something of what I believe the Crown means in Canada. In doing so, I should like to speak particularly to the young Canadians who may be among my listeners.

First, the Sovereign wearing the Crown is associated with the rule of law. To some, law is merely a matter of prohibitions and penalties. But a thousand years ago, when Anglo-Saxon kings gathered and recorded with reverent care the customs worked out in the common assemblies of the people, law meant that and far more. It was understood in its full meaning of security; security for peace and justice against violence and wrong. It is the glory of the Crown that it stands first for justice through law. This was the ancient boast of the ancestors of our Queen; and she has this day solemnly renewed, in the hearing of many of you, that ancient promise—the promise to rule according to the “laws and customs” of her peoples.

Out of our law has grown liberty. The two are often set against each other, but they are inseparable. They are really two faces of the same shield. This is nowhere better shown than in the long story of law and liberty in England. They have grown side by side and they have grown in our traditional way; first, in close association with the Crown; and also through the contribution of men and women of many tongues and in countless places who, in the name of law and liberty, have offered to our Crown their willing homage. I need not, I am sure, remind you of how our two great Canadian races have together upheld the Crown and cherished the Sovereign. In our law which is the frame of our liberty, French and English names are as intricately mingled as are French and English customs and ideas.

With all our pride of history, we can claim no monopoly of law and of liberty. We are, however, peculiarly, I can even say uniquely, happy in holding these blessings not merely in our courts and legislatures, but as completely represented by a family and in a person. Other monarchies have disappeared and are disappearing in this age of violence and strife. Our Crown lives on, not as an historic survival, but as a living and enduring thing, a central element in the life of the Queen’s peoples, more personal and for that reason, more firmly based than ever before. “Affection has been joined to reverence”. And if we ask what has given this ancient institution its perennial youth, its renewed vigour, in an age when so many former things are ceasing to be, the answer is, I think, not far to seek. It is to be found in the high character of our Royal House and in the steadfast determination of its members to live and move as a part of contemporary life and as a symbol of their peoples’ ideals. The Queen is the head of our nation, and our nation, as we contemplate her Headship, becomes a household itself.

At the beginning of this talk, I spoke of the glittering Crown worn by The Queen. I would ask you to remember that it is not only a splendid jewel and a glorious symbol. It is symbolically a heavy burden. We give our Sovereign all honour and affection. She gives us in return the example of unremitting labour and of steady self-discipline. We impose on her not only a heavy load of constitutional duties but also a personal participation in the life of all those realms which owe her allegiance. Our new Queen, it is true, is surrounded by loyal and devoted service, but she has dedicated herself today to a stern and solitary task.

Many will remember that at the crowning of His Majesty King George V, the Archbishop who preached the Coronation sermon chose as his text: “I am among you as he that serveth”. The very splendour of our monarchy serves to show forth the compelling force of these great and simple words.

The Coronation, may I remind you in closing, is a religious act, a solemn sacrament. It represents the dedication of the Sovereign to the people, and of the people to the Sovereign. The Queen has this day pledged herself not as a passive symbol, but as a living embodiment of our national heritage of law and of liberty, of humanity and of faith. It is for us to join her in this personal dedication—as we promise her our fealty and service. And, as we see her moving away from the Abbey in the splendour of her office, and with the burden of her task, let us follow her with the ancient and familiar prayer,

Canada: Her Status and Stature

Address to The Canada Club, London, England

I feel no stranger in this Club. I do not feel a stranger in this country. It is natural for Canadians to combine a love of their own land with a deep affection for this one. These sentiments, happily, are not inconsistent—indeed, they belong together. Long ago there were Canadians who found it hard to reconcile the national feeling that was growing—and rightly growing—in Canada, with our ties with the Old Country. As we achieved our maturity, however, and our self-confidence grew, the old issue was seen to be unreal. The word “Canadian” means citizenship in a North American nation. It also means membership of a great Family of Nations, and a proud sharing of traditions with the people of this Island.

It is not only these traditions we value. The world is indebted to this country for immeasurable gifts in the past, but economic travail has not diminished—nor will ever diminish—her great store of experience, tolerance and wisdom which is of such untold value in the world today. The qualities which made Great Britain great have not altered nor has our belief in Britain’s future.

We have been happily reminded of the noblest of our common traditions in the last few weeks. In her crowning, our Sovereign received, to quote a happy phrase, “The Sign which unites us all”. It is impossible to measure the importance of this symbol and, if incalculable, it is like all that is deepest in life—indefinable, for all the learned and moving things which have been written about it. In a Commonwealth formed of Nations both old and young, the Crown gives us all a common sense of oneness with the past. In a Commonwealth whose diversity is one of its glories, it brings about a true unity of spirit.

If the Crown gives the peoples of the Commonwealth at once a bond and a symbol, it performs the same high service within the borders of a nation. This we know well in Canada. Over the years we have been brought to realize what has been and what is today, the unifying, the harmonizing, the universal function of the Crown in our national life. This great and historic Symbol, this personal Symbol, has done much to hold us together in days of weakness, of poverty, of isolation and even of internal dissension. It will continue to do so in the days of power and wealth, and indeed in whatever peril may await us in the future.

As the new Reign has begun, we have entered on a new epoch in Canada. Those of you who have known my country in former years, would find it difficult to recognize today many places across its breadth, so great and swift has been our growth of late. We wish that more of you could have come in the last few years to visit us—and, indeed, to stay. The communications between our two countries have suffered since the war. Science has done her best to ease and multiply our contacts and through wireless and aviation to bring us closer. But this the chill hand of economics has done much to undo. Let us hope that conditions will make possible an increasing movement between us of men, merchandise and money.

It is a privilege and pleasure, of course, but it is also something of an embarrassment to attempt in a short space to give any clear or even accurate impression of what is going on in Canada today. We have in the past been a slow and a quiet people from nature and from circumstance. For a century and a half—for nearly two centuries, in fact—our future has indeed been all unknown. It has depended to a large degree—sometimes it has seemed to depend almost entirely—on forces operating outside our own land and beyond our control. There have been, I need not remind you, a series of sometimes painful debates as to what was our land. Educationally and culturally we have been tempted to wait on our neighbours. And yet with a queer sort of tenacity, wondering as it were at ourselves, grumbling at and criticizing ourselves and others as well, we have contrived to pursue an existence if not entirely independent, at least separate; if not secure, at least sheltered.

But unlike our friendly neighbour, we have never been conscious of a manifest destiny or of a providential plan. Our destiny has never been manifest and, without doubting Providence, we have recognized frankly that we had no revelation of the plan. And therefore we have, hitherto, remained a slow, moderate people in a vast and lonely land; we have lived from day to day, feeling our way through our constitutional problems and over our international tangles, as we moved through our muskeg and over our mountains; we have alternated boldness with caution, without expecting, or perhaps scarcely desiring, spectacular results. True, half a century and more ago this was hailed as Canada’s century; but our exultation was checked by the tragedy of war and later it died away in the slow years of drought and depression.

But now, in this second post-war period, there is a change. We know now that we have a future of our own, we know that we must and can control it; we know that, manifest or not, we have a destiny for which we must make plans. Moreover, we are conscious of a change in the economic basis of our national life. We are no longer poor, and our increasing population—through greatly improved communications—is much less isolated. Our economy is now much better balanced.

I can, as a much-travelled Canadian, and as one who does his best to keep abreast of current affairs, offer certain facts and impressions. These represent, fairly, I think, the Canada that I have been seeing and meeting in the past sixteen months, during which I have travelled thirty-two thousand miles.

The first and most forcible impression is one of material growth. A Canadian wit once said that some men spoil a good story by sticking to the facts! In the case of my country in recent years, the facts themselves provide the excitement. First, come iron and oil. These were the two main serious deficiencies in our economy as an industrial power. They are being made good almost overnight. Then come aluminium, uranium, bridges, roads, railways, aeroplanes, pipelines, waterways and power. But the tale is not one of hard statistical data. It is a very moving story.

Canada in truth has been passing through a period of economic expansion unparalleled hitherto in extent, diversity and duration. We are in our third great period of progress. Early in this century we grew rapidly on the strength of wheat, railways and immigration; during the few post-war years in the twenties there was a rapid growth in industry. We now witness a parallel to the first period, with the chief emphasis on mining and on power rather than on agriculture and railways; simultaneously, reminding us of the second phase but greatly exceeding it in importance, there is now an immense expansion of industry. And this brings me to other evidences of growth and power less in the news, but in the long run, I believe, of even deeper interest and importance. Politically we have grown up. We need external help, but not seriously. With our deepening self-confidence and self-respect, the respect of our neighbour increases.

In international relations observers say Canada shows political maturity, a maturity in keeping with the national character, free from haste or exuberance, slow and cautious. Canadian contributions at meetings of international bodies are said to be marked always by moderation and impartiality. These qualities, if we possess them, were not bestowed on us by heaven, but acquired in a hard school.

Most interesting of all, perhaps, and most significant for the future is our growth in matters of the mind and of the spirit. In my recent journeys I have found naturally great pride and even excitement at the swift physical growth to be seen in every community. I also found a new interest and elation among Canadians about new resources to be exploited and new areas to be discovered, quite unconnected with material progress. It is now, I believe, true that the nation is prepared to regard painting and music and letters as national activities, along with forestry, manufacturing, wheat-growing and mining; that universities as well as railways are looked on as institutions of national importance; that the author of a great book is worthy of national recognition. All this has given immense encouragement to Canadians working in those fields. I am aware that the true artist is one who has something to say or to show; and that, if he is a true artist, he will show it or say it without thought of reward. I am equally convinced that the true artist, consciously or not, must draw his inspiration and insight from the society in which he lives; he cannot talk if no one will listen. In Canada today the important thing is that so many young people trained in literature or in our other languages—painting, music, sculpture, drama—feel that they have things they must say, and that people will listen. This is their concern; not to produce a Canadian masterpiece but to speak, to be heard, and to be understood.

And the Canadian public agrees. The enthusiasm for painting, composing and writing is seizing the amateurs, the surest sign of true appreciation of these things. Canadian ballet, for instance, professional as well as amateur, is speaking in a new—a very new—medium to Canadians who, through it, gain a fresh understanding of their own life.

There is everywhere, here as in material things, a hopeful and confident activity. The concern is to develop forms of expression and to record the experience necessary to our understanding of ourselves, to our command and direction of our own life. Some day we may make a genuine contribution to the wealth of the great civilization which has nourished us, but we are no longer self-consciously concerned with our ability or inability to do so.

In my travels everywhere I have become profoundly conscious of the fact that Canada is at last taking possession of her century soberly, but confidently and gladly. Canadians are seeking a full and ample development, a sense of national life not only united but complete. This is important, for without the development of the mind and the spirit, we may have mass and weight, but we can have neither shape nor direction. Without these things nations may listen to us, but they will hear little, for we shall have little to say. Greatly as we must value our material strength, the stability of our institutions and our moderation in counsel, if that be true of us I must put high in importance the maturity expressing itself in creative work and in intellectual adventure. This is not easy to achieve in our vast country with its scattered communities. We are achieving it slowly, but so surely, that we recognize it now with a shock of surprise. This should be a matter for thankfulness and should also lead us to view our achievement thus far with modesty.

I should like to close by expressing a conviction that has always been mine, and one which I now hold more firmly than ever. Our national life owes much in every way to the soberness and strength of our laws and of our political institutions. We have inherited the parliamentary system of government. It is a precious legacy, which has indeed helped to shape our thinking. I have already mentioned the supreme institution which we are happy to share with you—the Crown itself. The influence of the Crown on our national life is so great and pervasive as to elude all efforts to appraise it.

I must end as I began. It is not easy to give any clear or accurate impression of all that is going on in Canada today. Still less easy is it to forecast the future. I think, however, that it may not be complacent or fanciful to suggest that Canada in youthful vigour, enthusiasm and confidence, hailing her youthful and beloved Sovereign, may even now be approaching her own Elizabethan Age.

Address to the Congress of the
United States

I feel no stranger in this city. I spent several very pleasant years here long ago, when my task was to set up the first diplomatic Mission from Canada to your country, and my privilege to serve as envoy. This was when the nations of our Commonwealth commenced to send their own representatives abroad—first to this Capital—each concerned with his country’s business but all looking on the same Sovereign as the head of the Commonwealth.

As Canadian Minister I bore credentials from our Sovereign. I now come to you again as a representative of the Crown—this time not in a post abroad but in one at home. “Governor-General” is, perhaps, a misleading term. A person holding that office does not “govern”. His functions, indeed, can easily be confused with those of governors in some other countries who, unlike him, are administrators. We, no less than yourselves, are of course a completely free and independent nation. Canada alone among the countries of the Americas is a constitutional monarchy. Under our system the Governor-General represents the Sovereign, who is the Head of our Canadian state, and with us all actions in the field of government, from the passing of legislation to the delivering of mail are performed, to quote the ancient phrase we use, “On Her Majesty’s Service”.

In June of last year, an event took place of high significance to us in Canada. In none of Her Majesty’s realms was her Coronation celebrated with greater fervour. May I say that as your neighbours, we Canadians were greatly touched by the deep and widespread interest displayed by the American people in this event. May I be permitted to convey to you the sincere appreciation of The Queen’s subjects in Canada, for your sensitive understanding of a ceremony which meant so much to us and, we believe, much to the world.

On an occasion such as this, made possible by your graceful hospitality, one is reminded of all that our Commonwealth owes to you, and, indeed, has owed ever since you established your free Republic here on this continent. The principles enshrined in your Declaration of Independence and in your Constitution were a challenge to the British peoples in the eighteenth century, and since, to seek out the sources of their ancient freedom—sources from which we all have fed. Thus, you helped us to cultivate our own institutions under the Crown, which to us is a symbol of freedom and duty. We are grateful to you for aiding us in the Commonwealth to preserve and enrich our own way of life.

Even at the very beginning, the noble emotions inspired by the Declaration of the Fathers of this Republic, and the solid framework of the Constitution which they built, were comprehended and welcomed by many in Great Britain. I belong to a club in London—a stronghold of the Whigs in the eighteenth century—many of whose members used to receive the news of General Washington’s victories with undisguised satisfaction. One of them, indeed, boasted that he had drunk the General’s health every night during the course of the war in America.

To say that you in the United States and we in Canada have much in common, is a venerable platitude. Living as we do side by side on the same continent, our resemblances are many. We have, too, similar views on fundamental things. Among our common characteristics, one of the greatest, I believe, is our dislike of regimentation—our respect for the differences which lend colour to everyday existence. We believe that each man should lead his own life; that each group of men should preserve its own customs. It is not surprising, therefore, that for all that we have in common, you and we should each preserve certain habits and traditions which we cherish because they belong to us. We know it is not your wish to have on your borders a mere replica of your own country, but rather a self-respecting community faithful to its own ways. We are thus better neighbours, because self-respect is the key to respect for others. On our side of the border you will find a country in which parliamentary government has been, we believe, successfully married to a federal system; a country whose people cherish two languages and two cultures—English and French; a land which has inherited from its Mother Countries in the Old World many forms and customs which have been happily fitted into life in the new. These ways of ours you respect because they are ours, just as we respect your ways because they are yours. Thus, in the words of the “Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Navigation”, which laid the foundation of our present concord as long ago as 1794, we “promote a disposition favourable to friendship and good neighbourhood”.

In Canada we are indeed fortunate in our neighbourhood. We have a warm-hearted neighbour. This your people have shown us over the years. There are countless bodies in this country in which, through your invitations, Canadians share membership with their American friends. We are not unmindful of what we owe to your great universities and foundations. Let me say, too, that we are ever conscious of the warmth of the hospitality we receive when we are your guests.

We have a powerful neighbour. Your massive strength, economic and military, excites a sense of wonder at its magnitude. The dedication of this power to the cause of freedom evokes the gratitude of all who love freedom everywhere. Your Canadian neighbours know that when you assumed the grave responsibilities you bear today, it was not of your choosing. And for what you have done, we honour you.

We have a friendly neighbour. There is no need to enlarge on the traditions of neighbourly good sense which for so long have marked our relations. We can only hope that they may be reflected elsewhere in this troubled world.

We are happy to think that we know you well. Countless Canadians have personal friends on this side of the border. Many of us have relatives here. It is, of course, natural that a small community should know more of a larger neighbour than that neighbour knows of it. We are getting to know each other better as the years pass. We welcome your visits to us. Often your objective may be the river or the forest, and we are happy to offer you a playground. But perhaps you will let me say that we would not have our visitors show too strong a preference for those parts of Canada which are not yet inhabited by Canadians! We should like you to know our people—what they do and how they do it. I would not, of course, suggest that you are unaware of what is going on in Canada in the field of engineering and industry. Much of our development in these spheres, I need not say, is a result of your confidence in our future. Nowhere has our recent growth met with warmer acclaim than in this country. It is true that quite extraordinary things have happened of late in Canada, but we prefer sober adjectives with which to describe them. Our expansion has been rapid, but it is steady and it is built on sound realities. It is based on the character of our people and on the quality of our national life. It is based on a hardihood and spirit of adventure as remarkable as that shown by our first explorers; on the disciplined intellect of our men of science seeking out new horizons of knowledge and usefulness; on the devotion of our legislators working to fulfil the conscious vision of the Fathers of our Confederation who almost a hundred years ago came together to found a new nation. We believe that the Canada of today is not unworthy of inspection. I invite you to come and see us.

I have talked about ourselves as your neighbours. I have said little about ourselves as your partners. You and we work together in the international community. Along with kinsmen and friends across the seas, we are allies in defence of the things we value. And, if I may say so, I think that we in Canada, like you, have given proof that those values must be actively and zealously defended. In the far North we are working with you to strengthen the defences of this continent on our territory and on yours. In Korea there has been, from an early stage, a Brigade Group of Canadian troops. They are now standing guard against the possibility of renewed attack. Twelve squadrons of the Royal Canadian Air Force and a further Canadian Brigade Group are stationed in Europe. Such formations, I need hardly say, should naturally be related in our minds to the size of the population which provides them.

We are also supplying our European friends with mutual aid on a considerable scale. Canada, too, is giving help under the Colombo Plan to the countries of southern Asia. We believe—as you do—that the problems of our time cannot be solved by military strength alone. The line can be held only by the deployment of force, but the objective—peace—can be won only by the quality of infinite patience. In our collaboration, we may not always agree on every detail of the plans we must discuss together, but there is no difference between us on the fundamental aims which we pursue; we may differ now and then on the “hows” but never on the “whys”. You may depend upon us as faithful friends and comrades.

The New Canadian

Address at the Citizenship Ceremony, Winnipeg

The primary purpose of the ceremonies of this evening is to welcome persons to the privileges and responsibilities of Canadian citizenship. It is one of the pleasantest and, I think, one of the most important duties of anyone in my post to join in such a welcome. This evening’s proceedings demonstrate our appreciation of the contribution made to Canadian life by the groups whose origins lie in other lands. I am conscious of this contribution as I travel about Canada, and I know I shall see, while I am here, fresh evidence of this in the towns of Gimli and Cook’s Creek, which I was invited to visit when I found it possible to come here at this time. So I am very glad to be with you tonight and to participate in this celebration of what we call Citizenship Day, a very significant occasion which we welcome and celebrate each year.

Je sais que mes concitoyens de langue française seront heureux de participer à cette célébration. Les Canadiens de langue française et ceux de langue anglaise collaborent depuis longtemps au bien-être de leur patrie commune. Tous s’unissent à moi, j’en suis sûr, pour souhaiter la bienvenue à tous ceux qui sont venus des pays étrangers pour se joindre à nous, faisant ainsi une importante contribution à la grandeur du Canada.

This evening we have been delighted and enlightened by all we have seen and heard. Now, as I address you, there comes a break in a pleasurable programme—it will not be, I fear, “the pause that refreshes”—but citizens must learn to take the rough with the smooth. That, no doubt, is why I was asked to come!

It is part of my duty, and I think it a very great privilege, to be present on public occasions and to express to the best of my ability beliefs and principles which are the common possession of all of us. It is a fallacy to suppose that what is known need not be said. The well-being of society demands that those things we most surely believe should from time to time also be plainly stated.

Let me begin, then, by reminding you all of matters which must often have been discussed on occasions such as this. We are citizens of a vast country of immense and varied wealth of which we constantly receive new revelations. As pioneers of half a century ago found Winnipeg a gateway to those great new provinces which this year celebrate their Golden Jubilee, so their successors now take off from Edmonton on their way to another great new region to the north.

In Manitoba I should speak of communities of Canadian citizens formed by peoples of every race and kindred and tongue, mingling in a new and strange land, learning to make it their own and to give a new meaning to citizenship, and a fresh interpretation of Canadian.

I believe we cannot recall these things too often. They remind us of the lesson that Canadians have learned over the years. We present a varied pattern and yet the strange forces of our history have brought us together and have shown us a common destiny, and a destiny which may be, and I believe will be, a great one. The conditions have always been difficult. We must pass through the barriers of languages and race, of geography and religion, of custom and tradition and we must build on a common foundation, without jealousy or hatred, with tolerance and sympathy. We all have, at all times, much to teach and much to learn. We must find the way to learn with humility and to teach with simplicity. We must set aside arrogance and hate. The past is our teacher, not our master; and the future is what we make it.

All these things are true. I firmly believe them. I believe they cannot be said too often or believed too strongly. Our nation has been built and it must grow on mutual tolerance, with respect and understanding of one another. These are typically Canadian virtues. But virtues are virtues only if they are practised.

Today it is my privilege to welcome very warmly our new citizens. We hope that you will come to love our country as we do; that you will prosper in it; and that you will give us renewed energy and vigour for our material tasks—and also for our moral responsibilities—that we may all grow together in these three virtues of toleration, respect and understanding.

May I now say something which applies more particularly to us older Canadians. Toleration is, of course, not enough. In Canada I believe we do not always sufficiently understand the depth, the power and the cost of the true virtue of toleration. It too easily can be allowed to sink to the level of indifference, or of a cautious courtesy. But indifference and caution in this sense are polite Canadianisms for stronger terms. Here in the West you like frankness—let me call them laziness and timidity.

True toleration, may I suggest, is forbearance towards something that you do not like, or even that you disapprove, in the interests of a greater common good. We all practise toleration every day. The finest example we have of this virtue is to be found in that great national institution whose roots go back a thousand years. Our members of parliament assemble for the purpose of expressing and hearing one another’s opinions; these views may be unpalatable to some of the hearers and frequently are, but they are driven home with vigour and frankness—unhampered by personal relations. We expect our representatives to set aside their own feelings and to pursue truth as they see it, as if it alone mattered. It is the genius of our constitution that the Crown, at its apex, stands for permanence and harmony in order that conflict of opinion in pursuit of truth may be untrammelled. This is true toleration, toleration that is growing and alive—positive and productive toleration.

But parliament derives its meaning and its strength from the community as a whole. We are too prone to forget that representative government means something more than ballots on election day. If the parliamentary spirit of free and fearless debate in the pursuit of truth does not flourish throughout the whole land, in every town and village, then parliament itself suffers and representative government loses much of its meaning.

Therefore, on such a day as this, we older citizens should ask ourselves what we are doing in our own communities with what we might call the essence of parliament. What are we doing with the spirit of debate and free speech? May I tell you of an incident that happened not long ago in a Canadian city? A new-comer to this country, an educated man, who had learned the value of freedom the hard way, came here to find it. He complained, not bitterly, but sadly, that when he ventured to speak critically of any institution or practice in Canada that he could not approve, he was rebuked; “You don’t need to criticize,” he was told, “you are lucky to be here at all!”

This cannot really be our view of honest criticism. We offer new-comers something more than a refuge. When we welcome new citizens, we are accepting free men and women and we invite, and urge, them to join us in using the privileges and responsibilities of free speech.

It is a truism to say that in Canada we are happy when people bring with them something of the culture and folklore of other lands. We have often been reminded of these things and of the enrichment of our cultural life which we owe to our fellow-citizens from the Old World. But, may I say, more important than these gifts which are brought us, is that passion for freedom which has drawn so many people to Canada. So we would be very complacent if we denied our new citizens freedom except to praise. We should be very slack indeed if we denied ourselves a freedom except to agree and consent, because then we should not be true to our national heritage of freedom. I would like to suggest that, vitally important as toleration is in our life, we should remember that toleration is not neutralism. It is an act of faith in the truth which must be diligently and patiently sought through and by our differences.

The Canadian Pattern

Address to the Rotary Club, St. John’s, Newfoundland

I am delighted to find myself once again in this hospitable island and this time I have not come simply to slip into St. John’s and out again. I am going to the outports—a word full of fascinating implications for a Canadian from the interior of our country. I am going to the outports. I am going to see the borders of this great land and the deep fiords which ring its coast where, as an English visitor says, “almost anywhere you could safely tie the Queen Elizabeth to a tree and go ashore for a beer”! When I return I hope to have a clearer, a more vivid picture of this tenth province, welcomed so gladly by Canadians as the youngest and the oldest part of Canada. And I am hoping to learn, perhaps, what Newfoundlanders think of continental Canada as a new and I fear a rather noisy addition to the oldest colony in the Empire. You are older than we. In joining yourselves to us you have increased our age as well as our stature. And you have noble traditions, a special and characteristic way of life, a way that belongs to the island and to the ocean, to the stern ways of the sea rather than to the turbulent expansionism of the continental land mass on which for so long you quietly and not uncourteously turned your back.

You doubtless feel that your own ways are finer and better. Better at least for you, and not to be boiled down in a general melting-pot. I hope you do feel this. I hope you will keep your good old ways, along with your good manners, your good speech and your good names. And, may I say, in keeping them you will not only be good Newfoundlanders; you will be good Canadians. Canada is not a melting-pot. Canada is an association of peoples who have, and cherish, great differences but who work together because they can respect themselves and each other.

I have said that Newfoundland is marked by strong individual qualities. There are, of course, various parts of Canada which possess such characteristics—regional communities in which people have much in common in their local history, the occupations they pursue and the ambitions they share. Canada is so large that often these regions are widely separated, not only in miles but in mutual knowledge. As I thread my way through our intricate and absorbing national pattern—I have travelled about 80,000 miles in the last three years—I have got to know a number of these regional communities with their strong characteristics and special loyalties. One of the duties of my post, I believe, is to tell people in one part of our country something about what their fellow-citizens are doing elsewhere and perhaps far away.

The regions I am thinking of are scattered across Canada and are very diverse. In British Columbia, for example, there is the Okanagan Valley—a lake surrounded by apple orchards guarded by sentinel mountains. Here is a valley, an entity where communities are linked together by the pursuit of the same industry—fruit-growing. To those who live there, the Okanagan is “the valley” and the beauty and prosperity of the area explain their loyalty to it. Of course, there are other parts of Canada which are called “the valley”. There is the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia; the Saint John Valley in New Brunswick, and a lot of other valleys which are rightly “the valley” to the people who live there.

On the East Coast is another region with communal traditions and characteristics which are also quite unique. Cape Breton was at one time administratively separate from the rest of Nova Scotia and it still feels apart, for there are to be found there a series of towns and districts united with all the force of an unshakable Scottish tradition and showing clearly, and I hope permanently, all the finest qualities of Scottish life in a Canadian setting. The people of Cape Breton welcome the great Causeway which now links them with the mainland, but they trust that easier communications will not mean the weakening of the special characteristics which always gave their community its strong individuality.

Let me mention another such region, this time in the province of Quebec—the country around Lake St. John with prosperous towns like Chicoutimi, Roberval and Jonquière. Here again, a lake is the central feature of the area. Here again, the population has grown apace in the last few years and with the ancient foundations on which all communities in Quebec are built, there is a new, pioneering spirit. The fact that the people around Lake St. John regard themselves as a community, is illustrated by the picturesque name which they have been given—“the Kingdom of the Saguenay”—a tribute to the great river which flows out of Lake St. John.

Last spring I paid two visits to another part of Quebec, south of the St. Lawrence, the Eastern Townships, a region with its own tradition and character. There one finds a happy marriage of expanding industry and prosperous agriculture. There, too, is to be found close collaboration between people of French and English origin, working together against an historic background of great interest.

The question is sometimes asked, whether it is a strength or weakness to have regions in a country which are so “different”. I would say immediately that our strength would, of course, be impaired if the various parts of Canada did not have common basic beliefs, certain links and bonds which bring us together and give us our Canadian characteristics and loyalties. I think we have shown both in peace and war how strong these bonds are. But there is, on the other hand, as we all know well, great strength in diversity. In Canada, we have proved it.

How colourless it would be if the world was inhabited by people who had the same tastes, talked the same language, and—more frightening still—thought the same way. We in Canada have learned to respect this truth. As new-comers arrive from other lands we invite them to become citizens when they qualify, and to assume the duties of citizenship, but we are happy to have them make their individual contributions to Canadian life through the culture they bring with them. Our aim is not standardization, sameness. As I have already suggested, our unity is not that of the melting-pot. It is based on a recognition and harmonization of differences.

The Good Canadian

Address at the 50th Anniversary of the Canadian Club of Montreal

May I say how happy I am to be with you today. Visitors to Montreal from the Middle West are always well advised, I think, to “come clean” without hesitation. I must confess that I “first saw the light of day” (I believe that is the accepted phrase) in an enterprising community on the shores of Lake Ontario! However, if I were not speaking into a microphone—how dangerous these things can be—I would make it quite clear that for many years I have lived near a little town some sixty miles closer to Montreal. That, at least, gentlemen, can establish my neutrality!

Puis-je adresser quelques mots en français à l’intention de vos concitoyens qui parlent notre autre langue canadienne et qui sont peut-être aux écoutes. Montréal est une grande cité où l’on reprend contact, chaque fois qu’on y revient, avec les événements historiques auxquels ont participé nos deux races pour établir les présentes dimensions de notre pays de même que sa vie commune. Les “Canadian Clubs” ont pour but premier de promouvoir l’amour du pays par une meilleure connaissance de celui-ci. Ce jubilé du “Canadian Club” de Montréal m’offre l’opportunité de rendre hommage aux citoyens qui travaillent ensemble ici, non comme Canadiens français ou canadiens-anglais mais comme canadiens tout simplement.

Recently, a well-known English journal published an article entitled “A Something Possible”. It was unsigned but was undoubtedly written by a Canadian who took as his text a Canadian writer’s lines about Canada. “What are you?” they ask and Canada replies, “I am,” she says, “America’s attic, an empty room, a something possible, a chance . . .”

What are you? It is a question for all of us to ponder, and a question for Canadian Clubs, especially on occasions such as this, when they look back to their origin and growth, to try to answer. “What are you?”

The question itself is, I think, a sign of growing maturity. For many decades we did not dare to ask it. Nor did we venture to ask the other “Why are you?” But in the past half-century of which we are thinking today, with the trials of a war and a depression, and a prolonged crisis and another war, our historians, observing our waxing national stature, have set themselves to consider the absorbing, the baffling question: “What sort of a nation is this?” “How and why did Canada come to be?” And the poets, following their proper trade, simple, direct and profound, are asking “What is Canada?” “What is Canadianism?”

We are ready for such questions. For fifty years and more we have been speaking boldly about wealth and power and influence in international affairs, speaking the more boldly, perhaps, because we knew it was not quite true; we even knew that we mattered so little that no one would pay much attention. Now we know it is true, we know that we do matter, we know that people are paying attention: we know all these things, and some of us are uneasy, and I believe that this springs from wisdom, and that it bears the fruit of courage, for it leads us to ask boldly “What are we?” and to answer without fear “a something possible, a chance”. When we say that, we are really, for the first time, facing our destiny and preparing to fulfil it.

It may seem strange to say that for this fulfilment the times are auspicious. Nations achieve character in crises, and we, with the western world, face a crisis unparalleled in history. We walk, to use Sir Winston Churchill’s phrase, “on the rim of hell”. It is of such moments in history that nations seem—albeit unconsciously—to say to themselves, “I live for something. For what? What do I value above all—what justifies my existence?” For a true community of people, it shrivels up the nonsense and makes clear the meaning of life. It should do more than that. At moments of crisis the meaning of existence stands revealed; that is when it is given to some to express that meaning in enduring form. Then so many nations, facing the prospect of ruin, have seen the beginning of new life.

May I give the proverbial illustration? Wordsworth, moved by his country’s peril, wrote the lines, often quoted, but too noble for custom to stale. Here are some of them, which you will recall:

In Canada it so happens that, when we have finally achieved national maturity, the civilization of which we form a part is in a state of revolution which affects every aspect of life. I believe we are being called to face a crisis which must reveal our quality, which may enable us to express it. And I think that this is the moment to ask ourselves frankly, “What is Canadianism?” There has been a great deal of discussion of this matter, some of it very sentimental. May I suggest that we have had too much sentimentality and not enough true sentiment, which is a very different thing. I should like to examine what I believe to be the true sentiment of Canadianism in a very calm and matter-of-fact fashion.

The sentiment of Canadianism is, I take it, quite simply love of country—an old-fashioned phrase, but I know no other as simple and direct. And love of country is shown by all true Canadians in three ways: love of the soil, love of the people and something else that I shall try to explain later.

I have used the word “love”. Will you allow me, for a moment, to explain what I mean by loving, and to distinguish it from liking? Liking is related to love, but it is not the same thing. We are enjoined to love our neighbour; we are not, indeed, we cannot, be required to like him because liking is an involuntary matter. Love, that most profound of sentiments, is a movement of the whole being toward the object of its concern. It is a positive thing.

A Canadian loves the soil of his country. As we all know, the most beautiful and lasting expressions of our love of country have been inspired by the sheer physical beauty of our vast and mysterious land. I am speaking, of course, of painting and poetry. Our painters and poets have shown us the startling loveliness and grandeur of every part of our country—island, lake, coastline, mountain, prairie, marsh and the vast tundra of the north. What have we done to show our love for this soil of ours? We have preserved vast areas of natural beauty for our children’s children, but what have we done with the rest? True love seeks not only to possess, but to adorn the beloved object. We have built large, thriving, prosperous towns and cities. We have many visitors from abroad and we are proud to take them about and show them what we have done in one or two generations with the wilderness. But should we be quite so proud? Yes, of the industry, ingenuity and enterprise which have made this country rich. But what have we done with the face of our glorious wilderness? Places with which we are familiar are never really seen by us as they stand. We rather absorb them unconsciously with all their material associations. But if we look honestly, through the eyes even of a kindly visitor, at our cities, their streets, their buildings, what do we see? We cannot claim that our Canadian cities are always exhibits of civic beauty; or, to borrow the useful French word, outstanding examples of “urbanisme”. How often we see glaring billboards, a hideous tangle of wires over thoroughfares which are bare of trees. What have we done to the face of our countryside? The mistakes do not belong only to the past. We are still too often steadily obscuring and disfiguring the landscape by uncontrolled advertising and haphazard growth. Everywhere, or nearly everywhere, we see an erosion of natural beauty. How strangely have we shown our love for our wilderness. Posterity will not easily forgive us. Over a bridge at Vancouver, there is a warning sign for the motorist: “Danger—Limited Vision”. We should take it to heart as a motto: “Danger: Limited Vision”; for there are perils where there is no imagination, where vision is lacking. Everywhere in our country, fortunately, there are people who are fully conscious of the problems I have mentioned and are striving for improvement. Let us give them our support.

Love of country means also love of its people, and this brings special problems with it. May I remind you of what I said just now of the difference between loving and liking? Too many of us grow discouraged because we think of love as only an intense form of liking. It is far more than that; we love our own people when we harbour a profound and humble concern for all of them. Such a concern comes readily to those who have been able to travel widely through this country and have been warmed by the friendliness and inspired by the vigour of Canadian men and women to be found everywhere from St. John’s to Prince Rupert; from Windsor to Aklavik. I think that it is less easy for those who have not had the opportunity for close contacts with their fellow-Canadians, not only near-by but far afield. But is it not true that a Canadian who truly loves his country, must have a profound and intimate and anxious concern with the lot of all Canadians, rich and poor, good and bad, near and far? It is a hard test, but it is a fair test. It shows the quality of our Canadianism. This is no novel idea, I assure you. As many here will recall, something like it was said over three centuries ago by the English poet and divine, John Donne, in that beautiful and familiar passage beginning “No man is an island entire of itself”.

This brings me to the Canadian qualities on which we rightly pride ourselves—the qualities of moderation, of courtesy and of toleration. As we all know, we have acquired them in a difficult school and we must cultivate them and maintain them. It is no disservice to Canada to remember our diverse origins and circumstances, to exercise self-control, to beware of blunt and heedless speech and to be tender as far as possible of the sensibilities of others.

And yet we should remember that every virtue has its haunting vice, its sinister opposite into which it may all too easily degenerate. True courtesy is not timid, but courageous; true toleration is not indifference or neutralism, but a frank acceptance of customs other than our own—customs which may be unacceptable to us—out of our respect for the essential integrity of the man who maintains them, out of regard for the common purposes that we pursue. May I suggest that we in Canada are in danger, that we always will be in danger of permitting a strong and courteous toleration of essential differences to fall into a timid indifference to what we regard as essential truths?

I would like to explain very simply what I mean. We are becoming so conscious of certain differences which we accept and which need not in any way affect the management of our common concerns, that we tend to avoid all argument. We are apt to avoid argument over those matters which need to be resolved by discussion—friendly, but frank and vigorous, by debate with no quarter given on either side. Under our democratic system the greatest national issues are submitted to parliamentary debate, with its fine tradition of frank exchange. But outside our legislative bodies, is the important and difficult art of debating holding its own? There are, I believe, far fewer debating societies today than formerly. We are in grave danger of confusing debate and argument with quarrel and dispute. The error is a serious one. Honest and frank and fair debate is not a prelude to a quarrel, but the alternative to it. Toleration, let me say again, is not indifference and is not timid; it is the fruit of an honest clearing of differences—without a frank exchange it becomes a weak and negative affair. In short, the Canadian who truly loves his fellows is the one who is prepared on suitable occasions to tell them quite frankly that he thinks they are wrong and why. Canadians, say our American friends, are too polite to argue. Let us be honest. We are not too polite; no one can be too polite. But we may be too lazy and too timid.

A good Canadian, then, loves, with a profound and searching and anxious concern, the soil of his country and the people of his country. There is something else he must love, something intangible, something that I cannot precisely name and yet how real it is to all of us. I have in mind the love of a Canadian for all those things, tangible and intangible, that rightly go by the name Canadian; for the victories and the defeats, the glories and the failures of the past, and of the present, and of those that will be in the future; for our history and our literature; for our institutions and our laws; for our wheat and our wood and our oil and for all that we make and do.

I said that we must love these things. Let me emphasize that I did not say like. But we must have an anxious concern, and thought and responsibility for them. How many of us have reproached good Germans who disown German war crimes. “We did not do it,” they say. “We did not approve or even know it.” A good Canadian, may I suggest, must embrace in his care not only the virtues of his country but also its faults, and he must make it his business to know and to attend to them. Love of country is no faint, negative thing, no mere sentimentality; it is just what love is—a profound, a constant and a careful concern—the toughest and most powerful thing in the world. What I have tried to say has been well expressed by a Canadian writer addressing her country:

Such, I believe, must be the love of a good Canadian for his country. It is not easy. Few, perhaps, can ever achieve it fully or even adequately. But I would urge all Canadians to see it for what it is—no light, sentimental, but a profound and solemn emotion. With this we may meet the crisis of our times—we may fill our “empty room”, we may achieve the “something possible”. We may even achieve the impossible.

A Report on the North

From an Address at the Annual Dinner
of the Canadian Press, Toronto

Lord Tweedsmuir once said, “Locomobility is an important quality for a Governor-General.”

I have tried to apply this wise observation to my work, and to see all I can of Canada while in my present post. I found my recent flight in the Arctic both a vivid lesson in practical geography and a stimulus to a Canadian’s pride in Canada.

“The North” has been rather a vague term to many of us. People seem to have been divided between those who know a great deal about it and those who know next to nothing, and of this latter company I was for long a member. But we have all had some ideas about it. There was the North Pole, of course, and the Aurora Borealis, the northern lights; but I didn’t know until a few weeks ago that the two are far apart. In fact, in the far North one sees the northern lights facing south!

To most of us the Arctic seemed until recent years almost a “no-man’s land”. Its only inhabitants, the Eskimos, were very nearly as remote as the reindeers of Santa Claus, and apart from these we knew only of a few policemen there to keep order, and some scattered traders. What did we think it looked like, the Arctic? A flat, white immensity. We thought of it as having slight importance, hardly able to sustain life.

All these conceptions are changing. First, we are learning to think of our North as Canadian, just as Canadian as the East or the West or the South. It is important to remind ourselves and others that this is so. What we call “The North” is over one-third of Canada. Most of the place names you find on the Arctic map are English—or Scottish—for British exploration made this vast territory eventually Canadian. But there are names commemorating expeditions from other countries. They show what competition there was before these matters were settled. There is a symbol of Canadian sovereignty in the tiny weather station, Alert, perched on the extreme northern tip of Ellesmere Island, about 500 miles from the Pole—the most northerly, permanently inhabited spot in the world. I was able to exchange greetings through the radio of my aircraft with its staff.

We no longer question the importance of the Arctic. Its meaning in the field of strategy and in civil aviation is obvious. Of its great economic resources we are learning more and more. But no one yet knows, or can guess, what wealth it may conceal.

There is a surprising variety in the northern landscape. It is far from being a vast white flatness. Some of Canada’s finest mountain scenery is on Ellesmere Island, with mountain peaks as high as 10,000 feet, some of them rising directly from the sea. They were forbidding in their grandeur and lovely in their colours, tinted by an evening sun. The Mackenzie Delta could hardly be more different. There, the tree line meets the Arctic Ocean, and you have what looks from the air like a lacework of lakes and channels. Our great archipelago of islands, large and small, in the Arctic sea has been called “The Queen Elizabeth Islands” in honour of our Sovereign, as Queen of Canada. Settlements and stations are bringing these within our ken.

It has been often said that civilization has been brought to the North by persons engaged in three great tasks—the Christian missionaries, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Hudson’s Bay Company. But to the organizations I have mentioned must now be added the Department of Northern Affairs, whose people are working for the welfare of the natives, and also the Department of National Health. We must not forget the Department of Transport, too, and its work in the field of communications—more important in the Arctic than anywhere else.

You come away moved by what you have seen and heard of the northern missionaries—some living solitary lives, others working in mission schools. In the Anglican and Catholic schools at Aklavik there were both Indian and Eskimo pupils. Most of them were organized as Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, as smart and keen as any I have seen. Their appearance was a tribute to the missionaries, their presence a credit to their families, because the children come usually from great distances and can rarely go home oftener than once a year, sometimes even less frequently—no small sacrifice for parents whose love for their children is very real.

The part which the Royal Canadian Mounted Police plays in the North can hardly be overstated. Surely nowhere else in the world are such vital services being rendered over so vast an area by so few men. I am thinking as I speak of one constable I met—the only representative of the Force in a tiny Arctic community. He served in the late war in a senior commissioned rank. He showed me a tiny baby in the little building which serves as a hospital and said, quite casually, that he had delivered the baby himself two days before—so the constable was the local midwife! He was also the teacher, because here there was no school. He was the guide and friend of the Eskimo community. He acted for several Federal Departments of government. For the local R.C.M.P. representative has, in many places, to be postmaster, customs officer, the representative of the Departments concerned with National Health and with Citizenship, and others as well. The strictly police duties of members of the Force in the North occupy a very small fraction of their time. I am told that applications by members for Arctic posts greatly exceed the vacancies. Isolation and the rigours of Arctic life have no terrors for them. I was glad to be able to send a few words of greeting over the R.C.M.P. radio to the constables at remote posts in the Mackenzie Delta—places with romantic names like “Old Crow” and “Arctic Red River”.

What can I say about the Eskimos? We haven’t a large Eskimo population—only some ten thousand, far fewer than those in Alaska or Greenland. The people who know the Eskimo look on him always with respect and affection. We have learned how good an artist he is from the carvings which filter through to southern Canada. More recently, we have discovered that he is a natural mechanic. Hundreds are now employed in construction work. The Eskimo is reliable, intelligent, good-humoured, self-respecting and proud of his race. You can often judge a people by their children. Eskimo children are captivating and have almost without exception—and I have met many—charming manners.

Eskimo life provides many contrasts. One of the radio operators at a wireless station was an able and well-trained young Eskimo. How different were the walrus hunters I met at another place, living a life practically unchanged over the centuries. They came by dog-team fifty miles to give me a welcome. They had blood on their parkas from the hunt, and they made me a present of two splendid walrus tusks. In another place I took a journey in a snowmobile driven by an Eskimo who had bought it from the proceeds of his trap-lines. The day before, he had travelled a hundred miles, picking up Arctic foxes. He had his feet in both the past and the present.

The Arctic itself is a world of contrasts. I am thinking of a group of bearded scientists from various parts of southern Canada, living at the Ionospheric Station at Resolute, and working in fields mysterious to the layman—cosmic rays, meteorology, seismology, terrestrial magnetism. (It is important for our researchers that the only magnetic pole in the Northern Hemisphere is on Canadian territory.) But only a few miles away Eskimos were killing seals, as their chief means of subsistence—as they have always done.

Science has entered the North in many forms, and has been skilfully applied to construction and transportation. It has made modern life possible in the Arctic world. You are aware of it as you move over the polar seas in the comfort of a modern aircraft. But you cannot help thinking of those men who explored the Arctic long ago, without the aid of modern science. Those who go there as visitors should read their story with humility. But science will never eliminate the hazards and hardships. These will always exist. You are very conscious of this when you hear that so-and-so’s husband was lost in a blizzard, that someone’s plane had crashed, that somebody else had been killed hunting.

What are the impressions one carries away? May I mention just a few mental pictures that will remain:

The Indian woman in the Mackenzie Delta who had been out with her dogs, shot a moose, skinned it, cut it up and brought it back single-handed. She had fifteen children all living—a most attractive family.

The Oblate Father who had built his house and chapel with his own hands—almost the only stone building north of the Arctic Circle. Another Oblate who, among many accomplishments, is a skilled shipwright—his Eskimo flock have now dissuaded him from making long journeys alone with his dogs.

The little wooden Anglican Cathedral at Aklavik with a picture of the Epiphany in an Arctic setting above the altar, and a finely designed frontal made of caribou and other furs.

The little group of Eskimo Cubs and Brownies (I believe the most northerly ones in the world), gravely singing “God Save The Queen” in their tiny school.

The drum dance in a great snow-house at Cambridge Bay—ancient Eskimo folklore, unspoiled.

Two government officials, working devotedly among the Eskimos, who wish to be moved from their settlements to others still more primitive and remote from civilization, where they can minister to the native people.

