Canada's Past and Present: A Dialogue 9781487578435

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CANADA'S PAST AND PRESENT

CANADA'S PAST AND PRESENT:

A Dialogue OUR LIVING TRADITION Fifth Series Edited by Robert L. McDougall

Published in association with Carleton University by University of Toronto Press

Copyright, Canada, 1965, by University of Toronto Press Printed in Great Britain

Reprinted in 2018 ISBN 978-1-4875-7928-9 (paper)

Printed in Great Britain by Latimer Trend & Co Ltd Plymouth

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION by Robert L. McDougall

vii

CONTRIBUTORS

xi

WILLIAM

LYON MACKENZIE

KING

by Blair Neatby

I

LOUIS RIEL by George F. G. Stanley

21

PAUL-EMILE BoRDUAs by Jean Ethier-Blais

41

0. D. SKELTON by W. A. Mackintosh

59

CHARLES MAIR by John Matthews

78

LOUIS FRECHETTE by David M. Hayne

102

SIR WILLIAM OSLER by Wilder Penfield

122

OLIVAR AssELIN by Mason Wade

1 34

V

INTRODUCTION

This book continues a dialogue between the present and the past begun in 1957 in a series of public lectures sponsored by the Institute of Canadian Studies of Carleton University and developed in successive series in 1958, 1959, and 1961. The fifth and present series brings the total number of lectures offered, including two extras which I shall refer to in a moment, to thirty-five. That is a considerable levy to make upon the past in terms of subjects, and a considerable levy to make upon the present in terms of speakers. The reader will judge for himself how well the scheme holds. Considered as a meeting of minds, one-sided only in the sense that greatness is not necessarily demanded of the subjects chosen, it would appear to me to hold well. The thought and achievement of Charles Mair is obviously a modest thing beside the thought and achievement of Mackenzie King, yet for excellence of insight into a broad range of Canadian life I find little to choose between the lecture on Mair and the lecture on King. In these cases as in others, of course, the treatment varies from lecture to lecture. The series is only nominally biographical. Wilder Penfield is frankly and lovingly impressionistic in his sketch of Sir William Osler; David Hayne discusses LouisHonore Frechette with scholarly precision and detachment. In this year of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism it is impossible to read these lectures closely, as I have in preparing them for publication, without being aware of the French fa.ct which runs through them like a scarlet thread. That is one

vii

INTRODUCTION

reason for the inclusion in the book of two lectures by Mason Wade on Olivar Asselin. These particular lectures were not part of the fifth series of "Our Living Tradition"; they were delivered by Professor Wade at Carleton in January, 1963, to mark the beginning of his appointment, for a term, as Visiting Fellow to the Institute of Canadian Studies. They deserve to be published, and they fit the conception of our series. But they have the added value, through their sharp focus on the issue of French-Canadian nationalism, of drawing out a theme which shows itself, directly or indirectly, in most of the lectures to which they have been joined. The living presence of French Canada, our oldest inheritance, leads us along the thread. Louis Riel, "martyr of the FrenchCanadian nation" as George Stanley calls him, looks down a long corridor of history to our divided present, and in the lecture on Charles Mair John Matthews makes clear the centrality in Mair's life of the metis uprisings in the North West and, in a wider sense, of the devious currents of racism and nationalism which were in conflict in the years following Confederation. Blair Neatby, paying tribute to Mackenzie King's great skills as a party leader, reminds us that perhaps nowhere were these skills more severely tested than in the task he faced of keeping English and French Canada together in time of war. Louis-Honore Frechette and Paul-Emile Borduas are themselves components of the French fact in Canada; and they too have their links with the present. Some weeks ago in Ottawa the revolutionary vitality of the painter who is so sensitively examined by Jean Ethier-Blais in this series came alive for me again when I heard a young separatist, all hot from Montreal, cite as the beginning of his revolt his reading of Borduas' Refus global. 0. D. Skelton seems remote from the theme, and that may be the way of the civil service; yet Vice-Chancellor Mackintosh's admiring and affectionate portrait recalls the teacher who spoke rationally, to the surprise of his students, about bilingual schools, and the writer who produced what remains to this day the definitive biography of Sir Wilfrid Laurier. It is indeed only in the lecture on Sir William Osler that the thread runs out. And well it might, for here we enter the world of science; the "Osler ferment" described by Wilder Penfield has nothing at all to do with political ideologies, everything to do with a disinterested passion for healing the bodies and minds of men. Perhaps Osler has viii

INTRODUCTION

the last word. He was, says Dr. Penfield, "the least sentimental, the most helpful, most lovable man," and because he was these things he brought people together and cemented their friendships. We are reminded of virtues of great power against forces that divide.

December, 1964

ROBERT L. McDouGALL, Director The Institute of Canadian Studies Carleton University, Ottawa

ix

CONTRIBUTORS

H. BLAIR NEATBY is Associate Professor of History at the University of British Columbia and the author of William Lyon Mackenzie King, Volume II, 1924-1932. GEORGE F. G. STANLEY is Dean of Arts and Head of the Department of History at the Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston. He is an authority on the West and on the military history of Canada. He is the author of Canada's Soldiers, The Birth of Western Canada, and Louis Riel. JEAN ETHIER-BLAIS is Professor of French Literature at L'Ecole des hautes etudes commerciales in Montreal. He is literary critic for Le Devoir and is a well-known contributor to many learned journals. W. A. MACKINTOSH is now Vice-Chancellor of Queen's University at Kingston, having previously served as Principal and Sir John A. Macdonald Professor of Political and Economic Science at that university. He has worked at intervals with governments in various capacities and was a member of the 1963 Royal Commission on Banking and Finance.

JoHN MATTHEWS was Dean of Arts and Science at St.John's College, University of Manitoba until 1962, when he joined the Department of English at Queen's University. His special interest is comparing the development of Australian and Canadian poetry, and he is the author of a book on the subject, Tradition in Exile. Xl

CONTRIBUTORS

DAVID M. HAYNE is Professor of French at University College, University of Toronto. Editor of the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, he is a regular contributor to English and French periodicals in Canada. WILDER PENFIBLD, O.M., M.D., F.R.S., was Director of the Montreal Neurological Institute until 1960. He continues in a long series of major interests which include football, neurophysiology, brain surgery, neuropathology, and historical fiction. MASON WADE is the Director of the Canadian Studies Program at the University of Rochester and is an authority on French Canada. He is the author ofFrench Canadians, 1760-1945 and Canadian Dualism.

xii

BLAIR NEATBY ON

WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE KING

The recent resignation of several members of Mr. Diefenbaker's Cabinet tempts me to entitle this lecture: "Why Mackenzie King's Cabinet Ministers rarely resigned-and never during an election campaign." The title would be appropriate because I want to talk about Mackenzie King as a party leader-the ways in which he arrived at party strategies and party policies, and the ways in which these strategies and policies were accepted and adopted by the party. I do not intend to summarize Mackenzie King's political career, nor even his political philosophy; his career was so long and his political ideas so adaptable that they require a multi-volume biography to make them credible. But Mackenzie King did have a definite idea of the nature of a political party-or at least of the Liberal party. He believed that within this party there was a consensus on every national issue, that there existed what Rousseau labelled the general will. The problem for King, as for Rousseau, was to discover this general will and then somehow to convince the members of this political society that it had been discovered. These two stages-deciding on the line to follow and then having it become the party line -were not always differentiated. But whatever the sequence might be and however prolonged the journey through the wilderness of indecision, there is, I think, a definite pattern. It is a pattern based on Mackenzie King's idea of political leadership and the techniques he used to ensure that the leader and his followers would never be separated. And it is here, I think, that one of the reasons for King's political longevity is to be found.

BLAIR NEATBY

It is only fair, however, to preface my ideas with a warning. Political issues are always simplified by the perspective of time. It is easy for us today to see, for example, that Mackenzie King was bound to win the election of I 926 and to see that conscription in I 944 would not split the Liberal party-just as it may seem obvious to us ten years from now that there was a logical and inevitable decision on nuclear arms. But this note of caution may best be left to Mackenzie King himself, an acknowledged expert when it comes to caution. King once pointed out to Norman Rogers, fresh from his post at Queen's University, "that it was the academic mind which saw only theory and objective, and the logic, and left the human factor out of consideration." King, of course, was not hampered by the limitations of the academic mind. In his diary (January 22, 1938) he records his comment to Rogers: "in politics one has to do as one at sea with a sailing ship; not try to go straight ahead, but reach one's course having regard to prevailing winds." Mackenzie King's respect for prevailing winds is notorious. His opponents even alleged that the man had no rudder and drifted aimlessly as the political winds blew. The difficulty with this interpretation is to explain why this ship usually had on board a majority of the Canadian voters and was in fact the ship of state for more than twenty years. H. S. Ferns and Bernard Ostry, in The Age of Macken;:,ie King, have attributed his political success to his consuming ambition; Mackenzie King becomes the manipulator, exploiting the political situation for personal power. He succeeded because, according to them, "in matters of detail, Mackenzie King was ever a man of genius: shrewd, amoral and a nice judge of human passions and weakness." Bruce Hutchinson, on the other hand, was less cynical. In The Incredible Canadian he sees King as the average Canadian writ large, as the man who stayed in office because he responded instinctively in times of crisis, and whose response satisfied the instincts of most of his compatriots. "The mystery of Mackenzie King," according to Hutchison, "is not the mystery of a man. It is the mystery of a people." I do not intend to propound yet another version of this mystery. I hope even to avoid the typical academic response when faced with two contradictory hypotheses, which is to argue that both are-partly right and that the full answer lies in a combination of the two. 2

WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE KING

Mackenzie King, as I see him, is by no means a genius, even in matters of detail; but neither was he an average or ordinary Canadian. I would not deny his tremendous personal ambition. Nor would I deny that most of his political ideas were fairly commonplace, and so likely to be acceptable to his contemporaries. But these qualities do not in themselves explain King's long tenure of office. Other men have been equally ambitious and equally orthodox in their political opinions, but no other man has been Prime Minister for as many years. It is Mackenzie King's talent as a party leader which does, I think, distinguish him from more short-lived prime ministers. King knew that the political party is the instrument of leadership in a democracy. And even in 1919, when he became Liberal leader, King knew a good deal about the care and maintenance of this instrument. His judgment and his technique improved with experience, but his ideas on the nature of political parties never changed. Mackenzie King was not so much a national leader as a party leader. He was no de Gaulle, posing as the personal embodiment of the nation's will. Nor could he, like Roosevelt, use fireside chats to mould public opinion. As a party leader, however, he was probably the most accomplished chief this country has ever known. The party he shaped and led was a national party, but King himself was a national leader only through his party. Mackenzie King's political philosophy is by no means irrelevant to his leadership. Political philosophy cannot be completely dissociated from politics, even in Canada. We have all deplored the meaningless platitudes which masquerade during election campaigns as definitions of liberalism or conservatism-and, I might add, of socialism or social creditism. We are all tempted to believe that beneath the mask there lurks only an intellectual void. But even if Canadian politicians seem to be innately--or deliberately-incomprehensible when they try to define their own ideology, they have a personal philosophy. And their beliefs however inarticulate, do affect their political decisions. · Mackenzie King called his political philosophy liberalism. His liberalism, if one reads his speeches, was an aggregation of platitudes which would rival the assortment of any other Canadian politician, living or dead. But beneath the jargon of his liberalism there was a 3

BLAIR NEATBY

body of belief, or of faith. King believed sincerely in the duty of public service. His life, as he saw it, was dedicated to the Liberal party, to Canada, and to hwnanity. And this belief was further refined by Mackenzie King; public service for him meant working for the weak and the underprivileged. His early career-the Sick Children's Hospital, Hull House, the report on sweated labour, the Industrial Relations Foundation-was a logical sequence traced out by this ideal of public service. Politics was a natural continuation of this sequence. King's idealism did affect the structure of the Liberal party. This is not to say that the party ever became a perfect example of his ideal in action, but scornful cynicism should not be allowed to hide the fact that King's sentiments had a profound effect. King was a leader in spite of what most Canadians thought-and think. The misconception of King as an indecisive and aimless politician has become part of the Canadian mythology, part of our national heritage. For example, only recently Eric Nicol has explained that politicians who try to imitate Mackenzie King make the mistake of doing nothing. King's secret, according to Nicol, goes beyond this; he not only did nothing, but he gave the impression that he never would do anything. A campaign slogan such as "Follow King" was unthinkable. Nicol argued that when King was running for election, it was an optical illusion: the country was running but King was standing still. Yet behind King's compromises and his manreuvring there was a vague sense of direction and there was movement. There was always his assumption that the Liberal party was the party of the economically underprivileged groups in Canadian society. In I 92 I, for example, many of the Canadian farmers were supporting the Progressive party. Mackenzie King took it for granted that the farmers were an underprivileged group and so were really a Liberal bloc. For four years he tried to convince the Progressives. It is not certain that this was the surest road to power. King's tariff concessions to the farmers won him no plaudits from the industrial areas of central Canada, and his preoccupation with the west irritated the Maritimes. In the election of 1925 King's patient courting gained the Liberals seventeen seats on the prairies but lost them thirty-three seats in Ontario and the Maritimes. This was not the way to stay in office. Arthur Meighen's party, on the other hand, 4

WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE KING

with its protective tariff policy, had gained a total of sixty-seven seats in this election, and almost won a majority in the House of Commons. If Mackenzie King's only concern had been getting into office, he might well have concluded that catering to the farmers' vote was not the way to do it. King, however, never questioned his strategy. He patiently continued to woo the Progressives. By the end of the decade he had succeeded. The farmers, apart from the more radical United Farmers of Alberta, had entered the Liberal fold. King had modified the structure of the Liberal party. This point, that Mackenzie King had a sense of direction, needs reiteration because we are all so bemused by our image of his spinelessness. The myth, I repeat, is a misconception. Let me cite old-age pensions as another example. Mackenzie King favoured pensions for the aged. Such pensions are a provincial responsibility according to our constitution, but in I 924 a Commons Committee had recommended a plan in which the federal government would co-operate with willing provincial governments by paying half the cost. No provincial government expressed any interest, and King's FrenchCanadian colleagues were opposed to the idea. King was not a crusader. He did nothing because he saw no chance of any results. In 1926 the situation changed. The Liberal government needed outside support to stay in office. J. S. Woodsworth offered the support of the two Labour members if the federal government would adopt the Committee's plan for old-age pensions. Mackenzie King did not need to agree. Woodsworth already knew that the Liberals were at least more sympathetic to pensions than the Conservatives. Even without a pensions scheme he would probably have supported King's government. And King could have temporized-he had enough ingenuity to have thought of promising a Dominion-Provincial Conference or a Royal Commission after the session. Instead, King called a Cabinet meeting and had Woodsworth attend and repeat his offer. King then used Woodsworth's promise to persuade the French-Canadian Ministers that the old-age pensions scheme should be introduced. Thus King, who had always favoured old-age pensions in theory, adopted them as government policy when it seemed politically possible. He would not tilt at windmills, but when he had a choice he was on the side of liberal reforms. King, ofcourse, never forgot the political facts of life. If the price B

5

BLAIR NEATBY

of a liberal measure was political defeat, the price would never be paid. He saw little scope for public service out of office. But if the price was not too high, the measure was passed; Woodsworth raised the question of old-age pensions in 1926, but it was because Mackenzie King was in office and because King wanted to act that the aged received their cheques in the mail. Naturally, he assumed that the sum of votes of the underprivileged would add up to a majority of seats in the House of Commons. But the nature of the Liberal party was determined by his emphasis. It is no coincidence that under him the party drew its support from the fringes of Canada, from the areas which, roughly speaking, lie to the east, to the north, and to the west of Toronto. The real problem, of course, was to bring and to keep all these groups within the Liberal party. Nova Scotian fishermen, FrenchCanadian colons, Hamilton steelworkers, Saskatchewan wheat farmers, British Columbian lumbermen-these do not at first glance seem the makings of a homogeneous party. To King, however, the task seemed relatively simple. By definition, underprivileged groups would be opposed to privilege and to vested interests. The common interests existed. If liberal policies furthered these common interests, the problem was solved. Of course, it was not always easy to discover what these policies were. And even after the policy was discovered, it was not always easy to convince the members of all groups that this was the policy they wanted. But Mackenzie _King made a further assumption. He took it for granted, not only that these common interests existed, but also that all "liberally minded men" could be persuaded to accept these policies once they were explained. Mackenzie King did not believe in coercion. He was never tempted to challenge the prejudices of a region or of a minority. He knew that emotions and prejudices could embitter men, but he was sure that tact and patience and, above all, time, could ease the tensions and make agreement possible. He had an abiding faith that eventually a consensus would emerge from discussion. This is why Mackenzie King talked so much of national unity; he believed that there was a fundamental Canadian unity-which controversy might conceal but need never destroy. Always he believed some compromise could be found. On any issue, this compromise was the consensus for which he was looking. Once 6

WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE KING

found, he intended it to become the policy of the Liberal party. The consensus might be arrived at in various ways. On some issues, Mackenzie King believed that he knew what the consensus would be and felt no need to consult his colleagues or his followers in advance. He was sure, for example, that liberally minded Canadians would insist on autonomy in their relations with Great Britain. There was no need to debate the principle of autonomy. Nor did it seem necessary to King to debate the ways in which autonomy should be defended or extended. He was sure he was right and was sure that he could speak for his compatriots. Thus, at the Imperial Conference of 1923, King knew he must reject any suggestion of a common Imperial foreign policy, even by implication. He discussed with the Canadian delegation how best to phrase his objections to British proposals, but that was all. Some Canadians, such as Dafoe, believed the best safeguard against a common foreign policy would be a definition of Dominion status. King disagreed. Definitions always seemed to him to be dangerously inflexible; they also seemed unnecessary because King was pragmatic. If Canadians were vigilant, their autonomy was secure; if they were not vigilant, no definition would make any difference. And so in 1923, King did not suggest a definition of Dominion status. The same certainty that he could express the consensus on Canada's relations with Great Britain can be seen in King's foreign policy from 1935 to 1939. On the question of participation in a European war, King always declared that "Parliament will decide". King, however, was sure that he knew what Parliament and the Canadian people would decide if Great Britain became involved in a major war. He told Hitler in 1937 that Canada would be at Britain's side. He told the House of Commons in March of 1939 that "If there were a prospect of an aggressor launching an attack on Great Britain, with bombers raining death on London, I have no doubt what the decision of the people will be." But if King had no doubt, why did he continue to insist that Parliament would not announce its decision until war came? The reason was that Canadian loyalty to Great Britain, as King understood it, depended upon a sense of autonomy. If Canada were committed in advance, Canadians would lose their feeling of autonomy.

7

BLAIR NEATBY

Great Britain would have a free hand to accept international obligations, knowing that Canada would fight if these obligations led to war. In King's opinion, Canadians would suspect that they had become British pawns in an international chess game, and would resent it. On the other hand, if there were no commitment in advance, there would be no resentment; King was sure that when war came Canadians would then participate voluntarily and with enthusiasm. And who is to say that King's judgment was at fault? In 1939, in spite of the heated debates on neutrality in the preceding years, Parliament did decide to be at Britain's side, and the decision received general approval. Mackenzie King's conviction that he knew the Canadian consensus was not restricted to relations with Great Britain. He had the same certainty on questions of foreign policy generally, and especially on relations with the United States. But it was not enough for King to reach a decision. He also had to make it the policy of the Liberal party. His colleagues had to be persuaded to accept his views, and the Liberal caucus then had to be persuaded to accept the views of the Cabinet. The problem of winning consent is, of course, the crucial problem for any leader, be he President of General Motors, of Carleton University, of the local Parent-Teacher Association, or Czar of all the Russias. The method by which consent is obtained or enforced reveals the kind of leadership and determines the character of the institution. Mackenzie King believed that the essence ofparliamentary government was collective responsibility. His Ministers were entitled to know in advance the policy which he planned to announce. They were also entitled to question the policy and to raise objections. If a Minister was strongly opposed, King was usually patient. Discussion might continue for weeks and even months. If the matter seemed more urgent, or the opposition seemed less serious, King might force a decision more quickly. C. D. Howe recalled one occasion when King had introduced a problem, allowed a cursory discussion and then stated his understanding of the consensus of Cabinet. Howe at the time was a junior Minister but he had the temerity to question this assertion. He was coldly ignored and, according to Howe, he learned his lesson. He never again lightly questioned the Prime Minister's decision that there was a consensus. 8

WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE KING

Collective responsibility, as this incident suggests, did not always mean collective enthusiasm. No announcement of policy would be made until all King's colleagues had been informed and had given their consent, but the consent might be grudging, or even the consent of silence. But this technique of leadership should not be scorned. King's colleagues could at least be certain that they would never be made collectively responsible for a policy of which they had never heard. King never presented his Ministers with afait accompli. King found it unpleasant to endure the discussions and arguments which his method involved, but he believed they were essential. Only in this way could the Cabinet develop the confidence and loyalty and the sense of fraternity which are the cement of governments. Ministers were given the opportunity to express their differences and defend their opinions. If they could not accept the decision of their colleagues, they had been given, at least implicitly, the right to resign. When the announcement was made, each Minister was committed to defend the policy. Mackenzie King's method is not as arbitrary as it sounds. It involved consultation, and there is an important distinction between being consulted and merely being informed. Canadian politicians have always been well qualified to make the distinction; in King's day they were only too often informed by the British government of a decision, in our day it is the American government who informs them. King's colleagues were consulted on policy; they were given an opportunity to discuss the implications and to suggest modifications. In foreign affairs King's policies were adopted, not because he merely informed his colleagues, but because he succeeded in convincing them. This is not to say that they were always convinced by sheer logic. Often they accepted King's views because they had great confidence in his judgment. Where disagreement seemed serious, they might yield because the alternative of resignation seemed worse. It seldom came to this because Mackenzie King was a shrewd judge of what arguments would be most effective. His defence of his policy was often buttressed by appeals to personal or party loyalty or by concessions on other issues. The way in which Mackenzie King convinced his colleagues and his followers can be illustrated by a minor incident in CanadianAmerican relations. King knew the importance of good relations 9

BLAIR NEATBY

with the United States. He knew that Canada, linked as she was to the two great English-speaking nations, could be torn asunder if the United States and Great Britain pulled apart. He also realized more clearly than many of his compatriots that Canada was a North American country. But he knew, too, that the attitude of Canadians to Americans is always bedevilled by a fear of domination. Canadian self-respect in dealing with the United States was the equivalent of autonomy in dealing with Great Britain. American governments, like British governments, have not always made it easy for Canadians to be friendly and at the same time feel independent. The question in 1929 was whether Canada should issue clearances to ships in Canadian ports which had a cargo ofliquor on board and whose stated destination was an American port. These were the days of prohibition in the United States, and there was a thirsty market for Canadian liquor. American customs officials were unable to control the smuggling, especially across the Great Lakes. Increasing the number of American customs agents could complicate the life of the smugglers-profits were reduced because there were more officials to evade or bribe-but it did not end the traffic in spirituous beverages. Even gun battles were no more than noisy diversions; a Canadian Member of Parliament complained of the danger to harmless citizens from stray bullets along the border, but the smugglers may not have read Hansard. The American government had appealed to the Canadian government to refuse clearances from Canadian lake or seaports for liquor-laden vessels. A Canadian Royal Commission in 192 7 had recommended the same measure. At this time, Mackenzie King had refused to act. The Canadian government did agree to inform American officials immediately of every clearance issued. To go further, however, King argued, would involve the Canadian government in enforcing an American law. If vessels left Windsor or Vancouver without clearances, the United States would blame the Canadians. If the Americans wanted prohibition, they would have to enforce their own laws. At the same time, the Canadian government was even less inclined to make this concession to the Americans because the Conservatives were already accusing the Liberals of being pro-American. Church organizations and temperance groups protested, but the government was firm. At this stage there was no disagreement within the Cabinet. As late as IO

WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE KING

the session of 1929, W. D. Euler, Minister of National Revenue, was still defending the Canadian position in the House. In the summer of 1929, however, Mackenzie King decided that liquor clearances should be abolished. Herbert Hoover was now President of the United States, and Hoover had promised tariff protection for the farmers of the American mid-west. The effect of such a tariff on the export of Canadian farm products would be serious. Mackenzie King hoped to avert the tariff increases by negotiating a St. Lawrence waterway treaty-Hoover was a warm advocate of this waterway, and he might be persuaded that the benefits to the mid-west of cheaper transportation would make the tariff increases unnecessary. These negotiations, however, were more likely to be successful if Canada first abolished liquor clearances. A grateful American government might be more receptive to King's arguments for a seaway. But Mackenzie King also knew that it would be very difficult to win Canadian support for this policy. He knew there was little sympathy for the difficulties of the American government in enforcing prohibition. He knew also that many would object to abolishing clearances for fear it would be interpreted as yielding to American pressure. Nor would it be easy to convince his followers of the feasibility of any policy which assumed that the Americans had a sense of gratitude. And certainly W. D. Euler, a very stubborn man, would not readily agree to abolishing the clearances he had so recently defended. Mackenzie King found a way to overcome all of these objections. Almost instinctively he girded himself for the controversy by donning a mantle of righteousness. He convinced himself-and I think sincerely-that liquor clearances were sinful and that by issuing them the government was exposing millions of Americans to the temptations of drunkenness. This simplified the issue considerably. Any opposition to the abolition of clearances could then be attributed to the nefarious influence of the liquor interests, desperately fighting for the right to smuggle whisky and debauch Americans. The problem was discussed by the Cabinet on several occasions late in 1929. King pledged in his diary (October 13, 1929) that he would "go out of office if need be before being dictated to by liquor interests," Euler was soon the only stumbling block; King's other II

BLAIR NEATBY

colleagues did not object strongly and were willing to accept the Prime Minister's decision. Euler, however, was obdurate. He finally yielded rather than face the irritation of his fellow Ministers, but he did not yield with a good grace. It was left to the Prime Minister and not the Minister of National Revenue to introduce the bill in the session of 1930. It was not enough to have the consent of his colleagues. The Liberal caucus must be persuaded. In Mackenzie King's method of party leadership, caucus ranked second only to the Cabinet. When the Liberals were in office, caucus was not used as a sounding board to assess public opinion. Decisions were reached in Cabinet and caucus was then persuaded to accept the decisions. King assumed that any policies on which his colleagues agreed represented the necessary consensus ofliberally minded men. But, as with his colleagues, King believed that all Liberal members should be informed and allowed to express their objections. No legislation was introduced until the members of caucus had agreed to support it. On this occasion, King expected strong opposition. He therefore took the initiative and raised the subject at the first caucus of the session. He spoke at great length and with great feeling, appealing to high moral principles as well as to loyalty to the party and its leader. Apparently the speech was a remarkable performance. For the next few days it was the talk of Parliament Hill. One journalist reported that no preacher had ever made such converts since the days of Peter the Hermit. Caucus approved of the measure. The final step was to pilot the bill through the House. King spent a week preparing his speech and took two hours to deliver it. He found no difficulty in showing how immoral liquor clearances were. It was not as easy to explain why the government had taken so many years to admit it. On moral issues, King explained, a government must always have the support of public opinion. Even now he feared his government was daringly ahead of Canadian opinion. Liquor clearances, however, were so pernicious that the government could wait no longer. Mackenzie King successfully transformed an administrative measure into a moral issue. Only eleven members voted against the bill; all the rest voted against sin. C. G. Power, who opposed the measure, summed up King's achievement in a speech during the debate: 12

WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE KING

Only a man with firm, sincere and deep-rooted convictions such as he [King] could have first persuaded and overcome the objections of his colleagues, and next succeeded in getting the support of his followers, and then, perhaps the saddest part of all, obtain, as he apparently will obtain, the reluctant and somewhat dubious consent of the House to the legislation now proposed. (H. of C. Debates, March 14, 1930)

The decision to abolish liquor clearances did not alter the course of history. Americans probably continued to ruin their health and their morals by drinking Canadian whisky. The American government showed little gratitude for King's efforts; instead of agreeing to a St. Lawrence seaway, it passed the Smoot-Hawley tariff. But the incident does show how Mackenzie King could overcome the opposition of his colleagues and his followers by the force of his own convictions and the power of impassioned persuasion. Liquor clearances were an aspect of external affairs, the field in which Mackenzie King believed he knew in advance what the Canadian people wanted or would accept. What of the fields in which King was less sure of himself? How was the party line established and how was it approved? The basic assumptions remained the same. The policy must be a national consensus, acceptable to liberally minded men in all parts of Canada, and this consensus must be approved in advance by Cabinet and caucus. Only the method of ascertaining the consensus differed. The method naturally varied, depending on circumstances. King always had opinions, even on the most controversial domestic issues. He usually knew, for example, the limits within which the party could manreuvre without alienating a bloc of Liberal supporters. But within these limits, he was ready to listen to advice. He drew conclusions from his mail, from newspapers, from casual conversations. Most useful of all, however, were the arguments within Cabinet and within caucus. There men spoke freely and forcefully. King could learn what various regions wanted or could not accept, and he could often sense what they might accept if necessary. Out of all this, King might produce a compromise which all regions would support, or he might adopt a suggestion which had been made during the discussion. These discussions were also helpful because they made it easier for him to persuade his followers to accept the compromise. If King, for 13

BLAIR NEATBY

example, sensed that the point of view of one region had not been adequately presented, he would provoke statements by direct questions. The more bitter the debate, the more obvious the need for compromise if the party was ever to have a policy on the issue. King's method can be illustrated by an incident in 1933. At that time, the Liberals were in opposition, and the caucus was the only instrument of party leadership. Caucus met every Monday morning during the session to plan strategy and policy. The process of arriving at decisions in caucus, however, did not differ from arriving at decisions in Cabinet when the Liberals were in office. This incident will serve to illustrate the process in each case. By 1933 the Bennett government had obviously failed to meet the problems of the depression. For two years King had insisted that lower tariffs and increased trade were the answer. By 1933, however, many Liberals found King's remedy hopelessly inadequate. The year before, a group of radical farmers and labour leaders had met in Calgary to lay plans for a socialist party. If King was too cautious and too orthodox, the new party might attract the support of men embittered by the depression. King's followers were pressing him for a clear statement of Liberal policies to counter the socialist ideas. By January of 1933, King admitted that something must be done. He did not like the idea of a party platform, but he sensed that it might be necessary. As he explained in a letter to J. L. Thorson, a western Liberal: There are always dangers that anything in the nature of a platform may become a target for opposing parties. It would be said that anything not included has been left out by design, and with respect to what is included there is bound to be the assertion that it goes either too far or it does not go far enough ....

