Native Canadianism: a Neglected Tradition
Canada
First, an organization founded by William Alexander Foster in 1868, sought to
promote a uniquely Canadian nationality in the face of imperialist and
annexationist sentiment. By the 1870's, the movement took on the flavour of a cultural nationalism, manifesting itself not
only in its membership, but in the support it received from politicians and
newspapers. Foster stated that the movement's aim was to "recognize the
pressing necessity for the cultivation of a national sentiment which will unite
the people of the various provinces more closely in the bonds of
citizenship...That an organization which will draw the line between Canadians
loyal to their soil and those who place their citizenship in a subordinate or
secondary position, affords the surest means of cementing a confederation and
securing political action in the interests of the whole Dominion."[1] Another Canada First member, Edward Blake,
went further, commenting that Canadians were "'four millions of Britons
that were not free.'"[2] Though viciously attacked by many Toronto and
Montreal newspapers as "Republicans", "Traitors" or
"Grits", the Canada First movement was not alone in its support for
its Canadian vision. For instance, the Hamilton Times had written (mentioned by
Foster in his inaugural address) around 1870: "'The Englishman, while
truly loyal to his Sovereign, gives his love of country to England. The
Scotchman and the Irishman while giving their full allegiance to the Queen,
give the first place in their affections to Scotland and Ireland. Why should we
in Canada be different? What reason exists why when Englishmen, Irishmen and
Scotchmen give their whole hearts to their respective countries, we in Canada
should not place our own land first, and so act and speak as though we felt
proud--as we have a right to be-of the name Canadian. We have a country in
which any people might glory, we have a future that is dazzling in its promise;
all we need is a sentiment which shall break down all provincial and sectional
distinctions..'"[3] Another paper Foster mentioned
had been more explicit: "'And this is the feeling we want more of in our
Dominion - a feeling of Canadianism. Are we to be
forever jabbering about our respective merits as Englishmen, Scotchmen,
Welshmen, French and Germans; as Irish Catholic and Irish Orangemen? We have
heard a great deal too much of this stuff talked. It is time that all classes
of our population, whether born here or elsewhere, whatever their creed or
country, should consider themselves, above all, Canadians.'"[4] Finally, celebrated Irish-Canadian statesman
Thomas D'Arcy McGee wrote, "'You want a principle to guard your young men,
and thus only your frontier. When I can hear your young men say as proudly our federation, or our country or our
kingdom, as the young men of other countries do speaking of their own, I shall
have less apprehension for the result of whatever trials the future may have in
store for us.'"[5] Most Canada Firsters
had probably not made the psychic break from a pan-Brittanic
ethnicity and certainly most did not envision a severing of the imperial tie.
Nevertheless, the first visions of a Canadian ethnicity and an independent
Canadian nation were articulated by Canada First intellectuals making the
organization's rise an important milestone in the annals of Canadian ethnicity.
The
obvious link between Canada's French and British peoples was Nordicity. The Nordic idea served Canadian nationalism in
two ways: first, it identified the northerly climate and landscape as
definitively Canadian. Second, it sought to fuse the French and British peoples
together by an appeal to common Norman origin. On the former point, the
northern theme equated coldness and bleakness with strength, freedom, morality
and vigour. In the words of one enthusiast,
"'The very atmosphere of her northern latitude, the breath of life that
rose from lake and forest, prairie and mountain, was fast developing a race of
men with bodies enduring as iron and minds as highly tempered as steel.'" Other
commentators drew attention to Canada's "'stern latitudes'" and
Canada First founder William Foster reflected, "The old Norse mythology,
with its Thor hammers and Thor hammerings, appeals to us, - for we are a
Northern people,-as the true out-crop of human nature, more manly, more real,
than the weak narrow-bones superstition of an effeminate South.'"[6] In Foster's words can be discerned the use of
the northern theme in differentiating the "stern, free" Canadians
from the "effeminate" or soft Americans. In addition, Americans were
derided as being less nordic because of their
populations of blacks and southern European immigrants. Added to the theme of a bracing northern climate was the fact
of Canadian isolation and the toil of wringing a living from a wild, infertile
environment. "Because of the climate and the Canadian Shield there is a
lack of good farmland in Canada. Our farmers, living on the edge of North
American agriculture, too frequently have had to be content with thin soils and
rocks as well as with winter...if there is a myth about Canadian agriculture,
it is about the toil and uncertainty of farming in a harsh environment, and
this is a very different myth from any in the United States."[7]
The
anti-Americanism of the northern myth was reinforced by the
Evolutionist-Hegelian idea that the Spirit of Peoples was moving to the
Northwest, putting Canada at the culmination of this movement. In addition,
Canadians would be to the British what the barbarians were to Rome: a source of
invigorating élan vital. George Parkin found confirmation of his ideas in Benjamin Kidd's Social Evolution, which stated:
"'The successful peoples have moved west-wards for physical reasons; the
seat of power has moved continuously northwards for reasons connected with the
evolution in character which the race is undergoing. Man, originally a creature
of a warm climate and still multiplying most easily and rapidly there, has not
attained his highest development where the conditions of existence have been
easiest. Throughout history the centre of power has moved gradually but surely
to the north into those stern regions where men have been trained for the
rivalry of life in the strenuous conflict with nature in which they have
acquired energy, courage, integrity, and those characteristic qualities which
contribute to raise them to a high state of social efficiency....'"[8]
The
Northern theme was one of the few ideas that was embraced enthusiastically by
both French and British Canadians because, as mentioned, both ethnies were seen as Norman in origin. In the words of F.B.
