Discovering Confederation: A Canadian's Story 9780773590250

Citation preview

D i s c ov e r i n g C o n f e d e r at i o n

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Footprints Series J a n e E r r i n g t o n , Editor The life stories of individual women and men who were participants in interesting events help nuance larger historical narratives, at times reinforcing those narratives, at other times contradicting them. The Footprints series introduces extraordinary Canadians, past and present, who have led fascinating and ­important lives at home and throughout the world. The series includes primarily original manuscripts but may consider the English-language translation of works that have already appeared in another language. The editor of the series welcomes inquiries from authors. If you are in the process of completing a manuscript that you think might fit into the ­series, please contact her, care of McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1010 Sherbrooke Street West, Suite 1720, Montreal, QC H3A 2R7. 1  Blatant Injustice The Story of a Jewish Refugee from Nazi Germany Imprisoned in Britain and Canada during World War II Walter W. Igersheimer Edited and with a foreword by Ian Darragh

10  In the Eye of the Wind A Travel Memoir of Prewar Japan Ron Baenninger and Martin Baenninger

2  Against the Current Memoirs Boris Ragula

12  Alice Street A Memoir Richard Valeriote

3  Margaret Macdonald Imperial Daughter Susan Mann 4  My Life at the Bar and Beyond Alex K. Paterson 5  Red Travellers Jeanne Corbin and Her Comrades Andrée Lévesque 6  The Teeth of Time Remembering Pierre Elliott Trudeau Ramsay Cook 7  The Greater Glory Thirty-seven Years with the Jesuits Stephen Casey 8  Doctor to the North Thirty Years Treating Heart Disease among the Inuit John H. Burgess 9  Dal and Rice Wendy M. Davis

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11  I’m from Bouctouche, Me Roots Matter Donald J. Savoie

13  Crises and Compassion From Russia to the Golden Gate John M. Letiche 14  In the Eye of the China Storm A Life Between East and West Paul T.K. Lin with Eileen Chen Lin 15  Georges and Pauline Vanier Portrait of a Couple Mary Frances Coady 16  Blitzkrieg and Jitterbugs College Life in Wartime, 1939–1942 Elizabeth Hillman Waterston 17  Harrison McCain Single-Minded Purpose Donald J. Savoie 18  Discovering Confederation A Canadian’s Story Janet Ajzenstat

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Discovering Confederation A Canadian’s Story J a n e t A j z e n s tat

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

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©  McGill-Queen’s University Press 2014 isbn isbn isbn isbn

978-0-7735-4323-2 (cloth) 978-0-7735-4324-9 (paper) 978-0-7735-9025-0 (ep df ) 978-0-7735-9026-7 (ep ub)

Legal deposit second quarter 2014 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Ajzenstat, Janet, 1936–, author Discovering Confederation: a Canadian’s story / Janet Ajzenstat. (Footprints series; 18) Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued in print and electronic formats. ISBN 978-0-7735-4323-2 (bound). – I S BN 978-0-7735-4324-9 (pbk.). – ISBN 978-0-7735-9025-0 (ep df ). – I S BN 978-0-7735-9026-7 (ep u b ) 1. Ajzenstat, Janet, 1936–.  2. Political scientists – Canada – Biography.  3. Intellectuals – Canada – Biography.  4. Political science – Canada – History.  5. Canada – History – Confederation, 1867.  6. Canada – Politics and government.  I. Title.  II. Series: Footprints series; 18 jC253.A49A3 2014      320.092     C 2013-908516-5                           C 2013-908517-3

This book was typeset by Interscript in 10.5/13.5 New Baskerville.

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Contents

Preface ix  1 Confederation Lost and Found  3   2  Finding Canada’s Texts 7   3  Getting to Political Science 11   4  McMaster’s Basement Lecture Halls 15   5  Allan Bloom and C.B. Macpherson 23   6  Our Greatest Constitutionalist 26  7 Divided Mind 30  8 Janet’s Dilemma 35   9  The Great Delayers 38 10  Knocking on the Academic Door 42 11  Enter Peter J. Smith 48 12  The Failed Siege of McMaster 55 13  Happy Home in the West 59 14  The World Remade 64 15  On the Inside  67

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vi Contents

16  The Law Class  75 17  The Confederation Texts  81 18  Making the Book  85 19  Human Rights  91 20  Return to the Law Class 97 21  Retirement as Career  98 22  Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig  104 23  In Demand as Expert: The Canadian Senate  107 24  “Your Publisher Is on the Line”  111 25  The “Revisionist Account” Revisited  121 26  Double-Duty Retirement  128 27  Return Trip to Primary Texts  132 Notes 135 Index 155