I shall keep the romantic vision which I think most of us have when we enter the Arctic, for it is a land moving in its vastness, with strange and mysterious beauty and overwhelming solitudes. But there must be realism in our minds as well, for it is a hard country, where endless and lonely toil, together with constant vigilance, is often the high price of survival.

In the North I was able to feel for myself what formerly I had only been told about—the spirit of a unique community—in geographical terms one of the largest communities in the world—a million and a half square miles. Nevertheless, the men and women of the North speak about “coming in” and “going out”. I would not dare to use these phrases because I entered as a mere tourist. But the true Northerner, one who has at least wintered there, has had the precious experience of belonging to a community, however vast, where people separated by thousands of miles are still neighbours and even friends, and where all belong to a fellowship, the great fellowship of those who have “gone in” and have wanted to stay. I brought back with me the happiest memories of the hospitality I was given from all alike, and my visit is one I shall never forget.

The Tourist’s Fare

Address to the Federal-Provincial Conference on Tourists
and The Canadian Tourist Association

What an amazing constancy there is in travellers’ tales, with their prevailing theme of bed, food, transport, prices. A traveller five or six centuries ago, belonging I think to a German religious order—apparently a rather easy-going one—found himself one day able to gratify a wish of long standing and set off on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, crossing the Alps to Venice and taking ship from there. He wrote a full and gossipy diary. He tells us what the beds were like on his journey and how much he paid for his; the manners of the captain of his ship that took him, after boring delays, from Venice to Palestine; the amount of the fare, the food, even the tips expected of him and above all, the conduct—at times very surprising indeed—of his fellow-pilgrims.

A new continent has come into our world since that day and the old one has been transformed. Every aspect of travel has been changed beyond recognition, but the tourist—pilgrim or not—is eternal and his ways do not alter. His interests are keen, his tastes well-defined, his energy incredible and he always knows whether or not he is satisfied. That knowledge he will certainly confide not only to his diary, but to all his friends and, as you know so well, often to the press.

It is clear from this ancient journal that the people of Venice were keenly interested in pilgrims and certainly not solely or even chiefly from the wish to further a pious purpose. Tourists were their business and sharp practices, if our pilgrim is to be believed, were occasionally employed. It is not for me to pry into your deliberations but I suppose it is safe to assume that, barring the sharp practices, of course, you have been conferring, as earnestly as the ancient Venetians may have done, on the best means of carrying forward this very important branch of Canadian trade. It has been stated frequently in our press that we are not addressing ourselves to our task as whole-heartedly as we might. Canadians, I am informed, are spending enormous and ever-increasing amounts in tours outside our country. The pleasures of travel are, therefore, one of our largest imports. Unfortunately, we are not attracting into Canada a comparable amount of tourism from abroad. For financial reasons alone, it is desirable to redress this unhappy balance and to enjoy our fair share of what is a profitable and expanding business.

I have not, however, come here this evening to talk to you on these aspects of the subject, which all of you approach with an authority to which I cannot pretend. I would, however, like to speak about some of the reasons for concerning ourselves with tourism, which are not only your problem, but are also the problem of all Canadians, whether they know it or not.

It is, first, highly important for Canadians to travel in Canada much more than they do. Most of our immense country popularly supposed to lie north of the 49th parallel, is unknown to the majority of us who, in fact, live in a little corner to the south of that line. Even those who live there do not know the different parts of it as they should, and far too many of us have not ventured north of the 49th parallel, and have no thought of doing so. As for our neighbours to the south and those from overseas, surely we are blind to the implications of our position in the world if we do not grasp the importance of inducing them to come and see us in our own country.

It has been said that we do not know enough about what travellers want; that, I am sure, is true. Broadly speaking, I suppose it is safe to say that apart from a search for hunting and health—that is, if I may put it thus, the urge to kill and the wish to stay alive—people travel from a desire for change (sometimes this is mere restlessness) and from curiosity or, more seriously, from a wish to learn and understand. Both groups need careful attention. The first is certainly more numerous; the second in the long run is more influential and more important in relation to our national character and our international relations.

I would like to speak for a moment about this latter group. What are we trying to do for them? I am thinking now of Canadians and of visitors from abroad, no matter where they come from. All will wish to see and understand us as a community; to go home with more knowledge of our country and how we live in it; what makes it different from other lands and our various parts different from one another; what makes and keeps us as a coherent whole. All this, as you know, is a matter for prolonged study and reflection, for very hard, if rewarding, work. But the tourist, the serious tourist, would like to learn, so far as possible, the easy way. It is our job to teach him the easy way, to show him, in the well-known slogan of the modern schoolroom, that “learning can be fun”; to show him, indeed, that only through a measure of learning and understanding, can travel provide the maximum of fun. Those who travel only from restlessness or idle curiosity are not likely to come to the same place twice.

It is, indeed, if I may digress for a moment, of those people that it may be said in Chesterton’s words “Travel narrows the mind”. I am reminded of a story told me recently by a Canadian who, visiting Venice, fell into conversation with her neighbour on the passenger boat which plies the Grand Canal. This lady, earnest in her pilgrimage, striving to be charitable in her judgments, was yet feeling a little weary and wondering what she was doing so far from home. “They talk so much of Venice,” she said, “and it’s all right. But we have the very same kind of town in California—canals and all.” “Of course,” she added, as one who would be fair, “these people here had it first.” A worthy woman she was, alas, returning with a narrowed mind. It was not that she was disappointed in what she hoped to admire, or disliked what she had expected to love. It was rather that she was going home, not merely having failed to notice Venice, but now convinced that it was not there.

She was less impressionable than the American G.I., who observed, “There is a lot of difference between Paris and Hoboken, but you notice the difference more in Paris than you do in Hoboken!”

The Canadian Tourist Association not long ago had some important things to say in a public document about tourism in Canada. They stated that more travel in Canada by Canadians can help to strengthen our national consciousness and help to give us “character and national unity”. Secondly, the Association spoke of tourism as a means “of promoting good will and improving relations between many different peoples, both international and within Canada.” These observations provide an admirable text for any talk on tourism in Canada. They prompt several questions. How successful are we in showing our visitors the real Canada? Do we present ourselves to him honestly, clearly as we really are? Are we satisfied with what we are able to show? When we look at our country through the eyes of a visitor, or a travelling Canadian from another part, does what we see satisfy us as representing the character and the quality that are really ours?

Reduced to simple terms, the two important conclusions of the Tourist Association to which I have referred, mean simply this—that we should show our best to the traveller and that our best should, if possible, possess a Canadian character. Let me say something about the first. I have nothing to say about what nature has done for us. The beauty of this country is nature’s gift. We cannot improve on it, but we can, where possible, preserve it. I am rather thinking of man’s part in the natural scene—what we have placed in the superb setting which we have inherited.

We have in our country distinguished towns and cities possessing charm and dignity, but here and there we have allowed things to happen which, as time goes on, we will regret. I am thinking at the moment of uncontrolled advertising; outdoor advertising plays an essential part in modern life, but it need not dominate it, and if we are thinking of our towns as they should attract the visitor, let alone please the residents, can we not agree that their defacement by garish billboards, or signs fashioned to catch and also to repel the eye, are not helpful? I re-visited the Netherlands last summer. I was again impressed by the cities of that country; the strict control of advertising; as well as the preservation of old structures of importance; the embellishment of towns with trees; the elimination of overhead wires which can be so ugly. Dutch cities provide a model in these things and the tourist is pleased that it should be so.

I have mentioned trees—in a Canadian town which shall be anonymous, I admired the verdure in the streets; I was told that a discussion was going on in municipal circles about the fate of two or three fine elm trees which were obscuring a neon sign! I was asked, if in my remarks at a civic occasion, I could say something in support of the tree lovers. Needless to say, ladies and gentlemen, this request I evaded! What happened to the trees I do not know. I suppose that, in a country like ours whose pioneering background is not very distant, a tree can be thought of, almost unconsciously, as an enemy. This it was, to the men who first cleared the land, but in the modern city, trees are the greatest friends. They prevent a street in the summer from becoming a bare and torrid canyon; at all times they are an adornment, embellishing the good buildings and often obscuring the bad ones. When we have to cut trees down when streets are widened, surely we can replace them in the sidewalks, as they do in European cities and in many places in the United States. What I am saying I don’t think is irrelevant—I am thinking in terms of the traveller who wants to see agreeable things.

Am I being very old-fashioned and highbrow? I don’t think so. It is obvious that we Canadians hitherto have been rather too busy and preoccupied really to look at our own cities. I believe we have an unconscious desire for order, for beauty and dignity. I am sure that now, as we spend time and money on making cities of which we can be proud, we will find satisfaction and we will derive an increased profit from the tourist trade.

In such matters we should judge our accomplishments by an international yard-stick. Very often they may not be peculiarly Canadian, but whether or no, let them have quality. What we do should hold its own with what is done anywhere else. A very good example of this is our Shakespeare Festival at Stratford. There is something which is as good as anything of the kind in the world. And, may I remind you, it makes no small contribution to the tourist trade! When it is possible, of course, what we do should have a Canadian character. We should be ourselves and the traveller, the tourist, the visitor from wherever he comes, will respect us the more if we are. No one looks his best in somebody else’s clothes!

I know that I am stating nothing new when I say that the visitor comes to Canada to see something different from what he left behind; that is one of the major principles governing your activities. If we allow the Canadian character to fade and disappear from our towns and cities, as it is so easy to do, and when the traveller who comes to Canada sees these places resembling more and more the place he came from, the stream of tourists will not grow as it should—it may even diminish. Visitors expect and hope to find something different when they arrive and not a reflection—possibly a very ineffective one—of what they can see at home. I am thinking not only of visitors from beyond our borders, I am thinking also of Canadians who travel in search of Canada.

I do not wish to suggest that we are complacent about our deficiencies, nor, on the other hand, do I wish to sound pessimistic. I believe, however, that Canadians now and often in their history have been embarrassed by two good but apparently conflicting principles. First, that we should be ourselves; and secondly, that we should accept gladly anything good, no matter where it comes from. I am sure you will all agree with me that we shall be happier, and our visitors better satisfied, if we offer them the best and most characteristic of what we have and are.

If we are to keep a Canadian atmosphere, preserve what is truly Canadian, this will help to accomplish two ends—it will stimulate our own national consciousness and it will give the visitor what he has come to see—something characteristically Canadian. That brings us to the problem of preserving things of historical interest. We haven’t many ancient buildings—a lot of them have gone, chiefly through carelessness and neglect, but we are doing much better now in preserving those that have survived. A good example is Fort Henry at Kingston, splendidly maintained by the Government of Ontario and a place of pilgrimage for tourists. The most famous is the Citadel at Quebec, which I know well, having lived there of late for a month each year. During this past season it has attracted about 100,000 visitors. Why did they come? To see an ancient fortress with an incomparable view, and immense historical interest, a structure which is not just a museum but is still playing an active part in contemporary life, housing as it does a battalion of troops. It is of the essence of Canada. Tourists at the Citadel see traditional Canadian military ceremonial—the Changing of the Guard in the morning with the troops in full dress uniform, with the full band of the Regiment, and in the evening the moving ceremony of Retreat. People like these things, as they liked—the other day—to see Her Majesty drive to Parliament Hill in the State Carriage, with a mounted escort of the R.C.M.P.

Although many ancient buildings have gone, we have some excellent reconstruction, lacking in sentimental value perhaps, but serving admirably to bring our past to life. Fort Macleod in Alberta has just been rebuilt—it should never have been allowed to decay—and is an impressive monument to the R.C.M.P., reviving our memories of that great Force in its earliest days. Our American friends do this sort of thing extremely well, and here and there we have been indebted to the interest and generosity of American tourists for some reconstructions in our own country. The best example of this is probably the habitation at Port Royal in Nova Scotia, rebuilt with scholarship and taste, showing us down to the last mark of the adze on timber, what the oldest European dwelling on this Continent (apart from those of the Spaniards) must have looked like.

So much for old buildings. If we want to make our country increasingly attractive to the traveller from abroad or from within, and wish to show ourselves at our true best, there are so many things we can do. We must not, for instance, overlook the factor of courtesy. This cannot be done by a slogan of “be kind to tourists” or the institution of a “courtesy week”. We must be courteous—period. An American woman on a train from Detroit to Toronto remarked to a Canadian that she was looking forward to her travels in Canada because Canadians, and especially railway officials, were always so polite. This spontaneous tribute we may well receive with pride and with gratitude, but also with caution. If, by character and tradition, we have natural courtesy, let us, by all means, cultivate and guard it. If there were still more courtesy among people who drive cars, fewer people would be killed on the roads. If we took more trouble to teach good manners in the schools, there would be more courtesy practised in later years.

How much more I could say on the fascinating subject of tourism! But I shall say no more, because I am sure you are wondering if this is degenerating into a sermon on the moral virtues. Let me relieve your minds—I have done. I do not apologize for having, perhaps, laboured the obvious. Our tourist trade is a great opportunity not only for maintaining economic stability, but for promoting national understanding and international good will. It cannot, however, be maintained by such organizations as yours alone. You must ask, and I trust you will receive, the help of all our fellow-countrymen.

The Discipline of History

Address to the Women’s Canadian Club of Montreal

During my term of office I am unhappily aware of the few opportunities that I have had to address groups of women. I say unhappily, not only because I have been deprived of a pleasure, but because I know that, contrary to what is, I believe, a general impression, men are the flighty and frivolous sex; women take things seriously. They not only listen and attend to what is said, they do something about it. For this reason, although I shall not, I hope, be too grim, I have prepared a serious speech. I have been encouraged by a friend of mine who said, when she heard I was to address you, “Remember, women can take punishment!” So I wish to bring before you certain matters that are much on my mind; matters that are, I believe, peculiarly the concern of a Canadian Club.

Un des buts principaux des clubs canadiens est de promouvoir l’esprit de bonne entente et de maintenir l’étroite collaboration qui existe entre nos deux grandes races. Il me fait donc plaisir d’adresser quelques mots à ces membres qui représentent au Canada cette grande tradition culturelle que nous avons reçue de la France. Votre club est vraiment canadien, puisque nous trouvons chez vous des membres de langue française et anglaise vivant dans une parfaite harmonie tout en accroissant l’essor de notre beau pays.

A Canadian Club is, of course, concerned first of all with Canada. What an extraordinary country ours is—what colour and variety and, as modern painters would say, what rhythm! I am thinking, as I talk, of certain remote and little known corners of our country. To you here in Montreal, and shall I say to those in Toronto, such places are on the periphery. Let me mention some of them. How many of us, for instance, know about Barkerville? It was once a crowded, pulsating centre for the great numbers who were attracted by the Cariboo Gold Rush in British Columbia—perhaps eight thousand in that community alone. Now it stands, practically uninhabited—a ghost town, a monument to the enterprise, the hopes, the disappointments, that can affect human beings.

In sharp contrast with Barkerville is another place I have seen. Its “pop. trends” have been up, not down. Sept Iles was a modest village ten years ago. Now, with its 6,000 inhabitants it is a busy port for the iron ore which comes down the railway from Schefferville.

How many out-of-the-way places there are in Canada, which reflect the drama of the past, or forecast the future, or do both. I could give you a long list, but I won’t—just a few examples.

Moose Factory, at the mouth of the Moose River, a few miles from James Bay—the last great Hudson’s Bay post with its venerable buildings still pretty well intact—although sadly needing repair! Moose Factory is the second oldest post in the Hudson’s Bay Company. I was greeted by a guard of honour of Indians, enthusiastically firing shotguns!

St. Anthony, at the northernmost tip of Newfoundland—the centre of the great Grenfell Mission; bleak and inaccessible, but manned by a devoted staff, who have served that region and the coast of Labrador so loyally over the years.

The settlements of Haida Indians in the Queen Charlotte Islands. An ancient and gifted people, they are not very numerous now, but they have preserved their traditional arts and they have kept something else—a sense of deep pride in their past. One of the Chiefs, in his address of welcome, said that the “war canoes of the Haidas, like the Royal Navy itself, had never been defeated”!

Frobisher Bay in Baffin Island, where I saw Eskimos dancing Scottish reels, and when I asked where they had learned them, I was told—from Scottish whalers a hundred years or so ago!

The Magdalen Islands, the little Archipelago in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with a brave and hardy people, half farmers, half fisherfolk. They receive few visits and when I spent four or five days in their waters, all the people of some of the villages assembled to welcome me.

I have many pictures in my mind of what I have seen in the last six years, illustrating the rich and varied pattern of Canada. It may be a yoke of perfectly-matched oxen which I saw slowly moving through the charming streets of Lunenburg in Nova Scotia; or bars of gold at a mine in Yellowknife—the town on Great Slave Lake in our northern wilderness whose life is based on its gold; or a band of highly trained and disciplined girl pipers in Cape Breton, each wearing the tartan of her family. However, my catalogue must not become too long.

I can think with pleasure of so many places, some of them very small, hardly known in the great centres of population. I like little places with their own life, their own pride and ambition in the job they do, which is an important part of the whole; tiny settlements on the prairies, very often with the word “city” playing a surprising part in their name; little but ancient settlements in the Gaspé Peninsula, the population drawn from so many sources blended into a unity; remote mountain villages in the Rockies.

It is hard for me to explain, but I think you will understand how moved I am by these glimpses of far-off places in our country. So many of them are bound by fragile links to a past which is moving from us. They are a part of us, of our character, of our quality as a people. We should, we must, possess them, see ourselves in them, treasure them for our contemporaries and for those who are to follow us. And yet, in these changing times, this rushing, headlong age, it is so easy for memories to die, for traditions to be trampled underfoot. For this reason, I always look for any signs of what I must call, perhaps pretentiously, the historic sense—that is, awareness that an understanding of the past is essential to self-knowledge. And if we should need to be reminded of the importance of history, let me tell you what a professor in a Canadian university said, when asked by a sceptical student, “What’s the use of history anyway?” He replied, “Do you know what happens to people who lose their memory?”

There is much to encourage us. There is much to be done, but a good start is being made. Old wives’ tales are not enough in a day when old wives and old men, too, are constantly moving away from the scenes of their labours. This matter, like so many others, once personal and private, is becoming a subject of public concern. I do not know how many of you are interested in archivists and their work. Archives, strictly speaking, are repositories of public papers. In Canada, adapting ourselves to our own needs, we have generously extended the use of the word. Up and down the country, provincial archivists are gathering in not only public documents, provincial and municipal, but old letters, diaries, personal papers of all sorts and, equally valuable, old and often faded photographs which recall what would otherwise be completely lost. Not enough is done, I agree. There is so much to do, and so little time for it, and much is still being lost. But as I have said, we should be greatly encouraged at the growth of what I believe is an essential sign of national character—a reverent sense of the past.

We are greatly helped by anniversaries, and we are now going through a period in Canada when the crop is pretty rich. Saskatchewan and Alberta celebrated their jubilees three years ago, and how well it was done. I saw something of the Saskatchewan festivities myself. This year British Columbia—that is, mainland British Columbia—commemorates its foundation as a colony one hundred years ago. I hope to see something of that. This year in Nova Scotia they are observing the bicentenary of the institution of representative government—its beginnings in what is now Canada. Here in this province you have a most important anniversary this year, for three centuries and a half ago—as I need not remind you—the city of Quebec was founded—the first permanent settlement in this country. I hope that all Canada will take an interest in the commemoration of an event which has meant so much to our nation.

It is important that anniversaries of cities and towns and provinces should leave something permanent behind them, to enrich the life of the community. Pageants and festivities play their part—even the widespread practice among the more adventurous male citizens of growing a beard to mark the occasion, can be accepted as not unreasonable! But even that (I think, fortunately), is not permanent! Both Saskatchewan and Alberta built fine concert halls to mark the occasion of their 50th anniversaries and, in addition, the former erected a spacious museum in Regina, which I had the honour to open. (I hope all our cities, however, will not have to wait for jubilees or centenaries to acquire those buildings which should be the normal equipment of a community of any size.)

Let me say a word about museums. Long ignored and neglected, old ones are now taking on a new look, and new ones are springing up. Again, there is no need for complacency, but things are happening. The material relics of the past are now being safely housed in an increasing number of places. What we need now is an effective policy for those rather unwieldy but precious relics—old buildings. Alas, it is difficult to reconcile the activities—and there is no doubt of their importance—of the traffic engineer with the preservation of structures of historic and architectural value. This is a theme on which I am afraid I can get very boring, but I am convinced of its importance.

But archives and museums are not enough. By themselves they may be no more than mausoleums, where the buried evidences of history are lost as surely as if they were destroyed. What Canadian history needs is a livening touch; not only industry in collecting, but care in examining the evidence, and after that industry, sympathy and imagination working to make the dry bones live. Of this, too, we see most hopeful signs. First, there are serious scholars working in the field of history. The University of Montreal in this city is one of the important centres of such studies in the French language. I think it is true to say that the University of Toronto, specializing in its very large department of history, plays a leading part in English-speaking studies in this sphere. But, although our history must in the end depend for its integrity on the strict discipline of the scholar that, once more, is not enough. It cannot reach our national life until it conditions the mind, and shapes the sentiments of those who do not, as a rule, read scholarly books.

That is one reason why we give a special welcome to the more popular works, to historical essays, sketches, novels, which are published—and sold!—by Canadian houses; to the frequent historical “features” in the daily and periodical press, and to the work of the National Film Board and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. I do not wish to be complacent; there is no occasion for it. History is an art and a science; the true artist, the real scientist, are never satisfied with what they do. But the things that are happening are encouraging. What we must do is to welcome all that is good and to strive constantly to enlarge our conception of the best; and we should be greatly heartened by the growing number of books on Canadian history which are both readable and scholarly—popular in the best sense of the word.

In all these matters, Canadian Clubs have an interest and responsibility. In the gathering of our records, in the preservation of relics and monuments, in the reading and writing and criticizing—may I add in the buying of works on Canadian history, you are, I am sure, deeply concerned. May I, however, suggest to you that all these matters having reached what one might call a hopeful state, it is time to consider the next step? We have, I think, acquired an awareness of our history. We are rapidly developing a taste for our history. Canadian history is no longer a subject that nobody wants to read. We are now, I believe, ready for what I will call the discipline of history.

As we all know, one can play at anything; at games or at work, at ping-pong or at chemistry. But no worth-while pursuit will yield us full returns until we have yielded ourselves fully and freely to its own particular discipline. It is never very light or easy. It is the price we pay, and pay willingly, when we understand the rewards which are offered.

What do I mean by the discipline of history—that rather sombre phrase? First, for Canadians, serious and systematic reading of the story of their country. A generation or so ago this was difficult. So little was written, and for the most part done in a dull and undistinguished fashion and generally very boring. But now there is really no excuse. The Canadian who wants a bird’s-eye view of his history can choose from half a dozen or more volumes, well written, often well illustrated and easy to read. Our “1066 and All That” is on the way!

There is, however, more than this to the discipline of history. National history will be—it must be—read with the heart as well as with the mind. That is as it should be. But need I remind you that the heart of man leaves much to be desired. History is the necessary food of good and noble sentiments. It ought to give us at once humility and confidence in the face of greatness. It may also, unhappily, minister to unworthy qualities, to complacence, or arrogance. As you know, this may operate when the reader identifies himself too exclusively with a particular nation. Such identification, however, is natural and not necessarily unhealthy. With all respect to the fine organizations that have laboured to give us an international outlook, I believe that they err in supposing—to put it bluntly—that we love other peoples more through loving our own less.

It is no service to the world we live in to be lacking in self-respect. We in Canada have never erred in the past in possessing too much self-reliance or pride in ourselves. Our fault has been in the other direction. It is obvious, I think, that the more conscious we are of ourselves, our past, what we can do in the present and future, the better will be our role in the world at large; but as our pride grows and is justified in growing, it should, of course, be tempered with that rare and precious virtue of humility; an honest awareness of shortcomings—a sober recognition of the good fortune which has often attended our progress.

If we Canadians, French- and English-speaking, would subject ourselves to the discipline of history, we would more fully reap the benefits and avoid the dangers which history presents—for it has dangers. Our story may be an epic of brilliant achievement. I believe it to be so from the beginning 350 years ago. It also should lead us to be conscious of our occasional shortcomings.

If we accept this discipline, we shall be more ready in mind and spirit to commemorate the great events in our history, in the anniversaries which occur from time to time. One comes next year, a bicentenary of high importance. We have already a worthy monument, and a unique one, overlooking the St. Lawrence, to two great soldiers, two good men, their conflict over, near the field where each did his duty with bravery and distinction. It is for us to be worthy of the monument and the men—both strangers to our shores, neither “Canadian”, but led in a strange way to help shape our Canadian destiny.

A friend of mine who speaks both our languages perfectly and who, by descent, belongs to both our cultural traditions, suggested to me a new and, I believe, a very true interpretation of the central event of 1759, or rather of the Treaty which followed. It marked, he says, the end of European fighting over North America. How right he is. After that, the secession of the American colonies was no longer much in doubt. After that, there was a steady growth of self-government, north and south of the international border. After that, the Canadian people, French and English, increasingly found themselves free to grow and flourish in their great country. Our history since is their story. The story is still being told. The writing is ours.

I told you that I wished to speak to you of serious and, I believe, important things about our country. I think it is for Canadian Clubs to concern themselves with Canadian business. I am deeply convinced of the meaning to us all of the matters that I have ventured to set before you. With this I feel sure you are in full agreement.

The Improbable Province

Address at Fort Langley, B.C.

I could say much of the beginnings of this province in the gold-rush days when the forty-niners and their successors swarmed across the invisible and, to them, imperceptible line. There followed the fabulous days of the Cariboo Gold Rush, when men poured into the country and created, for example, in the mining town of Barkerville, what I am told was the biggest settlement between Chicago and the coast. I have a vivid recollection of my visit to Barkerville—one winding street with an empty church and an abandoned saloon—a relic of the beginnings of this great province. I am hoping that one sequel to the fine work of this centenary may be the restoration and preservation of that historic little town. There is the true stamp of adventure and romance in those modest houses and in the small pine church—a moving and beautiful model of what may be seen built in stone in countless villages all over England. And still more in the graveyard with the cracked boards standing at every angle—“to the memory of Bill”—and dozens of Bill’s friends—once more a reflection of green and peaceful graveyards thousands of miles away.

So much for one chapter in your past.

Our neighbours, the Americans, struck by the series of improbabilities attending the birth and survival of their great nation, have often attributed them, and perhaps not unreasonably, to the direct intervention of Providence. In Canada we are inclined to talk less of providential arrangements. In fact, until the past few decades we have said singularly little about our history at all. The culmination of Canadian evolution has appeared to us, and to others, so unimportant that it has not seemed worth while to concern ourselves with the series of what have often seemed trivial incidents which brought us to birth and marked our infant years.

Now, however, all is changed. In the twentieth century we have become suddenly aware, almost at the same moment, of our nation and of our history. And particularly we in English-speaking Canada are beginning to realize that it is not only our French-speaking fellow-countrymen who can relate with pride the epics of the past, and that we need not leave to our American neighbours alone, a sense of the workings of Providence in national affairs. Can anyone think, for example, of a stronger succession of improbabilities than that which brings a Governor-General of Canada here to celebrate with you the founding of what has become one of the largest, wealthiest and most beautiful of the provinces of Canada? You are surely the most improbable of all our ten provinces: born one hundred years ago, from a collection of fur-traders, miners and other adventurers, exhibiting from the very beginning a most remarkable sense of law and an instinct for self-government, ignoring the obvious and easy connections with the neighbouring settlements on the Pacific Coast, and attaching yourselves to—or should I say attaching to yourselves—the infant Dominion of Canada, 3,000 miles away across a sea of mountains, a vast expanse of uninhabited plain and a still vaster extent of apparently uninhabitable rock. What could be more fantastically improbable than your story? And yet this story is the hinge on which the whole history of our nation turns. But for the momentous decision on the part of British Columbia to remain British, and to unite with the almost unknown Canadians far away to the east—the Canadian nation of today would have been impossible, even unthinkable.

I should like to touch on some of the forces that influenced this great decision, for I think them typical of our story, and indeed, of ours alone.

It is not, after all, surprising that the mining settlement which was the origin of British Columbia early accepted the principles of law and order, for that settlement took shape in a land where, for nearly 200 years, those principles had prevailed. We all know the story of the “Gentlemen Adventurers Trading into Hudson’s Bay”, but I wonder whether we grasp the whole significance of these trading operations. It was, or it used to be, fashionable to abuse the Company for settling on the Bay in an unenterprising fashion, while the Indians toiled for them; to accuse them of buying cheap and selling dear; of clinging to their monopoly and their land claims; in short, of settling firmly over Canada’s natural hinterland, and removing themselves unwillingly and grudgingly at last. I cannot deal adequately with these complicated matters, but I can remind myself and you of some important aspects of the history of this great corporation.

The Bay men were merchants and their job was to make money. If they did not make money, they could not be on the Bay—that was clear. But for nearly two centuries before British Columbia was born, they had traded on the Bay, and fairly enough by the standards of the day. They had built up on that frozen waste a tradition of hard work, honesty, courtesy and non-violence. As their journeys and their influence spread—and spread they did—from the Bay to Labrador on the one coast and California on the other, they were, as you know, the government of a vast country. There was no other. And yet, living the hardest and most dangerous lives and trading with tribes if not lawless by their own standards, yet reckless and violent by ours, they still maintained peace, order and justice to a quite astonishing degree, without soldiers, police or organized force of any kind. Their rule was, in its way, I suppose, a political achievement unparalleled except by that of their greater counterpart in India—the East India Company.

One may well ask how this was done, and whether I am suggesting that we of the North-West witnessed something like a rule of the saints. I suggest no such thing. They were not saints at all. They were practical men. There was nothing, I believe, miraculous about their story. It is merely one illustration among many of the growth of our great governmental tradition. The Hudson’s Bay Company was chartered when this development was in its early stages. But, as you all know, about the time that Wolfe took Quebec, when French and English first became associated in the building of our common country, there was being worked out in Britain that remarkable combination of administrative authority and popular control, which is our modern form of parliamentary government—the particular form that we in Canada like to call responsible government. And it was at this very same time that the spirit of free enterprise achieved great heights and caused all public-spirited members of parliament (and a good many others with private interests to serve) to look with profound suspicion on the capitalist monopolies.

The result was that the doings of the Hudson’s Bay Company were subjected periodically to pretty stern and searching parliamentary criticism by men who were fairly sure that all monopolies were wrong in the first place. And yet—and this is the pride of our system—the importance of sound administration was never forgotten. There was no irresponsible meddling. If the Hudson’s Bay was handling its half continent with reasonable efficiency and justice, it must not be interfered with until other arrangements, equally just and efficient, could be made. And so, for a century or so, what might have been a very lawless monopoly, was kept under close supervision, and its agents were constantly reminded that authority carries responsibility, and that power can only be justified by public service.

Thus, out of a fruitful conflict of principle—fairly and openly carried on—there emerged the first government that this country knew. Indirectly, it is true, but none the less certainly the principles of honesty and justice, of law and order in what became Canada, were the products of parliamentary government, and of parliamentary give and take.

I emphasize this because it is our tradition and peculiarly our tradition. It explains what makes and keeps us a little different from the rest of North America—a little different even from the powerful neighbour whom we admire and imitate so much. And may I here digress for a moment and speak of something about which I feel very strongly. I am entirely at one with those who are deeply interested in American history. I find it fascinating, heroic, gigantic in imagination and execution, but I am utterly at variance with those publicists who plead that we should make our history interesting. First, we don’t need to make our history interesting. It is interesting. All we need is to read it and write it—(and you in British Columbia set the rest of us a worthy example). Secondly, our history is not like American history—in many important respects it is very unlike it.

And that brings me back to my subject. Thanks very largely to the accident of the gentlemen adventurers of the seventeenth century, and to the association with them of parliamentary institutions in the eighteenth and nineteenth, and to the wise guardianship of the North-West Mounted Police from the 1870’s on, we have never had a Wild West. I do not see why we should not commemorate the fact that we established civilized life without one.

But whatever we celebrate, this we should do. We should cherish the great parliamentary tradition which helped to give British Columbia peace and prosperity from its earliest days, and which, in its varying ways, has blessed us all. We should constantly remind ourselves of the stuff of which it is made—a healthy tension between those who differ in principle, who disagree about methods, but who are united and at one in a common task. The results of this conflict of opinion, of this balance between minds and wills, are often better than if either party took its unhindered way.

This country, and every province within this country, is like a house whose architecture is based on the principle of stress and strain. This is good. It is a sound and constructive principle of strength and unity in architecture, and also in the sphere of politics, so long as we remember that private views must constantly be checked by an honest judgment of the public good. Canada looks to your great province on which, in a sense, the historic structure of the Dominion rests, to play an increasingly important role in the nation of which it is so splendid a part.

Things That Remain

Address on the occasion of the Centenary
of Trinity College, Toronto

Trinity College stands securely, as a great monument to its Founder’s genius and leadership. It is also the living embodiment of certain ideas. These, most of them, were considered sadly out of date by the intelligent young progressives of a century ago, but it does not take much research to discover that these ideas are among the things that endure. Centenaries are not only pleasant events which give opportunities for retrospect, but they are also highly profitable if they are used as a time for re-examination and re-appraisal. They provide an occasion when history can be distilled from legend.

Few figures in Canadian history have suffered more than John Strachan from unsympathetic interpretation. He has come down to us inexpertly embalmed in a partial selection from his more explosive phrases and his more peremptory actions. Certainly, one cannot deny that Strachan clung to his convictions doggedly and, at times, irascibly, and that some of those convictions—those ideas—have been either set aside, or transmuted by the passing years. But, even about Strachan the authoritarian, or Strachan the shrewd Aberdonian with a lively eye for the main chance, there is an appealing directness and a robust egotism that should provide rich material for the biographer. One recalls a letter that he wrote to an old friend in Scotland on the subject of his recent marriage:

When in his letters he talks about politics, the voice is not so much that of the despot as of the schoolmaster admonishing a classroom of unruly boys. He writes in the year 1818:

Admittedly, these quotations do not put Strachan in an altogether amiable light. But Egerton Ryerson, who did not see eye to eye with Strachan on many matters, makes this comment on their first meeting, “. . . nor could I desire to meet with a more affable agreeable man than the Lord Bishop himself . . . conversation took place on several important topics, on scarcely any of which did I see reason to differ from the Bishop.”

His common sense could often burst through platitudes and convention. It is recorded that a deputation of laymen came to Strachan when he was Bishop of Toronto and asked for their rector’s removal. They pointed out that he was getting old, and that he was constantly preaching the same sermon. “When did he preach it last?” enquired the Bishop. “Last Sunday, my Lord.” “What was it about?” None could tell. “What was the text?” Again there was silence. “Then,” thundered the Bishop, “go back and ask him to preach it again next Sunday.”

The truth of the matter is that Strachan was too complex and forthright a figure to be neatly pigeon-holed. He did not respond mechanically to catch phrases, nor was he the victim of a set of rigid ideas. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his attitude toward the nature and destiny of the youthful country to which he had come when it was just beginning to emerge as a recognizable entity. The usual interpretation is that Strachan strove to impose on Upper Canada the pattern of society that existed in the Mother Country. Certainly he was convinced that the British way of life was of infinite value—and for holding that conviction he surely needs no apologist. But he saw clearly from the very start that this was a new country which could achieve neither physical nor spiritual autonomy by a process of abject imitation. There is a record of a meeting between Thomas Carlyle and John Strachan which took place in London in the year 1824. To the best of my knowledge, Strachan has not left us any account of Carlyle, but in his Reminiscences Carlyle has set down a brief and characteristically mordant impression of his fellow Scot. He refers to “one insolent Bishop of Toronto, triumphant Canadian but Aberdeen by dialect”. I would draw your attention to one phrase where Carlyle, perhaps unwittingly, went to the heart of the matter—the phrase “triumphant Canadian”. Closely bound up as Strachan was with the Old World, he was even more a creature of the New. There are many examples of his New-World outlook. He was, for example, a pioneer in propounding the idea that education was the responsibility of the State and that its benefits should be made available to all. The Act of 1816 establishing a system of elementary schools in Upper Canada, partially supported by the State, grew out of a memorandum written by Strachan. This legislation is all the more remarkable when one remembers that there was in England no government support of education until 1833. Again and again he declared that education was the prerogative of all. “The whole expense in a free country like this,” he wrote, “should be defrayed by the public so that promising boys giving indication of high talent, though poor, might have an opportunity of cultivating their faculties and, if able and virtuous, taking a lead in the community.” In a similar vein he wrote, “Neither the sick nor the destitute have higher claims upon the public than the ignorant. The want of knowledge brings all other wants in its train; and, if education be regarded as a charity, it is a charity of which the blessings are without alloy.”

In this context it is well to remember that the original charter of King’s College, narrowly sectarian in some respects, was, in the light of contemporary English practice, an extremely liberal document, since it exacted no religious test from the student; all could come whatever their faith. The democratic spirit that shines through Strachan’s comments on education is apparent in his comments on the nature of Church government. As early as 1832 he wrote:

Although his theoretical convictions were not given practical embodiment until 1851, it is significant that the Synod that met in that year was a new development which was later extended to the whole Canadian Church, to the churches in the other dominions and, ultimately, to those of the Mother Country itself.

There are many other instances of his ideas and acts which do not fit into the legendary pattern. If he was one of the pillars of the “Family Compact”, then that phrase—one begins to think—although picturesque, is highly imprecise. I should like to indulge in an agreeable speculation. At the old Blue School at York, one of Strachan’s pupils was Robert Baldwin, the man who was to be directly responsible for introducing what Strachan felt was the iniquitous University Act of 1849—the statesman who was the leading architect of Responsible Government. Is there a possibility that, in the lively give and take of the Strachan classroom, and in the careful study of British parliamentary orations that was an important part of the curriculum, Baldwin first began to think about the nature and function of government?

When we turn from Strachan the administrator and man of affairs to Strachan the teacher and educational theorist, we are on firmer ground. Unfortunately, even here we must exorcise a legend. Strachan’s name is associated, and rightly so, with the painful parturition by which Trinity came into being. It is not my intention, however, to discuss the controversy. The arguments employed did not lack vigour; they were embellished by an invective of peculiar richness. But they belong to the past and should be allowed to rest. Beneath the surface level of controversy, however, there are expressed in Strachan’s writings and demonstrated in his practice, ideas about education that have a sharp relevance to the problems of today, ideas which sometimes even anticipated the views of later generations.

Strachan’s was an extraordinary career. Trinity men no doubt know the facts, and I hope I may be forgiven for dealing with the obvious, but it is useful for those of us whose knowledge of Strachan is often limited to his part in the great controversy, to realize how much more there was in the character of this remarkable man than what the familiar legend suggests.

He was primarily a teacher; and there can be no better preparation for the work of an educational administrator than to have first-hand experience of teaching. He was an effective and inspiring teacher. It has been said that two important attributes of the gifted teacher are largeness of heart and energy. If this be true, then Strachan’s qualifications are not in doubt. A schoolmaster who receives a gift from his boys twenty years after they have left his school must have meant something to his pupils. Indeed, he commanded their admiration and their loyalty, for he was intensely human. Almost all his pupils later became advocates of the principles for which he stood. In his school at Cornwall were trained a substantial proportion of those who became leaders in the first half-century of the history of this province.

Some of Strachan’s methods would have shocked modern doctors of pedagogy. For instance, he made his pupils commit verse and prose to memory. Again, he believed in, and practised, corporal punishment. But in this he was no extremist.

He stood for frankly competitive methods. On that subject he had this to say,

These methods may sound old-fashioned, but Strachan introduced in his school a large measure of student government. He gave ample opportunities for initiative and self-expression. He grappled boldly and firmly with what we in modern days call the question of human relations. He found the answer in sincere respect for parents and home and for friends and associates, not in the acceptance of smooth maxims. With no home and school clubs in those days, he yet strove to associate the parents intelligently with the work of his school; and with no alumni association, he retained throughout his life the support and encouragement of his former pupils in his educational work. As we have seen, he worked steadily to secure State support for education at all stages, including that of the University, and to secure scholarships for poor boys. He introduced in 1806 the study of science in the first laboratory to be set up in the province, financed by a special grant from the Legislature. He stood for intellectual discipline, for integrity, and for personal, as opposed to mass education. In all his teaching he, like the modernists, put personality first, but he called it character. Although he encouraged self-expression, he saw the key to character in self-discipline. To this he added hard work. “Never did anyone,” he said, “gain pre-eminence without exertion.” He insisted that the effective moral training and discipline of the school could not be effective without religious instruction and religious faith.

Strachan was not the product of a normal school or of a faculty of education; but he had a firm grasp of the principles of teaching. He was happily more concerned with the principles than with the techniques. It cannot be claimed that his views on education were unique. They were shared by others in his day and since, but he did much to enrich a fine tradition. His address to his pupils in 1807 is a stimulating document which might well help us to keep to the educational path from which it is so easy to stray. “I begin with an observation,” so he says, “which to many of you would appear a little extraordinary. It is this: that one of the greatest advantages you have derived from your education here, arises from the strictness of our discipline,” and again, “it is to the want of a systematic education, to a confused method of thinking, early acquired but never thoroughly removed, that we must attribute those numerous inconsistencies and that confusion of ideas, which we find so general amongst those we converse with.” He did not leave manners outside his curriculum. He asked for politesse du coeur. “The civility of manners which I would recommend,” so he says, “flows from the heart, and is intimately connected with all the finer affections that can adorn human nature.”

So much for some of the ideas which were held by John Strachan. They were no abstract things; they were practised with vigour and consistency. He applied them at first to secondary education, but the deeper principles apply to all stages in the educational process. It was Strachan’s achievement to give them application in his early work with boys and later to embody them in his Foundation.

I should like to discuss these ideas briefly, first of all in relation to organization—the framework, and secondly to the philosophy which they reflect—the content.

Strachan was a profound believer in the college, but not because he had ever attended one. His University at Aberdeen, like other Scottish foundations, was not organized on the collegiate principle. Its students did not live in residence. The system of instruction was professorial rather than tutorial; but somehow through his long career, he came to admire the collegiate system which had grown up in the two ancient English universities; and this ardent Scot, adopting the notion from across the border, promoted it with characteristic vigour. The conception of the college is peculiarly English. We know that in France and Italy in the Middle Ages there were foundations resembling the English colleges, but they, with a very few exceptions, disappeared. Sometimes we forget how very nearly the colleges in England vanished too. A few years ago I reminded the undergraduates of this Trinity College, how another Trinity came into being at Cambridge. Its late Master tells us that, when Henry the Eighth had succeeded in suppressing the religious foundations in England and distributing their wealth among his upstart friends, he thought that it would be a very good idea to carry on the process by putting an end to the collegiate foundations in Oxford and Cambridge and appropriating their endowments. There was a very real danger that this might happen. Had it taken place, the idea of a college as we know it would have disappeared and education in the western world would have suffered gravely in consequence. The situation was saved, however, by Catherine Parr, Henry’s surviving queen, who was a very wise woman and a very shrewd judge of human character. She knew that Henry was greedy and that he was also vain. She played on his jealousy of the dead Cardinal Wolsey, who had annoyed him by building his sumptuous college at Oxford—Christ Church, and she persuaded him to build an even more magnificent one at Cambridge; and Trinity was the result.

Strachan knew from study and observation, if not from experience, what a college—a collegium—could be. One hundred years ago, when Trinity was opened, the Founder stated the objects of the institution which had been brought into being:

There are some to whom the conception of a college may seem out of date. It may appear to be a picturesque survival of another era, out of keeping with the urgent and “practical” demands of a scientific age. Higher education today cannot, of course, be confined to the walls of a college. New needs must be met in new ways; but it does not follow that the concept of the college and the academic function of the college are obsolete. Indeed, the complexity and the size of the great modern university seem to me to make it all the more necessary that collegiate foundations wherever they exist should be jealously preserved. Perhaps the most precious inheritance of the University of Toronto is the college system. Strachan did not leave his mark on Trinity alone. It is well to remember that University College grew out of King’s College which, like Trinity, was conceived in collegiate terms. All four Colleges in these academic precincts, University, St. Michael’s, Victoria and Trinity, serve to preserve and foster some of the ancient and timeless truths in education which are needed today perhaps as never before.

May I suggest two principles for which the college has always stood. First, that education is a personal thing. Second, that it is concerned with the whole man. The first of these brings us sharply up against the problem of numbers, which so often besets the modern University. A witty critic of modern education has asked, “Why did the dinosaur die out?” He goes on to say, “It was the result of a ‘process in which the demands of sheer bulk competed with the surface available for respiration,’ ” and continues, “a similar fate is rapidly overtaking our universities.” The problem has not escaped the attention of wise critics, but the solution is no easy task. Do what we may in the modern university world, we shall probably always have more students than we can properly teach. To increase the number of teachers or reduce the numbers of the taught and to find the ideal proportion between them is often a task beyond our powers.

But we can make some progress if we will. In our universities generally, I believe we are increasingly aware of the danger of unthinkingly admitting students who are unfitted to take advantage of, or even understand, what the University can give them, and who so overcrowd it as to lower its standards. It is surely fallacious to say that if everyone is not fitted for a university the University must somehow be made fit for everyone. That error can lead only to mere bulk and shapelessness. There is surely no field in human life where it is more important to distinguish between bigness and greatness.

How easy it is to build up a vast system of lectures, of “credits”, and of examinations that can be little more than a periodic regurgitation of lecture notes and a mechanical repetition of textbooks. How easy it is to lose sight of the person in our preoccupation with the process. When I happened, not long ago, to be one of a group to examine candidates for an important scholarship—these were naturally able students of especial promise—I was struck by the fact that professors who sent in testimonials were frequently obliged to say that they did not know the candidate personally. This was no reflection on the professor, but simply showed the pressure under which he was working, and the numbers he had to cope with. The relationship between the tutor and the undergraduate, as senior and junior members of a family, cannot be reproduced on a large scale. The cost of the tutorial system alone places limits on its growth, but it is useful for us to realize what the ideal is, even if we can only partially attain it. An inspired lecturer can sometimes strike sparks in the minds of the many who hear him; but this is rare. It is the intimate contact that matters. Someone asked if a certain Victorian statesman had a first-class mind. The reply was, “He has an admirable second-class mind in a first-class state of effervescence.” That happy condition can best be attained under the personal influence of a gifted tutor.

One of the maxims of progressive education is that “the whole child goes to school”. But that was the conception of the mediaeval college and the institutions which inherit its traditions. The college ministers to the whole man—the spiritual, intellectual, and physical aspects of his being. It is the University’s function to turn out well-balanced persons with an understanding of themselves and of their place in life. One cannot conceive of higher education except in terms of a community. It may be a very large community, divided into many units, with different professional aims and a variety of academic tasks. In such institutions there can be, of course, little or no common experience shared by the whole. The smaller the unit, the more intimate the academic household, and the greater its educational power.