Cumberland, Vice-President of the National Club of Toronto, the "'Norman
French'" and the British immigrants are "'welding together into Unity
and by this very similarity of climate creating in Canada a homogeneous Race,
sturdy in frame, stable in character, which will be to America what their
forefathers, the Northmen of old, were to the
continent of Europe.'"[9] The genealogists Benjamin Sulte
and Cyprien Tanguay gave
credence to this idea when they concluded in their Dictionnaire g[)1]én[)2]éologique des familles
Canadiennes that most French Canadians were
"'Norman, whether its origin be pure Norman, Gascon
or French-English.'"[10] The theme of these 19th century French
Canadians continued to be popular amongst both French and English writers until
the mid twentieth century. Perhaps William Wood stated the case most clearly
when he asserted "'that many of the French Canadians are descended from
the Norman-Franks, who conquered England seven hundred years before the English
conquered La Nouvelle France, and that, however diverse they are now, the
French and British peoples both have some Norman stock in common.'"[11] In the early twentieth century, historians
George Bourinot and G.M. Wrong continued to echo the
racial unity theme and in 1944, Abb[)3]é
Arthur Malheux of Laval University "pointed out
that 'the Norman blood, at least, is a real link between our two groups'...The
French people, the Abb[)4]é
explained, 'is a mixture of different bloods; the Gaul, the Briton, the Romans,
the Norman each gave their share. The same is true with the English people, the
Celt, the Briton, the Roman, the Saxon, the Dane, the Norman each gave their
share of blood. It is easy to see that the elements are about the same and in
about the same proportions in each of these two nations. Both are close
relatives by blood from the very beginning of their national existences. And
both Canadian groups have the same close kinship.'"[12]
The
Northern theme also received play at the hands of authors and artists. In the
nineteenth-century, for example, "the adventure stories centering on life
in the isolated Hudson Bay posts and the exploits of the lonely trapper had
long been the staple themes of the novels of Robert M. Ballantyne
and the boys' books of J. Macdonald Oxley." Later, writers like Robert
Service and William Fraser "not only set their works in the northerly
setting but also lived there."[13] It is significant that in Service's Sam McGee, the lead character, who is
from Tennessee, is constantly complaining about the freezing Yukon weather in
contrast to the others (Canadians), including the narrator, who displayed a
tougher attitude. This helped enshrine the northern feature that separated the
Canadian character from the American. On this northern note, by the 1920's,
seven members of the "national movement" in Canadian visual art had
made a name for themselves. Starting in 1911, Frank Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A.Y. Jackson, Franz Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J.E.H. MacDonald and Frederick Varley
met in Toronto and by the 1920's had been painting together in the bush,
causing their technique to follow similar bold, expressive-romantic lines.[14] The members also expressed themselves in print
and on tape, displaying a clear Northern Canadian nationalism. "After a
trip into the Arctic with A.Y. Jackson, Lawren Harris
reported that 'We came to know that it is only through the deep and vital
experience of its total environment that a people identifies itself with its
land and gradually a deep and satisfying awareness develops. We were convinced
that no virile people could remain subservient to, and dependent upon the
creations in art of other peoples...To us there was also the strange brooding
sense of another nature fostering a new race and a new age.'"[15]
Anglo-Canadian Cultural Nationalism
The Group of Seven was merely one of the better
known examples of a broader phenomenon of intellectual nationalism in English
Canada during the 1920's. This activity involved artists, writers and
university professors and was centred in Toronto
around several interlocking organizations: the Association of Canadian Clubs
(ACC), the Canadian League, the Canadian Institute of International Affairs and
the League of Nations Society in Canada. Membership in these organizations was