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Preface

“And what do you do?” The question is the usual polite one at a social gathering. How should I respond? I write books on the history of Canadian constitutional law. As a conversation opener the admission is a non-starter. The response is usually, “how interesting,” followed by a change of subject. Constitutional law is boring; that is received opinion in this country. The history of constitutional law is even less attractive. An argument for abolishing the Senate may receive attention; an argument for revising the electoral system is tolerable. But the history of law? “Are you talking about the British North America Act?” My interlocutor is doing her best. But it is a struggle. When it becomes evident that I am proposing a discussion of the Canadian constitutions’ strengths, she suggests a trip to the wine bar. Discovering Confederation is an intellectual autobiography. It tells the story of a woman who stumbled into the field of law. She was originally enamoured of the progressive politics of the 1960s and hoped to establish a career as a radical activist; in those days she believed that the “good” in politics can be determined once and for all and should be resolutely grasped and promulgated. In the 1960s she entered the political science program at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, completing her undergraduate and Master of Arts

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viii Preface

degrees while shedding some of her radical opinions. In 1972, she advanced – or, if you prefer, retreated – to the University of Toronto for a PhD, studying briefly with the ­political thinker Allan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind.1 In 1979, she returned to McMaster as a parttime night-time instructor in Canadian politics and, after some years, won a tenure-track appointment. At the core of this book lies her discovery of the argument for parliamentary democracy in the debates on Confederation in the British North American parliaments and her dawning appreciation of parliamentary democracy as sufficient security for political freedom and individual rights. The book concludes with a sketch of today’s mature woman, today’s aging woman, a retired professor of political science. She is sometimes referred to as a conservative but should by rights be regarded as a defender of the political constitution that ensures unconstrained and continuing deliberation among parties, interests, and philosophies of all political stripes. The author thanks Sam Ajzenstat, Sandor Ajzenstat, George Breckenridge, and Louis Greenspan for editorial assistance and commentary.

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D i s c ov e r i n g C o n f e d e r at i o n

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1 Confederation Lost and Found

For decades Canadian historians and political scientists argued – some still argue – that the Canadian Constitution is deficient. The Canadian founding, if I can speak of a “founding,” was inadequate, and the consequences of that botched effort are still crippling us. Thus the historian F.H. Underhill says: “It is well known that the Fathers of Confederation were pragmatic lawyers for the most part, more given to fine tuning the details of a constitutional act than to waxing philosophical about human rights or national goals.”1 The historian Peter Waite says: “Confederation was born in pragmatism. The lack of a philosophical mind to give guidance to the thinking of ordinary citizens has been a great weakness of our Canadian national experience throughout our history.”2 I used to agree with these statements. In 1991, addressing the Canadian Political Science Association as outgoing president, Professor Peter Russell said: “At Canada’s founding its people were not sovereign and there was not even a sense that a constituent sovereign people would have to be invented.”3 Two decades later the political scientist Robert Meynell said: “Canadians do not have one defining revolution, or a vivid beginning that can serve as the fount of the country’s national identity, a single decisive moment or founding document to be referred to in times of strife or when pausing at crossroads.”4 In 1991, I found Peter

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Russell’s statement worthy of serious consideration. By the time Meynell was writing – 2011 – I had changed my mind completely. I had by then made a study of Confederation’s primary documents and come to see that the Fathers of Canadian Confederation, the men who drafted the Canadian Constitution at the Quebec Conference of 1864, and the legislators in  the British North American parliaments who discussed it, had deliberately rejected the idea of describing national goals in a constitutional document. They considered and rejected the invention of what Peter Russell calls a “constituent sovereign people.” They argued that there should be no one substantive goal, no single idea of Canada, towards which ­Canadian politics should aim. The men who met at Quebec in 1864 to draft the union document included Tories, Liberals, and Independents. All understood that they were designing a political constitution that would allow Tories, or Liberals, or indeed Independents, to take the reins of government. The document that emerged from the Quebec Conference was subsequently debated in each colonial parliament with all parties participating. It is sometime said that Canada is a Tory country made by Tories for Tories, but this statement is not true. Some of those participating in the Confederation process had fought in 1848 to overthrow the local oligarchy, the Family Compact in Upper Canada, the Chateau Clique in Lower Canada, government by “official party” in the Atlantic provinces. All knew the story of oligarchy’s overthrow and by 1867 none wished its return. In brief, the Fathers of Canadian Confederation gave us parliamentary democracy. It is an English invention, dating from some time in the seventeenth century; 1688 is the conventional date. Parliamentary democracy, party government as it may be called, gives the right to govern – that is, the right to draw up and administer a legislative program to a party, a group of men and (today) women who by definition cannot