But this, he went on, was one of those rare moments when "the value of something definite outweighs the risks in other particulars. If sufficient care is taken with the wording, I see no reason why we should not be able to get out a statement of policies sufficiently comprehensive to cover everything that is essential at the present time." Once King had decided on a platform, he left little to chance. He knew how difficult it would be for the Liberals to agree on a statement. The platform would have to go far enough and yet not too far

14

WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE KING

if it was to be acceptable to all. On the most controversial issues, King had already been searching for the compromises which could become the Liberal consensus. He knew the party would need leadership. Mackenzie King already knew that the most difficult problem would be monetary policy. The debtor prairie community, beset by drought, saw inflation as its only hope. Even if the rains came, the price of wheat was so low that farmers would not be able to pay their truces or the interest on their mortgages. At every prairie gathering, local experts discussed their enslavement by the money power-the bankers and financiers-and talked of central banks and credit and international finance. Already it was obvious that the new socialist party would favour a policy of controlled inflation and that this would have a tremendous appeal in the west. Mackenzie King was against inflation. His views on money were rigidly orthodox-inflation was dangerous, would probably be disastrous, and was most certainly dishonest. And King knew that many Liberals agreed with him. In the fall of 1932, King had discussed the problem with a few leading Liberals, including]. W. Dafoe, Vincent Massey, and Norman Rogers among others. He had learned from them that the question was more complex than he had realized; manipulating interest rates and the volume of credit was not necessarily immoral. These men all approved of a central bank. Mackenzie King was not sure what a central bank implied, so he had consulted an economist. From him he learned, to his delight, that a central bank was not a policy but an institution. If controlled inflation was necessary, a central bank could provide the means, but a central bank did not necessarily mean inflation. This was exactly what King needed. In public discussions a central bank had become linked with the idea ofinflation. If the Liberal platform advocated a central bank, the party would be given credit for sympathy with inflationary ideas. If inflation ever became necessary, the means would be available. And meanwhile, the promise of a central bank might make it unnecessary to make a statement on monetary policy. The next step was to convince his followers. Leadership by persuasion requires both skill and infinite patience. At the first meeting of caucus, early in February, King spoke of the need for a platform, mentioned the possibility of a central bank as a compromise on the

15

BLAIR NEATBY

monetary question, and then steered the discussion to other topics. As King intended, this prevented anybody from expressing an ex-

treme opinion which he might find it embarrassing to retract later. Meanwhile, each Liberal had time to get used to the idea. When caucus met the following week it was prepared at least to consider King's proposal sympathetically. King thereupon read out a tentative draft on the need for a central bank and suggested that it be referred to a committee. The issue was so important that twenty-five Liberals attended the first committee meeting next day. The meetings continued that week, with King finding it difficult to prevent a split. He then produced another draft which he believed would meet all the objections raised, which he read at the next meeting of caucus. Some Liberals were not yet tired of arguing; they suggested another committee. King pleaded with them at least to accept the draft as a good beginning. Two weeks of discussion had germinated the seed of compromise. It was finally agreed that the draft would be included in the Liberal platform. Other issues had been discussed in caucus and committee at the same time, again with King taking a personal hand in drafting the final statement. King presented the completed Liberal programme in a speech to the House of Commons late in February. This ended discussions of a party platform. In the next few years, whenever correspondents criticized the Liberals for not having positive policies, King mailed them a copy of his Commons speech. He had no intention of going through the ordeal of engineering agreement on a platform a second time. To one Liberal who continued to demand a broader Liberal appeal, King replied (letter to J. K. Blair, March 25, 1933) that "there is a great deal of difference between broadening out a platform and falling over one end over a precipice." Mackenzie King had no urge even to get near the edge. The success of King's method did not depend entirely on his ability to discover acceptable compromises and to engineer consent within the party. King, for example, might have come to the wrong conclusions if the points of view of all parts of Canada had not been forcefully presented in the discussions from which he drew these conclusions. Mackenzie King tried to ensure a representative discussion by appointing strong and even stubborn colleagues. In the 1920s he persuaded Charles Dunning and Colonel Ralston to enter

16

WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE KING

federal politics, and persuaded Ralston to return when war broke out. In 1935 both C. D. Howe and Norman Rogers had agreed to become Liberal candidates and were appointed to the new government. And as long ago as 1919, Mackenzie King had picked Ernest Lapointe as his French-Canadian lieutenant. It would take too long to analyse the ways in which King decided on suitable colleagues and then persuaded them to join his government. In summary, however, it can be asserted that Mackenzie King was a sound judge of character. And King had enough self-assurance to welcome the support of strong colleagues; he was not afraid they would become rivals. Yet another prerequisite, if King's method was to work, was the willingness of such men to accept King's leadership. King deliberately gave his colleagues wide authority within their own departments. They were expected to inform Cabinet of their decisions, but the decisions were questioned only if King sensed that there were political implications which could not be ignored. And the Ministers were likely to respect King's judgment on these political implications. Mackenzie King could not rely on the affections of his colleagues to make them co-operative, in the way Wilfrid Laurier could, because few of his colleagues really liked King. But King's judgment was respected because he had a well-earned reputation for being right. As C. D. Howe once put it (letter to H.B. Neatby, October 21, 1959), "his methods were not those that endeared him to individual members of his Cabinet but they were successful." The reputation for winning is as important to politicians as to generals. One result of Mackenzie King's method of party leadership was the development of a strong sense of confidence and loyalty within the party and within the Cabinet. The importance of this feeling cannot easily be assessed, but it cannot be ignored. The strength of the bond is illustrated by an incident in 1938. Just before Chamberlain flew to Munich, King thought it might be wise to announce that Canada would be at Britain's side if Chamberlain's mission failed. The Canadian government had agreed that there should be no commitment in advance, but war now seemed so probable that it might be argued that the possibility of Canadian neutrality had encouraged Hitler. Ernest Lapointe was in Geneva at the time. His career, more than that of any other Minister, was at stake, for he had 17

BLAIR NEATBY

promised his French-Canadian compatriots that there would be no prior commitments. Lapointe cabled to King that in his opinion the government should wait until Parliament was called. But Lapointe was not dogmatic. He had confidence in the judgment of King and of his colleagues; if the Cabinet felt that the situation in Canada demanded action, he trusted them to weigh all sides of the question carefully. In a letter to King (September 24, 1938) he wrote: I do not see how I could advise any course of action that would not only be opposed to personal convictions and sacred pledges to my own people but would destroy all their confidence and prevent their carrying weight and influence with them for what might be essential actions. Please consider these views and submit them to colleagues before reaching final decision. God help you.

That was all. Erne!.t Lapointe disagreed strongly with the suggestion and expressed his opinion frankly. But he knew his colleagues well enough, and knew that they would heed his arguments even in his absence. In fact, the announcement was not made. But the point is that this was the kind of confidence in and loyalty to the party which Mackenzie King's method of party leadership could produce. The method, needless to say, was not always successful. There was always the possibility that honest men would not agree. J. W. Dafoe, for example, writing to Sir Clifford Sifton in April 1927, was dubious about the cohesiveness of King's Cabinet. "The Government," he wrote, "is a warring family with King very much on top as boss and chief cook; it is pretty safe for this and perhaps another term if it doesn't blow up from within-a possibility." The government did not blow up in 192 7, but during the war internal pressures came very close to shattering the entire Liberal party-and the Prime Minister with it. Mackenzie King's method was not to blame for the crisis in 1944. Frank discussions within the Cabinet had brought out all points of view; men understood the situation only too clearly. The difficulty was that no compromise could be found. Between voluntary and compulsory enlistment there seemed no middle way. It was not King's method but his basic assumption that was at fault. In I 944 no consensus existed among liberally minded men or among Canadians in general. English Canadians had promised in 1939 that there would be no conscription, but most of them had changed their 18

WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE KING

minds by 1944; French Canadians, however, still insisted that the solemn pledge of 1939 must be honoured. Months of weary debate in Cabinet led nowhere. King seemed to be faced with the resignation of his French-Canadian colleagues ifhe introduced conscription and the resignation of many English-Canadian colleagues if he refused. There is no need to describe the events of 1944 in detail. King averted an explosion by dismissing Colonel Ralston without warning and replacing him by a man who promised to find enough voluntary recruits. McNaughton failed, but the desperate efforts of the Prime Minister to avoid conscription at least convinced his FrenchCanadian colleagues of his sincerity. When King decided, three weeks after Ralston's abrupt dismissal, that partial conscription was necessary, his French-Canadian Ministers acquiesced. Cabinet and caucus were persuaded with surprisingly little opposition, and the crisis was over. Mackenzie King, it should be noted, had not waited helplessly, in the hope that his problem would miraculously disappear. He had been perplexed, but he had not been indecisive. Within three weeks he had dismissed one of his strongest colleagues and had reversed the policy of his government. And to put this crisis in perspective, there is the obvious contrast of the lasting bitterness after the conscription crisis of 1917. In 1944, Colonel Ralston left the government because he insisted on conscription, and C. G. Power resigned because he was opposed to conscription. And yet these two men, completely at odds on this issue, never lost their respect for each other. Years of frank discussion and collective action ensured that each of these men would appreciate the sincerity of the other, even if they could not agree. The same kind of understanding in 1917 would have saved Canada from a great deal of racial bitterness. No analysis of Mackenzie King's leadership would be complete without a detailed study of his personality and also of his actual policies over the years. I have also ignored other aspects of party leadership: the fact, for example, that King neglected and almost ignored the problems of party organization outside of Parliament. You will be relieved to hear that my analysis tonight will be incomplete. Mackenzie King's methods of discovering a consensus on national issues and persuading his followers to accept this consensus are, none the less, the heart of the matter. The leader and his followers 19

BLAIR NEATBY

were never separated. And when King retired, the party he had built survived. Years before, Goldwin Smith had forecast the end of the Conservative party and of Confederation itself when John A. Macdonald disappeared: "When he is gone, who will take his place? What shepherd is there who knows his sheep and whose voice the sheep know? ... When the shears of fate cut the thread of Sir John Macdonald's life what bond of union will be left?" When King was gone, the Liberal party remained united and stayed.in office for almost a decade. His party survived because he was not a shepherd and his colleagues were not sheep. Mackenzie King had moulded a cohesive national party. But while King lived, he was the leader of this party. He was never rash or reckless, but he did make decisions, and, when the decisions were made, he could be resolute and even ruthless. If I may refer to C. D. Howe once again, Howe once told me with great emphasis that any true assessment of Mackenzie King would show that he was a leader of men. Corning from C. D. Howe, a man not easily led, this view seems doubly convincing.

20

GEORGE F. G. STANLEY ON

LOUIS RIEL

What do you look for when you pick up the biography of any wellknown historical figure? Do you expect to find in it a true explanation of the character and motives of the man about whom the book is written? Or do you hope to draw from your study some grasp of the general trend or thrust of the history of the time in which the subject of the biography played a significant part? If your purpose is the first, then you will ask yourself the questions, what is the truth? Does the author have it in its entirety? Has he done anything more than make a crude guess at the answers? Can he, who knows his subject only second hand, judge fairly a man's whole conduct when those who knew him intimately are not in agreement? Has he done anything more than construct a credible human being, credible within the limits of his own understanding? If you are dissatisfied with the answers to your queries, do you lay the book aside and cry out in despair, "Oh Clio, venerable daughter of Mnemosyne, I doubt every statement you ever made since your ladyship became a Muse?" If your purpose, however, is to find some explanation of the universe, to derive some law, to discover some philosophy in the events you have read, then you will ask yourself the questions, what is history? Is it being or becoming? Is it merely the study of developing and changing forms? Does all this historical research, with its collection and arrangement of data, amount to anything more than the giving of a cachet to the incidental? Is it sound and fury signifying nothing? C

21

GEORGE F. G. STANLEY

What, then, is the role of the biographer? As a historian he is clearly not a scientist. He lacks the tools; he lacks the method of the scientist. He cannot observe at first hand; he c;mnot experiment; he cannot measure; he cannot deduce laws and submit them to the test of the laboratory. His equipment is primitive; his approach to his subject, highly personal. To succeed as a historian, an author needs the imagination of the poet, the understanding of the philosopher, and the revelation of the prophet. He must see the past, not as a dead body, but as a living culture, a dynamic growth, the incarnation of an idea, the eternal future. The historian knows that he himself is part of history, because history is interwoven into the being of his humanity. It is thus a personal thing; a personal recreation of the forces, the motives and the ideas of the past. And this is particularly true of the biographer whose task is to understand by sharing the motives and the spirit of his subject. He will be something more than a chronicler, something less than a philosopher. Ifhe is a truly great biographer, he will be an artist. He will seek the truth rather than the facts. Louis Riel was born in St. Boniface, in the Red River Settlement, October 22, 1844. His mother was Julie Lagimodiere, a FrenchCanadian woman, his grandmother, Marie Anne Gaboury, the first white woman in western Canada; his father was Louis Riel, a metis, his grandfather a French Canadian from Berthier-en-haut. Brought up in a home intensely religious in character and raised among a people strongly conscious of their national identity as half-breeds, Riel was sent to Montreal, in 1858, in the hope that he would become a missionary priest. In 1 866, before he had completed his classical studies with the Sulpician fathers at the College de Montreal, Riel left school, and found himself thrust into the highly-charged and emotional atmosphere engendered by the forthcoming British North American union. Depressed by the death of his father and by the refusal of his fiancee's parents to accept a metis as a son-in-law, and excited by the arguments and counter-arguments of the proponents and opponents of Confederation, Louis found it impossible to apply himself to the study oflaw to which he turned on abandoning school. Leaving Montreal, he tried his hand, it is said, at writing poetry in company with the French-Canadian poet, Louis Frechette, in 22

LOUIS RIEL

Chicago, and then at clerking in a store in St. Paul, Minnesota. Finally, in 1868, he returned to his home in Red River. He was both homesick and unemployed. By this time Confederation was afait accompli in Canada and steps were being taken to bring Red River and the North West Territories into the federal union. This western expansionist movement was one which was inspired by Ontario and which received more support in Ontario than in Quebec; and it was the Ontarians who were making their way to Red River to urge the cause of Canadian annexation. The sequel is well known to students. The aggressiveness of the Canadian minority, their sense of economic and racial superiority, the failure of the federal govern,ment to allay the fears of the local population, the indiscretions of the surveyors sent to Red River by Canada, the apathy of the Hudson's Bay Company officials: all these factors united to produce a general feeling of malaise in the Red River Settlement. Louis Riel was not responsible for this malaise. But he was part of it. He shared the sympathies and the apprehensions, the fears and the aspirations of his own people, the metis. His education, his eloquence both in French and in English, his dynamism, his tradition as the son of the man who had led the local people in their opposition to the Hudson's Bay Company's fur monopoly in 1849, marked him as a leader in spite of his youth. He became, almost inevitably, the voice of the inarticulate many in Red River. Like John Brown, he heard the call. Assisted by the cure of St. Norbert, the Abbe J. N. Ritchot, Riel organized the French half-breeds, forbade the entry into the Settlement of the Hon. William McDougall, the lieutenant-governordesignate appointed by the federal government, seized Fort Garry, the principal fortified post in the Settlement, called a convention of the local inhabitants, and set about to achieve a unity of mind and spirit between the French and English settlers. If he failed in this last, he did at least make himself master of the Red River Settlement, defeat a Canadian attempt to seize power-the Canadians tried to play a role rather like that of the Uitlanders in Johannesburg at the time of the Jameson Raid-establish a provisional government, and secure the support of the local newspaper. All of this was done within the space of less than three months, and when Louis Riel was only

23

OEORGE F. G. STANLEY'

twenty-five years of age. He had displayed a combination of drive, astuteness, and sincerity which is often the mark of greatness. The Canadian government replied to Riel's action by disavowing McDougall, refusing to take over the country from the Hudson's Bay Company while it was still in a state of ferment, and by sending three emissaries, Grand Vicar J.B. Thibault, Colonel de Salaberry, and Donald A. Smith to Red River. Two of these emissaries achieved nothing more than a few polite formalities. The third, Donald A. Smith, was more skilful as he was more adroit. Smith was not only an employee of the Hudson's Bay Company, he was also deeply com.:. mitted financially in the Company, and about to realize his life's ambition to acquire the controlling interest in it and to direct its activities into new and more profitable channels. It was in Smith's interests as well as in those of the Canadian government to bring about an accommodation with Riel and an end to the Red River troubles. Smith intrigued with various settlers. With ample funds at his disposal, he encouraged a group of metis led by Riel's cousin, Charles Nolin, who were hostile to Riel. He also forced Riel to consent to a public meeting at Fort Garry so that he could present the Canadian case to the people at large. At first outwitted, Riel quickly recovered the initiative. He obtained public support for the election of a convention to list the demands to be placed before Smith, and then forced Smith to issue an invitation to the people of Red River to send delegates to Ottawa to present their terms to Sir John A. Macdonald and to Sir George Cartier. Full of confidence, Riel pushed ahead with the appointment of the delegates and with the reconstitution of the Provisional Government. His position was a strong one. Local opposition was only half-hearted and various obstacles, both legal and geographical, prevented the Canadian government from taking vigorous measures against him. Such measures as were attempted were taken by the Canadian minority, largely Ontarians in Red River. In spite of advice to the contrary and their lack of success in their previous effort, they endeavoured to organize a counter-movement to overthrow Riel. But the effort failed, and many of them were imprisoned in the cells of Fort Garry. Then, with complete victory almost within his grasp, Riel was guilty of an error as fatal as it was inexplicable. In the face 24

LOUIS RIEL

of all remonstrances he insisted upon the execution of an Ontario Orangeman, Thomas Scott, for no worse offence than insolence and violence to the metis guards. Some would explain Riel's action by arguing that he was compelled to take this drastic step by his own undisciplined but still necessary soldiery; others, by quoting Riel's own statement that it was a deliberate act of policy, "We must make Canada respect us." The execution of Scott involved no change in Riel's policy as far as negotiation with Ottawa was concerned. The Red River delegates, a judge, a priest, and a bartender, went to Canada, and entered into discussions with Cartier and Macdonald. The outcome of these discussions was the adoption by the Canadian Parliament, in May, 1870, of the Manitoba Act. The conclusion of the terms with Ottawa had been contingent upon the granting of an amnesty to all who had participated in the events of 1869-70. However, the federal government, with scandalous timidity, refused to alienate Ontario political support by giving, or Quebec support by refusing, an amnesty to the man who had pennitted the execution of Thomas Scott. The dirty work was left to the Governor-General, Lord Dufferin, and Riel was finally exiled from the province of which he had been the defender, and was, in one sense, the founder. With strong support from French Canada and from his own people in Manitoba, Riel was several times elected as a member of the federal Parliament. He did not, however, venture to take his seat, threatened as he was by the charge of murder brought against him by his enemies. For several years he sought refuge in mental hospitals both in Montreal and in Quebec. Then, after 1878, he settled down in the United States. He made his way to the west, joined a group of metis on the Missouri river, married a metisse and became an American citizen. He made a brief entry into American politics in support of the Republican party but emerged from it with his pockets empty and his spirit apathetic. At that point he settled down, with his wife and family, as a schoolteacher in a mission school in Montana. But not for long. The problems left unsolved by the Manitoba Act had grown in size and number. The Ontarians had moved into Manitoba, and the metis found themselves so choused and bullied and generally bedevilled that many of them had left the province and moved farther west to the Saskatchewan valley.

GEORGE F. G. STANLEY

If there had been any excuse for Sir John Macdonald and Sir George Cartier in 1869, there were no excuses for the Canadian Prime Minister in 1885. Sir John had taken the portfolio of the Interior and was himself responsible for the policy of starving the Indian service as well as of disregarding the complaints of the halfbreeds. Their future now seemed less promising even than it had been in 1869; for by 1883 the buffalo had disappeared from the prairies, and the early frosts and the change in the route of the Canadian Pacific Railway had brought severe economic distress to half-breed, Indian, and white man alike. Encouraged by discontented whites, many of them Liberals anxious to strike a blow against Sir John Macdonald, the French and English half-breeds met together and invited Louis Riel to return to Canada to advise and to lead them in an agitation to secure them guarantees against the mishaps of the future. Riel journeyed to the North Saskatchewan valley in the summer of 1884. He was well received on his arrival, both by the mltis and by the whites who hoped to use him for their own purposes. His conduct during the remainder of 1884 was moderate, and the impression he left was not unfavourable to him or to the cause he represented. Working with a committee of half-breeds and with the Settlers' Union he spoke in Prince Albert and throughout the District of Lorne. He asserted the rights of westerners to enter the Canadian federation on their own terms, terms that would safeguard their interests; and he asserted them eloquently and persuasively. With the assistance of William Henry Jackson of the Settlers' Union he drafted a petition to Ottawa demanding compensation for his own sufferings, land grants for the half-breeds, responsible government for the settlers, and a railway to Hudson Bay to counter the monopoly of the Canadian Pacific. And then he waited impatiently for Ottawa to act. In spite of letters from Lieutenant-Governor Dewdney, appeals from Bishop Grandin, and warnings from the member of the North West Council for Lorne, the Canadian government took no positive action. Sir Hector Langevin deliberately avoided the North Saskatchewan region when he paid a visit to the North West Territories during the late summer of 1884. Perhaps it is not surprising that Riel began to wonder if he were not a liability to his people 26

LOUIS RIEL

and if it would not be better for him to return to Montana. The situation in the North Saskatchewan, in 1885, although it bore certain superficial resemblances to that in Red River, in 1869, was quite different. Riel was not the young man of sixteen years before. Then he had been strong physically, and strong in the support he had received from the Catholic clergy of St. Boniface. Now he was suffering from nervous indigestion and from the realization that the clergy were opposed to him. Riel's heterodoxy, dating from his months in Longue Pointe and Beauport, had aroused the suspicions and the disapproval of both the Oblate Provincial, Father Andre, and the Bishop of St. Albert, Monsignor Grandin. In 1885 there was no Ritchot at his elbow as there had been in 1869. And the Church, instead of encouraging Riel, expressed its disapproval of any course of action that seemed likely to lead to violence. And violence was not improbable as the physical and mental strains ofRiel's exertions and anxiety revealed themselves in exhibitions of extreme irritability whenever his judgment was questioned. In March, 1885, Riel resolved to make a show of force. Perhaps that would move Ottawa. He did not plan armed rebellion. Rather he hoped to repeat the formula of 186g-70, to obtain the support of the English half-breeds and whites, to form a provisional government, to talk terms with Ottawa. To prevent subversive activity against him he arrested Charles Nolin, who was being used by the clergy to develop a group with whom to counter Riel. Then he organized his own metis police, gathered his supporters under arms at Batoche,proclaimed a provisional government, and commandeered supplies from local stores. It was an essential part of his plan to make a bloodless capture of some of his opponents and hold them as hostages while talking with Ottawa. But the attempt went wrong. There was bloodshed, almost a battle, and a war began. At the last moment, when hostilities seemed imminent, the Canadian government acted with decision where there had previously been none. Troops were sent at once to western Canada under the command of a ponderous British officer, General Middleton-he was better fitted for his later employment as guardian of the Crown jewels in the Tower-and the Canadians worked themselves into a position in which they might have been cut to pieces. It is all rather reminiscent of what happened later during the Boer War. But

27

GEORGE F, G, STANLEY

Riel was no Cronje. He would not take the offensive. Rather he took the view that fighting had been forced upon him and he would remain on the defensive. Finally, Gabriel Dumont, Riel's military chief, refused any longer to follow Riel's ideas of strategy. But by then it was too late for the meagre, ill-armed metis levies to do more than delay the inevitable end. At Botache they held out for several days until overborne by weight of numbers and volume of fire. Several Indian nations had shown a disposition to take part in the rising. Made desperate by the disappearance of the buffalo and by the operation of the treaties by which they surrendered their lands to the white men, they had taken up arms for a little slaughter and a little pillaging, but without any plans for concerted action against the whites. It is difficult to see how Riel could ever have used their help, unless he had been a nihilist, which he was not. He could never have worked them into any constructive scheme. Riel's surrender was followed by his trial, and by his condemnation to death on a charge of treason. He was reprieved several times in order that his appeals might be heard in Winnipeg and London, and in order that a commission might inquire into his mental condition. The report of the commission was not conclusive. Its members agreed that although Riel might suffer from delusions of greatness upon religious and political subjects, he could, nevertheless, clearly distinguish between right and wrong. He was therefore executed at Regina. Today his body lies in the churchyard of St. Boniface, beneath a small brown granite column bearing the words "Riel, 16 novembre, 1885." What is the explanation of the two Riel risings? What was the basic motive determining Riel's actions? It was, in a word, that sense of common identity that we call nationalism. The metis, both French- and English-speaking, looked upon themselves as a people distinct and separate from the Europeans on the one hand and the Indians on the other. They were the bois brutes, the New Nation. They belonged to the soil of the west. Indeed they claimed their own aboriginal proprietory rights in the lands that the whites were ready to concede belonged by native title to the Indians. This sense of nationality, vague, unstable, inchoate as it may have 28

LOUIS RIEL

been, was first encouraged by the North West Company. It was the Nor'Westers who planted the idea ofland ownership in the minds of the half-breeds and suggested to them that the whites were interlopers come to rob them of their patrimony. It was an idea which was all too easily encouraged by the disposition of the whites to ignore the susceptibilities of the metis and to emphasize their own racial superiority. The metiswere intoxicated by this new concept. Did they not possess their own national organization with its hierarchy of officers and soldiers born of the needs of the buffalo hunt? Did they not possess a common tongue in the various Indian dialects they learned at their mother's knee? Did they not have their own name, the New Nation? Did they not have their own peculiar economy, neither sedentary like the whites, nor nomadic like the Indians? A strict analysis of the foundations of half-breed nationalism would, of course, reveal all its weaknesses: its lack of any common political concept, its lack of any common purpose or aspirations for the future. Moreover, a historical survey would show that it was not a constant or a growing thing, that its demonstrations were only sporadic, and emerged only under some strong but fugitive stimulus. But that it was there to exploit when the occasion did present itself will not be denied. It was there when the metis, led by Cuthbert Grant, the "Captain-General of all the Half-Breeds in the country," descended upon Semple and his colonists in 1816 in order to clear their native soil of those whom they regarded as "interlopers and assassins." It was there when Louis Riel and John Bruce organized the National Committee of the metis in 1869 at St. Norbert and sent a warning to Lieutenant-Governor McDougall not to try to force his way into the Settlement. The metis looked upon the Canadian surveyors, as they had looked upon the Selkirk settlers over fifty years earlier, as men come "pour piller notre pays," to use the words of the metis song-writer, Pierre Falcon. In its fundamentals, the rising led by Louis Riel in 1869 differed little from that led by Cuthbert Grant in 1816. It was the inevitable reaction of a small group, conscious ofits own identity, against the threat of absorption by a larger group, of a weak culture against a strong and aggressive one, of a simple economy against a highly competitive one. There is nothing new about this. The same situation is to be found in other parts of the world when one culture intrudes or imposes itself upon another.

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What real difference is there between the fate of the metis in Manitoba and that of the Mexicans in California? Louis Riel and his supporters hoped that the Manitoba Act and the half-breed land grant, extracted from a reluctant administration at Ottawa, would give them time to adjust themselves to the rapidly changing conditions oflife. But the newcomers poured in too quickly and in too great numbers. The years after 1870 proved only that the Manitoba Act was little more than a paper hoop through which the railway and the immigrants jumped with ease. In consequence, many of the metis retired farther to the west to re-live for a few years the life to which they had always been accustomed. But the immigrants with their alien culture and their alien economy flowed inexorably on; and in desperation the metis turned to the man who had brought them a temporary victory in 1870. Neither he nor they realized that distance, their best ally in 1870, had by 1885 been conquered by applied science and by Donald A. Smith. Carrying only a crucifix into the last battle of the New Nation, Riel faced Canadian soldiers armed with Gatling machine guns. The North West Rebellion of 1885 is linked with the troubles of 1869 not only by the participation of Louis Riel, but by the fact that it was the last of the three great manifestations of half-breed nationalism. 1885 marked the last stand of the metis culture in Canada. An American poet sardonically wrote of the expansion of white settlement south of the border, Across the plains where once there roamed the Indian and the Scout The Swede with alcoholic breath sets rows of cabbages out.

What had happened earlier in Minnesota happened in Manitoba with the coming of the Ontarians, the Icelanders, and the Mennonites. It was also to happen in the valley of the Saskatchewan. And to the original inhabitants of the plains, the Indians and the halfbreeds, the new competitive, industrious, alien culture meant demoralization, decline, and ultimate extinction. Bishop Grandin, writing in 1887, placed his finger on the underlying cause of the Riel risings when he wrote, "Les metis ... ont grandement souffert des changements arrives dans leur pays. Ils n'etaient pas assez prepares a cette civilisation qui tout a coup est venue fondre sur eux.... Je pourrais dire que c'est la toute !'explication de la guerre civile."

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LOUIS RIEL

Hayter Reed, the Assistant Indian Commissioner, said much the same thing when he wrote, "I have now formed, I think, a pretty correct idea as to our rebel Indians, they all look upon the whites as interlopers and would get rid of them if they saw their way clear." If this were the end of the Riel story, you might say it is drab and insignificant enough. Does it amount to anything more than the two attempts on the part of a handful of half-breeds under the leadership of a man whom many considered then and many believe today to have been unbalanced if not insane, to resist the advance of progress? The first rising was quickly suppressed by a military expedition "all Sir Garnet" for its military efficiency, and the second, after one or two trifling reverses, by a force of militia led by a bumbling Middleton. Riel was hanged, and the door was thrown open to civilization in the form of a locomotive belching smoke from its monstrous stack. The metis, the New Nation, and the Indians, the original inhabitants, tried to stand in the way of the locomotive and suffered the fate of the cow in the famous Stephenson anecdote. To carry this line of thought a little further, could one say that the real history of western Canada was not to be found in the person of Riel the metis, or Dumont the buffalo hunter, or Big Bear the Cree chief, but in Donald A. Smith, the ex-fur-trader become financier, who by 1885 was one of the rulers of the great corporation that was the successor, morally, if not legally, of the Hudson's Bay Company? But this is not the whole of the Riel story. The basic problem of Canadian history has been that of accommodating, within the confines of a single country, two nations, one speaking French and the other speaking English. This problem is as old as the Seven Years War. It is as old as the treaty that ceded a French-speaking Canada to an English-speaking king. For the French Canadians their history has, since 1763, turned upon their struggle to maintain their own distinct identity within the framework of an English political system. Bullied by repeated attempts at assimilation in 1763, in 1822, and in 1840, the French Canadians stubbornly refused to surrender their heritage. Finally, in 1867 a solution for co-existence was found in the federal principle. Confederation became, in the eyes of the people of the new province of 31

GEORGE F. G. STANLEY

Quebec, as much a pact between nationalities as a treaty between provinces. But the new federation was an uneasy balance. Both French- and English-speaking Canadians knew that, while sharing a common country and working a common constitution, they did not share common views with regard to the nature of their federation. The English representatives of the old Upper Canada would have preferred complete political assimilation and a unitary constitution, but accepted federalism as a second best in the hope of achieving their ends by strengthening the central government. The French representatives of the old lower province would have preferred a separate political existence, but reluctantly accepted federalism in the hope. of preserving their culture through a strong provincial administration. Each carefully watched the other; and both watched, too, the events in Red River in 1869 and 1870. As the Toronto Globe gave its support to the Canadian opponents of Riel, so too did Le Nouveau Monde discourse upon the justice of the metis cause. With Riel's execution of Thomas Scott, the Ontario Orangeman, in March, 1870, both French and English Canadians threw off the flimsy mantle of national unity and bared their arms for battle. Both Scott and Riel became rallying cries in Ontario and Quebec. Each became the personification ofhis own national group. To the Ontario Orangemen, Scott became a martyr, the victim of a French-Catholic murderer, Louis Riel; to the Quebec Catholic, Scott was no better than an agitator, a trouble-maker deserving of no sympathy, while Riel, the defender of the French cause in the west, was a national hero. Efforts were made by Scott's friends, in the expansionist and "nationalistic" Canada First group, to indict Riel's delegates to Ottawa for murder, and loud demands were made for the dispatch of a punitive force to suppress the Red River rebellion. "There is only one sort of argwnent likely to prevail with characters of this stamp;" wrote the editor of the Toronto Globe, "Donald Smith's chicken-broth has failed to cure the Winnipeg disorder, so suppose we try the effect of a steel tonic." Agreeing that a military force might be useful in Red River, the French-Canadian press insisted that it should be looked upon in the nature of a police force-"On ne doit pas, neamoins, considerer cette expedition comme une declaration de guerre. Les Metis n'ont aucune objection a recevoir une

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LOUIS RIEL

garnison canadienne, si nous leur donnons satisfaction sous d'autres rapports ... " wrote La Minerve. As the weeks passed the words became shorter and the tone sharper. French Canadians demanded the promulgation of an amnesty for Riel and the metis; English Canadians demanded Riel's arrest for murder. There seems little doubt at this distance that Cartier and Macdonald did give verbal assurances to Bishop Tache and to the Abbe Ritchot that no member of Riel's government should suffer for having participated in the events that had led to the creation of Manitoba; it is equally clear that Cartier and Macdonald were unwilling to fulfil their promises as long as the feelings in Ontario were running high. An amnesty would present no problem once the outbreak of English Protestant nationalism should die down. But it was not allowed to die, either in Ontario or in Quebec. Its roots went too deep in the soil of Canadian history. Macdonald and Cartier might hope that Confederation had given a new course to Canadian history; but men wondered if the new federation would survive the Riel crisis. Oddly enough, several hundreds of miles away, in the new province of Manitoba, the metis had no conception of the furore their actions had raised in old Canada. The role of Riel was essentially that ofa symbol, the symbol of the rights of French Canada, the symbol of the determination of French Canadians to survive. It was the French Canadians who migrated to Manitoba, the Royals, the Dubucs, and the Girards who defended the French fact in western Canada, not the metis who, in their sporadic bursts of nationalism, thought of themselves as bois brutes rather than as French Canadians. It was the French Canadians of Quebec, the Lachapelles, the Desjardins, the Fisets and the Massons, who fought Riel's battles in Parliament, who provided him with hospitality and money, and who kept him constantly before the public eye. It was not Riel personally for whom they were fighting; it was what Riel stood for to them. Riel thus became a victim of Canadian history as well as one of its heroes. Louis Riel's return to Canada in 1884 once again lighted the fire under the pot of racial animosities. Once more he became a figure to be praised or damned according to the nationality of the observer, a symbol, a slogan. On Riel's reappearance in Canada, Bishop Grandin wrote to Sir John A. Macdonald, "What I most dread is the