fairly substantial when we consider that much of the membership consisted of an
Anglo-Canadian cultural elite. For instance, the League of Nations Society had
13,000 members by 1928 while the Association of Canadian Clubs had over 40,000
members by the end of the 20's. Several journals growing up around this
movement of cultural nationalism included the Canadian Nation (the journal of the ACC), with a circulation of
37,000 by 1929 and the more high-brow Canadian
Forum, with a 2,500 circulation.[16] Not all of these intellectuals repudiated the
pan-Brittanic ideal, but many did. An expression of
their Canadian nationalism appeared in a Forum editorial of the 20's:
"'Real independence is not the product of tariffs and treaties. It is a
spiritual thing. No country has reached its full stature, which makes its goods
at home but not its faith and its philosophy.'"[17] While these intellectual movements tended to
stress Canadian culture and Canadian civic nationalism, the more populist
Native Sons of Canada had a more ethnic vision of their new nation. The Native
Sons of Canada was formed in 1921 in Victoria by a congerie
of politically active professionals and small businessmen. By 1929 it had an
estimated 120,000 members in over a hundred assemblies in Canada. Its organ, the
Beaver Canada First had a circulation
of 34,000 in 1930. According to one of its early pamphlets, the organization's
aims were:
"'1. To keep in Canada all her native born.
2. To bring
back to Canada those who reside in foreign lands.
3. To induce
desirable people to make homes in Canada.
4. To make
Canada the most desirable country in which to live.
5. To mold
all peoples within her borders into one great virile race-CANADIANS.
6. To plant
in the heart of this race an unbounded love for, devotion and loyalty to
Canada
and all that pertains to her interests.
7. To
respect and obey the laws of Canada.'"[18]
The Native Sons were, in the main, liberals who
either were disenchanted with Imperial nationalism or never felt their pan-Brittanic identity. Their organization was closed to those
of foreign birth and was formed with the "explicit intention of competing
with such other fraternal societies as the Sons of Scotland and the Sons of
Ireland for Canadian-born men."[19] Canada First had drawn charges of treason in
the 1860's and 70's, even though much of its vision was still within the pan-Brittanic tradition thus it is unsurprising that the Native
Sons, with their more radical platform, drew similar fire. Deliberately
spurning the British tie and the tradition of Loyalist anti-Americanism, the
Native Sons went on to attack even Orangeism and
certain kinds of British immigration.
The
Native Sons' were especially incensed by the self-help networks of British
immigrant societies which helped their members secure many of the best urban,
white-collar jobs. "'Scots were helping Scots, Englishmen helping
Englishmen...but nobody was looking out for Canadians, least of all other
Canadians.'"[20] The Native Sons responded with a demand that
British subjects be required to declare their loyalty to Canada in return for
which they would receive a certificate of Canadian nationality. This idea of
Canadian nationality later germinated into the 1947 Citizenship Act.
The
Native Sons' views on Canadian ethnicity were a more explicit repudiation of
pan-Brittanicism than those of Canada First. The
Sons' felt that a new Canadian "race" was developing by natural
selection and that non-British immigration could help build this new ethnic
group. The Native Sons' pan-European ethnic vision should not disguise their
Anglo-Canadian outlook, however. Though accepting of European immigration, they
were against Oriental immigration and did acknowledge that British immigrants,
though at times deplorable, did have the benefit of being closer to
"Canadians" in temperament and race.[21]
The Nationalism of A.R.M. Lower
The ambivalence shown by the Native Sons toward the
British connection reveals a kind of "double-consciousness" similar
to that of Americans who subscribed simultaneously to both the melting pot and
the idea of WASP ethnicity. This tension is best illustrated by one of the more
famous of the Native Sons', historian Arthur R. M. Lower, who carried the
banner of Anglo-Canadian ethnic nationalism into the mid-twentieth century.