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Confederation Lost and Found 5

claim sole right to represent the country’s identity, goals, character, and ambitions. At best they can claim to speak for the political opinion of the majority of the populace at the time they are elected. The consequence is that Canadians can criticize their governors and political governments without ceasing to be loyal to the Canadian regime. Coupled with even a moderately extensive franchise and the requirement that elections be held “frequently” – every five years, let us say – party government enables a population to dismiss a government from office in orderly fashion, at any time, without taking to the streets and without overturning the country. Would we be better off today if the Fathers of Confederation had described “national goals” as Underhill suggests? Would we be better off if our thinking was informed by Peter Waite’s “philosophical mind”? Surely it is one of the best things about our politics that we are each free to argue for our preferred goals, to choose our ideology and our political associates. We can change our party allegiance; we can choose to remain apolitical. In the debate on Confederation in the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada John A. Macdonald put the matter this way: “We will enjoy here that which is the great test of constitutional freedom – we will have the rights of the minority respected. In all countries the rights of the majority take care of themselves, but it is only in countries like England enjoying constitutional liberty, and safe from the tyranny of a single despot or of an unbridled democracy, that the rights of minorities are regarded.”5 By the term “minority,” Macdonald means to designate the parties and groups on the opposition benches. Their views, their rights, must be “regarded.” Parliament’s decisions are  not final. If Canadians are to live together in peace, Parliament must reach decisions and those decisions must have the force of law. But there is no requirement that decisions and arguments have effect for all time. Laws can be repealed. Defeated issues and arguments may spring to life in

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subsequent parliamentary sessions. Discussion continues in the extra-parliamentary arena. New parties take shape. Majorities erode; minorities join coalitions or swell to majority proportions. The process will often seem imperfect; it will never satisfy the impatient. Yet it is difficult to imagine one that does more to include all voices. It is difficult to imagine one that does more to secure political rights. And Canada has been successful. We have preserved civil peace. (Not many countries can make that boast.) We welcome immigrants. On occasion citizens of countries we have defeated in war migrate to Canada. Their children may choose to live here. We are an envied nation.

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2 Finding Canada’s Texts

In 1972, at thirty-six years of age, I completed an m a degree in political science at McMaster University and went to study with Allan Bloom at the University of Toronto. Mr Bloom, as his students called him – not “Doctor” or “Professor” – was offering a two-term course on Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, which he was in the process of translating.1 He was then known chiefly as a translator. He became hugely famous only after leaving Toronto for the University of Chicago and is today remembered above all for The Closing of the American Mind, a book that plunged academe into discussion about the rights and wrongs of an education devoted to the classics of the Western canon.2 I applied to write a dissertation on Emile. The book describes an education that enables a child to regard himself, almost from birth, as an independent individual. The hard facts of the natural world may affect him but not – or so it seems to Emile – the will and intentions of others. He is not taught to please anyone or to need anyone, and he is never given reason to be angry. The idea that a young man educated in this fashion will grow up to be a good citizen and loving husband has interested many philosophers, among them Kant and Hegel, and I wanted an opportunity to write about it. Among the questions I had was this: Did Rousseau believe that an education like Emile’s is suitable for girls and women?

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I then discovered that the Department of Political Economy (as it was called in those days) had signed me up in the Canadian politics stream. Adding up the courses I had taken at McMaster, Toronto’s PhD committee concluded that I had too few credits in political philosophy. I would be allowed to work towards a “minor” qualification in the field but could not write a dissertation. I wanted to weep. I might have enrolled for a second year at Toronto, making up credits. I was tempted. But I was already a “late PhD.” In those days late PhD’s sometimes had trouble finding employment. I was a married woman with children; I was over-age; if I was to have an academic career I had to hustle. (A woman in the same situation today will fare better. Parental leave is available. Moreover, the idea of a “non-standard” career pattern is well established. A hiring committee no longer automatically tosses out a curriculum vitae in which it appears that the woman, or indeed the man, did little or nothing in the way of research and writing for a period of years.) At this point, Mr Bloom gave me the instruction that guides my research to this day. He told me to explore a “great text” in Canadian political history, studying it as one studies texts in the canon. A great text in Canadian political history! It was an entirely novel idea. My colleague George Breckenridge tells me that the American political philosopher Leo Strauss advised all his students to study the texts associated with the American Constitution and political founding. Some of them took his advice.3 I raced through Kenneth McNaught’s Pelican History of Canada and found that there is at least one Canadian document that is always referred to as “famous.”4 (It is only sometimes said to be “great.”) I announced that I would write on Lord Durham’s famous Report of 1839 on the Affairs of British North America. Everyone was pleased and arrangements were made. Peter Russell, already prominent in the study of Canadian constitutional law and politics, was to be my advisor. Gerald Craig, of Toronto’s Department of History and