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antipathy, the hatred, and the desire for revenge which will infallibly rise among the different nationalities and religious denominations of the country." As in 1870, the French Canadians of Quebec sprang immediately to Riel's defence in 1885. They provided him with funds to sustain him, with lawyers to defend him, and with petitions to save him. But to no avail. The law took its course, and Riel was convicted of treason. But there was no let up in the agitation, no surrender to the inevitable. Indeed, few French Canadians really believed that Riel would suffer death. It seemed unthinkable that Riel should hang after his English-speaking associate in the North West Rebellion, William Henry Jackson, was freed and sent to a mental asylum on the grounds ofinsanity. "Si la folie est une excuse pour un Anglais," wrote La Presse, "elle doit en etre une pour Riel, quoique metis." As the day ofRiel's execution approached the agitation increased in intensity. L'Etendard set the pattern of French-Canadian thought. "Il ne nous est pas permis d'oublier quel role la constitution, les lois d'equite, la voix du sang, nous assigne vis a vis les minorites des autres provinces, notamment celles qui sont nos co-religionnaires et nos sceurs d'origine." Against this the Toronto News placed the extreme nationalistic view of English Ontario: "We are sick of the French Canadians with their patriotic blabber and their conspiracies against the treasury and peace of what without them might be a united Canada.... If Ontario were a trifle more loyal to herself she would not stand Quebec's monkey business another minute." Reaching a higher pitch of fanaticism, L'Electeur declared of Riel, "L'Histoire te consacrera une page glorieuse et ton nom sera grave dans le cceur de tous les vrais Canadiens Franc;ais •.•. Tes fautes personelles s'effacent devant la saintete de la noble cause dont tu t'es fait champion. Jeanne d'Arc, Napoleon, Chenier, Riel. C'est avec le plus profond respect que l'on prononce vos noms sacres." From Ontario came the opposite view: "We consider that such lives as that of Riel are blots and stains on our humanity which ought to be summarily removed by the hand of justice in like manner as the dangerous cancer is removed from the human body by the hand of the surgeon." These were the more strident voices. But even the moderate papers divided sharply on national lines, with La Minerve and Le Courrier du Canada lined up against the Toronto Mail and the Montreal Gait;,ette. 34

LOUIS RIEL

The 16th of November was a day of mourning in Quebec. Men spoke in low voices. Pictures of Riel appeared in shop windows draped in black. French Canadians wore crepe on their hats. In some schools prayers were said for the salvation of the dead man's soul, and in the streets men stood and sang "La Marseillaise Canadienne"-there was no suitable Canadian tuneEnfants de la nouvelle France Douter de nous est plus pennis ! Au gibet Riel se balance, Victime de nos ennemis. (bis) Amis, pour nous, ah, quel outrage ! Quels transports il doit exciter ! Celui qu'on vient d'executer Nous anime par son courage. REFRAIN

Courage ! Canadiens ! Tenons bien haut nos cceurs; Unjour viendra. (bis) Nous serons les vainqueurs. Honte a vous, ministres infames, Qui trahissez, Oh ! lachete ! Vous avez done vendu vos ames ! Judas ! Que vous ont-ils paye ? (bis) Dans la campagne et dans la ville Un jour le peuple vous dira : Au bagne, envoyez-moi tout ca ! La corde n'est pas assez vile ! Courage ! Canadiens ! etc. Amour sacre de la Patrie, Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs, Liberte, liberte cherie, Combats avec tes defenseurs ! (bis) Riel, gardons ta souvenance Que ton nom souvent repete Nous parle de la liberte, Et nous preche l'independance ! Courage ! Canadiens ! etc. In Quebec troops stood by to guard the house of Sir Hector Langevin, while students and other demonstrators burned federal Cabinet

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Ministers in effigy. Israel Tarte wrote in Le Canadien, "Le sang est un mauvais ciment, et si la confederation n'en a pas d'autre, le coup de vent qui la culbutera n'est pas loin." How far did the Riel crisis alter the course of Canadian politics? During the pre-confederate days John A. Macdonald and George Cartier had succeeded in building Canada's first political party, properly so-called. It was a coalition of Conservatives and rightwing Liberals, and bore the double-barrelled name, the LiberalConservative party. It included French and English Canadians, Protestants and Catholics, Orangemen and Ultramontanes. It was a group with no particular political philosophy save that of action. But it was this party that was largely responsible for bringing about Confederation and for governing Canada after Confederation became a fact. As long as it avoided any racial cleavage it was practically unbeatable. The first post-Confederation outbreak of racial feeling did not seriously damage the unity of the Liberal-Conservative party. Riel's friends in Quebec, such as Masson, Mousseau, and Desjardins, were Conservatives and believed that more could be done for their protege inside the party than outside of it. Riel's supporters in Manitoba, such as Joseph Royal and Marc Girard, were likewise supporters of Sir John Macdonald. Moreover, Adolphe Chapleau, when he offered his services to defend Riel's Red River associate, Ambroise Lepine, against the charge of murdering Thomas Scott, was a member of the Conservative administration at Quebec. Riel himself, when he ran for Parliament, ran as a Conservative, as a supporter of the Macdonald government. With Edward Blake, the Liberal leader in Ontario, offering a reward of $5,000 for the apprehension of Louis Riel, there was little inducement for the metis leader to seek political affiliations outside the Conservative ranks. Macdonald was embarrassed by Riel's support. But Macdonald, whatever his personal feelings may have been towards Louis Riel, would take no step either on his behalf or against him that would disturb the balance of forces within Canada, and within the party of which he was the leader. As long as he neither granted nor refused an amnesty, as long as he could place this responsibility upon the shoulders of the Imperial authorities in London, he could hope to hold his party to-

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gether. And to Macdonald unity within the Conservative party meant unity within Canada. Riel's entry into the Hospital of St.Jean de Dieu at Longue Pointe removed him temporarily from the Canadian political scene. Then, to Macdonald's annoyance, he emerged again in 1885 as a leader of rebellion in the North West. The agitation that followed the rebellion and the defeat of Riel aroused all the latent rivalries of earlier years. Macdonald hoped that the agitation would not last, that it would, like a grass fire, quickly burn itself out. If his assessment of the situation were correct, he would not have to commit himself in 1885 any more than he had done in 1870. To Macdonald the situation seemed, as it had seemed to Riel, almost to parallel that of fifteen years before. On August 8th the Montreal Ga,t;,ette wrote, There is a strong effervescence on both sides. One side cries: Riel must be hanged or-! The other side cries: Riel shall not be hanged, or-! This effervescence must needs be, but it will subside, and then there will float on the surface the view of common sense. That view is as follows :-The verdict was twofold, "guilty, with recommendation to mercy." In pursuance of the first part, the man was sentenced to death. There justice was carried out. In furtherance of the second part, he will be interned for life either in an asylum or a prison. There mercy will intervene. One thing is imperativeRiel must never be let loose again.

This view probably represented that of Macdonald and his Conservative colleagues, or rather it represented their unwillingness at that stage to take any positive stand on the Riel issue. It would be sufficient to wait upon events, and then act in a manner that would leave the fewest scars on the Liberal-Conservative party. As the weeks passed the agitation, instead of cooling off, increased in heat. More and more Macdonald found himself being pushed towards the decision that he did not wish to make. This time Blake, instead of fulminating against Riel's iniquities as he had done in 1870, defended the metis chieftain's actions and laid the blame for the unhappy events in the North West upon the government itself. Moreover, the provincial Liberals, grasping the opportunity to show themselves as the defenders of the national cause, introduced a motion in the Quebec legislature censuring the federal government for its handling of the metis problem. It was in vain that the provincial Conservatives argued that the North West was purely a federal D

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matter. By opposing the motion of censure, on no matter what grounds, they were made to appear as less than enthusiastic for the national cause that Riel represented. Macdonald was clearly on the horns of a dilemma. Should he pardon Riel to appease his French-Canadian supporters; or should he allow the law to take its course to satisfy the Orangemen? Whichever course he took would be the wrong one in someone's eyes. And from each side he was subjected to political pressure to take a firm stand. During the East Durham by-election in Ontario, one of his campaign workers wrote to him, "During my canvass I have found that the Riel matter has, before all other questions, engaged the attention of the farmers, and many of the strongest of our friends have not hesitated to declare, that, if Riel is not hung, they will never again vote on the Conservative side." On the other hand both Le Monde and La Minerve, the newspapers representing Sir Hector Langevin and Adolphe Chapleau, were demanding clemency and assuring the people that Riel would not hang. Early in November a group of Macdonald's French-Canadian supporters met in Montreal and forwarded a telegram to the Prime Minister, "Dans les circonstances, !'execution de Louis Riel serait un acte de cruaute dont nous repoussons la responsabilite." The significant figure was that of Adolphe Chapleau. He had defended Lepine and supported Riel during the earlier rising. He was the obvious choice of the "nationalists" in Quebec, and he could, had he so wished, have become the leader of a "nationalist" party. For a time Chapleau wondered if that should not be the course he should follow. Only at the last moment did he write to Macdonald, "I spent the greatest part oflast night in preparing my memorandum in support of my disagreement in the Riel case.Just as I was sending it this morning, I hesitated, in the face of the terrible responsibility of an agitation on such a question where national animosities would surely meet to fight their battle, and after a long meditation I have decided not to incur that responsibility." Perhaps this was the most statesmanlike act of Chapleau's life; but it meant the end of his political career. The fact that Chapleau, Caron, and Langevin remained in the Macdonald cabinet at this time saved the Macdonald government. But the reputation of the Liberal-Conservative party had been 38

LOUIS RIEL

damaged irreparably. The party could no longer appeal to French Canadians, as it had done in days past, as the defender of FrenchCanadian rights; it could no longer claim to be the home of true French-Canadian patriots. In spite of the tradition of ClearGritism and No Popery that once had attached to the Liberal party, that party now included men like Wilfrid Laurier, who declared that had he lived on the banks of the Saskatchewan he, too, would have shouldered his musket with Riel, and Honore Mercier, a convinced nationalist and irredentist in the French-Canadian sense of the word. In spite of the return to the Conservative fold of Israel Tarte, in spite of the support of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, the LiberalConservative image seemed to show too clearly the hard lines of the Ontario, Protestant farmer. Following the execution of Riel, a great mass meeting was held in Montreal on November 22nd. It was probably the largest political meeting in the history of this country. Thousands of people thronged the Champ de Mars, and thirty-seven speakers addressed them from three different platforms. Conservatives and Liberals alike vied with each other in denouncing Macdonald and the three FrenchCanadian ministers who had stuck by him; traitors, enemies of their race, they were called. The outcome of this meeting was the formation of what the Conservative senator, F. X. Trudel, called "le mouvement national" but what Mercier preferred to designate as "le parti national". The new party was a combination of dissident Conservatives and hopeful Liberals, united under the banner of patriotism. "Jene viens pas ici, comme chef du parti liberal," declared Mercier, "Je viens ici comme canadien fran~ais, ayant ressenti, comme vous, !'injure faite a notre nationalite." Mercier spoke from the heart. And his appeal was both moving and convincing. Encouraged by an early electoral success in the Lotbiniere byelection, Mercier and the Nationalist party continued their political campaign without let or interruption. During the summer of 1886 the Conservative administration in Quebec struggled on without confidence in itself or in the future. Finally it gave up the effort in the autumn, and a general election was held. It was a bitter election. In many ways it recalled the days of 1837, with Mercier assuming the mantle of Louis Joseph Papineau. Wherever the Conservatives ap-

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GEORGE F, O. STANLEY

peared they were greeted with showers of rope ends, and with huge pictures of Louis Riel. When the returns were in both sides claimed victory-but victory really rested with the Conservative nationalists who held the balance of power, and their support went, not to "les pendards," but to "le parti national." In January, 1887, Honore Mercier became premier of Quebec. The Conservative regime was at an end. Tarte wrote in Le Canadien of the Conservative nationalists, "Ils ont fait mal au parti conservateur; mais ils n'ont tire autre resultat que celui d'accroitre la force du parti liberal." The ghost of Louis Riel stalked the political platforms again during 1887, when the federal election was held. But it had had its revenge. And revenge is justice, after a fashion. Although Macdonald managed to secure thirty-three seats out of sixty-five in Quebec, the traditional Conservative hold on French Canada had been greatly weakened, and the voters were disposed henceforth to place their trust in the party led by one of their own, Wilfrid Laurier. Of Laurier's loyalty to his race there could be no question. It was thus the Liberal, not the Conservative image that wore the habitant toque, and the Liberal rather than the Conservative voice that spoke with a French accent in Quebec. Such is the role of Riel in our history. The visionary defender of an obscure cultural epoch in western Canada, he became the martyr of the French-Canadian nation: the Conservative Member of Parliament who never took his seat in Parliament, he became the nemesis of the Conservative party in Canada. The story of Riel is not difficult to understand. It is not difficult because we, as Canadians, are aware, in our own day and generation, of the reality, the intensity, of the national feelings of both Frenchand English-speaking Canadians, of the gulf that has existed and does exist between them, and of the tenuity of the bonds that unite them in a single state. Because we ourselves are living history, we can see Riel and the metis risings, and their aftermath, as part of that time-continuum we call history. Looked at in this way, Riel is seen, not merely as one man's life against a completely static background, but as part of a continuing process, the process that Oswald Spengler has called "the eternal becoming, and therefore, eternal future." Or, in other words, destiny itself.

40

JEAN ETHIER•BLAIS ON

PAUL-EMILE BORDUAS

To begin with, I should like to draw a portrait of Borduas at three crucial moments of his life: first, Borduas on the eve of his departure from Canada for Paris; second, Borduas in Montreal some eighteen years later, around 1945, at the height of his success as an innovator in painting and a social reformer; and finally, Borduas in Paris, a few years before he died. Who was this young man leaving for Paris in 1928? His contemporaries describe him as a frail and innocent-looking young man, with one conspicuous feature: dark and profound eyes, which gazed upon the world apparently always in surprise. These are key words; Borduas, at the time he left for Paris, was profoundly immature. He had not yet decided what he was or what was to become of him. He was truly the young provincial, carried away by events and by the fact that his natural gifts were strong enough and his personality weak enough for him to be at the same time both protected and encouraged by his environment. Indeed, Canadian students in these years, in Paris, remember Borduas quite well, but not, as one might today imagine, as a forceful painter and thinker, rather as one who was polite and withdrawn, as a man who shared in the general laughter of students without seeming to have understood the significance of the joke. I was told by one of them that Borduas was not quite a figure of fun for the sole reason that he looked too angelic. He had no self-assurance. But he worked hard, and let us not forget that on the eve of his departure for Paris, as well as during his first

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stay there, Borduas was steeped in a religious and mystical atmosphere. His future had been thought out for him; he was meant to become Quebec's foremost religious painter. He had the looks for the job. By 1946, the year of the first Automatist Exhibition, a man totally different from the one his elders and protectors expected has developed. The angel has flown away (where to, no one knows) and has been replaced by a man of considerable energy. I met Borduas in 1947, at one of his exhibitions. He was standing in the centre of a white room, the walls of which were covered with his paintings. Abstract, of course. Borduas was talking to elderly people who were listening with great attention and respect. I had been brought to this exhibition by one of his friends, a poet and a Jesuit, Franc;ois Hertel, who introduced me to Borduas as "a famous young writer and disciple of Claude!." Hertel knew what he was doing, for Borduas, in spite of his simplicity of manners, had a weakness for celebrities, however young. Borduas explained his painting at great length to me, but I have entirely forgotten what he said. I remember only the man. He had indeed extraordinary eyes, though certainly not the piercing, penetrating eyes one usually associates with a painter. No, Borduas' eyes were of a mellow and questioning kind, dark brown and deeply inserted in the orbits. They were tender, in fact, and although I have never seen a doe I cannot imagine one without associating it with Borduas. When speaking with someone, Borduas bent his head and faced him from underneath, with melancholy. He was a small man, all bones, badly built, as a matter of fact, with short legs and arms, and a big head. One could see at first glance that he was suffering from a strong physical inferiority complex. He tried to make up for his lack of a domineering physique by a constant agitation, by making movements in every direction, to the point that, when he explained the meaning of one of his paintings, he sometimes looked like an aviator describing, arms extended, one of his most perilous exploits. In 1947, Paul-Emile Borduas was no longer the young student who did not quite understand the jokes; he was regarded as a master by a whole generation of painters, and as a dangerous anarchist by those art functionaries who were entrenched in administration and religion. He was preaching revolt against the conformist 42

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atmosphere of French Canada. He had youth on his side, and his painting was already acclaimed as opening what is usually called "new vistas." Surrounded by his disciples, he reclined on couches and explained his doctrines. His photograph was taken, and pictures of him were already considered as documents. He was a celebrity. He enjoyed being one and thoroughly played the part. Borduas lived in Paris towards the end of his life. This, again, is another kettle of fish. He lived on the rue Rousselet, one minute from the Abbaye-au-Bois, where Chateaubriand had read his Memoirs to a chosen audience. But Borduas was never much affected by literary reminiscences; he was uncultured. His atelier was on the first floor and had once been a shop. It was large and comfortable, extremely well-lit and filled with the master's works. Borduas in I 956 was a very sick man indeed; he spoke with difficulty at the end ofan evening. When he talked, one always expected him to produce some kind of eerie whistle, which he never did, fortunately. He usually sat on a huge divan, legs and arms crossed, head bent to one side, smilingly looking at his guest, with his patient eyes timidly but unwaveringly probing. He laughed frequently and drank quite an extraordinary number of little glasses of cognac, smoking, crossing or uncrossing his anus and legs, smiling as he explained at length some obscure point of painting or of philosophy. Yet in spite ofBorduas' laughter, of his apparent creative facility, there was a cadaverous atmosphere in his atelier. One could, as it were, smell death. Borduas' face was wrinkled beyond imagination; magnetism alone seemed to hold his bones together; he literally floated in his clothes. He was a dying and unhappy man; he had just started his career anew and was apparently unsuccessful, at least in Paris. Furthermore, he knew that the mode of painting he was experimenting with was a thing of the moment. Where would it lead him? He had discovered, during his first year in Paris, the pleasures of fast driving. He drove exceedingly fast, and his driving habits were, to say the least, poetic. Borduas was in fact entering a period of transition, intellectually and morally, a period of deep self-searching in which he must have asked himself essential questions. He was like a man waiting for a job to begin, for the signal to be given to start work. This sense of an uncertainty about the future was strongly felt by Borduas' friends at that time. In fact, there was no uncertainty. Borduas died, and that put a stop 43

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to all possibilities. His unfinished paintings were considered as a last and eternal testament. His doubtful manner was taken to represent the ultimate in his evolution. He was buried, and I shall tell you how before we are finished. Let me now for a moment talk about his beginnings. Paul-Emile Borduas was born in 1905 in Saint-Hilaire, near Montreal, on the banks of the Richelieu. The valley of the Richelieu contains one of the oldest French-Canadian settlements in Canada, and Borduas was very proud of the antiquity, at least the comparative antiquity, of his family. He came from poor stock, but he was gifted. Ozias Leduc, a painter and decorator of churches who also, as an aside, painted some of the most imaginative landscapes in Canadian art, lived in Saint-Hilaire and protected the young Borduas from the start. He it was who discovered Borduas, taught him the first rules of art and undoubtedly gave him his first sense of a "mission" as an artist. Ozias Leduc was a remarkable man, and Borduas never spoke of him except as "Monsieur Leduc"; not "Leduc, the famous painter," but "Monsieur Leduc," with suitable reverence. Leduc was also a religious man, and history will always underline the curious nature of the link between Borduas and him: ironically, this man, who to all outward appearances accepted the world in which he lived, gave spiritual birth to one whose avowed aim was to destroy that same world. As his mystical poetry shows, there was more to Ozias Leduc, as a thinker and as a teacher, than met the eye. For over twenty years Borduas lived by Leduc's thought, whether in painting or in religion. He is the most important single influence in his life. Certainly there existed hidden currents of thought between these two men. But if we concern ourselves with Borduas as a painter, what did Leduc teach him? He taught him, first, a sense of responsibility towards painting, to be painstaking about his work; in short Leduc taught Borduas the virtues of the artisan. Secondly, he gave to Borduas' whole conception of painting as a way of life a certain touch of effeminacy. By this I mean that there is inBorduas'painting a grace, a languishing atmosphere, an absence of dynamic colouring and of resolute edges (such as one finds in Pellan, for example, but not in Morrice) which give it its esoteric and intricately feminine value. This particular tendency towards a feminine spirituality is

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also to be found in Leduc's own painting: a graceful evanescence. Finally, Leduc taught Borduas that painting can be akin to a religious experience. And to the end, in spite of his avowed agnosticism, Borduas looked upon the process of painting as a spiritual phenomenon which permitted him to enter a new realm of fantastic experiences. It is revealing, in this connection, that Borduas, having lost his Catholic faith, should have immediately found surrealism to replace it. He was a painter, and, as such, could not live or paint except from within a set of well-established rules and precepts. From his early youth Borduas was expected to link intimately, in his own mind, art and religion. His behaviour at the time of his revolt cannot be understood outside of a religious context. In 1928, having taught drawing in a private school for a few years, Borduas left for Paris on a Quebec provincial scholarship to study paintingreligious painting of course-with Maurice Denis and Georges Desvallieres, two important Catholic painters of the time. Maurice Denis is frankly, let us say the word, saccharine. There exists a Madonna by Borduas which is a direct imitation of Maurice Denis' style and which is typical: pale colours flatly applied on the canvas, a veil which falls like lead on the young woman's shoulders, a general air of fatuity of the subject. There is no doubt that Maurice Denis had a disastrous influence on his Canadian disciple. OfDesvalliere's role in Borduas' development as an artist we know nothing. It is questionable whether he exerted any influence on Borduas; Desvallieres is what is called a "strong" painter-indeed, excessive at times in the expression of his feelings. One sees no sign of strength of this sort in Borduas' painting on his return from Paris; all is pure Maurice Denis, bloodless and uninteresting to a degree. It is logical to express here the quasi-certainty that Borduas reaped very little of artistic value during his first stay in Paris. Of course, he matured technically. He learned to dispose colour elegantly on the canvas. He also learned the negative lesson of taste. But even this much he does not seem to have mastered. What he painted from 1930 to 1938 is not particularly good technically, neither is it particularly interesting from a psychological point of view; it is merely the work of a rather clever, enthusiastic student. It is not the work ofa truly great artist. What transformed Borduas from a disciple into a budding master

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was teaching. He was a born teacher. Upon arriving in Canada from Europe, at the beginning of the thirties, he tried to continue a career as an itinerant painter--one, that is, who travels from one church to another, painting ceilings and vaults. But he very quickly found that there was no place left for him in this particular field. Italian painters were busy everywhere, painting pale-blue Virgins being whisked away on pale-grey clouds. Even Maurice Denis, in spite of his natural feeling for the unnatural, would have shuddered. Since Borduas had to earn his living, he returned to his previous occupation of being a teacher of drawing-first in a private secondary school, then, in 1933, at the Ecole du Meuble in Montreal. The Ecole du Meuble is an arts and crafts school; its professors are, to a certain extent, considered as provincial civil servants. To teach was enchanting. Borduas had an audience, the first one in his life to believe in him. He was a born talker, and he had thousands of things to communicate to these youths which, to them, must have sounded quite new: his experiences in France, his developing ideas about what painting actually was, his views on the social and cultural development of the French-Canadian people. For the first time in his life, Borduas discovered that he could exert an influence. I should like to stress this view of the man as an influence. Borduas was a born leader, not in the sense, of course, that he could have swayed masses, but a born leader, nevertheless, in depth. The opinion of his disciples on this quality in him is unequivocal. He could convert and direct human beings, not so much by what he said as by the psychological strength of his belief. Intellectually, as a leader, he had a wonderful innate sense of tactical manreuvring: he would go so far, and then, in discussion, he would retreat, so that he could at one and the same time give the impression of dynamism and sound judgment. This would be in a discussion among friends. When, on the other hand, it came time to defend his ideas against the "philistines," he never hesitated to attack with extreme boldness. The result of this approach was that his followers, during his Montreal period, considered him both as a leader and as a friend. He was their friend because he admitted the force of ideas contrary to his own; he was their leader because he could speak with authority to their elders. Thus it was that Borduas found himself caught, during the most crucial period of his life, between his desire to express him46

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self, as it were, to the core, and the fervent wish of his admirers and disciples to shock. He could give way only to them, not to the general public. Intellectually, at the moment of crisis, when his future was at stake, Borduas was a prisoner-the prisoner of the myth he had created of himself as the man who is afraid of nothing, of the man who is pure. the myth of the intellectual revolutionary. Strangely enough, from 1933 until the end of the war Borduas seemed relatively content with his lot as a teacher of drawing in a provincial school. He had married, and he had had children. He had built a house in Saint-Hilaire, and he commuted. He taught, painted, and stood waiting for the psychological shock which would set him free. The liberating influence came with the war in the guise of the pope of the surrealist movement, Andre Breton. We all know what surrealism is; it is represented in painting today most conspicuously by Salvador Dali. Breton, together with men like Aragon and Dali, had founded this literary and political movement at the beginning ofthe twenties in order to promote the cult of the unconscious, the liberation of self, the search for odd and secretly meaningful beauty. At the very time that Borduas was living in Paris, surrealism was thriving; its members were being arrested for public obscenity, and Breton, Aragon, and Eluard were publishing their masterpieces-for although surrealist writers may act as madmen, they are in dead earnest when it comes to translating their experiences into words, and they do write masterpieces. During his stay in Paris, Borduas had lived only a few minutes away from Andre Breton; but he had not known of him, being apparently under the complete domination of Maurice Denis. It would seem that Borduas needed a period of personal incubation before he could even begin to submit to the influence of surrealism. Indeed there is something in his make-up which leads one to wonder whether his natural tendency was not to develop along the lines of a rigid conservatism. Unlike most people, Borduas did not rebel as a youth. He rebelled as an adult, and for this adult rebellion he had to have a congenial environment, a reason and a method outside his world. Surrealism served this end beautifully: it is at the same time an artistic school and a revolutionary party which has, on occasion and amid resounding quarrels, allied itself to Communism. In 1941, Andre Breton came to America and stayed for some time in New York, and then at 47

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Perce, the rock to which he later referred at length in one of his books, Arcane 17. It was at this point that Borduas discovered surrealism. And the discovery gave birth to two important developments: first, Borduas abandoned his former conservative mode of painting and allowed himself, as an artist, to be led entirely by subconscious powers; second, he started to react violently against the social, religious, and intellectual conditions which prevailed in the province of Quebec at that time. Let us look at Borduas' painting as it appeared in 1945. Until then, as I have already pointed out, Borduas had been painting in a seminai:ve, semi-religious style a few landscapes, but mostly figures, women wearing veils, with sadness in their eyes. In other words, it had been a sentimental message which had corresponded perfectly with Borduas' frame of mind at this stage in his development. He was imitating his masters and had experienced no intellectual or psychological dislocation which could have forced him to convey a personal message. Painting was not yet a true mode of expression, it was not a vital necessity; it was purely and simply a trade, a means of earning a living. The craftsman was alive, not the artist. Immediately upon discovering the message of surrealism, which he interpreted in terms of liberation, Borduas translated it into a pictorial vocabulary. He realized that, until then, he had been painting, as it were, against his inner feelings, corseting his subconscious, and that only after he had set his subconscious free would he start to express himself, and not only a part of himself, in painting. He discovered that there existed a direct link between the dictates of his subconscious and his creativity as an artist. He abandoned his realist style and began to paint freely-that is, not to draw figures or landscapes, but, abandoning subject matter completely, to let his hand follow automatically the rhythm of his feelings and sensations. There is absolutely no doubt that this new period of creativity, which extends from 1941 to 1948, was an extremely happy period in Borduas' life. He began by painting heavily on the canvas, as if only to use paint were in itself a pleasure. He painted in vivid colours: whites, yellows, reds, violets, and greens which fell on the canvas as rain, tightly-knit at the top and spreading out towards the bottom. A kind of orgy of happiness. There is one such painting, multicoloured, where white, green, red, and black are intimately linked, 48

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which has the finality of somebody who says: I am happy. One finds this kind of atmosphere in the painting of Borduas at that period. I do not wish to sound literary in my analysis of his painting, although I am sure Borduas would approve of any literary description of his work. He himself was haunted all his life by the problem of literary expression, and if there exists such a thing as a writer's painter, his name is Borduas. However that may be, literary or not, Borduas' painting became at that time, and under the influence of surrealism, a personal creative act. It was in 1941 that Borduas produced his first non-figurative pa·inting, and as early as 1944 he was a famous man. In Montreal, that is. For example, it was in 1944 that Robert Elie published a booklet on Borduas which immediately focused attention on the work of this new and rising star. It is interesting to note that Robert Elie refused to take any kind of permanent position with regard to Borduas, refused to pass conclusive judgment on his work. And it is precisely this refusal on the part of Robert Elie to judge and define which is important today. It proves one thing: Borduas was important enough as an artist to be written about at length, but still too much of a controversial figure to be treated either with respect or disrespect. On the whole, Robert Elie's work is sympathetic to Borduas; of course, Robert Elie was then a member of the avant-garde. But it is a discursive book, not an analytical one. Thus, in 1944 Borduas had to be written about; on the other hand, he could not yet be given a niche in Canadian art. But this his disciples had already done. They were young men and women, some of great energy, some oflittle intellect. One of them at least, it must be said, was completely mad, to the point of being certified. I do not mean to disparage the ideological movement which originated with Borduas and his group by making this kind of comment; what existed has to be described, and the fact that some of the young people who surrounded Borduas were vaguely insane does not mean that the group's thinking was also, automatically, such. The point is that Borduas, under the influence of young people such as Mousseau, Riopelle, Gauvreau, Barbeau, and Leduc, began, some time around 1944-45, to think in revolutionary terms: revolution in painting, revolution inside the French-Canadian historical and sociological context. It all coincided in time: automatism and social revolution. When one considers,

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therefore, the artistic value of automatism, one should not divorce it from the sociological analysis of French Canada which accompanied its development. What is automatism? It is an artistic doctrine, the gist of which is that the artist must become the creative instrument of his own personality. Borduas expressed this thought beautifully. In Refus global, he wrote: "Gradually the calculated act must give way to the act of faith." We must, from the very start, eliminate the notion that automatism implies a complete abandonment by the artist of his inner judgment, of his powers of reason. This would be too simple. One does not, and could not, become an automatist at will; the goal is achieved only as a result of a painful and long process of acceptance and rejection. Borduas starts from the principle that it is only at the end of a slow process of decantation, of intellectual and spiritual asceticism, that subconscious forces can, and will, be released. He compares man's subconscious life to "tumultuous rivers," and adds: "The scientific method has made it possible to bridle our tumultuous rivers inside a straight-jacket." To become an automatist is precisely to reject this scientific method, which has kept the artistic development of mankind in check. Borduas interprets history as a constant refusal by the leading spirits of humanity to accept the reality of the subconscious mind, a reality which he sees embodied in the eternal themes of magic, the objective mysteries, love and change. To this global refusal by past generations to accept intellectual, psychological, and moral transformation, the automatists oppose complete acceptance. As Borduas put it, "It is with joy that we take the entire responsibility of tomorrow." And it is at this point in the development of his artistic theory that Borduas enters into direct conflict with political and religious authority; for he adds: "Salvation can come only after the greatest excesses in the exploitation [of the soul, of the intellect] have been reached. The present authorities have reached these excesses; they are these excesses." It is not in the least surprising that the "present authorities" should have reacted to this pronouncement with pained surprise, a surprise which quickly turned into a sort of sour violence. They were even more shocked when they realized what Borduas' philosophy of French-Canadian history really was. We all know that the motto of the province of Quebec is J remember. It is both an appeal to the past