Lower often took pride in the Britishness of English
Canada, as when he commented that "' in the United States, the Anglo-Saxon
stock is becoming diluted but in Canada it is scarcely touched.'"[22] At other times, however, Lower took to
criticizing the British immigrants, whom he felt were an obstacle to the
realization of an independent Canada. Another tension in Lower's
thought concerned the place of the French in Canada. On the surface, Lower's nationalism was civic and included the French, but
it is not hard to detect the distinctly Anglo-Canadian thread in Lower's writing. This began as a pan-Brittanic
vision. For example, in 1943, Lower would plead to the French to understand
"how difficult it is for an English-speaking person to be Canadian, tout court: how he is pulled apart by
the appeal of race, so strong both from south and east. After all, it is asking
a lot to expect people to abandon membership in a great world group of some two
hundred millions, in order to retreat into a peculiar little self-contained
society of eleven."[23] Yet in the same year, Lower, in an apparent
volte-face, would upbraid the English Canadians for their attachment to
Britain, a theme continued in his 1946 opus, Colony to Nation. As Lower remarked in 1974, "I had from my
boyhood a strongly marked sense of the group. This could have stopped at the
simple level of "the team," but it went on to interest me, greatly
bolstered by my reading, in the historic "team," that is to say, the
state. At first for me this was the British state, but gradually it changed
into my own, the Canadian."[24]
By
the late 1940's, Lower was criticizing the Canadian historical establishment
which praised Canada's development within the Empire. Instead of affirming the
Imperial connection, he "saw as one of the main drawbacks of such a
pattern of growth the lack of any profound break that might have come to
signify decisively for Canadians, especially those of British descent, the line
that separated them from their 'homeland'."[25] Throughout his writing, Lower showed great
concern with matters of ethnic, as opposed to merely civic nationalism. This
began as a concern with the loss of English Canada's homogeneity through
non-British immigration. Lower's chief concern was that the acquisitive ethic of
Protestant Canadians led them to leave for the more prosperous United States,
to be replaced by non-British immigrants. "'Our British stock, Lower
warned, 'both native born and born abroad, is rapidly slackening its rate of
increase and..., unless some unforeseen change occurs, it is destined to be
outnumbered, not only by the total of all groups but by one of them alone, the
French.'"[26] "What bothered Lower about this pattern
of population movement [Canadian emigration and non-British immigration] was
not only the tremendous wastage of human resources involved, and the callous
and exploitative attitude toward immigrants that it revealed, but above all its
effects on Canadian nationalism. 'If Canadians wish to see Canada possessed of
all the best attributes of nationhood,' he explained, 'and if the chief result
of immigration is to drive out the native-born, it is evident that much evil
must come from this constant renewal of blood; generation by generation....' A
people had to be moulded slowly by the soil and
climate before they became 'true children of the fatherland'. Yet the
population's shifting and unstable nature forced precisely those best adapted
to Canada to leave and replaced them with aliens; people never got a chance to
integrate and adapt to a fixed culture. Clearly massive immigration was one of
the main impediments to the formation of a strong sense of national
community.'"[27] Notice that there is a distinctly native
Canadian emphasis to Lower's worries, not a pan-Brittanic one. Lower reaffirmed this native, Anglo-Canadian
ethnic vision in 1943 when he wrote that it is "'as necessary to health
for a people to integrate their personality as it is for the individual.
Sometimes the individual sensitive to such things feels drowned in the
immensity and depth of the general cultural heritage of the world.' At such
time he searches for a little island, for recognizable peculiarities-for, in
short, roots.'"[28]
Lower's
nationalism escaped its pan-Brittanic influence, but
remained at heart an Anglo-Canadian vision. Thus while Lower eloquently
deplored the materialism of Anglo-Canadian life and admired the French
Canadians, he hoped to put his observations to good use in encouraging the
Anglo-Canadian to develop a similar cultural rootedness.