As I have suggested, it is not likely to be possible for obvious reasons to extend the number of collegiate foundations. There is, however, a half-way measure which can greatly enrich university life and give to the students some at least of the benefits of communal life. I am thinking of the undergraduate residence. I deliberately avoid the word “dormitory” because that, it seems to me, suggests a misconception of what a residence can be. Its function is far greater than the provision of food and shelter. It should be something more than a barracks or a hostel. An academic residence, properly conceived and organized, is an educational instrument. It can and does deepen and broaden the essential process of education.

I wonder whether we have ever given enough attention to the relation between physical environment and spiritual growth. The surroundings in which an undergraduate sojourns for a few years will not only shape his taste but, perhaps, help to mould his character. In the physical setting we should, of course, avoid the sumptuous and luxurious just as firmly as the ugly or the sordid. Beauty and austerity can be close allies; and in architecture, poor design is generally no less costly than good.

So much for the physical fabric. It is not, as I have suggested, unrelated to the quality of the life within, or to the function which the college should perform. What of the function? One thinks of the traditional college as being far removed from the professional school, concerned with education as distinguished from training; but it is easy to find one’s thinking distorted by words and to make artificial distinctions. Strachan knew that professional training, properly conceived, without neglect of the principles which should underlie the liberal professions, can be real education; precisely as the humanities, when they are sterilized, robbed of their human content, can cease to have a right to the name. Strachan was not opposed to the idea that the college should prepare for the professions. He was aware that the mediaeval university was essentially a training ground for the Church, for Law and for Medicine, while the philosophy which pervaded these great institutions gave them vitality and coherence and lent dignity and a wider relevance to the training which they imparted. He referred to the Universities of Europe as “the fruitful nurseries of all the learned professions which adorn and maintain society. . . .”

In an interesting paper which Strachan prepared for the Lieutenant-Governor in 1826, he made some comments on the professions. He regretted that there was no provision in Upper Canada at that time for training men for either Medicine or the Church, although there was a School of Law at York. To the Law he attached the greatest importance, as destined to “become the most powerful profession,” possessing in time “more influence and authority than any other.” “Lawyers,” he said, with characteristic bluntness, “will gradually engross all the colonial offices of profit and honour. Is it not, therefore, of the utmost importance that they should be collected together at the University?”

But Strachan believed that basic education was the peculiar prerogative of the college; that the college should be the cradle of the humanities. At the opening of King’s in 1843, he expressed this hope—that it would “become one of those blessed asylums where men of retired habits may taste the sweets of society, and yet converse with the illustrious dead, who in past ages have illuminated the world.” The curriculum which he established in his first foundation was four-fold—first came divinity; secondly, literature, ancient and modern, which included history; thirdly, science and mathematics; and fourthly, mental philosophy, which embraced ethics and political economy. Strachan believed in the unity of knowledge. He recognized no cleavage between the sciences and the humanities. That, I would suggest, is remarkable in the light of the persistent argument between the rival claims of these branches of learning. He accepted quite naturally the complementary role of the two in the education of a civilized person.

It would be a very ill-balanced picture of John Strachan and of his ideas which left out his belief that religion should be the foundation of education in all its stages. In this, of course, he was not unique nor was his Church, for his view that education and religion are inseparable was shared by the Presbyterian and Methodist communities.

Strachan wove the same principle into the fabric of Trinity. Trinity has always stood for high seriousness and for a sense of spiritual values. It was a distinguished member of the College, Archibald Lampman, who asked us

It was Strachan’s belief that a college or a university was more than a training ground, more even than a community of teachers and scholars; it was, in essence, a spiritual force that could give clarity to our thoughts and vitality and depth to our convictions. These are the “things that remain”. We have a right to expect and a faith to believe that academic communities—colleges or universities—will remain true to their high purposes, resolute to ignore the shifting currents of the time. To them we look for both chart and compass. No human institution should be more firm in its course, more sure of itself; like a ship, it should be guided “not by the waves but by the stars”.

Laval: Citadelle et Pont

Discours à l’occasion du Centenaire de l’Université Laval, Québec

En tant que représentant de Sa Majesté la Reine, petite-fille de cette autre reine illustre qui donna à votre institution sa charte royale, je suis heureux de féliciter la vivante et toujours jeune centenaire qui veut bien m’honorer aujourd’hui.

Le centenaire de Laval, en effet, n’est pas une occasion de légitime réjouissance seulement pour ceux qui y appartiennent, et la fierté que soulève un pareil événement n’est pas limitée à la seule région québécoise ni même aux héritiers d’une seule culture. Loin de là. C’est tout le pays qui se réjouit à la pensée des cent années de plénitude intellectuelle qui ont été vécues ici. Et je suis sûr d’être le fidèle interprète du Canada tout entier quand je vous félicite pour ce qui a été fait durant ce siècle en vue d’édifier cette grande institution, grâce à laquelle non seulement de larges portions du domaine de la connaissance ont été explorées mais aussi d’anciennes vérités ont été fidèlement défendues.

Nous, qui de toutes les parties de cet immense pays regardons vers l’Université Laval avec affection et respect, nous lui voyons deux principaux caractères également nécessaires à la qualité spirituelle de la société canadienne.

Laval, c’est d’abord une citadelle de l’humanisme. D’un humanisme qui se veut intégral et qui, désireux de servir tout l’homme, garde sa culture ouverte sur toutes les valeurs susceptibles de le grandir. D’un humanisme de synthèse—qualité bien française—par laquelle la culture, loin de se fermer sur le destin temporel de l’homme, débouche comme naturellement sur des perspectives d’éternité. Je n’en veux pas d’autres preuves de la place si importante que, depuis sa fondation, l’Université Laval a toujours donnée aux humanités. Nulle part on n’a mieux qu’ici compris et enseigné que, sans ces fleurs de culture et ces ferments de civilisation que sont les humanités, la compétence professionnelle ne dépasse pas le niveau de la qualité purement technique. Nulle part non plus l’équilibre entre la formation professionnelle et la culture générale n’a été mieux réalisé qu’ici. Aussi bien est-ce avec admiration et reconnaissance que le Canada jette aujourd’hui les yeux sur Laval, sentinelle séculairement dévouée à la défense des valeurs sur lesquelles reposent les structures de la civilisation canadienne.

Pour nous, cependant, Laval n’est pas seulement une citadelle avancée de l’esprit; c’est aussi un pont, bâti par des gens à l’esprit civique large et constructif, reliant entre elles deux cultures dont les différences pourtant réelles ne parviennent pas à faire oublier la source commune. Que sont les traditions culturelles françaises et anglo-saxonnes sinon des branches distinctes du même vieil arbre dont les racines plongent jusqu’en les terres fécondes du moyen âge? Elles représentent des courants de pensées et de sentiments auxquels l’histoire a certes donné des formes diverses mais qu’il suffit de remonter de quelques siècles à peine pour retrouver la source commune à laquelle ils s’alimentent.

Monseigneur le chancelier, en proclamant que la mission de l’Université Laval est de mettre “la culture française au service de la nation canadienne”, vous êtes resté dans la tradition de ces hommes au coeur large et à l’esprit profond, de ces grands Canadiens qui pensent à leur pays en termes de fraternité, et qui dans la diversité même de ses richesses spirituelles voient la promesse de son plus grand destin. Et le peuple canadien, quelle que soit la culture à laquelle il puise la nourriture de son esprit, est reconnaissant à Laval d’avoir voulu être, et d’avoir, en fait, été si efficacement le pont qui, jeté par-dessus les eaux jadis tumultueuses mais aujourd’hui heureusement paisibles de notre histoire, ouvre la voie à des échanges spirituels dont la fréquence et la continuité sont les plus belles promesses d’une véritable amitié canadienne.

Useful Knowledge

Address at the Convocation of the University
of Manitoba

Here, in Canada, we express our emotions with some reserve. Our sentiments and convictions are none the less strong and deep. It is, then, the more necessary that these sentiments and convictions should find expression in assemblies like this. This gathering is a proper and appropriate tribute of respect both to the past and to the future; a recognition at once of the strength of our traditions, and of our sense of common responsibility. Here we may see the individual activities of the academic world in their true light as an essential part of the functioning of a free and united community. I am most happy to be able to be here today because I feel so profoundly the importance of the occasion, and of the various ceremonies which mark it.

I have been reading with much interest something of the history of this great University. This audience doubtless knows it well, but I cannot refrain from mentioning some facts which have impressed me deeply.

First, I was struck by the very long and honourable tradition of education in this community; I say community advisedly, for the tradition is longer and, I may add, far broader, than the life of the province of Manitoba. I observe that plans for higher education in the colony were laid immediately on the establishment there of permanent missions. We are told that the students of St. Boniface in the 1820’s were being offered the works of Cicero. They were also, I find, being personally instructed in the use of the plough by the Bishop himself. Thus, perhaps, was founded the partnership between practical agriculture and the “pure” arts and sciences which is so useful and distinctive a character of western Canadian universities.

As I have said, I was impressed not only by the length but by the breadth of your educational tradition. This community was, it seems, less a missionary field than a missionary centre, the headquarters of a parish that extended in early years from the Red River to the Pacific, and from the Missouri to the Arctic. The educational institutions which grew up here before the period of the mid-century kept always before them two great purposes: to train clergy for the vast mission fields; and to afford the opportunity of a higher education for all in this immense area who could take advantage of it. From these two great needs and from the determination to meet them, grew the three founding colleges of St. Boniface, and St. John’s, and Manitoba College.

It was this long and spacious tradition which struck me first and most forcibly as I read your history. Sometimes a long and noble tradition may, by the very intensity of the loyalty which it inspires, breed a narrow and fanatical outlook. Nothing of the sort happened here. These small ecclesiastical institutions welcomed with cordiality the opportunity to co-operate in the larger life of a University. The history of higher education in Manitoba reveals the work of men as distinguished for their toleration as for their sincerity and their fervour.

This western community with all its material problems, and with all its pressing need for modern communications was equipped with a University before it had a railway of any kind. Not for another five years was there any direct rail communication with the rest of Canada. For a pioneer community, largely dependent not on subsistence farming, but on the regular and rapid shipment of a staple product to world markets, this is an achievement none the less notable because it was entirely consistent with established tradition.

The reference to tradition brings me to one more fact which I must mention, although in doing so I am forced to tread on delicate ground. I learn that with all the readiness of the constituent colleges to sacrifice time and effort, and even perhaps personal preferences and prejudices in the service of a great idea, the initiative and the driving force required to carry through the plan did not come from them. Nor did it come from the legislature or from the general public. “The Public,” says one authority, “did not clamour for a University. The colleges did not ask for it.” As for the Legislature, the Attorney-General, who, on January 30, 1887, introduced the University Bill, announced with a frankness which in these conventional days is a little startling, that “The Government thinks the Bill premature but have been so repeatedly urged that they have brought it down.”

From whence, then, did the pressure come, and who was it that urged so repeatedly the unwilling government to act? The pressure came—I hesitate to say it—from the representative of the Crown, and the urgings from Alexander Morris, then Lieutenant-Governor of this province. I do not know what His Honour the present Lieutenant-Governor’s intentions may be; but I cannot deny that I was intrigued to discover how far royal prerogative had been stretched in this academic matter. It is pleasant sometimes to meditate on what has been, but definitely, may not be again.

To return to Mr. Morris, it appears that he had already achieved some diplomatic fame as the man who had been largely instrumental in persuading those indefatigable warriors, John A. Macdonald and George Brown, to remain on speaking terms just long enough to complete the arrangements for confederation. After such a feat it is not surprising if the warm and generous spirit of the West tempted him to continue to direct his powers of conciliation toward the formation of federal unions. Not that the colleges needed to be conciliated; but he had to cope with the reluctance of the Cabinet, expressed with such alarming frankness by the Attorney-General; and there were certain small difficulties in convincing the other members of the Legislature. The Bill passed without opposition, but not without effort. “The Governor,” we are told, “. . . is alleged to have transgressed the limits of gubernatorial isolation and to have done some active canvassing among the members.” A shocking affair, undoubtedly, but on this happy occasion the unforgivable may be forgiven. It might indeed be appropriate for this meeting of Convocation to repeat history by a quite unconstitutional pardon to Alexander Morris for his quite unconstitutional conduct!

One more fact does seem to me worthy of note. A charter by itself is an empty privilege. The authorities did not forget that a University needs funds. The Legislature, in its generosity, set aside the princely sum of $250 annually for the support of the new institution. Whether this sum satisfied the distinguished patron I do not know. It did not entirely satisfy the University authorities. Having taken thought, they had recourse to the remarkable device of requesting federal aid, which was granted in the shape of an endowment of lands only after many years of deliberation.

And now with all our pride and rejoicing in the achievements of the past we must still look soberly at the present, and into the future. The age in which we live is not suited to idle complacency or to pleasant dreams of past greatness. On these occasions it seems fitting that those who are called upon to speak about Universities anywhere should examine the present with gravity in order to offer with due deliberation a charge for the future. No one acquainted with my personal views will be surprised to hear me say that I have only one charge to give. I give it whenever I appear before a University audience. I am here, unrepentant and unashamed, to give it to you today.

May I say, first, how admirable and how impressive are the activities of the modern University as exemplified here in your own institution. Every year you send out from your precincts hundreds of young men and women trained in useful callings, lawyers, doctors, agricultural scientists and home economists, teachers, architects, engineers and others. Through you these young people are enabled to bring the discoveries of science and the experience of society to the service of the public. And, in addition, you serve the community directly in countless ways, through your libraries and laboratories, through your lecturers, demonstrators and extension workers. For all these things you have earned the gratitude of your community and the admiration of the nation.

But it remains true, of course, that all such things can be done, and have been done outside the walls of a University. They may be and doubtless are, a desirable and even a necessary part of its responsibilities, but they do not comprise its essential character. And on such a day as this, it seems to me suitable to ask what is the essential character of a great University. What happens in such a place that happens nowhere else? What do we do in Universities which no one else does, and which without them would not be done?

The answer is no mystery; it is only the enunciation of the simple old-fashioned principle which is so easily overlaid and obscured by the constant stream of other demands on our time and attention. The University should surely offer higher education in the strict traditional sense of the word. It exists to preserve and promote all truly useful knowledge. It lives to impart a love of that knowledge for its own sake; that is, knowledge in the sense of understanding and enlightenment. These need no justification. To the rational being they are ends in themselves because they are the very essence of life. But in these days, with its universal subjection to the blue-print, the time-table and the machine, the true nature and value of useful knowledge is easily forgotten.

In the past the humanities, enjoying the honour traditionally bestowed on them, undertook seriously to give the student some insight into human existence, its demands and its rewards. They did this through the rather severe discipline involved in the study in the original of the literature of Greece and Rome. This was not, I suggest, in any way an irrational or “unscientific” procedure. These literatures still comprise the longest and fullest continuous record of what the human mind has been busy about in the past. They cover some 2,500 years of its operations in poetry, and drama, in law and agriculture, in astronomy and politics, in natural history, mathematics and geography; in short, in everything.

The mind that has examined this record with attention and understanding is a mind disciplined, experienced and matured. It is a mind stored with truly useful knowledge and understanding; knowledge and understanding of human nature and of human destiny in the light of human experience. Such a mind is, in my view, educated and ready for training.

We have now renounced this long and difficult discipline. It was certainly beyond the capacity of many, and was never even available to all. It must now perhaps be dismissed as the luxury of an aristocratic age. But surely there is nothing in democracy which requires us to carry this sacrifice to the limits which we now seem to be approaching. We need not throw education quite out of the window. Long regarded as luxuries, as frills, the humanities seem now, having slipped to the periphery of our academic concentration, to be in some danger of being clipped off altogether, with only the passing tribute of a sigh. The very meaning of the name should be a warning. There is not only a loss, but a danger to society when men are encouraged to forget or to despise the nature of their essential humanity.

We have, indeed, by neglecting or over-simplifying the infinite complexity of the nature of man, lost our sense of the dignity of man. It is not enough to rest our claim to human dignity on our ability to comprehend and even to master the forces of nature. Underneath the complacency induced by this sense of mastery there still remains the insecurity of the being who does not understand, and who cannot master himself. Rational comprehension of the universe is not enough. We must call to our aid not merely reason, but the vision and the spiritual insight of all the ages. These things we must seek.

In this day, when urgent practical problems are constantly moving us to apparently efficient short cuts, it is more than ever necessary for Universities to maintain their high tradition. They must constantly recall that training without education gives power without giving life—the proper nemesis of a machine age. The Universities dare not, even in the service of the most pressing immediate needs, forget their essential nature; the living storehouse of human knowledge, the flaming spirit of human enlightenment.

The Modern University: Progress
and Digression

Address at the 75th Anniversary Convocation
of the University of Western Ontario, London

Western University in its seventy-five years has not been without the tribulations promised to the saints. But I need not dwell on your past history. It would not be fitting for me to reduce to a cold chronicle the story which is built into the very lives of so many members of the University present here today. I have, however, given myself the pleasure of looking into this story, and I have been deeply impressed by the combination of audacity and persistence on which you have flourished. The original demand for a university on the “western fringes”—to quote a significant phrase—was typical at once of the saintly daring of the missionary who thinks nothing too good for his flock, and of the more worldly sentiments and good judgment of those who refused to be absorbed by Toronto.

But if it was audacity that seized on a charter—a charter which envisaged colleges in arts, science, medicine, law and engineering—it was persistence which clung on during the difficult years when problems of collegiate affiliation, of absentee presidents, of hesitating students, and, of course, of fugitive finances harassed those who continued to believe in the predestination of Western University.

Audacity and persistence have now been rewarded and Western University has won a most honourable and I think a very happy place not only in the local community, but in the province, and in the nation. You have a fruitful association with affiliated colleges; you receive necessary and, I do not doubt, welcome support from federal and provincial governments. I think, however, that I am right in saying that the association which marked the great change in your fortunes is the one which gives you your special character among Canadian universities today; your intimate and happy relations with the city of London which as a city is well known for its keen enjoyment of the arts, and for the generous patronage which it extends to them. It may well be proud of its association with this foundation.

I could say much in praise of this University. I could recount the names of your distinguished scientists and scholars; I could speak of the well-merited recognition that you have received throughout our country and abroad; I could praise the far-sighted generosity which has given you dignified and commodious buildings, and I could pay tribute to your own earnest efforts to offer to young men and women a generous and balanced programme of study and recreation. Although I shall not enlarge on these matters, it is a great pleasure and privilege to observe these fine accomplishments and to join with you today in praising those responsible for them.

In these very difficult days, however, such institutions as yours even at a time of celebration are forced to look forward rather than back. They are drawn rather to face the challenge of the future than to contemplate the achievements of the past.

Universities today are rightly claiming ever-increasing support for their manifold activities. This support they ask and receive from their students, from their graduates, from private persons and from voluntary societies as well as from government. The support is welcome, and is often generous, but universities are now illustrating their own version of the Malthusian law: their activities are forever pressing, and pressing closely on their means of subsistence. They are therefore obliged to ask themselves regularly, and urgently: What claims come first? And if all seem important, how can we secure increased funds? And these two questions lead inevitably to the third and fundamental one, not always considered in its correct priority. What, in essence, is a university and what is its function in relation to society?

In dealing with this question, I have no novel or startling statements to make. I am only carrying on the conversation which constantly engages all those Canadians who know and love our universities. It is, I think, these earnest conversations, whether public or private, about meaning and purpose which alone can maintain and direct our growth.

May I commence by stating this as a proposition: that the primary and essential function which the modern university has assumed is nothing less than the care and preservation of the entire inheritance of our civilization; that it is for the universities to maintain and to keep alive the memory and the evidence of our accumulated cultural achievements, in the arts, and letters, in science, in philosophy and in religion; that it is for them to make this intangible heritage available to each generation; to cultivate it and to present it in such a fashion that it may be, so far as possible, comprehensible to all.

This responsibility imposes on the group of scholars young and old which is the core of a university, many tasks which still go to make up one whole. They must acquire knowledge both ample and precise. No field is too broad for their investigation, no detail too minute for their attention. They will, inevitably, in the process of acquisition add to the sum of knowledge. We must remember that the scholar can only reach its bounds by looking beyond them.

To the process of gathering must be added the task of arrangement. As new knowledge is added categories change, and old classifications become useless. The whole body of learning must constantly be re-thought and rearranged if the new facts are to be fully valued, and the old understood. The university in its own sphere is like the careful librarian who knows that books not classified and arranged are worse than lost.

This conscious organization inevitably implies the process to which I must refer, regretfully, as integration. It is the special task of the university to keep the conception of knowledge in its wholeness, of knowledge with the right emphasis, with the right centre, knowledge not dispersed but with the corporate form, without which there can be no sense of direction in learning. In other words, the university must represent and hold forth a coherent philosophy. It must help us, if I may use familiar words, “to see life steadily and see it whole”.

This responsibility again is linked with another. The true university is not and never has been an “ivory tower”. An essential aspect of its work is that of interpretation. The relevance of all knowledge, the relation of the whole sum of our cultural achievement, to contemporary life must be clearly shown. This is the collective witness of the university. This should be the individual witness of every man and woman privileged to receive a true university education. Osler placed this passage from Froude in the clinical note-book he prepared for his students:

I can now explain what I take to be the creative function of the university. In the past the men who have launched great movements have, as a rule, been men of extraordinary gifts perhaps, and of extraordinary experience, but they have been men grounded in the standard knowledge and philosophy of their day. St. Paul, Francis of Assisi, Luther and Wesley, each a religious revolutionary, was steeped in the accepted learning of his time. The men of the Renaissance and of the age of Enlightenment had also as a rule orthodox training before they went each on his brilliant separate path. The corporate life of a university at its best probably does not encourage true creative effort directly. Yet by its nourishing and disciplinary functions, by its clear representation of the best that has been done, it is equipped to foster those who will later create, if only as an act of rebellion at complacency which they think they perceive in those who have reared them. It is the function of the university to provide the grounding, the roots.

To those who, like myself, received their education a generation or so ago the modern university seems to be alarmingly given to short-cuts. There is, of course, the “college text”, handsomely but sturdily bound, lavishly illustrated, scrupulously headed and sub-headed. It is too often high in price, mediocre in style, poor and even inaccurate in matter. In addition to these works of dubious merit, the student may be offered anthologies and abstracts, the newest commentary on the philosopher, dramatist or poet. There seems to be a constant tendency to substitute the book review for the book, the critic for the author.

How, indeed, can anyone learn truly to love the great places in literature when, instead of being left to observe them for himself as he plods steadily along the quiet ways, he is rapidly whirled from this one to the next, and on and on until the end of the “course”. It may save much time to give him the best of Aristotle or of Plato, of Molière or of Shakespeare. He may have “covered” them completely enough; but he has been deprived of the pleasure, of the interest and of the discipline of gathering his own fruit.

It is worthy of notice that many of this generation, fed on textbooks, on anthologies and on abstracts, cannot read. (Neither indeed can they write.) I have heard of a young man in the classroom of a great university—not in Canada—who was asked to write an essay as the basis of discussion for the next meeting of the class. He said, “I am sorry but I can’t.” “Why not?” asked the professor. Then came the reply, “I’m non-verbal.” It is strange that in an age when we hear so much about mental hygiene we have forgotten that a good diet is the first rule of health and that books are still the cheapest and the best form of intellectual nourishment. Moreover, reading is the best stimulus, the surest invitation to quiet meditation, to rational analysis, to creative thought. A well-known figure in Canadian university life, disturbed by the busyness of these days of “audio-visual” education and of precise laboratory techniques, used to say to his science students: “If you want to get an idea, go and take a walk by yourself. No one ever had an idea in a lab.” Many will agree from experience that he is right. Reading and walking are the best provokers of thought. The present generation is rapidly losing both these useful arts.

Modern universities encourage, in spite of some qualms, early specialization. This means that many students have no knowledge at all worth the name, of certain important areas of learning, and these gaps in their knowledge occur too often in the field which should be the focal point for all others. How can there be a unity of knowledge, an integration of learning, a philosophy, when the centre is dropped out? Nowadays we admit the importance of man in the mass. We are paying, and we know we ought to pay, increasing attention to research in political science and sociology. We are, however, forgetting man as an individual, as he is found in literature, as he appears in history. We lose thereby the vivid understanding of the person which comes from seeing him set forth clearly at his best, and at his worst, and in all kinds of situations. We lose the great moral lessons which must be learned by anyone who, for example, has considered seriously and sympathetically the supreme figures of literature and of history. And we lose, moreover, our whole sense of the mystery of life, of the spiritual nature of man, for only in literature, sacred and profane, do we find men dealing boldly with the unknown and with the unknowable. We must derive from literature the surest foundation of our knowledge of man and the preparation for an understanding of God.

Modern universities also and perhaps inevitably encourage early research. Many of their advanced students have no adequate background even in the field of their own research. They have, as a rule, done no wide reading. It is safe to say that in very few of our academic departments does the specialist master the classics of his field. This is as true in history and in literature as in the sciences. Even when the student becomes a professor he may receive no encouragement, and he may have no time, for the wide reading and intensive thought necessary to his teaching and to his scholarship.

May I offer an illustration which has come to my attention of what I believe to be a most dangerous contempt for wide reading and ripe reflection, along with an undue emphasis on so-called “research”? In a certain university, professorial publications are classified either as “research” or as “magazine articles”. The latter less worthy category may and does often include essays of a high quality, giving evidence of wide reading and of deep reflection. Such essays perform what I take to be the proper task of the humanist in applying his understanding of human nature and human experience to current human problems. They are rated, however, even though they may be published in the most reputable periodicals, as “magazine articles”, and to descend from the scholarly to the practical, they bring no promotion. One young man in a junior position, with a growing family, renounced such work in favour of what he deemed relatively easy mechanical studies. He won preferment. This was told me as a true story; I can only hope it is not often true.

University communities contain those who are natural technicians and those who are capable of the highest creative thought; those preoccupied with the “know-how” and those concerned with the “know-why”. The latter must not be kept to the level of the former’s training. If they are, then our swollen faculties will be obliged to secure recruits from those who themselves have been trained not as philosophers and scholars but as technicians. Such a process could lead only to a condition in university communities where there would be scholars unable to fit their knowledge into a philosophy or so to interpret it as to make it apply to current needs. Their background might become so inadequate that they could not even analyse a current problem. In other words, our intellectual and spiritual heritage, although not lost, might be effectively buried and hidden like the manuscripts which humanists sought for with such diligence in the attics and cellars of fifteenth-century Europe.

We have not yet reached such a parlous state, but we are in grave danger of it. Our civilization is derived from three great sources: the Greek pursuit of truth and beauty; the Roman devotion to discipline and order; and the Judaic-Christian spiritual insight, with its penetration into the abiding mysteries of human nature and divine love on which all Christian civilization is founded. We are slowly but surely cutting ourselves off from these roots, “those things which are eternal and incapable of man’s measurement” which give to our contemporary civilization at once nourishment, support and direction. It is the duty of the university to maintain these roots in healthy and active connection with the tree. The leaves, flowers and fruit will appear in careless abundance in the upper air if the roots are safe and healthy and allowed to do their work; but without them there will be no creative inspiration, no intellectual food, no sense of form. The great menace of civilization in the present is that we offer an education with too little regard for the roots.

It may be argued that such strictures come from old-fashioned scholars devoted to gentlemanly disciplines. Why, it may be asked, concern ourselves with roots when science has changed everything? Why bother about growing processes in a synthetic age? Scientific techniques enable us, or will enable us if we use them intelligently, to achieve the security that everyone wants. With them, so we are told, we have everything.

The answer is, science has not changed everything. We are still the product of tradition. We are constantly moved by our unconscious assumptions. Indeed it might be said that, like the iceberg, nine-tenths of our motivations are below the surface. This is, I believe, good psychology although I am not a good psychologist. The idea has been expressed perfectly by Shakespeare in The Tempest, “What’s past is prologue”. This I believe is true at any given moment in history. It is most of all true in times of crisis. We are always moved by our own past. We act most surely and most effectively when we are not slavishly, but consciously and intelligently aware of this fundamental fact.

Let me then come back to my original idea. The weakness of the present generation is that it is rootless, and the great function of the university is to take it back to its true roots. We have been living through a time when the common retort to a serious remark has been “So what?”. The question is intelligent enough. The tragedy of the “So what?” generation has been that they have assumed that there is no answer. Today there are many signs among university students that this mood is passing. Young people today, with all their apparent indifference feel, even if they can hardly express their thought in words, that there is an answer to the persistent question, and that they should be helped to find it. It is, I believe, the duty of our universities to bring with understanding and sympathy, a far wider knowledge and a far sterner discipline to the reluctant heirs of the “So what?” generation—to lead them back to their roots. The function of the universities is to tell them what they all want to be told, that there is an answer, but that it is not an obvious or an easy one. The answer cannot be reached through academic short-cuts, nor can it be determined by a simple technique. The answer is yielded slowly and reluctantly, but those to whom it can be conveyed will have received far more than a diploma granting entry to a profession. They will have gained the understanding which permits them to enter into the life of civilization, “a thing not divided in time, but a communication between the dead, the living and those who shall live”.

The Small University and Its Part

Address at the Convocation of St. Francis Xavier University

Your Foundation plays a unique and distinguished part in a region famous for the number, for the antiquity and for the vitality of its university institutions. The name of this University recalls one of the most famous religious societies in the western world, less ancient perhaps than some represented in our country, but second to none in its noble and heroic associations with our early history. In the true spirit of the early fathers this institution has adapted itself to the demands of the modern age and to the needs of the locality in which it has found itself by meeting and coping with one of the greatest problems of our day. Your distinguished part in the co-operative movement has won you the respect of all Canadians.

I am always happy to speak at university convocations. Holding, as I do, decided views on university education, I am seldom at a loss for something to say. On this occasion, however, I must admit, you have put me in a position of no small embarrassment. Called upon to address the members of a liberal arts college with a religious foundation, I am confronted with a subject which is of the first importance: the value of a liberal education, and the significance of a religious frame of reference. I find, however, that I have been preceded yesterday and this morning by two visitors of distinction, each so eminently fitted to pronounce on these themes that I can only conclude that what has been left unsaid cannot possibly be worth saying. I am like the actor who has lost his lines. And I must add that, knowing as I do the reputation of your College for precision in planning and efficiency in execution, I am compelled to ask myself, is this an accident or was it, as our Presbyterian friends would say, foreknown and predestinated?

Whatever may be the truth, I am not a Presbyterian, and on this occasion it is my will to make a speech. I cannot hope, indeed, as I have said, to add much to what you must already have heard on the great themes of religion, a liberal education and life. But there is something I can do. As one with a lifelong knowledge of and love for our Canadian universities; as one who in the past few years has in one fashion or another had close and intimate contacts with many of them, I can offer you some modest reflections on Canadian university life and in particular on what I take to be the contribution to it of an institution such as this.

As everyone knows we have in this country a great variety of university foundations, although with our accustomed moderation we do not attempt to compete in that respect with our nearest neighbour. We range, however, in size and complexity from the immense university with professional and technical schools, related institutes of various types, schools of graduate studies, and vast and intricate affiliations, to the small homogeneous college which cherishes as its single aim the old-fashioned but still fundamental purpose of developing the educated man.

I visit all these institutions with much pleasure and I express to each one, whatever its character, my sincere good wishes and my admiration of the work it does. These are not, I hasten to add, idle compliments. In our universities there is, and there should be, a diversity of gifts. We must all recognize and rejoice in this fact. To say this and no more, however, would be to show an inadequate appreciation of the gifts. In times of peril and crisis individuals and institutions wisely look into their weaknesses and at the same time take stock of their resources. On occasions of celebration the emphasis is properly reversed. It is a time for rejoicing in strength, while at the same time casting a prudent glance on those limitations or dangers which must necessarily accompany special gifts. It is certainly not my desire nor is it within my capacity to offer any searching analysis or authoritative pronouncement. The reflections which I have to offer are the fruit of my journeys and of my reading—they are offered with the warmth and, I hope also, with the humility of a sincere friend.

The small liberal arts college has, I should imagine, a number of advantages perhaps more easily understood by its members than explained to outsiders. There is the all-important factor of personal, of almost individual, instruction. Too often teaching today may be no more than a cold and rational demonstration, or on the other hand, an emotional appeal or a curious combination of both. It is, of course, an illusion that the vast classrooms with perfect ventilation, lighting and acoustics enable even the best of professors to do for a group of one or two hundred what formerly he might have done for ten or twenty. The law of diminishing returns operates all too surely. Sound teaching is neither merely a rational demonstration nor an emotional appeal. It must be, as our experts tell us, addressed to the whole personality. Pascal had, I think, the same thing in mind when, protesting against mechanical rationalism, he said, “Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait pas.” Teaching which is to reach the whole person must be a matter of more or less intimate personal relationships and intellectual exchanges. The modern emphasis on what is called “group dynamics” is only a modern way of expressing the old truth that the best learning is done in small groups. The small college allows—if it does not ensure—that steady and continuous meeting of minds which too often in the larger institution is reduced to a very brief encounter. A true and whole conception of life may be conveyed to groups of few persons—it cannot be “taught” to massed classes. We would do well to remember Cardinal Newman’s warning on this subject: “An academic system without the personal influence of teachers upon pupils is an Arctic winter; it will create an ice-bound, petrified, cast-iron University and nothing else”.

A few years ago, as a member of a Committee whose duty it was to examine candidates for an important scholarship, I was struck by the fact that in the letters of recommendation forwarded by university professors, the writer frequently said that although he recommended the candidate highly, he was not personally acquainted with him! This was not the fault of the professor, but was a disturbing piece of evidence showing that because of numbers even students of unusual promise—the candidates were limited to this class—could not be personally known to those with the greatest responsibility for their education.

I have, perhaps, laboured a very simple matter. I need scarcely remind you of the corollary. The constant and intimate meeting of minds in the small college can result in the most intimate and fruitful fellowship between professors and students, a “fellowship of intellectual adventure”, a continuous conversation, a steady educational process which need not be related to class standing or marks or credits, and which will continue when all these last have been forgotten. This is true research, or rather it is the necessary foundation and background of all true research.

And this brings me to another matter which is not without significance. The small liberal arts college is not ringed round with professional and technical schools nor has it the embarrassing obligations which sometimes follow large grants for research. I am not suggesting that these elaborate accessories are necessarily bad. I do say that they may be Greek gifts. Free of them, at least the authorities can give their minds to the achievement of a liberal education without having their practices and procedures fitted to the Procrustean bed of a curriculum and credit system adapted to an immense variety of courses, most of which have little or no concern with liberal education.

Finally, the liberal arts college founded on a common religious belief has the immense advantage of a universal frame of reference, a coherent philosophy linked at once to moral standards of the present and to the great tradition of the past. I do not speak now of the religious or even of the moral value but rather of the intellectual significance of such foundations, of which we happily have many in Canada belonging to various communions. Properly understood, they provide the common ground without which truly intellectual conversation is almost impossible, the starting-point without which intellectual adventure may be aimless. I am not unaware of the dangers incidental to narrow dogmatism or of the value of free expression of thought. We are all aware of them. They are and must be matters of concern in any academic institution. But it is too easy to forget the other danger, which is attracting increasing attention from, shall I say, even the intellectual libertines. I mean the danger of that “neutralism” which may settle like a blight on those of differing or of ill-defined views. In the interests of sensitive feelings, for fear of acrimonious discussion, genuine intellectual exploration may be confined to mechanical reasoning and eventually Pascal’s essential reasons of the heart set aside as trivialities.

Sir Walter Moberly quotes a passage from Pusey:

The author observes that when this was written, it might have appeared to some as an expression of bigotry, but suggests that since then much has happened to give it relevance.

I have mentioned certain problems faced by the small college, and have suggested that smallness in numbers need never be accompanied by narrowness of mind. Such a mental attitude, while leading to intellectual sterility, can render no service to faith.

There is also the danger of parochialism, parochialism of time, of place and of thought. The college can so easily find a happy intimacy degenerating into a kind of pleasant but unfruitful coziness. It is never safe, particularly in our modern age, to forget the importance of constant intercourse with dissimilar groups. There is always a peril when this is done of refusing a reasonable co-operation for fear of losing one’s own identity. Such a fear is not a sign of life and vigour, but of timidity and of insecurity.

Again, there is the danger of poverty. This is not, I believe, the greatest danger of the small college yet, in the modern age, when we take for granted that the achievement of the worthiest and best of our aims may be accomplished through employment of material things, poverty can be a genuine and dangerous source of weakness; and as we all know, poverty can be a special menace of the college which does not give itself to the profitable pursuits of professional learning and of applied research.

Assuming, however, and I do assume, that these perils can be faced, one cannot but be immensely impressed with the opportunity of the small college to make a much-needed contribution to Canadian university life. It can do much, I believe, to restore that unity of knowledge which we are losing. This must be done, not by any revival of mediaevalism, but by a reinterpretation of old truths in the light of new ones. It is T. S. Eliot, I believe, who has remarked that one cannot be a good critic of Goethe without knowing Thomas Mann. I should like to offer two illustrations from my recent reading suggesting how our sense of the unity of knowledge depends on a perpetual intercourse between the living past and the actual present.

In English-speaking universities there has been increasingly an unhappy tendency to divide institutions of higher learning into the secular ones, which worship science, and the religious, which may regard scientific studies at best with some suspicion. We now find eloquent pleas for universities, professedly Christian or otherwise, to recognize in their teaching one important truth. Modern science is a unique product of Christian and western civilization. Modern science depends in the first place on the conception of monotheism, of order in the universe, which is the scientist’s first axiom. This conception we have developed in the western world and it has been treasured in the Christian Church. It is not to be found in any such clarity in Greek, Chinese or Indian thought.

A second Christian conception which again has done much to encourage and inspire scientific study is a genuine love of nature, the love of a nature which is the manifestation of a God of Love. You will recall the passage in Religio Medici, in which the author says:

There has been, in our western world, the willing and eager exploration of those mysteries which furnish one clue to an understanding of the divine operations and the divine purpose.

Again, I find expressed, not once but many times, in academic circles, the fear that with the loss of that sense of divine meaning and purpose which first directed and inspired scientific studies, the very meaning and purpose of science may be lost. And a purposeless exploration of the powers of the universe by those unconscious of its meaning is a process that one fears even to contemplate.

The following observation of M. Gilson is not irrelevant:

In saying these things, I recall that it is a part of your great tradition to speak to people in their own language, to present the eternal truths in contemporary dress. The new language of our day, as we all know, is the language of science, and a rather special aspect of scientific research suggests again a special contribution which the small college is in a position to make. The years after the First World War were marked with innumerable discussions of, and publications on, the immaterial world and its occult power. In our own post-war years, equally concerned as they are with the metaphysical, scholars are turning increasingly to revealed religion and to the works of the great mystics of ancient and of more recent times. Certain parallels between the methods and ideas of the mystics and of modern psychologists would seem to have significance. A leading British review, emphasizing the importance of this tendency in the whole of life, closes an article on recent publications in this field with the following words: “It is indeed a promising sign that such books as these . . . are finding capable translators and new readers for it is on the basis of a renewed understanding of the mystical experience that any restatement of religious truth for a psychological age must be based.”

I am dealing here, I am fully aware, with difficult problems, but to me they are important ones. I offer only illustrations of my thought. I believe, and I have said elsewhere, that larger universities are in danger of losing not only the community of scholars but also the unity of knowledge. The smaller ones, while retaining the community of scholars, may also lose sight of the unity of knowledge if, devoted to their exclusive and special interests, they lose sight of their universal mission. But if they keep that ever before them, they will render even greater service. They can offer an expression of the unity of knowledge in the intellectual sphere. They can, moreover, show that this unity has necessary and essential implications on the higher level of values in relation to the whole man, or, as Pascal says, in relation to the reasons of the heart.

A true and living restoration in the universities of this unity of knowledge could do immense service to our country and to our civilization. It is of great importance to learn to speak one another’s language. I am, however, moved to ask myself how we can learn each other’s language if we do not know our own. What have we to say to each other in any language, failing a clear, coherent and complete view of our intellectual world? What a great opportunity there is here for the small, intimate community of scholars with a broad, generous intellectual vision!

There is no need to emphasize the immense importance of the great universities of Canada, with the magnitude and variety of their tasks. None the less, when I contemplate the current trends, the dangers of size and of multiplicity of aims, the octopus spread of immense institutions, I feel that, rightly inspired, wisely led, single but not solitary, conscious of limits and yet with a sense of special power, foundations such as this one may have a great, one might say a redemptive, mission in Canadian university life.

The Tale of a College

Address at the Centenary Dinner of
University College, Toronto

This evening, I have very personal pleasure in being with you, and in sharing in the celebration of our Centenary.

I use the word “personal” for I am proud to be a University College man, and I have a feeling of sincere gratitude to the College for what it gave me as an undergraduate. I have, as we all have, deep admiration for the service it has rendered in the century which has just closed and a profound belief that its achievements will be even greater in the century which has just commenced.

The recollections of those who were here as undergraduates between 1906 and 1910 (I was bound to mention these years sooner or later!) are inevitably limited—limited by the degree of corporate life we were enabled to enjoy; the extent to which we were able to see one another and share common experiences. When you enter the precincts of your College almost solely for the purpose of attending lectures and classes, and forgather with your fellows rarely outside these not invariably hilarious occasions, your reminiscences are naturally restricted.

Those, of course, were the days when University College, as a college, was slowly emerging from what in the stock market they call “an all-time low”. Then, it really was not a college—a collegium—at all. It was more like a non-collegiate body, living in the shadow of the University of which it is proud to be a part but into which it has never wished to be completely absorbed. It was endeavouring to acquire a personality of its own. It had just acquired its own head but the College still harboured within its walls the President of the University himself, who was able, at close range, to observe, if not to supervise its activities! The University offices, too, were housed in these buildings, and twice a month we undergraduates were profoundly impressed—and not a little mystified—to see trooping into one of the classrooms, towards the end of the day, a group of solemn, slow-moving figures who the janitor, whispering not necessarily in awe-struck tones, told us were the “Board of Governors”! The old residence, which had housed in “The Cloisters”—not always given to the tranquillity and calm which the name suggests—a small, but high-spirited group of undergraduates, had disappeared, and the College had lost what might be described as its convivial focus. Residential accommodation for either men or women students lay far in the future.

The structure erected to house University College was, in those days, known as the “Main Building”, sharing this romantic appellation with the principal structure to be found in any well-organized county fair. Into the College precincts were crowded departments concerned with what we know here as “University subjects”. I think, if I may digress for a moment, that the visitor to our academic halls must find it of no small interest that in Toronto the College may teach history to a certain year, I think it is a.d. 476, after which the University picks up the torch, or, indeed, that one romance language is taught by the Colleges and the others by the University! Of course, we know the historic reasons for this. Perhaps it adds to the colour and charm of our Alma Mater that, although logic is taught within her walls, it is not invariably practised!

So much for some recollections of forty years ago. I would like to say, and I am sure that my contemporaries will agree, that, despite the inadequacies of those days—since so fully recognized and so largely overcome—there existed the basis of an abiding loyalty among the men and women who frequented the romanesque building which we learned to love. Indeed, its architecture played no small part in our feeling towards the institution we belonged to. That is what architecture can do. Purists can say what they like about our building, but it has character and distinction and it conveyed something to us which was of permanent value.

But, if we look back over all the years represented in this room, I think we can agree that there is one supreme reason why the College merits the loyalty and devotion of all of us. I am thinking of the personalities under whose guidance we worked. I can recall, I know, with a deep sense of gratitude, the names of a group of richly endowed characters, each possessing strong individual qualities—all showing devotion to their task and concern for those whom they taught. They were far from being standardized in their tastes or habits—academic eccentricity, that lovable quality, was richly represented; and they were capable, most of these men, of striking a spark in the dullest undergraduate who sat before them.

Tonight each of us is naturally thinking of the period in the past which we look upon as the vintage years. That is natural, but we can all turn to one year of equal interest and pride to every one of us—the year we commemorate this evening—1853.

I suppose few colleges have had a more inauspicious birth than ours. The institution did not rise as the result of a great upsurge of popular feeling. I think that the College might be entered in the academic stud book with the words “by Legislation out of Necessity”. When the child was born, it was decided to find it, or rather build it, a home. Mr. Stewart Wallace has described the very practical motives which apparently lay behind what appeared to be an act of imagination and generosity. I shall not labour this point. The important thing is that the deed was done, although circumstances made it necessary, or at least advisable, that the first steps should be taken by stealth! As far as I can make out, there were but three brave men in attendance at the clandestine laying of the foundation stone. How different that furtive proceeding must have been from the scene of pageantry and enthusiasm which we witnessed this afternoon. The former occasion must have been safeguarded by arrangements which would make a modern security officer green with envy. The cornerstone was so secretly laid it has never been found since!

I have mentioned the architecture of our College. I have no further comment to make about its style—or charming variety of styles—but perhaps I might be permitted to say how interested I was to discover the intimate relation between my distant and distinguished predecessor of a hundred years ago and the plans for the building. Apparently, the Governor-General of the day took a part in the foundation of this College, far more active than his more cautious, even timid, successors have thought appropriate. In Mr. Wallace’s history of the University there are some passages from the papers of John Langton on the subject, which I cannot refrain from quoting:

When the ground was staked out and the first sod about to be turned, a new difficulty arose, and again John Langton gives us a vivid picture of what happened:

Well, you will be relieved to know that I regard this episode merely as a picturesque fragment of our history, and not as an invitation to emulate the example of my predecessor in intervening in your plans!

So much for the past. I have no doubt dealt with it at too great length. You must forgive the digressions of an unreformed history teacher, but if we leave the past what of the future? What is to be the role of the College in its second century? What will be the changes in its life? What dangers lie ahead? Of one thing we may be sure. The ceremony of this afternoon had a deep significance. The long-awaited residence for men which is now assured will deeply enrich the life of this institution. Let us be grateful to all those who have made it possible.

It is very easy to think of such a building in a purely utilitarian sense. It does provide food and shelter for the undergraduate on reasonable terms, but a college residence is an instrument of education. It is an integral part of an academic house, and it shares an importance with the classroom, because undergraduates can often learn from one another and from the teachers who live with them in an informal—often spontaneous—way, as much as can be imparted by the set-piece of the lecture room, particularly should it be presented under the rule of compulsion.