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to stay with us and a refusal of the future. Borduas decided to change all that. "The past," he said, "must be accepted with birth. It should never be considered as a sacred value. We owe the past nothing." Within the leading intellectual circles of Montreal, in 1948, this premise was anathema. As a matter of fact, it might still be. This much, coming from a teacher who was really a provincial civil servant, was bad enough. But worse was to follow. Borduas divided French-Canadian history into three stages which he saw as being dominated, first by fear, then by anguish, and, finally, by nausea. The French Canadians, he noted, were as early as I 760 a colony "precipitated inside the smooth walls offear." He visualized the history of the French-Canadian people as a huge conspiracy of the clerical and professional ruling classes designed to keep the people in a state of fear and ignorance. The aim of this conspiracy was, of course, to permit the ruling classes to play, in peace, their role as intermediaries between the English governing class and the ignorant mass of French Canadians. In a spiritual sense, Borduas considered the evolution of the French-Canadian ruling classes as premeditated treason. It follows that the historical plight of the French-Canadian people saddened him. He ascribed it to its generosity of spirit; but, he adds, "fatality is stronger than generosity," and by this he meant that history was moving forward and that the old order was on its way out. What I consider to be of importance in Borduas' attitude is, first, that his global analysis of the evolution of French-Canadian society-or rather its lack of evolution-should have proceeded from an artistic source. It gives it historical strength, it gives detachment to his thinking. But more important still is the fact that, for the first time, a creative group accused the French-Canadian Church, as a social force, of having hindered the natural development of the population. Borduas considered that he and his disciples had entered into the age of nausea. They had to speak out against exploitation and narrowness of mind. They did speak out, in the form of a mimeographed pamphlet which appeared in 1948 under the title of Refus global: a complete and utter rejection. The title was a play on words, for not only did Borduas and his friends reject everything which present-day French Canada stood for, but they also accused the intelligentsia of 1948 of having utterly rejected their civilizing mission. Reaction was swift. 51

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Borduas published Refus global in May of 1948, and he was expelled from the Ecole du Meuble in September. He had become a martyr to the sacred cause of liberty. He was not unhappy; his paintings sold, and he could live, although poorly. He could paint, and he could express his ideas. He advanced amongst his chosen disciples within a cloud of sufferings and righteousness. But he experienced the fate of most prophets, and his disciples, during the next five years, went their own way. The most famous of these separations is, of course, that of Riopelle, who broke away from Borduas on technical grounds, but presumably also because Bor~uas admitted less and less of discussion inside his group and seemed more and more to think that his intuition was law. In 1953, Borduas, who felt isolated, left Canada for the second time and spent the summer in Provincetown, where he painted forty canvases in a state which he later described as approaching ecstasy. He continued to let himself be guided by inner development, abandoning himself entirely to psychological painting. In September, he moved to New York, where he stayed until 1955. One must not belittle the influence exercised on Borduas by modern American painting. It was in New York that Borduas discovered that painting was not only, as he had believed since the beginning of the forties, a question of expressing oneself through form, but that there existed certain problems in the art of painting which had nothing to do with the sole release of one's emotions. One of these problems, for example, was the quest for space. Painting could become the expression of dimensional qualities. The aim of Borduas in New York was to blend emotion with space, to translate his inner development in terms not only of lines and colours but of physical depth as well. His painting became less and less profuse. His colouring, which had been at the same time both rich and dense, became sparse, and the few colours used were basic. Even more revealing, masses began to appear in Borduas' works. Until New York, there had been something fluttery about Borduas' manner of painting: light strokes in great quantities, colours mixed and interpenetrating, waves of multicoloured strokes succeeding one another. For the eye it was often an enchanting spectacle, but, examined within the frontiers ofBorduas' development, this method was bound to disappear in the same proportion that Borduas' character affirmed itself. This happened in

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New York. Borduas' painting became clearer and geometrical. Those heavy blocks of white, brown, and black paint which have become so familiar began to appear on the canvas. Not yet the utter simplicity of line which was to be found later, not yet the apparent drabness of colouring. But the heavy affirmative blocks are there, They signify that Borduas has reached pictorial maturity. He had also reached maturity as a man, and the time had come for him to return to Europe, to be confronted again with his past, to face as an adult non-figurative painter, as a non-believer, the youth who had studied in the conformist and religious atmosphere of Paris from 1928 to 1930. In 1955, Borduas came back to Paris and settled down in the atelier in the rue Rousselet where he was to die in I 960. These five years were given over entirely to painting and travelling, and to selling his works. Borduas was, by the way, an excellent seller who looked keenly after his own interests. There are many letters of his written in quick succession to the same gallery owner, or gallery's representative, requesting either payment or refreshing news about same. Borduas was not ashamed of discussing money matters. He considered money, in the life of an artist, as essential; but once he had it, he did not let it bother him in the least any more. An admirable philosophy. Borduas, one feels with regret, came back to Paris too late. He should have come back in time to meet Picasso's friend, Max Jacob; they would have understood each other, these two, because they had one thing in common, which was a sense of spirituality and of the fantastic. Borduas was in this respect a typical French Canadian; his religion was built on terror. He left this world sure of the fact that he did not believe in Christ, or in Catholicism. But his whole social thinking is Catholic-inspired. It is a blasphemous kind of Catholicism, but it is Catholicism none the less. He believed in liberty, the liberty to believe or to disbelieve. And this is what he offered his disciples-the liberty to be free, but nothing else. He offered them the choice of plunging into the abysses of their own personalities; and, as soon as they became afraid of what they found inside themselves, he talked about the supremacy of psycho-analysis. It was truly a replacing of one religion by another. It is not surprising, therefore, that Borduas found himself, in Paris, rather isolated. His work symbolizes this solitude, about which he so often complained. Far away from Canada, he visualized his country as a land of great E

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intellectual and moral possibilities. One cannot help but think that his last paintings, all white, are to be closely associated with our own snow symbolism. These vast expanses of white colouring contain all the sadness of exile as well as all the freshness of the native winter. Borduas has gone back over the past and has sought to blend with his origins. Just as Cezanne painted and repainted his mountains in Provence, so Borduas re-creates this abstract geography. Abstractness forbids him from giving density to the contours of this landscape; but he will at least re-create it symbolically. Borduas' last paintings are the Canadian landscape seen from the inside, this whiteness representing at the same time the physical presence of Canada, its psychological nudity, and its void. During the last years of his life, Borduas sold paintings to leading galleries in London, Amsterdam, and Diisseldor£ In London, Tooth's was his dealer; in New York, Martha Jackson. He was beginning to be what is called an important painter, and his name, although not as famous in Europe as that of his ex-disciple Riopelle, was well known. He died very suddenly, in his atelier, during the night. He had complained to friends that he was not feeling well and had even seen a doctor, who had prescribed something innocuous. Borduas was a sickly man, but of the kind of whom one says that they are on the verge of death until they die at the age of ninety-five. Borduas died at the age of fifty-five, forty years too soon. Friends of his, wondering what was happening, telephoned in the morning. No reply. They hastened to his atelier. The Canadian painter, Marcelle Ferron, who lives in Paris, was also there. Borduas was dead. A sort of odd shambles occurred during which most of Borduas' personal papers and private correspondence is thought to have disappeared. Since Borduas had no family in Paris, the Canadian Embassy looked after the details of the burial ceremony. The French, as a general rule, are not very interested in burials; they know nothing of the American approach to death rites. Borduas' burial was, according to some witnesses, ghastly. The French official bearers threw the coffin in the grave, at the bottom of which it landed with a sad thud. Borduas' friends passed in front of the grave, one after the other, and threw some earth on the coffin. Five minutes and it was over. Borduas is buried in the Montpamasse Cemetery, in the heart of Paris. Some people might think his tomb worth a visit. 54

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Borduas wrote a vast correspondence and two small books, Refus global and Projections liberantes. In the correspondence, as in the books, he has not given himself entirely away, but, fortunately for us, he has revealed the essential components of his intelligence and sensitivity. He was an excellent correspondent in the sense that, face to face in imagination with a friend, Borduas would let himself go, would talk about himself, his desires, his hopes, his remorses. Reading the correspondence, one is confronted with a delicate system of nerves; Borduas discusses his problems and ideas as much with himself as with his correspondent. One interesting point is that he never expresses himself in direct fashion, in the sense that he never states a fact as if it were an absolute truth; he talks to himself, alters the meaning of a statement, explains its psychological background. Borduas' correspondence resembles a psycho-analytical document in many ways. The fact is that in spite of his great facility in letters, Borduas was not a born writer. In all his writings, one feels the difficulty he had in expressing a thought in its entirety; his language is involved, his use of vocabulary lacks precision, and he has the awkward tendency of always coming back to what he has said earlier, to correct it, to give it a more precise meaning. He wrote: "As soon as they have been given life, my thoughts, very maliciously, take on a frightened look, become generalities and are lost." Borduas, indeed, lacked the intellectual, the cultural background which would have permitted him to express his thoughts in their entirety. He was, to use a barbarism, uncultured, and his writings, especially his correspondence, reveal this plight of his to a degree. He generalized about everything because he could not, for lack of true knowledge, particularize. In a sense, therefore, in spite of the importance of what he has said, Borduas never expressed his real thinking-the thought which was at the bottom of his mind, that thought which can be found only through patient intellectual probing. He could not, because the words were not present when they were most needed. His letters reveal a lot about himself, explain how he felt about certain subjects such as painting, politics, and sociology; but, more important, they reveal also the existence of an intellectual and psychological background which Borduas has been unable to explore. What I mean is that the more one comes to know Borduas the more one realizes that the greater part of his personality is composed ofregions 55

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of darkness which do not symbolize those secret intellectual regions which nourish one's personality; on the contrary, these regions of darkness tend to represent the constant changing of a personality which is without solid intellectual resources, a personality of genius perhaps, but one which does not know exactly where it is going. Intellectual vagueness forced Borduas to confine himself to a few fundamental truths. Those thoughts of his which had a profound influence in the forties were, let us be frank, half-baked. They did not stem from knowledge but from sentimentality. They were magical incantations, not seriously thought-out theories. Let me give you one example. Borduas often said that he considered himself to be "in expectation." There existed, in his make-up, an element of fatality; he had been chosen, he knew that, the seal of something had been pressed on his forehead. But the seal of what, and to what end? This is still to be surmised. In any case, he had what he called a "profound comprehension of the present," and this understanding was coupled in his mind with the necessity for him to project it into the future, which he considered his only judge. Borduas had never been interested in the future of Canada, nor in its ethnical composition; he knew practically nothing about history, least of all about constitutional history. Nevertheless, in New York he is struck by the intelligence and personality of an English Canadian, and to him it is a revelation. Immediately, he understands what he described as the "psychic unity" of Canada, meaning that English and French Canadians share some traits of character, some automatic reactions, which separate them from the rest of humanity and bind them together. Borduas, however, has never revealed what these singular attributes were. Be that as it may, upon discovering what he will henceforth consider to be a historical fact, Borduas starts prophetizing: "What we must hope for, now, is that a greater number ofus should accede to this understanding of the present. Unexpected unity will suddenly arise." It is possible, as in this instance, to unveil Borduas' intellectual mechanism. He starts from a personal, sentimental and, in this case, solitary discovery. But this is not enough for him, since it is personal, sentimental, and solitary. He feels the psychological need to expand his discovery to the dimensions of history; he must generalize and project his generalization into the future. To Borduas, ideas did not

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exist as such. They had no value in themselves. An idea was an instrument of intellectual war. He did not think, he thought for or against. The example I have given of the meeting with the English Canadian in New York is unimportant since it does not concern Borduas as an artist. Unfortunately, when it comes to art he reacts in exactly the same fashion. In 1958, Borduas finds himself for the second time in Paris. He has just physically rediscovered France and Europe. He is unhappy: he is unknown, he has difficulties with art galleries, his personal life is complicated. It is a period of great distress. Borduas thinks about painting, about the history of painting. And he writes: "A strong group of extraordinary painters has given to the World those two components which are absolutely necessary if the future of painting is to be prestigious: first, the liberation of the objective impersonal accident and secondly, a new space concept. For once, in the history of art, the mediterranean apprehension of art has been blown to pieces." Again it is the same thought mechanism, the same process of generalization. The main object of this choice between a decadent Europe and a vital new America is, of course, to permit the flow of Canadian art into universal currents. In the domain of painting, this is Borduas' great lesson: the abandonment of provincialism in every sense. And this is why, in Paris, he will tend progressively to say as few things as possible as a painter, but to say them well. He has learnt the lesson of perfection and knows that perfection alone will last. Borduas' last paintings are precisely that: movement and light. They represent nothing else but the triumph of light and abstraction over matter, and the triumph of movement and abstraction over form. They are intended to be the symbols of a universal and eternal artistic meaning. Borduas' life and career are typical of the rapidity of historical development in Canada today. What did he do? He preached, in 1944, a species of intellectual and religious revolt which, in 1963, less than twenty years afterwards, has been completely accepted by the society against which it was launched. In the world of art, Borduas brought to Canada, amid an outcry of protests, a creed which had been accepted by most important painters in Europe and America for the last fifteen years, if not for more. The influence of Borduas has been decisive. I shall give only one example, the case of

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Alfred Pellan. Pellan is an extraordinary painter, full of imagination and profound knowledge of his art. He is a simple man whose natural idiom in painting is a cross between cubism and expressionism. At the beginning of the last war, after an absence of twenty years during which he had lived in Paris and had built up an excellent reputation as a painter and stage-designer, Pellan came back to Canada. When he arrived in Montreal, he was appointed professor at the School of Fine Arts. Borduas was then beginning to hold forth about art and surrealism; he had the quality ofa master, the ability to inspire love in those who listened to him, and his disciples were numerous and vociferous. These attributes Pellan definitely did not have; he was content with painting beautiful and dramatic sets and costumes, and vases of flowers and fruit (some of which can be seen at the National Gallery) filled with the joy ofliving and the mystery ofnature. There is very little doubt that Borduas was afraid of the influence which Pellan might exercise in a small artistic milieu which had just begun to open up to new ideas. He may also have been a little jealous of Pellan's technical mastery as a painter. He instinctively set out to destroy Pellan as a teacher, as a guide, as an artist. He succeeded, not only temporarily, for a few years, but in depth. Today Pellan has abandoned his free-flowing and at the same time complicated style in order to paint bad imitations of Borduas. This is of course a sweeping judgment; there are qualities in Pellan which he is unable to lose. Nevertheless, Borduas' influence has been preponderant and pervasive. I doubt very much if there is one Canadian painter of note who has not been influenced by Borduas' style, by his example as a man. He is the Canadian artist who best represents the qualities and defects of our society. One does not know what the future of abstract painting will be; Borduas, for personal and necessary reasons, chose to link his destiny as a painter with the development in time of abstract painting. In that sense, he might disappear as a painter. He will not disappear as a man, the first one in French Canada who has had the deep-felt courage to go to the very end of his thought, to accept the solitude inherent in revolt, to choose despair where success could have been easy, to choose beauty where humdrum painting could have been socially rewarding, to choose inner and truthful development where ambition could have reaped the most honourable rewards our society can give. 58

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0. D. SKELTON

The persisting reputation of 0. D. Skelton and his place in history rest on his talents and works as scholar and teacher, as a writer, as the builder of the Department of External Affairs and as the confidential adviser of prime ministers. Of course there are still many, twenty-two years after his death, who recall as a friend, teacher, or colleague this quiet man of acute perception, proven judgment, and great generosity. Almost my first recollection of Skelton is as he appeared to me as I sat-a diffident and coltish student-in his elementary class in political science at Queen's University in 1913. To us he seemed mature if not venerable, but he was actually only thirty-five. A vagrant lock of his rather colourless hair was likely to slide forward over his prominent forehead. His heavy long eyebrows protruded inquiringly over his thick-lensed eye-glasses. His mouth was sensitive and mobile, now pursing in considered judgment, now diffidently smiling at his own comic paraphrase of a well-known quotation, or encouragingly at an inarticulate student. We noted but were not surprised at the breadth of his reading and knowledge. It had been impressed on us from our infancy that all elderly people possessed vast stores of knowledge. We were quickly engaged by his lively and informed interest in current Canadian political and economic questions. We knew, of course, that Ontario Orangemen had dogmatic views, stridently voiced, on bilingual schools. We learned that bilingual schools had an origin in law and history, had parallels in Belgium, Switzerland, and other countries,

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and that there were rational answers to such problems. There will not seem to you to be anything striking in this example, but contemporary and Canadian fields of study were rare in Canadian universities in 1913. The bearded James Mavor at Toronto found a congenial and safe field of study, not disturbing to the local Establishment, in pre-revolutionary Russia. At McGill, Stephen Leacock turned his infectious humour on the innocent town of Orillia and left the vast comic resources of St.James Street and Westmount untouched. 0. D. Skelton was born in Orangeville, Ontario, in 1878 but spent his school years in Cornwall, where his father at that time was public school principal. He came of English-Irish stock, his ancestors having migrated, I think, from Yorkshire to Ulster. He was influenced throughout his life by strong Irish, not Ulster, sympathies. He entered Queen's University on a scholarship in 1896 and enrolled in an honours course in English and Latin from which he graduated, M.A., in 1899 with the medal in Latin. These were days when Queen's gave an M.A., in a Scottish tradition improved by local invention, for full honours in two subjects and a double first. Because, he once said, he found the Professor ofGreek,John McNaughton, an exciting and stimulating person, he returned for a further year to complete the honours course in Greek, in which he also won the medal. In no examination did he fall below first class except for a subordinate class in philology for which, after an exacting course in Anglo-Saxon, his enthusiasm had evidently flagged. This was a brilliant record. Queen's University was a small institution of a few hundred students in the 189o's and doubtless the competitors were few, but its professors were not without distinction and repute. Skelton's attainments, as attested by T. R. Glover in Latin, James Cappon in English, and John McNaughton in Greek, would at no university have been subject to any discount. His studies in literature did not, however, stop here. President Harper of Chicago, with high ambitions for the new institution and, thanks to John D. Rockefeller, with money beyond the dreams of other presidents, was raiding the universities of the world for professors. He attracted from Harvard the distinguished Platonist, Paul Shorey, and Skelton spent the session of 1900-1901 at Chicago as a graduate student in Greek. 60

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Whether from lack of funds or waning interest, here ended his literary studies. In the nearly thirty years I knew him, I do not recall him ever using a Greek quotation nor any Latin other than legal tags. After some looking around, he accepted a post as assistant editor of the Book/over's Magazine in Philadelphia and remained there until it was taken over by Appleton's in 1905. Whether here or elsewhere, he acquired a skill in rapid and lucid writing and a quick eye for typographical errors which remained conspicuous talents throughout his life. In the fall of 1905, already married, Skelton set out on a new tack. He enrolled as a graduate student in political science and economics at the University of Chicago. He had hacl little or no formal training in political science though it has usually been assumed that he had been a student of Adam Shortt's. In fact, at Queen's, he had only, as a modern registrar would phrase it, "audited" a couple of courses in political science, as he had in philosophy, but had sat for no examinations. He had, however, developed an interest in political and economic questions as a student. Indeed, he once told me that his views on Canada's place in the Empire had been formed while working on an undergraduate debate. The subject was Imperial Federation, and coming from a Conservative family and in a university whose principal had been an outspoken advocate of Imperial Federation he learned with dismay that he was to support the negative. Setting desperately to work, he convinced not only the judges but himsel£ Some correspondence with Adam Shortt confirms his growing interest in public policy. Chicago in 1905, as such writers as Dreiser and Sandburg have described it, was a brash and turbulent city, scornful of Boston and the east and teeming with energy. The University had all the vitality of a new institution, and lively minds had been recruited to its professoriate. Skelton's interest was in political science and in what might be broadly called welfare economics. Doubtless he was caught up, to some degree, in that change of climate which marked the tum of the century and which was evidenced by such events as the publication of Charles Booth's Life and Labour in London, the establishment of Toynbee Hall and Hull House, the rise of the Fabian Society, the upsurge of trade unionism, the success of the political labour move61

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ment in the British elections in 1905, and even the establishment of Departments of Labour in Ottawa and Washington. Political science was just emerging from political philosophy, and Charles E. Merriam had begun to demonstrate his power and originality in the reorientation. Thorstein Veblen was at the peak of his powers and had not yet set out on his bohemian wanderings among American universities. The freshness and originality of his thought as well as his formidable learning attracted Skelton. He learned to appreciate the sharp analytical mind ofH. C. Davenport, but economic theory as such repelled him. He seems to have been untouched by Laurence Laughlin and the ponderous Albion Small. A young instructor, little older than Skelton, who died in early middle age, had great influence on his studies. R. F. Roxie's pioneer studies in unionism, particularly industrial unionism, have never been equalled in penetrating analysis. It was he who encouraged Skelton to undertake his study of socialism. Skelton was only two years at Chicago, but they were very busy, crowded years. He redressed his lack of undergraduate studies in the social sciences and at the end of two years was already well into his thesis. He supplemented his meagre budget by writing, and he explored parts of the brawling city which interested him. In 1907 he was appointed Lecturer in Political and Economic Science at Queen's University, and the following year succeeded Adam Shortt as Sir John A. Macdonald Professor. Shortt's first choice as an assistant had been E. R. Peacock, who had been his favourite student and who had already started on his financial career with Dominion Securities. Peacock after some deliberation refused. He said later that it was the right decision, that he thought he became a better financier than Skelton would have been, and that Skelton was an incomparably better scholar than he. The years before World War I are often represented by presentday writers as a period of idyllic calm with no one giving thought to anything but garden parties and inevitable progress. It would be hard to frame a view further from the truth. Throughout the world old assumptions were being questioned, old institutions were cracking, great tensions were evidently growing, and new movements were welling up. The war added some problems, but in the main the war was the concussion which set off charges already laid. The

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Chinese Empire had crumbled. The Japanese, stimulated by the victory over the Russians, began to expand. The Russian Revolution of 1907 failed but gave every assurance of ultimate success and stimulated an immense interest in Russia. New forces were erupting in British India. Germany had launched its challenge to British sea power. The British had tried brinkmanship successfully at Fashoda and the Germans unsuccessfully at Agadir. The Lloyd George budget, the Parliament Bill, and the Home Rule issue produced anything but tranquillity in Britain. The French Republic was riven with dissension and assassination. In the United States, the long Republican regime, after an era of muckraking, gave way to the Democrats. In Canada, the first French-Canadian prime minister had fallen. The succeeding government was finding it hard to control its Ontario Orange and Quebec Nationalist members. There were two unfinished and foundering transcontinental railways. The settlement boom was over and the balance of payments had an ominous shape. The New Statesman started on its career of querulous radicalism in 1913, and the New Republic, with young Walter Lippman as one of its editors, had been launched earlier. Skelton was intensely interested in current political and social developments, and his students shared in his interests and excitement. In his teaching, he devoted himself chiefly to Political Science but lectured also in Economics on distribution of income, socialism, labour problems, and sometimes public finance. Such subjects as constitutional law, political theory, international law, socialism, and comparative government he expounded expertly. We read books, not manuals-Bagehot, Bryce, Lowell. We discussed the leading cases and read the basic documents, but there was no attempt to make research students of undergraduates. Of a different sort were courses on contemporary political thought, and national and imperial problems. Here he was less the authoritative guide than the fellow explorer. He saw his subjects, not as formal disciplines but as straightforward inquiries into human behaviour and thought. Leonard Hobhouse, Graham Wallas, Thorstein Veblen, H. N. Brailsford, H. G. Wells, Walter Lippmann, and others were turning up what were then radical but rational points of view, and we were encouraged to measure them against the older and more conventional scholars.

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Imperial relations and such national problems as bilingual schools or other bicultural questions, immigration, tariffs, British preferences and reciprocity, Senate and electoral reform, and provincial rights-these were subjects which I recall. They were not treated in great depth. Nevertheless, we acquired a knowledge of the historical background and the legal basis and got an intelligent understanding of the issue involved. On Skelton as a teacher, I venture to repeat a paragraph which I wrote a long time ago: "The quality of the lecture, the ironic obiter dicta, and the flippant quotations prevented the students from lapsing into passiveness-wise or unwise. There was no artifice, no setting up of false propositions for students to tear down. He treated immature intellects as if they were mature and gave them his best judgment frankly. More even than his wide-ranging knowledge, it was his objective marshalling of evidence and the obvious soundness of his judgment which impressed his students. At times it was almost discouraging. Why look for the answer, when one knew that Skelton had already reached it? One learned by a sort of contagion. The stimulus came from being able to follow the workings of a mastermind. 'The mark of a master,' said Mr. Justice Holmes, 'is that facts which before lay scattered in an inorganic mass, when he shoots through them the magnetic current of his thought, leap into an organic order, and live and bear fruit .... If you can convince a man that another way oflooking at things is more profound, another form of pleasure is more subtle-if you really make him see it-the very nature of man is such that he will desire the profounder thought and the subtler joy.' " Of Skelton's standing as a scholar I cite only the judgment of others. James Bonar, a graceful scholar who was the first Deputy Master of the Royal Mint in Ottawa, told me that on reading Skelton's Socialism he had felt embarrassed at having written the article on socialism in the ninth edition of the Britannica, for Skelton had so evidently established himselfas the authority in the English-speaking world. Harold Dodds, who retired a few years ago as President of Princeton, told me that when about 19u or 1912 he had decided to undertake graduate work in political science his first choice was to enrol for his Ph.D. at Queen's under Skelton. Eventually, for other than academic reasons, he elected to go to Princeton.

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During his years at Queen's, Skelton wrote prolifically. From 1908 to 1922 there was only one year in which he did not produce a book, or one or two substantial articles. His articles, which appeared in such varied journals as the Journal of Political Economy, Queen's Quarterly, American Economic Review, the New Republic, and the Grain Growers Guide, were concerned generally with current political and economic developments. They were directed in the main to the lay reader, but they combined informed scholarship with imaginative writing and cogent reasoning. His first book, Socialism: A Critical Analysis ( 191 1) was a bit breathtaking in its encyclopaedic scope and compendious size. It comprised critical examinations of the socialist indictment, utopian and Marxian socialist doctrine, and the socialist movements of the major countries. Not all his readers had his talent for compression and sharp focusing on the critical issues. In comparison with earlier books on socialism it was by a wide margin weightier in substance and more penetrating in analysis. It was distinguished particularly by its balanced judgment and lively writing. Of course, it was published six years before the Russian Revolution. Plans to bring out new editions never came to fruition. But though the book is dated it is not obsolete. The quotation of a few sentences will illustrate. In discussing the probable impact of communism on liberty, Skelton wrote: Especially dangerous would be the control of the organs of opinion. One of the most disquieting features of the present time is the grip which predatory interests have on a large part of the press, the paralyzing influence of the advertising on the editorial department. But today there is outlet possible for any group of enthusiasts seeking expression. Under an individualist regime socialist papers rise and flourish. Under a socialist regime would individualist heretics find as easy utterance? Would the Capital of the revolutionary Marx of the future receive the imprimatur of the state printing bureau? Discontent, now scattered among scores of individual offenders, would then be concentrated on the state as sole offender, but its legal and peaceful expression would be made more difficult. Today liberty is to many made a mockery by lack of equipment for the struggle, but the best way to make it real, to equalize opportunity, is not to set up a system which denies liberty to all. (Socialism [Cambridge, Mass., 1911], 215.)

The young radicals of the thirties would have deemed this paragraph antiquated and irrelevant to the new era, but Mr. Khrushchev

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would find it realistic and pertinent. He might even use it in his wordy war with Mao. Skelton wrote four books for the three series promoted by Glasgow, Brook & Company in the second decade of the century. The General Economic History written for "Canada and its Provinces" was really the first extended economic history of Canada to be published and was competently done. It did not, however, reveal Skelton at his best. The boundaries were too tightly drawn. He did not willingly work within a fence. The Railway Builders was a study soundly based on research and well written for the general reader; it opened up resources which others have mined more extensively since. The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier was a companion to Sir Joseph Pope's Day of Sir John A. Macdonald and a brief forerunner of the official biography. The Canadian Dominion in the "Chronicle of America" series was written in his best style and was the best short history of the Dominion until Professor Creighton produced his Dominion of the North. These years, 191 1-2 I, were years of quite amazing productiveness. Skelton carried his full teaching duties and added other ones during the war. He initiated and wrote a substantial part of the courses in banking carried on for the Canadian Bankers Association. Before the end of the period he had become Dean of the Faculty of Arts under a new and inexperienced principal. In the later years he was also editor of the journal of the Canadian Bankers Association. Yet the Canadian Dominion ( 1919) was followed quickly by his massive Life and Times of Sir Alexander Tilloch Galt (1920). In historical research and in the light shed on a rather neglected yet formative phase of Canadian history, this is perhaps his most enduring book. Other books will be re-written with differing emphasis and new materials, but Galt, as the doer among the Fathers of Confederation and the sturdy builder of much of the structure of Canadian business and government, will remain much as Skelton drew him. The Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier was published in 1 92 I, two years after Sir Wilfrid's death. Work had been proceeding on it, however, for the better part of ten years. It was undertaken at Laurier's request and with his active co-operation. Skelton had begun his acquaintance with Sir Wilfrid in the summer of 191 1 when he worked with Mackenzie King providing material for the reci-

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procity campaign. There was no extended diary to complicate the task, but papers in great volume were placed at Skelton's disposal and ultimately given to him. There was no Rockefeller grant and no research staff. With one secretary, he worked through the collection and had the advantage oflong talks with Sir Wilfrid on the important aspects of his career. The younger man, like many others, was charmed by Laurier and developed great admiration for his courtliness, tolerance, and bread th of view. The result was an informed, highly readable, and sympathetic biography. The papers of other politicians have since become available which shed additional light on some questions, and some day, when our biographers have become completely frustrated in trying to unravel the life of Mackenzie King, we shall have a new life of Laurier, more widely informed and in longer perspective. Skelton's Life, however, still stands among the best of Canadian political biographies. The biography of Laurier drew almost immediate fire from J. W. Dafoe of the Manitoba Free Press. He wrote a series of articles in characteristic white heat which were published in 1922 in book form. Having been a close observer and at times a vehement participant in Canadian politics since the early eighties, Dafoe had a natural desire to say his say on questions in which he had been deeply involved and to supply from personal knowledge, and in colour, details which did not appear in the records. This did not excuse, however, his unmannerly references to Skelton as an "official" biographer who would disclose nothing derogatory to his hero. Dafoe, as a journalist, was often intemperate, but rarely irrelevant. Dafoe on Laurier becomes more understandable after reading Ramsay Cook's recent and excellent book The Politics ofJohn W. Dafoe of the Free Press (Toronto, 1963). Most ofus who knew the older man were unaware of or had forgotten his lack of sympathy with the French and his strong Protestant bias, though we were familiar with his ardent desire to westernize the Liberals. To Dafoe the movement toward Union Government was a matter of conviction on the conduct of the war and the outcome of growing dissent on the part of the western Liberals. Skelton, without denying the participation of sincere people, stressed the difficulty ofLaurier's position in maintaining Canadian unity and emphasized the War67

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time Election Act, which Dafoe did not mention, as an integral part of the scheme. The chapter dealing with these events was bound to be controversial, but Skelton asserted privately that on no part of the book was he more willing to stake his reputation. To my recollection Skelton did not reply to Dafoe's attack, but about ten years later (1932) when Dafoe appeared as the official biographer of Clifford Sifton, Skelton wrote an extended review in the Q,ueen's Q,uarterry. It was a generous review, generous to Sifton's talents and achievements and generous to Dafoe as a biographer, even when Dafoe gave his hero the benefit of the doubt. Skelton did, however, review critically Sifton's differences with Laurier, and in the last few sentences nailed down swiftly and firmly the evidence that Sifton had, in fact, in 1917, abruptly and late in the day, changed his mind on acceptable Liberal policy after assurances of agreement with Laurier. After 1921 Skelton wrote no books. A chapter in the Cambridge History of the British Empire was published in 1930 but had been written much earlier. There were a few articles and some addresses. In 1937 he gave a series of lectures at Fulton, Missouri, under the title: "Our Generation: Its Gains and Losses." They were written in his authentic style, perceptive, balanced, wide-sweeping. They were recollections, recalled in something less than tranquillity. They did not attract the attention given to the lecture delivered a decade later under the same auspices by Winston Churchill. The summer of 1922 Skelton spent in Europe, recruiting university staff and taking a quick look at post-war Europe. He wrote for the Toronto Globe and other papers a series of ten articles, "The Remaking of Europe." They were journalism, but good journalism, informed, accurate, and relevant. When in early 1923 Mackenzie King asked him to undertake the preparations for the coming Imperial Conference and to accompany him to London, a new chapter opened in Skelton's life. He was absent from Queen's from May to December, 1923, returned for the first part of 1924, and then became Counsellor in the Department of External Affairs, to succeed Sir Joseph Pope as Under-Secretary on his retirement in 1925. Skelton had addressed the Canadian Club of Ottawa in 1922 on "Canada and Foreign Policy." It was a reasoned plea for Canadian

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control of our own foreign policy. He started from a recent speech of Lloyd George, who had stated that "the instrument for the foreign policy of the Empire is the British Foreign Office." He explained what a reversal this was of the evolution of the past two generations. He argued for Canadian control of Canadian foreign policy. He urged that it was mainly economic policy, inseparable from domestic policy. Canadian control did not mean isolation. "Let us take our part, but let it be a modest part and at the same time an intelligent part." He finished his address: "And let us remember too that as a matter of actual fact we have assumed, and with cumulative rapidity in the last few years, control over the greater part of this field of foreign policy through our own government, and that the path of security, the path of safety, the path of responsibility, the path of honour and of duty toward other nations in the world lies, I think, in following that course to the logical end." Re-reading this address, one has the feeling almost that Skelton might have been preaching for a call. Mackenzie King was present and confided in his diary: "An excellent address ... would make an excellent foundation for Canadian policy on External Affairs and Skelton himself would make an excellent man for that department. At the luncheon I told him he might be wanted there someday." Whether he was preaching for a call or not, it was a good sermon. I think in fact, however, that he was disturbed by the turn recent statements on imperial policy had taken. He urgently wished to influence Canadian thinking on this subject to which he had devoted thought for years. Ramsay Cook records that Sir Clifford Sifton, in urging J. W. Dafoe to accept King's invitation to accompany him to the Imperial Conference as press representative, noted that Skelton was going but that he (Sir Clifford) was "not impressed with the profoundness of his grasp of the subject." There is an air of surprise, too, in Dafoe's report after reading the material prepared for the Conference that it was "soundly Canadian in every respect and advanced. Practically identical F.P. position." One is left with the impression that it may have been the least little bit more advanced than the Free Press position. Bruce Hutchison reports another comment of Dafoe's in The Incredible Canadian, that F

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•.. as early as 1920 he [Dafoe] had written to his friend Borden that "the only possible status for Canada, in my judgment, is that of complete nationhood on the basis of equality with Great Britain.... The executive government in Canada would be vested in the King advised by his Canadian Minister." There, unheeded at the time, was the germ ofa new Commonwealth.... The fantastic invention of a monarch divided into half a dozen or more separate official persons.