For his efforts to define an Anglo-Canadian nation within Canada, Lower was
compared to a great French-Canadian nationalist by Alexander Brady, who dubbed
Lower "'the Abbé Groulx
of English Canada.'"[29]
Nordic Canadianism After
World War II
Arthur Lower's Canadian
identity was well-developed in 1963, the year he wrote an article entitled The Forest: Heart of a Nation, an
article which showed how far Lower was attracted to the theme of Northern
Canada. As mentioned, this sense of nordicity and its
counterpart, the "northern" Canadian ethnie,
were ideas that had resonance with both French and British, but more so for the
latter, who lacked an effective Canadian identity. Perhaps Governor General
Vincent Massey expressed this frame of mind best when he said as recently as
1948 that: "'Climate plays a great part in giving us our special
character, different from that of our southern neighbours...it
influences our mentality, produces a sober temperament. Our racial
composition-and this is partly because of our climate-is different, too. A
small percentage of our people comes from central or southern Europe. The vast
majority springs either from the British Isles or Northern France, a good many,
too, from Scandinavia and Germany, and it is in northwestern Europe that one
finds the elements of human stability highly developed. Nothing is more
characteristic of Canadians than the inclination to be moderate.'"[30]
Well
after Massey's statement, the theme of the north continued to influence
Canadian nationalism. Hence in Canada, the lure of the north and the northern
frontier played a role similar to that of the west in the United States in the
sense that it acted as an environmental stimulant to the Canadian values of
order and liberty and shaped the nation's personality, even its ethnicity. In
the idea of the Northern Canadian people can be seen the stirrings of a new
ethnicity, but several factors ensured its lack of popular dissemination, the
most important of which were the entrenched pan-Brittanic
and Quebecois identities of the majority of the Canadian population. By the
time most of Canada's British element had overcome its attachment to pan-Brittanicism (between 1945 and 1975), collective
romanticism was losing its hold on the opinion-making sectors of the
population-a saga we shall take up in the following chapters of this work.
[1]Smith, Goldwyn, Canada First, a memorial of the late William A. Foster, p.6
[2]Smith, Goldwyn, Canada First, a memorial of the late William A. Foster, p.6
[3] Foster, W.A., Canada First, pp 50-51
[4] Foster, W.A., Canada First, pp 50-51
[5] Foster, W.A., Canada First, pp 50-51
[6] Berger, Carl, The True North Strong and Free in Peter Russell (ed) , Nationalism in Canada, pp.5-7
[7] Harris, Cole, The Myth of the Land in Canadian Nationalism in Peter Russell (ed) , Nationalism in Canada, pp. 33-34
[8] Berger, Carl, The True North Strong and Free in Peter Russell (ed) , Nationalism in Canada, p. 19
[9] Berger, Carl, The True North Strong and Free in Peter Russell (ed) , Nationalism in Canada, pp. 12-13
[10] Berger, Carl, The True North Strong and Free in Peter Russell (ed) , Nationalism in Canada, p. 13
[11] Berger, Carl, The True North Strong and Free in Peter Russell (ed) , Nationalism in Canada, p. 13
[12] Berger, Carl, The True North Strong and Free in Peter Russell (ed) , Nationalism in Canada, pp. 13-14
[13] Berger, Carl, The True North Strong and Free in Peter Russell (ed) , Nationalism in Canada, p.20
[14] The Canadian Encyclopedia, p.778
[15] Berger, Carl, The True North Strong and Free in Peter Russell (ed) , Nationalism in Canada, p.21
[16] Vipond, Mary, The Nationalist Network: English Canada's Intellectuals and Artists in the 1920's in Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism, Vol.Vii, No.1, 1980, pp. 39-42.
[17] Vipond, Mary, The Nationalist Network: English Canada's Intellectuals and Artists in the 1920's in Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism, Vol.Vii, No.1, 1980, pp. 42-43.
[18] Vipond, Mary, Nationalism and Nativism: The Native Sons of Canada in the 1920's in Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism, 9, 1982, pp. 83-84
[19] Vipond, Mary, Nationalism and Nativism: The Native Sons of Canada in the 1920's in Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism, 9, 1982, p.84
[20] Vipond, Mary, Nationalism and Nativism: The Native Sons of Canada in the 1920's in Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism, 9, 1982, p.92
[21] Vipond, Mary, Nationalism and Nativism: The Native Sons of Canada in the 1920's in Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism, 9, 1982, p.92
[22] Berger, Carl, The Writings of Canadian History, p. 130.
[23] Lower, Arthur M., Two Nations or Two Nationalities, in Welf Heick (ed), History and Myth, p. 202
[24] Lower, Arthur M., in Welf Heick (ed), History and Myth, p. xv.
[25] Berger, Carl, The Writings of Canadian History, p. 134.
[26] Berger, Carl, The Writings of Canadian History, pp. 130-131
[27] Berger, Carl, The Writings of Canadian History, p. 130.
[28] Berger, Carl, The Writings of Canadian History, p. 136.
[29] Berger, Carl, The Writings of Canadian History, p. 136
[30] Berger, Carl, The True North Strong and Free in Peter Russell (ed) , Nationalism in Canada, p.23