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Finding Canada’s Texts 9

editor of the standard Canadian abbreviated version of the Durham Report, would serve on my committee. I opened the report and read: “I entertain no doubts as to the national character which must be given to Lower Canada. It must be that of the British Empire; that of the majority of the population of British America.”5 I was not prepared for the strength of Durham’s language. I knew his reputation. But the power, coherence – the boldness – of the argument surprised. And I was appalled. The report makes an out-and-out argument for the obliteration of the traditional French-Canadian way of life. Surely I had made a terrible mistake in my choice of “great text”! In his introduction to the 1963 edition Gerald Craig remarks: “We can easily find glaring weaknesses of fact and argument in this noted and notorious state paper.”6 So it appeared! Mr Bloom advised perseverance. When you find what seems to be an odious argument in your text, one that appears to spring from ignorance or prejudice, persevere. Pay attention, read sympathetically. Make the best case you can for your author. And rejoice! You may have before you a sterling opportunity to step out of the frame of thought that characterizes your time and experience. I persevered. I read the standard complete edition and ­appendices.7 Indeed, I read all the editions, British and Canadian. I read Durham’s speeches in the British Parliament, especially the speeches on parliamentary reform. I read his campaign addresses. I read the parliamentary speeches of the previous generation of British Whigs, including William Lambton, Durham’s father, and Charles James Fox, always Durham’s hero. And then because there were among Lord Durham’s associates on the Canada Mission men who were indebted to critics of parliamentary democracy like James Mill and Jeremy Bentham, I read those thinkers. I pored over the Edinburgh Review, the Whig and Radical journal of choice. I read the thinkers whose names were cited there: Edmund Burke, Montesquieu, and William Blackstone. In short,

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I immersed myself in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century arguments for and against parliamentary government. It was an invaluable education. My chief acquisition was a question, the one that shouts from the Durham Report’s pages. Supposing the British Constitution to be the great boon that British Whigs believe, does a population have to be British (culturally or ethnically British) to enjoy its benefits? I do not write “national history” in the usual sense. I am not a historian. And I am not a historian of ideas. I do not describe the development and transmission of ideas and ­ideologies. I consult historians; I rely on them to alert me to events and arguments of the period but I am not one of them. In fact – to put my cards on the table – I do not read Canada’s historical texts in order to understand Canada or Canadian history. Over the years I have learned facts about personalities and events. I know our story in broad outline. And I am glad. But I am primarily engaged in a search for ideas of universal interest. They arrive as questions: Is liberal democracy suitable for all peoples? Does residence in a liberal democracy erode particularity? I wrote the dissertation and published the book.8 It is still selling. In 1979, I presented myself at McMaster, PhD in hand. I was now a political scientist, a graduate of the country’s premier department in the field, supposedly qualified to teach Canadian politics at all levels and political philosophy at the undergraduate and m a levels. What was my next step? Mac was not hiring at the tenure-track level, and, with small children at home, I was not ready to apply further afield. When the McMaster department offered a limited contract to teach the Introductory Politics course I was glad to take it. And so my career began. It was quite different from anything I had imagined earlier in life.