One is reminded of the fog over the Channel which isolated the Continent, but the fog was closer in. In February, 1920, Skelton had published two articles entitled "Canada, the Empire, the League" in which he rejected imperial federation, union with the United States, and independence, and argued in favour of a Britannic alliance of equal nations, citing Laurier, Borden, Doherty, Rowell, and others in support of his arguments. He ended by setting out eight specific steps necessary to achieve full equality, including the securing of formal power to amend our constitution. And in what journal were the articles published? Surprisingly, in the Grain Growers' Guide And where was the Grain Growers' Guide published? Within a stone's throw of the Free Press building. Though public exposition and advocacy appeared desirable to Skelton in 1920 and 1921, his ideas had taken shape long before. I am able to read from lecture notes taken by a sophomore in the elementary class in political science in March, 1914. After tracing the evolution of autonomy in trade policy and in treaty negotiation, from the days of Galt and Macdonald, Skelton continued: Along with this breaking down of the old conception of Empire as implying subordination, there has grown up a new ideal of Empire, that of alliance between equal states, bound together by allegiance to a common King and by other agencies of co-operation. Particularly in the last dozen years, this conception has become familiar to people on both sides of the Atlantic. It is the conception that has governed the relations between the United Kingdom and the self-governing dominions in most formal actions. It has been most specifically set forth as the real situation by men such as Premiers Borden and Laurier, Mr. Asquith and Mr. Balfour in England, Mr. Deakin and Mr. Fisher in Australia. There sometimes survive, it is true, in the thought and speech of statesmen and of the man of the street, vestiges of the older view, as for example when last week Mr. Winston Churchill made a glowing peroration to his speech with a reference to "our splendid possessions." Under this conception we have "equality of status if

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not of stature," a free and equal alliance between communities of varying strength and at varying stages of development. It implies that the Australian living in Sydney would have just as much control over the South African living in Capetown as would the Englishman in London.

The lecture, as was proper, was exposition and not advocacy. It ended with choices not answers. But there was no doubt in the minds of his youthful listeners what the speaker's views were. There is a later sentence in the same lecture which perhaps gives a clue as to why Skelton was anxious to speak out in 1920 and 1921. He said (March, 1914): "If war between England and Germany were to come in a year or two, it would undoubtedly give impetus to the centralizing scheme." The question of priority is, of course, neither important nor even real. Skelton and Dafoe had arrived at similar, almost identical, views on these questions. Both saw full autonomy as the logical and practical extension of the evolution of Canadian history. Both knew that Canadians, in the face of real issues, whether Galt on tariffs, John A. Macdonald on the Treaty of Washington, Laurier on the Navy, or Borden on Versailles, came down on the side of autonomy. Both were influenced by John S. Ewart, attracted by the sharpness of his mind but repelled by its rigidity and prejudice. Both had shied away from the Round Table group, the successors of Milner's Kindergarten, with their neat plans for a centralized Empire. Both were deeply suspicious of such men as Curzon who saw the Empire as power in negotiation. Dafoe did not bring to the Conference of 1923 ideas novel to his associates, either his own or Sifton's. He brought political knowledge and the promise of support to an uncertain prime minister, a great skill in forceful advocacy, and no small experience in political manreuvre. It was Skelton who set out the issues, documented the precedents and reduced the answers to hard words. Professor Cook quotes Dafoe's blunt comment on a draft statement: "Two good clear clauses by Skelton and two more by King that were 'a jumble of words.'" There was no subject on which Skelton was clearer and more confident in his thinking than on Commonwealth relations. He sometimes said jocularly that any uncertainty disappeared when he found that the great pundit on the subject, A. Berriedale Keith, disagreed with him.

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The Conference of 1923 established the pattern of agreement. It was left to the Conference of 1926 to put it into words. The biographers agree that King was reluctant to be in the forefront of these discussions and, by being late in taking up Hertzog's line, missed the boat as far as public credit was concerned. King often was more concerned with being in step with history than with appearing to shape it. I cannot comment usefully and at any length on later Commonwealth and foreign policy issues. I have not searched the files of External Affairs and I am one of the dwindling few who have not read Mackenzie King's diary. I can well imagine a great unwillingness on Skelton's part that Canada, a country without oil or substantial navy, should give even the appearance of proposing oil sanctions against Mussolini. He repeatedly stressed that as a small power our proposals in foreign policy should be intelligent but modest, in accordance with our resources. He feared responsibility without control. In 1920 Skelton had written hopefully of the League of Nations, even of the contentious Article X. As the years went on he seemed to become disillusioned. Less and less did the League exercise effective influence in countering the ambitions of any great power. Bruce Hutchinson states in The Incredible Canadian that Skelton urged neutrality on Mackenzie King in 1939. This I would have to have confirmed and from some other source than Mackenzie King's diary. Skelton by this time had become extraordinarily expert in his understanding of the complicated processes by which Mackenzie King made up his mind. He knew how prone King was to fall back on a formula: "Parliament will decide." He knew that there must be not only decision but understanding of the decision and its implications. He knew that it is not a civil servant's responsibility to make decisions for his Minister but to ensure that the Minister understands the evidence and the implications. Skelton not only understood King's mind. He had an intimate understanding of the mind of Ernest Lapointe. Mr. King had a habitual note of complaint against people who forced him to clarify his mind. I am sure that extensive evidence, ifit exists, would show something quite different from Mr. Hutchinson's brief report. Among 0. D. Skelton's greatest contributions was the immense

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strengthening of his own Department and the civil service generally. He had watched with sympathy and interest Adam Shortt's efforts as Civil Service Commissioner to bring persons of ability and knowledge, and particularly university graduates, into the Service. To a degree Shortt had in mind the British civil service as a model and wished to build up an administrative grade, selected by academic examination, and attractive to university people. He had some measure of success in this and added to the service a number who gained later distinction, but he encountered ministerial opposition. Finally, when he refused to sign a certificate of competence to the nominee of Hon. Robert Rogers for a post in Public Works, he was firmly persuaded to accept a position at the Public Archives. Skelton had a unique opportunity. There were only three officers in the Department of External Affairs when he joined it. He set to work to generate applications and ensure careful selection. He always had a most generous view of the possibilities of youthful talents, and he actively sought young people of promise. He asked help wherever there was hope of getting it. He compiled lists of junior academics, and he had an expert knowledge of academic talents as well as academic salaries. I recall supplying him by request with such a list. I have no recollection of how many of the names I gave him were selected, but it is gratifying to recall that the present Prime Minister's name was on my list. Skelton seems to have discerned that, in a university or a government service, the best method of recruiting a team is to attract a sprinkling or a nucleus of a few brilliant individuals and then select carefully among those whom the nucleus attracts. Though he solicited applications, they were dealt with by the regular selection process of the Civil Service Commission; only a few senior appointments were made by Order-inCouncil. His influence and interest strengthened the selection procedure and the Commission. But Skelton's influence on the recruitment of the public service went far beyond his own department. His very presence in Ottawa drew attention to the opportunities for interesting and satisfying work. Deputy Ministers are named by the Prime Minister, and both Mr. Bennett and Mr. King sought his advice, though not invariably. One of his signal contributions was in the appointment of W. C. Clark as Deputy Minister of Finance. Clark had been persuaded to

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leave investment work in New York to rejoin the staff of Queen's University. Skelton, who was in charge of preparation for the Imperial Economic Conference of 1932, seized on this unexpected opportunity and asked him to prepare the document on monetary and financial policy. Mr. Bennett quickly learned to appreciate a mind which was bold, imaginative, and knowledgeable in a field where Mr. Bennett himself was less inhibited by his preconceptions and commitments than in some others. He learned also, and not fortuitously, that while Clark's political leanings might appear murky, his father had been a solid Conservative. It was Clifford Clark in turn who drew Mr. Bennett's attention to the great merits of Graham Towers as a possible first Governor of the Bank of Canada. Years later the public service of Canada was recognized as among the best in the world. Much of the credit for this must go to 0. D. Skelton, ably supported by Clifford Clark and many others. His contribution was not limited to recruitment. He was always strongly on the side of able persons already in the service who lacked adequate opportunity. Skelton was not only permanent head of the Department of External Affairs, he did much of the work now done by the Secretary of the Cabinet. He was in addition the Prime Minister's general deputy and adviser. Before he joined the public service, he had been a declared Liberal, though by no means an undiscriminating one. He had taken some part in at least two general elections. Neither he nor any one else in 1924 would judge that Mackenzie King had a secure hold on the office of prime minister. He had therefore faced, before accepting a government post, the prospect of serving under Ministers of different parties and was clear in his mind as to the role of a permanent civil servant. He was clear that ultimate decisions were made by Ministers and by Parliament. The duty of the civil servant is to see that his Minister understands governmental and national issues,· as distinct from purely political issues, to see that all the available and significant evidence is put before his Minister and that he understands it, and when the decision has been made to see that it is carried out. Anything beyond this, and there is often much, rests on the personal relations with the Minister and is dependent on the Minister's initiative.

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Skelton's relations with Mr. Meighen, during his brief tenure, were, I think, excellent. I recall him expressing delight at the dispatch with which the new Prime Minister had reached a number of decisions and signed an accumulation of documents which had been dangling for months. R. B. Bennett, on taking office, looked dubiously on Skelton, principally because he knew that Skelton did not look favourably on Mr. Bennett's programme for blasting his way into the markets of the world. Skelton was not one of the delegation to the Imperial Conference of 1930. He was not perturbed. Indeed, I suspect this was one of the Conferences he was glad to miss. The main engagement having been won, he was tired of a kind of guerrilla warfare carried on in a committee on economic arrangements of which he was secretary. Soon he was very fully in Mr. Bennett's confidence, a trusted adviser, though one who had inexplicable and unfortunate aberrations on questions of tariff and trade policy. Mr. Bennett did not extend trust very widely. Skelton once told me ofreading one evening in an English political biography of some extraordinarily sharp dealing between cabinet colleagues. It was so sharp and unprincipled as to be amusing. He recounted it next morning to the Prime Minister, who was not amused. "You know," he said ferociously, "that's the kind of thing my colleague X would do." From Mr. Bennett, Skelton had not only trust, but consideration for his health and convenience and many perceptive kindnesses. Of his relations with Mr. King, others have spoken, are about to speak, or will speak voluminously in the future. There were few issues on which he was not consulted. No one could have known the intricate mind of Mackenzie King more accurately than he. One sometimes felt that he knew what King was going to decide, but rarely when. It once fell to my lot to present a particularly unpalatable legislative proposal to the War Committee of the Cabinet. The issues were: would the Government adopt it, and if so, would they enact it by Order-in-Council under the War Measures Act or call a special session of Parliament? I think I am not violating the oath of secrecy, which to my knowledge I never took, when I say that the discussion consisted mainly of bitter complaint at being asked to do this, and some proposals for ineffective and inappropriate alternatives, As we came out of the door at the conclusion of the meeting,

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Skelton said: "You should get the bill drafted right away." "But," I objected, "I could not detect that any decision at all had been reached!" "No," he said pursing his lips, "but don't lose any time in preparing the legislation." Mackenzie King was an exacting and to a degree unpredictable taskmaster. His heart bled for those who sewed mail-bags, but he was only rarely perceptive about those who worked for him. There are few certainties about the life of Mackenzie King, but this is certain: he could never have been elected by the wives of those who worked for him! By no one was he served with greater patience and more unreinitting effort than by 0. D. Skelton. Through the last years, Skelton persisted in carrying out his full duties in precarious health, telling his doctor, who did not long survive him, that he would let up when he saw his medical adviser taking it easy. He relinquished few of his responsibilities. Day after day, through his dinner hour or late at night, he waited unutterably weary and pale for War Committee or Cabinet to end their long discussions in order that he might be available to the Prime Minister, transmit the results, or set the wheels in motion. There are, on the occasion of 0. D. Skelton's death, generous sentences in Mr. King's diary, as admirably reported by Mr. Pickersgill, and some revealing ones: "The most serious loss thus far sustained in my public life.... Someone to lean up on as a real support .... There was a fine sense of security with Skelton at hand ... it seemed part of the inevitable ... part of a great purpose ... there must be a purpose and, as I see it, it may be meant to cause me to rely more completely on my own judgment in making decisions ..•. " Mr. Pickersgill adds: "No one ever completely took Skelton's place." Skelton served with unequalled loyalty and stubborn devotion, but it was not, as I saw it, a loyalty to Mackenzie King; he remained his own man. It was loyalty to the Prime Minister ofhis country, and latterly his country in peril. It was also loyalty to an ideal he had formed and elaborated in his own mind of the qualities of a great civil servant and a great civil service. When he left academic life, he had made, after long thought, an irrevocable decision. (He rejected a later opportunity to return.) There were certain issues, principally Commonwealth issues, on which he wanted to exercise influence. Beyond, he saw the possibilities of a great public service, and a great

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northern community of free men. During his lifetime he was able to see results flowing from his unflagging efforts. Some of Skelton's books will live. His name will recur in histories and political biographies for decades to come. Some of his work is built into our institutions and laws. But beyond this, where, here and there, people value knowledge as the basis of understanding, prize reason and tolerance as gateways to peaceful accommodation, give high place to personal and professional integrity and feel a valiant and decent pride in being Canadian, there will be some persisting influence of 0. D. Skelton.

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CHARLES MAIR

Let us admit at once that what we are doing here is part of a pervasive national pastime; we are examining, as the title of the lecture series itself proclaims, aspects of "Our Living Tradition." We do this, with varying degrees of confidence, in the expectation that an understanding of the men and events that have shaped the Canadian past will lead to a clarification of the Canadian present and provide a sense of direction for the future. Some of the lecturers here in this series have shed new light on the giants of the tradition-men and women who, in their own'right, have captured and held the public imagination. But over the years there have also appeared the names of others who strike no immediate note of recognition; in many cases they are men who have failed in unspectacular ways (the spectacular failures usually head the pantheon), but who by their failures tell us something about ourselves. Charles Mair obviously falls into this category. The surface image which he presents to us is unimpressive, whether from the literary or the historical record. Until recently the recorded accounts of his life were scattered, fragmentary, and sometimes contradictory. It is only through the focus provided by the large accumulation of his papers preserved at Queen's University that a different picture is beginning to emerge. My own probings into the then unsorted bulk of the Mair material some ten years ago have been followed by a most comprehensive research project undertaken by Professor Norman Shrive of McMaster University, who is at present preparing for the press what will undoubtedly be the definitive biography of Charles Mair. Pro-

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fessor Shrive's articles on Mair's part in the Red River Rebellion, in Canadian Literature, are an earnest of the great value of his research. What are the bare facts with which we have to begin? To the literary historian Charles Mair is a minor Canadian poet who published a small volume of verse, Dreamland and Other Poems, in 1868; a verse drama, Tecumseh, in 1886; a composite volume, Tecumseh and Canadian Poems, in 1901 ; and one work in prose, Through the Mackenzie Basin, in 1908. A postscript to the history of his works is the enshrinement of most of them, in 1926, as volume XIV of John Garvin's "Master-Works of Canadian Authors" series. That this event nearly coincided with Mair's own death and that of his literary reputation can only in part be attributed to the hyperbole of Robert Norwood's introduction to the volume. In these five miscellaneous books, then, lies the public record of a life that spanned nearly ninety years, from 1838 to 1927. In the month that Mair was born, Lord Durham set sail from Quebec to make his report to Parliament. In the month that he died, Canada was celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of Confederation. From Mackenzie to Mackenzie King is a living tradition in itself. Let me outline briefly some of the events of that long life-events which are varied and interesting enough in themselves apart from their significance in a wider context. Charles Mair was born in Lanark, Upper Canada, in 1838, the youngest of seven children. His family was in reasonably comfortable circumstances, and, as was true of so many households of prospering settlers in established Upper Canada towns and villages, there was an emphasis on education and, as far as was possible, the cultivation of the arts. There is evidence, at all events, that a broad range of books was available to members of the Mair family and that there was encouragement that they should be read. As a freshman of eighteen Mair enrolled at Queen's, but at the end of his first year difficulties in the family business prevented him from going on with his Arts course, and he returned home to help. By the year of Confederation he was in a position to continue his education, and he returned to Queen's, this time as a medical student. He had been writing poetry in the meantime and in 1868 had his first volume, Dreamland and Other Poems, accepted for publication. It was during the summer of 1868, while he was in Ottawa arranging for details of 79

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publication, that events occurred which changed the course of his life. Through Henry J. Morgan, a journalist friend, Mair met three other young men: George T. Denison, William A. Foster, and Robert Haliburton, the son of Thomas Chandler Haliburton. The five of them, young, enthusiastic, and visionary; meeting as they were in the capital of a nation not yet a year old, argued and dreamed and put rhetorical questions to each other-questions which we, in the same city and nearly a century later, are still asking, although, as I shall try to point out, the answers may be implicit in the questions. What did it mean to be a Canadian? Where was Canada going? How could they help? The first year of a nation's existence is the obvious time for such questions, and one might have expected a multiplicity of such groups of enthusiasts debating with optimism all the implications of nationalism, its heady visions, and its responsibilities. We are all familiar today with the fact of Afro-Asian nationalism, and it is a poor ex-colony indeed that does not have its flag all ready to run up the masthead when independence day comes. But Mair and his friends were concerned because no one else seemed to be. They complained about apathy; they wondered if anyone really cared about Canada; they were afraid that the high promise of Confederation would dwindle away to nothing. Mair, who had been working during the summer for William Macdougall, collating the treaties between the Hudson's Bay Company and the Indians, added another theme, not unfamiliar even now, that Canadian resources were being exploited by outside corporations. Yet all these pleas, familiar enough in nationalism everywhere, had a special and paradoxical quality in nineteenth-century Canada. Rather than nationhood coming as a climax to nationalism, Mair and his friends had to deal with a completely new set of circumstances. That the Canadian experiment was to provide the pattern for the future development of the British Commonwealth could not be known in 1868. The whole concept of dominion status-of virtual independence within a larger constitutional framework-posed bewildering problems for the post-confederation nationalist. He had no new and striking flag to wave, and he did not really want one, because everyone knew that a completely separate flag meant a completely separate state, and if that came about the United States was 80

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waiting to add some new stars to Old Glory. Nationalism, in the accepted sense, therefore, was "unnatural" in terms of Canada, for followed to its logical conclusion it would lead to the extinction of the Canadian identity. As this was unthinkable to all except the annexationists, experiments had to be made with a different type oflogic. The five young men themselves, and the differences between them, provide a good example of the way in which these experiments were to be tried. Denison was a cavalry officer, proud of his United Empire Loyalist origins, sometimes pompous, always direct, and fiercely determined to uphold Canada (typically, he was later to remark that "a rattling war with the United States" would be just the thing to arouse Canadian national feeling). Quick to take offence at what he considered to be British patronage towards "colonials," he nevertheless felt himself to be the rightful heir to all the riches of the British tradition, and he could not contemplate any future for Canada where it was not possible to maintain these. He therefore saw no paradox involved in asserting (as he does in a letter to Mair) his qualifications for being a Life Member of the St. George Society, his pride in so being, and his belief that "it is all wrong" and that Canada should have such institutions of her own. Denison was later to lecture to many groups on the dury of Canadians to develop a national feeling, and, in a notable speech in 1871, he proclaimed that Canada must become the "largest ... the most populous, the most warlike, and the most powerful" nation in the world, for the express purpose of strengthening the British connection. Britain would surely want to keep her ties with Canada then! These views were clearly quite different from Robert Haliburton's. Haliburton had inherited many of his famous father's aristocratic sympathies, and to these he added racial overtones. Canadians were "the Men of the North," inherently superior through their racial purity and through the training in positive action and survival which the rigours of the Canadian climate imposed-superior to those living in the United States, who were not only racially confused but rendered ineffective because of their more temperate climate. Here too a virtue is made of necessity and extremes of size and climate become positive assets. Factors "unnatural" in more restricted and temperate lands become "natural" within the Canadian logic: challenges which call forth equivalent responses. 81

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Haliburton's eventual aim for Canada was complete independence, and he saw the task of arousing a Canadian national feeling as the necessary prelude to this. He later sought Mair's support for a proposal that the North West Territories should be called "Norland" as a first step to having the name replace that of Canada when the nation became independent. Morgan and Foster were less sure of the precise direction which they wished to follow. In its early days the group appeared to be united in its aim: "the creation ofa national sentiment." It was only later, when this generalization had to be translated into action that differences became apparent. In the meantime, how were the founders of this group, soon to be known as "Canada First," to begin the task of creating a national sentiment? Almost at once Charles Mair found an opportunity thrust upon him. He was offered by Macdougall the post of paymaster to the party surveying the Fort Garry Road at the Red River Settlement. While acceptance meant postponing his return to his medical studies, Mair was sufficiently fired by the enthusiasm of the summer to see in the offer a chance to further the aims of the group. So offhe wentto the North West, full of optimism and confidence, not only as paymaster to the road party but also as a correspondent of the Toronto Globe. The fascinating story of how Mair managed to antagonize, in a very brief time, the majority of the inhabitants of the Red River Settlement, even to the extent of a public horsewhipping inflicted on him at the post office by the outraged wife of a settler, has been told in detail by Professor Shrive (Canadian Literature, no. 1 7, pp. 6-20) who concludes: "For Charles Mair, less than a year after he had journeyed to Ottawa with his manuscript of Dreamland, a work intended to sound a key-note of a new, united nation, had by his pen, ironically, helped to create a situation of potential danger to Confederation itself." The articles about the North West which Mair had sent back to the Globe had been full of tremendous enthusiasm about the potential of the area. Here was a vast and fertile empire waiting for Canada to develop for herself; and in sounding this note Mair was consistently applying the principles upon which the five friends had been agreed during the summer. In stressing the visionary aspects of what this land could become, he made a number of points, by contrast, highly

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unflattering to the current inhabitants. Mair regarded the metis with suspicion as possible allies of the United States and supporters of annexation; the Hudson's Bay Company was already identified in his mind with economic imperialism, and the fur trappers represented a reactionary influence which might impede the agricultural future which he saw for the country. The settlers, on the other hand, saw Mair as one who had abused their hospitality by calling for a great flood of Ontario settlers who would come in with the avowed purpose of swamping them and their customs. Mair's call for a Canadian national sentiment seemed to them nothing but an Ontario expansionism bent on extending itself into the North West. In its first practical application, therefore, the aim of the Canada First group revealed its basic flaw. No matter how tactless Mair may have been personally, the very terms in which the group saw the problem of national feeling ensured that it could not succeed. Mair and his friends recognized the existence of regionalism in Canada, but they saw it, not as a positive force which could be used and directed to build a concept of national unity, but as an obstacle which had to be beaten down before a national sentiment was possible. As a result, very few of their pronouncements offer any common ground on which, for example, the French Canadians of Quebec could meet them. There is a blithe disregard for this basic problem, and the assumption that eventually the French element would become assimilated as the "good loyal Canadians" (to use Denison's term) spread out to populate the rest of the country. There need be little wonder that such an interpretation of Canadian national sentiment should prove to be a divisive rather than a unifying force, or that it should be seen, and not only in Quebec, as itself a regional device, designed to spread the influence of Ontario over the rest of Canada. During the first Riel Rebellion, Mair was taken prisoner and sentenced to death. He escaped, and, after many adventures in which he showed considerable courage and powers of endurance, he reached St. Paul en route for Toronto. Once in Toronto, he was determined to spread his sense of outrage about what was happening at Red River. In this he was supported by a fire-breathing Denison. So successfully was Toronto opinion aroused that a civic reception

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was given for Mair and his fellow-refugee Schultz. Back in the emotion-charged atmosphere of Toronto, Mair felt he could let himself go, and from the Globe reports of his speech (April 7, 1870) he compounded his former comments on the local inhabitants of Red River, adding such remarks as "the French have an aptitude for falling into the modes of savages," a statement which, presumably, he did not think was prejudicial to the cause of national unity. With the slogan "Death to the Murderers and Tyrants of Fort Garry," Mair's party set off by train to try to persuade Sir John A. Macdonald not to see Riel's emissaries. There were patriotic displays and receptions along the route, those at Cobourg and Belleville being particularly notable. The mission failed, however, and Denison, for one, was so disgusted with Macdonald that he did not again have a good word to say for him until the Prime Minister had proved his staunch Canadianism to Denison's satisfaction by his statement: "A British subject I was born, a British subject I will die." The Wolseley expedition was sent to Winnipeg to coincide with the admission of Manitoba to Confederation. But there was no trouble; Riel and his followers had dispersed. There was to be no dramatic finale after all. Mair rejoined his wife in Portage, opened a general store, and settled down to an apparently anticlimactic and peaceful existence. No later events in Mair's life rival the drama of the 1869-70 period, and although the remaining fifty-seven years were to be varied enough, the events of that, for him, Great Year, were to colour and influence everything that followed. Discouraged by the loss in the Riel Rebellion of the only manuscript copies of poems which he had hoped to make the nucleus of a second collection, Mair "postponed" his literary activities until he felt he had achieved a measure of economic security. Poetry, it seemed, was a luxury in the west in a way it had not been in the more settled atmosphere of eastern Ontario. Seven years later, and now with five children, despite business success and social prestige, Mair had second thoughts about the glowing future he had so confidently predicted for Portage. He pulled up his roots and moved to Prince Albert. The C.P.R. was coming, and when the ports of Hudson Bay were opened up-a theme on which he hammered away in periodic articles-Prince Albert would be the real crossroads of the country. 84

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Within four years, by 1882, Mair was the largest landowner in Prince Albert. But trouble threatened. The C.P.R. was re-routed farther south, bad seasons followed, and fresh controversy arose over Mair's part in the Red River Rebellion. Discouraged, but keeping his Prince Albert holdings in the hope that his judgment might be vindicated, Mair moved his family to Windsor, Ontario, and began to write his verse drama Tecumseh. In the second Riel Rebellion of 1885 both Denison and Mair were officers in the same regiment, but neither was anywhere near any action. Riel was executed, Tecumseh was finished, published in 1886, and was well received. Revived, Mair moved back to Prince Albert and for a time seemed to prosper, but the slump continued. More and more settlers began to move out of the town, and Mair saw his holdings steadily diminish in value. Plans for an epic poem dealing with the British influence on Canada were shelved in favour of more urgent problems. In 1892 he made a foray farther west still, this time to Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia. He opened a general store there, and his family followed him the next year. But this venture, too, failed to succeed. Nearly destitute, the family moved back to Prince Albert, hoping against hope that a miracle would happen and that prosperity would return to the area. In 1898, at the age of sixty, Mair was employed in Clifford Sifton's Department of the Interior in Winnipeg. He was to be an immigration agent for the next twentyfour years. In 1903 he was inspector at Lethbridge, Alberta, and later at Fort Steele, British Columbia. He was involved in the treaty negotiations with the Indians of the Peace and Mackenzie districts, and his prose work, Through the Mackenzie Basin, is the result of these experiences. He retired in 1921 at the age of 83 and died nearly six years later. What relationship is there between Mair's poetry and this long life of early excitement followed by struggle, succeeded in turn, at an age when most men are thinking of retirement, by almost a quarter of a century in the civil service? While I have discussed this question more fully elsewhere (Tradition in Exile, Toronto, 1962), I must mention here some of the issues connected with the publication of Garvin's collected edition of Mair's works in 1926. The correspondence between the two men is important for the light which it sheds on Mair's evaluation of his own work, and on the curious fate G

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in Canada of the type of nationalism which Mair had supported for so long. In 1868, Dreamland had been well received. The timing of the publication had been fortunate, and on all sides there was encouragement for the young poet. Despite recurrent pleas by authors that in a young country publication is difficult and criticism over-harsh, this has rarely been true in Canada. While the level of criticism has been generally high, it has, on the whole, welcomed local authors who showed any real sign of talent; nor have publishers been unwilling to assume the risk of publishing them. For Mair, in 1868, to be called "the Canadian Keats" was the height of praise. He felt that he was writing within the English poetic tradition, and saw nothing incongruous in applying its diction and conventions to the Canadian scene. This apparently "unnatural" type ofliterary nationalism became, as we shall see, the way in which an authentic Canadian literary voice was to emerge. On the surface the poetry is imitative-"pale Keatsian and Wordsworthian echoes"-sufficiently imitative to discourage further examination by many early twentieth-century critics. Yet Mair was writing in a tradition which was to be extended by Lampman to a stage where the old forms-still imitative on the surface-were made to serve new purposes, and where the old images were transformed in the description of a new landscape and a subtly different concept of Nature. This evolution and development of theme and purpose within the form of an existing tradition is not nearly as exciting as a literary call-to-arms to "make it new"-it is not even as obvious an earnest of good faith as the sprinkling of local place-names through the pages. The self-conscious attempt to create a fully grown, nonderivative literature was attempted in the United States, where literary nationalism could take its place as the respectable partner of a general and official public patriotism. It was a noisy element in Australian literary history. But in Canada, where, under these conditions, he who would keep his identity must first lose it, it would not do. Mair's first volume gives hints of this process of evolutionary adaptation. There are still many poems of nature which attempt to evoke a mood in terms so general that there is no hint that this idealized landscape really exists-nothing to tie it to the Canadian 86

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scene from which it may progress, ifit possesses the power, to a more universal significance. It is only in a few poems that Mair sharpens his focus for a little and describes the minutiae of the scene before him without striking a pose about it. These poems were apprentice pieces -promising, for he was a young man, a hopeful beginning perhaps to a long literary career. But Canada First intervened and brought with it a set of new pressures. Haliburton had written a favourable review of Mair's first book, but in a private letter he had added some advice that was to have far-reaching consequences. If the five Canada First founders were to be true to their pledge to each other, they had to foster and encourage a conscious Canadianism. Mair, as the literary member of the group, had to do this through his poetry. As Dreamland had been written before Mair had met Haliburton or Denison, obviously he could not be blamed for failing to keep in the forefront of his mind the national purpose on which they had all agreed during the summer of 1868. However, there is the implication that for the future Mair should keep his function as a poet of national purpose well to the fore in his work. "I shall be glad to hear from you," wrote Haliburton, in August, 1870. "I have been reading the poems over and like your 'Fireflies,' but these archaic words set me damning. For God's sake drop the old style--you're living in a new world, and you must write the language of the living to living men. I hope to see some new poems from you." This is, after all, standard advice for any poet who sees himself in the role of a literary nationalist. Throw off the old shackles, talk to your fellow-countrymen. In his newspaper articles Mair was attempting to do just that: stressing the need for assuring the geographical integrity of the nation by filling and developing its vast empty spaces. One poem, written during this period-"Open the Bay!"-restates the argwnents which he had set out at much greater length in his articles, and the two epigraphs which he sets at the head of his poem identify the enemy (Tecumseh . .. and Canadian Poems [Toronto, 1901], 169). "The navigation of Hudson's Straits is impracticable" is the quotation attributed to one whom Mair describes as "Enlightened Hudson's Bay Company Trader from Ungava," and a second one, "The Hudson's Bay route is a chimera,'' is taken from what he calls a "Patriotic Toronto Newspaper." For the purposes of this campaign 87

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(and this poem) enlightenment and patriotism are identified with the development of a port on Hudson's Bay, and its enemies are the Hudson's Bay Company and eastern transport interests who put gain before country. Open the Bay! Who are they that say "No"? Who locks the portals? Nature? She resigned Her icy reign, her stubborn frost and snow, Her sovereign sway and sceptre, long ago, To sturdy manhood and the master, Mind! And such are they who, in their Eastern place, Say, "It is folly and the purpose vain!" The carrier and the shallow huckster's raceTheirs are the hands, not Nature's which efface, And seal the public good for private gain.