Without a collegiate residence, no college can possess a communal life and in a college a communal life should be found. I was reading the other day some of the things that Cardinal Newman had to say on the functions of a college. He used the word “household” to describe it and called it “the shrine of our best affections, the bosom of our fondest recollections, a spell upon our after life. . . .” It is interesting that these reflections should be found in a chapter entitled “Colleges, the Corrective of Universities”. This phrase may suggest that I am about to strike a controversial note on a happy and harmonious evening. Far from it. Newman conceived a delicate and acceptable balance between the function of a university and that of its colleges. He was thinking, of course, of the English universities, but what he said is applicable in principle, if not in detail, to other and newer foundations such as ours, where arts colleges exist as parts of an academic whole. May I quote one short passage:

But this distinction is, of course, too sharp. If the Arts College is the citadel of the humanities, it must not keep them enclosed and isolated from other parts of the University. The studies we associate with the humanities may be taught in one place, but their spirit should pervade every faculty, institute, or school. If instruction cannot be imparted with an understanding of, and concern for, the principles involved, then it has no place in a university and should find another home. (I apologize if I appear to be following a well-trodden path or, to change the metaphor, to be beating an oft-heard drum. I am afraid I am unrepentant in talking about these matters. You will agree with me that they are not unimportant.)

The neglect of the humanities in present-day education is doubtless not a cause but a symptom of an age. But any symptom which aggravates the sickness, as this one does, must be treated as a malady in its own right. The treatment is obvious. It is for the Universities now so to use their traditional freedom that they may resume their universal function. They should not necessarily cut off or curtail any useful activity. They should rather strive to redress the balance, to restore a true perspective, to define with courage and with clarity what are the essential values in education as distinct from training.

Institutions like University College here, and our three sister Colleges, remind us of this universal function because they loyally perform it. It is this that should move us above all else to honour our own College today; and I think we would do well to remind ourselves that, although University College has changed out of all recognition in its organization, in its equipment, and in its size during the span of its first century, its purpose remains precisely the same as that which its founders had in mind. It was founded, exists, and must always exist for one fundamental purpose—the development of the educated man or woman.

So, more important even than treasured personal associations and the memories of old friendships should be our quickened belief in the College as a living, vital force, keeping alive, in this great University, the spirit which gives all universities their inner meaning.

The Gifts of the University

Address at the Convocation of the
University of British Columbia

I am deeply conscious of the responsibility of preparing and delivering an address to such an audience on an occasion so serious and so important to many here. Let me hasten to add that I have not, of course, forgotten the feelings of my young fellow-graduates who, having suffered already many things on their academic pilgrimage are now, I suppose, bracing themselves for one more trial. I have not forgotten you; indeed, I feel for you, but I cannot spare you.

I am, I hope, earning my degree by delivering this speech, and you, I fear, must complete the earning of yours by hearing it. We are thus united as classmates should be, not perhaps in a common, but in a reciprocal ordeal. Let us endure it together with courage!

We may well do so. Ordeals, common or reciprocal, are indeed among the finest things in university life, whether they take place on what our administrators call a “high level” such as the one which is ours today, or on a lower, more materialistic plane.

An example of the latter type occurs to me, and although it may perhaps be thought a trifle unseemly by those who are sitting behind me, I shall nevertheless venture to offer it to them as an example of practical wisdom in University administration. The incident occurred at the University of Oxford and I give it to you in the words of the don who relates it:

Now shall we get on with our reciprocal ordeal. It is, indeed, ours, and I am speaking now directly to my younger fellow-graduates. I want to offer you as simply and humbly as I can, some of the reflections which always come to me when I find myself once more at a great University on its great day.

You are, whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not, being admitted to a privileged order in your community. You are a select group. The task you complete today has been a difficult and a costly one. I am not now thinking of the trials of lectures and examinations. I am thinking of money, of the cost of your university education to yourselves, your parents, to this province, to the country. I am thinking of time, of the three or four years that you have invested at a period in your lives when your mind and your emotions are most ready for exercise, for growth and for the achievement of maturity.

Let me remind you that you have chosen to spend this time as you have done. You are an elite, elect, if you wish, but self-elected, to privileges which are denied to most. I think I see in your faces that you have heard this before. I hope you have. You are now to hear it again. This, remember, is our ordeal.

Now you have these privileges, what are you going to do about them? You are people who now have power. This power, by your own will, has been granted to you. Have you realized that it has also been imposed upon you? The essence of democratic society is that power is an obligation as much as a right. Those who value power for its own sake are not fit to exercise it. They are more than over-privileged; they are a menace. If you think of what you have acquired here as riches, you will be the idle rich, no matter how busy you may be.

You are now, then, to use your power—it may be very great power—over your own lives, and over the lives of others. Power wisely used leads to great and noble achievement, but it is not easy to use power wisely. May I suggest (as your senior classmate) two virtues that you need, two aims that you should follow. Each one is complementary to the other, and each represents a part of your education that will never be completed, for it goes through life. One is a virtue simple and obvious in appearance, complex and mysterious in truth; a virtue which was the subject of the most famous of the dialogues of one of the most famous pagan philosophers—Plato. The other is, perhaps, the most typical and almost certainly the most rare of Christian virtues.

Plato, in The Republic, found the essence of goodness in the individual and in the State (and by the State he meant all of society) in justice. Socrates said that justice “is the ultimate cause and the condition” (of all other virtues); that it is simply “doing one’s own business and not being a busybody . . . the having and doing what is a man’s own, and belongs to him”.

Those who know this work better than I, will recall the elaborate examination of the virtues and harmony of the State and of the parallel situation which is described in the individual. That I have torn these phrases somewhat from their context, I acknowledge. Nevertheless, I believe that in this modern world where, amid conflicting ideologies, so many are struggling back to old truths, it is well to seek some permanent principle which each person and each society must establish: that ultimate virtue by which, as Plato says, a man has and does that which rightly belongs to him.

For you, I would suggest that justice means two things: A right ordering of your private lives and a sense of public duty.

First, about yourselves. You have been nourished by a great University in the high tradition. As virtue, true virtue, is, and must be, its own sufficient reward, so knowledge in the truest sense is valued for its own sake. There may be many who will accuse me here of flagrant neglect of the demands of modern life in a scientific world; of trying to re-create the lost society of the pedant and of the dilettante; of being “impractical”. I accept the challenge. I am not looking backward, I am thinking of the present and of the future. No one, for example, questions the unique contributions of Great Britain for the past two centuries to applied science, and yet last year Sir Edward Appleton, President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, entitled his presidential address, significantly, “Science for Its Own Sake”. Having mentioned ten years of public service in applied science, he went on to point out “that Science has interest as well as utility—that Science is illuminating as well as fruitful”. Arguments of profit and loss, he said, do not go to the heart of the matter. This is to be found in “the example of the scientist—be he amateur or professional—who is impelled solely by a passionate desire to explore and understand. That is what I mean by Science for its own sake—when knowledge and insight are sufficient reward in themselves”.

What has this to do with you and with Platonic justice? Simply that you have, or you should have by now, a conception of knowledge and insight in all areas worthy of investigation, as rewards in themselves. Having such a conception, it is for you by example and precept to promote the love of truth and the desire for knowledge. It is for you to represent to others less fortunate, that aspect of civilization without which all our material comforts are worthless; without which we cannot provide for the good life of the individual in society. It is for you to show in yourselves that the love of pure knowledge, and the earnest pursuit of it, are as much the obligation of the democratic citizen as the exercise of the vote and the acceptance of public office.

And may I add one warning (it is not irrelevant). It is also for you to show, by example and precept, that the pursuit of pure knowledge is only made possible by a careful and reverent use of one of the most precious parts of our civilized heritage—language. Language is, among other things, a vehicle of truth; our tongue through the centuries has been glorified by poets and dramatists, scientists and philosophers. Today in our careless and stumbling interpretations of democracy, we are dragging it in the dust. We must beware lest it take its own proper revenge; too much abused, it may turn on its enemies and confound them. Dictators, as we know well, abuse and confuse their own language. Free men are careful to use it with precision and respect. They recognize it as the most powerful means to the knowledge which preserves freedom. Is this merely an argument for spelling, for the rules of grammar, for principles or style? It is not. You have cleared such hurdles, passed those ordeals. It is a reminder that you have now in your hands the power to create, the power to destroy the truth by which we live.

Now about public duty. I spoke a moment ago of exercising the right to vote and accept public office. You have received, directly and indirectly, much from society. It will take your whole life to pay this debt. This is, I suggest, the meaning of Platonic justice, “the having and doing what is a man’s own”. If you have the power and knowledge for public service in any capacity, as I said a moment ago, it is imposed on you, and in the Platonic sense belongs to you, to offer yourself. Only so, can you be yourself in a free society. This is Platonic justice. I have said something of the public service that every man and woman should render every day. This public service must take the form of an active and intelligent understanding of the business of society and its institutions.

The sign of a healthy community is the willingness to participate in this business and to support its institutions with discerning criticism. It is observed that in younger countries the critical faculty is less developed than in older ones. Here is, perhaps, the responsibility of those who have the power and the privilege. It is for them to exhibit, in relation to what goes on about them, what a great religious body calls “concern”. Criticism, if adverse, can be harsh; if favourable, can be patronizing. It will be neither if offered with humility.

This brings me to the second virtue to which I referred, the peculiar Christian virtue, rare and precious—the virtue of humility. None is perhaps so hard, so impossible to achieve, for it is opposed by the vice of pride “whose name [said Sir Thomas Browne] is comprehended in a monosyllable but in its nature not comprehended in a world”. Pride generates the egotism which can neither learn nor love. It is the enemy of truth, and of humanity. It is mastered by humility—no negative virtue, but a positive grace achieved alone by those who stand in the light of a truth which illuminates them and which dedicates them to the love and service of their neighbours. Truth must be the guide of those who hold the power; but humility is their sign, the promise that their privileges are in safe hands. There is, indeed, no finer adornment, for the humble man has a dignity proof against all assaults, and a virtue untouched by the faults which he, himself, is the first to own. I need not, perhaps, add that humility is hard to win and harder to retain. The struggle for it will last through life, but it is a struggle which makes life worth living.

An introduction to this difficult virtue may be found in the steady and consistent contemplation of greatness; in a seeking for the best, not uncritically, but simply and sincerely. Such a pursuit takes us beyond ourselves, keeps us looking outward, at once steadies and speeds us on our way. Without humility, autocracy is tyrannical, aristocracy grows arrogant; democracy becomes merely mean. With it, and I believe only with it, can one expect to find the true harmony which Plato in his ideal “Republic” and which we, in these chaotic and fear-ridden days, long for. We are, I believe, in our instinctive reaction against the ills of the present time, and the ills we find in ourselves, unconsciously applying a remedy which aggravates the disease. Disease and remedy have been vividly described by a famous Canadian doctor:

And the writer continues:

I bring these words to your attention because they do describe, truly, attitudes seen all too frequently—a mood that is all too common. And yet I think that the post-war generation is ready to throw off this affectation of vice, this marked concern with evil, this instinct to escape from duty and from responsibility. There is a growing concern with justice, and, I hope and believe, an increasing desire to return with humility to a true understanding of the good and the great—of those virtues in our society which, though threatened, are not lost. You could pay no greater tribute to this University than to say that the years you have spent here have rooted and grounded you in a sense of justice and humility.

Some Lions in the Path

Address to the Alumni of the Collège de Montréal

More than 300 years ago, Ville Marie was founded by those who, in an age marked at once by material self-seeking and by spiritual conflict, determined that on this spot where the trader came in search of profits, there should be maintained a clear and constant witness of the truest and best in western civilization.

It was my privilege last year to visit the Mother House of the Compagnie de St. Sulpice at Issy-les-Moulineaux, in the outskirts of Paris. There I had the pleasure of meeting a number of the Fathers. I was impressed then, as I am today, by the role played by the Company in the history of Montreal and, indeed, of all Canada; by the bond which it created and has maintained between Canada and France. Every student of Canadian history knows that a group of Sulpician Fathers were the first Seigneurs of the Island of Montreal; that they founded the first Parish here which, at the beginning, embraced the entire Island. The fact is happily and appropriately commemorated in the common designation of Notre Dame—La Paroisse. You will, I hope, forgive me for touching on what you know so well—the contribution to our nation of Les Messieurs du Séminaire.

When, in the very early years of this perilous outpost, the members of your Company—La Compagnie de St. Sulpice—arrived, bent on carrying on their ordinary functions, they encountered conditions of extraordinary difficulty. Such things did not disturb them. In an age of religious strife and political confusion, it was their task to maintain essential values, by showing a due respect for tradition, along with a wise flexibility in the face of new and changing conditions. The initiative and tenacity called forth by the conflicts of the Old World fitted them admirably for the unknown struggles of the New.

Your President has not only been so courteous as to ask me to address you; he has added to his kindness by selecting the subject of my discourse. He asks me to speak on the humanities, a request which I am more than willing to obey. To be worthy of such a subject presented to such an audience, I feel that I should express myself entirely in Latin and, indeed, I would gladly do so. However, those of you who are familiar with the curricula of our schools in English-speaking Canada will scarcely be surprised if I confess that I find myself unequal to the task. From a classical education which was, indeed, a “thing of shreds and patches”,—few shreds remain to me. One of these I recall tonight—the saying of Terence:

I am a man; I count nothing human foreign to me. I might well choose this as a text for a discussion on the humanities. Unfortunately, to do it justice, I should require an entire evening. Once again, however, the will of the President is decisive. I will not tell you how many minutes have been allotted to me, because I am not quite sure how many minutes I shall require. I will say only that certain inexorable conditions of time compel me to spare you the exposition of my views on all that concerns mankind.

Je vais m’en tenir à un aspect fondamental que j’estime de la plus haute importance aujourd’hui. Vous vous rappelez que la Compagnie des Sulpiciens, avec d’autres groupes qui, eux aussi, sont marquants de nos jours, fut fondée à une période critique dans l’histoire de la pensée occidentale. Chez plusieurs gens, l’humanisme brillant des quatorzième et quinzième siècles s’était revêtu d’une livrée païenne. Les humanistes affirmaient le pouvoir et le droit de la raison par opposition à ce qu’ils appelaient une tradition morte; et telle était la puissance et l’éclat de leur défi qu’ils semblaient menacer non seulement les formes extérieures de la tradition, mais le coeur même d’une foi vivante.

Voilà le défi qu’acceptèrent les grandes communautés, les sociétés et les congrégations de l’Eglise au seizième siècle; dans un langage adapté à cette époque nouvelle, ils soutinrent de nouveau, que la raison n’est pas destructrice de la foi, que la foi n’est pas ennemie de la raison, mais que toutes deux sont destinées à travailler de front au service de la vérité.

C’est à dessein que je vous rappelle des faits que vous connaissez si bien—n’est-ce pas qu’il est plus facile de se situer dans le présent après avoir fait un tour dans le passé? Ce soir, je me propose de vous entretenir d’un danger grave et grandissant de notre époque. Je ne m’attarderai pas aux périls qu’encoure la foi. Ces périls, nous les connaissons tous, mais je laisse le soin d’en parler à ceux de vous qui sont mieux qualifiés que moi. Je pense aussi à un autre danger qui n’est peut-être pas aussi évident à tous, mais qui doit faire le souci de tout homme bien pensant et surtout de l’humaniste. Je veux parler des attaques que l’on dirige contre la raison, d’une disposition à nier ouvertement ou implicitement l’existence de la vérité objective et démontrable. Il y a quatre cents ans, les humanistes laïques firent, du pouvoir et de l’intégrité de la raison, la pierre angulaire de leur foi. Les humanistes chrétiens, comme on vient de le voir, acceptèrent le défi et affirmèrent que la foi et la raison forment une alliance nécessaire et naturelle. Aujourd’hui, la société peut fort bien demander à ces humanistes qui déplorent la déchéance des humanités: “Que faites-vous actuellement, en tant qu’humanistes, pour assurer et démontrer le pouvoir de la raison?”

Nous ne connaissons que trop bien les plus flagrantes atteintes portées à la raison. Ne songez-vous pas à ces états totalitaires où la pensée humaine est avilie, la nature humaine est écrasée et déformée, et l’existence même d’une justice rationnelle et d’une vérité objective est niée, au nom de religions qui s’avèrent aussi fausses que néfastes. Nous savons tout cela. Et nous savons en plus, que dans ces états totalitaires, le parti politique se donne tous les droits—la justice est déformée selon ses exigences, la science est assujettie à sa philosophie, l’art et la musique servent aux besoins de sa propagande, l’esprit humain est détruit froidement et tous ses secrets lui sont arrachés brutalement dans l’intérêt de sa stratégie. Nous sommes au fait de tous ces excès, et nous les déplorons sincèrement; mieux encore, nous sommes heureux de ne pas en être coupables, et nous en louons Dieu. Mais comme le pharisien, nous oublions peut-être de jeter un regard sur nos propres déficiences.

Permettez-moi de revenir à l’aphorisme latin que j’ai cité tout à l’heure. On peut lui donner une signification troublante. Rien de ce qui touche l’humanité—le bien comme le mal—ne peut m’être indifférent. C’est là une vérité inquiétante—non seulement suis-je le gardien de mon frère, mais je participe à sa nature—je suis donc solidaire de tout ce qu’il fait, le bien comme le mal. Alors, regardons ce qui se passe. Dans notre société contemporaine, nous assistons à un débridement d’émotions, à une adhésion à un semblant de foi. Ces manifestations tantôt banales, tantôt outrées, ne sont pas soumises à la force équilibrante et stabilisante de la raison, et c’est en ceci qu’elles sont dangereuses. On se rend compte, qu’en pratique aussi bien qu’en principe, la raison souffre d’un abandon croissant.

En ce siècle de science, un tel aveu peut paraître mal fondé, et même ridicule. Il faut avouer que les conditions qui régissent notre ambiance matérielle, sans compter les forces qui menacent de nous détruire physiquement, sont issues de recherches scientifiques que l’on considère comme la fine fleur de la raison. Mais il faut aussi admettre, qu’en envisageant sérieusement ces étonnantes manifestations matérielles de la raison, plusieurs tombent dans un état d’admiration idolâtre, qui dépasse la raison.

This may, indeed, be no more than a proper tribute from those who understand the helplessness, as well as they do the might, of the human mind. Its reflection among the many who are less well-informed may manifest itself in ways that are foolish, if not dangerous. One of the disturbing characteristics of our age is, indeed, the ignorant invocation of science where science has no place. An American theologian has given some graphic examples of this tendency:

And, while we thus ignorantly worship science—I could even say because we thus ignorantly worship science—we are turning our backs on the mental discipline without which science is worthless, and the humanities dangerous. In the everyday business of life, in the countless decisions made every day by every man and woman, decisions which are collectively far more important even than the wonders of science in determining the quality of human life—in these decisions reason is being set aside, the quality which humanists saw as the crown of human nature is being scorned. The propagandist who operates on human appetites and human emotions leaves us no time for study and reflection. His noisy exhortations drown out the quiet, critical, questioning voices which, exposing error, used to help to open the way to truth.

May I offer a few illustrations of what I mean? They are only too familiar to all of us. They are, I suggest, evidences of a mental state against which the humanist, as a humanist, must protest.

First there is the reverence for the big name—which, indeed, may be no more than the name one hears oftenest, regardless of merit. It is a shocking truth that we are increasingly unable to appreciate the anonymous book—the unsigned article. Some here may recall the remarks of the critic in Bernard Shaw’s Fanny’s First Play, when he is asked his opinion on a dramatic work. He enquires, “Who is it by?” and when he is told that that is a secret, he replies, “You don’t expect me to know what to say about a play when I don’t know who the author is, do you?”

We do not trust our critical sense. Why? Is it not an admission of the fact that we have discarded the critical faculty, that through incapacity or sheer inertia we can no longer respond with our whole mind and spirit to the various human voices which address us. Rejecting the guidance of reason, we have rather become automata, ready to give an instant and uniform mechanical response to the man who presses the right button.

Equally barbarous is our uncritical reverence for the expert—I almost said the medicine man! We contemplate his performances, we listen to his exhortations in a condition of passive admiration, and all too infrequently does some precocious child of nature stand out from the crowd long enough to remark that “the Emperor has no clothes”.

And this reminds me of a third mark of our irrational mental habits. It used to be known as obedience to the rule of the tribe. The modern name for it is “group integration” or respect for the consensus. We so often refuse to exercise our reason even on matters well within our competence. We fear to make any bold and decided individual statement lest the group should find us wrong. We indulge in group thinking and we assume that others do the same. The assumptions are at once laughable and tragic. A blunt statement of opinion is not considered on its merits. It is immediately attributed to the unseen influences of religion, race, party, family—or most frequently and most gleefully, the subconscious reaction induced by the operation of the glands. When I say that Mr. X is talking nonsense—a luxury in which, at present, I can rarely indulge—no one asks himself seriously and rationally whether, in fact, Mr. X is talking nonsense. There is organized, instead, an elaborate research project and eventually we learn, not whether my remark is true—that, it seems, is irrelevant—but what induced me to make it. It will be shown that Mr. X and I are graduates of rival universities, have differing tastes in ties, or perhaps snubbed each other at a school board meeting ten years ago.

Loin de moi l’idée que nous devrions faire fi des réputations bien fondées, manquer de respect pour les spécialistes de la science, se passer des opinions de notre groupe, et ne pas tenir compte des préjugés.

Mais ce que je propose, c’est qu’en fondant nos décisions et nos jugements sur ces seules considérations, nous abaissons nos opérations intellectuelles au niveau de celles de la tribu primitive, et cela, en plein âge atomique. A mon point de vue, ce danger est l’ennemi le plus redoutable qu’encourent les humanités.

Cependant, l’indifférence envers les humanités ne m’inquiète pas autant que l’indifférence des humanistes envers nous. Ils ont trop longtemps présumé, à tort, que le respect porté au travail de l’homme de science comporte automatiquement le respect des opérations normales de la raison. Evidemment, tel n’est pas le cas. N’est-ce pas alors, que l’humaniste a la responsabilité de maintenir et de commander le respect pour les fonctions de la raison, malgré la léthargie, les préjugés, et les passions des hommes. Je crois qu’il a oublié cette responsabilité. Ici, au Canada, personne ne doute de la variété et de la richesse de notre vie culturelle, mais je crains qu’il soit impossible de profiter de ces bienfaits comme nous le devrions, sans redécouvrir le pouvoir de la raison, d’une raison qui n’est pas l’ennemie de la foi, mais sa digne compagne dans l’oeuvre d’éclairer et d’élever tous les aspects de la vie humaine. Voilà une entreprise qui dépasse toute différence de culture et de langue. Il faut se rendre compte que ce qui est en jeu, c’est la base même, je ne dirai pas, de nos deux cultures, mais de la civilisation que nous avons en commun. Cette civilisation a été inspirée et nourrie par la foi, mais elle se fonde sur la raison et en tire ses disciplines. Les humanistes doivent assumer l’obligation d’affirmer et de maintenir la vigueur et l’intégrité de la raison. La tâche est pressante; de son accomplissement dépendent l’illumination de la foi, l’intégrité de la science, et enfin, la paix et le progrès de la société.

The Academic Cornerstone

Address at the University of Ottawa

C’est avec un très vif intérêt que j’ai lu l’histoire de votre université. On ne peut manquer, lorsqu’on en prend connaissance, de songer au grand ordre religieux à qui elle doit son existence et sous la direction duquel elle a grandi et prospéré. L’importance du rôle que les Pères Oblats ont joué et continuent à jouer dans la vie de notre pays ne saurait échapper à personne. La réputation de courage, de dévouement et de zèle de vos Pères, missionaires et éducateurs, est légendaire et il m’est à peine besoin de le rappeler. Il n’existe pas de plus beau témoignage de la grandeur de leur oeuvre que cette université qui, il y a quelques années déjà, célébrait cent ans de services rendus à la cause de la raison humaine et de la foi chrétienne.

Le rôle que vous jouez au Canada dans le domaine de l’enseignement supérieur a un caractère tout particulier, approprié d’ailleurs à votre situation, ici, dans notre capitale nationale. Ottawa a ses fondations tant dans le Canada de langue française que dans celui de langue anglaise et, si j’ose dire, sert de pont entre eux. La composition de cette ville constitue un exemple de collaboration entre nos deux races. L’Université d’Ottawa est une université bilingue et, dans son personnel enseignant, dans ses étudiants et dans ses programmes, elle représente bien les deux grandes traditions culturelles de notre pays.

La culture dérivée de la France et celle qui est dérivée des Iles britanniques nous apparaissent différentes, pourvues l’une et l’autre de qualités propres. Et il n’est pas douteux, en effet, que ces deux cultures ne sont pas les mêmes. Au Canada nous accueillons ces divergences avec plaisir. C’est à elles que nous devons notre caractère particulier et la variété que nous nous réjouissons de posséder dans notre vie nationale. Et pourtant, la vie et l’oeuvre de votre université nous rappellent que ces deux cultures n’ont pas une origine différente. La culture française et la culture anglaise ont en commun, par delà ce qui les distingue, des sources dont le courant remonte jusqu’au moyen-âge. Et si l’histoire nous a fait culturellement différents, une conception parente de l’humanisme nous rapproche, en laquelle il y a une véritable raison de croire que nous sommes un peu de la même famille.

La culture la plus humaine est celle qui fait des valeurs spirituelles son fondement et l’essentiel de son contenu. Et parce que la culture française et la culture anglaise communient toutes deux à un même fond historique d’humanisme chrétien, parce qu’aussi elles plongent toutes deux leurs racines dans la terre féconde du classicisme, elle doivent donner au Canada un exemple d’existence fraternelle et simultanée. Le pluralisme culturel est le signe des civilisations avancées et les Canadiens doivent à leur réputation de peuple généreux de tout mettre en oeuvre pour que ce régime soit celui sous lequel progressent leurs idées et leurs institutions.

Just now I mentioned the subject of humanism. Let me say how happy I was a few minutes ago to perform a most agreeable duty—that of laying the foundation stone of the new building you are erecting to house your Faculty of Arts. I am glad that, if I was to have the honour of laying a cornerstone of one of the structures which will serve the expanding needs of this University, the Arts building was the one selected, because I have very strong views—shared, I know, by many others—about the role which the liberal arts, the humanities, should play in academic life. I am unrepentant in taking every opportunity that comes my way of saying what I profoundly believe to be true on this subject. I apologize if I appear to be following a well-trodden path, but you will agree with me, I am sure, that such matters are not unimportant. If Arts buildings, wherever they stand, have cornerstones, I would like to suggest that the Faculty of Arts itself should be the cornerstone of every institution of higher learning. I think that sentiment would probably be very widely accepted in principle, but when one looks at the Universities of today with the growth in academic precincts of, let us say, technology, in so many forms, one wonders how often the principle has been neglected and the cornerstone forgotten. I cannot help thinking of a verse in St. Mark’s Gospel (I hope that the students present will not think that the quotation of a text heralds a sermon!). Here is the phrase I have in mind:

Let us hope that the liberal arts, if we can regard them as the cornerstone of a University, after much neglect in many places—will come into their own once more. Then we will be able to complete the quotation from St. Mark and say that this precious stone again “is become the head of the corner”.

Today of course it is natural that the physical sciences should make heavy demands on our thought and on our resources. We can understand why the liberal arts should have become so regrettably overshadowed. The problem has now, for a good many years, played an important part in the thinking of academic people, but the issue, may I suggest, will not be solved by placing science and the humanities in separate compartments; by a divorce of one from the other. We cannot leave the development of atomic forces to technocrats who ignore the principles which underlie human relations—such men would be as dangerous as statesmen who were ignorant of the existence of nuclear energy. The world needs philosophic scientists and scientific philosophers. Conflict between science and the humanities is surely a meaningless strife. If true to itself, science must confer many of the blessings which the humanities themselves transmit to those who follow them. We have been rightly asked to look on science itself as one of the great humanities. We need to be reminded of the warning: “You may not divide the seamless coat of learning”. An English scholar has said:

But the latter danger would not seem to be the greater one today. We are not likely, at least here in North America, to be immured in any “cloister of the mind”. On the contrary, the humanities seem still to be in retreat while we stand in urgent need of what lies in their gift.

This has often been described as a scientific age. It is perhaps more accurate to call it a technical age. Scientists, if we use that honourable term in its proper sense, are relatively few, but so important is their function now that the technicians who give practical application to the researches of the scientist, steadily increase in numbers. The growth should even be accelerated if we are to have the technical services we need, and technological training must grow proportionately. Technology has been defined, perhaps a little ungenerously, as “a long Greek name for a bag of tools”. But Universities are primarily concerned not with the tools so much as with the men and women who use them. If a University exists to preserve and promote all truly useful knowledge, I would like to suggest that the most useful knowledge which any of us can acquire, or try to acquire, is a knowledge of the nature and meaning of life. This must be at the centre. Everything else flows from it, and from it gains sense and purpose.

Such knowledge has, in the past, been based on those studies which we call the humanities. Their present neglect is doubtless a symptom of the age in which we live. Our humane Christian tradition is threatened today as it has not been for many centuries by an opposing philosophy which is pagan, materialistic and ruthless. Should it prevail, human freedom would be extinguished and what we know as western civilization would vanish. This materialistic philosophy need not be defined. We know it all too well. We need no appraisal of the danger which it carries.

That danger lies largely without our gates, but, as I have suggested, there are mental perils within the walls—a philosophy not so easily detected, which darkens our thinking. I have recently read an arresting book by an American scholar who, in his comments on contemporary life, observes that “man’s ingenuity has outrun his intelligence”. He then depresses the reader by describing the efforts of those who attempt today to create and apply what they call “the science of man”—“human engineers” who apply to human personality the methods developed in the physical sciences. The more advanced and self-assured of our “human engineers” look forward to being able both to predict and regulate the operations of the human mind. When a prophet of this new era forecast with confidence a few years ago our “approaching scientific ability to control man’s thoughts with precision”, it was not surprising that Sir Winston Churchill, who heard him, remarked (according to the reports) that he would “be very content to be dead before that happens”. To attempt to apply to personality the methods which belong to chemistry and physics, reveals a grave aberration in our thinking, but this basic error inspires much that is written today and prompts much that is being done. The “conditioning” of human beings as mechanisms by the new techniques, were it possible, would lead to a society in which the individual would be submerged in the mass. We have been given frightening pictures of what such a world would be like.

So we witness today a battle between mechanists and humanists. We cannot remain neutral. Universities everywhere reflect this conflict, but it is the universities’ function to be not so much a minor as a beacon. To the universities we must look for guidance. We must ask them to keep a true perspective, to define with clarity and courage what are the essential values in education and in life. They must be concerned with many “practical” things, but as I have ventured to say before, cannot replace the magic of the human heart and the mystery of the human mind. We could not do without psychological research, statistical calculation, experimentation in science. Excellent in themselves, their importance requires no emphasis, but they are not substitutes for other things—the reasoned faith of the theologian; the insight of the philosopher; the imagination of the historian; the vision of the poet.

Je sais que l’université dont je suis aujourd’hui l’invité reste fidèle aux grandes traditions de l’enseignement supérieur. Le rôle que vous jouez en tant que gardiens de l’humanisme chrétien est d’une grande importance et mérite notre profond respect et notre appui. C’est toujours avec plaisir et reconnaissance que je me rappellerai ce passage dans les murs de votre institution. En vous quittant, je veux vous exprimer mes voeux les plus sincères et les plus chaleureux: puisse l’avenir assurer la prospérité de l’Université d’Ottawa.

Poetry is Education

Address to the Women Teachers’ Association of Toronto

I have come here to spend an evening with you—but I am very happy to be overheard by any who are interested. If there are sympathetic hearers, that will only add to my enjoyment. It is a privilege to be with you and to express to you my deep sense of the value of your work. It is not for me on this occasion to speak of the daily trials which test your devotion. I do, however, recall a true story which seems to give some hint of them. A mother was commenting to a teacher on what seemed to her unduly protracted school vacations. “Do the children,” she asked, “really need such long holidays?” The reply was instantaneous. “No, but the teachers do.” In my present capacity, when I ask for a holiday for the children, I am aware that the teachers are able to accept the proposal with becoming resignation, whatever the mothers may say.

It is not for me to particularize on your problems. I had thought, indeed, that I would find it easy to generalize about the eminently safe and respectable field of education. I am informed, however—by my spies—that this field, once a smooth and shining meadow, is now a battlefield. It is strewn with broken swords and shattered armour. It is littered with the wounded. Fatalities, I believe, have been few, but my counsellors suggest that the field of education is not a very appropriate area for a constitutionally cautious Governor-General.

I shall, however, try to pick my way through this dangerous territory and I hope that you will offer me, as it were, a safe conduct. I ask this privilege not merely as your guest, but as an aged, aged man who left school when the century was still young. I know as little of the tradition of progressivism as I do of the progress of traditionalism—but, with a little bit of luck, I may pull through. And if I should stray, please ascribe it to ignorance, or should I say innocence, and not malice.

If I were a teacher, I should do many things very badly. I should not be good at arithmetic; my knowledge of the rules of health is negligible; I can spell, but no one who reads my writing could be sure of it. As for social studies, my zeal for projects either intra-or extra-mural would, I believe, soon flag. Would I ignore these necessary operations? No, for I was educated in those dim and far-off days when we were taught that duties, although likely to be disagreeable, had to be tackled. However, in those distant school-days, duty done did give us an extraordinary zest for those indulgences that might properly follow.

If I were a teacher I would allow much time for my indulgences. I would deal with mathematical skills and health habits, with orthography and calligraphy, with group projects, social integration and personality profiles—and then I would claim my reward. I would turn to my bookshelf. I would pull down my books, and teaching the boys and girls nothing, I would teach them everything. Perhaps I should explain what I mean.

If my natural sciences had wobbled, if my social studies had been vague, if my music appreciation had failed to strike the right note, if the art work was messy, if classroom democracy was dissolved in chaos or drowned in apathy, then I would try a more excellent way. I would take down my books and I would read the children poetry.

Do I hear you saying—“That shows he knows nothing about the practical problems of education”? But I do! I know that the heedless poet may use words beyond the official vocabulary of Grade II or III or even VII. And I know that those busy workers, the manufacturers of synthetic literature, who precisely adopted the supposed verbal requirements of Grades II, III and VII, have not yet got round to making their products rhyme. I know and I do not care. I would still read them poetry. And I would defend such a course as a sound educational procedure warmly and—I am confident—successfully.

That is what I would do. I like poetry and I like to read it aloud. In my view the teacher is best employed doing what she can best do. If children are not little tanks to be filled up—no more are teachers gasoline pumps to fill them. We agree that children need an opportunity for self-expression—so do teachers. Both the teacher and the pupil are better for reasonable freedom within the school precincts, and I am sure that in our elementary schools, teachers must find admirable opportunities for teaching a great deal through their chosen medium, whatever it may be—history, literature, science, geography. It is true, I believe, that in teaching at all levels of education, a certain amount of self-indulgence is an advantage. If it is true that children do best what they do gladly—and I believe that it is—why is it not also true of teachers?

If these are frightful heresies, forgive them. Remember your safe conduct. I am only telling you what, if I were a teacher, I would do—while I lasted!

But I can defend my particular method in several ways that may seem more rational. Poetry is surely a universal subject. I have heard, for example—perhaps it is now out of date—of the importance of dealing with the whole child. How can you do this better than through poetry, because poetry appeals to the senses, to the emotions, to the mind and to the imagination? When I read poetry to my pupils I would be building on all they have felt and all they have learned, and I would be doing both at the same time. May I explain in a little more detail? Poetry is the first thing children learn. “Jack and Jill”, “Little Bo Peep”, Mary and her lamb, and the other familiar deities of the nursery, come to them indeed at their mother’s knee. And if they did not come in poetry they could not, at that age, come at all. Thus, in their earliest days, the seen world is shown them, and the unseen world revealed. Poetry is the language of infancy, of childhood. Someone has said that every child is a poet from the age at which he learns to beat the spoon on the table in numbers. And poetry first learned is longest remembered. What children truly gain in the earliest years will remain with them to the end of their days.

Moreover, this constant companion is a constant teacher and a teacher who insists that the child should do his own thinking. There comes to my mind the absurd but, I think, sound illustration of “Jack Horner”:

—Was he good, or only impudent, or smug, or so stupid that he identified his momentary pleasure with eternal virtue, or is he a take-off on much older self-seeking Jacks—or was the author solely concerned with rhyme and rhythm? No child says all that aloud, but most of the good poems that children love, give them something to wonder about, something to ponder, without the deadening finality of a formal question that must be answered and then may be forgotten.

Of course “Jack Horner” is not really poetry. It doesn’t arouse the imagination. Think what visions are conjured up by the lines, familiar to most children:

That little piece of verse creates wonder in the mind of a child. Such wonderings indeed, may lead to wonderings more rich and extravagant than the poetry itself. An American writer a few years ago told of a poem which went with her through all her glowing youth. Read in the cold light of adult years, the couplet ran:

This she heard. But she also heard

Lady Mandegreen was the companion of her youth. There she was in all her beauty, stretched on the greensward by the heroic Lord Douglas who loved her deeply and who—such is the precision of childish logic—was quite clearly and demonstrably not her husband!

But I must return to more seemly aspects of my exposition. Poetry, I suggest, has also the gift of teaching without preaching. The other day I ran across a little piece of verse which (apart from its incidental contributions to a knowledge of natural science) has, for those who may see it, a profoundly moral and even spiritual lesson. And yet on the surface it is all just a joke. I shall give it to you in part. It is called “The Human Attitude” by Geoffrey Dearmer:

How right educationists are to say (if I am correct in believing that they do), that it is not so much what a child learns as the attitudes that develop within him that count. I think a teacher teaching attitudes is very wise to call in the poets to help. But beyond all this, poetry does stir that true love for the world and the men who live in it, which is the heart of education. Poets for instance, can help children to learn about the past. History, as seen through great narrative poems, is often more apt to catch the spirit of history than the average textbook. Take, for example, Chesterton’s “Ballad of the White Horse”; Stephen Benét’s John Brown’s Body, our own E.J. Pratt’s Brébeuf and his Brethren, which records and illuminates a chapter in Canadian history.

Is it fanciful to suggest that we would be better citizens if the songs of nature, which are a special part of our Canadian heritage, were made part of our lives? Let me quote some lines from “Tantramar Revisited” by Charles Roberts. The poet returns to the scene of his youth:

And might not some of our traditional poems open up to the pupil the new poetry, more difficult in rhythm? Here is a fine example of the verse of a contemporary Canadian, Douglas Le Pan. He is describing a canoe trip:

I came across the other day some moving verses by a contemporary English poet, Stephen Spender, in which he pays tribute to the brave who are gone:

And finally, what more can you do for the child who is beginning, consciously or unawares, to dwell on the whole meaning of life and death—how better can you begin to deal with his, perhaps, unspoken question than to let him listen to the poets. Think of the lament in Cymbeline which begins:

It is clothed with the sublime beauty of resignation and peace. There is a poem by Henry Vaughan called “Peace”, which deals with this theme in a Christian context. Here are some of its lines:

This opens a window from time to eternity.

Will the children accept what you offer? When I picture my imaginary schoolroom, I tell myself that they would, if I were sufficiently patient and encouraging and imaginative and sympathetic. There is good poetry for every need and every I.Q.—the two must be brought together. Humbert Wolfe, in a sonnet he called “The Teacher”, asks the question which every teacher asks. “How much of what I give will stay with them?” I do not think he is in doubt about the answer. May I read you this tender little poem?

If you can give your children good poetry, they will have an armour against all the cheapness and vulgarity, all the ugliness and crudity that are poured out before them from so many sources. Surely so much of the fascination of bad literature is like the unwholesome cravings of the undernourished. Children who have been able to see what is good will know what is cheap or inferior. They may not lose all taste for it, but they will know it for what it is. It will not form their principles or mould their taste. I say bad literature cannot do this if children have seen what is good. They must see it, of course. They must recognize it themselves and take it as their own. It cannot be forced on them. But the shelves in my classroom would be wide. I would gather there, all the good songs, all the best pictures in verse and poetry both old and new, and I would try them all until I found some response in everyone. Or, I think I would. And in this matter, I believe that faith can move mountains.

I would not be content only to read poetry in my classroom; I would make its inmates memorize poetry. Perhaps I am now giving utterance to serious heresy! I know that I am grateful for having been made to commit poems to memory when I was at school, and I do not think I am wrong in saying that children like to do so. They find pleasure in the music of good poetry. They may not understand every word, but after all, they won’t understand words unless they use them.

But I must not ride my hobby too hard. I am sure, however, that teachers, when they have opened this new world of poetry for themselves, will be able to do for their pupils something greater perhaps than they will know. I am obsessed with the idea that all children at school, in a sense wait for something, something precious but indefinable, that can bring to life what lies within them. Quiller-Couch has this in mind, I suppose, when he talks of the secret which lies hidden in children and reminds us that:

This is the thing I have in mind. This secret that you give to your children, you give from yourselves, you give through that which means the most to you. Many of us, I think, might find it in poetry. But wherever you find it, you can move children only by what has moved you. You can bring them to live only through that by which you truly live. And you cannot exercise your privilege of giving life to others unless you keep life in yourselves.

The Weighing of Ayre

Address at the 75th Anniversary Dinner of the
Royal Society of Canada, Ottawa

I have been making so many speeches of late, I am reminded sometimes of a passage in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. You will recall what the candid Beatrice says to Benedick, “I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick: nobody marks you.” In moments of depression, I am haunted with the idea that the audience marks only my indiscretions.

To be serious, like everyone here, I am sensible of the dignity as well as of the enjoyment of this occasion. I am here this evening not only as an occupant of my present post, but also I am happy that I have the privilege of coming in another capacity—as one of your Honorary Fellows. Whatever the role may be in which I appear tonight, I deeply appreciate the honour you have done me in inviting me to address you when, on your Seventy-Fifth Anniversary, you gather in our capital city. You have given me a heavy responsibility, but I could not well refuse it.

No one need be reminded that it was one of my distinguished predecessors who founded this Society three-quarters of a century ago in the hope that it would help the young nation to grow in unity and understanding, as well as in intellectual power and distinction. Lord Lorne, as he then was, did not find that his initiative met with universal approval—acts of imagination seldom do. A powerful newspaper of the day refused “to hold the Governor-General responsible for a project so absurd,” and observed, in elegant language, that the new body would be “a mutual admiration society of nincompoops”! (I have much sympathy for those who, with commendable motives, initiate such crack-pot schemes.) It is interesting to read in Professor McNutt’s book on Lord Lorne’s régime, that his determination to proceed with his idea was strengthened by his discovery of the fact that an American institution had been permitted to collect Indian relics on Canadian soil. Since the Society came into being in 1882, its Fellows have done much to direct the attention of the Canadian people to our own national life—its precious past, its stimulating present and its boundless future. Although your outlook, like that of any body of true scholars, has never been narrowly nationalistic, you have helped to make us proud of being Canadian and proud, too, of the contribution which you made on behalf of Canada to the world as a whole.

Mais à cette occasion je m’en voudrais de ne pas souligner le fait que Lord Lorne en fondant son noble projet a beaucoup tiré d’une culture d’origine française qui, pendant plus de cent cinquante ans, fut la seule au Canada. Cette première tradition canadienne n’a pas toujours été reconnue et appréciée à sa juste valeur.

Mais cela est chose du passé. D’un passé qui a toujours su trouver, je le dis avec fierté, des canadiens de langue anglaise anxieux de reconnaître avec Pierre Chauveau, premier vice-président de la Société, qu’ “Il y a longtemps, bien longtemps, que l’on fait de nobles efforts pour la culture de l’esprit humain, sur les rives du Saint-Laurent.”

Nous devons beaucoup aux premiers citoyens qui dès leur arrivée en notre pays se sont donnés aux choses de l’esprit. Notre pays, alors tout jeune, a connu, grâce à eux, un départ intellectuel dont il est resté marqué. Certes nos fondateurs n’ont pas ignoré les richesses matérielles qu’un Canada du dix-septième siècle avait en abondance, mais en hommes sages ils se sont préoccupés avant tout de sauve-garder jalousement ce trésor infiniment plus précieux qu’ils apportaient avec eux: la tradition culturelle et spirituelle de la France.

Cette culture le Canada français l’a conservée à travers les générations avec courage et augmentée avec vigueur. Nous avons aujourd’hui autour de nous des héritiers de cette culture et ils lui font honneur. Les lettres françaises jouissent maintenant parmi nous de l’admiration et du respect qu’elles se sont justement attirés et c’est avec plaisir que je me fais l’interprète des canadiens d’expression anglaise en vous disant notre reconnaissance pour l’enrichissement qu’elles apportent à notre intellect et l’espoir que nous entretenons de les voir s’épanouir de plus en plus pour le bénéfice de la nation toute entière.

Et c’est mon privilège ce soir d’offrir à vous tous de la Société Royale mes félicitations les plus sincères pour l’excellent travail que vous avez accompli au cours des années et de vous souhaiter succès et bonheur dans l’accomplissement des devoirs qui sont les vôtres.

May I say again that it is my privilege tonight to give you of the Royal Society, as a body, my warmest congratulations on the great work that you have done over the years, and to wish you good fortune and happiness in your discharge of the immense responsibilities which face you today.

These things I say in the official capacity in which I am your guest tonight. But I would like to think that your invitation to me is also personal and that, like other members thus honoured, I am required in this community of scholars to stand and deliver such knowledge and ideas as may be worthy of your attention, or failing that, to own myself unworthy of your confidence.

It is here that I am somewhat at a loss. I remind myself of Satan in the Book of Job when (along with others more worthy) he presented himself before the Lord and was asked, “From whence comest thou?” His answer might well be mine. “From going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it.” If I am a scholar, I am a wandering scholar; and I fear that the wandering has left behind more traces than the scholarship! I should, indeed, compare myself not to the itinerant scholar, but to the humble mendicant who went about seeking hospitality—and, not infrequently, singing for his supper or occasionally rewarding his hosts with a traveller’s tale. With these I feel close fellowship. I know both their joys and their sorrows.

And, if you will allow me, I should like to retain something of this character tonight. I do not offer you an address fit for your reception in your collective and scholarly capacity. I should like, instead, to speak to you as individuals, as men and women deeply interested, in a very special way, in the well-being of our country and its people. You are concerned, as scholars must be, with the future of a community which you see in length and in depth, knowing its past, and penetrating beneath superficial appearances to the realities of the present. And if what I say should not be unworthy of attention, it will be so because I am at least trying to observe the scholarly method; humility before a difficult and important task; honesty and care in reporting what I know, and only what I know.

May I first touch on the nature of my present work as representative of the Sovereign? Monarchy, I believe, is best described as a kind of society where, by a special personal symbolism, the community seeks to remind itself of its oneness and of its corporate will to see and cherish excellence wherever it may be found. I mention this because, by your name and origin, you are associated in a particular way with such a conception. The original Royal Society was created in order to distinguish those who were devoting themselves disinterestedly to the new scientific learning in seventeenth-century England. They were—to use the old phrase—“divers worthy persons inquisitive into natural philosophy and other parts of human learning.” The honour was bestowed by the Monarch, I take it, in recognition of the value to their country of their researches and deliberations.