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3 Getting to Political Science

When my father returned from the Second World War, the family settled in Toronto. I was ten years old. A wonderful era opened. I had my father again. My sister and brother had become old enough to be recognizable as individuals. We lived in our own house and acquired a car, piano, and radio. (The record player came years later and the television set only after I left home.) And I had, at last, enough to read.1 My parents unpacked their books, put up shelves, and stocked them. I was perhaps twelve when I read John Buchan’s Memory Hold-the-Door.2 How I loved it! The spell holds. I read it again recently, the same copy I read then. I have kept the volume through all the moves and changes in my life. It showed me a world of honour, public service, generosity, friendship, and courage: the adult world, as I thought. It is supposedly Buchan’s autobiography, but for the most part he wrote – with such affection – about other people. His readers see him at one remove, in his accounts of friends’ achievements. He knew everyone who was anybody in Edwardian England and in the years between the wars. I imagined myself among them. I would have gone to Oxford or Cambridge. Oxford, surely! I would have written poetry and literary essays. I imagined myself speaking at the Oxford Union. I began to think about

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ways to get published. (I thought less about what I would ­publish.) I entertained dreams of joining a company of scholars and constitution-makers, like Lord Milner’s “kindergarten” in South Africa. I barely noticed that Buchan’s ­attractive persons were all male, indeed males of my grand­ father’s generation.3 I considered studying for the bar. The family lawyer discouraged me. “Women do not fare well in law.” That was his opinion. In the end, of course, I did what my parents and teachers told me to do and did it well and, on their advice, went into a university program eminently suited to someone of my ­talents and gender (my “sex,” as we used to say): the old Art and Archaeology course at the University of Toronto.4 Something of my former ambitions lingered; in my second year, I shyly presented myself at the offices of the student newspaper, the Varsity. I was soon writing for the art, music, and drama page. The following year I became the art, music, and drama editor. Varsity staffers would sit up for hours talking about art, books, pacifism, and, inevitably, politics. The signal political events of my undergraduate years were the Hungarian Uprising and the stirrings of nationalism in the Province of Quebec. In my second year on the paper Peter Gzowski, later famous as the host of the national radio program Morningside, became editor. He had a keen eye for European politics and, surprising to me, Canadian political affairs. I graduated in 1959 – a year late (working for the Varsity had taken its toll) – obtained a job at the Art Gallery of Toronto (as it was then) and married the then editor of the Varsity, Sam Ajzenstat. We rented an attic apartment in leafy Rosedale. I had my life planned and it did not include political science. But the winds of change were blowing. The Vietnam War loomed. Sam and I joined the Toronto Student Union for Peace Action (s u p a ), and we allied ourselves with the civil rights movement in the United States.

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Getting to Political Science 13

In 1962, Sam and I moved to Philadelphia while Sam ­ ursued his PhD in philosophy at the University of Pennp sylvania. We identified ourselves as friends of the anti-war movement, joined the Socialist Party of America (the party of Eugene V. Debbs and Norman Thomas), and attended meetings of the local New Politics Discussion Club, an organization that was loosely affiliated with the group that was then called the Weathermen and that is now referred to as the Weather Underground. I signed up with the anti-war group Women Strike for Peace and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. I read Betty Freidan and Simone de Beauvoir. Most of our friends and acquaintances lived in Philadelphia’s Powelton Village, a pleasantly radical community, you might say – a hotbed of communism according to some – and political protests became part of my routine. I joined a letter-­ writing group, all women. We would meet at one home or another, set our youngsters down to play, and write indignant letters to congressmen, senators, and the president about anything and everything. We were, I remember, strongly opposed to the practice of above-ground testing of nuclear weapons. (On that score we were surely correct.) At demonstrations in  support of civil rights, or against the Vietnam War, the Powelton Village women were regulars, pushing strollers or carrying the baby in an over-the-shoulder sling. Sam and I subscribed to I.F. Stone’s Weekly and to a journal of the same variety entitled A Minority of One. Sam went to Martin Luther King’s March on Washington.5 A career as political radical was beckoning. I began to draw up lists of radical books. I took public speaking lessons; trying out my voice, as it were. I put the history of art behind me. While an undergraduate at the University of Toronto I had been an ardent supporter of the Isaacs Gallery and the Gallery of Contemporary Art, Toronto’s first commercial venues for the exhibition of abstract expressionists. In Philly, I ignored the art scene. I did not visit New York. I went to the famous

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Philadelphia Museum of Art only once. I had dedicated ­myself to changing the world. The next step, as I saw it, was to study Marx and Marxist economics. In 1964, Sam was offered a position in the Department of Philosophy at McMaster University, and, once settled in our new place – a picturesque and inconvenient set of rooms in  Hamilton’s South West – I consulted the university catalogue.