This is the poetry of public exhortation and purpose, but Mair felt, in the light of Haliburton's comments, that Canadianism could be demonstrated in verse of a more private and reflective nature too. During these years he set about the task of revising the Dreamland poems, in some cases completely rewriting them, presumably to make them more Canadian. This drastically revised version of Dreamland was the one which appeared, together with Tecumseh and the verse written after 1868 (called "Canadian Poems"), in the volume of 1901. We have therefore in the 1868 and 1901 texts of Dreamland an extraordinarily opportunity to examine one poet's conception of how to "Canadianize" poetry-the before and after of the process. The best example of Mair's deliberate attempt to naturalize his Muse comes in a poem called "Summer." In the 1868 version (Dreamland, p. 78) the heat of summer induced a lethargy that caused the poet's mind to wander over a wide range of associations called up from his own cultural background-the English poetic tradition in general-with no specific roots in the local scene: Dreams of by-gone chivalry, Wassailing and revelry, And lordly seasons long since spent In bout and joust and tournament. And, mid visioned feats of arms

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Fierce attacks and rude alarms, Let my dreams run back to thee, Chastely fair Eurydice!

In the 1901 edition (p. 222) the poem has been completely changed. The point of departure is the same, but the dreams and the images which people them have undergone a metamorphosis. Indians now replace mediaeval knights. Dreams of old-world chivalry, Bout and joust and revelry; Or, more suited to our land, Dreams of forest chief and band: Braves in paint and plume arrayed, Sun-burnt youth and dusky maid Paddling down, in days gone by, Spirit lake or haunted snie;

Eurydice is not suitable now either; and if one's dreams drift to "forms ideal, forms of grace" and to "Kindred regions of Romance" a more satisfying and local-grown exemplar may be provided by Evangeline. And then there is always the stirring theme of Canadian history: Or let the roving Fancy delve In the fields of "Eighteen-Twelve"; In her dreams recall the sward Where the wife of lame Secord, Knowing Boerstler's subtle plan To surprise the British van In the far camp where it lay, Roused her cows at break of day, Hoaxed the sentry thus, then passed, Smiling, to the forest vast.

From here one may proceed to dreams of home-of domestic bliss; but again, although there are roses around the door, it is a Canadian home, for there are forest "spoils and trophies" on the walls, flowers, rare books and pictures everywhere, and two stuffed grizzlies in the vestibule. It is easy to make fun of this attempt, and the poem as a whole is by no means as ludicrous as this description makes it sound. But Mair's poetic limitations remain, no matter what the subject, and it is the painstaking process which he undertook to make his poetic

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practice fit his new conception of the Canadian poet's function that is important here. Tecumseh, which had been a conscious exercise in literary nationalism, dealing with obviously Canadian themes (though expressed through the form of the nineteenth-century, closet verse-drama), had been a success in 1886. It seemed as though this application of traditional form to indigenous theme had been fruitful, and should provide a pattern for the future. In this Mair was partially correct; but between 1868 and 1901 others had carried this technique, unselfconsciously (and this is perhaps the key point), far beyond the lhnits of Mair's literary capacity. Carman, Roberts, Lampman, and D. C. Scott had left him far behind in a much more subtle and profound adaptation of traditional form and imagery to Canadian subject matter, so that the goals for which Mair had been pressing as part of an externalized and obvious nationalism had already been reached and passed in typically Canadian fashion by other less obtrusive means. There is little evidence that Mair was influenced by or was aware of any of the achievements ofhis literary contemporaries. He was therefore unprepared for the reception which was given to the 1901 collection on which he had been working in isolation for so long. The volume failed badly. Critics and public alike were completely indifferent, and, failing to accept the obvious implications, Mair compared in his mind the favourable reception given to the 1868 volume and to Tecumseh in 1886 with the re_buffhe endured in 1901 when the revised Dreamland poe1ns had appeared. The fault must obviously lie in the revisions. When John Garvin approached Mair in 1925 with plans for the preparation of a Mair volume for his "Canadian Master-Works" series, he intended to include Tecumseh, Through the Mackenzie Basin, the "Canadian Poe1ns" and both versions of Dreamland, the 1868 and the 1901. Mair flatly refused to give permission for the inclusion of the Dreamland revisions. Writing to Garvin, he said: As regards my poems I do not see what use there is in publishing both the full and abridged poems. I cut them down and omitted "August" and the "Prologue to Tecumseh" and other verses in the 1901 volume in order to reduce its size, a matter of moment at that time. I am glad that they will be restored. Silly as some amatory verses are, I am not ashamed of them, they werefelt, enacted; the truth that is poetry the world over. (December 22, 1925)

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This was not, of course, the real reason; the 1901 poems were in most cases longer not shorter than the originals, and some of the earlier verses had been left out because Mair had not been satisfied with them. Garvin tactfully tried to point all this out to Mair, but as he did not know what really lay behind Mair's objections he could not hope to overcome them by his arguments. But he tried: You say, "As regards my poems, I do not see what use there is in publishing both the full and abridged poems." I am sorry that you differ from me in this respect, but I feel very strongly that the 1868 edition of Dreamland and Other Poems should be republished exactly as in the original and the 1901 edition should also be reproduced exactly. You are aware that there has been considerable discussion among the critics as who was the real founder of Canada's distinguished nature school of verse. My contention for years has been that Charles Mair was the real founder. That is why I want the 1868 edition republished exactly. It is also of tremendous interest to students of literature to know the changes made by the author himself thirty years or more later. Hence my exact reproduction of the 1901 edition. And I do want you to yield to my critical literary judgement in this respect. (December 28, 1925)

Mair refused to yield, in in his refusal continued to avoid coming to terms with the specific arguments which Garvin presented. At the end of his long life he looked back to the I go I revisions as a debdcle best forgotten, content instead to be remembered by the text of poems which had been welcomed when they had appeared nearly sixty years before. What does this incident tell us about Canadian literary nationalism in general? On the surface it is the rather pathetic account of a vision that failed-of a poet of limited capacity working in isolation to achieve single-handedly and in the wrong way what had already been done more successfully than he could ever hope to do it. If this were all there was to Mair's story, he might deserve his oblivion to rank as a minor literary curiosity of the Canadian scene. But we must remember the question that he was attempting to answer: How do we find and arouse a national feeling that will give this country unity? And it is this tired but still vital question that confronts us everywhere today. Mair tried to answer it in a literary context, but he was partly defeated by his refusal to recognize the implications of the logic peculiar to Canada. Earlier, you may remember, I suggested that the Canadian 91

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scene dictated a logic of its own. Some of the factors determining it are shared by other large and ex-colonial countries-such as Australia-but some are specifically Canadian: "natural" to Canada but "unnatural" elsewhere. What one has to do here is to put together a number of the national cliches to see how consistently this has proved true. The Canadian had to come to terms with two extremes-of size and of climate. Unlike the Australian, he did not have a continent to himself-a "natural" geographic unit; he had to share it, nervously at first, with a large and powerful neighbour; the "natural" lines of communication ran north and south, not east and west. Canada's separate existence at all, therefore, had to be based on a new concept of what was "natural," and within this context such projects as, for example, the building of the C.P.R. rightly assumed the status, within the national mythology, of an act of heroism and self-preservation, both as a physical act of conquering the extremes of nature and as a moral act of faith in the survival of a sense of separate identity. The struggle against the extremes which the country imposes brings its own compensations. Nature is rarely animistic, benign or malign; it is just there-a power with which the individual is forced to come to terms. Whether it is Daulac or Brebeuf, Macdonald or Van Horne, or the solitary settler planting himself on the immensity of the prairies, the essence of the struggle is the same, and the issue is survival. In its simplest terms survival is physical-a living extracted from the soil, shelter gained from the cold-but when these have been won, and man has interposed an instrument between himself and his physical environment, he sometimes forgets that integrity and survival are not purely physical conditions. Joseph Howe could write a poem glorifying the Canadian winter because it spurred men to activity, but the struggle which it imposed had its effect on the interpretation of other seasons too. Instinctively the poet responded to the attitudes of Canadian life. The traditional poem of the English autumn celebrating the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness undergoes a sea-change in its adaptation to Canada. It becomes, instead, the Indian summer-the dramatic time ofriotous beauty in the woods and forests, but also a time of uneasiness, of waiting for something to happen. You may remember Wilfred Campbell's poem, "How One Winter Came in the Lake Region," with its long hushed

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description of the static yet somehow ominous world of the Canadian fall, and the sense of release which comes with the final line: "Fast fell the driving snow." Battle has been joined; now one knows where one is, and can take action. Survival is also involved in a moral sense, and the realization of this can also be brought home by the extremes of Canadian nature, even by the extremes of summer. Lampman's famous short poem "Heat" provides the obvious example where, following a minute description of the heat-held landscape and the universal lethargy which seems the natural accompaniment to it, comes the unexpected bombshell of the final couplet, challenge and response: In the full furnace of this hour My thoughts grow keen and clear.

Haliburton's blatant "Men of the North" racialism was a perverted conclusion drawn from many of these same premises. For the Canadian settler it was a source of moral strength to have endured and prospered, but on the basis of an individual rather than a collective philosophy. There were also lessons ofno less value to be drawn from the failures, and the novels ofF. P. Grove provide some striking examples. In one of the most vivid scenes from Our Daily Bread, the old pioneer, John Elliott, flees in terror from his daughter's comfortable house in Winnipeg because he has not been aware that a blizzard is raging outside. This scene is concerned with an issue that is of immense importance for many Canadian authors; not that one should leave a comfortable, centrally heated house to go out to stand in a blizzard to reinforce one's capacity to survive. The horrifying thing, which caused terror inJohn Elliott, is that the very instrument which has been created to cope with the original challenge (in this case the heated house against the blizzard) has been so successful that we are completely unaware that the original challenge still exists, or, if we do know, we have become indifferent to it. This is not, therefore, a Puritan glorification of hardship for its own sake; it is a plea for awareness of relative values. For obvious reasons emphasis on the interaction between man and his physical environment has always been strong in Canadian literature, and in this century the pressures threatening physical survival have been transferred by analogy to those urban and social pressures 93

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which threaten the survival of individual integrity. Moral rather than physical survival is now the focus of attention, and while this theme is universal enough, there is a recognizably Canadian way of interpreting it-an attitude stemming from the land itself. Ifwe are unaware of the pressures closing in upon us it is obvious we can do nothing to resist them, nor can we come to terms with ourselves, and we have lost the opporturiity of seeing perhaps more clearly what the issues are. This clarity of vision is an advantage which our special environment has provided. By seeking to overcome the distinctive elements-to make life in Winnipeg or New York or Buenos Aires virtually identical-we risk throwing away our advantage to no end. This is, in part, what the original members of Canada First were worried about. They saw the political fact of Canada as a house which had lulled its occupants to a sense of false security. They felt that they had to shout about the dangers which threatened, before the roof fell in. But while they were right in insisting on the need for a sense of unity, they were wrong in the methods which they used to impose it. For, obviously, no sense of unity can be imposed. The rallying point, if there is to be one, must start from what Klein has called the "family feature, the not unsimilar face," and the very understatement of this phrase is indicative of the process. When Canada First became a political party briefly in 1871, it fell apart because it could no longer rely on vague phrases which meant all things to all men. It had to define what it meant by national sentiment. It had to define, and therefore to exclude. There is ample evidence that national sentiment did exist in abundance. Denison's was one type, Bourassa's was another. As Mair found out, the view from Prince Albert was not the same as the one from Toronto. I suspect that, individually, Canadians take part in the game of Seek-the-Identity with a suppressed smile. They know very well indeed what it means to be Canadian, they have always known, but they aren't telling. By all means let the others look, and join in too for the fun of it. The secret is safe and untouchable. Once expressed, formulated, it might turn out to be quite different from one's neighbour's knowledge ofit; therefore, keep it, where any deep sense of attachment is preserved, as a private faith. This protective coloration had evolved steadily from the time when too strong an insistence on separate identity courted the risk oflosing it altogether.

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The compromise which resulted has led to two consequences. From one point of view Canada has apparently managed to leapfrog over the most raucous and chauvinistic aspects of nationalism to a mature and internationalist viewpoint which must surely one day be the course which all nations must follow. But from another, the price which she has had to pay for this development of her own strange logic is that the noisier aspects of nationalism have never been completely expelled from her system; and so, despite the answers which have been found over the last hundred years, there is a compulsion to go on asking the same questions. Let us see how these issues are reflected in Mair's poetry-not by the public patriot of Canada First, but by the poet of nature. Mair's poetry becomes increasingly bound up with a spirit of place-not through poems revised to substitute sumac for eglantine, but in a more instinctive and subtle way. In the early work, nature is Wordsworthian, benign, breathing solace, and promoting escape into Dreamland. Only in such poems as "August" among the earlier works, when, in typical poetic revery, he is prevented by the heathaze from describing vaster sweeps of the landscape in general terms and does not choose to ascend on wings of Fancy to the world of romantic visions, he suddenly becomes aware of the range of activity immediately around him. Insects are busy everywhere, dozens of small dramas are being played out. The heat of August may have • . . besmirched the day and night And hid a wealth of glory from our sight.

but there is compensation: Thou still dost build in musing pensive mood, Thy blissful idyl in the underwood. Thou still dost yield new beauties, fair and young, With many a form of grace as yet unsung. (Dreamland, 124)

Occasionally Mair is capable of poetry which rises well above his usual level. This description of a prairie lake owes nothing to any deliberate attempt to introduce Canadian imagery. Many of the tired old adjectives, "ethereal," "fulgent," "cerulean," "wreathed," are here, yet something of the scene penetrates through the commonplaces. 95

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A gentle vale, with rippling aspens clad, Yet open to the breeze, invited rest. So there I lay, and watched the sun's fierce beams Reverberate in wreathed ethereal flame; Or gazed upon the leaves which buzzed o'erhead, Like tiny wings in simulated flight. Within the vale a lakelet, lashed with flowers, Lay like a liquid eye among the hills, Revealing in its depth the fulgent light Of snowy cloud-land and cerulean skies. And rising, falling, fading far around, The homeless and unfurrowed prairies spread. . . . ("Canadian Poems", 1901, 148)

Put to the service of four successive images: the intense heat, the fluttering of the aspen leaves, the lake itself, and the surrounding prairie, the imagery, so often vague and tenuous in more general descriptions, has assumed an added sharpness which gives new life and meaning. Lampman was to do the same thing more often and more successfully, but Mair was in the tradition too. When he was not straining to be self-consciously Canadian he was capable of passages which could have told him that this was the way in which a distinctive poetic tradition would emerge: not through a painstaking rephrasing or a substitution of Indian for Greek mythology, but in the use of simple and traditional images transformed to new life by their application to the closely observed particulars of the Canadian scene. Even Tecumseh's brief description of the Canadian fall, made appropriately in a period of oininous expectation before the battle in which he will die, succeeds in its limited purpose: This is our summer-when the painted wilds Like pictures in a dream, enchant the sight. The forest bursts in glory like a flame! Its leaves are sparks; its mystic breath the haze Which blends in purple incense with the air. The Spirit of the Woods has decked his home, And put his wonders like a garment on, To flash, and glow, and dull, and fade, and die. (Tecumseh, V, vi, 1-8)

Tecumseh, as a whole, provides an interesting blend of Mair's point of view on a number of subjects. The historical background of the War of 1812 provides opportunity for the rhetorical nobility of public

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patriotism. The variety presented is strongly Imperial; Canada and Britain are always linked. Immediately after the declaration of war, a Chorus steps foiward from the pages of Henry V and declaims: War is declared, unnatural and wild, By Revolution's calculating sons! So leave the home of mercenary minds, And wing with me, in your uplifted thoughts, Away to our unyielding Canada! There to behold the Genius of the Land, Beneath her singing pine and sugared tree, Companioned with the lion, Loyalty. ( Tecumseh, Prologue to Act IV)

Brock has this r:redo, which was not, apparently, considered blasphemous: For I believe in Britain's Empire, and In Canada, its true and loyal son, Who yet shall rise to greatness and shall stand At England's shoulder helping her to guard True liberty throughout a faithless world. (Tecumseh, IV, i, 109-13)

"Imperial doctrine and Canadian rights" are spoken of as synonyms throughout the play, and following a ringing peroration from Brock set in the same terms, the loyal volunteers march off singing: 0 hark to the voice from the lips of the free! 0 hark to the cry from the lakes to the sea! Arm! arm! the invader is wasting our coasts, And tainting the air of our land with his hosts. Arise! then, arise! let us rally and form, And rush like the torrent, and sweep like the storm, On the foes of our King, of our country adored, Of the flag that was lost, but in exile restored! And whose was the flag? and whose was the soil? And whose was the exile, the suffering, the toil? Our Fathers'! who carved in the forest a name, And left us rich heirs of their freedom and fame. Oh, dear to our hearts is that flag, and the land Our Fathers bequeathed-'tis the work of their hand! And the soil they redeemed from the woods with renown The might of their sons will defend for the Crown!

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Our hearts are as one, and our spirits are free, From clime unto clime, and from sea unto sea! And chaos may come to the States that annoy, But our Empire united what foe can destroy? Then away! to the front! march! comrades away! In the lists of each hour crowd the work of a day! We will follow our leader to fields far and nigh, And for Canada fight, and for Canada die! (Tecumseh, IV, iii, 85-108) I have quoted this song in full because the sentiment was as valid for when the play was written, 1886, as it was for 1812. With Denison's encouragement Mair had hopes that the song, which had been set to music, would become popular as a leading expression of Canadian patriotism for the future-perhaps even the National Song. Parallel to this series of Imperial tableaux runs the theme of Tecumseh's attempts to unite the scattered and squabbling Indian tribes, and to lead them to a state of simplicity and innocence: . . . mine shall be The lofty task to teach them to be freeTo knit the nations, bind them into one. ( Tecumseh, I, i, 303-5) Tecumseh's task, therefore, is not unlike the aims of the Canada First group. The creation of a "national feeling" would give unity and broad agreement about national purpose. This in turn would lead to an awareness of relative values, and simplicity and nobility would result-the inevitable consequence of harmony between man and his environment. So that while Bro~k's volunteers show the public virtues of a transplanted Imperial legacy, Tecumseh is the spokesman for the native-grown traditions that must merge with them for the Canadian to benefit from the best of both worlds. There is a third theme in Tecumseh, one represented by Lefroy the Wandering Romantic, friend and contemporary of Brock, who had been fired by the ideals of the American Revolution, disillusioned by their application in practice, and who had fled to the wilds looking for a Rousseauesque state ofinnocence. He is captured by the Indians and makes common cause with them, seeing Tecumseh as the Noble Savage. His is an attitude with which Mair obviously sympathizes, and some of the most rhapsodic lines in description of the grandeur

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of the unoccupied West are given to him. But it is a fascination which, Mair recognizes, is futile. In argument with Brock, Lefroy's idealism and romantic dreams are dismissed by Brock as anarchistic and ruinous. No matter how idealistically attractive such visions might be, they must fail before the realities of Canadian life, and it is in the union of the two principles represented by Brock and Tecumseh that the future must lie. In Lefroy Mair is saying farewell to a romantic dream whose attraction he can still feel, but which he has now outgrown. In one of the "Canadian Poems", "Kanata,'' Mair again develops his ideas on the influence of the native environment. "Kanata" is an Indian word for the Spirit of the Place. (Mair believed "from this word, there can be no reasonable doubt, our country derives its name"). He views the flood of settlers streaming into Canada, escaping from Europe, seeking peace and freedom, but bringing with them attitudes which threaten to duplicate all the old iniquities from which they were running. Vain promise and delusive dreams Which gloze the hidden, narrow heart; Here man's own vile and selfish schemes Will yet enact the tyrant's part. Alas! for equal life and laws, And Freedom 'neath the Western sun; Here must they stand or fall-her cause On these fresh fields be lost or won.

The dreams of Lefroy are revealed again as beautiful, but finally as futile and unproductive. Nature, the spirit of place and freedom, provides the challenge that can lead to self-awareness, but the battle must be fought out in the mind of every man. Still must she fight who long hath fought; Still must she bleed who long hath bled; There is no consecrated spot, No clime where she alone doth tread. Devise for her your "simple plan," Or "perfect system," as of old; They count not where insensate man Spurns his own right to be controlled. ("Canadian Poems", 1901, 166)

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This "right to be controlled" which Kanata offers is the touchstone which Canada as a place brings to join in partnership with the inherited legacy of British institutions and traditions, the one supplementing and strengthening the offer. Some years ago I came to the conclusion that Mair's life and work was of interest mainly because it showed what happened to the literary nationalist in Canada who tried to mix politics with poetry. I felt that Mair's rejection of his 1901 revisions was emblematic of the failure of self-conscious Canadianism in literature, and added that his final position seemed to be a reversion to that type of colonial romanticism which he had found so congenial in 1868. This is, I think, still true as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. Mair at no time rejected the ideals by which he had been inspired at the time of Canada First-what he did reject was one method of putting them into practice. The public platform receded before the private conviction. Mair's life and work possess a dichotomy about them which is partly the dichotomy of Canada herself-her two faces which seem at times so contradictory. The one: conservative, almost impassive, combining cliche in form and outward appearance, guardian of a tradition which beneath the surface has quietly and instinctively evolved a new essence from the old ingredients. In literature: the use of old images for new purposes-the analysis of the Canadian experience to find in it a distinctively Canadian way of looking at universal problems, not as part of a school or a movement, but from a succession of writers, not influenced by each other, but by Canada hersel£ When Matthew Strang, in Raddall's His Majesty's Tankees, is forced to choose between British and Americans, he makes a point which reflects a long heritage of Canadian thought: "it comes down to law and order at the last.... " Not only in the public sense, but in Mair's meaning of the private "right to be controlled"---of individual moral responsibility. The other face of Canada provides both a foil and antithesis. The issues of national unity and identity, charged with emotion and with passionately held convictions, move apparently towards head-on collision. But collision has in most cases (not all) been avoided by compromise that pleased no one, but which gave passions time to subside, and which provided a framework sufficiently flexible to JOO

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allow widely diverging views to co-exist. John A. Macdonald was a genius at this, and so, in his own way, was Mackenzie King. The loose and repetitive public discussions of identity, themselves a national tradition, comfortably include all those whom definite conclusions would exclude and embitter. In the logic of Canada no flag has been adopted officially ninety-seven years after Confederation because such a move would tend to divide the country. Therefore, by implication, not having a flag has been a unifying factor. The negative approach, this has been called, but only in terms of the world outside; for the Canadian knows that once the negative (notBritish, not-French, not-American) have been removed, what is left may be undefinable, but it is very positive indeed. One might talk, in these terms, of a Brock and a Tecumseh type of Canadianism: the Brock concerned with inherited traditions, both French and British; the Tecumseh concerned with those native Canadian influences which, regardless of racial background, have sprung up as a result of common interaction between the land and its people. It is in the alliance between these two that the Canadian identity is to be found. And perhaps always in the background, too, there is the ghost of Lefroy appearing and disappearing with his visions and revisions to tease the imagination.

H

IOI

DAVID M. HAYNE ON

LOUIS FRECHETTE

Although the fact has passed almost unnoticed, 1963 is a centenary year for French-Canadian literature. Exactly a century ago there were published two "firsts" in the literary production of French Canada: the first noteworthy novel, Les anciens Canadiens, and the first collection oflyric verse, Frechette's Mes loisirs. In the 1958 "Living Tradition" series, Professor James Tassie anticipated the centenary ofLes anciensCanadiens by lecturing on Philippe Aubert de Gaspe; here I propose to recall to you the figure and career of Louis Frechette. Despite the neglect of his centenary, it should not be thought that Frechette himself has been completely neglected by the critics. On the contrary, more book-length studies have been devoted to him than to any other French-Canadian author; at least seven such volumes have appeared. The most important books and articles on Frechette have, however, been concerned with special aspects of his life and work: his family background, his prose writings, his polemics, his imagery, or his theatre. As a result we still lack some basic tools: we have no critical edition of his works, no bibliography of all his writings or of the extensive critical literature concerned with him, and no published study of his sources. Despite the greatly increased interest in French-Canadian literature that has been apparent since the Second World War, no general study ofFrechette's poetry has appeared for nearly twenty years, and none of his biographers have had access to the important collection of papers now available in the Public Archives of Canada. When an author is as well known in his country as Frechette has always been, there is a 102

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tendency to assume that there is nothing left to learn about him. Thus, by a curious paradox, literary fame may lead to scholarly neglect, and this has apparently been the fate of Louis Frechette. That Frechette enjoyed an unusual measure ofliterary fame in his time is beyond doubt. For at least twenty years of his life he was the principal literary figure of French-speaking Canada, the first, and indeed the only, nineteenth-century French-Canadian writer to be favourably known outside his country. Yet he was a perpetual centre of controversy, being denounced as a subversive political influence, an enemy of religion, and a plagiarist. We may well ask ourselves how one man could in his time play so many parts. Frechette was born on November 16, 1839, near Levis on the south shore of the St. Lawrence opposite Quebec. He was baptized Louis, and only much later did he acquire the name Louis-Honore. He tells us in his Memoires intimes how this occurred: Je fus baptise a l'eglise de la Pointe-Levis, aujourd'hui connue sous le nom de Saint-Joseph de Levis. Mon acte de bapteme porte simplement le prenom de Louis. Si pendant mes annees de jeunesse ii m'est arrive de signer Louis-Honore ou Louis-H., qui en est l'abrege, c'est qu'on avait ajoute le prenom d'Honore, lors de ma confirmation, en 1849, en l'honneur de notre vicaire l'abbe Honore Jean, qui etait l'ami de ma famille et qui avait preside a ma premiere communion. Apres mon mariage, je repris mon seul et vrai nom, a cause de la confusion qui pouvait en resulter clans mon etat civil. (Memoires, p. 28)

On the paternal side, Frechette was of the seventh generation of his family in Canada, his ancestor Franc;ois Frichet having come to New France in 1677. From his father, an unlettered but successful constructor of docks and wharves, Frechette seems to have inherited his sturdy physique, his intelligence and initiative, his quick temper, and his sympathy for the underdog. His mother had received a convent education which enabled her to assist her husband with his correspondence and his book-keeping. She seems to have shared the latter's sympathy for the poor and unfortunate, and it was not unusual for orphaned or homeless children to be taken into the Frechette household and treated as members of the family. From all we can gather, the Frechette fainily, at least until the premature death of Louis' mother, was a happy one, and to the end of his life Frechette retained a strong sense of family ties.