And yet it is pleasant to remember Pepys’s story of King Charles’s amusement at some of their early activities. He, we are told, “mightily laughed at” the Fellows of his Royal Society “for spending time only in weighing of ayre, and doing nothing else since they sat.” He had, it seems, faith that, given recognition, freedom and encouragement, they would do right, but apparently he did wonder, in a detached fashion, just what he might have started.

He had started something of enduring importance and, despite those qualities which are out of place in learned circles, gave us a great example of how the Crown in so many epochs has been identified with scholarship and learning. Indeed, in the modern age this generally has been regarded as representing one of its obligations. If one could remove from the pages of history the enterprises or achievements in letters and the arts and science which received their first impulse from our Sovereigns, the annals would be greatly impoverished. This Society is but one example of what representatives of the Crown in Canada have been able to do over the years in these fields. You will recall that your Founder himself was, indeed, responsible also for the establishment of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, and the National Gallery of Canada.

It is pleasant, I think, to remind ourselves of our relations with the Royal Society of England. Pleasant, too, to remember as we consider the astounding results of the efforts regarded by Charles II with benevolent amusement, that it was our two Mother Countries which, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, took the lead in intellectual labours which have transformed the world. If your story is blended with that of your elder sister it is indeed one of astonishing achievement.

But I need not say that the Royal Society of Canada has a character of its own, different from that of its counterpart overseas; that it was born in a different age and in a different land. You have your own story of accomplishment and your own special tasks. When this Society was founded, no one in the Old World questioned the dignity and greatness of scientific studies, but in this new country everything was to be done. Science and the humanities alike needed nourishing and cherishing. The dignity, the usefulness, the necessity of scholarly work in all its branches, had to be demonstrated in a new and still (in many respects) primitive society.

I wonder whether you are not unique among the learned societies of the world in having in your membership representatives of both the humanities and science. You demonstrate what has been called “the seamless coat of learning” and here biologists, historians, geologists, economists, men of letters, chemists, philosophers, forgather. They are divided in their studies, but united in the intellectual approach which they make to them. Today the work of this Society is enmeshed with that of the national universities, of research institutes, of individual artists and writers, and of the scholarly societies growing every year in numbers and membership, whose annual meetings cluster around this great central gathering, showing what one of your original Fellows foresaw, “la noble contagion d’étude et de travail.” Looking back to the humbler beginnings of seventy-five years ago, we can call this a notable, a brilliant development.

By this very fact we can also look for the hidden weaknesses, barely perceptible shadows which the brilliance too easily hides. One of these I will mention, but I will only mention it because I am aware that the active members of the Society understand it much better than I do. It is that your gifted children, each maturing but going his own separate way, may easily forget the value of close and intimate family life in scholarship and the importance of that intelligent and stimulating domestic conversation which it is your special mission to foster and preserve. A Society called “Royal” is, by definition, one and universal. The King’s Writ runs everywhere. Historians will recall the tough resistance of the great feudal chiefs long ago to this royal claim. They will remember, too, the danger to the unity and peace of the State when the claim was ignored. May we not discern a parallel in our special situation today? Are we not in some danger of intellectual feudalism?

The power and energy of the departmentalized national societies, the vigour and distinction of the young specialists who form their membership, may draw strength away from the mother society, and may at the same time separate these strong and healthy offshoots from one another. What can the Royal Society do to preserve the unity of learning which it was intended to safeguard, while encouraging the intense specialization that our knowledge and our needs impose on us? I am interested to learn that your programme for these meetings includes sessions designed to strengthen the community of scholars.

The second source of weakness, I propose to discuss in some detail, because my understanding of it proceeds much more directly from my own observation and reflections.

It is a platitude to say that learning and the arts cannot be supported on strictly economic principles. They must have a patron. Their patron must have enough good will to give them support, and enough intelligence to leave them alone. Our attitude to patronage is sometimes distorted. It is easy to assume that, in past eras, the writer, the scholar, or the artist was denied true freedom by his patron, and revealed something servile in his attitude to the prince or the nobleman or the city or the Maecenas of any age who gave him patronage. There were, as we know, sometimes a lack of self-respect on the one hand and unreasonable demands on the other. But we should remember that the old formulae of dedication, which seem to us obsequious, represent merely the forms of politeness of an earlier and politer age. Patrons there had to be, or the arts and science and letters would have withered; patrons there must be today. No matter whose name may stand in the position of honour, the real patron (passive or active) is now the everyday man, the average man. And therefore one must ask whether this collective patron of the twentieth century is any better informed—or even as well informed—as Charles II or others in the past. Certainly anyone can get money today for practical projects; certainly scientific learning never before stood so high in popular esteem; certainly the people of Canada have just given the practitioners of letters and the arts what must seem to them like a gigantic sum. Yet in this Society, we must look beyond superficial appearances. We must ask whether the true nature of the Society, its disinterested concern for knowledge and understanding, really means much more to the community in which we live than “weighing of ayre” did to King Charles.

Obviously, the vast majority of any society must be more or less unaware of the special values for which you stand. I have in mind, however, the critical minority, on whom we must rely to a considerable extent for the maintenance of the standards of civilization. May there not easily develop a dangerous gap between you and this group? May there not be in Canada “two solitudes” represented by the scholarly and learned on the one hand and this minority on the other—two solitudes perhaps even more to be regretted than those so sharply pictured for us by a member of this Society?

I can best illustrate my meaning by passing on to you some of the questions which run through my mind as I travel through our wealthy, booming, optimistic, enterprising country, with its growing millions—vigorous, able, confident that Canada’s century, a little late in starting, is making up for lost time.

As I go about, among those I meet are many of your patrons; not egg-heads, nor long-hairs, but average men and women with an informed interest in your work. These are the people on whose understanding and support you ultimately depend. Are there enough of them? How active are they as your patrons?

Let me begin with one subject on which I have thought and spoken much. How many of us in this prosperous and enlightened country speak or write with purity and precision, with pride in the fact that whichever intellectual “solitude” we inhabit, we have been entrusted with one of the great languages of the world? I am thinking, at the moment, of those whose mother tongue is English and of those whose callings oblige them to take communication—with its possibilities and its pitfalls—seriously. I am not, of course, concerned about those whose energy in the conduct of practical affairs gives their speech a vigour and poetry of its own. I am thinking of the B.A., the M.A., I dare to say the Ph.D., and I certainly cannot except even the thrice-anointed LL.D.

I am reminded by M.A.’s and Ph.D.’s of another matter. I must ask you—for if your judgment fails, no one’s can stand—what does education really mean to this important and powerful group? How many are true scholars of the kind that you delight to honour? How many, on the other hand, are diligent, able, even brilliant specialists with no cause to be ashamed, but unfitted—not by their degree of ability, but by the nature of their training—to play a special role in scholarship?

I have another question. How many of us, even those of us engaged in supposedly intellectual pursuits, seek books not as escape, but as food and drink? Here statistics are available. We have good libraries, but too few of them. We have bookshops, but where and how many? People borrow books from libraries; they may buy periodicals for trains and planes, but as a people we have not the habit of buying books to have and to hold, to read and to mark, books where a man has been allowed to set forth his whole thought—not merely fragments tailored to so many thousand words, and then often arranged in a half-tone setting for the striking productions of an advertiser.

And again, how many of us are prepared to support journals which devote themselves to serious and informed discussion of matters which should be of general interest? Ask those unhappy souls who strive to launch and keep them afloat, who—to change the metaphor—set themselves to bridge the gulf between what is scholarly (and presumably “dry”) and what is known as “light entertainment”.

Here is a further query. How many of us understand and practise something of what a well-known American critic called “poetry as a means of grace”? I am perverting his meaning slightly. He was here recommending it to young clergymen as a necessary refreshment for the soul. But is it not a necessary refreshment for the mind as well as the soul? And is it not meant for scientists and philosophers as well as for clergymen? Surely the practice and use of poetry in a society is an index of imagination, of vigour, of creative power, without which knowledge may be lifeless. Is it not reasonable to say that when a society begins to leave poetry to poets, and to those who must, to quote a dismal phrase, “major in English”, its mind is in danger?

Let me return to my M.A.’s and Ph.D.’s, and the meaning of their education. If I had, as it were, to distil its true essence, I would, I think, offer them a generous selection of verse in their mother tongue and ask for their free, untrammelled, uncensored comments. I think that a panel of examiners would be able to select fairly accurately not only the potential professors of literature, but also the original thinkers in chemistry and physics, in politics and industry. I say I think so—I may be wrong. As a Fellow of this Society, albeit merely honorary, how much I would like to initiate this experiment, and I would care no more about the ridicule of the onlookers than the original Fellows cared for the laughter of the Merry Monarch.

I ask these questions very humbly. I do not assume that all the answers will be depressing. In every matter that I have mentioned, I see signs of deep concern among thoughtful people. I see also much to encourage us, but we have no ground for complacency. A retired Canadian business man, a few years ago, employed a part of his leisure in writing memoirs in which he urged upon his younger colleagues the importance of a sense of urgency. A sense of urgency, I firmly believe, is as necessary in the scholarly as in the business world. The questions I have raised are a matter of concern to the Royal Society. There is, we all know, in the realm of learning today, no ivory tower, no aristocratic preserve, no royal enclosure. In an age of increasing specialization, the Society has come to represent a great chain of communities of scholars. Could not its Fellows, without neglecting their specialties, concern themselves more than ever with the general learning, the whole intellectual life of the community? I say more than ever—I am not impertinent enough to suggest that you have ever forgotten this responsibility. I wish only to convey my personal sense of the need at this time when growing wealth provides so many distractions from the hard, sweet discipline of thought. And may I call it a special need at a time when the increase in public aid demands not less, but much more personal effort from those able to lead and guide our nation in the things of the mind.

The University and Freedom

Address at the Congress of the Association of the
Universities of the British Commonwealth, Montreal

It is a great pleasure to me to welcome to Canada today members of the Universities of the Commonwealth, and also a number of our friends from the United States. This Congress of Commonwealth Universities represents two associations whose existence is deeply bound up with the well-being of mankind. I can appropriately pay tribute at the same time to our family of nations and to the great chain of academic foundations which enrich their life, for in their history and traditions they have much in common.

In every country of the Commonwealth, universities, young and old, are striving to maintain the great and noble tradition of an independent society of scholars; and, at the same time, to turn out scientists, technologists and other highly trained people in every field of applied learning, sufficient to meet the demands of complex planned societies. I need not remind you of the difficulties entailed in the recruitment of staff and the raising of funds. Nor need I remind you that in one country after another, governments have had to come to the aid of the universities in order to enable them to do the necessary work which only they can do. I venture to say there is no one here who would not acknowledge, with both modesty and earnestness, the necessity of such acts of charity and benevolence.

I believe that every thoughtful member of society must follow the work of this gathering with anxious concern. It would be foolish and wrong to ignore the fact that all our universities today tread a very dangerous path. Increasingly, they are accepting government money because they are doing things that government wants done. How great a peril is this in a democracy? May I remind you of the conception of the University in society in those great centuries of the Middle Ages when these remarkable corporations were taking shape? They saw themselves as a part, or rather as an aspect, of a united and divinely ordained society. The essential attributes of goodness, power and wisdom were then reflected in the Church, the State and the University. The place of the University representing Wisdom was to enjoy its own autonomy, informing and aiding both Power in the State and Goodness in the Church.

Today, the imperative facts of existence make this autonomy difficult; and yet we all know that if wisdom succumbs, goodness will hardly survive. The intellectual duty of the University to remain free, I suggest, is greater now than ever; and more difficult than ever before. In this matter we may, indeed, all defer to the universities of what, in Canada, we often refer to affectionately as the “Old Country”. There, the august Treasury has been induced to do good and give—not lend—hoping for nothing, nothing that is, in the shape of any strict accounting. Surely that is the right spirit. Universities must work closely with government departments. They must never run the risk of being confused with them. It is their right and obligation to labour ceaselessly in the interests of the modern State, but to work as free men and not to be used as instruments.

In our Commonwealth, the government from whose power the University must increasingly be endowed, is in all cases a parliamentary government. It is this particular tradition of government by discussion, with the flexibility and compromise that we know so well and all its queer contradictions and great toughness. It is the possession, the enjoyment, the perpetuation of this special tradition that holds us together in the Commonwealth. It is parliament that is the political aspect of our intellectual freedom. Our parliamentary governments and our universities are, from the broad viewpoint of human welfare, two aspects of the same thing. They can serve best the cause to which each is dedicated by working, as they must, ever more closely together but in mutual respect and mutual tolerance. Power must not dictate to wisdom, but it is never the part of wisdom to ignore the realities of power.

It is, however, not for me to discuss these things at any length, but briefly to perform a very agreeable duty. I now declare this Congress open and I do so with a deep sense of privilege and honour. May your sojourn here be a happy one and your deliberations fruitful.

The Role of the C.M.R.

Address at the Collège Militaire Royal de St-Jean

Je n’ai pas à insister sur le rôle que le Collège militaire royal de St-Jean est appelé à jouer dans notre défense nationale. Absorbés comme nous le sommes aujourd’hui par un besoin d’armes innombrables, aussi déroutantes dans leur complexité qu’accablantes dans leur coût, nous n’osons oublier que même au sein d’une armée moderne l’élément humain demeure toujours le point central et dominant. L’art de la guerre ne sera jamais vraiment mécanisé tant qu’il restera aux mains des hommes.

Le facteur humain des services armés requiert toutefois plus qu’une nourriture saine, un bon logement ou des soins médicaux suffisants, quelque essentielles que puissent être toutes ces conditions. On doit aussi trouver dans l’année cet accord du raisonnement et du sentiment, ce mélange d’intelligence et de volonté, d’élévation d’esprit et de ferveur spirituelle qui s’imposent dans toute entreprise malaisée et ardue. Nous en sommes venus à ranger tout cela sous le titre de morale militaire. Chacun des hommes contribue une part personnelle plus ou moins forte à cet état d’esprit, suivant ses dispositions et sa compétence. C’est aux officiers cependant qu’incombe la responsabilité première de maintenir le moral des troupes. Là réside donc votre tâche non moins que votre privilège. Le rôle, le but du Collège militaire royal de St-Jean, sera de vous préparer à ce devoir noble mais peu facile.

L’ouverture d’un établissement comme celui-ci au Canada français arrive fort à propos. Dans notre pays la tradition militaire aura été avant tout française. La Nouvelle-France était une colonie missionnaire. Les relations commerciales avec les Indiens, quelle que fut leur importance, ne devaient pas faire oublier l’oeuvre christianisante et civilisante de la France. Les premières troupes au Canada ne se composaient point de conquérants sans merci venus pour exploiter et opprimer les indigènes. L’amitié des peuplades indiennes, en effet, avait déjà été acquise par des moyens pacifiques. A une époque où la mère patrie, la France, s’avérait la plus grande puissance militaire d’Europe, de belles figures françaises telles que Frontenac, d’Iberville et Montcalm réussirent à obtenir le respect et l’admiration de tous, y compris du vieil ennemi, l’Anglais.

Cette fière tradition ne s’est jamais éteinte. Plusieurs d’entre nous se souviennent du regain qu’elle a connu pendant la première guerre mondiale, alors que naissait cette unité célèbre, le Royal Vingt-Deuxième, régiment canadien dont nous avons tous raison d’être fiers et qui fut caserné autrefois à l’endroit même où nous nous trouvons aujourd’hui. Vous le savez tous, ce régiment comprend maintenant trois bataillons dont l’un a vu le feu en Corée. Un autre est présentement engagé sur ce front éloigné. J’admire fort la valeur, les succès récents du Vingt-Deuxième, mais ce qui m’impressionne surtout c’est la qualité particulière, la tenue de ce célèbre régiment. Ses membres s’enorgueillissent avec raison de la tradition militaire inhérente à l’histoire de la région qui lui a donné naissance. Ceux qui, comme moi, ont eu le privilège de relations plus ou moins étroites avec ce régiment affirmeront sans contredit qu’il symbolise non pas une innovation mais un renouveau, purement canadien, des traditions léguées par les grands colonisateurs militaires du passé.

I must also remind you of one more matter doubtless familiar to most of you. You all no doubt admire the historic buildings of the College, placed as they are on this beautiful site on one of the great rivers of Canada. The site of this College is doubly appropriate. St. Jean gained its significance as an outpost of Montreal, which itself was once an outpost of Canada. Montreal, we are told, was founded by the gallant soldier, Maisonneuve, not as a result of calculated military strategy but in obedience to the visions of those who saw it as a defence of Christian civilization in a wild and pagan country. Maisonneuve’s first responsibility was to defend the hospitals and schools of a Christian civilization. This noble tradition was never quite effaced by the crowding commercial interests of later years.

St. Jean itself comes into the picture a century later as a fur-trading post, not as a fort. It achieved particular prominence on the occasion of another great crisis in the history of our country. Destroyed at the close of the Seven Years War (by order of Vaudreuil), it was rebuilt during the American Revolutionary War when Carleton erected “two redoubts a hundred feet square and two hundred yards apart connected by a strong palisade”. This was the time when the Quebec Act had clearly expressed that the British colonial policy, far from being narrowly English, was broad enough to find room for the culture and for the religion of “that sweet enemy France”. It was then that Canadians, French in speech and in tradition as they were, decided that the British Empire could offer them the kind of freedom which they sought. It was through St. Jean that American invaders made their entry into the country in the critical year of 1775. They crossed the scarcely defended frontier but found little welcome from the inhabitants. It was by way of St. Jean that many of them retreated during the following year, leaving behind them a territory and a people content to remain British because they were free not to be English.

And now today in this historic area, on this ancient site, men of our three services and of our two cultures come together for a common task. For this task you receive here not just training, but education. This education is intended to fit you once more to defend our western Christian civilization whose roots, French and English, go far deeper than the bitter but passing struggles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They go back to the time when Western Europe was building up its common life on the foundation of liberty and of law. It is the quality of that life which requires that you come here for education as much as for training. The defence of our way of life is more than a technique. It is a calling. One cannot defend unfamiliar ground. You come here to know what you have to defend as well as how to defend it. Undoubtedly you learn here military science along with the new techniques, the new methods and devices that scientific advances have made possible, but you are also directed to the understanding of values which are permanent. They are not old because they are always renewing themselves. And in learning how to understand and to defend these values you receive here certain virtues which may be somewhat neglected elsewhere; the classic virtues of duty, discipline, and of good manners.

May I say one thing more. I have to offer you a very special and personal piece of advice. You are here together—French- and English-speaking Canadians, with every obligation and every opportunity to learn to know and understand each other’s language, culture and character. Do not neglect this precious opportunity, which comes to you just at the age when you are in a position to profit from it to the full. Your minds are open and your judgment is generous. Learn to speak and think and feel together. Do not forget what is your own, but develop the understanding and sympathy that come from speaking another’s language, not only with the tongue, but with the mind and with the heart.

You have a great and noble tradition behind you and a great and worthy task before you. May you be inspired by both to go forward to your work with energy and enthusiasm. Remember always that you are to defend not only the soil of your country but the life of your civilization, and remember that your civilization has this great quality: it can be defended only by those who understand it with their minds and who adorn it by their conduct.

Law and Liberty

Address to the Canadian Bar Association, Ottawa

It is obviously my almost painful privilege to be called on constantly to speak to distinguished audiences on matters about which they know almost everything and I know almost nothing. If my remarks are to be relevant they cannot be very new or interesting to those whom I address; a humbling thought.

And yet, though humbled, I am not humiliated. I recall that on those distinguished occasions when judges and lawyers assemble for the sole and single purpose of doing justice, the most decisive (if not always the wisest) words may be spoken by one who is not learned in the law, the foreman of the jury. And I recall, too, that occasionally the unwilling witness, sternly reminded that he is on his oath, may utter a truth new and startling to the most learned of his hearers.

I have no new or startling truths to offer today, only, as a humble witness speaking for all my fellow-citizens unlearned in the law, I venture to recall to you once again the greatness of your profession and the weight of responsibility that you have to bear. We talk much today of freedom, of liberty, of democracy, of our way of life. The idea of justice may be found in many different ways of life; in this country we associate it with the rule of law. From the union of these two great concepts, justice and the rule of law, have grown our liberty and freedom. Let me change the metaphor and say that freedom flourishes in such soil and will flourish in no other. That has been heard before but it is perhaps the most important single statement that could be made about our civilization today. It is our peril, not so much that other peoples deny this, but that too many of us are forgetting it or, indeed, never knew it. In our western world the law has done its work so well that it is imperilled by its very success. Many nowadays set law and liberty in opposition to one another, forgetting that in a truly free society we never name the one without thinking of the other.

I make no apology for reminding you of the long history of our law and our liberty. At the dawn of our civilization, law formed the bridge between the reason of the philosopher and the power of the prince. The Romans, those superb organizers whom most of us remember for their roads and their laws, expressed this idea admirably in two expressions which have become proverbial: “The word of the prince is law” and yet, as they said also, “Law is right reason”. With these maxims the Romans gave peace and prosperity not to a single nation only but to the nations of their day.

Why do we go back to these old tags today? Why should we not? Why do we not repeat them every day in an age when we see around us societies falling into disorder from which they are rescued only by the competent dictator or the boss with a will to power, and an emotional appeal to the mob?

But we think not only of the Romans and their law. We preserve in Canada another great tradition: the tradition of the English common law which finds its roots in modes of living worked out long ago by small groups of plain men and women who never saw a law book or heard of philosophy but who still had a sure instinct for that justice which lives in the rule of law.

We are proud to maintain the system of the Romans and the common law. We are proud of the distinguished and learned men and women in this country who devote themselves to the various aspects of this great calling. You are gathered here to deal with very important professional matters. Your deliberations, I am sure, will be learned in the best sense. That is as it should be. In this changing and increasingly complex society, it is of the first importance that members of the great professions should meet regularly and frequently to deal with the difficult and important problems of the times.

But a humble witness may remind you of the need to attend to fundamental questions, simpler and yet more baffling than those which are specifically professional. You are dealing with the intricacies of the great scheme which provides the framework of humane and civilized life. It is important to remember also that even in a country such as ours this framework may take on the guise of a beleaguered citadel with sappers at work all about it.

Not long ago a distinguished judge remarked to me that he was impressed by the contrast between the court-houses of the present day and those of the last century. Our fathers strove to provide noble and dignified settings for the processes of the law. Their taste may not have been the same as ours but they expressed very clearly their conviction that only an impressive building would be a fitting place for the sittings of a court of justice. Today in this, as in so many other matters, we tend to confuse the simple with the mean and we wrongly identify dignity with pomposity. It is, I think, a sound instinct of the legal profession to maintain in all strictness their ancient forms not only in legal language and procedure but in the apparently less essential details of custom and ceremonial. In our “practical” age, impatient of delay, we are inclined to dismiss these things as useless trappings. In our minds we contrast them unfavourably with the much respected white garb and mask of the surgeon. These we think of as functional.

May I suggest that there is here a distinction but not a contrast. The judge’s robes, the lawyer’s gown, the stately ceremony of the court, are functional in a special sense. To those who take part in the ceremonial they should serve, and I believe they do serve, as a constant and solemn reminder of the duties and obligations of the profession. To those who observe the ceremonial they serve as an ocular demonstration, or may I be modern and say as a “visual aid”. They suggest to the bystander the majesty if not the full meaning of the law. We cannot dispense with these things. We cannot dispense with any means of maintaining and preserving the rule of law, which is the ground of our liberty.

But forms and ceremonies, though I believe we are coming increasingly to understand their importance, are not enough. In an age which has grown careless and forgetful of the things which truly belong to the character of the people, much more is needed. The rule of law is not a mechanical device nor a professional performance; it is a moral principle. We need to recall something of the spirit of the ancient days when all freemen assembled at their own cost to see that justice was done and to help in doing it. Professional lawyers, like the actors in the ancient Greek tragedies, must work with and by and through the chorus, to say nothing of the audience. With this I am sure you will agree. The maintenance of the law and its free and fruitful development as an instrument of justice is a calling for every citizen. It is obvious that it is the professional responsibility of the lawyers not to lose touch in this matter with their fellow-citizens. It is their privilege to guide them in this, their vocation, to preach reason to the multitude today as they once offered it to the ear of the prince. Now, as then, if they fail to carry the rulers with them, the burden of their failure rests on the entire community.

Some Thoughts on the Press

From an Address at the Annual Dinner of the Canadian Press, Toronto

I cannot claim that I forgather with so distinguished a company of publishers and editors without a sense of uneasiness. In my present post I often meet professionals about whose work I know next to nothing. I am a sort of professional gate-crasher. I am often where I have no business to be; I frequently talk when I ought to keep still. How deeply I feel this tonight.

Comme toutes nos grandes organisations nationales votre association fait montre d’une coopération étroite et fructueuse entre canadiens de langue française et de langue anglaise. Les journaux des deux langues ont beaucoup en commun, étant comme ils le sont tous, d’abord canadiens; et pour rester canadien chaque journal doit, redisons-le encore, demeurer fidèle à sa propre tradition culturelle.

My only experience in the field of journalism, apart from a few articles which surprisingly escaped rejection by the editor, were in my student days. Here in Toronto I helped to edit an undergraduate magazine, which enjoyed a short, gay and precarious career and then died of—shall we call it pernicious financial anaemia? Later in Oxford, a similar venture in which I participated succumbed to what might be termed acute congestion of the editorial column! These were cases in which enthusiasm should have been tempered by horse sense. How great a quality is horse sense! Someone has defined it as that something which keeps horses from betting on men!

I have been careful to say that tonight I am a layman among professionals. I am a humble consumer while you are skilful and powerful producers. But I venture to suggest that my present work is not dissimilar to yours—indeed, they are in a sense related. It is not merely that I am required to make copy (I am afraid I do not make much) and that you take what is not too boring; it is rather that, like you, I, in a modest way, am a purveyor of news. My role is, of course, a very limited one. I only see what my hosts want to show me; I try to hear only what is meant for my ears, and never have I the faintest hope of bringing off a scoop. But mine is really a reporting job all the same. It is my privilege, as an ambling and often fumbling amateur, to trail behind you professionals and to learn what I can of the facts about our national life, and to report them as opportunity offers. You will, I think, agree with me that although free from the bondage of the typewriter and immune, or apparently immune, from the City Editor’s glare, I do know something of the demands of the press.

There are other things we have in common. The newspapers represented here are all dailies—so am I a daily. You and I come out every day—in fact, I am more daily than you, because Sundays are included in my programme! There is another point of similarity between you and me. It is suggested by the remark made by a politician to his constituents. Having slightly confused the writings of Shakespeare and St. Paul, he promised them to be like Caesar’s wife—“all things to all men”. Let us call that versatility! It is a virtue which both a daily newspaper and a Governor-General have to practise. One more thing—we are both interested in circulation. I circulate a lot. My secretary is practically a circulation manager in himself! You and I strive for the largest possible distribution. It is essential in my job, as it is in yours.

Here tonight I am conscious, as you have a right to be, of what Canadian newspapers have done through the years for the unity of Canada, and especially do I think of what the Canadian Press has accomplished as a great national news service. Its contribution to nation-building commands our gratitude. That object, of course, was very much in the minds of those who founded what all Canada knows as the “C.P.”. Its task is one of vast importance and I, as a visitor this evening, would like to pay tribute to the way it has been performed, and to the qualities of thoroughness and fairness which have marked this great organization since the beginning.

Few institutions have changed, in the last century or so, more than newspapers. It used to be possible, as we can recall, for a man who had something to say, a cause to espouse—or an object to attack—to spend a modest sum on a printing-press and start a newspaper, even if he wrote the editorials, set the type and delivered the papers himself! Now the modern newspaper must be, for many reasons, a business enterprise, always complicated, often immense. The modern newspaperman belongs to a trade, a business and a profession—his trade is to sell news; his business is to maintain circulation; his profession is to carry on his great task of public enlightenment.

The newspaper has its critics. The sharpest and liveliest of these are to be found among newspapermen. If I said a tenth of what you say about yourselves, I don’t know what would happen to me! I can think of many self-regarding comments. An American editor, for example, has observed with a pleasant touch of irony, that “it is doubtful whether anything really unifies the country like its murders”!

You have increasing competition. You find rivals in various forms of mass media (to use a disconcerting phrase). “Audio-visual” (another horrible term) audio-visual means of communication are growing. More and more people are exposed to their impact. This can be a most primitive form of language and it seems sometimes that what it conveys is not received by the mind at all but is absorbed through the pores! That, of course, is quite unfair to the best of what we hear on the air or see on the screen, but I am one of those old-fashioned enough to believe that although there is room for all these things, the printed word—and I am thinking just now of the newspaper—will never lose its pride of place. I am sure that what is read lasts longer than what is heard or seen. Vividness is no substitute for permanence.

It is doubtless true that the permanence of an editorial is of little importance, if no one reads it. An American writer has said, of newspapers in the United States, “I doubt if there is an editorial page . . . that is read by 5% of the paper’s readers.” This is a very depressing observation. I would like to think that it was not true of Canada. But if it should be true that in our country only a small minority of readers pays any attention to the editorial, it is a great credit to our newspapers that the editorial continues to exist. Democracy is built on a respect for minorities, and those who appreciate hearing or seeing worth-while programmes or reading serious comment—if they are minorities—have their rights.

An American columnist once said, “Nobody wants to know what you think. People want to know what they think.” This comment is not one to encourage robust leadership in the press or anywhere else. But I do not believe it to be true. I think that most of us respect positive opinions frankly expressed. Frankness could be excessive in the early days of newspapers. A writer in the London Times a hundred years ago, referred elegantly to a contemporary statesman as “a squirt of dirty water”! I do not suggest that we should revive such journalistic habits. I only mention the phrase to show how we have changed.

We have indeed become very polite and very moderate in what we say. We also reflect that leaning towards conformity which is a tendency everywhere in this age of standardization. Uniformity is admirable where tools and machines are concerned; but the standardization of ideas is a form of mental paralysis. I agree with the English writer who said, “That so few dare to be eccentrics, marks the chief danger of the time.” We have been fortunate that in critical moments in our precarious past, when our future was in doubt, there have been men with tough, individual character, and rock-like convictions who have seen us through.

We have still much unfinished business. Our job is not complete. As long as time lasts we in Canada will be faced with the task of quickening national feeling and deepening the understanding that unites us.

For this, and so much else, we look to you. Without newspapers, Canada as a community would be impossible. We look to you to give us the facts. We look to you for the stimulus that must precede action. All this is yours to give. If there is much still to be done in this challenging and exciting country, we can ask for your guidance with confidence.

Modern Medicine: A Layman’s Views

Address to the Canadian Medical Association, Quebec

As a privileged honorary member of the medical profession, I cannot shrink from my duties. And yet I am tempted to shrink, for I have a formidable task this evening—to express, as far as I can, some intelligent and intelligible views on the problems of the profession. These problems seem to be becoming daily less intelligible, except to the superlatively intelligent—and I dare not include myself in such a category!

Durant cette réunion nationale des membres de la profession médicale, des canadiens d’expression française et anglaise se rencontrent pour discuter de problèmes communs.

En plus des deux langues qui y sont entendues il s’y parle un troisième langage avec lequel vous êtes tous familiers et c’est celui qu’a créé votre contact avec la médicine.

Des réunions comme celle-ci rassemblent des citoyens qui ont en commun des intérêts, des problèmes et des responsabilites; elles permettent aussi à chacun d’augmenter ses connaissances personnelles et apportent, par là, une importante contribution à notre unité nationale.

I have spoken of problems related to the medical profession. One current dilemma of which I am thinking is charmingly described by one who is not of our fraternity, but who thinks she knows something about us—Miss Phyllis McGinley, known to the addicts of The New Yorker, of whom I am happy to be one. I quote a few lines from her verses:

To the layman it would appear that the medical profession has really made a full circle since the stately academic days when (if I am rightly informed) the philosophic physician, after casting a learned eye over the sick, might suggest certain measures to be taken by others but, secure in the realm of pure reason, would not himself touch the patient.

In the course of the centuries, as we all know, methods improved, doctors became less ethereal and more human, scientific knowledge increased and by the nineteenth century medicine with surgery emerged and assumed a most honourable place among the learned professions. Until the present century, however, I think it is safe to say that with medical science at a relatively elementary stage, the art of healing was practised with a surprising degree of empiricism, and, one must add, with surprising success.

In the last two or three generations—can we think of them as a third phase?—there have been changes so sensational as to astonish even the layman. First, the tremendous increase in the amount of scientific knowledge directly or indirectly applicable to medicine and surgery. I do not know, it is not for me to say, whether these advances have shown more breadth than depth. It is, however, clear to all of us that the doctor has now penetrated to every corner and cranny of our physical being. It is superfluous to exhort the patient to tell his doctor everything. How can he possibly hope to conceal anything from him?

It is not, of course, from the increase of anatomical and physiological knowledge alone that the doctor has profited. The advance of technical science has supplied him with the most astounding battery of instruments, tools and machines for examining, measuring, weighing, analysing and testing in every conceivable fashion. The old-fashioned patient who looked forward to a quiet chat with his old-fashioned doctor now finds himself spirited off and conveyed through a strange underworld of white enamel, white coats and white lights, a world in which his role is chiefly passive and his posture almost invariably horizontal. The ordeal over, he sees his doctor, who asks him practically nothing—but who almost certainly does not tell him everything!

Seriously, it looks as if all things are now possible, or soon will be. There is nothing the doctor cannot see, and with X-rays, cobalt bombs, and “wonder drugs”, running repairs to the human frame and the skilful insertion of spare parts, almost nothing that they cannot do. Jokes at the expense of the medical profession are with us now, as ever. But this is increasingly, it seems to me, a tribute to their immense power and prestige.

And yet the most alert and thoughtful of your profession today turn their minds more and more to what may follow fresh successes. It is not that changing conditions of life bring unexpected problems; it is not that new diseases or newly-identified diseases crowd in on the old. It is, rather, that your very achievements give rise to new questions. The very extent of your knowledge reveals to you mysterious forces hitherto unknown.

It is hardly necessary for me to explain to this audience what I have in mind. The increase of knowledge, the multiplication of techniques, has outstripped the capacity of the single individual. We are in the hands of the specialist and the team. I heard recently the comment of a man with small children: “We have no doctor; we have five specialists”. His lament was that when he needed simple but sound advice for an unclassified ailment, he did not know where to turn. A parallel predicament is that of the patient in the hospital, catered to, and magnificently and intricately, by specialists, technicians, dieticians, internes, students in training, nurses, nursing assistants and nurse’s aides, and, if need be, psychologists, psychiatrists and therapeutic experts, but who rarely sees his doctor and who cannot lay claim to any single angel in white as his nurse. He is treated, and ably treated, by what might be called a medical task-force!

Would I go back to the old days of the overworked nurse in the small nursing home? No, indeed—there is no going back. Knowledge compels as well as invites. But I know that I only repeat a question asked by many here when I wonder if the wealth of our scientific knowledge, our technical equipment, our valuable and essential organization are not somehow threatening to obscure the personal needs of the man or woman who is sick and in trouble.

And, as if to underline this problem, there comes the new awareness of the mysteries of medicine which has, I believe, been current since the First World War. It began with shell-shock; it has been hovering about ever since, under various names. Now it is really in the open. “It’s psychosomatic, now, psychosomatic, whatever you suffer is psychosomatic—your ills today are mental, and likely all your fault.” So runs the comment from which I have quoted. Well may the patient say, “They’ve taken the fun out of having diseases.” But what about the doctor? No sooner has he perfected his streamlined hospital, complete with the latest things in rays and bombs and labs, with a specialist in everything on call, than he is made to feel that sometimes he is encountering forces mysterious to him and defying his control.

They have, indeed, taken the fun out of curing diseases. I recall a story of a doctor called on to treat a woman who had suffered untold misery through the chaos and disaster of Europe in the last war. He treated her for one malady, successfully. She promptly was visited by a second more serious one. Both were what I think the profession calls “organic”. The doctor, a European highly skilled and most sympathetic, remarked quietly, “How can you blame her for running away from all she has suffered?”

This may well be just a legend for the layman; but I believe it does suggest a well-known truth. Every good doctor has always recognized that he must meet his patient as a whole person. It was hailed as a triumph of the recent past, that mental illness was recognized and treated as an illness. But the latest step—the recognition and treatment of physical illness as something for which the patient is somehow to blame is new indeed—or is it very old?

Does this current understanding of disease merely present the medical profession with a new set of problems to be classified and handed over to researchers for solution? Or does it invite you to look again at the whole of society and at the place of the profession in society?

These are rhetorical questions. I know that colleges of medicine, medical associations and many thoughtful and able doctors are pondering these matters and dealing with them in a manner more profound, if somewhat less sprightly, than that of my friend Miss McGinley. I know that the perplexity of the layman—and occasionally, I suppose even of the physician—at some modern procedures has not escaped them.

It is certainly not my purpose to offer any suggestions. I am happy, most happy, to be on the sidelines, and to watch the medical profession constantly finding new and greater opportunities of service. I would like simply to comment on two tendencies which are to be welcomed.

One of these is typified by the presence here today of the Federation of Canadian Medical Women as a group within the Canadian Medical Association. I know well the trials of the women who first determined to qualify themselves for this exacting profession. It is a great pleasure to congratulate their successors, and to assume from the pleasant relationship which appears today that the citadel is successfully stormed, and the forces reconciled. But I must add, it is an even greater pleasure to reflect on the special contribution that women doctors can make. “Women,” we hear, “are always so personal.” Let us thank heaven for that. Please go on being personal in a profession, and in an age when, as it seems to me, we are in constant danger of losing the person. I do not doubt the knowledge and skill of the women members of the profession; of that we can be sure. I am sure, also, that you may always associate with your professional ability, the special qualities of sympathy and compassion which come easily and naturally to women in whatever work they do.

The second tendency, which I observe with unmixed pleasure, is a renewed attention to the general education of those who enter the profession of medicine. For some years now I have been aware that, in spite of the ever-increasing mass of scientific and medical knowledge which must be mastered, the profession is reminding itself more and more earnestly that the good doctor must be an educated man in the most universal sense of the word. We all know that the profession reached its present honourable estate when educated men joined its ranks and proved that their education made them better doctors as well as better men. But today we stagger under an increasing load of knowledge which—inadequately used—may bewilder as well as illuminate. Every profession today is in danger of having its intellectual life narrowed, its imagination stifled by the weight of professionalism. Doctors, above all, have become aware of the danger; and members of the profession are asserting increasingly that, although some experience of liberal education does not make a man a good doctor, he cannot be a good doctor without it.

Surely this re-examination of the doctor and of medical professionalism is timely. When you are faced with the realization that while you must deal with the whole man, science, so far, has encompassed only a part, and perhaps not the most important part—surely that is the time, not to lay aside science, but to recall that there are more ways than one to a knowledge of human life, of human character, of the human person. I was interested to learn of the anatomy professor who used in his lectures slides of Michelangelo’s drawings of the human body. Here he paid a kind of practical tribute to the oneness of science and art. This is perhaps a symbol of your recognition that the doctor who deals (by special techniques and with expert knowledge) with the whole man, must himself be a whole man. And he can achieve that wholeness only through a generous education, however it is acquired. He must have his imagination inspired and his mind liberalized by the broadest and most vigorous training before he can be allowed to subject himself to the profound and relentless discipline of the medical sciences.

One thing more. The doctor today must not only encounter baffling problems. He is burdened with the grave responsibility of applying the most subtle and drastic treatments to patients who are quite incapable of understanding, let alone criticizing, what he is doing. His moral responsibility is heavy indeed. It is not enough to say that a good man will be a responsible doctor. The man who is placed in this position of tremendous trust must have his moral instincts developed, refined and strengthened by all that intellectual training can do. Moral impulses are not enough. They must grow into sound, considered, rational moral principles.

This I take to be the most difficult question facing the medical profession today. How can you draw to your ranks men and women of the highest intellect, of the soundest character? How can you find, among them, the sympathy needed by those who meet their fellow-men in moments of anxiety and despair, and the qualities essential to those who must use science (and not be used by it) in the practice of one of the greatest of the arts? And, having found such persons, how can you, in the few short years of their training, cultivate the mind and the imagination and the character without neglecting the essential scientific and technical preparation?

I have raised these questions as a layman, with a layman’s diffidence—but with the concern that all of us must feel for a matter which affects so closely human happiness and the well-being of society. I know that the whole matter is a subject of serious and anxious consideration to medical associations and medical faculties. I have read, and have been enlightened, by articles which deal with this question in terms of the broadest human sympathy and social concern. It is not, indeed, for me to put questions and demand answers on an issue which is in the best of hands. It is rather my privilege to say how deeply I am impressed by the weight of your responsibilities and by the courage and energy with which you meet them and to wish you well in all your deliberations.

Every Man His Own Geographer

Address to the Canadian Geographical Society, Ottawa

It is trite to say that, the study of geography in Canada has special importance and interest because there is still so much to uncover. When I think of the vast field of enquiry still open to you, I am reminded of the story of a Negro woman in the deep south. When asked if she had any corn pone she replied: “Honey chile, corn pone is what we ain’t got nothin’ else but.” Not many generations ago, we could almost have said the same of our geography. We had little else. But over the years our land, with its mystery and its riches, has prompted enquiry and adventure, given us wealth and shaped our thinking—created a nation in what were once thought to be empty wastes.

There is no need for me, addressing this audience, to talk about the long line of brave and able men who have wrested from the northern half of our continent so many of its secrets. But are our boys and girls familiar enough with the tale—our Canadian tale? Men who came from France, from England, from Scotland, from Scandinavia, and from the older parts of our own country—the procession is unending and still continues—belong to a story of exploration which should prove absorbing to every schoolboy and moving to his elders. Francis Drake once asked Queen Elizabeth for her support in an enterprise which he had conceived. She asked if there were any risk and if he thought the undertaking would be successful. He replied: “Madam, success is not certain, for the wings of a man’s life are plumed with the feathers of death.” This is true of countless endeavours in our vast land.

Recently I have been reading The Private Journal of Captain Lyon of the Royal Navy, which was published in 1824. He spent two and a half years in the Arctic in his little ship H.M.S. Hecla. His purpose was to map the northern coast of the continent. He possessed no academic degrees, but he was a geographer in the fullest sense of the word; not only did he chart the region but he studied the rocks, the vegetation, the climate and the fauna. He gave an account of the natives and the way of life demanded by their environment. This is only one example of the countless enterprises from the beginning to the present day, in which endurance and courage and determination gave us knowledge of our own great north. Last spring when I flew over the North Pole in an aircraft of the R.C.A.F. I found it an experience as humbling as it was fascinating. Here I was travelling in comfort, over a region in which men had suffered great hardships and often spent years facing overwhelming and sometimes fatal hazards in their searches.

The primary functions of your society are related to the geography of Canada, but it has not been conceived on narrow lines; you are concerned with geographical studies in general. Scholars of many lands are ready to defend—if defence is necessary—such researches as their chosen pursuit. The French, renowned for their brilliant work in this field, are among the most enthusiastic. “Geography”, we learn from one of their scholars, “comprehends all the sciences, opens all vistas, embraces all human knowledge”. And, this loyal Frenchman adds, “We place the University of France on the summit of a pyramid with the word ‘geography’, towards which all human knowledge tends . . .” Perhaps, as Canadian geographers, we can throw aside our cold—may I say our deliberate?—moderation, and place this subject (I need not say that I name no Canadian university!) at the summit of all learning!

But why—we may ask—why must the enthusiastic geographer be so exclusive in his worship? The answer, I believe, is not far to seek, although here I must defer to my colleagues who, if their “projects” have perhaps been less extensive than mine, have given—if I may employ an understatement—more profound attention to the scholarly aspects of the study. Why must the modern geographer proclaim his faith with so much fanfare? His studies have always been of first importance. They deal with the whole physical environment of modern man—its impact on his mind and character. It is the vast home where he spends his life. It is concerned with what this home does to him, what he does, what he can do, what he should do, with it. Man has never been able to dissociate himself from the facts which, to so large an extent, govern his life.

All this is true. It is also true, as geographers know very well, that their subject hitherto has largely been the handmaid, one might almost say the slave, of other studies or pursuits. It is hard to understand why the establishment of chairs of geography in modern universities—which gave it its full status in the academic field—took place only recently. Geography in its own right has too often been relegated to the very junior classroom. There, in a rather charming way, it reflects the recent or even the not so recent, history of the community. Think of those limitless lists of capes and bays which we wrestled with years ago in school; what are they but the desiccated fragments of that living knowledge which meant not merely a livelihood but life itself to our forefathers, the great seafarers of the western world? Similarly, the depressing catalogues of county towns, which used to afflict our infant minds, doubtless reflected the local preoccupations of those who guided our early educational steps, or their sense of the cost and the arduous efforts of their grandparents who created these communities.

But having served as the medium for this and other curious lore, geography, after the elementary years, disappeared from formal studies. It was still there on the higher levels, more or less, but it had been captured by history, economics, literature, art and even philosophy; by geology, biology, chemistry and physics; and in the world of affairs by politics, military strategy, navigation, and in modern times by all forms of commercial enterprise. These varied creatures have battened on geography’s helpless form. No wonder that those who have recognized and resuscitated her now, with perhaps a slight excess of enthusiasm, do her honour as the source of all knowledge.

We may not go quite so far, but we should recognize geography as at once a fascinating popular pursuit and a great academic discipline. Your Society plays an admirable part in bringing such studies to the attention of the Canadian people in every aspect. As an association of scholars, you give to geography its true place. You also give pleasure to the amateur. Through your journal you cater to many tastes, and you stimulate a wide variety of articles from the strictly scientific to the popular and entertaining. Your universal appeal is splendidly reinforced by the generous use of photographs of distinction. Last, but not least, you endeavour to keep in touch with geographers everywhere through the book reviews of the magazine. I cannot overstate my sense of the importance of such service. Nothing, I believe, will contribute so much to Canadian cultural development as a knowledge of what is being done in Canada and abroad in any particular field of interest.

It is, I suggest, on occasions such as this, appropriate to ask ourselves again exactly what the study of geography means and should mean to the individual and to society. That it can mean a quite astonishing and absorbing variety of things every reader of your journal knows.

May I suggest that one can think of geography in two ways—that one can regard it as both an art and a science. This does not precisely express my meaning, but for the moment it will serve.

We might think of geography first as an art. It begins with experience, man’s experience of his own physical environment. He translates this experience in all sorts of ways. He employs it for the furtherance of his practical designs. But it is geography too that helps him to realize the ultimate futility of designs which are merely “practical”. They should draw him on to deeper understanding and contemplation. I could, I am sure, illustrate all of these geographical practices from the whole of history, if I knew the whole of history. I can certainly illustrate them from the limited historical knowledge at my disposal.