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4 McMaster’s Basement Lecture Halls

The economics department at McMaster did not offer evening courses – we now had two small children in tow – and I reluctantly registered in political science. The textbook was J.A. Corry and J.E. Hodgetts, Democratic Government and Politics.1 The next winter, faced with the same difficulty – no economics available – I again opted for politics. And so it began. I spent mornings in the kitchen, afternoons at my books while the children napped, and two evenings a week in a basement lecture hall. I was having a pretty good time. We supported the New Democratic Party. Sam campaigned door-to-door for a colleague who was running for the provincial parliament. He organized protests against the Vietnam War and published an anti-war bulletin for distribution to the McMaster community. We continued to subscribe to I.F. Stone’s Weekly. We opened our home to American draft dodgers and, on occasion, arranged to drive them to the border, make the crossing into the United States, and return to enter a formal application for residence. Summers were among our best times, when the visitors from Powelton Village descended and we rolled out extra mattresses and put on the Pete Seeger records. I kept my eyes on political events in the world at large. Of course: I was preparing for a political career. And yet, looking back, I know that I did not see. I knew almost nothing about

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what was happening in the world outside the university and very little about the changes that were taking place within it. The politicians who would transform Canada were already waiting in the wings; they were already active. I paid no attention. The books and articles that were to change Canadian politics and Canadians’ sense of national identity had been published. I did not know them. I read historian Donald Creighton’s biography of John A. Macdonald and loved it. But I did not think of Macdonald’s story as something a political activist could profitably reflect on. I was deeply moved by George Grant’s Lament for a Nation.2 I understood it to be a nationalist and pacifist tract. I knew little about feminism. I was living with the threat of nuclear war but had no coherent thoughts about the Soviet Union. And I was almost entirely ignorant of economics. The term “Keynesian” was not in my vocabulary. At about this time I received a phone call from one of our Philadelphia friends, a fellow member of the New Politics group. He was now a resident of Canada and was proposing to continue the “Struggle” from his new base. He had conceived a plan to close down the University of Toronto and would need my help. He had not yet met many Canadians. We would form teams to phone the university every five minutes of every day; or more often, if I thought it necessary. When could we meet? I felt deep furniture moving in my mind. Close down the University of Toronto? My university? Where I had studied with Northrop Frye and Peter Brieger? (Peter Brieger was the beloved chair of the Department of Art and Archeology.) Close down the Hart House Theatre? The Varsity? All the pleasant rooms at Victoria College and University College, where I had had so many vital discussions? Where I had met Sam! I said that my movements were restricted. I had a family. I would not be available. It must have been about this time that I thought of visiting the Hamilton Art Gallery. I would want to take the children

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McMaster’s Basement Lecture Halls 17

when they were a little older. The first work of art to catch my eye depicted the rear ends of three horses, two stallions and a mare. The foreparts disappeared into a wall; only the hindquarters were visible, most convincingly detailed and covered with what to all appearances was real horse skin. The piece was entitled “Three Great Canadians.” It is often said that women have no sense of humour. I, at any rate, was not amused. On Sundays we took the children for walks in Hamilton’s escarpment parks or to games at the Jewish Community Centre. We read to them. We joined a national movie group called The Child’s Own Theatre, which distributed British films for children, mostly harum-scarum stories about youngsters of all ages involved in exciting adventures. We sometimes showed the films at McMaster and sometimes at the Jewish Community Centre. By 1970, I had accumulated enough credits in political science to qualify for admission to McMaster’s graduate program. I decided to go on, and I moved from basement lecture halls to the fifth floor of the “Arts III Tower” (now Kenneth Taylor Hall), the stronghold of the political science department. I was ten years older than the other graduates but fitted right in – or so I thought. I arrived in time to experience the student indignation, protests, and sit-ins typical of the decade. Classes in the basement rooms had been comparatively decorous; many of the students had been my age or older. The fifth-floor graduate students took nothing for granted: not the course content, the grading system, or, it goes without saying, the professors’ arguments. We might take an entire term to settle the matter of course readings. It was not uncommon for a professor to walk into the first class of the year, or first class of the term, and ask the students for a reading list. I did well in all my courses. When I went on to the University of Toronto I was able to present what to all appearances was a splendid record. But I myself was not always sure why I received good grades.