DAVID HAYNE

The Lower Canada of the 184o's in which Frechette grew up was a quaint little world in which gentlemen took snuff and distrusted the new sulphur matches, in which elderly ladies still preferred the goose quill to the new-fangled steel pens, in which the raftsmen came to town wearing their red shirts and long "ceintures flechees," eccentrics dug for buried treasure at midnight, and little boys fought in the streets at the name of Papineau. Louis Frechette was later to be caught up in the republican enthusiasms of the post-rebellion years, and the little boy who stood on his doorstep shouting "Hourrah pour Papineau" was often to be a rebel himself. A rebel to authority but not to his race. One might play, as little Louis did, with his English neighbours the Houghtons, but one could not be unaware that immediately across the river lay the Plains of Abraham: Tous les jours je voyais, dominant les hauts mamelons, se dresser clans le lointain les rondeurs estompees des lourdes tours Martello, sentinelles avancees de l'altiere citadelle de Quebec ou flottait le drapeau de I' Angleterre, entoure d'une ceinture de canons. Tout cela etait anglais; et pourtant nous etions fran~ais, nous! Nous parlions fran~is, nos livres etaient fran~ais, ils nous entretenaient de la France et ses gloires! II me fallait bien m'expliquer tout cela: le pays decouvert et peuple par la France: un Canada a nous, d'abord, un Canada fran~ais. Et puis la guerre, des guerres sans fin, des succes, des revers, d'inutiles resistances, et enfin la catastrophe clans une lutte supreme, la, juste en face de nous, sur ce vaste plateau aux monticules rebondis comme le corps d'un grand lion fatiguee dormant au soleil. (Memoires, p. 122)

In his Memoires, written more than half a century later, Frechette would have us believe that his poetic vocation was apparent even before he went to school: Un jour, mon pere-il me semble le voir encore devant son miroir, en frais de se raser-nous demanda, a mon frere et a moi, quelles professions nous avions !'intention d'embrasser quand nous serions grands. - Moi, repondit mon frere, qui n'aimait rien tant qu'un cheval et un fouet, je veux etre charretier. -Et moi, je veux etre poete, ajoutai-je. La reponse d'Edmond avait fait faire une grimace a mon pere; la mienne faillit lui faire faire une boutonniere a la joue avec son rasoir. -Sais-tu seulement ce que c'est qu'un poete? me demanda-t-il. Et, comme j'hesitais pour cause d'ignorance bien naturelle, ii ajouta:

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-C'est un homme qui fait des chansons, petit fou. -Eh bien, je ferai des chansons, dis-je sans me decourager. -Oui? alors tu peux te resigner mourir l'hopital, mon gar~on. (Memoires, p. 95)

a

a

And, as Frechette goes on to tell us in the same passage, although he was to be in turn labourer, printer, journalist, secretary, lawyer, member of parliament and civil servant, he always returned to this first aspiration of his childhood. About this same time, a second possible career was suggested to the young Frechette when one day his family was visited by the famous Abbe Chiniquy, the great temperance leader of the 184o's, who later shocked all of French Canada by his conversion to Presbyterianism and subsequent marriage. Abbe Chiniquy, then at the height of his temperance fame, put his hand on the head of the sixyear-old Louis and told him he would be a priest, a prediction that haunted the boy for some years. Frechette's early schooling was received under self-employed schoolmasters and with the Brothers of the Christian Schools in their short-lived college at Pointe-Levy; his devotion to the teaching brothers was to be expressed on numerous occasions. At Brother Hermenegilde's suggestion, the motherless Frechette was enrolled for the classical secondary course at the Petit Seminaire de Quebec in the fall of 1854, but three years later he was expelled, for reasons that are not too clear. He was then sent to the College de SainteAnne de la Pocatiere, seventy-five miles away, but from this venerable institution also he was ultimately dismissed. In Ogdensburg, N.Y., the twenty-year-old Frechette picked up employment as an apprentice telegrapher, then lost it three days later and was obliged to work as a street labourer; he stuck it out for a month, and then, like the prodigal son, he returned home, having learned his lesson. His father gave him another chance, sending him this time to the College de Nicolet, where he was much more successful: in his second and final year there he stood at the head of his class, although his teacher noted that: "Frechette me parait trop applique a la poesie et pas assez aux matieres de classe." Indeed, it was in this very year that Frechette submitted as a school exercise the poem he was later to publish in several volumes under the title "Alleluia!" While still a student, he was already having his pieces printed in news-

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papers, and even his subsequent enemy, William Chapman, admitted: "A vingt ans Frechette a eu du genie." In the summer of 1860, after graduating from Nicolet, Frechette returned to Quebec and that fall registered as a law student at the recently founded Laval University. Living in an attic room in the rue du Palais, he and his fellow students imagined themselves to be the bohemians described in Henry Murger's famous novel. These student years are delightfully recalled in a nostalgic poem, Reminiscor, that Frechette wrote some time later. They were good years for an aspiring poet to be in Quebec. The perambulating Canadian Parliament was to be located there from 1859 to 1865, providing a temporary capital with a concentration of cultivated persons. It was a time ofliterary excitement when the young curate of Notre-Dame de Quebec, Abbe H.-R. Casgrain, was attempting to launch a new literary movement. We cannot be certain that Frechette participated in the literary discussions in the back room of Cremazie's bookstore, but he was certainly an early contributor to the new literary reviews of the sixties, Les Soirees Canadiennes and Le Foyer Canadien. Frechette also wrote for the Journal de Quebec, and he tried his hand at writing for the theatre by dramatizing in 1862 the newly published memoirs of Felix Poutre, then thought to have been one of the heroes of the 183 7 rebellion. This first play of Frechette's, although published only once and then apparently without his knowledge, has been a stock item in the repertories of amateur theatrical groups ever since, and in 1953 was adapted for radio. By the beginning of 1863, Frechette had enough poems on hand to publish his first volume, Mes loisirs. Although he industriously sent copies to Longfellow, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and others, he received only the limited satisfaction of courteous letters of thanks; in _Canada the volume received little attention, and the sales failed even to cover the printing costs. The following year, his legal studies concluded, Frechette hung out his shingle at Levis, but clients were few and far between. He and his brother Edmond, also a lawyer and also with time on his hands, founded two liberal newspapers in succession, each of which lasted only a few months. Then in June, 1866, disillusioned and perhaps politically involved, Frechette closed his office and packed his bags for the United States, where he was to spend the next five years. 106

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His other lawyer brother, Achille, was working in Chicago as a journalist, and Frechette followed him there. Although we know little of his existence in Chicago, it would be a mistake to think ofit as a miserable exile. He became prominent in the Franco-American colony of pre-fire Chicago, founded another ephemeral newspaper, worked for the Illinois Central Railroad, founded and edited a second and more durable periodical and launched a Chicago branch of the Societe Saint-Jean Baptiste. He also did a good deal of writing, some of it for the stage, but the latter has been lost. As an ardent Liberal Frechette chafed at the news from Canada, where a Conservative government was striving and scheming to bring about Confederation. Soon his indignation was too great to contain, and he poured it out on paper in his most sensational work, a verse polemic entitled La voix d'un exile, first published in Canada in a Montreal newspaper in 1867 and 1868. By the mystery surrounding its subsequent editions, La voix d'un exile constitutes one of the principal bibliographical puzzles of French-Canadian literature, and by the violence of its language it is undoubtedly one of the most unrestrained works of that literature. Frechette returned to Canada in 1871 and immediately threw himself into controversy and politics. The controversy was with his contemporary and former Laval room-mate, Adolphe-Basile Routhier, later to become a distinguished jurist and the author of our anthem, 0 Canada. In three articles later to appear in his volume of essays Causeries du dimanche, Routhier had questioned both Frechette's unabashed liberalism and his apparent religious indifference. Frechette retorted in a series of witty newspaper articles, later to be collected under the title Lettres a Basile, in which the choice of Routhier's second name was not lost upon readers of Beaumarchais. Frechette's plunge into politics began in earnest in 1871 when he ran in the provincial elections and was defeated. He was a candidate again the following year, in the federal elections, and again lost out, although by fewer than 50 votes. Then in 1874 he stood once more and was this time elected to the House of Commons where he sat for the next four years as the member for Levis, having as his desk-mate a young relative of his named Wilfrid Laurier. During his term in the House, Frechette made a few speeches, some of them on the undue influence of the clergy in Charlevoix, and secured a new wharf 107

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for Levis-constructed of course by his father-but otherwise he did not distinguish himself. The electors in any event appeared unimpressed, for they refused to return him in 1878 and again in 1882, and Frechette noted in his correspondence: "Je suis rentre heureusement dans la vie privee ... j'espere bien n'enjamais sortir." While a member of Parliament, he had made in 1876 a happy and profitable marriage with the daughter of the founder of one of the major banks of the province. This made it possible for Frechette to think of a literary career freed from financial cares. Almost immediately he brought out a new collection of his poems, Pele-mele, published in the spring of 1877 and dedicated to his wife. Unlike Mes loisirs, Pele-mele was well received by the reading public and Frechette's reputation as a poet seemed now assured. We are thus drawing near to the high point of Frechette's career -his recognition in 1880 by the French Academy. It is possible in the light of the documents now available to reconstruct the stages by which this came about. When Pele-mele came off the press, Frechette at once sent a large number of presentation copies to leading literary figures in France; we know of some forty letters from Victor Hugo, Leconte de Lisle, Alexandre Dumas .fils and others, acknowledging these copies. One of the recipients was the editor and poet Prosper Blanchemain, with whom Frechette continued to correspond. Early in 1879 Blanchemain suggested to Frechette that he submit a volume for the Academy's competitions, as Blanchemain himself had done the previous year. At this very moment, the Quebec government was having published a small volume ofFrechette's selected poems, to be distributed as a prize in the schools of the province. If Frechette was to enter the competition for volumes published during 1879, this little collection was hardly suitable; it included a number of very early poems, it contained only sixteen examples of the then popular sonnet form, and it lacked a catchy title. Frechette at first thought of reprinting Pele-mele, but then set about producing at short notice a more promising volume. First he weeded out seven of the oldest poems in the Poesies choisies, replacing them by eight others with exactly the same number of pages. He then assembled more than fifty sonnets, many of which had been dedicated to prominent persons in France, 108

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thus making up a volume of which two-thirds was composed of topical sonnets. But time was pressing. Frechette therefore arranged with the printer to use the first 150 pages of standing type from the volume of selected poems, and then to print a new impression of these pages, so that when the sonnets were set in type at the end of the book a volume of 268 pages was produced in record time, and printed in thirty copies for the competition and for presentation to a few friends. Since the new volume was really two collections it was given two titles: Les fleurs boreales, Les oiseaux de neige. Frechette hastily forwarded three copies of the volume to the secretary of the Academy, the way having been prepared by a letter from Prosper Blanchemain. Since a Canadian work was a novelty in the competition, it was sent for reading to the only academician known to be interested in such exotic items, the much-travelled Xavier Marmier. Marmier was well disposed towards Canada, having visited it thirty years before and having described it in his books. Feeling that Frechette's volume should receive some recognition, Marmier and his fellow academician Jules Simon managed to persuade the other members of the committee that the usual policy of making no awards to non-French competitors should be relaxed on this occasion as a token tribute to French Canada, and Frechette was listed as the recipient of one of the largest of the ten Montyon prizes. These prizes were given not for literature but for "virtue"; other books winning Montyon prizes that same year bore such titles as Les metamorphoses des insectes, L'astronomic populaire, and Le mariage et les mlEurs en France. As was to be expected, however, the circumstances and the precise nature of the award were lost sight ofin the excitement it caused in Canada. Frechette was notified by cable early in June that his prize would be presented at the annual public session of the Academy in August, and he at once made plans to attend in person. The news of the award came at precisely the moment when he was in a somewhat delicate position as a result of the first Montreal performances of his two plays, Papineau and Le retour de l'exile. The latter was shortly to be revealed as almost entirely borrowed from an obscure French novel published fifteen years before; the former was an undistinguished piece doomed to failure once its immediate topical interest was exhausted. It was therefore with a more than ordinary satisfaction that 109

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Frechette sailed for France early in July. After the glorious expePience of the public session of the Academy on August 5, Frechette was the guest of Xavier Marmier, visited his idol Victor Hugo, was lionized in the newspapers and at social gatherings, and found himself making arrangements for a French edition of his prize-winning volume. When he returned to Canada in October, the plaudits of his fellow Canadians awaited him-Charles G. D. Roberts wrote him a poetic tribute of doubtful quality-and in mid-November a magnificent public banquet was held in his honour. Despite the occasional sniping of his enemies, Frechette was to be from this moment the unofficial poet-laureate of French Canada. He stepped into this new role with his accustomed zest and was on hand at Windsor Station the following December to greet the great Sarah Bernhardt with a suitable ode when she arrived for her first Canadian tour. Before long Frechette was in trouble again, this time over the publication of his Petite histoire des rois de France, an anti-monarchical brochure which, his enemies claimed, was largely copied out of an encyclopredia. The poet-laureate, with his young family growing up, was now seemingly too busy to write much lyric poetry. He was making frequent public appearances, reciting his verse, contributing articles and stories to reviews like the Nouvelles Soirees Canadiennes, or writing for, and in 1884 acting as editor of, the Montreal newspaper La Patrie. When Frechette wrote poetry now it was usually in the form of occasional pieces for dinners or anniversaries, mementoes for friends and relatives, or historical passages for inclusion in his magnum opus to come. This was to be a great panorama of the emergence of the French-Canadian nation, and was to consist of pieces which he had been collecting for a dozen years or more. In 1887 the manuscript was almost ready, and at the beginning of May Frechette set out again for France, where he spent three delightful months in the midst of the group ofBreton poets who gathered in the salon or at the country estate of Madame Eugene Riom at Nantes. Frechette seems to have captivated his hostess, for she wrote in µer Souvenirs, published in La Revue illustree des provinces de l'ouest in 1893, of the "grand poete canadien Louis Frechette, qui se dit breton d'origine et qui a compose dans ma solitude du Pellerin son magnifique volume La Ugende d'un peuple." And she added wistfully: "Je puis dire que pendant trois mois ii m'a fait vivre de poesie." 110

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Frechette for his part wrote a preface for one of Madame Riom's volumes and sculpted her in alabaster, sculpture being a hobby in which he had indulged with unusual success since it had first been suggested to him by the sculptor Philippe Hebert. While in France he also participated, at the invitation of the Archbishop ofRouen, in the ceremonies marking the bicentenary of Cavelier de La Salle, Frechette having been a corresponding member of the Academy of Rouen for the previous two years. But perhaps Frechette's greatest achievement in this gratifying summer of I 887 was the ease with which he gave the impression of spending it in the writing of a volume he had largely composed before leaving Canada. When La ligende d'un peuple appeared, with its enthusiastic preface by Jules Claretie, it was immediately acclaimed as Frechette's masterpiece, as indeed it still appears to us to-day. His last volume of verse, Feuilles volantes, published in 1890 and reissued the following year, added little to his stature as a poet. From this time on he devoted himself increasingly to prose, bringing out in 1892 his amusing collection of portraits of eccentrics, Originaux et detraques, and writing a large number of short stories. He was mellower now, but still ready for a controversy: in his open letters to Abbe Baillarge in 1893 he expounded his views on the reforms necessary in the programme of the classical colleges, and then the next year found himself the target of intenninably documented charges of poetic plagiarism made by his former friend William Chapman. In the later nineties he wrote his memoirs for the Montreal weekly, Le Monde illustre, made two more trips to France, and published, in English, a collection of his short stories entitled Christmas in French Canada (1899), translating himself into French the following year under the title La Noel au Canada. In these years the portly sixty-year-old Frechette must have been an impressive figure with his Edwardian moustache and beard, his commanding air and resonant voice, limping slightly from rheumatism as he received visitors in his handsome house on Sherbrooke Street in Montreal, or else driving out in his two-horse victoria to let all the world see, as Berthelot Brunet put it, what a poet should look like. He was now laden with honours; he was a Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur, a companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, an honorary doctor of four universities, President of the II I

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Royal Society of Canada, and Honorary President of the newest literary movement, the Ecole litteraire de Montreal. From time to time he made trips to Quebec City to attend to the minimal duties of his appointment as Clerk of the Legislative Council of the Province, but most of his time between social engagements was spent working in his luxurious study, or practising the art of being a grandfather, the art so charmingly described in the poetry of his idol Victor Hugo, and for which Frechette earned the affectionate title "le grand-papa chocolat," having learned the importance of carrying pieces of chocolate in his pockets. In his last years Frechette, afll.icted with neurasthenia, was obliged to withdraw more and more from the public gaze. In 1907 he and his wife moved out of their three-storey house into an apartment in the Institut des Sourdes-Muettes on St. Denis street, and the aging poet settled down to the task of preparing the collected edition of his works that appeared in the very year of his death, 1908. These three volumes brought no revelations, although they included some unpublished poems and the full text of his play Veronica, which, after Professor Wyczynski's recent article, we now know to be merely another example of what their author indulgently described as "works of collaboration." When Frechette died, after suffering a stroke at the end of May, 1908, the modest attendance at his funeral caused his admirers like Gonzalve Desaulniers to reflect sadly upon the transience of public favour; twenty years before, Frechette had been the literary spokesman of his people, but now literature had passed him by, and this patriarchal figure was already associated with an age that would never return. Frechette's long and sometimes stormy career had been a mosaic of many interests and activities, but such enduring reputation as he enjoys today is based upon his role as a poet, and this is the identification he would have chosen for himself had the choice been given him. In order to examine his claims and achievements in this domain it will be necessary to take up in turn his six principal volumes of verse. In February, 1863, Frechette was preparing for the press his first collection, Mes loisirs. In his "Preface" he set forth his conception of 112

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poetry in the form of the imaginary dialogue so dear to Victor Hugo: -Ce livre contient-il une idee? C'est une question que l'on est en droit de me faire en ouvrant les premieres pages de ce recueil, et a laquelle je suis force de repondre: -Non! J'ai ecrit par pur delassement, par amour pour l'art, sans jamais suivre d'autre regle que le caprice du moment, d'autre voie que celle ou me poussait mon imagination, d'autre etoile que celle de l'inspiration qui nait des circonstances. (p. 8.)

The terms used in this preface-"inspiration, imagination, caprice, delassement"-mark its author as a child of the Lamartinian poetic revolution; poetry is no longer, as it had been for Michel Bibaud thirty years before, a vehicle of sense painstakingly versified; poetry is now to be a relief of the soul, born in the divine inspiration of the moment and bodied out with all the resources of the imagination. If any confirmation be needed, it is found in the second poem of the volume, entitled "La Poesie" and dedicated to Cremazie: Divine poesie, 0 coupe d'ambroisie De nectar et de miel ! Voix pleine de mystere, N'es-tu pas sur la terre L'echo des chants du ciel? (p. 18)

The poet rises above earthly reality, raising man to new heights: Dans les flots de lumiere, Secouant la poussiere De ce monde pervers, II plane sur la foule Et sous lui se deroule Un nouvel univers. (p. 18)

In the latter part of the same poem Frechette's poetic allegiance is made even clearer when he undertakes to play the Reboul to Cremazie's Lamartine. The opening pages of Mes loisirs are thus a manifesto of the young poet's determination to have a part in the great battle of classics and romantics which divided FrenchCanadian authors a century ago and to which Dr. Seraphin Marion has devoted an important book.

DAVID HAYNE

Mes loisirs is the most unstudied and the most intimate of Frechette's volumes. Its forty-odd poems, composed between 1858 and 1863, show the inspiration of Lamartine, Hugo, and Turquety, and include treatments of the well-known themes of his models: the passage of time and the pleasures of memory, the glory of God and of His creation, the humble virtues of the poor, the joys of mankind and the beauties of nature, and also the horrors of war and revolution, for Frechette, like Victor Hugo, was neither republican nor anti-clerical in his earliest works. As befitted a self-styled bohemian, Frechette included about a dozen poems describing the feminine charms of Louise, Cora, Juliette, or Flora, and recounting the poet's loves and disillusionments. Although several of the poems on this latter theme are purely conventional, one group of half a dozen pieces dated in the fall of 1862 clearly refers to an actual episode in Frechette's life, involving a girl several years his junior, named Herminie. The dedication of the volume Mes loisirs to "H" therefore becomes significant. I suspect that the Herminie referred to in these poems is the same person whose subsequent marriage is noted in a mysteriously titled poem in Feuilles volantes, "A Mll0 H*** D***, la veille de son mariage." I mention this hypothesis in passing merely as an illustration of my contention that Frechette's poems have not yet been made to yield up all their content. Here also are found the seeds of themes later to be greatly expanded in Frechette's subsequent works: Canadian history, nostalgic memory, and patriotic feeling. In its content, therefore, this first volume shows us a Frechette we might not otherwise encounter: a conservative, devout, almost reactionary young man, writing of his own amorous experiences in thinly veiled verses, only occasionally anticipating those themes that would later become his stock-intrade. In technique, Mes loisirs is the work of an apprentice whose native gifts are not yet accompanied by a thorough knowledge of rhyme or versification. Like Cremazie before him, the young Frechette was dazzled by the metrical riches of French masters like Victor Hugo and strove to imitate their verse forms: in the 44 poems of Mes loisirs there are no fewer than 40 stanza forms, sometimes mingled haphazardly in the same poem, but at others skilfully adapted to the content, particularly in the case of several poems that were set to music by friends of the poet. 114

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Mes loisirs is thus essentially a collection of lyrical verse, and, as I have said, the first such collection to appear in French Canada. But lyrical verse, and particularly amorous verse, was not in keeping with the new patriotic view of the national literature then being promulgated by Casgrain's Quebec group, nor was it calculated to appeal to the practically minded and politically oriented readers of 1863. The volume failed to sell, and Frechette jettisoned it: 34 of these 44 poems he consigned to oblivion. It required a detached observer like Cremazie to perceive, in a letter written in 1866 from his refuge in France, that in Mes loisirs Frechette had been "un veritable poete." Only two or three pages of Mes loisirs could have given any clue as to the nature ofFrechette's second poetic work. Two changes had meanwhile taken place in the poet: he had become a Liberal, with annexationist sentiments, and he had read Victor Hugo's Les chatiments with its crushing indictment of Napoleon III. What emerged from this combination of circumstances was the successive versions of La voix d'un exile, which by its savage attacks upon the followers of Georges-Etienne Cartier put the name of Frechette in every newspaper and on many a lip. The work, as finally completed, is in three parts, written in October, 1866, in May, 1868, and in April, 1869, respectively. In the first of these the poet-exile deplores the decline of his once proud country: "Quand du haut du vaisseau qui m'emportait loin d'elles, J'ai jete mes regards sur tes rives si belles, 0 mon beau Saint-Laurent, qu'ai-je aper~u, grand Dieu ! Toi, ma patrie, aux mains d'une bande sordide, Haletante d'effroi, vierge pure et candide Qu'on tratne dans un mauvais lieu. J'ai vu ton vieux drapeau, sainte et noble oriflamme, Dechire par la balle et noirci par la flamme, Encor tout impregne du sang de nos heros, Couvert des monccaux d'or qu'un ennemi leur compte, Servir de tapis vert a des bandits sans honte, Sur la table de leurs tripots."

Where now, he asks, are the great leaders of the Rebellion days, the heroes who gave their lives for their country: Il5

DAVID HAYNE

"O Papineau, Viger, patriotes sublimes! Lorimier, Cardinal, Chenier, nobles victimes! Qu'etes-vous devenus, heros cent fois benis? Vous qui, sur l'echafaud, portiez vos fronts sans tache? Vous qui teigniez de sang les murs de Saint-Eustache? Vous qui mouriez Saint-Denis?

a

Exile is bitter, but at least the exile has not witnessed the desecration of his homeland. In the second part, written in 1868, Confederation is already a reality. The exile can no longer bear to sing of a homeland shamed and defiled; his lyre must be tuned to the sterner strain of vengeance: "O peuple, les crachats ont macule tajoue; Un bouffon te harcelle; un pierrot te bafoue; On te hue, on te heme, on te pique, on te mord; On t'arrache du front le bandeau de ta gloire.... Debout, peuple, debout! Vas-tu leur laisser croire Que le patriotisme est mort?

In its earlier version the sequence concluded with sober reflections upon the assassination of the "traitor" Thomas D' Arey McGee. Frechette subsequently replaced these by "Ultima verba" in which the poet in his disillusionment glimpses the possibility of a better day to come. In 1963, now that the specific political issues of Frechette's poem have receded into the past, we are able, as his contemporaries were not, to look upon La voix d'un exile merely as satirical verse and invective. These sequences of stanzas, with their gradation from a calm opening through a rapid crescendo to thundering vituperation are unique in French-Canadian literature, both in their conception and in their effectiveness. But as in the case ofFrechette's experiments in Mes loisirs, this was not the way to greatness in French-Canadian poetry, and La voix d'un exile was another adventure not to be repeated. When Frechette was urged in 1883 to allow the reprinting of the work in a collection of polemical pieces, he declined, "at least for the present." And when, at the turn of the century, some of his enemies wished to delay indefinitely a rumoured knighthood for Frechette, they could think of no greater embarrassment for him than the reprinting of La voix d'un exile. 116

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After Frechette completed La voix d'un exile in 1869, eight years passed, during which he was deeply involved in politics and practical concerns. But in his leisure moments he continued to unburden himself in poetry, giving expression to what he was to describe in his next collection as "fantaisies et souvenirs poetiques," and "ces pauvres fleurs effeuillees de mon printemps." We are probably entitled to deduce from these expressions, as well as from the title Pele-mele itself, that Frechette thought of himself as emptying his desk drawers into a book, just as Victor Hugo had done on more than one occasion, and that he probably had at this time no precise plans for further writing. The new volume was fatter and much more elegantly printed than Mes loisirs; it contained 64 poems, ten of which were reprinted with minor revisions from the earlier collection, the remainder having been written at various dates over the fourteen-year period since 1863. The lyrical character of the former collection is again evident here, as is the experimentation in stanza forms, which continues. But Pele-mele also includes some longer poems in epic vein, such as "Jolliet," which was eventually to find its way into La Ugende d'un peuple. The opening lines of "Jolliet" are undoubtedly one of the best-known passages in Frechette's whole work: Le grand fleuve dormait couche clans la savane. Dans les lointains brumeux passaient en caravane De farouches troupeaux d'elans et de bisons. Drape clans les rayons de l'aube matinale Le desert deployait sa splendeur virginale Sur d'insondables horizons. (p. 65)

A novel feature of Pele-mele was the inclusion of seventeen sonnets dedicated to friends and relatives. Frechette had apparently been introduced to the sonnet by Alfred Garneau in 1865, but he did not take up the form until the seventies, when for a period of seven or eight years he wrote more sonnets than anything else. It should not be thought that these were Parnassian cameos; Frechette's principal French inspiration for the sonnet was Josephin Soulary, the bulk of whose work had been published in the Romantic period. Frechette's sonnets are loose and "irregular," and his habitual indifference to technique and craftsmanship made it impossible for him ever to I

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achieve real success in this exacting form. Nevertheless, Pele-mete contained enough competent verse and genuine emotion to make it an acceptable volume not only in Canada but also in some quarters in France, and Frechette's reputation as poet was considerably enhanced by it. The two collections published in I 879, Poesies choisies and Les fleurs boreales, were, as we saw earlier, scarcely separate editions, since three-quarters of the former was reprinted in the latter. The new material in the Poesies choisies consisted of a dozen sonnets, almost all of which described various sites along the St. Lawrence: Montmorency Falls, Lake Beauport, the Thousand Islands, and the Saguenay. As sonnets these are much more successful than the earlier attempts, for they allowed Frechette to indulge his fondness for the immense and the grandiose, and to meet the exigencies of the sonnet form by juxtaposing impressionistic details. When he assembled Les fleurs boreales he included these sonnets in a section entitled "Paysages"; he reprinted all the earlier friend-and-relative sonnets with some new ones in similar sections called "Amities" and "Intimites"; and he added a sonnet sequence under the title "L'annee canadienne." These twelve poems bore the names of the months of the year and, as one might have anticipated, were not without platitudinous lines like these from the month of October: Les feuilles des bois sont rouges et jaunes; La foret commence a se degarnir; L'on se dit deja: l'hiver va venir, Le morose hiver de nos froides zones. (p. 178)

By apparently publishing in Lesfleurs boreales every sonnet he had ever written, Frechette brought the total up to 52, or two-thirds of the volume. Since almost all reviewers of the book made reference to the same dozen or so poems, one is justified in concluding that Frechette might have eliminated at least half these items without any real loss. But by a strange quirk, Frechette, who in his youth had ruthlessly sacrificed most of the poems in Mes loisirs, could not in middle age bring hiinself to omit anything, and from Pele-mete through the three editions of Les fleurs boreales he continued to print his most mediocre efforts alongside his best. This lack of a critical attitude towards his own work, coupled with his life-long indifference

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to technical questions, was to make it impossible for Frechette ever to achieve excellence as a poet. After the repetitions of the lyrical collections, one is relieved to open La legende d'un peuple and to find that all is new, and that the Pele-mile order of the earlier collections is here replaced by a simple historical arrangement. The book's 4 7 tableaux are, if one omits the Prologue and Epilogue, arranged to suggest three epochs, corresponding roughly to the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, or to three phases of the struggle for survival: the struggle against the Indians, against the English, and against oppression. 0 notre Histoire !----ec-rin de pedes ignorees !Je baise avec amour tes pages venerees. (p. 13)

Here at last was a theme to which Frechette could bring all the resources of his eloquence; to have eschewed grandiloquence here would have been to disappoint a public prepared for such a work by twenty years of more modest efforts on the part of the writers of the movement of 1860. As far back as 1866, Abbe Casgrain had expressed in his lecture "Le mouvement litteraire au Canada" his ideal of French-Canadian writing: ••• nous aurons une litterature indigene, ayant son cachet propre, original, portant vivement l'empreinte de notre peuple, en un mot, une litterature nationale ••. sa voie est tracee d'avance; elle sera le miroir fidele de notre petit peuple clans les diverses phases de son existence, avec sa foi ardente, ses nobles aspirations, ses elans d'enthousiasme, ses traits d'heroisme, sa genereuse passion de devouement. (CEuvres completes, I, 368-69)

La legende d'un peuple was the fulfilment ofCasgrain's prophecy; it had come late, but, as Frechette wrote in one of the poems included in it, "C'etait le temps marque pour une grande chose" (p. 31). The poet's romantic delight in the vast, the sombre and the unknown could be indulged to the full : C'etait le Canada, mysterieux et sombre, Sol plein d'horreur tragique et de secrets sans nombre, Avec ses bois epais et ses rochers geants, Emergeant tout a coup du lit des oceans! (p. 37)

Frechette had always been content to buttress his own imagina119

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tion by a literary model; now he was happy to draw upon the pages of Garneau, Casgrain, or Parkman for his material and to clothe the episodes in his most sonorous diction. His hesitations about stanza form no longer appear; La Ugende d'un peuple is written almost entirely in Alexandrine couplets irregularly grouped as in the laisses of the medieval epics. I doubt, however, whether one is wise to use the word epic in this context; La Ugende d'un peuple has not the amplitude nor the unity of an epic, and is better described as a sequence of narrative historical verse. Its evident shortcomings have been catalogued more than once, but, despite its unevenness, it cannot fail to move the reader by its obvious sincerity and its patriotic fervour; it was the best work Frechette could or would produce. Although it passed through four editions and became his best-known and most admired volume, it was not destined to open a new era in FrenchCanadian letters; on the contrary, it marked the final phase of the romantic movement of 1860. Three years after La Ugende d'un peuple, Frechette decided to rake together in a volume significantly entitled Feuilles volantes the remnants of his poetic production accumulated over the decade since Les .fieurs boreales. Feuilles volantes contains several competent longer poems, such as the tribute Frechette composed in 1889 on the first anniversary of the beatification ofJean-Baptiste de la Salle, founder of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, and the thirty stanzas he wrote to express his gratitude to his hostess at Nantes in 1887. But the chief impression one retains from these pages is one of graceful anachronism: Frechette writes on, untouched by the movement of poetry elsewhere, as unaware of the existence of Parnassianism and Symbolism as, it should be added in his defence, all his FrenchCanadian contemporaries were. But his contemporaries were about to change their notions of poetry in the years immediately following 1890; Frechette was to persist to the last, resurrecting at the end of his life several more unpublished pieces for inclusion in his collected works, and explaining in a pathetic preface: Je n'ai pas la pretention de croire que ces bribes echapperont au naufrage qui attend Ies pauvres feuillets quej'aijetes un peu toute ma vie au vent des evenements et des circonstances. (p. 7)

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volumes of poetry, we can now see him for the impenitent Romantic he was. By the chronology of his poe.tic production he belonged to the generation of the movement of 1860, a movement that had been displaced soon after 1890 by a more eclectic one. By his literary allegiances, to Lamartine, Hugo, and Turquety in France, and to Cremazie in Canada, he identified himself with the romantic period in both countries, and these allegiances he never renounced, for he was imitating Hugo in 1887 in La legende d'un peuple, and one of his last public acts was his chairmanship of the Cremazie monument committee in 1906. It is therefore understandable that in the late seventies French reviewers were already speaking of him as a distant echo of a forgotten school and that what popularity he eajoyed in France was in the provinces rather than in the capital. Today no one would call Frechette a great poet, although he did not lack poetic sensibility, sincerity, and talent. His was the courageous originality of an intellectual pioneer, strengthened by the energy and sense of immediacy of the journalist and the politician. As a central figure on the French-Canadian scene and the spokesman of his people abroad, he deserves his place in the ranks of those who have shaped "Our Living Tradition."