Obviously man cannot live on earth without employing his knowledge of geography. There have, however, been certain epochs in history when the geographers ought to have been—but generally were not—the first citizens of any country. I am thinking, for example, of the great surge of energy in Europe which resulted in the occupation and development of the American continents. Europeans were deserting their piecemeal overland trade with the Orient and on the high seas were striving to reach their objective directly. It was a time of great practical designs; it was also an age of great geographers of all kinds, practical and theoretical. Men like Magellan and Vasco da Gama, Columbus, and Cabot, Cartier and Drake come to mind. Behind them, however, stand those whose bold ideas and patient researches provided the foundation for the work of the men of action: giants like Copernicus and Galileo, and men like Dr. Dee, the remarkable English geographer—part-mathematician, part-astrologer—who helped to persuade the Elizabethan navigators that the world was waiting for them to open.

This reminds us of one of geography’s most publicized triumphs—the development of the study of “geopolitics”. It was, as you know better than I, this enquiry which, early in this century, began to turn men’s minds from the dogma of sea power and the pre-eminence of sea-going people, to the modern view that (given our communications—railway, the motor-car, the aeroplane) the solid land mass has the greatest potential for world domination. This theory, developed and made popular by MacKinder, (I remember how exciting I found his book when I read it years ago), has received astounding and even frightening confirmation in our day. It is only another illustration of the immense sweep—as well as the painstaking detail—involved in the work of the geographer. It is only one more illustration of the need for attracting to this study not only able technicians and scientists, but also profound philosophic minds.

On our own continent, the practical necessity for fish and furs, and the spiritual urge to save men’s souls and bodies, led a handful of men in a few decades to open the water gates to what is now the centre of power in the western world. It is interesting and cheering to note that Champlain, the first of this heroic group, not only was, but called himself, a geographer. Today, as we have often been reminded, we are completing the opening up of this immense area. The St. Lawrence Seaway will be a great achievement in modern engineering—and we should be proud that the major share of it is a Canadian responsibility—but new though the development is, it is, of course, but the final exploitation of an ancient water route—a geographical feature as old as North America itself.

It has often been said that Canada is a compromise between history and geography—with the natural geographical lines running north and south—and our links with the Old World in history and tradition lying east and west. The Seaway represents both history and geography and will, of course, make a profound impact on Canadian life in the intangible as well as in the economic sphere.

Here is an example of man’s ability to influence his environment. The geographer whose plans are put into effect is continually finding new ways for us to exploit our physical surroundings in Canada, not only in the regions which still can be called the frontier but also in those parts which have been settled for many generations. There is unbroken continuity between Champlain and his astrolabe and the prospector with his Geiger counter. We are still in the full flush of exploration and discovery; it is, perhaps, the most exciting period of an exciting history.

Great geographers for long have been concerned with the effect of environment on the mind and temperament of man; “human geography” such studies are rightly called. I find it fascinating to speculate on what will be, over the generations or centuries, the impact on the people who live in our country of our climate and physical setting. Perhaps your researches will throw light on this. Will our surroundings give us national traits and qualities which are peculiar to ourselves? How far has this process already gone? Environment, we can agree, shapes and influences man, just as man moulds and changes his environment. Our people come from all parts of the world, but I think that even now our physical setting has given us qualities of our own. In many ways it is unique. We are a people of the north like many others, but Canada is the only large northern country in the world without a sub-tropical south. (We won’t discuss the immediate influence of southern climates on some of our compatriots now temporarily absent from us, as this might smack of envy!)

It would be a commonplace to say, especially to this gathering, that the greatest geographical influence in Canada is derived from the Pre-Cambrian Shield. Lying across the country and dividing it, it has governed our politics and Constitution because it has shaped our economic foundations. How right it is that our national capital should stand on the border between the two geographical Canadas—our great fertile plain and our vast area of rock and lake and forest. Only a few miles from here—just behind Hull—we can stand on the plain and see, a few hundred yards away, the outcrop of the Shield itself.

There are regions in Canada which leave vividly their stamp on the people who inhabit them. I was conscious of this not long ago in the Arctic when I flew across the tree line which runs from Churchill to Aklavik. On one side lies the tundra—the barrens—on the other the forests, and the natives of these two areas, so much alike, are yet so varied in such matters as their means of transport, and their diet, as to have developed over a long period, marked differences in their modes of life.

As I have tried to suggest, there is much more to geography broadly conceived than practical undertakings, just as there is to life itself. I have already mentioned the illustrations in your journal, some of them reproductions of paintings, others photographs, notable for their variety, for their precision, sometimes for their striking beauty. Your pictures carry on beyond the functions of the engineer and the economist to the realm of the artist and the poet—and why not? Poets from time immemorial have practised the art of the geographer with power and precision. So have painters. It was Canadian poets who first showed us our own country; and it was Canadian painters who, through their interpretation, can be said to have found Canada’s Northland and who are still opening it before our eyes. The discoveries of writers and artists are peculiar to them. They see, and convey, a sense of the unseeable in nature and in man. When I spoke of the influence of environment on people, I was thinking not only of physical effect. Natural beauty plays its part. Our artists, as I have suggested, have given us vivid records of that. We have only to remember the influence of the grim beauty of Algoma on our first native school of painters. But the splendours of nature affect those who perhaps are unconscious of the process. I heard in Newfoundland the story of a brakeman in the caboose of a freight train who was overheard to say, standing by the door as dawn was breaking, and gazing at the receding countryside:

We have all been moved by the peculiar charms of our country which take so many forms. I have seen much of this for the first time within the past year: the opal lights on the great mountains of Ellesmere Island; the savage grandeur of the Fraser Canyon near Pavilion Mountain; the dark forests of Sitka spruce in the Queen Charlotte Islands; the varied panorama of the Gaspé Coast; the sombre beauty of the Saguenay; the black and white pattern of the Mackenzie Delta in winter seen from the air. These are some of the glories of our land—there is natural beauty everywhere for those who have eyes to see, and consciously or otherwise it must affect us profoundly. In a recent Canadian novel the author, Ethel Wilson, speaks of the impressions of a traveller crossing Canada traversing

I am expecting every moment to be called to order not so much for getting away from my subject as for abusing it. I shall no doubt be told that I have divided geography between the scientist and the historian, the poet and the painter, leaving the geographer, as always, in the cold. You will say to yourselves, “That is what happens when we ask a layman to address us!” But I am not forgetting the position of geography. I am reminding you, perhaps in too many words, of what we all know, that every man should be his own geographer, and that a knowledge of geography is basic to most human arts. We must all be geographers if we are to live intelligently in this world, just as we must all be historians if we are to live acceptably in society. Geography and history are universal arts. When they cease to be so, civilization decays.

But geography, like history, is also a science. In each of these capacities it is playing a role of increasing importance. The more crowded the house, the more careful must be the planning and organization of space. The more crowded the world, the greater the need for precise knowledge of every part, and of every aspect of every part. Moreover, the more complex the relations between countries (or provinces, or towns) the more important it is that we should have a clear and comparative knowledge of them. To collect such varied data, it is true, has become the task of the biologist, the mineralogist, climatologist, agronomist, ecologist, demographer and so on—I groan under the weight of language! Geography, as always, is parcelled out among the specialists. But this does not mean that the geographer works for the specialists. Rather they work for him. It is his task to assemble all facts and to see the total human environment; to exhibit man’s home to him clearly, precisely, objectively, not from the point of view of the carpenter, mason, plumber or painter, but from the point of view of the man who lives there. Modern geography is, and must be, an exact science.

But like all great sciences philosophically approached, it must be numbered among the humanities. It is, as I have already ventured to assert, an art. Its character as a humane study, however, derives not only from the fact that it shows the world to man; it also places before him in peculiarly sharp and striking form, human problems requiring the keenest analysis, and the most careful judgment of value. It is this responsibility which has transformed modern geography. Until the last century the “environmentalists” had it all their own way. Montesquieu, with his implication that government was the product of climate, was one of the most famous of a numerous band. The modern geographer, with his eye on the past and future, as well as the present, shows the absurdity of assuming man as passively receiving impressions. Man, of course, influences his environment; not only is he influenced by it. Modern man, from Copernicus with his eyes on the stars, to the habitant with his mission to “faire la terre”, has created (and has been created by) the modern world. Here then we have a subject in great need of precise scientific analysis and sound philosophic judgment. I mean the delicate and shifting question of the influences operating between men and their earthly dwelling place.

How are these ends to be attained, these tasks to be accomplished? By continuing such good work as you and others in the same field are doing. I would not understate past achievements, but I would remind you that in all really great tasks—and yours is a great task—there are limitless possibilities.

A Layman Talks to Architects

Address at the Annual Dinner of the Royal Architectural Institute
of Canada, Ottawa

Quite often over the years it has been my good fortune to be associated in one way or another with members of your profession. I have greatly enjoyed our collaboration—if I may use that word. I do not know, of course, whether my enjoyment has been shared by the architects, but that subject I shall not pursue.

I certainly do not wish to claim any expert knowledge of the architect’s craft, and I shall follow my course this evening with appropriate humility, but there is one feature of this occasion to which I can make almost “a professional approach”. This is your Golden Jubilee—your Fiftieth Anniversary, and, although I know too little about your profession, I can claim to be an authority on anniversaries, jubilees—golden and diamond—centenaries—even sesquicentenaries. I am deeply concerned with anniversaries—I like them—I thrive on them. I am delighted to participate in yours.

Votre Institut, comme beaucoup d’autres parmi nos grands organismes nationaux, offre un bel exemple de collaboration entre citoyens d’expression française et citoyens d’expression anglaise.

Au Canada nous savons combien notre héritage spirituel se trouve enrichi par cette dualité de culture qui nous est chère et qui se retrouve dans tous nos arts—le vôtre y compris.

Frequently when I am privileged to address one or other of our national bodies, I can explain my sense of the occasion and my pleasure in it by referring to the importance of the organization in our national life. I am also happy to record the recognition and acclaim which it has won, and the general acknowledgment of its place in the community. Of course, I may now and then overstate the matter a little! But if festive evenings are not fit for some decoration of speech, for some slight embroidery on the harsh fabric of fact, they are poor things indeed. Of the importance of your profession, there is no question in my mind nor, I am sure, in that of any informed and reflecting person. But I am in some difficulty when I speak of the public recognition which it receives. Flattery itself cannot, I believe, conjure up much acclaim or even much interest out of the depths of the general apathy towards your calling. I applied a little test, an “objective test” which is, I believe, in professional language sufficiently “valid”. I looked through the files of that admirable production the Canadian Periodical Index for the past year or so. For the word “architecture” I looked almost in vain. (I regret to say that the Journal of the R.A.I.C. is not included in this work of reference.) Under the letter “A” I found aeroplanes and airports and airfields in the index; I found Aklavik and Arctic; but any evidence that the travellers on aeroplanes or dwellers in the Arctic had any interest or concern in houses was almost lacking. If the editors of Canadian journals really have their fingers on the pulse of the national interest, then I think we must say that the public take you and your works largely for granted. In its way, this is perhaps a tribute but, as I believe, and as I shall try to show, a somewhat disturbing one.

Architecture, after all, just as much as any other craft and far more than any other art, has felt the effects of the fantastic industrial and social changes of the past two centuries. It is not only that technological revolutions in opening vast possibilities have placed on the shoulders of the artist as well as of the craftsman an immense responsibility. The whole function of the architect has changed with our social revolution.

I know that in discussing this matter, I am telling you only what you know much better than I. But I should like to spend a few minutes recounting, briefly and simply, what I take to be the reflections of the man in the street—when he does reflect—on this problem. Or, in modern language, I am trying to help you to “get the layman’s angle on it”.

A century or so ago, the construction of a building, public or private, was generally an isolated event. It was, of course, like similar undertakings now, a matter of deep concern to the individual or group expecting to pay for it and to use it. It was also, no doubt, a matter of concern to the architect who hoped to be paid for it, and to gain prestige by it. It was, however, an incident—usually a single event. Then, new buildings were few; they were also built to last forever. Now, in these days of unheard of expansion of the urban population and the progressive obsolescence of existing structures under changing conditions, we no longer plan buildings in the old sense of the term—we envisage, blue-print and implement building programmes.

Today, in the mechanized society of the social welfare state, architecture, whether we admit it or not, has become the very fabric of our lives. I have already suggested that we do not recognize this in any direct or specific fashion. There is no doubt that the architects do. I read with interest, if also with a slight sense of shock, the confession of faith of a contemporary American architect who sees his colleagues of the future as “endowed with a perilous power of design capable of producing or effacing disturbances of our inner equilibrium, our organic harmony, and influencing happenings and functions that play deep down within us in a manner much too subtle to be compared with the function or failure of inorganic machines”. I think I understand what he means. I would like to suggest, however, that this is carrying environmentalism a little too far; certainly, as one critic has said, a house is an artifact, not an organism. But my heart warms to the architect who, in the face of public indifference, thus, if I may quote St. Paul, “magnifies his office”.

For your power over our lives is tremendous. Montesquieu, more than two centuries ago, argued persuasively that national character and national institutions derived from climate, considered in the broad sense of geographical environment. In modern times the architect is increasingly taking the place of Providence for, in our urban society, it is he who provides the immediate physical environment. It is he who plots the shape of the houses and he who dominates the operations of the workshop. On the one hand he may be an innovator—blessed or cursed as the case may be; or, by accepting thoughtlessly outmoded patterns, he may lay a dead hand on useful progress. A recent writer in an architectural journal gives an amusing illustration of this last. After much thought and research devoted to the planning of a hospital ward with a view to comfort and beauty, the several needs of the patients and to the activities of the nurses, they called in further advice. It was, students of history might be pleased to know, not the sociologist, but the historian who enquired if the nursing routine for which the ward was planned had any justification except the approval of Florence Nightingale! It appeared it had not.

I need not labour a point familiar to us all. For better or for worse, buildings are coming more and more to give us almost our total physical setting. They condition, as never before, the way we eat and sleep and enjoy our recreation; the way we do our daily work, and the way we feel towards the world we live in.

I do not, for one moment, deplore this condition of our lives. I want only to look at it as the condition of our lives and to see it in its proper perspective. Architects of the early nineteenth century and before, are cherished in popular memory for the exquisite houses, town halls and churches constructed by them for the rich or the near rich. Architects of the period immediately following (or their substitutes) are remembered for their exuberance (sometimes ill-judged) in public building, and for their failure to give shape or form to the oceans of urban dwellings, the construction of which had become big business.

The architect of today is taking on a new function. A public building is no longer an event; it is an everyday affair. And thanks to increasing interest in municipal housing, you are now called on to build appropriate houses not only for the rich and very rich, but for the poor and very poor. Architecture has been democratized. It is the architect’s problem and his privilege to devise a decent physical environment for all. And it is his problem, as I have suggested, to consider this environment in terms not only of the home, but of the place of work: the factory and the school and the “business block” are his constant concern. You are, surely, in a happy position. You have to sell what everyone must buy; modern science and technology have placed in your hands limitless materials and fabulous tools; and yet your craft is still an art, and a very great art.

You are, moreover, in a special sense, becoming public servants. You work less and less for the special taste and private purse of the individual and more and more for public institutions and, most of all, for governments. When I speak of governments, I have in mind, of course, not only architects as Civil Servants, but private architects commissioned by governments. Just as the typical eighteenth-century dwelling was designed for private taste or caprice, so the typical twentieth-century building is designed for public use. It has been well said that architecture reflects perfectly the social revolution of our time. Building is now everyone’s business and everyone’s property.

Moreover, most buildings are public performances. They should be recognized as such and at one time they were. In eighteenth-century England, for example, Webb, Kent, Adam and Nash were household names, and their work was known and applauded. Such men worked against a background of fine craftsmanship created by unknown persons who had contributed, in every part of the country, to a sound and beautiful local tradition. That was a happy state; it belongs to the past. We cannot restore it. We would not if we could. The increase of wealth, its more equitable distribution, the advances of science and technology, now make possible building on a vast scale with an amazingly high standard of dwellings for all, a high standard not merely of decency and of health, but of convenience, comfort—even luxury.

But the fact remains that as more and better houses and public buildings appear, the land is being covered, the landscape obscured. How important it is then that, in the words of the Psalmist, your works should praise your name. And your problem is a special one. When the public recognizes that one of our painters or sculptors has imposed a failure on the local art gallery, the loss is not irreparable, nor the injury permanent. All galleries have basements—and very useful places they are! An architect’s failure, however, is in another category. It cannot be buried; it must be looked at; and its cost can go far beyond money, for, in the course of construction, it may well have effaced the hills, buried the brooks, rooted up the trees and blotted out the sky. Architecture has been variously described. It has been called the “mistress art”, the “Cinderella of the arts” and many other names. With these we may, or may not, all agree. But there is no doubt that architecture is the one inescapable art. We make a distinction between private and public building. In urban architecture, at least, there really is no such distinction—as I have suggested, all buildings are public buildings. They impose themselves always on our sight.

What I have tried to say is that architects have immense power over our lives and also a heavy responsibility—not only in what they do, but in their opportunity to make people understand and appreciate it. This I believe is fundamental to your task. As servants of the public, you do not enjoy the complete—but frequently imaginary—independence of those in other arts. You must keep in touch with your public, you must show them what you have learned, you must help them to look with eyes that see; you must make them refuse to tolerate the intolerable.

May I give two illustrations of unworthy toleration? How often have we seen a fine structure, well-proportioned and built of good material, defaced and disfigured by signs affixed by the owners with the apparently innocent intention of simply identifying their place of business. But what is the result? A garish cloud of paint by day and a fiery pillar of neon by night. This is not only an offence to the passer-by, but it is also a betrayal of the architect himself. The integrity of a work of art ought to be protected and in some cases is protected. But if we look, as we should, on the architect as an artist, we must give to his work respect comparable to that which we give to books or paintings—not as a matter of law, but, shall I say, good manners. And may I add that I wish that a building, like books and pictures, bore more often the signature of the architects, who frequently suffer from an inappropriate anonymity.

There is a second matter relevant to the first. Perspectives and models of buildings produced by architects nearly always include the trees and shrubs which can give the structure an agreeable setting. How often the owners fail to provide these when the building is finished! It can look, sometimes, almost like a picture without a frame, and that is unfair to the picture. Here are two examples of the way in which sound, and even beautiful, work is ruined, or at least marred, through ignorance or carelessness. Here, surely, the architect could do something to enlighten and persuade his client.

This is a form of private education. You cannot escape the duty of public education. It is the indifference of the public to architecture, their ready acceptance of the amateur, the quack, the totally unqualified person, which here and there are defacing the country, often without creating anything worthy of a town or city. The remedy of public example and public education is slow. I wonder if it need to be so slow? I wonder if we are doing all we can to induce people to know about building and to love good building, to encourage intelligent criticism? Intelligent criticism can, of course, accomplish two things. First, the critic can do for architecture what critics do for any of the arts. He can arouse and develop taste. Secondly, he can do what those who criticize books and plays and films cannot do—he can discuss the merits of a building before it is finished—in the planning state.

Coventry Cathedral affords an interesting example of the public discussion of the plans of a public building. Mr. Basil Spence’s sketches, as you know, were published as they developed. They were the subject of a great deal of discussion, informed and intelligent, or stupid and prejudiced—but all of it generally heated—by architects and laymen alike. Have the plans been thus improved? It is not for me to say. Certainly the public had an informal course in architectural appreciation. A costly course, some might say, but education is costly and indispensable. I know that even approaching this subject carries me on to thin ice. I do not know what the members of the profession feel about this matter—there are probably many views on the subject. Here is the reflection of one attitude. In a recent article in an English journal, the reader was told that a well-known architect, asked whether he objected to his building being made the subject of a public discussion, replied that he “would look forward to hearing it and that his solicitor would do the same”!

The story, I think, should serve—if I may say so—to remind us of the constant and often poignant dilemma of the artist; he must be true to his own light, but he must also find his public. Lacking either of these he falls short of fulfilment. He must speak the truth, but he must be heard.

Your public must be educated. They must also be understood. In most of us there is a touch of sentiment—perhaps more than a touch. (By sentiment, I do not mean sentimentality, which is false sentiment.) Thus, men come to love the face of their city, as they love the look of their home. Old associations and moving experiences may create a beauty in men’s minds which the aesthete cannot see. We can learn much from American practice in the preservation and care of old buildings.

Whether you deal with old buildings or new buildings, may I suggest that your art, like the doctor’s science, must be tempered with humanism. If so, you serve the whole man, but you can serve the whole man only by ministering both to his physical needs and to his spirit. It is probably a venerable truism to say that no profession combines, as does architecture, the utilitarian and the intangible; it unites the mastery of material with the service of beauty. It does not matter in what so-called “style” the structure is built. In the present generation and, indeed, before it, we have seen a reaction against building in the forms of the past. If a layman may venture an observation, fidelity to old modes may be either a mechanical imitation or it may be a new statement in an old vernacular, a statement possessing a vitality of its own. Much of the building today in our country reflects a healthy determination to create structures whose style finds itself, through an honest effort on the part of the designer to produce a building best able to perform its allotted function—to do its job. There has, of course, been in all the arts in contemporary times, a conscious rejection of the sentimental, the meretricious, the merely pretty; architecture, along with music, literature and the fine arts, provides countless examples of this. In all these fields, the results are often stark, sometimes obscure, however candid and sincere the craftsmanship may have been. Wise members of your profession hold the view that however “utilitarian” a building may be, the factors of grace, elegance—let us say beauty—need never be neglected. After all, I suppose the basic elements of design in any building, anywhere, are twofold—form and colour. This can apply equally to a cathedral and a factory. And so I would agree with those in your profession, and outside it, who remind us that architecture is an art as well as an applied science—that at its best it possesses a spiritual content; that great architecture transcends building. This, I believe, is the genius of your profession. I am conscious of it as I move round our vast country and see fine examples of the architect’s work, both new and old. Many onlookers may not be aware of the importance of what you are doing, but I am sure that as you bring warmth and humanity to the task, you win from your public increasingly the respect and loyalty which your great profession so truly deserves, creating buildings fully worthy of it and helping architecture the better to take its rightful place among our lively arts.

Our Debt to the Civil Service

Address to the Professional Institute of the
Public Service of Canada, Ottawa

This is the first time since I took up my present post that I have had the privilege of meeting with such a representative body from our Public Service. I have been hoping that some day I would have such an opportunity. However, thanks to the kindness of your Chairman and his benevolent approach to both speaker and audience, my remarks today will lie on the side of brevity. The Chairman’s thoughtfulness simply goes to show how civil the Civil Service can be!

Votre Institut, comme beaucoup d’autres parmi nos grands organismes nationaux, offre un bel exemple de coopération entre citoyens d’expression française et anglaise. Au Canada, nous savons combien notre héritage se trouve enrichi par l’union de ces deux cultures qui nous sont chères et qui se retrouvent dans toutes nos organisations. Nous devons chercher à garder dans nos services publiques, cette étroite collaboration qui existe entre ces deux grandes familles, et en agissant ainsi, nous pourrons mieux servir notre pays.

I think I am right in saying that a most important index of the quality of any country is the standard of its Public Service. Fortunate is the country whose Civil Service is marked by intelligence, integrity, impartiality and devotion to its task. Secondly, it augurs well for the future of that country, if there is a genuine desire among the best of its young people to enter the Service themselves. I am only saying something which would meet with widespread agreement when I state without hesitation that Canada passes both tests with great distinction.

A word first about the second point—about recruitment for our Public Service. It has so happened that in recent years I have been a member of several Committees charged with the examination of applicants for important scholarships. One of the obvious questions to ask on these occasions is “What do you want to do when you finish your formal education?” A very considerable proportion of the young men and women thus interrogated have put the Public Service of Canada at the top of the list of careers which they wish to enter. This was not because of a search for security, it was because they felt that in the Civil Service there was a very important and rewarding job to be done. That would not have been the case a generation or two ago—the fact that it is so now is a tribute, of course, not only to the growing importance of our country and the Service which staffs it, but to a correct assessment of the significance of its work. The idea that a Civil Servant is a lightly employed beneficiary of the state died hard, but it died many years ago. The public now realizes what our Public Service means in our national life, and is proud of its members.

I am happy to have some knowledge of the work of the Service and the problems it encounters. I am glad to have been a Civil Servant myself, unimportant and temporary—as long ago as 1919. I do not know what the records say about my tenure of office, which was less than a year. I hope such documents are kept confidential until the time of destruction arrives!

I have, indeed, for long known and respected the great Service of which you form so distinguished a part. It was my privilege—if you will permit me to draw on personal experience—to collaborate often with members of our Public Service during nearly fifteen years when I was serving abroad, most of the time in London but also, for a shorter period a few years before, in Washington. I met numerous members of the Service who came to both capitals to meet their opposite numbers. They always served Canada well.

During two strenuous and rewarding years as Chairman of the Royal Commission on the Arts, Letters and Sciences, I worked with many members of your organization and received most valuable help and advice from them. Moreover, I learned to know some of the great names of the past, names of those who were not your members but your precursors, for they laboured in the Public Service before this Institute came into being. I came across many names whom all here would delight to honour, for they anticipated your work. They adorned their offices; indeed they created them. They showed what must be done by doing it.

The very important body meeting here today represents, I suppose, nearly every profession in Canada, and almost every branch of learning, scientific or humane. I am, indeed, awed and intimidated by the weight of knowledge, the force of intellect which I know is present here. I gain courage to speak only from the thought that to those of you who spend your days penetrating the depths of the unknown and perhaps incomprehensible, my commonplaces may strike you, if not as words of universal wisdom, at least as harmless efforts!

In my present post I have been privileged to know and value the work of many of your distinguished members. I have been constantly astonished at the thought of how new this organization is, how rapid its growth has been, and how remarkable is its prestige. In spite of the work of your great predecessors, you are of the twentieth century, and yours are the opportunities and the perils of this great age. No one, I suppose, can speak to such a body as this without recalling Adam Smith and his fear of government meddling, as he called it, especially government meddling in the disposal of capital; the exercise of such power, he said, “would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to imagine himself fit to exercise it”.

Alas, for the folly and presumption of our age! Our forbears of the last century heeded Adam Smith but, in due course, as we all know, he was undermined. He was threatened in the First World War, defied in the Second, and soon afterwards, if I may use the expression, “he had had it”. Governments everywhere now tell people not only how they may (and must) “direct their capital”; they tell them what they may (and especially what they may not) eat and drink and wear and live in and travel in or on; they inspect these things, they control them; increasingly they provide them.

I would remind you that the citizen, for many years, has insisted on having all these things done for him. Such services are accepted as part of civilized life in the twentieth century, and as such they are demanded. They could not, however, be provided without the remarkable organization which has grown up in this country during the last four decades. They would be unthinkable without this particular branch whose services (as it has been very well said) are directed “to discover the causes of disease in men, animals and plants; to eradicate pests and scourges—to explain the vagaries of the weather, the secrets of the atom, the effects of cosmic rays and the courses of the stars . . .” “The processes of government,” says the same commentator, “have become massive—highly technical and complex.” A list of the job classifications in the Civil Service reads like a calendar of all the talents. Virtually every profession, every skill and every field of learning is represented.

As you will gather, I have prepared myself for this speech by some reading of the experts. I am now going to throw away my book and offer you a few reflections on—to use a well-worn phrase—what I take to be the occupational hazards of your calling—at least on one or two of them. If my remarks sound amateurish, forgive me. They come from one who has a deep admiration for our great Canadian service, much pride in its present achievements and firm hope for its future.

Let me draw your attention to two words in the name of your organization which suggest a certain contradiction in terms. They are the words “service” and “professional”. The expression “service” derives, presumably, from the armed services. It is a noble word. It suggests to the mind the virtues of obedience, loyalty, self-denial and silence, the glory and the anonymity of the uniform, the harmonious ordering of clearly defined ranks and categories, all with a single purpose in mind; the individual nothing, duty and the honour of the Service everything.

All these, of course, are excellent things. The word “professional”, however, suggests to me certain other good and great qualities which may be difficult to blend with the first. I do not forget that one may speak of “a professional soldier”, but I suggest that when we use the word we think, as a rule, of the classic “learned professions”—Law, Medicine, the Church—and of their innumerable modern offshoots. Now the characters or qualities of professional men are generally seen as, first, intellectual ability and character; secondly, that broad general education which is the indispensable preliminary to the ensuing professional training; and thirdly, the professional training itself, which is never merely the acquisition of knowledge, but the acceptance of a code of ethics, and of a method of discipline more or less strict and severe. And this, you will recall, is the only discipline that the professional man is prepared to accept. Not of him can it be said, “Theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why . . .” It is his job constantly to reply to questions; to differ; to experiment. It is his duty to refuse obedience to any external authority. He is independent, an individualist, a competitor, it may be, for the rewards of his profession, with an endeavour to render the greatest service to his clients, or to further learning and raise the prestige of his calling. But, traditionally, he does not obey a superior officer. He follows his star, guided only by professional ethics, disciplined only by his own profession.

When professional men, cherishing these traditions, join a service, even the relatively informal Civil Service, there must, of course, be no conflict, nor even a tension, but there is need to effect a harmony. The professional man demands complete freedom, or he cannot do his best work; he may say he cannot even do honest work. But complete freedom for the individual in a complex and organized service means anarchy. He must submit himself to superior direction. He may easily learn to do so. He may enjoy doing so. He may, of course, become a mere conformist, and therefore no longer a professional.

And, as we all know, if in the professional Civil Service these problems are resolved (one way or the other) there still remains a delicate relationship between the whole body of experts on the one hand, and, on the other, the authority and people whom they serve. They may be coldly regarded, if I may quote a couple of unfriendly phrases, either as “an army of bureaucrats lusting for power”, or as a body characterized by “lack of initiative and imagination, procrastination and unwillingness to take responsibility or give decisions”.

May I suggest that between these two dangers, the Scylla and Charybdis, which confront you, you must make your difficult way, both as individuals in relation to the administration and as a body, dealing with the public as a whole? The price of success must surely be constant vigilance with a steady effort to combine loyalty with independence of mind, discipline with individual responsibility and, in the last analysis, obedience to orders with the strictest professional standards.

It is to the lasting credit of our Public Service that this harmony is so fully achieved within its ranks. This we must attribute first to the integrity of the Civil Service and the qualities of character possessed by its members. Those who can speak with the greatest knowledge and authority have no doubt of this.

Integrity lies at the foundation of a public service, so does education—education in the broadest sense of the word. It was not mere professional knowledge but liberal education and scientific learning that differentiated the apothecary from the physician, the barber from the surgeon, the scrivener from the solicitor. In an organization of specialists, entrusted as a body, one might almost say, with the health, welfare, safety and defence of society, how necessary it is that each individual should have such breadth of knowledge and understanding as may enable him to view the total task not only of his department, but of all government; and much more, such as may enable him to be at once a strict professional, a loyal Civil Servant and a responsible citizen.

I must conclude. The main purpose of my remarks today was most certainly not to criticize but rather to show to you, who know so well all these matters that I have mentioned, that in a small way I share your pride in this great organization, and your hope that it may continue and widen its essential and invaluable services. I wish you well.

Letters Today: A Consumer’s Comments

Address to the Canadian Authors’ Association, London

Now I have no intention tonight of imposing on you sententious observations on the state of Canadian literature or the position of the Canadian writer. I just want to offer very briefly a few simple reflections which I hope are not irrelevant to this evening. Some of these may sound optimistic—others less so. Let me turn to the latter first, for I like happy endings.

As one surveys the field of literature in the world today, the most striking thing about it might well seem to be its quantity. (I am using “literature” in a very broad and generous sense.) In two or three generations the school has everywhere multiplied the consumers of the printed word immeasurably, but it is not difficult to draw some discouraging conclusions. It can be held that the increase in the consumption of literature of all kinds has been accompanied by a marked decline in respect for letters. It is probably true that a century ago if a man could read at all, he could read well. Also single works by a Shelley or a Darwin or a Victor Hugo could make an immense impact on the reading public. That is no longer so. The reading public is almost universal and is concerned with literature as varied as human nature and intelligence can be. Literacy is widespread and increasing. It is natural, however, that literacy, until education overtakes it, should be a matter of law rather than mind.

It seems likely that in our society, with so much of every sort to read, that really important works are often lost in the general tumult of books. Nevertheless, it would seem that in our times, when so much is produced that is at best a means of mental anaesthesia, there is at the same time a remarkable amount of really distinguished writing.

There are, I believe, also encouraging symptoms that the general taste in literature is not nearly so depressed as one might imagine at first sight. In the United States, for example, the circulation of such periodicals as the Atlantic, Harper’s, or the Saturday Review of Literature has increased very considerably over the last twenty years. There are many scores of thousands of people who turn each week with pleasure to the quiet and distinguished urbanity of The New Yorker. In Canada there have appeared in recent years works both of imagination and of criticism which have been intelligently and warmly received.

I sometimes wonder whether in the world of letters we are not beginning to see the sort of thing which has happened to music through the advent of radio. In its earlier years, radio was undoubtedly responsible for diffusing, at a time when it was little more than a toy, a flow of, let us say, undistinguished music. But there has been, in recent years, not so much a reaction as rather a discovery on the part of people as a whole of the great delight to be found in fine music well performed. It is undoubtedly true that radio has been a means of enormously elevating popular taste in music.

It seems possible that the same sort of thing is happening now with books. It is apparently true that we are just now beginning to discover the vast potential market for really low-priced books. Many of them may be still somewhat sensational, and some publishers seem to find it necessary to issue reprints of the classics bound in covers bearing illustrations largely irrelevant to the subject matter of the book itself. I need not perhaps be more explicit on this theme; but it does seem to me possible that in the world of books the inverse of Gresham’s law may come to be true and that the good, if it is really good, will drive out the bad just as very largely that has been true of music over the last twenty years. That is not to say that we may look forward with certainty to a time when there will be only discriminating buyers of books, any more than now is it true that shoddy and worthless music is no longer heard; but when one compares the vast numbers of people who are now intimately familiar with Scarlatti, with Mozart, or with Brahms, with the very tiny minority of thirty years ago to whom these names meant anything at all, I think you will agree with me that there has been a very great revolution in the musical habits of the modern world; and it does seem to me, as I have said, that something of the same kind may be happening in the world of books and of letters. I understand, for example, that public libraries in Canada and elsewhere have never been so busy as during the last year or two.

It is my belief, however, that at the present time more worth-while and even distinguished books are written than an educated man could possibly find time to discover, let alone to read. I think it is true that every literary or learned publication contains announcements of more genuinely important works than any of us could possibly undertake to deal with. I am reminded of what is probably the finest book review ever written, this by a little girl aged nine who had been given as part of her homework the task of writing about a volume dealing with penguins. Her perfect comment read in full as follows: “This book contains more information about penguins than I am interested in knowing.”

One of the more striking aspects of the modern world of letters is that many of those who achieve distinction in literature are not professional writers at all, but who, through the richness and variety of their experiences, through the sensitivity of their perceptions, and through a happy facility with words—no doubt usually stemming from long apprenticeship as readers—have been able on occasion to achieve both great artistic and popular success in their writing. This, of course, is not a frequent occurrence, but it does happen often enough to make one suspect that there is a greater wealth of literary invention and of literary capacity among our people than we suspect. It is perhaps true that there are at the present time relatively more capable writers than there are discriminating readers.

It is, however, to me a reason for rejoicing that no matter how long one may live, there will always be more books one wants to read than there is time to deal with them; and from the point of view of a still quite unrepentant reader this, it seems to me, is a most happy state of affairs. Cicero, in the midst of a very busy life and shortly after the time when he had held the highest office in the Roman Republic, took a moment to sit down and comment:

Without any great claim to scholarship, I think that one could put together an anthology of similar passages in which busy men, who are not professional scholars or men of letters, have paid warm tribute to their delight in the companionship of books. One of the most satisfying collections of English Essays was edited by Lord Birkenhead when he was Lord Chancellor of Great Britain. Lord Wavell, you will recall, was able to compile, in a busy soldier’s life, a highly personal anthology of verse which will always be a joy to the reader.

But the amateur’s part is primarily that of consumption not production, and his attitude to the writer should be one of humble indebtedness. To you here this evening who represent so important a body of Canadian writers, I bring the warmest of greetings; and to you as the colleagues of all those who throughout my lifetime have brought me some of the greatest pleasures which I have known, I bring to you also a warm expression of my very deep gratitude.

On Books and Reading

Address at the 125th Anniversary Dinner of the United Church
Publishing House and the Ryerson Press

In preparation for this evening I have even gone so far as to read a book about publishing written by a publisher! I have looked as far as a layman may, into some of the mysteries of a venerable craft. I have even familiarized myself with the sound, if not with the meaning, of such terms as cast-offs, cross-heads, captions and cases. I have actually made the interesting discovery that seraphs are a phenomenon not exclusively celestial.

Let me add that my new-found knowledge is not only technical. I will not say, in our rather pretentious modern phraseology, that I have mastered the philosophy of publishing. I will say rather that I have been enabled to contemplate with sympathy and even with some understanding the dilemma of the publishers. It has been set forth with vigour and clarity—I leave to my hearers to say with how much truth—by a German writer:

There are many today who are ready to proclaim that books will find little or no place in this age of mass media. It has even been claimed—and I quote the sensational words that were used, that: “Radio and TV have books on the ropes”. Whether or not the publisher is prepared to subscribe to this as a dogma, he will agree that it cannot be altogether brushed aside. Today books are becoming no longer the exclusive or even the principal means of communication, and there is an alarming relative decline in their use as a means of recreation. They are being replaced by radio in its various forms, by television, and of course by the cinema. The last two represent increasingly the pictorial tastes of the masses who are turning more and more to wordless cartoons or to pictures in which the captions are couched in the most primitive and rudimentary of language.

This does not mean that books and reading are not increasing, but they are not increasing at all proportionally to the wealth and leisure of the population, nor is their increase relative to the growth in the use of all of the other various means of communication. This tendency has been commented on by many observers, some of whom regard it as inevitable and even desirable. It may be tactless to remind the audience of this evening, but it is nevertheless true, that civilization endured for thousands of years before the appearance of the printed book. We must also remember that printed books have been circulating only for some five centuries, and that our society has known general literacy for little more than a hundred years. One might well conclude that a widespread and constant use of books may be only a slight interlude, a transition, shall we say, between natural and scientific forms of communication. Books, it may be argued, will remain with us, but once again will be confined to libraries for the use of the cloistered scholar. The world will pass them by, securing its information through more attractive, more convenient, more striking, and broader channels.

I am not come to offer any apology for books and reading. I shall attempt an “apologia”—a reasoned defence, unnecessary, even ridiculous in this company, but, I believe, not inappropriate on this public occasion when we are gathered to honour those who make books their calling. I shall not dwell on what we all know—that books are obviously still the standard means for the recording and communication of facts in ample, precise and coherent form. In our age, marked by a progressive revelation of new and significant knowledge, there is a constant demand for information which cannot be met by a series of radio talks, however good. On the contrary, as we all know, the usual response to a satisfying series of addresses on the air is the demand that they be printed. As a means of serious communication there may be supplements to, but there is no substitute for, the clear, adequate, permanent and portable book.

I need not labour this obvious truth. Less obvious, but in my opinion of the first importance, is the purpose so nobly set forth by Milton in his famous essay. Books foster, feed, inspire and preserve the individual in society. If the western world is distinguished from all other civilizations by the integrity and the freedom of the individual, it is also distinguished from all other civilizations by the free production and the free passage of books. The two facts are not unconnected accidents. They are two aspects of one character. In the modern world the assertion of the values of individualism and of free inquiry coincided with the introduction of the printing-press and the gradual emergence of books, plentiful, relatively cheap, but above all, presenting authoritative and reliable statements of the author’s thought.

It is, therefore, not surprising that the period of the supremacy of books has been one of amazing fruitfulness in the exercise of human reason. True, the free investigations which opened new worlds of knowledge, which created new conceptions of man and the universe, were notable for experiment and direct observation, as distinguished from mere book-learning—but they were founded on books and they ceaselessly brought forth more books. The Age of Reason, of Science, of the Enlightenment was, above all, the Age of Books.

The era of books has also coincided, as we all know, with the growth of social equality and political freedom. Until the fifteenth century, printed books were unknown, and until the nineteenth they had a relatively small circulation. But until the fifteenth century only the exceptional individual was able to emerge from his group to rise above his station. In public affairs, in social life, hereditary status counted for very much more than innate personality. Today, perhaps, we cannot say that books have freed the person, but we can at least assert that personal freedom and a general concern for the integrity of the individual has gone hand in hand with the general use of books.

It is striking that the pursuit and enjoyment of literature seem to belong in a special way to free peoples. It is a question, I think, whether a great literature can flourish long, or even at all, among people in a condition of bondage. At all events, I think that I am right in saying that the two freest of the great nations of the western world are the two which are notable for their long, coherent and distinguished literary production. I am referring, of course, to the English and to the French, and to the literatures which represent perhaps their finest contributions to civilization.

Today in a mass-produced, mass-organized, “group-thinking” society, books are above all others the means by which the individual may be nourished and a free society preserved. It is not only that the solitary reader finds himself in the company of great men, standing, as it were, on an equal footing and able to come to terms with them. The reflective reader is also invited, if not obliged, to look into his own mind and conscience, and to come to terms with himself. No other means of communication offers him this opportunity. All others carry him along at a time and pace set by the machine. He must listen or watch with the group, he is constantly subjected to the emotional pressures almost inherent in group operations. At best the individual today is constantly menaced by the encroachments—often the well-meant and apparently beneficial encroachments—of the group. Good books, and perhaps good books alone, can check the rapid and degrading de-personalization which is the threat of our times.

I have tried, all too inadequately, to offer an apologia for books. It is, I believe, not too much to say that books are safe if our civilization is safe; that on the other hand, if books are, indeed, “on the ropes” so are all the values of our civilization. May I venture to suggest further, that if books today need an “apologia” the publisher needs an advocate. We may well say that in spite of sensational headlines, books are not and never can be seriously menaced in a rational society. But if books are safe, it does not altogether follow that publishers are completely secure; and we must remind ourselves that books may be endangered, not so much by the completion of new mass media as by the plight of the publisher who, in every country, and especially in our own, faces endless problems in carrying out his essential task.

My recent studies, to which I have referred, have convinced me that none of us knows enough about the work of publishers to whom we owe so much. Publishing, it has been said, is at once “an art, a craft, and a business”. It is not for me—even though I have read a book on the subject—to pontificate on such matters. It is, however, apparent what a responsibility rests with the publisher who must attract to himself manuscripts, select them and reject them, and—more important still—stimulate, advise, comfort and restrain the all-important but occasionally intractable author.

Charles Morgan, in his little history of the Macmillan firm, helps us to understand the matter when he says:

I think we can imagine the headache which must visit the best publishers most frequently. They are offered books of obvious worth, of definite importance which probably—or certainly—will not pay, and they must ask themselves whether they are philanthropists or business men. The best publishers, as we all know, take grave risks or incur certain losses, so far as they can afford it, for to the best publishers, books are a vocation as well as a business. Unhappily, the narrow margin of profit in recent times restricts such vocational indulgence. An American writer recently pointed out that the modern author may often live very comfortably—but not on his books. What he writes pays him so highly in prestige that he lives as “teacher, lecturer, project-director or symposium-attender”, by selling the products of others, “the souls of poets dead and gone”.

I have, indeed, observed with much interest that publishers, like other business men, have naturally developed their own special ethics—a code which, indeed, has become for them a rival of the decalogue. First and foremost, they subscribe most heartily to the wisdom of Polonius,

Borrowers and lenders to them must represent an evil conspiracy, bent on depriving the labourer of his hire. Secondly, “Thou shalt not beg”, and under this category, I regret to say they place many of our most reputable institutions. I will go no further. I am not here to talk scandal. I cannot, however, resist the temptation to mention one other item in the publisher’s decalogue. No publisher can be asked to declare categorically that it is wrong to steal a book. The guilt or otherwise depends entirely on circumstances. For example, if you steal from one who values the book sufficiently to purchase another copy, it is almost a meritorious act.

A President of the Royal Society of Canada has said that in this country it is an heroic act to buy a book. But may I return to the even more obvious heroism of bookselling. I need do no more than mention here one of the most melancholy features of the Canadian landscape—the dearth of real bookshops. The English-speaking Canadian publisher, with his connections over the English-speaking world, can offer to his clients an extraordinarily rich and varied supply of books. Unhappily, his natural and proper partner in the operation is wanting, to the great loss of the publisher and of the public that he seeks to serve. Booksellers, it has been said, are “part of the living basis of civilization”.

But the work of publisher and bookseller alike depends on the temper and character of the society they serve. If they are to perform their functions adequately, they must have a society not only literate but rationally enlightened; and not only enlightened but endowed with a sense of moral responsibility. Such a society will be ever conscious of the fact that its integrity and its freedom rests on the steady unfettered consumption of good books.

In speaking thus at length of publishers, I do not for one moment forget the noble and heroic role of the author—published and, alas, unpublished. But I suggest that if too few give to the author his due, hardly any even know what may be due to the publisher. Many publishers, like many authors, make money, but the best publishers, like the best authors, do not and cannot put material rewards in the first place. The reward they covet has been admirably described by a distinguished publisher:

I think that this is a worthy eulogy of a noble calling.

Uncertain Sounds

Broadcast for the B.B.C., London, July, 1957
(Originally given in a longer version at Mount Allison University, as the Josiah Wood Lecture.)

Confucius one day was approached by a disciple who asked what he would do first if it were left to him to administer a country. The Master replied: “It would certainly be to correct language.” His listeners were astonished. “Surely,” they said, “this has nothing to do with the matter. Why should language be corrected?” The Master’s answer (freely translated) was:

One finds these words quoted as singularly apposite to our age of vast and complex communications. And, I must add, many who have never even heard of Confucius would, on reflection, admit that in modern parlance “he had something”. He did indeed have something. So did St. Paul, who expressed the same idea more pithily, “If the trumpet give an uncertain sound who shall prepare himself to the battle?”

I propose to take these two ancient sayings as my texts. I want to talk about the mainspring of all human affairs, that special mark of humanity by which mankind stands or falls—language.

I need not remind you that in the time of Confucius and for many centuries thereafter, the multitude confined their language to speech, and that a very small minority expressed and exchanged their ideas in writing. Until modern times, the two aspects of language, speech and writing, might meet, but only very slowly did they mingle.

Our own age has seen a revolutionary change. When I say our own age, I speak, of course, in rather broad terms, for I am thinking of the age of printing, which began some five hundred years ago. Confucius would have rejoiced to see the day of Gutenberg. He would have detected, almost certainly, the essential significance of his great invention—the device of movable type which made possible an unlimited number of identical and accurate copies of a published work.