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I do believe that, in one class at least, I did well merely because I attended regularly and looked interested; there were no ­assignments. Perhaps everyone in the course received an A grade. In the matter of protests, Canadian students took their cue from Americans. It is true that, at this time, there was a Canadian movement to ban American professors from our universities; an angry Canadian nationalism coloured all ­protests north of the border. And yet the Canadian students’ tactics and the substance of their statements were modelled on the tactics and arguments of the American student movement. I decided not to write an m a thesis. I had come to the conclusion, probably correct, that I would not be able to put together a committee of professors who would not quarrel among themselves about departmental and ideological matters. I opted to take extra courses and turned to political philosophy, signing up for George Grant’s course on Plato. This is the course in which I first encountered Allan Bloom’s translation of the Republic. Grant was then chair of the religious studies department at McMaster. There was no contestation in his classroom: he effortlessly dominated his large seminar. It was held in one of the university’s stone fortresses, a firstfloor room with tall windows. We sat around a long, broad table that would not have been out of place in a medieval castle. I would think: “I am now at the University. This is the true University.” We would remain quiet through Grant’s long pauses, while he silently pursued a fugitive thought or word. But perhaps I am exaggerating the lack of contestation. I remember an occasion on which Grant resorted to a show of anger, telling a student bluntly that one reference to the political thinker Karl Popper would be tolerated in the seminar, but only one.3 Popper’s interpretation of Plato’s Republic was ruled out of court. It was years before I understood something of what had happened on that fraught occasion. Popper regards the “city”

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McMaster’s Basement Lecture Halls 19

– that is, the political regime described in The Republic – as a tyranny. He assumes that Plato is recommending a vicious form of rule and he strongly disapproves. It is true that Plato’s spokesman, Socrates, praises the city, or appears to, suggesting that it offers a worthy form of rule because it is collegial. The racket and dissent evident in most regimes is absent. About the purposes of common life the citizens are united; they collectively work towards the common good.4 The Republic supremely describes a regime dominated by national goals – indeed, national goals framed by a philosophical mind. And yet, as the reader examines the particular laws designed to enhance the idea of collegiality and common goals, doubts grow. The ruling class practises eugenics, breeding citizens to promote desired features and forbidding all particular affections. “Marriages” are little more than one-time acts of rape. “Unwanted” children – that is, those conceived spontaneously (“love children,” we might say) – are murdered. The class system is rigid and all are subject to a severe program of indoctrination in order to reinforce the idea of collegiality. The arts are censored. Innovations are forbidden. Needless to say, political opposition is ruled out. In short, the city allows no individuality, no sense of separate personhood, and, above all, no querying of the ruling class. Is it an oligarchy or an outright tyranny? Leo Strauss, Allan Bloom’s teacher, invites us see the city as a tyranny, a dystopia. In The City and Man, Strauss says: “[The] Republic conveys the broadest and deepest analysis of political idealism ever made.”5 By “idealism” Strauss does not mean high-mindedness, as I supposed when I first read this passage. He is referring, rather, to the idea of communitarianism or collegiality found in political thinkers associated with the German philosopher Hegel, who are commonly referred to as “idealists.” George Grant was then reading Leo Strauss. His students in the course were certainly reading Allan Bloom’s interpretative

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essay, appended to his translation of The Republic. Insofar as Grant was receptive to arguments by Strauss and Bloom, he had every reason to entertain, in his class, a discussion of Karl  Popper’s critique. However, although Grant was undoubtedly captivated by the Straussian method of reading classics in translation, with its injunction to read sympathetically, and although he surely understood the Straussian critique of idealism, he was not prepared to accept the notion, associated with both Karl Popper and Leo Strauss, that, in the modern world, some form of liberal democracy, with its emphasis on individualism, is the necessary alternative. Grant was comfortable with the idea of oligarchy, especially oligarchic government led by Christians. He looked benignly on the oligarchies that had characterized Upper and Lower Canada and the Maritime provinces before the introduction in 1848 of “responsible government.” He approved of the Family Compact and the Chateau Clique. Indeed, he regarded oligarchy as a form of conservatism. The most famous line in Lament for a Nation reads: “The impossibility of conservatism in our era is the impossibility of Canada.”6 Almost everyone in the seminar had read Lament, and many were there because they loved the book. Yes, Grant might have used the student’s question to illuminate his own position on modernity and liberal democracy, and his qualms about Strauss’s position. I saw little of all this while I was taking the course. It was years before I understood that Grant did not believe that most men and woman are fit to govern themselves. He would often say, “the salt does not lose its savour,” by which he meant to convey sturdy appreciation of the “man” in the street. But he was not a liberal democrat. I ask myself what I would have done, faced with a student’s demand to hear a discussion of Popper’s critique of Plato. I like to think I could have initiated a discussion. I surely would not have expelled the student. It was a shocking act.