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SIR WILLIAM OSLER

"Sir William is over there on the floor." That was my introduction to Osler. I stood embarrassed, wondering, for this was my first appearance at tea-time in the home of the Regius Professor of Medicine. Lady Osler smiled and led me through the guests. Under the piano, a young army officer was lying full length on the floor. Two little children knelt beside him, laughing with delight as Osler bandaged an imaginary wound of the young man's leg. The bandager looked up and laughed. Those who stood about joined in the laugh as he rose to his feet, and I noticed that he was as quick and agile as though he had been sixteen instead of sixty-sixan erect man of medium height. His forehead was high, the skin olive brown, his eyes dark and expressive. He had drooping moustaches touched with grey. When he was not laughing, his face became impassive, but the smile somehow lingered in his eyes. This was the man you have asked me to conjure up, to establish in his rightful place in the company of other men and women who by their lives and work are part of what we are and what we do today. Professor McDougall would have each of the biographies in this series "a lively dialogue between the past and the present." This is nothing new to me: a dialogue has been going on between Sir William Osler and me ever since I met him that afternoon in Oxford, almost fifty years ago. He is one of my heroes, and so he goes about with me wherever I go. I should perhaps say a word about sources. The student who desires more than I can give in this lecture can of course find delightful 122

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Osleriana in any good library. He can turn, for example, to Harvey Cushing's two-volume life of Sir William Osler (Oxford, 1925) or to Maude Abbott's two-volume collection of "Appreciations and Reminiscences of Sir William Osler," with its complete bibliography (Bulletin No. IX of the International Association of Medical Museums: Montreal, privately printed, 1926) or to that most charming oflibrary catalogues, the Bibliotheca Osleriana by William Francis (Oxford, 1929; shortly to appear as a photographic offset edition, with addenda, McGill University Press). These authors were, all of them, Osler disciples of distinction. The Great Physician by Edith Gittings Reid (Oxford, 1931) is a spirited biography written by one who knew Osler first when she was a little girl and he visited her in the nursery. New selections ofOsler's writings, moreover, still appear from time to time-for example, Richard Verney's The Student Life: The Philosophy of Sir William Osler (Livingston, Edinburgh, 1957)and Osler societies flourish among students and physicians. It is interesting that Osier's collected essays and addresses and the stories of his life have outlived his serious medical contributions and his textbooks. I shall not compete with these sources tonight. I have prepared Osler talks before. Some were published and some were not. I intend to draw on these previous writings when it suits my purpose-for surely a man may steal from himself without the reproach of plagiarism. I see the subject of this sketch more distinctly now with the passing years. Perhaps I can paint a lively portrait in fresh colours, dipping my brush indiscriminately into the records and the memories of the past. Osler was born July 12, 1849, in the Anglican parsonage at Bond Head, Upper Canada. The wilderness had not yet been converted into the fruitful farmlands of Ontario. He came of Cornish stock. His father, Featherstone Osler, the son of a merchant in Falmouth, Cornwall, had been sent out from England to this wilderness as an Anglican missionary by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. But the propagation of the gospel by Featherstone could hardly have been more important to Canada than the propagation of young Osiers by his diminutive wife. Mrs. Osler was a brunette with dark eyes and the swarthy skin of the ancient Celts who took refuge in Cornwall, She was a highly intelligent woman l2~

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and lived to a great age, passing her hundredth birthday. William was not her only distinguished son. But he was different from other men. I like to fancy that a Canadian elf came out of the deep woods and crept into his cradle, to go with him through life and to make him different. When he was hurt, he seemed more gay. It may have been the elfin him, the "merry wanderer of the night," that made him so. He whistled and joked when others might have wept. He said it was "to keep my mother out ofmy eyes." He was often aloof, but always accessible to those who needed him. His driving motivating characteristic was love of his fellow men. Call it compassion, if you like. Compassion goes a long way toward the making of a good doctor. Medical students are a rather ordinary lot. The appeal of the sufferer draws out compassion, to some extent, in all of them and moulds them. My prescription for a Doctor of Medicine is this: Take one part-compassion for human suffering, one part-curiosity about the body and the mind of man, two parts-willingness to work. Dissolve in a decade of time, and decant! If that will make an ordinary doctor, then how was Osler different? One difference was that from the outset he was consumed by a desire to discover the causes of things. Osier's family moved to Dundas, Ontario, and he came eventually to be a pupil at Trinity College School, became the first head boy, in fact. But the important thing for him was that the warden, the Reverend W. A. Johnson, was an enthusiastic biologist. On weekends, Mr. Johnson was joined by Dr. James Bovell, from Toronto, and they made excursions looking for specimens to examine with their microscopes. Microscopes were exciting in those days. Willie Osler went with them as their willing slave. And so he learned to tramp through the woods and swamps about his school, collecting, cataloguing, studying the things that lived in the fresh-water pools. One might have feared that the Puckish spirit within him would lead him away into the deep forests, away from any care for study. But no, he discovered a minute race of organisms, the polyzoa, in the pools. This cataloguing and collecting-these thrilling little discoveries-conditioned him to a later scientific life. He even published his schoolboy notes on the polyzoa later on. 124

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From Trinity College School, he went on to Trinity College, Toronto, and then into medical school, beginning at Toronto and finishing in Montreal, at McGill University. Following that, he went abroad for two years of graduate study in England and Germany. Nothing very unusual in all that. But when he was called back to McGill to join the Faculty of Medicine, he showed that he was not like other young physicians of those days. He plunged into the study of the causes of disease, ignoring the methods of treatment then in vogue. It so happened that the Professor of the "Institutes of Medicine" at McGill died at the end of that first year there. Osler took over his work, and shortly thereafter his chair. He was only twenty-five. It was then his task to study and teach histology, or the microscopic structure of the human body. He taught what was known of physiology, the way the body functions under normal conditions. But young Osler also continued to work at pathology in the Montreal General Hospital, studying the abnormal conditions found in the autopsy room. He recorded, collected, and published these findings in a series of brilliant papers. His private patients were few in number since he left practice to others in that stage of his career. The occasional dollars that made their way into his pocket were passed on quickly for the necessities of life, or were used for books and instruments in his department. If you would understand the contribution that Osler made to medicine, you must see medicine as it was in 1874. The causes of disease were, in general, not known. Although a vast number of treatments were in use, very few of them were specific. While Osler, during his teens, had been studying polyzoa in Canadian swamps, Louis Pasteur, in Paris, was demonstrating the micro-organisms that had ruined the wine industry of France, and showing that these living organisms could be killed by what we have come to call "pasteurization." At the time that Osler joined the faculty at McGill, Pasteur had just begun to direct his attention to the micro-organisms of disease among animals and men. He was only beginning to see the possibility of treatment by inoculation. It was another eight years before Koch was to announce that the tubercle bacillus was the actual 125

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cause of tuberculosis. Antiseptic surgery was in its cradle, but X-ray had not yet been dreamed of. During those ten years in Montreal, Osler's major preoccupation was with the effect of diseases on the human body. In this period, many scientific discoveries were being made as to cause. It became apparent to him that the clinical practice of medicine by traditional methods had become suddenly old-fashioned. The profession had need of a leader who dared to defy tradition in medical practice, a man who would forbid useless treatment, and thus make way for modernization. Osler became that leader. He was criticized, called a "therapeutic nihilist." Certainly he was an iconoclast. And yet, in spite of that, he did not become unpopular with his fellows. He was too kindly, too friendly for that, too lacking in guile. Instead, he had a hand in the formation of new medical societies, new journals. As Palmer Howard, his friend and patron at McGill, expressed it with delight-he instilled a new "ferment" into his colleagues. During the early period in Montreal, young Osler was himself changing and growing. The halting, awkward phrases found in his early lectures were disappearing as he learned to write and to speak. By now other centres were calling for him. The University of Pennsylvania, which was then the leading centre of medicine on the American continent, offered him its chair of medicine. He is said to have flipped a coin-"Heads to Philadelphia; tails to remain in Montreal." "Heads" it was. But Philadelphia was not to hold him long. The doors of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Medical School in Baltimore were about to open. Youthful leaders were being called to each department, and the institution was already famous. Finally the choice for the senior post, the Chair of Medicine, was made. It fell to William Osler and he accepted, at the age of thirty-nine. Not long after this, he married the widow of his Philadelphia friend, Dr. S. W. Gross. The bride was the great-grand-daughter of Boston's revolutionary hero, Paul Revere. Grace Revere Osler was a strong-minded woman, but a wise and very charming one. In his new position at Johns Hopkins, Osler had the attention of the medical public. He continued to be the iconoclast, banishing outmoded methods and refusing to prescribe treatment whep. he ~2Q

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knew no treatment would be effective. But he was constructive in medicine, too. In his textbook of medicine which appeared shortly before the wedding, he described the effects of disease with a new clarity. He stated what was known, and he outlined what was not known of cause and treatment and diagnosis. This textbook, falling into the hands of John D. Rockefeller's adviser, led directly to the Rockefeller support of research and education in medicine. In the field of clinical instruction, Professor Osler revolutionized the methods of the day. He introduced bedside teaching. It was the old Edinburgh method, matured and developed in the wards of the Montreal General Hospital. And everywhere he went, disciples followed him-students and doctors, young and old. Always the Osler ferment-new societies, new journals, new enthusiasms. And with it all a lasting affection between him and them, as though indeed the mantle of the Great Physician had fallen upon him. He gave occasional addresses on life and literature and history, all prepared long in advance with the greatest care. Physicians caught and treasured these writings that turned them toward a broader culture. To students he preached a "way of life" with great simplicity. At Yale he told them to learn how to concentrate at their work, a few hours each day, and a few minutes given to better reading so that they might have "fellowship with the great minds of the race." "Be temperate," he said, "Learn to know your Bible.... These words of mine may help some of you so to number your days that you may apply your hearts unto wisdom." Featherstone Osler sometimes seemed to speak out in the voice of his son. Returning to Toronto, Dr. Osler said to the medical students, "The master word in medicine is work. It is the open sesame to every portal, the great equalizer in the world, the true philosophers' stone, which transmutes all the base metal of humanity into gold. The stupid man among you it will make bright, the bright man brilliant and the brilliant student steady." Sixteen years in Baltimore, and then he was away again to his last appointment, the Chair of the Regius Professor of Medicine in Oxford. From the hubbub of a great medical centre, with its consultations, teaching, meetings, and administration, he slipped easily into a quieter life. Quite naturally, he turned to literature and 127

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medical history. From the time of his early days in Ontario, he had been a collector and a cataloguer. Now he developed his own medical library into one of the finest historical collections in the world. Such a man was William Osler, Fellow of the Royal Society, recipient of innumerable honours, a great teacher, and a Canadian whose life drew three great English-speaking nations together and whose memory cements their friendships. I have given you the man, seen in retrospect. You might come to know him better if I can draw a contemporary picture, as well. Contemporary accounts are very rare. This may be due to the fact that greatness, close at hand, often passes for the commonplace. From the letters of an undergraduate, I have culled references to Osler, during his Oxford period. I seem to remember this student well enough, but I hardly realized how nai:ve he was until I came on these letters, written to his mother. One week after beginning his medical studies, this young American wrote, from his rooms in Merton College, Oxford: [January, 1915] When I look up at the seven volumes ofOsler's Medicine on my shelf, it makes me, mentally, worship him. It does not seem possible that he can be the same middle-aged man I saw last Sunday, who, with a room full of guests, spent so much of his time in pretending to bandage up the leg ofa young officer, to the glee of two little children. Sir William said to me: "Don't you go to the Front; you have got to use all your vacations in real work. I'm going to watch you and see that you don't go home any vacations," so I guess I'm committed to vacations in Edinburgh and will see little work in France.

At the end of the first year in Oxford, December, 1915, the student wrote: Sir William had the students of medicine out to his home one evening and he talked very interestingly about the origination of Physical Diagnosis and showed us some of his priceless collection of early manuscripts and writings of doctors-old Latin things, for Latin was the only written language of medicine for a long while. [January, 1916] Davison [Wilburt C. Davison, than an Oxford undergraduate, later Dean and organizer of the Faculty of Medicine, Duke University] just came in and said that Osler had 'phoned him and asked if he and I would not like to go down to Cliveden with him tomorrow; it means cutting one lab., but of course I will go. He goes to Cliveden each week to inspect the big Canadian Hospital there. 128

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And again, in February, 1916: Sir William told the story of his life last night, at a meeting of the American Club, simply, with no affectation nor false modesty. He said he started with every opportunity, seventh in a missionary's family with twins ahead [the student misquoted; Sir William was the eighth child]. He took time for a "gilt-edged" degree and for working too. When the Hopkins was being built, he was at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. He said one morning Dr. Billings walked into his room and said: "Osler, we are opening the Johns Hopkins in a month; will you go down and take charge of the School of Medicine with Welch?" Osler said: "Will I? Yes." "All right, someone will write you, good morning." When he was in England in 1904 (that was 16 or 17 years later), and tired almost to death with the work and engagements of Baltimore, Oxford offered him this job here. So he cabled his wife. Her answer was characteristic. It was, "Don't procrastinate; accept at once. Better to leave Baltimore in a ship than in a wooden box." So he accepted. He said, at the end, that his rule had been to like and sympathize with everyone. That's his creed, I think. He is the least sentimental and the most helpful man I've ever seen-the most lovable. You may believe that he is stimulating to me, too, and is on something of a pedestal. If I were not so dumb, I should have the nerve to hope and dream I might follow in his footsteps.

On March 24, 1916, while crossing the Channel for a second vacation trip to a Red Cross hospital in France, the student was wounded when his ship was torpedoed. He was returned to a military hospital, in Dover, from which he wrote as follows: This is easily the best ward in the hospital. I am learning lots, lots. Bedside manner, I think I've discovered, is nothing but the effect of the doctor's personality. A young, handsome doctor left me hating him after three minutes of hurried examination. It was not that he did not know, but that he did not care about me, or my feelings .... My! Everyone is nice. Both Sir William and Lady Osler and their cousin have written and Sir William telephoned. [April, 1916] Received my first bunch of flowers. The first ever. They came from Lady Osler. I can hardly understand all their kind attention. A letter came from him yesterday to tell me about the surgeon who is in charge of me, Mr. Linington. He says he seeins to be a good man, to judge from his directories, and he remembered an article by Linington in the Lancet and told me to ask the latter about it. So I did, and he seemed quite pleased and brought it for me to read. This morning, Mr. Linington said he had heard directly from Sir William.

That was his way of helping, from behind the scenes.

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A month later, it was the student's unbelievably good fortune to find himself in the·Osler home at Norham Gardens. From there, he wrote on Easter morning: It is good to be so near Sir William. He does not dislike anyone. He sees good and something to admire in everyone, and I've seen his face cloud up when someone repeated a bit of scandal or criticism. He is full of vigour and energy. Last night he came into my room about rn o'clock, as he has each night, in the red smoking-jacket. I showed him an X-ray photograph and simple photographs of one of my ten cases at Ris Orangis, which Dr. Blake had operated on. [The student had managed to get over to the Hopital Militaire, V.R. 76 in France during a vacation. Dr. Joseph Blake of New York was the Chief Surgeon.] Sir William said it was unique, and advised me to publish it! Imagine! Breakfast comes to me in bed. He forbids my getting up before. The silver and the little portions seem good after Dover. Soon Revere and Sir William both come in to see what they can do. Revere is a captain in the R.A.M.C. but is home on leave waiting his change into the artillery. After I am dressed, Lady Osler comes in to talk a little. Never before have I been waited on like this. If I enter a room, Lady Osler gets me a pillow, and someone else a footstool, etc., until I sit down quickly in a sort of shame. Much of the nice days I spend on the terrace overlooking the garden and Oxford Parks. I never heard such birds as here in England. It is like a great choir, the quality of whose voices is ever changing. I read Physiology, or, perhaps, one of the books Sir William has brought me, on the endocrine organs. One of them is in Italian, a great tome, but I look at the pictures and puzzle out a few words. Two little kiddies came in to see "William," as they call Sir William, the other day and, to amuse them, he took them up to a second storey porch which overlooks the garden, and from there he threw water down on Lytle and Davison, who had come to see me. Then, when Lytle put up a lady's umbrella, which lay there, he poured a whole pitcher of water full on him, while the kiddies screamed with delight.

After this two weeks' idyll, the student moved back into his Oxford lodgings, but the kindness that emanated from the household in Norham Gardens did not cease. Revere Osler came in after a day's fishing on the Thames and left a trout for him. Before long, the student, using crutches, was back at his studies. Another memory may be inserted here, a picture the student did not share with his mother. One morning it fell to him to carry out his first autopsy while his fellow students looked on. In the midst of it, Dr. Gibson, the pathologist in charge, left the room and in a few 130

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minutes the student realized that Osler had entered and was standing silent, watching, and stroking his moustache. At last Osler spoke. "That is splendid!" The student looked up. The "Chief" was smiling at him. "It is always better to do a thing wrong the first time. Then you never forget." Removing his coat and rolling up his sleeves, he put on gloves and took the instruments from the student. Then he demonstrated, in the kindliest sort of way, how to do the job properly. He asked about the story of the man who had left this body behind him. He spoke of the man with deference, and referred to death with a sort of reverence. Somehow, he did much more than show the correct autopsy technique. He changed a procedure that had seemed distasteful, even gruesome to a beginner, into something that was admirable. And an autopsy has always continued to be that for that student: A physician's loyal contribution to the art of medicine, an effort to help posterity, an effort in which the doctor seems to be joined by the spirit of the patient, and by those who cared most for the loved one they have lost. Let us turn back to the letters of the student to his mother: Let me tell you what Sir William has done now. He had Davison and me to tea Thursday afternoon, and then we went down to his office in the Museum. Here was a great collection of medical books and of his own reprints. The books were about to be sent to the University of Louvain. "Now," he said, "you boys had better take what books you like, about 20 apiece, and select a set of reprints," and he walked off with his springy step, waving his hand as he slammed the door to cut off our attempted thanks. We took off our coats and dove in, carrying off 40 and, later, splitting them in my room. I have a dandy two-volume surgery.... But the reprints are the best of all. You've no idea what that man has written on-almost every topic in medicine. And now he tells us to bring the reprints to tea this afternoon, and he will send them away to have each set bound and titled. I shall never do it, but I'd like to get a first class in the final examinations because of what Sir William will think.

In these youthful letters there is nothing very extraordinary, but they tell one why every medical man and student who knew Osler loved him and resolved to emulate him. Osler was a simple man who never made his juniors conscious that they were in the presence of greatness. What is more important, I think that he himself never 131

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gave a thought to the length of his own shadow. He had too lively a sense of humour for that, and, besides, he was much too busy following his own rule oflife, "to like and sympathize with everyone." In the summer of 1917 the medical student had found his way to Paris. There he received a letter from Lady Osler: You will, I know, grieve for us when you hear that Revere died August 30th from wounds. It is too horrible to take in, and yet we expected it. I prayed Sir William might be spared this. We know little yet. The first news came from Major Harvey Cushing, who was with him at the C.C.S. [Casualty Clearing Station], and that comforts us so much. I am bothering you-by asking you to do this for me-but know you will not mind. So many of Sir William's friends are in France, and I know all will have the New York Herald (Paris edition), and so I am asking you to put this among the death notices: "Died of wounds received in Belgium, Edward Revere Osler, 2nd Lieut., Royal Field Artillery, aged 2 I. Son of Sir William Osler, Bt., Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, and of Lady Osler."

That the death of his only child and dear comrade was the greatest sorrow that life brought to Sir William seems obvious. But, although his nights were passed in agony, that house, which had gained the name of "The Open Arms," an asylum which had continuously shut its guests away from the worries and cares of war-time, did not now become a place of lamentation. The week-end after the receipt of the news of Revere's death has been described to me by Dr. Robert Osgood, distinguished American orthopaedist. When he heard the news, he immediately proposed to recall his acceptance of an invitation to visit Oxford, but he was informed that both Sir William and Lady Osler would be "distressed and almost displeased" if he did not come. Therefore, with misgivings, Dr. Osgood carried on with the visit, which he described as follows: Sir William met me on the Oxford platform, gay, debonair, with a flower in his button-hole, and, as we drove to Norham Gardens, was as scintillating, humorous and charming as he possibly could be, without a suggestion of any lurking sadness. Soon we dressed for dinner, at which there were perhaps halfa dozen guests who were spending the week-end, including a scholar, whose name I have forgotten, connected with the British Museum, a Canadian lieutenant, who was just having his leave from his regiment in London, and myself. It was a

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very merry dinner party, and Lady Osler seemed as completely in control of herself and her emotions as did Sir William. After dinner, when the gentlemen had gone upstairs to smoke in Sir William's library, he would pull down a non-medical book from his shelves and ask the scholar from the Museum something about it and his opinion concerning it and it would be quite evident in a few minutes that ·sir William was very much the more conversant with this non-medical book. He would then touch on some medical subject and address me, and I would, of course, scuttle as gracefully as I could beneath his feet. He would then turn to the Canadian lieutenant and discuss with him the size of Gertie Miller's ankles (she was then the leading vaudeville star) and he had considerably more knowledge of their size and pulchritude than the young lieutenant. So the evening went. With the ladies he was again, of course, the brilliant leader of conversation....

That night Dr. Osgood slept little. At dawn, before others were stirring, he dressed and left his room to go for a walk in the parks. As he passed on tiptoe down the hall he was startled to see, through the crack of a slightly opened door, Sir William, kneeling in silence by his bed . . . . Sunday, Lady Osler went to church. There was another very considerable party at luncheon. In the afternoon twenty-five American aviators were in for tea with gaiety unconfined. It was almost more than one could bear, this apparent gaiety, this complete obscuration of his real feelings, because it was war-time and the sporting thing to do. Lady Osler entirely caught his spirit and talked and acted in complete harmony with his mood. I fancy efforts like this may have lost him to the world too early.

Aequanimitas! That was the word he had chosen to be inscribed on his own crest when he was created a baronet. Equanimity was an essential quality in his character. He took all things in his strideeven the death of Revere. Today his precious collection of books is active, as he wanted it to be, in a permanent home at McGill, the Osler Library. His ashes, with those of Lady Osler, are behind an unmarked panel there. His spirit has not gone back to the wilderness of Upper Canada. It lives on in the world. His life and thought have meaning for all ofus. I would have you keep him in your mind as that undergraduate saw him-"the least sentimental, the most helpful, most lovable man." K

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OLIVAR ASSELIN: I

I have chosen Olivar Asselin as the subject of these lectures because he was a precursor of present-day Canadian nationalism who was in his heyday, from 1900 to 1911, almost as well known in both English and French Canada as Henri Bourassa. The latter's fame has since eclipsed Asselin's, at least among English Canadians, who are disposed to be more generally sympathetic to the ideas and attitudes of these two French Canadians today than they were before World War I. Bourassa is chiefly, if wrongly, remembered for his anti-war stand. Unlike Bourassa, Asselin did not persist in opposing Canadian participation in the war on nationalist grounds. He raised a battalion, saw service at the front, and was attached to the Canadian delegation at the Peace Conference. I had another reason for discussing Asselin: he has connections with both your country and mine. He lived in the United States from his eighteenth to his twenty-seventh year, and indeed began his journalistic career there. This early period of exile had an important influence on his later life: it strengthened his Canadian nationalism and his love for the French language, while at the same time it gave him some ideas and attitudes which were rare and daring in Quebec before 1914. Like other French Canadians who came back from New England, he became a maker and shaker of the new Quebec world which in 1900 began to emerge under the impact of the industrial revolution, and which is still evolving today. I think that you will find his ideas strangely contemporary, and that you will recognize in him a man who was ahead of his time, yet who expressed some of the 1 34

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most vital traditional values of French Canada. This review of his life and work may help to provide an understanding of what is happening in the tumultuous world of French Canada today. And finally, I chose to talk about Asselin simply because he is an exceptionally interesting figure, as a man and as a writer, who deserves to be better known by English Canadians than he is. Who was Olivar Asselin? According to his former colleague in journalism, Omer Heroux, with whom he parted in 19m, he was "the greatest journalist of his time in Canada." According to the editor of his selected works, Gerard Dagenais, he was "the greatest and most celebrated master of French thought in Canada." These are sweeping generalizations, and before examining them critically, or going into details about his work, I propose to give a sketch of Asselin's early life. This is all the more necessary since there are major errors in most of the standard biographical accounts. Joseph-Franc;ois-Olivar Asselin was born on November 8, 1874, at Saint-Hilarion, Charlevoix County, Quebec, the fourth child in a family of fourteen children. The Asselins had come to this poor and mountainous region from the Ile d'Orleans and Chateau-Richer, by way ofBaie Saint-Paul. The eldest son, Oscar, helped his father with the family farm, while the second son, Raoul, early showed evidence of a vocation for the priesthood and was sent to the college classique at Rimouski. Olivar, the third son, who early evinced a precocious intelligence, was to follow him there. Their father was unhappy at poor harvests and the hostility of the Charlevoix clergy because as a "hon Rouge," in Olivar's words, "ii ne voulait pas reconnaitre pour envoye de Dieu sir Hector Langevin, ministre concussionnaire, protege de l'episcopat, mort depuis, deshonore .... " So Asselin pere decided to move to Mont Joli, on the south shore of the St. Lawrence, and to combine farming with a tanning business in the village. Here Olivar attended the village school, and heard his father talk of his heroes, Louis Riel, Honore Mercier, and young Wilfrid Laurier, from the last of whom great things were hoped, despite the opposition of the clergy, when he became Liberal leader in 1887. When young Olivar was sent to the Seminaire de Rimouski in 1886, he soon won the nickname "Petit Caporal," for he was already a dreamer with a need for grandeur, set apart by "his lofty air, his commanding tone, his need of domination, and his assured walk," 1 35

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all of which somehow offset his thin, short, and sickly figure. Though he was an undisciplined student who did not work hard, he was able to carry off prizes by last-minute cramming and feats of memory, and so was befriended by his older brother's patron, Bishop Blais ofRimouski, who provided him with the clothes that his father could not afford. He fell ill of scurvy-he was always to suffer from a delicate stomach-and was given permission to board outside the college, with a Madame Sirois. Two of his five fellow boarders at mere Sirois' were Franco-Americans, Willy Lapahne and Frederic Pelletier, who sported better clothes, fancy watches, unlimited spending money, and told tall tales of their adopted country, New England. Another was Dr. Joseph Gauvreau, who nearly half a century later was to write what would remain the best biographical account of Asselin until the appearance last year of Marcel Gagnon's excellent work, La vie orageuse d'Olivar Asselin, to which this essay is much indebted. Young Olivar left the seminary in 1892 without completing the full classical course, in his own words "avec une frottement de lettres apres le baccalaureat de rhetoric." While one legend runs that he was expelled for throwing a spittoon at the head of a professor, the more probable reason for his departure was that his father had decided, like so many other Quebecois of the day, to try his fortune in the United States, after losing his tannery by fire and his eldest son by marriage in 1890. Leaving his farm to the latter, Asselinpere took his family to Fall River, Massachusetts, where the streets were reputed to be paved with gold, while the whole Lower St. Lawrence region was close to starvation after the great depression which had afflicted Canada ever since the 187o's. The Asselins were part of the last wave of a great human tide which swept some 300,000 French Canadians out of Quebec and into New England between 1870 and 1900, when prosperity returned to Canada. The Civil War had decimated the farming population of New England and created an industrial system which seemed to have an insatiable appetite for man, woman, or even child power. To those accustomed to bare subsistence on an annual income of some $75 a year, $3.50 a week for dawn-to-dusk labour, six days a week, for anyone over IO or 12 years of age who could learn to tend a machine, looked like the Promised Land. And so the farmed-out, 136

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over-populated St. Lawrence valley parishes emptied their surplus population into the teeming Little Canadas of the New England mill towns. By the time the Asselins moved, the old French imperial dream of making New England part of New France seemed to be in a fair way to coming about at last, to the alarm of such old-stock New Englanders as Francis Parkman, who like many others was disturbed by the tendency of the newcomers to keep to themselves, to establish their own French churches, schools, societies, and newspapers, and to show a most notable resistance to the great American melting-pot. At first the Canadian authorities had been contemptuous of the exodus; George~Etienne Cartier dismissed it with the observation: "C'est la canaille qui s'en va." Then the Quebec clergy began to regard the migration with alarm, and tried to stay it. Failing, they sent missionaries to work among the migrants, in response to the repeated requests of the New England bishops for French-speaking priests. Repatriation movements were encouraged by both Church and State but failed to lure many exiles home. Finally the leaders of both Church and State capitulated, with Bishop Lafleche voicing the opinion that perhaps it was the design of Providence thus to Catholicize New England, and with Laurier and many other political leaders touring the Franco-American centres to maintain touch with the exiles, who had become politically powerful enough in New England by 1885 to bring pressure to bear upon the President of the United States to intervene and prevent Riel's execution. The crazed prophet of the new Canadian West had briefly attended classical college in Montreal, before it was decided that he was too unstable for the priesthood, and he had many former classmates among the Franco-American clergy of New England who had taken care of him during his wandering years of exile after the uprising of 1869-70. Like thousands before them, the Asselins soon found employment in New England. Olivar lasted a week as a grocer's clerk, and then became a textile mill-hand. With his work punctuated by Sunday picnics at the shore, where he learned to dive and swim and to enjoy the new pleasures of a clambake, he was content enough his first summer in the States. But in the fall his thoughts turned to study again, and he asked his brother Raoul, still at the Seminaire de Rimouski, to send him books on science and philosophy. He discovered French culture in Fall River, where French newspapers cir-

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culated widely, Parisian journals as well as those founded by the migrants from Quebec. The Abbe J. Bedard, the curl fondateur of Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes-de-Fall River, was a co-worker of Ferdinand Gagnon, perhaps the greatest of the Franco-American journalists, who sought to unite the Franco-Americans by means of national societies and annual conventions, with the programme of "Nos traditions, notre langue, et notre foi,'' after failing to persuade them to return to Canada when he served as a Canadian repatriation agent. As Marcel Gagnon notes in his biography of Asselin: Curieux destin, vraiment, que celui de ces emigres devenus meilleurs patriotes et nationalistes convaincus, le jour ou ils abandonnent leur patrie. Doivent-ils pour autant renier tout leur passe? C'est le patriotisme passionne de l'exile, empreint d'imagination nostalgique et de souvenirs d'enfance. C'est quand la patrie n'est qu'un nom, dit Chesterton, que le nationalisme est le plus ardent.

Asselin began to practise what he later preached to novice journalists: Pour etre joumaliste ii faut savoir le franc;ais .... Pour apprendre le fran~ais lisez les joumaux de France.... Ce n'est pas la province de Quebec, le berceau de la langue franc;aise; quoi que nous fassions, nous n'enseignerons jamais leur langue aux Francais.

And so he taught himself to write good French by reading and annotating French newspapers in his spare time. This self-education was so successful that in 1892, at the age of eighteen, he began to supply Le Protecteur Canadien of Fall River with a weekly article on politics or political economy, as well as an occasional poem. While continuing to work in the textile mill until March, 1894, he launched himself as a freelance writer for the Franco-American press. He also followed an elaborate programme of physical culture to strengthen his frail physique, bicycling to work, running, swimming, skating, and playing lacrosse or football. His caustic wit won him friends, and he led a gay enough life. His decision in April, 1893, to enter the Jesuit order was a surprise to his friends and relatives. But this plan had to be abandoned that fall when his father died and Olivar became the chief support of the family. Up to this time he had been paid for his journalism chiefly in glory and satisfaction at seeing his writing in print. But in March, 138

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1894, Adelard Lafond, the editor of Le Protecteur, offered him a staff job, and despite the fact that it paid a pittance compared to his wages in the mill, he took it. He also seems to have contributed to Le National of Lowell, before going to La Tribune of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, a paper which Lafond started after the failure of Le Protecteur in the spring of 1895. Like many other Franco-American papers, La Tribune died almost as soon as it was born, and by November Asselin was out of a job. He found one on the JeanBaptiste of Pawtucket by the end of the year. By September, I 896, he was once more an editor for the revived La Tribune of Woonsocket. From the first he was not really a reporter; he wrote essays, columns, editorials, and occasional verse. During this same period he also worked for three months as a reporter for La Croix of Montreal, which he noted was "travail d'autant plus facile que La Croix ne publiait pas d'information et que le reporter ne connaissait rien au reportage." He later described this period as one of forced labour in the galleys. To eke out his miserable wages he became principal of the Stade Night School at Woonsocket during the winter of 1897-g8. When the Spanish-American War broke out in April, 1898, Asselin promptly enlisted and also used his pen to encourage recruiting, before the Rhode Island Volunteers, who numbered in their ranks another soon-to-be-distinguished Canadian, Calixa Lavallee, were sent in June, 1898, to train at Quonset in Rhode Island, Camp Meade in Maryland, Camp Alger in Virginia, and at Columbia, South Carolina. Here he fell in love with a Southern girl with whom he corresponded until his marriage. For all his fire-eating zeal, he never got to Cuba, for the peace treaty was signed in February, 1899. By the end of April, Asselin was a journalist once more, writing now in English for the Evening Star at Woonsocket, and rejoicing in American citizenship as a result of his enlistment. He took part in the founding of the Societe Historique Franco-Americaine, whose goals were to encourage the study of the history of the United States, to shed light on the part of the French race in the making of the American people, to gather historical documents, to inquire into French influence in America, and to work for the expansion of French thought. In I goo he decided to return to Quebec. The best explanation of his motives is probably supplied by the verses en139

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titled "L'Exil" which he had published in Le Glaneur in 1892 under the pseudonym of "Jocelyn": L'exil, on y voit l'or, de vastes moulins, des choses merveilleuses. Mais l'exil, l'on n'y voit plus Ies grands bois verts, Jes hies