There is no need to dwell upon the influence of the printed book on the growth of political democracy. Without the mechanical means of conveying information—and therefore the material for critical thought and judgment—to the ordinary man and the poor man, almost on terms of equality with his more privileged and wealthier neighbour; without this, democracy would have been impossible, unthinkable, in the nation states of the modern world. The citizens of ancient democracies met in person, in one place, where everyone could see and hear. The people of modern states meet only through confidence in the printed book and the printed newspaper, whose voices speak clearly and coherently to all. Modern nations, one must add, can meet only in so far as language is, as Confucius would say, “correct”; only so long as the trumpet gives a clear and certain sound.

I must add that, if democracies live on printing, modern governments live on and through and by paper. Many distracted Civil Servants and members of the Armed Forces, weighed down by copies in triplicate and worse, may groan that theirs are governments for paper. But in spite of their protests it is true that but for the mechanical word, the elaborate services of our large centralized states would speedily perish from the earth.

What then has the printed word done? It gave men the opportunity, the hope of freedom and equality, because knowledge, sure knowledge, lay open to him, and knowledge was power. It has, moreover, by making possible speedy and precise communication on practical matters, enabled large communities to carry on their affairs smoothly, efficiently and profitably. It has helped to give us not only knowledge and freedom, but comfort and prosperity.

Many are now wondering whether we stand at the end of the age of printing, at the close of an era when a particular use of language for communication made possible a new and, as we believe, better form of political society. During this period writing and speech have almost merged. The writer no longer occupies a world of his own. Everyone reads, if not always very widely, or very deeply. Almost everyone writes, if not very much or very well. Communication through the printed word is, therefore, complete. And, one might well say, if the beginning of this process made the individual more free, and society more united, so its completion ought to bring us to the perfection of freedom and unity.

And yet, as I have suggested, there are those who think that the end is self-defeating. Ours is the age of the telephone and the cinema, of radio and of television. Many now appear to believe—and fear—that the new “mass media” will push the book into the corner. In this age of automation, we shirk the labour of attention to the printed page. Our eyes are naturally caught by the colour and movement of the pictures, and our emotions are stirred by the warmth and vitality and variety of the human voice. Few of us need much urging to toss aside our books. Human nature has not changed much since Dr. Johnson declared that “people in general do not willingly read if they can have anything else to amuse them”. What has changed is the variety and accessibility of the rival amusements.

I place myself among the traditionalists who see a connection between the spread of the printed book and the growth of liberty and the extension of learning. I warmly applaud a recent writer who points out that there are three things that a book can do that the new mass media cannot do. The listener or viewer, carried along by honeyed words or ornamental passages, cannot say, “Stop one moment and tell me again the assumption on which you are building this elaborate argument”; or, “Let me know now just what you are trying to prove, so that I may make sure that you really make out your case”; or, “Exactly what do you mean by this word or expression?” The reader of a book can do all these things. He can meditate and re-read. He is permitted and invited to work with the writer and on him, until he truly possesses him. The process can and often does lead not only to critical but to creative thought. Losing the habit of serious reading, we are deprived of valuable, perhaps essential, means to that end.

I am, however, encouraged by the assurance that, so far, books are not losing either their authority or their charm. Reviewers assure us that more books, and more good books, are being bought than ever before. Their reports are confirmed by a glance at any bookstall where Penguins, Pelicans and Pans jostle Vulcans and Vintages in their endeavour to press their way into everyman’s modern library.

The danger is not so much, I believe, that the reading public will desert good books, as that our abuse of the written language may ruin our books, our speech and, indeed, ourselves. It is commonly observed that our written speech requires correction. We err in two ways. First, we imitate too closely the spoken word, retaining its negligence, its informality, its blunders, while losing, unavoidably, the colour, the strength, the vigour of the spoken word. Our second crime is exactly the opposite of our first. When the subject is complex or academic, we throw overboard completely the strong simple language of speech and plunge into a new country, a shadowy place for the most part, finding and using the strangest verbal shapes and the most startling figures of speech.

It is this second crime that I would urge on your attention. Let me offer you a few samples of language that even Confucius might have despaired of correcting. For example, what would he make of this terse suggestion on how to build a lot of motor-cars quickly:

Or this simple comment of a man dissatisfied with his job:

But this last was said a century ago by Dickens’ Mr. Micawber, who was good enough to add his own translation—“in other words, it does not pay”. We now live, however, in a world of Micawbers who do not pause for the translator.

It is fair to say that our love for the magnificent generalization is equalled by our taste for striking metaphors. These are no longer left to the poets. And we employ, very properly, strong everyday words—the bottleneck, the ceiling. Sometimes they get the better of us, as in this passage which brings to mind vague memories of Alice in Wonderland. It runs as follows:

An unwary scientist, in a serious statement, can speak with enthusiasm of his discovery of “a virgin field pregnant with possibilities”. We are fond of “ironing out bottlenecks” and “covering angles”. Metaphorically, however, we are at our best in the international field where the writer of a paper, striving to clarify I know not what, announced to the reader that he now had come to “the hard core of the third slice of infrastructure”! This may have had something to do with the cold war—it certainly played a part in the cold war against the English language.

As for words, we are never at a loss; if they do not exist, we invent them. We carry out purposeful projects in a meaningful manner in order to achieve insightful experiences. We diarize, we earlierize; any day we may begin to futurize.

(Several examples of what might be called the newer English which I have offered, come from Sir Ernest Gowers’ famous handbook on the subject.)

In this day, every kind of slovenly language finds its supporter. I know that shallow and pedantic defenders of popular English remind us that grammarians always lose in the end, when they struggle against “the people”. I know, too, that every one of dozens of new professions and specialties must have its particular jargon to establish and defend its status. Those who strive to correct language today find themselves reviled at once by the “expert” and by the self-appointed spokesman for the multitude. For all their talking, bad language is still bad, and the perverse use of bad language is a crime.

Why do I call language such as I have cited, bad? For several very simple reasons. First, it is verbose. It says in three pages what could be said in one. Secondly, it is ugly. It has neither shape nor form, harmony nor rhythm. Thirdly, it is obscure. The writer, having to say what might easily be clear after one reading, seems to take pleasure in compelling us to a second or even a third. After sorting out all the clauses and phrases and connecting words, we are still left wondering exactly what the writer means. And this is not surprising, for the sins of this form of writing are not confined to their effect on the reader.

If man, in using words, becomes inadequate in his own language, confusion must arise. It is too easy to assume that thought can exist independently of speech. One often hears it said: “He has excellent ideas but he cannot express them”. There may be some truth in such a statement; there is far more falsity. An idea comes to birth when it is expressed. Newman, very wise about such matters, says this:

Today we are treating our language as the Victorians treated their building materials. As they needed more buildings of many different kinds for many different people, so we need more language of different sorts, for different purposes. Like the Victorian builders we have too much to do, we have to do it too quickly, and we have too much to do it with; and in the urgency of our task we can forget to be cautious and humble. Those who come after us will have to accept, for a time at least, many of the verbal devices that we pass on to them, ungainly and awkward though they may be.

There is another cause of bad language. I have mentioned government by paper. I could also mention buying and selling; conveying and exchanging; making; building; planning; discovering—all by paper. A vast number of people make their living today by writing, by reporting, recording, describing, explaining, directing.

Very many of these people write badly. There are many reasons why they should do so. Some are ignorant and inexperienced and they write badly because they know no better. Others are not ashamed of writing badly but rather proud of writing at all, and, with a certain vanity, are attracted by gorgeous words which give to their slender thoughts an appearance of power.

Compare the majestic simplicity of a great passage in Ecclesiastes with George Orwell’s version in what he humorously calls “modern English”. Here is the original:

I give it now in Orwell’s version:

Some offenders against language are merely lazy. Nothing is more difficult, even in dealing with the most familiar and commonplace matters, than to find exactly the right word or phrase.

And, most ominous of all, perhaps many write badly because of cowardice, unacknowledged, possibly unconscious, but none the less debilitating. Sometimes, of course, such obscurity of language is purely conventional, as with the doctor who, when asked the meaning of the phrase “bilateral, periorbital haematoma and left subconjunctival haemorrhage”, willingly translated it as “two lovely black eyes”. But there are others who, it would seem, through fear or shame, can never call a spade a spade. They do not heal the sick, but they may take into consideration the rehabilitation of those suffering from “psycho-physical maladjustment”; poor children to them are “underprivileged adolescents”; slums are disguised as “sub-standard areas”. There may be a reason for some of these easy evasions, but they are dangerous.

As I have suggested, there are many who scoff at any concern for the correction, the purity, the integrity of language and assure us that if only we would remember that language comes from the people and that the grammarians are always wrong in the end, all would be well. I am getting weary of reading these smart sayings. I wish that someone more competent than I would meet such linguistic democrats on their own ground and show them how little they know of either language or of democracy.

We may agree that oral communication is the living matter, the raw material on which all writing must be based, out of which all creative writing must be fashioned. Not all oral communication is alive, of course. All of us know persons whose conversation seems confined to barely articulated phrases. But it is a fact that, in any human society, so many people must talk so much that there is not a chance, but a certainty that someone will occasionally say something superlatively good. From the mass of ore which comprises their endless conversation, emerge the sparkling fragments which, tried in the fire of everyday usage, come out as fine gold.

Is it true that grammarians inveigh uselessly against slang and grammatical solecisms—uselessly because slang always wins in the end? Nothing could be more untrue. What could be staler than ninety-nine per cent of last year’s current sayings? But the one per cent, the hundredth new word or phrase, will survive in spite of all that grammars and dictionaries can say. It survives because of its beauty, its precision, its power to convey something new in human experience, or to show something old in a new light. It survives precisely because it has the true quality of poetry, for all good prose must grow from poetry, and must constantly be purified by it.

Language, then, is largely born from the speech of the multitude and is constantly being refreshed by the vigorous action of popular speech. Where (in this scheme of creation) do the writers come in? I am speaking now not of those whose sins I have deplored, but of the writer who is an artist. His art is deliberately to convey in words what he has seen, felt, thought, or in any way experienced. Or, more exactly, it is his art to see, feel, experience, think in words.

Whether in poetry or in prose, the writer takes the living but undifferentiated speech of the people and gives it form, coherent, harmonious, beautiful. The parts are given to him and he must be true to them; but the whole is his creation. It is the whole created by the writer that gives coherence and consistency to everyday communication, lifting it above the level of the daily round and making it symbolic of life.

I have tried to describe to you the two creators of language; the exuberant spontaneity of the crowd and the conscious creative art of the writer. I do not, for a moment, forget the guardian of the treasure, the much-maligned grammarian, the scholar. It may be true that without the vigour of the multitude, language would become bloodless and feeble; it is equally true that without the scholar’s anxious, refining, criticism, it would be corpulent and unwieldy.

But today there is a dangerous shifting of forces. With our increasingly stereotyped experiences, everyday speech may lose much of its originality, spontaneity, and freshness. Moreover, it may actually be stifled by the amount of reading and writing that is going on. More people today read than ever before, but far more people write—and too many of them do not write well. Many, as we have seen, do not even try to write well. For them, writing is only the full and careless assembling of prefabricated parts with, here and there, a cunning twist where they think it may serve. There are fine writers and great writers still, of course, perhaps more than ever before. But the number of true writers—those who know that experience and the expression of experience are inseparable—has not increased at all proportionately to the number of readers. The danger is that the spontaneous creative power of the people may simply be damped out by the mass of so-called “Literature” which is offered to them.

What is the remedy? The task before us is to influence the ordinary writer, the man who, perhaps, does not call himself a writer but who writes and is read. He would not call himself an artist; but neither is he an unskilled worker. He is—or he should be—a craftsman. As a craftsman he has his own essential role and standards. Practice in the manual trades is governed by regulations. The standards of a writer can only be influenced by his own conscience and the criticism of his readers. It is not possible, nor is it even desirable, that all writers should be artists, for artists, because they are creators, are also experimenters. Not all of their experiments turn out well. They are allowed and expected to break the rules in the hope that some day they will reveal a new order. We also need writers who are craftsmen. Not only do they know and practise the obvious rules of correct writing, they remember also the fundamental principle that underlies all good writing. As in architecture, the basic structure is the important thing. Decoration can be added only with care and discrimination. The writer must communicate clearly and unambiguously and, if possible, with grace and harmony. He can only do this if, so far as in him lies, he feels with imagination and discerns with humour, and if he thinks carefully and honestly; if, to use a familiar admonition, he can “stop, look and listen”.

We have no lack of good artist-writers and no want of serious readers. But our language will be in peril until we can train the craftsmen who, objuring all uncertain sounds, fix their hearts and minds on the good writing that is rooted in clarity, in honesty, in simplicity. When I struggle through the daily spate of feeble, synthetic and perfunctory writing, I am reminded of the counsel that Philip Sidney said he had received when, deeply troubled, he endeavoured to write to his lady. Here is the last line of his sonnet:

The writer of prose must never forget the essence of poetry, an honesty of mind which compels spontaneity.

Nous avons besoin des Clubs Richelieu

Discours au Congrès Annuel des Clubs Richelieu,
Trois-Rivières

Je veux d’abord souhaiter plein succès et longue vie aux clubs de la Société Richelieu qui sont des foyers rayonnants d’esprit canadien. Au cours de mes précédentes fonctions officielles, j’ai été amené à étudier l’activité de vos clubs et j’ai eu l’avantage de rencontrer quelques-uns de vos directeurs. Ce fut pour moi une révélation au moins à trois points de vue.

La Société Richelieu est relativement jeune. Elle compte pourtant des clubs qui, dans nos villes les plus importantes, sont aussi actifs et influents, et qui attirent autant de membres, que d’autres sociétés bénévoles plus anciennes et dont les ressources financières sont plus considérables. C’est là une preuve de vitalité qui est très prometteuse pour l’avenir.

En second lieu, les clubs de la Société Richelieu commencent à se multiplier parmi les Canadiens de langue française au delà de la Province de Québec. Tous les Canadiens qui sont de bons patriotes s’en réjouissent puisque c’est en s’affirmant ainsi par leurs propres institutions, et par leurs réalisations dans tous les milieux au delà des différences de langue et de religion, et tout en respectant pleinement ces différences, que tous ensemble nous réussirons à bâtir l’unité canadienne.

Enfin, en groupant ainsi l’élite canadienne-française dans des clubs où elle a l’occasion d’exprimer ses aspirations, de servir la communauté nationale et de prendre conscience d’elle-même, la Société Richelieu maintient des traditions de culture qui doivent être également précieuses à tous les Canadiens. Ces trois raisons suffisent, il me semble, pour expliquer ma présence parmi vous aujourd’hui.

En rendant hommage à l’action bienfaisante des clubs Richelieu je veux, en même temps, reconnaître l’importance dans notre société de cet organisme que l’on appelle la société bénévole ou encore le groupement volontaire. Ces sociétés sont nombreuses chez nous. Quelques-unes poursuivent des buts d’un ordre purement culturel ou professionnel; d’autres sont avant tout des organisations charitables. Quelques-unes sont surtout des groupements sociaux, mais toutes ont pareillement leur utilité dans un monde où la vie communautaire prend une place de plus en plus grande.

Les sociétés bénévoles, où tous les droits élémentaires de l’individu, et même certaines coquetteries bien légitimes de sa personnalité, sont respectés, où l’effort de chacun—le mot bénévole le dit bien—est consenti librement, où l’on s’engage à faire certaines choses utiles et bonnes parce qu’on s’est d’abord convaincu soi-même qu’elles étaient légitimes et bonnes, les sociétés bénévoles, dis-je, ont établi une tradition qui est en parfaite conformité avec notre attachement à la liberté d’action, d’opinion et d’association.

Dans la société bénévole, la personnalité s’épanouit pleinement. L’autorité y a moins de poids que l’émulation. On y prêche d’exemple et non de parole. La société bénévole perfectionne l’individu en complétant l’enseignement de la famille. C’est notre formule, à nous, de fraternité et de camaraderie, une formule qui est en harmonie avec toute notre manière de penser et de vivre.

Mais la société bénévole ne rend pas service à l’individu seulement. L’Etat profite abondamment de son action, soit directement, lorsque les sociétés lui présentent, par exemple, des suggestions d’ordre pratique, qui sont le résultat d’enquêtes ou d’études dont elles ont pris elles-mêmes l’initiative, en vue d’améliorer un état de choses, ou encore indirectement, lorsqu’elles se font les auxiliaires des gouvernements dans la propagation d’idées ou de mesures destinées à servir le bien commun.

Il ressort de cela que la société bénévole est impossible dans un Etat totalitaire. Elle ne serait plus alors un groupement d’individus libres qui peuvent à loisir consentir ou refuser de se mettre au service des bonnes causes. Il n’y a pas dans un Etat totalitaire de bonnes ou de mauvaises causes. Il y a ce que l’Etat décrète et qui doit être reconnu de tous comme nécessairement bon. C’est tout. Le reste n’existe pas.

La société bénévole n’existe donc qu’en démocratie. Elle est par essence le meilleur soutien de la démocratie où elle agit comme un intermédiaire libre, volontaire et puissant.

Dans une nation comme la nôtre, la société bénévole, en plus de fournir les services qu’elle rend dans un pays comme l’Angleterre ou la France, se trouve à jouer un rôle particulier du fait de la coexistence des deux races constituantes. Il est dans l’intérêt du pays que chacune de ces races se développe selon ses caractères particuliers. Ni vous ni moi ne voulons d’un Canada qui serait une agglomération uniforme de citoyens de diverses origines, ayant sacrifié à l’uniformité de l’ensemble ce qu’il y avait de plus personnel et de plus original chez eux.

La Société Richelieu, avec ses nombreux clubs dans le pays, contribue à maintenir la culture française et à la faire rayonner de plus en plus loin. Son action patriotique est donc aussi importante que celle des associations bénévoles de langue anglaise. Vous participez, à titre de membres des clubs Richelieu, à un grand nombre de mouvements nationaux d’ordre culturel, patriotique ou charitable. Vous affirmez ainsi la présence canadienne-française dans tous les secteurs de notre vie nationale. Vous êtes ainsi de bons patriotes canadiens.

On ne peut oublier non plus l’importance de votre action charitable. Vous soulagez des misères et vous contribuez à donner aux déshérités de la vie une idée plus réconfortante de notre civilisation que s’ils étaient laissés à eux-mêmes ou encore à la sollicitude nécessairement impersonnelle de l’Etat. Bien plus, vous vous trouvez de cette façon à combattre efficacement cette propagande qui tente d’exploiter la misère pour changer l’ordre chrétien dans la société.

Il existe donc plusieurs raisons de vous féliciter pour l’oeuvre admirable que les clubs de la Société Richelieu accomplissent. En tant que membres d’une société bénévole, vous continuez une tradition qui est éminemment utile à l’individu, au groupe social et à l’Etat dans un pays démocratique. En tant que membres de langue française d’une société canadienne aussi importante, vous rendez de précieux services à notre organisation nationale dont la culture française est l’un des deux piliers essentiels. Enfin, votre contribution à l’unité du sentiment canadien est de toute première importance. Pour tous ces motifs, je souhaite aux clubs de la Société Richelieu d’étendre encore plus leur influence, et je souhaite à notre population de profiter au maximum de cette influence.

The Mission of the Jews

Address to the Canadian Jewish Congress, Toronto

You are, I understand, an organization representing every conscious Jewish community in Canada. Through local groups, I have been told, in each of our great geographical divisions you keep in touch with the needs and interests of all Canadian Jews and are in a position to speak for them on national and international occasions. This, may I suggest, is an achievement distinguished and even rare. In our country we struggle for articulation and coherence against many forms of isolation. Canada owes much to great cultural and religious groups such as yours, which spare neither time nor money to make their solid contribution to our common national life.

It was my happy privilege to gain an intimate and even personal acquaintance with many of these groups a few years ago, and I remember with pleasure my meeting with a representative of your own organization in the City of Montreal. I recall his very able presentation of the purposes of the Jewish Congress—to develop the highest standards of citizenship by encouraging, and by actively participating in all those national activities patriotic, cultural and humanitarian, which serve to promote the spirit of understanding and good will between diverse racial groups.

Your representative made an able and, may I say, eminently civilized presentation of the viewpoint of one of the half-dozen or more small minority groups as he modestly termed his organization. He explained how many cultural communities in Canada have the desire and determination to be thoroughly Canadianized, and at the same time deem it not only a right but a duty to retain and preserve those intangible possessions of their forebears—mental and spiritual baggage, they have been called—which they have brought with them. These traditions, precious to them, they believe, rightly, will constitute also a valuable contribution to the common life which they are prepared to foster and cherish.

I am not, I should say, quoting your representative precisely, but I believe I am giving the sense of his remarks. He argued that Canada must accept and welcome a “multiple culture”—two main cultures and a number of smaller ones. He pleaded in your name for special measures toward mutual understanding and good will; for the easing of tensions as we face the fact of tension, accepting it and dealing with it as the price we pay for the wealth and variety of experience that is ours.

Surely no one could be better equipped to discuss such a matter than one of your people, in every country a minority, scattered throughout the nations of the world—no more than one-half of one per cent of the world’s population, I am told—and yet always bearing in the person of every loyal Jew that sense of oneness, that conviction of destiny which has, in our age, been partly realized.

And yet as a lover of history, and as one who has been able to enjoy many aspects of the great civilization which is a part of our Canadian heritage, I must suggest that the role of the Jews in any national community must be far deeper and broader than that of merely one small minority group among half a dozen others. I would like, from the viewpoint of history and of the philosophy of our civilization to consider with you briefly this greater role. It is impossible to do so without touching on painful subjects, but I believe that the greatness of the theme will atone for its tragic aspect.

May I suggest that throughout the whole history of our civilization the Jews have been—unconsciously perhaps—both suffering for humanity and serving it. A well-known French commentator sees the Jews as representing one of three streams from which western civilization flows, the others being the Greeks and Romans. The Greeks and Romans achieve immortality through their works alone; the fertilizing stream of Jewish origin is still with us even though the very magnitude of this contribution has added to the perils and hardships endured by Jewry.

A recent writer speaks of “the Jews who have influenced well-nigh the whole world by their unswerving belief in one God, Lord, Providence and Judge of all”. The very earliest history of the Jewish people, as we all know, sees the gradual and cumulative revelation of the one God holy and righteous which has been appropriated by the whole western world. How few Gentiles acknowledge or even know their debt to the Jew who daily repeats:

I need not remind this audience of the early conception of one God, of the jealous God who claimed the allegiance of all men; nor of the law which translated his will to his chosen people. This has given us the supreme concept of one moral law; a law binding on all men, everywhere; a law, too, righteous and merciful, binding men to each other as well as to God.

On the idea of this one moral law emerging from the living God so vividly portrayed in the Jewish Scriptures, is based primarily our conception of a common humanity. From that comes a common obligation of every man to all men regardless of race or language, regardless even of any personal quality. This first, this fundamental Jewish contribution to western civilization lays not only all westerners but all men everywhere under a permanent debt to the Jewish people. The Jews, I know, are aware of this, and it is perhaps inappropriate for me to dwell on it here. Yet it is, perhaps, not inappropriate for one Gentile publicly to acknowledge the debt ignored by so many.

Of our cultural debt, and particularly of the debt of all English-speaking peoples to the Jewish Scriptures, I need not speak. I am, however, tempted to offer you a quotation—rather a long quotation, I fear, but too good, I think, to shorten—from the historian Arnold Toynbee on the unique mission and the strange destiny of the Jews:

The story of the Jews in Christendom during the long period of the Christian era, the formative period of western civilization, is both painful and difficult. Even if I were able, I would not attempt to deal with it here. During this period there was intermittent suffering and persecution. There was also, although varying with time and place, a steady and persistent contribution in every field to a civilization of which Jews were a part, and yet not a part; a civilization in which they made themselves at home in every country and yet remained aside. They formed, one might say, a fruitful and a fertilizing stream. I shall discard the metaphor for a noble simile which must be familiar to all here: They were “like a tree planted by the rivers of water”. One may speculate whether their remarkable contributions to arts and letters, philosophy and science may be attributed not only to their great tradition and special gifts, but in some measure to the peculiar and difficult character of the life they lived. The individual who is separate is invited to reflection. If he can respond to the invitation he must see more than other men see. And the Jews all the way down the ages from the great lawgivers and prophets have translated their poignant experiences in terms of astonishing clarity and beauty. “Tribulation,” said a Jewish writer, “worketh patience and patience experience.” Through the experience of tribulation, perhaps, Jews have enriched every people among whom they have dwelt as strangers.

In speaking of the Christian era, I have, in my own mind, excluded the present age. Effectively, and taking into our view the whole of the western world, it must surely be described as non-Christian, if not anti-Christian. In this age, as all here know too well, the Jews have been the victims of the greatest—the most hideous crime that human history records. I wonder if we Canadian Gentiles are fully aware of the magnitude of this crime. We know something of the quality of it. Few in our day have not read of the horrors of the concentration camp and of the death chamber. On the other hand probably very few have any true conception of the extent of a destruction which staggers the imagination.

Let me add immediately that I have no thought of isolating the crime in one country. It is a blot on the whole of our western civilization and the symptom of a disease which has infected all of us more or less. It is perhaps the greatest case of moral retrogression that the world has known. It was a deed committed in the midst of western society which knew and professed the principle of humanity, and of love which its members dared to call Christian love. It was a crime against the light and, in this, it constituted the true and ultimate blasphemy. Accepting, as we do, the principle of the oneness of humanity, no human being can contemplate it without a personal sense of shame. One of our own Canadian poets, a Jew, has given moving expression to what all must feel:

Can we, in face of this crime, associate the notions of suffering and of service without what must seem like a callous attitude? Is this a kind of sterile crime, a dark blot which must be covered over and forgotten, a deep gulf over which we must cross without looking down? One might be inclined to say yes, and to pass on, leaving this iniquity in oblivion; and yet no such a course is possible. This event has, I believe, had a profound effect on Gentile thought. It has been one factor in the re-awakening of our conception of the active spirit of evil in the world. It has helped, I believe, in the process which we now observe going on about us, the flight from that easy and flabby morality expressed in some such terms as “Be good to everyone and they will be good to you.” It has led, I am sure, to a new conception of the depths and heights of the human spirit, to a new awareness of spiritual forces.

In Canada we have had no dreadful scenes of horror, but we have ourselves been part of the background. Canadian Jews have suffered and Canadian Gentiles have blushed for this crime. We have, in our own community, friends and relatives of the victims and indeed victims themselves. We are challenged to use our peace and our relative security not to deny or ignore our religious differences but completely to wipe out that pride, which is both un-Christian and un-Jewish, and to eliminate the qualities which are false to the best in both our communities, and could mar our common relations. We are called on to unite in what is the glory of the Jewish and I dare also to say it, of the truly Christian tradition, the love of humanity and dedication to the true service of humanity to which we are all committed. As you know, Jewish literature abounds in precepts of mercy and justice.

This noble precept every one of us knows and reveres. Christians, by their profession, accept it and have striven, if unworthily, to build on it. This is the bond between us. It is a bond that was never needed so much as it is today, when synthetic slogans and artificial groups tend to suppress the individual, the individual heart and conscience, and the truest and best individual emotions on which humanity rests.

Holding and maintaining this great tradition of humanity, Jews have seen themselves scattered over the length and breadth of the earth. They have, as I have suggested, made noble contributions to the communities which they have made their homes. These contributions, too, have been made not as aliens but as members. Yet their own tradition and the will to survive have given them always another and a wider loyalty. They have instinctively and of necessity combined and used their own peculiar national spirit as a bridge between nationalism and internationalism. It might indeed seem that the wonder of our own age, the dream of a score of centuries, the foundation of the state of Israel, would bring this strange Jewish nationalism down to a level with the nationalism of more recent times. History and geography alike forbid this. While the Jews remember their history, while they find themselves still integral parts of nations over the western world, they must be the first and the greatest of internationalists. Their tradition at its best meets the ideal of all nations in the twentieth century. And this century, this period for Canada of unprecedented power and prosperity and unparalleled responsibility, offers an inspiring opportunity of service to every member of her Jewish communities; and Canada will be the greater for the service they will render.

Christian Social Order in a Changing World

Address to the Montreal Council on Christian Social Order

I am most happy to be with you today and to address this distinguished, indeed, remarkable, organization. But may I say at once that I have approached this evening with considerable apprehension. I am not an economist, still less am I a theologian. I can merely offer you the reflections of a very humble layman, on some of the problems with which we are all confronted.

May I begin by offering you my congratulations on the conception and on the nature of your common effort. In my present capacity as representative of the Crown in Canada it is, in a special way, my privilege to keep my mind fixed on the oneness of our national heritage, on the common beliefs that bind together our national life, on the solemn obligation that we have to take up together our national responsibilities. It is part of my duty to see and to understand the signs of our unity and as far as I can, to describe what I have seen.

In this world, as we know too well, differences of creed are too often used by the careless and selfish, and even deliberately by those of evil intent, to stir up dissension and ill will. It is, therefore, a particular pleasure to find in the varied life of this great city an organization which stands for the belief that the true social order must be based on a recognition of an essential unity underlying all diverse gifts, distinctive ministries and differing persuasions. There can be, I am sure, no national service greater than the patient and ardent demonstration of the truth of this unity.

This is the unity which, by your very nature, you and you alone can show forth. The word “Christian” implies a community historically and theologically. I should like today to offer some reflections which to you may seem platitudes, but which to me are rather watchwords on the role of the Christian community in our Canadian and in our western social order. Against the chaos which confronts us today the essential oneness of all those who profess and call themselves Christian stands out with an almost startling clarity.

I vividly recall still an impression made on me as a young man at Oxford, not long after I had done with that extraordinary combination of the sheltered existence and the strenuous life that every Oxford undergraduate remembers. I heard there a lecture from the famous Dean Inge called, I think unfairly, “the gloomy Dean”, who went about puncturing complacency in words which at that time seemed startling and even shocking. In one passage he warned us of “the contempt for experience and wisdom, setting the feet above the brain and bringing back the dark ages without their faith or hope.” In another sentence he observed: “Ancient civilizations were destroyed by imported barbarians; we breed our own.” Such phrases as these struck very sharply on youthful conceptions of a good and glad world that the young could make even gladder and better. They gave me pain and even aroused resentment.

Today I, along with others of my generation, might well reproach the Dean for his excessive cheerfulness. The social order of the western world, the peaceful progress of which he was so presumptuous as to question, is faced with a frightening paradox. On the one hand we seem to have at our disposal power and wealth, knowledge and freedom hitherto undreamed of; on the other hand we see, if not among ourselves, among other peoples (and all the world is now our neighbour), mass ignorance, mass slavery, mass poverty, misery and cruelty on which even in imagination we cannot bear to look. A few centuries back, at the beginning of the Age of Progress, learned men still postulating a divine being with a divine plan, set forth on the noble and humane task of bringing human reason to bear on the mastery of the forces of nature. Today we seem to have lost sight at once of the divine being and of the divine plan. We find ourselves instead peering into a great and terrible machine with no one in control.

Here we see not a temporary disaster but tragedy in its truest and deepest sense. Modern reason has confounded itself. To say that it has achieved only Pyrrhic victories would seem to be a grievous understatement. It has achieved its own nemesis of turbulence and confusion.

The retort of the rationalist to these charges is, as we all know, a natural one—and a reasonable one. He retorts that the failure is moral. Reason, the intellectual quality, must by its nature, so he says, have a kind of moral neutrality. The machine has power, but the driver must guide it. And as we all know, some scientists are appalled as they look into the mechanism they have created, and when they see its power for evil, call urgently for the moralists to take control.

I need not remind you that the consciousness of our current social paradox has for the past generation and more sent many on the road followed by Dr. Inge. They have tried to look into the origins of this age of progress, and to enquire into the strange path in which we have been led—or into which we have strayed.

Looking back through the past few centuries we observe the increasing secularization of large areas of life: political, economic, intellectual, moral. The first three have been increasingly regarded as in themselves neutral; and the moral life, as we all know, seems to many to have become little but a matter of intelligent social adjustment. Religion is thus left to be a purely personal and private affair.

It would be absurd to deny the very great achievements, social and moral as well as material and intellectual, that have marked this increasingly secular age. It has even been distinguished for virtue, piety and religion as well as for power and wealth. And yet, the growing cleavage between various aspects of life has constituted an implicit denial of what I take to be the essential character of Christianity: embracing as it does the principle of love and the practice of the oneness of all life. Christian love, I need hardly say here, has nothing in it of the romantic or the sentimental. It is, of course, rather that quality of complete and self-giving devotion of which the final result is the unity of all human society. From Christian love is derived the necessary equation of the words “Christian” and “community”. It should not be possible, I would submit, for a Christian to think of the one without the other.

In our modern world, as I have already suggested, we have suffered an un-Christian division of life into two spheres, one of which is secular and public, and another which, being religious, is looked upon as private. Is it rash then to say that it is this division which has brought on our purely secular activities its own nemesis, taking the shape of the paralysis that comes from our lack of any coherent philosophy as a directing and guiding force for the whole of life? We are very conscious today of insecurity. Is this because we, by that I mean our whole social order, have refused to recognize and face our living spiritual unity—and therefore, as a result, we clutch nervously at the bits and pieces of life, conscious that we have lost our grasp of the whole?

A contemporary historian, in one of a recent collection of essays, says:

And again:

It may well be argued that Mr. Butterfield’s barbarians who manage—or who cannot manage—motor-cars and radios are harmless enough; that we cannot all be highbrow; and that, in diagnosing the ills of the social order it is indeed harsh to associate, for example, our cheerful and kindly democratic barbarism with the barbarity and fanaticism which we have observed in certain of the totalitarian countries. In reply it can be said that if the association is a remote one, it is nevertheless not entirely unreal.

The pleasant, easy barbarisms of the democracies, where with boundless knowledge we accept ignorance with complacency, where we renounce the contemplation of greatness for the worship of the commonplace, where we find time for everything except solitary thought, cannot be entirely dissociated from some of the excesses of the totalitarian states. Both are symptoms of frustrations, of inner insecurity and disorder.

There are certain symptoms common to all modern society such as the dread of solitude and of quiet contemplation, the acceptance of shouting crowds, in uniforms, or otherwise. Totalitarian states talk about the “party line”, and democracies are concerned with “group dynamics”. In each, security causes a fear of the individual who is encouraged, through social adjustment, to lose himself in the group. He is forcibly crushed or gently absorbed in the mass. His personality is allowed to express itself in costumes, badges, or medals or degrees, which he may wear or win, but strong and disturbing characters are discouraged; non-conformity is unwelcome; eccentricity is banned. It is indeed curious to reflect that the insecurity and confusion of life are reviving in us, to a dangerous degree, the instincts of the herd. Moreover, both result in a loss of true humility.

Perhaps the most significant characteristic of our everyday life is the increasing rarity of the Christian virtue of humility. Even the layman can observe, in purely secular matters—if there are any such—the destructive effects of pride in everyday life. Surely, as a sin, it is rightly placed at the head of the famous list of seven. I can think of no reading more topical today than Milton’s epic of Lucifer. You will recall Sir Thomas Browne’s comment on the subject of pride:

Pride generates the egotism which is the negation of love, while humility renders love possible—serves as its basic condition. The words humility and humanity, after all, come from the same root. They grow in the same soil.

But if Christian humility is the finest flower of Christian life, it is cultivated with little zeal. Indeed, modern educational philosophy is inclined to reject it. Our modern emphasis on self-expression and satisfaction, on the supreme importance of a sense of success, seems to push aside humility almost as if it were a vice. Morally and intellectually the results are alarming. We may strive to “save face” but our sense of insecurity is deeper than ever.

Nothing would surely do more to restore the individual to a sense of security and to the dignity he should possess than a revival of true humility. The truly humble person, after all, is so not because he is constantly abasing himself, but because he has identified his life with something far greater than himself. Far from being abased, it is only the truly humble person whose dignity is proof against all assaults; and such a person, standing in the light of a truth beyond himself, even enhances his dignity by admitting his faults. He cannot lose face. Without this sense of truth, absolute and unchanging, there is no positive humility, but only self-abasement, which is negative and destructive of personality. Our modern barbarism has lost this condition of true humility.

There is, surely, but one hope of solving the paradox of our secular social order, whether it is expressed in the barbarities of totalitarianism, or in the simple barbarism of western democracies. We can agree that the first paradox must be met and overcome by a second one; by the Christian paradox with its appeal to transcendental power, to other-worldly values and to the single and sufficient quality of Christian love. The expressions of the Christian paradox are so familiar that it is easy to forget their elemental power and their almost startling relevance to our age. It is nothing new to say that a society with a frantic desire for security needs to learn that the saved life is the lost one; those who have no longer any joy in work would find a deep satisfaction in the conception of the service which is perfect freedom; and the anxious self-expressionists might even be glad to hear that it is the meek who inherit and the humble who are exalted. Only through the acceptance of these noble paradoxes can, in the Christian view, the present chaos, insecurity and weakness in the social scene be turned to order, peace and strength.

It is needless, however, to remind this audience that the kingdom of heaven comes not by observation. What is of necessity spiritually discerned, may not be lightly offered as a blue-print for social ills.

May I return, however, to my original statement. Distinctions may and must be made between spiritual and intellectual, religious and secular, but any division or cleavage is destructive of the values of both. Intellectualism without spiritual discernment may confound itself; but religious convictions, held though they may be in all certainty and reverence, do not release us from the duty of steady and honest intellectual examination of all demonstrated truth. If the intellect may be clouded by unhealthy emotion, as indeed it may, it is equally certain, on the other hand, that intellectual enlightenment may aid the work of grace. And in this matter I believe that co-operative Christian groups have a great and useful opportunity. No doubt you are more than familiar with the problems on which I have ventured to touch.

My academic interests are constantly bringing to my attention the growing anxiety of scholars about the degrading intellectual effects of academic studies pursued in a spirit of neutralism toward philosophy and religion. I need not remind you of the many works which have appeared on such topics by leading educationists whose names are familiar to all here. Indeed, not only those directly concerned with education, but leading figures in various scholarly fields, history and philosophy and science, show increasing concern at the intellectual sterility which must result from the absence of any coherent philosophy capable of providing a frame of reference for all the activities of the human mind and spirit. And readers of the many secular journals which make their appeal to the intelligent and cultivated man, cannot but be struck by many signs of movements to close the gap—the gap between the world of spiritual perception and that of intellectual clarification. As they readily admit, they are not so much drawn as driven, by what they see about them.

An obituary of a noted English philosopher who died recently contains these words, “Like most contemporary converts he had accepted God via belief in the devil.” How many others are coming and have come in the same way, receiving even from a rational examination of our modern paradox a sudden and frightening intuition of evil. But these movements do not in themselves mean that the problems and conflicts of a secular materialist and rationalist society are thereby solved. It is the work of a Christian community to solve them and to solve them with the devotion of the whole man.

May I, in conclusion, sum up my too lengthy, and I fear very rambling, remarks. Our social order today is suffering from a sense of futility and insecurity born of the intellectual confusion of a fragmented and largely secular society. We represent the paradox of the wealthy who may be empty; of the learned whose knowledge may bring no enlightenment; of the masters of society who may be timid and afraid.

The totalitarian state has sought a way out of confusion through its unifying but blind worship of force. It is a terrible synthesis. The Christian paradox represents an alternative; for Christians it is the only alternative. No council can apply it as Stalin applied his Five-Year Plans, but quite apart from spiritual measures, a concerted effort can attack our intellectual confusion by intellectual means. The Church faces a world not only a slave to its passions, but the prisoner of its own learning. Its representatives could, I believe, unite themselves most fruitfully with many learned laymen who are seeking the key. Together they can face the chaos of pagan barbarism which confronts them with weapons intellectual, as well as spiritual. I firmly believe, in the words of your admirable pamphlet, “God, Man, Work”, that “the heart of all our problems is the heart of man”, and surely no means of assault on this citadel should be neglected. “The truth shall you deliver; it is no dread”. The Christian stand, we believe, must be not only on the unity of the spirit, but on the wholeness of the truth and its relevance to every aspect of human life.

I conclude with some lines from Mr. T. S. Eliot in which the poet, although conscious of the waste land about him, bravely affirms:

A Play to the “Gallery”

Address at the Press Gallery Dinner, Ottawa^[1]

Training for Business

Address to the Canadian Manufacturers’ Association, Toronto

Yours is an activity in which I have a special interest. I am not entirely unfamiliar with the problems that you discuss on these yearly occasions. I was, indeed, myself a manufacturer for a time. It was, I suppose, chiefly by the accident of heredity that I became head of a certain company. The experience was, however, a very useful one for me. I have always been grateful for my years in business. They left me, I think, with an understanding of and sympathy with the problems of industry that I could have achieved in no other way. And I have been enabled, also, to appreciate the great functions of the Association with which I am privileged to forgather this evening.

L’on me dit que plusieurs d’entre vous, assemblés ici ce soir, viennent du Canada français. Je ne veux pas laisser passer l’occasion sans vous adresser quelques mots dans votre langue maternelle. J’ai eu, au cours des années passées, le plaisir de visiter de nombreuses industries de la province de Québec et j’apprécie, comme tous ceux qui sont ici d’ailleurs, l’importance de votre contribution à notre production nationale.

I would like tonight to consider for a few minutes not so much the problems of industry itself, as the relation, in some fields, between industry and the general community, and I would like to speak with frankness about one which concerns you closely. How, in this day of labour shortage, of great competitive pressure from the increasing number of callings offering young people interest, prestige, and security—how can you attract to your ranks enough persons of real promise? No one, I think, will say, “We offer a high price and we can bag what we need.” You will think, as I do, that no calling worth the name can be maintained by those who ask only, “How much money is there in it for me?” No doubt you could secure enough men in this way, but they would not be the right ones. You must select with care and with discernment.

You are, I know, deeply concerned with the problems of recruitment. I was most interested to learn of the effort and attention which has been given to devising streamlined, foolproof, scientific modes of selection. I have studied them and not without admiration—but, I must also add, not without some doubt. There are many procedures about which I wonder. After all, anyone can wonder! Occupants of my post have always had occasions for wondering and—I am informed—it is perfectly constitutional!

I recently came across this comment by a psychologist employed in industry on the increased use of applied psychology in this field:

This might be a text for a sermon on the subject. I confess, when I read about personnel laboratories, selection procedures, the measurement of dominant interests in personality and “evaluative attitudes” I get rather frightened! I examined a pamphlet which describes a short method of measuring the relative prominence of six basic interests or motives in persons (there are apparently only six!). This test seems to be intended to guide young people on the choice of a career. It is really very simple. The examinee, or, as he is rather unkindly called, the subject, is asked a series of questions to which he answers “yes” or “no”. The questions may be about the abolition of war or the search for pure truth or the relation of law to liberty. If the candidate were asked to write an essay on these questions and make a case for his point of view, that would be a test of his mental quality; but no, his answers are limited to the figures he writes in the proper column. The reader is told that the completion of the paper should take eight minutes or less. One must admire a plan which analyses and determines the personality of a human being in statistical form and in so short a time! Perhaps I am being unfair, but I think you will agree that the secrets of mind and character do not reveal themselves quite so simply. I would like to add that, in my view, there is no better way of appraising a candidate’s personal quality than an informal interview with experienced and discerning persons.

The Armed Forces, as we know, have found psychological methods very helpful, if used with discretion. The discovery of the aptitudes of recruits and their placement in appropriate work can be greatly facilitated in this way, and without doubt industry has been wise to adopt such procedures. In my researches, I examined what is called a “Mechanical Adaptability Test”. Such questions as these: “Is steel always tempered in water?” “Is white lead used in plumbing?” are reasonable, when it comes to making the best use of a candidate’s aptitude and experience. And they can be useful—even indispensable—if the procedure is influenced by that not too common quality, common sense.

But I want to say something more about the training and recruitment of persons who are expected to qualify for responsible positions in business.

In the great days of the past, the captain of industry, like the great admiral, like the great general, like the great statesman, achieved greatness through two qualities above all—imagination and courage. Imagination to discern in the present situation the germ of possibilities, still invisible, from which new worlds might grow. Courage to act on what has been discerned; to meet failure and success with firmness and to go on. What sort of preliminary training is needed to give you not only the qualities perceptible through aptitude tests, but in addition, these more subtle qualities of courage and imagination, not measured by tests?

As far as I can determine, there are three schools of thought on this question.

There is the old tradition, and a fine one in its way, that a business man is born—not made; that because industrial kingdoms have been created by men trained in the school of experience, formal education is not only unnecessary but a positive handicap. This tradition is not confined to business; it is to be found in the professions. One still hears of young men with university degrees being reminded that they have two strikes against them in the business world. There is still the view that theory kills practice and a feeling that if learning refines, it must also weaken.

But there is another, more powerful and increasingly popular school, which takes a very different view. In all business, as in manufacturing, we have learned the value of precision in method and technique. The precision of the manufacturing process is now being transferred to administrative procedures. It is claimed that what can be set down precisely can always be learned precisely. Increasingly the young man who looks forward to a career in business is led to or directed to the doors of a school of business administration, an institute of accounting or, more grandly, a college of commerce. He comes out with two great advantages; for the many who now, far from scorning education, worship blindly at the altar of the university degree, he wears a halo; for those who still remember that the degree matters less than the studies which have earned it, he is master of certain tried and true procedures—he has the “know-how”.

But it is hard to generalize about such things. It is, after all, for the individual who acquires the degree to demonstrate what it means. There is some wisdom in the comment made by the author of a book now, perhaps, forgotten, called The Letters of a Self-made Merchant to his Son. The boy is told that college does not make fools—it only develops them!

And so the man who has learned the hard way, who has studied not books, but human nature, who has drawn from within himself imagination, courage and tenacity, now looks with growing respect at the product of “business education”. I am old-fashioned and possibly prejudiced, but I do sometimes ask myself whether business education has very much to do either with real business or with real education.

I observe that there is a third approach to this question. I confess to prejudice again, but I intend to go out to the very end of the limb and maintain—without questioning for one moment the achievements of those who have learned in the school of experience (or even in schools of business administration)—that this third approach is, I believe, the most promising for Canadian business, and for the Canadian business man. I think also that it is the best in the long run for the Canadian people.

I need not explain the third approach in my own words, because it is admirably described in the account of a conversation in which Mr. A. J. E. Child—well known to many of you here—gives his views. I quote, with his permission, not Mr. Child’s precise words, but a published report which I found in the journal Office Equipment News. It was not at all irrelevant to this publication, for the article dealt with a not unimportant part of office equipment—the human being in the office:

In the next issue of the same periodical, there was support for Mr. Child’s point of view. Also, in an enquiry conducted recently by the Jean de Brébeuf College in Montreal, among 600 business firms in both English-speaking and French-speaking Quebec—300 firms in each—there is a striking demonstration of the importance which is attached by most of these companies to the Liberal Arts as a basic education for young men wishing to follow a business career.

It is, perhaps, not for me to defend this point of view. It is human, of course, to acclaim other people’s opinions as being true and sound when they happen to coincide with your own, and I may be biased and even suspect. But why do so many experienced business men want young persons of liberal education, nourished in the humanities or in mathematics? Well, of course, an obvious reply is that they are seeking men with disciplined minds who have learned the art of clear thinking and precise expression (and, may I add, economy in the use of words), but there is much more in it than that. It seems to me they are looking—and quite rightly—for those very qualities of imagination and courage which today are so hard to come by. These were not hard for our fathers and grandfathers, who lived excitingly and dangerously. They are hard today for young people reared in security, in comfort, surrounded, almost muffled, by safety devices and rules of health. How can one develop imagination? You cannot, perhaps. There is no sure “formula”. But the least unsure—our only specific—is an education in the humanities, the liberal arts or in man’s second language, mathematics. Such studies, properly pursued, do rouse and nourish the imagination by leading the youth out of the stifling security of the mechanized world into other worlds where nothing is insured, where anything can happen, where no answers will be one hundred per cent right, but where the most unlikely things may lead one to a greater measure of perception.

So much for the imagination. And courage? Courage is more than boldness and fearlessness, although it must assume these qualities. Courage is an affair of the heart. The man who has his own private world, who knows that life is more than a matter of ledgers, but who has yet chosen to fulfil himself by their means, this man (assuming him to be fitted for the business world) will not lack courage to carry out decisions that he has had sense enough to make. He will have a very important advantage over the young man with “know-how” and nothing more. Conditions change constantly; only human nature remains the same. The young man trained in the humanities has this in common with a grandparent without such training. He has learned to know people in many circumstances and many moods. Techniques come and go. He knows how to use and how to discard them. He never forgets that his business is with people. He will never know all about them; but given a good start he will spend his life learning. He will not be oppressed by the timidity of the expert whose expertness, perhaps, has failed. He will have the flexibility of the artist, who knows how many are the roads to Rome.

I said a little while ago that I thought the recruitment into business of young people with a liberal education would be good for the Canadian people, as well as for Canadian business. I do indeed believe that, and it is, for me, a matter of chief concern. I need not say this in an exclusive sense. It must be a matter of concern to all of us. We all, as Canadians, see the transformation which modern manufacturing has wrought in Canada, as in the whole western world.

The miracle of mass production of basic human necessities, combined with the host of new tools, has given us a life of freedom from drudgery, of material security and comfort undreamed-of in any previous age. Modern industry has literally freed the slave and released the servant. In doing so you have given to all men a new equality and a new social unity in a world where all may gladly work with their hands because the use of mechanical devices leaves them time to employ their brains. You might, indeed, in contemplating such an achievement, regard yourselves as one of the great moral forces of the world. This vast material power has, indeed, profound moral implications.

Your Association now exercises an increasing power over the whole of Canadian society, over the destinies of the Canadian nation. All Canadians who value comfort, health and leisure must wish you well. None can wish to reduce the power that is a necessary part of your prosperity. But all must be deeply desirous of seeing that power in the best and safest hands. John Stuart Mill, defending liberal education, remarked that men are men before they are manufacturers. It is my earnest hope that in attracting to your ranks even greater numbers of our most able and energetic young people, the foundations will have been so truly laid that they may become better men and better Canadians as they become even better manufacturers.

Women’s Place Is . . .?

Address at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the National Council of
Women of Canada, Kingston

I was glad for a rather special reason to be able to accept your kind invitation. The National Council of Women of Canada was brought into being in the house in which I live at present. That very remarkable woman, Lady Aberdeen, your foundress, hatched a good many eggs at Government House—the Victorian Order of Nurses for one; and the Maycourt Clubs, which have flourished since then in various Canadian towns and cities; and, as I have said, the body which is meeting here today.

Lady Aberdeen did not lack imagination or energy or perseverance. Occasionally she was a little in advance of her time. May I quote a passage about your foundress from a book which I have been reading recently:

That was about sixty years ago.

There are two other very good examples of Lady Aberdeen’s advanced thinking. In the middle 1890’s she expressed the view that Canada should have her own diplomatic mission in Washington and that the principles of town planning should be applied to Ottawa and the adjoining area. She anticipated action in these matters by many years.

Before such characters as Lady Aberdeen, men and women alike can only stand in admiration, or, occasionally, dismay. We are inspired by them but they offer no example for general imitation. It seems to me that at gatherings such as this, we can most usefully consider the possibilities and obligations of ordinary men and women—and the tasks to which they can address themselves. What I wanted to do today was to offer a few reflections on the part that women can play in these times. I do not think I have ever undertaken quite so dangerous a task since I went to Ottawa! If I am foolhardy enough to follow out this intention, I only do so because I know that the virtues of sympathy and compassion are high in the list of qualities which women possess.

It is not necessary to remind you that these times are times of crisis. It is hard to glance at any serious periodical without seeing evidence of this. We have suffered in the recent war from wounds inflicted from without. Although we now live in a period regarded as one of peace, we are conscious in western society of many maladies. Our civilization threatens to disintegrate because the bonds of duty, of absolute obligations, of mutual responsibilities, have been weakened. Stark individualism, what we are pleased to call self-expression, seems often to be uncontrolled, and majority rule frequently expresses itself not in terms of self-discipline and co-operation so much as an easy invitation just to move with the crowd. These may appear to be very gloomy broodings, but they are the conclusions of many who are thinking deeply about our western society.

What about woman’s relation to all these problems? In the building of our civilization, the initiative may seem to lie with men. They are, as it were, in the chair. They are, or have been, primarily the builders and the governors and the fighters. But if men build and govern and fight for civilization, women, in a mysterious but very real way are civilization. These are subtle and difficult distinctions, but is it not accurate to say that while men create, administer and protect, women choose, and nourish and maintain?

Without woman, one can possibly conceive of culture in Matthew Arnold’s sense of creative work, but we could not conceive of civilization, which is the ordered, harmonious life of a coherent society. Women, I think, perhaps unconsciously, grasp the conception of the whole, while men are rationalizing about the parts. Two men who were talking about this subject agreed very amiably that the exasperating thing about women was that by their utterly irrational methods, they might suddenly leap on the truth, towards which rational man was proceeding with slow, and sometimes faltering, steps. Men, perhaps, have been the most famous artists, but women make the home a place of beauty and order; men may prove to be the greatest chefs, but women nourish their families; men have discovered all about germs, but women, long before that, kept the place clean; men have been the most eminent doctors, but it is women who care for, and therefore, cure the sick.

I have been generalizing too long. May I speak of some of the practical problems which face us today and of woman’s responsibility in relation to them. It is commonly said that western civilization has been nurtured from three great streams—the Greeks with their passionate pursuit of truth and beauty, the Romans with their gifts for organization and discipline and their rational code of law, and the Judaic-Christian revelation of man’s spiritual nature. It is through this civilization alone, of all the civilizations in the world, that women have achieved anything approaching equality or freedom of action. Progress has been slow and often uneven, but looking back, we can now see steady development for the past 2,000 years. The western world, then, can be called a woman’s world. They have done much for it and it for them, and I believe that today the health of civilization—always woman’s job—depends on them as never before. Never was there a greater need for them to bring to bear on life the special qualities they possess.

May I be very simple and specific? And first may I mention the education of children. Of course, here I must be cautious. One used to be able to talk about such things with perfect freedom and equal safety, but now education is a battlefield and the very word divides the most peaceful into warring camps—so this is no place for me! But I still may say that women have a great responsibility in this field. They are peculiarly aware of the product of education which comes home every day from school. In our Parent-Teacher Federations and Home and School Clubs, they have an opportunity to play a very important part. It is, however, widely believed that the home has delegated too much of its traditional responsibility to the school. Is this, in your view, true? Have women examined this problem with instinct and intuition as well as with their minds? And may I say, with all masculine timidity, there is no substitute for a woman’s understanding of the needs of those to whom she is entirely and selflessly devoted.

I do not think women exercise nearly enough influence on domestic architecture. Men may design and build the houses, but women live in them for more hours a day than men, and their ideas should have a bearing on men’s designs. I cannot believe that many of the houses that I see really satisfy their desires for beauty and harmony, for the convenience and seclusion so necessary as a setting for the best home life. I am theorizing, I admit, and perhaps ignorantly, but I believe that if experienced women gave themselves to the design of the small and relatively inexpensive dwelling in which the vast majority of Canadians live, there would be many changes—and most desirable ones!

It is widely believed that women are conservatively-minded. I heard a story when I was in the Arctic a few weeks ago which might support this theory. Womenfolk among the Eskimos have a habit of working very uncomfortably with their domestic utensils placed on the floor, and a missionary, wishing to be helpful, gave an Eskimo housewife a stool on which to place these articles. On his return to the igloo a few days later, he discovered that she had acquired something to stand on, so that she could remain on the same level as the stool holding her utensils!

And what about that domestic giant, television—so amiable as a servant and so formidable as a master? On this I shall make no comment except to say that television reminds me of books, because it so often now takes their place. If children are to be reared and taught to absorb ideas from the printed word, women’s guidance can do much. It rests largely, I believe, with women to see to it that the civilization that they should be guarding is represented by the books in their homes. I am thinking particularly of children’s reading, because I believe that a child’s mind and character are more influenced by what he reads before, say, ten, than by what he reads later.

We hear a great deal about “crime comics” but, like so many regrettable things in life, that menace can be most effectively met by replacement. Give the child well-selected, attractive books in gay editions; put the crime comic to the test of being read along with the others, and see how they will fade, alongside stories written with intelligence and power.

Now I have an uneasy feeling, ladies, that you are saying to yourselves, “What he really means by all this is that ‘woman’s place is in the home’ ”. Heaven forbid! That is not what I mean to say—or imply—or suggest, in an exclusive or negative sense; but let me remind you that it is agreed almost universally that the home is the most important human organization in the world. Our civilization today is threatened by the decay of our homes. I do not know our statistics, but I read the other day that one-fifth of the indictable crimes on record for Great Britain in 1952 were committed by children between eight and fourteen years of age. They represented the war generations when so many homes were broken, and children often ran wild. For those responsible for a home, it is a terrifying thought.

The problem of the home reminds us very vividly of that great tradition in our western world—the emphasis on spiritual values in relation to human society. I mentioned a minute ago the preoccupation of serious writers with the threat to our society through loss of a sense of duty and obligation. This lowering of ethical standards is freely associated with the ignoring of religion in a secular age. Here again we forget the essence of the civilization which we wish to defend, and may I suggest that one cannot begin to consider the quality and character of western civilization in isolation from religion.

It is often a matter of comment that women, if not more religious than men, are at least more inclined to religious observance. How important that is. The Church in the western world, with all its imperfections in practice, has stood at once for moral obligations and for the free development which belongs to spiritual life. It demands primacy for the glory of God expressed in free and devoted service to men. This is surely the core of our civilization.

It has been well said that although we fear communism and wish to fight it, we do not realize sufficiently that material weapons are no defence against its spiritual attack. Our only recourse is to our own religion. But how many of us are shy of stating what we truly believe? Our opponents in this fundamental struggle are not so timid and are not ashamed of their philosophy.

This, after all, is the central issue—the deep-seated basic problem of the western world. It is over a century now since Goethe maintained that no culture could endure without faith as its centre. “All epochs dominated by belief,” so he said, “have a radiance and bliss of their own.” Our own age, it has been observed, is not so much unbelieving as lacking the capacity to believe. Without this capacity—without a faith to unify our conceptions of right and of justice, of truth and of beauty, we are in danger of succumbing to those who have faith in an evil power. And this matter is too, I believe, women’s concern. In practice and in perseverance, in seeing the whole even when the parts are dim, women have the gift of faith.

Our civilization—our whole way of life—is in danger. It is none the less true for having been so often said. Consider our assets—our intangible assets, for these are the greatest—what are they? Creative ability, self-confidence, ingenuity, drive. These we associate perhaps chiefly with men. How greatly we need the women’s qualities of order, quiet industry, devotion, humility, self-sacrifice, spiritual awareness. They are, indeed, in all fields of service. Have I seemed to suggest that most women do their most valuable and lasting work in the home? That is what I honestly believe. The greatest work that a woman does is impossible to a man.

But that does not mean that I believe women have any right to refuse the opportunities and obligations of public service. I believe no such thing—I believe strongly that from the vantage point of the home and their knowledge of its needs, they should look on society and its problems as a whole, that they should select their appropriate service, fit themselves for it and then, gently and persistently—but firmly too—urge their right and duty to give that service. Nothing more, I think, is needed. Most men would agree that feminine gentleness and persistence, together, present about the most powerful and inexorable force in the world. Do not let me give you the impression that I see no place for more direct methods. Women now do, and do well, almost all the important things that men do. Your foundress provides an admirable and formidable example of the value of women’s influence in public life.

I am reminded of the wife of a more recent but still remote Governor-General. It was said of her by one who knew her: “She rose early and before 10 a.m. had arranged the day’s programme, of every individual who came within her orbit”! Perhaps she went too far, or perhaps she just showed her hand a bit too plainly; but even when we question such methods, how we all admire such women, when they show true integrity of purpose. How many of us would wish that they would arrange our day for us?

You will by this time, I think, have no illusions about my views. I think women today are charged with the first social responsibility—the restoration of the integrity of the home. I honour your organization most highly, because, recognizing this, you have interpreted your duty in no narrow fashion. You defend and build up the home, not only at home, but abroad, in municipal, provincial and national life. You recognize that in our modern, faltering, bewildered society, there is no area where the home may not be threatened—or where, on the other hand, it may not be cherished and enriched. My purpose today has been to honour you for what you have done by exposing what I believe to be the limitless possibilities of your future service.

Ugliness is Not Necessary

Address to the Community Planning Association of Canada, Ottawa

You have asked me to assist in your deliberations on a subject in which I have a very deep interest. So true is this, indeed, that when I tried to organize my ideas and to express my feelings, I found that, in common prudence, I had to modify and limit what I would like to say. So I cannot speak quite as strongly as I feel on the subject—to use the convenient French word—of “urbanisme” in Canada. And may I say that I offer my remarks simply as the humble reflections of an interested layman.

Je suis heureux de pouvoir dire quelques mots aux membres de cette Association qui sont d’expression française.

Votre société a connu, d’un bout à l’autre du pays, de beaux succès dont plusieurs ont montré une étroite collaboration entre canadiens de langue française et de langue anglaise.

Une association comme la vôtre ne profile pas seulement à ceux qui sont intéressés à l’urbanisme mais elle est, par son exemple de bonne entente, d’un grand bénéfice à la nation toute entière.

We need not remind ourselves of the varied beauties of our country—of the opportunities given by climate and landscape to a bold, able and adventurous people, equipped with all the aids of modern science and invention. But I think we would all agree that we have not fully responded to the challenge offered by Nature. Perhaps, indeed, we hardly saw that she was challenging us. We have many cities in noble settings. I cannot say that we have too many noble streets or squares. We have many peaceful, prosperous towns, set in a natural harmony of field and sky, but the town has frequently been given no logical shape, and is really a scene of man-made confusion. Towns, of course, cannot be built without destroying most of the natural features which they replace, but we could have compensated for the necessary liquidation of natural beauty by the creation more often, in nature’s setting, of worthier symbols of ourselves and our way of life. We have, of course, in this country and on this continent, been unfortunate in many ways. We have, as it were, been hurried into indiscretions, and even into offences that were contrary to our better nature, and our history does offer excuses for many regrettable things we have done. We have advanced very fast and our towns have been built—almost prefabricated—from mass-produced materials. Before the days of modern industry, when man had to bend his ingenuity to make the best possible use of materials at hand, there grew up a natural tradition of sound building and of good taste. The materials of the countryside, fashioned by men bred in it, did achieve a kind of harmony. We can find that harmony today, here and there in our countryside and in a few pockets in older cities, but it has been largely lost in the years of rapid growth.

In another way we have been unlucky. Historically, towns are a product of trade, but many of the old towns of the western world were built around a kind of natural centre which imposed some sort of plan—some discipline of design. They grew up about a cathedral, a fortress—even a university, and thus found character and direction. There are, for instance, few European cities or towns where you do not find a central square—probably in the beginning, a market place—but remaining at the centre of the community as the core of its communal life. Some of our Canadian cities, through the imagination of their founders, have been endowed with such squares, but very few. Where they exist, they play a subtle and important part in the life of the community.

In this new country our towns have too often fallen between two stools. They have not been able to grow by adapting themselves to the slowly accumulating accidents and pressures of history, nor have they been consciously planned. They have been, as a rule, improvised or assembled as a result of forces outside ourselves. Often a traveller on the western prairies will hear of “C.P. towns”, “C.N. towns” and places which came into being as “divisional points”. In the east we grew more slowly but Ottawa itself, you will recall, was not founded on this spot because a magnificent natural site appealed to men as a setting for a great city. It simply happened that a lumbering town grew around a canal and river junction. No doubt most of our cities had similar beginnings, but here, fortunately, many years after Bytown was founded, man’s imagination was stirred by the growing importance of our national capital and the beauty of its site. The master plan was the result.

But other city plans exist in Canada. As you know better than I, here and there there are places where people with both vision and perseverance have succeeded in persuading their fellow-citizens to take thought for the morrow and plan accordingly. No comments on town planning in Canada should overlook those towns where parks were laid out, squares created, trees saved, natural features preserved and the town as a whole given coherent form. There are many of these places—all honour to the men who guided their growth.

We should remember also that industrial corporations have often played their part, as one learns from visits to what were or still are, “company towns”. Almost everywhere in Canada the principle, at least, of town planning is accepted, and we are becoming aware of the need to make up for past neglect. Here in Ottawa and its environs, the work of the Federal District Commission shows what striking results can be achieved by the able and imaginative efforts of a planning authority. Posterity will be grateful to its members and their staff.

But, as I need not remind this audience, sad mistakes have been made in many places in our country—many of them irreparable. As I have suggested, it is our misfortune that in Canada we have grown so fast and so casually, and we are not alone in this, for we resemble in this respect many industrial regions in the Old World. Economic forces have often hurried us into size without shape, into greatness without grandeur. We are advised in the Scriptures that it is vain for man to take thought about adding cubits to his stature. The rule does not hold for towns. It is the tragedy of many of our towns that cubit after cubit has been added in the past without much thought at all.

But there I am wrong. Canadian towns—or to speak more precisely—Canadian Mayors and Councils—do and must take thought about many things. They must take thought about business, or the town would cease to be. And they must, through their own convictions and the pressure of public opinion, take thought about many other important matters. I know many Canadian Mayors, for I have visited, since coming to Ottawa, over 180 Canadian cities and towns. I am full of admiration for their Mayors—admiration and sympathy. In these booming days they must be closely concerned with the problems of water supply, sewers, light, power, pavements and their cost, with the menace of traffic, with overpasses, underpasses, bypasses and “throughways”—with public transportation and all the incredible complications involved in keeping a great mass of people alive, moving and in reasonable health and comfort.

I have mentioned the business of keeping people moving. No City Council needs to be reminded of the problem of traffic, but as a layman may I suggest that the traffic engineer, highly important as his functions are, represents only one aspect of a city plan. Like other experts, he is a member of a team. If his job is not co-ordinated with those of other specialists, no coherent plan can possibly emerge. Parks will be sacrificed to bypasses; trees which are cut down to make streets wider, will not be replaced; the future layout of the town will be distorted. We must accept the demands of progress and promote it zealously, but progress need not always take the form of a bulldozer.

Until a short time ago most Canadians lived in the country. Now all that is changed. Hitherto a nation of country dwellers, we are now moving to town. Having settled there, we may make money, we may achieve comfort, we may even aspire within our home to that curious thing called “gracious living”, but do we receive all we might reasonably hope for in the benefits of a civilized life?

It is easy to use good-sounding words and convey, simply, good sounds and nothing more. One may well ask, “What is a civilized life and how can it be achieved?” Well, I think it comes when men and women in society cherish four things. First, physical well-being; secondly, the moral virtues without which society cannot exist; thirdly, knowledge and understanding; and fourthly, beauty in all its forms.

I do not think these can be separated from one another. They are, to a considerable extent, interdependent and I am not suggesting any priority for they are all necessary aspects of civilized life. May I say something about two of these things?—the promotion of knowledge and understanding of ourselves and our traditions, and the preservation and creation of beauty. These should not be special municipal “activities”, to use an overworked word. They should be linked with the very existence of the town.

To be practical, what can we do? We can consider sanely our liabilities and our assets. I have suggested that in the nature of things, towns and cities are destructive. Even to be brought into existence they must destroy the turf, flatten out the lesser hills, grade down the higher ones, mask the little streams and root up the trees. But city dwellers still need natural beauty. They have always known it and have, when they could, surrounded their habitations with gardens, parks, lawns, stretches of water. These amenities are not luxuries; they satisfy a profound need. We can have natural beauty in our towns even if we must forgo the charms of the open countryside, and in a town one may enjoy the peculiar delights of natural beauty associated with the harmonies of good architecture, each embellishing the other. I am thinking as I speak of one example—the loveliness of old elm trees against the white clapboard houses of New England. But may I venture to say something else? If trees serve to adorn fine buildings, they can also hide bad ones. A mean and commonplace street, if it is lined with trees, becomes less unattractive. Its architecture—perhaps I should say just “buildings”—can borrow a certain grace from nature.

Over eighty years ago Joseph Howe made a speech here in Ottawa, in which he said this:

If Howe were alive today I should like to travel with him to some cities and towns, in particular begging people to think of the importance of preserving the shade trees they have and of adding charm, and at times comfort, to scores of bald and dingy and—in the summer—torrid streets, by planting more.

And while we were on this tour I think we would say something about parks. Does the amount of land dedicated to this purpose seem sufficient in a country with the area of half a continent? Few as our parks are, they are, in some cities, constantly suffering from encroachment. Some of these invasions are doubtless necessary, but can we not see that a park is as essential as a road to sane and healthy town life? To reduce without need the precious area set apart as a park, is to betray posterity. There are notable examples of Canadian cities which have created and are preserving their parks with a keen sense of responsibility. One which I know is rightly proud of the fact that over one-fifth of its area is maintained as parkland. Parks, let us remember, increase in importance as the city grows in size. There are two great and very familiar examples of the value of parks and the far-sightedness of those who laid them out—Hyde Park in London and Central Park in New York. It is comforting to notice the outburst of indignation which follows any proposal to encroach on either of these precious reservations.

Could we not, in improving our parks, try to preserve and embellish natural beauties? I know we must have playing-fields and recreation grounds, but could we not give more thought to the increasing thousands of apartment dwellers who, after practising the art of survival on our city streets, and dazzled by the glitter of neon signs, need to see something still and green? Many cities realize this, but others do not.

I cannot help saying a sentimental word about the Zoological Garden as a municipal asset. It is really a normal piece of educational equipment. Here and there in Canada there are collections of animals which can arouse the imagination of children and give pleasure to them and their parents, but we have only three or four large, well-organized zoos. I am glad to know that there is talk of more. A zoo is always presented as a very costly enterprise, but I understand that, with modest beginnings, revenue from the gate and the exchanges of animals between zoos—because their Directors are, in a sense, an international fraternity—a zoo should be within the capacity of any city of reasonable size.

Again, could we not think more of preserving the relatively few buildings we have that are old and good? Such monuments have beauty and dignity. They give life and character to our towns. I know two cities in Canada each with a long history. Each has a site of natural beauty; each has a number of buildings of historic interest and architectural charm. One of these places takes a pride in preserving its treasures. In the other there is grave danger that they may disappear from sheer neglect—leaving the city just like any other one. I have no sentiment for the old just because it is old; but what is old and good has a special value in a mass-produced, synthetic age, and its preservation can give a town a special, individual character. I am not thinking only of monumental buildings. In our older cities, streets remain with dwelling-houses surviving from earlier times and possessing a charm and quality of their own. Their restoration would seem to be a task for individual enterprise, rather than for public authority, but, however accomplished, the preservation of such old houses—there are many examples of this in London and New York—can lend special distinction to any community. The quality of sameness is a major menace in modern life. Let us protect our cities and towns as we would the minds of our children, from the steam-roller of uniformity.

But that is only one part of the problem. It is so easy to assume that the town dweller, with all his accumulation of the comforts of modern engineering, gains everything and loses nothing by his move from the country. But often when he goes to the city there is too little in his surroundings to appeal to his reason or affection. It is of the utmost importance that, with shorter hours of labour for all, the atmosphere of the town should be stimulating and satisfying. There must be interest and occupation for the mind and the imagination. Where is this to be found? It will not be found in mere diversions, however excellent they may be as diversions. If we are to maintain a healthy and vigorous life, people must have substantial food for the mind and spirit. There is a difference between sedative and sustenance. We all need sedative at times, but we live on sustenance. We owe our young people nourishing food, and we should concern ourselves with feeding the mind and satisfying a natural appetite for beauty. And what an opportunity we have! Ugliness is not necessary. Let me illustrate this thought. Towns are centres of trade; but why, when I pass through our cities, where nearly every shop window gives evidence of wealth and taste, must I look back now and then at a street which, as a whole, is mean—a treeless waste, disfigured by enormous signs and obscured by a tangle of overhead wires? Why should not the street, as a whole, express the quality of the wares offered by those who do business there? In one small area in a Canadian city the merchants, justly proud of their stores, are interested in the streets on which they stand. They would like them to be distinguished; but they will not be distinguished—although the buildings are, for the most part, good—unless advertising is kept within reasonable limits, and the wires are buried and trees grow out of the sidewalk. At present our streets are often unworthy of the admirably dressed windows which face them. Why cannot we have a look at Vienna, at Stockholm, at Copenhagen, and learn what we can from their fine streets and squares?

I could go on and on. So, I suppose, could everyone in this room. The question may be asked: How can we afford these things? We can afford them. In many places we have proved it. And we can find plenty of examples in other countries to encourage us. I have long been impressed by the ingenuity of the builders of the Royal Festival Hall in London. Whatever one may think of its architecture—and I have my own views about that—the planners and builders have created in one of the dreary deserts of London a little oasis of light and air, of freshness and greenness. They have used all their art to create the impression of space, of green and growing things, of movement and light, and at very moderate expense. I was delighted to learn that one of our own cities is now engaged in a very similar undertaking. I have been delighted also in Vancouver and Calgary and Edmonton, to learn of libraries, theatres, concert halls now planned, or even under construction.

But our new and growing towns should not wait, and many of our older ones should cease to linger. Where can they find the money? Where indeed? Have you ever thought of how much money there is in every city? Have you ever thought of what could be done by an intelligent combination of individual liberality and public expenditure? We are a free-handed and generous people. Not only do we support worthy causes; we find pleasure in giving. We are constantly devising new days and new occasions which demand a present. Not only Christmas but Easter and St. Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day and Father’s Day—shall I live to see a Grandfather’s day?—and we do it not meanly, but lavishly. We know the luxury of giving. Luxuries may be necessities. How useful and how easy it would be for a group of people to afford themselves the pleasure of presenting a picture to the local gallery, or an animal to the local zoo or a plant to the botanical garden. If, in any Canadian city or town, we could induce a mood in which the citizen with a modest surplus could ask, “What could I give to my community?”, it would become easier to ask the municipality to play its part. It has, of course, a dominant part to play. Today in Europe, in cities and towns destroyed in the war, buildings for music and drama and opera are rising from the rubble because the public wants them and is prepared to pay for them, just as they must pay for the supply of light and water.

I have talked too long and I have covered much strange territory. Has my discussion of “land use” and “zoning”—to lapse into technicalities—seemed to you eccentric? I may appear to have neglected many departments of a subject which touches every aspect of human life; for example, that sector of the front which belongs to the engineer. I recognize the importance of his role, but I am not competent to discuss it. I believe, however, that very often the aims of the town planning engineer are in full harmony with the objects of those concerned with civic amenities. They, together with their colleagues, have a supreme task which is nothing less than that of creating well-being through environment. I hope I may not be quoted as saying that man should seek first town planning and all else will be added unto him. But I do believe—and please quote me!—that without town planning there will be a very restricted “good life” in Canada. Few countries in the world today offer the planner such limitless opportunities.

The English-Speaking Union

Address to the World Branches Conference of the English-Speaking Union, Ottawa

We are united here this evening in a firm belief in the high purpose to which the English-Speaking Union is dedicated, and we are happy to pay tribute to those who brought it into being. When we consider our beginnings, how we came to be, and what we have done in the past, we cannot help but ask what holds us together; what driving force has caused us to grow and prosper as we have done? At one time, when the members of the Union were drawn chiefly from the two great English-speaking nations, its object being to forge links of understanding between them, the answer to this question was simpler than it is now. Today, we are happy to have in our membership people of many different races and languages. We are proud to have them, but we naturally ask, “Does this changing membership change our character? What does now unite us?”

We call ourselves “The English-Speaking Union”, and yet the members in this room represent a chain of nations and territories in which, taken all together, English is the language of the minority. In some Commonwealth countries it is spoken by a small minority; in some it is one of two official languages. In Canada, for instance, one-third of our people speak French as their mother tongue. And, may I say, we Canadians are the better for this. Canada is a richer country because of its two cultures and two languages.

J’aimerais dire quelques mots à mes amis Canadiens français dans leur langue maternelle. Bien qu’il soit difficile de mesurer dans toute son ampleur l’importance de la contribution française à la nation canadienne, je crois qu’aujourd’hui, mieux que par le passé, nous savons reconnaître et apprécier le rôle très important que jouent nos concitoyens de langue française dans notre vie nationale.

Perhaps we might regard the English-Speaking Union as a body whose high aims and vitality and success have led its functions to outgrow its name. In any event, labels are less important than what is labelled, and if there is a cheerful disregard of logic in the use of our title, we must remember that logic has never been a mark of movements with an Anglo-Saxon background. (I was going to say “thank goodness!”—but that might be going too far!)

The high aims of the English-Speaking Union remain unchanged, however its membership may have broadened. Many of us, of course, own English as our native tongue. Great numbers have learned it in many parts of the globe, as a lingua franca enriched from numerous sources and mellowed by time. Those who have learned to speak it do so, very often, with a distinction that commands our admiration.

Today, the English-Speaking Union is united by an affection, or at least a respect, for one of the great languages of the world. Yet language and literature are not our only bond. There are other subtler and perhaps even stronger ties, which mean much to those of us whose native tongue may not be English. I am thinking of the English language not as a vernacular, nor as literature, but as a vehicle for ideas which are our common legacy. We may remind ourselves of certain noble traditions which English-speaking peoples may have sometimes neglected or forgotten, but which have always been theirs, defended by their greatest men speaking as the voice of the public conscience.

I think first of the common links between free peoples. We know that the two original members of our union dissolved their connection and appeared as independent nations, after much bitterness of spirit. And yet even in those days, there were those who held that independence should be followed by close collaboration, based on common convictions and common aspirations for good and free government. Their successors on both sides of the Atlantic have laboured well to build and strengthen a fabric of friendship and understanding. We, in Canada, know how successful they have been.

In all dealings between strong and vigorous peoples there will be some hard passages but we here in this country can testify that never did a small community experience so much tolerance and good will from a powerful neighbour, as we have done over many years. And in Canada we have profited from the lesson learned from the separation of the two great English-speaking nations. We are deeply concerned that these two peoples should live in harmony and work as partners. It has often been said that one of Canada’s international duties is that of an interpreter between them. That observation was confidently made long before Canada could so act—we were too small, too unimportant, too immature to play any such part. But, as often happens, events have overtaken rhetoric, and with our increasing strength and, I believe, an accompanying sense of responsibility, we are now able to attempt a role which fortune has assigned to us.

Canada has grown up in a community—the British Commonwealth—which has, as the principle of its existence, the bond of freedom. The new Commonwealth grew from the old Empire because the senior member of the English-speaking union realized that there was no greater imperial triumph than the recognition of new and independent nations. We in Canada know that well—our achievement of full nationhood received the blessing and the aid of our kinsmen across the sea. Such recognition is not always easy. But in our tradition, it has always, in the end, been accepted as right. We can, indeed, justify the claim that English is the language of freedom.

The word “freedom” is always stimulating. How many examples one can think of in our English-speaking world. I am tempted to mention a little incident which occurred during a visit to England years ago. I remember it well. As I was driving through London, I saw a speaker addressing a group of people from a scarlet rostrum in a little square. Leaving my engine running, I paused for a moment to hear what he was saying. He was engaged in denouncing the established order, and calling for its destruction. A policeman—representing that same established order—came up and said to me, “I’m sorry, sir, but would you mind turning off your engine—the crowd can’t hear what the gentleman is saying!”

But to return to the international sphere, we realize that the rights of nationalism are not, in themselves, enough. We in this century know too well how this can easily breed division and hatred. The nations represented in this union, however, have a unity that underlies their separation. It derives from the English common law, widely used where English is spoken. Our unity, however, does not depend on the law itself. It is, rather, the sense of law and of legal community that we all share. When the English, from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, were spreading over the globe, they were, at the same time, thinking deeply on the meaning of law and on its relation to human well-being. The ideas produced then have been received, absorbed and transformed by countless communities not originally English, which have learned much from those of English speech—and have taught much in return.

There is, therefore, a unifying principle in the body which is meeting here tonight. We share great ideas and a profound belief in them. All these lend immense importance to the work of a society which supports and promotes them. But, there are dangers. I wonder whether I might mention two or three. For one thing, we must beware of complacency, we English-speaking peoples; the finest ideals in the world can be tarnished by smugness. I hope that a little story which I heard the other day will not sound too flippant:

There is, I think, a moral in the anecdote.

Another danger is sentimentality. How often has a good cause been damaged by the lack of down to earth realism. Not long ago a phrase was used in a land which is the source of much vivid prose, to describe a sentimentalist: “That guy has a heart so warm that it’s melted his back-bone.” Warm hearts are essential in human life, but they cannot be the only equipment. I am uncomfortably aware that sentimentality is never so menacing as it is after dinner!

Another risk we must avoid, as far as we can, is the cult of uniformity. Standardization is often essential in the material sphere; it must not be allowed to invade the things of the mind. Good relations between communities are not dependent on similarity between them. On the other hand, they are greatly aided by the honest recognition of diversity. Indeed, the toleration of differences is a measure of civilization. That we believe in the English-speaking world.

The common language which happily links the two greatest English-speaking partners can, now and then, have a confusing effect on relations between them. When peoples speak the same language, it is easy to assume that their institutions are the same; that their views are identical. That, of course, is not true and the world would be far less interesting if it were. But to turn to fundamentals; in those things that have the deepest meaning, the peoples within the bounds of the English-speaking world possess a unity of mind. This is the basis of collaboration between them, and without such collaboration—one need not remind this gathering—our civilization could hardly survive.

I have suggested that we share a sense of law. But, again, such a sense, even of just and humane law, is not enough. At one time we thought it was. Increasingly, in the twentieth century we understand that law is not a machine, a handy substitute for personal power and personal responsibility. The English, concerned with the operation of their ancient but ever-growing legal processes, could, perhaps, forget this in former years. But they found correction in their sense of the practical. A very simple illustration occurs to me—a story told by an Englishman who had seen long service in India:

In the twentieth century, confronted by the tiger of intellectual, moral and spiritual revolution, we realize that our neat nineteenth-century theories of law, liberty and legislation, excellent though they may be, are not sufficient in themselves—that indeed, in this age of confusion, they can be turned into nonsense. Increasingly, we see that we live in a world where, with all our laws, we still depend very greatly on power exercised by persons over other persons.

Our thinking on such subjects, as we know, has undergone great changes. We regard the governance of one people by another not as permanent, but as a temporary measure of guardianship for communities labouring under some form of disability—as a prelude to increasing freedom. How often and how well has this been demonstrated in the British Commonwealth in recent years.

And yet, for all our liberal beliefs, and all our striving for international law and government, we still live in a world of power politics. We must ask ourselves, viewing the facts of the exercise of power in modern life, whether we have anything in our tradition to help to preserve us from the evil consequences which can flow from this.

I think the answer is that we have. We have traditions of the right use of power just as old as our laws. I do not say that they are peculiar to the English-speaking world, but I think no other communities have preserved them so long and so faithfully. May I mention two?

The first tradition is that power must be used for the general good. It may seem arrogant to claim that principle as our own, and it would be if the claim were made exclusively. But it was a Frenchman who said of Great Britain in the nineteenth century that no country had ever had so much power and abused it so little. I believe that the same claim could be made for the United States in the twentieth century. To all in our English-speaking tradition, there could be no higher praise than that. It expresses, if not what we are, at least what we honestly wish to be.

Another tradition which belongs to the English-speaking world, is the sharing of power as widely as possible with all over whom it must be exercised. It is always hard for the holder of power to lay it down. It is the glory of our union of English-speaking peoples that the fiercest altercations about the proper distribution of power have been settled, not always without strife, but with remarkably little of it. And deep bonds of friendship have endured the strife, and lived beyond it.

An inscription recently drafted by a Canadian scholar will be cut on a rock to be placed where the international boundary passes through the St. Lawrence Seaway. It runs thus:

That sentence can be applied to the relations between all the communities represented in our English-Speaking Union. It should be engraved in our own hearts and cherished not as a boast but as a pledge. Our partnership carries with a common language not only a great legacy of law and freedom, but a deep sense of the moral imperatives of power. This inheritance it is for us to maintain and strengthen. Let us remember that in so doing, we serve not only ourselves but the whole world.

Fifty Years of Flight

Address to the Canadian Aeronautical Institute, Montreal

People who do not know anything about aeronautics today are in a dwindling minority. The term has almost become a household word. Television and radio have made us familiar with a vast array of missiles and rockets; a great assortment of manned and unmanned aircraft. Our youngest offspring wear space suits, assemble toy aircraft and play with rockets—sometimes powerful enough to dismember them. This has all happened in a very short time. People today, of course, think nothing of boarding a jet aircraft to fly thousands of miles in a few hours. Yet, tonight, the first British subject ever to fly a heavier-than-air machine in the British Commonwealth is with us here, as we celebrate his great exploit. I was very glad indeed when I heard that there was to be a suitable commemoration of the flight of the “Silver Dart” which took place on this very date fifty years ago. For, as everyone here knows so well—and everyone in Canada should know—on the 23rd of February, 1909, Mr. McCurdy flew his aircraft from the ice of Baddeck Bay. A year before, another Canadian, F. W. Baldwin, flew the “Red Wing” on a lake near Hammondsport in the United States, and so our country, thanks to these courageous men—followed closely by many others—proudly entered a new era in transportation. I was interested to see in an account of Lord Grey’s term of office as Governor-General, that he paid a visit to Baddeck in 1909, not long after the flight of the “Silver Dart”, and had a talk with Dr. Alexander Graham Bell and Mr. McCurdy and Mr. Baldwin, who were closely associated with him in his researches. At this time Lord Grey drew the work of these two young men to the attention of the British Government with the comment that “McCurdy is a young Canadian whose services should be retained for the Empire. . . .”

We are celebrating, this evening, a Canadian event. I am one of those people who feel that we are inclined in this country of ours to play down our own achievements. We do not want to be boastful or smug, but things have happened and are happening of which we can be honestly proud and, if so, why should we not honour these events and pay tribute to the men who made them possible? Understatement is a virtue up to a point, but carried too far it is not helpful to the morale of a community. We should not sound our trumpets too stridently; but they should not stay silent.

The aircraft came to Canada as a godsend. It probably has meant more to us than it has to any other country. I think it is true to say that nowhere else did pioneer flying play such a part in national development—I am not thinking now of communications only in the opening up of inaccessible country, but of economic exploitation. As everyone knows, the greatest patron of the pioneer pilots in our north was the mining industry, which depended on them for the transportation of unbelievable loads of equipment.

Comme dans beaucoup d’entreprises nationales des canadiens des deux langues ont trouvé dans l’aviation un champ d’action commun. Dans un petit livre qui raconte les exploits de Roméo Vachon, trophée McKee mil neuf cent trente sept, il est dit:

After the excitement of the early flights, like young birds who have enjoyed the thrill of first using their wings, our pioneer pilots turned themselves quickly to useful tasks. As in other countries, both civil and military aviation in Canada were developed side by side and interwoven, because many of our early pilots and aeronautical engineers lent their courage and their energy to both.

Those who, at the end of the First War, computed Canada’s contribution to the Royal Air Force as being approximately 22,000 airmen, could predict that on whatever day the Royal Canadian Air Force would be officially born (it turned out to be the 1st April, 1924—35 years ago this year) a very promising child would be delivered. His health and vigour had been assured by such worthy forefathers as Ince, Bell-Irving, Leckie, Collishaw, Barker, McLeod, Bishop and the many others who, in those days, to the danger of flying added the menace of gun fire.

In the years that followed the armistice, military aviation in Canada was not left idle. A look at the Royal Canadian Air Force log book reminds us of certain exploits in the early days which meant much to flying. I shall mention one. The first trans-Canada flight in 1920 was completed in just over 49 hours by relays of six aircraft, including a seaplane and two flying-boats. On this occasion, Halifax and Vancouver were linked by air at an average speed of 68 m.p.h.!

I have alluded to the official birthday of the R.C.A.F. In a country like ours which, by tradition, has never fully developed its military potential except in times when the world’s freedom was at stake, perhaps one may wonder why it would seem fit to create an Air Force in 1924. I said that civil and military aviation in Canada had been developed along parallel lines. As if to disprove Euclid’s assertion that two parallel lines never meet, the military Air Force of the 1920’s entered the field of civil aviation. Here is one example. In two years, Service Aircraft piloted by members of the R.C.A.F. photographed more than 40,000 square miles of territory in five of our provinces. This operation was later described as the greatest of the kind ever undertaken.

Civil aviation, I need hardly say to this audience—or any other in Canada—has produced a company of great pilots in their own right. Here I am thinking particularly of those men who have worked and thrived in our northern Canadian skies. They are known to us by a phrase which expresses a sense of admiration and gratitude—“bush pilots”. Other lands have had men like them, but I think that we in Canada can take pride in the fact that our pioneer pilots have played a role of especial importance, and have faced unheard of problems and hazards. Theirs was a more than difficult job—it was a nearly impossible one. Those who managed to survive the early years—happily most of them did—will never cease to amaze us by what they accomplished. They had few instruments, most of them unreliable. The fuel gauge never worked properly and a pilot had to measure his gasoline consumption by his watch! The quality of fuel found en route in a cache could be ascertained, not by any precise information painted on the drum, but by dipping one’s finger into the fluid and using the sense of smell. After the fuel had been checked it would then be filtered through the pilot’s felt hat! The radio, of course, was unknown. The infant compass of those days displayed childish moods when confronted with the iron content of the equipment which might be concealed in the crates carried as a load, and allowance had to be made for this. It was even more erratic in “bush pilot” country because of the proximity of the magnetic pole. A pilot (Flight-Lieut. D. A. Harding) returning to civilization in the late 20’s was reported to have ignored his bewildered compass completely and followed a flock of migratory geese which were heading south. He found them much more reliable. The existing maps told the pilots little more about our north than Cabot and Cartier learned from the charts which they brought to Canada centuries before. The maps our early fliers used had generally been drawn by trappers and coureurs de bois from memory! If we consider the comforts of life—something which those hardy pioneers seldom did—we will realize that their cockpits, whether they were open or even covered, provided but little heat.

Two names come to our minds when we think of cold flying conditions—those of “Wop” May and Vic Homer. In early January, 1929, they flew from Edmonton to Fort Vermilion, a distance of over 500 miles, to bring much-needed antitoxin for the settlers of Little Red River who were stricken with diphtheria. In his fascinating book called Canada’s Flying Heritage Frank Ellis has this to say about their flight of mercy:

I think we will agree that this description, coming from a man who has flown the north a great deal himself, is no overstatement. Not long ago I had the interesting experience of chatting with a few old-timers who flew the north in the 20’s. I have found that pilots as a rule—and bush pilots in particular—are always reticent about their personal experiences. The reason why it is so may have been given by one of the Wright Brothers when he said “the parrot is the most loquacious bird and also the poorest flier”! But however strong the tendency to understatement, illuminating stories do emerge from the legends of the pioneers. I like the story of a former bush pilot—I had the pleasure of meeting him the other day—who was on a flight east of Hudson Bay with a passenger who was a Bishop. The weather was appalling—the ceiling could not have been much lower; he was flying about fifty feet above the ground, and the visibility was equally bad—in fact, he was not very far removed from what is meant by the ominous phrase “weather zero, zero”—but there was nothing for it but to go on. He wondered how his passenger was faring and how alarmed he must be. He looked round and found the Bishop obviously enjoying every minute of the flight, looking out of the windows and saying in tones of enthusiastic interest that he was able to identify places where he had camped on canoe trips some years before—and wishing it were possible to get a rather closer view! Where ignorance is bliss . . .!

An old saw has it that necessity is the mother of invention. The truism has been illustrated time and again by our early fliers—never more graphically perhaps than by a mechanic named William Hill, and a cabinet-maker called Walter Johnson. A propeller blade had been broken in a crash landing, on the Mackenzie River, in winter weather. These two men carved out of an oak sleigh-board what would now be called a “do-it-yourself” propeller. Here I quote from an account of the achievement:

And later in the narrative:

What I have just said about Hill and Johnson speaks highly of Canadian resourcefulness when it is confronted by a predicament. And we can take equal pride in the ingenuity of our engineers who successfully applied their intelligence to the solution of many aeronautical problems encountered in the days of early flying.

The reproduction of the “Silver Dart” for which we can thank LAC Lionel McCaffrey of the R.C.A.F., has enabled us to compare this aeronautical ghost of our past with the sleek aircraft of today. A flying machine whose bamboo struts were held together by piano wire, and equipped with the crudest controls, has evolved into modern aircraft whose structure can withstand twenty-mile-a-minute flights; vertical-take-off aircraft that perform conventionally once airborne; helicopters and aircraft that land on aircraft carriers. Some are now able to land in a “pea-soup” fog flown by the brain-child of aviation engineers—the auto-pilot—faithfully answering to information received from the ground.

Modern man who takes progress in his stride and is not easily moved to profess enthusiasm, cannot but admire the genius of those who, over the last fifty years, have transformed what at first were oversize kites into the reliable and speedy craft of today. There is a fine passage in a book by the French airman Saint Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, with which you may be familiar:

Saint Exupéry, as a great airman, knew intimately the relation between pilot and aircraft, the marriage between man and his machine. We celebrate such a union tonight—a union of fifty years ago.

THE END

Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.

A cover was created for this ebook which is placed in the public domain.

[The end of Speaking of Canada by Vincent Massey]