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McMaster’s Basement Lecture Halls 21

As I write these words, preparing to return my copy of Strauss’s The City and Man to its shelf, the cover falls open, revealing the following poem. To Janet Since what is in this book has given fuel Both to your thought and mine May our separate marginalia In Thought’s concord combine Making a commentary With Fire – thought’s fire, love’s fire In every line. Love – and thought, Sam Channukah, 1978. The following term I read Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourses with James Nichols, once Allan Bloom’s student and at that point temporarily employed by McMaster. I met Mr Bloom at a departmental presentation by Nichols and applied for admission to the PhD program in political economy at Toronto. I had a new routine: bus to Toronto one day a week, attend Bloom’s graduate class on Rousseau, drop in on my mother, bus home. We hired a delightful babysitter to keep the home fires burning. I would have liked to have taken more graduate courses at Toronto. I would have enjoyed sitting in on senior undergraduate courses, like Peter Russell’s public law class or the course he taught with Walter Berns on Canadian and American political thought. I was not encouraged to do so, and, in those days, I was not the kind of person to press on

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regardless. I do remember Peter Russell telling me that in the course he taught with Mr Berns the Canadian material was of less intellectual interest than the American. At McMaster in the late 1960s and early 1970s, embattled professors faced off against each other and against arrogant students. Toronto, in contrast, was quiet. But it was quiet in part, I believe, because the professors lived behind closed doors, avoided students, and kept requirements for graduate study to a minimum.

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5 Allan Bloom and C.B. Macpherson

In my third year at Toronto, with the dissertation under way, I was invited to lead tutorials in Mr Bloom’s first-year course in political philosophy. We read excerpts from Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Tocqueville, and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Why Flaubert? I am not sure that I know.1 Bloom had a great reputation as a lecturer and deserved it. He had his eccentricities. For one thing, he stuttered. When he paused to make a transition in the argument, the stutter would emerge, gentle syllables of unformed thought: “The-a, the-a.” And he smoked. He stood at a lectern positioned before a large no-smoking sign, cigarettes tucked I do not know where, periodically fishing for the lighter in a front pocket of his perfectly tailored trousers. I had three tutorials, with perhaps twenty students in each. They were very little work, apart from the marking associated with essays, quizzes, and examinations. I would read aloud some puzzling or outrageous statement from notes I had taken in Bloom’s lecture, and the students would take it from there. My job was to listen, nodding encouragingly when a shy student tried to get a word in. What students remember from tutorials is what they themselves say. The same may be said of lectures. Lectures show students the “shape” of reasoned argument, if I may use that term. From the assigned texts and the lectures they come to see that arguments should be supported and can be developed. But as to the substance of the course,

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what stays in the mind, I do believe, is what the individual says in class or in tutorials, or writes in essays: what “passes the barrier of the teeth” or flows from the ends of fingers. Yes, attending Bloom’s lectures in Pol 101 and meeting tutorials were among the most valuable experiences of my graduate years. After the twice-weekly lectures the six or seven tutorial leaders would return to Mr Bloom’s office to talk about the texts and our students, and about American politics. I do not remember that we talked about Canadian politics. I went on occasion to hear visiting lecturers in the department. There were not many in those days. (A closed-door ­policy was in effect, you will remember.) Harvey Mansfield came to speak about the executive power in the American Constitution. I asked him to address the subject of executive power in the Canadian Constitution. He suggested that a compete answer would require a description of “party government.” The term was then unfamiliar.2 I wrote him, sending a draft of an article written for publication – my first – and received in return a handwritten letter. I was greatly encouraged. On one memorable Toronto afternoon, a sunny fall day as I recall, I attended a long talk on the Constitution of the Soviet Union given by C.B. Macpherson. If you had asked someone at that time to name the most eminent political thinker at Toronto, you would surely have been referred to Macpherson. Everyone, whether or not they took his courses, everyone, including Bloom’s students, read Macpherson’s Possessive Individualism.3 It is still read. It is a critique of capitalism and the individualism implicit in John Locke’s thought, and, as I came in time to understand, owes much to the German “idealists.”4 We were also reading Frank M. Coleman, Hobbes and America: Exploring the Constitutional Foundations (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977). Coleman’s contention that Hobbes rather than Locke might have been the signally important influence on the American founding was received

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Allan Bloom and C.B. Macpherson 25

as a serious proposition. No one asked whether Hobbes might have influenced Canadian Confederation. No one, to my knowledge, discussed Confederation. On that Toronto afternoon, as Macpherson painstakingly outlined the Soviet Union’s hierarchical system of representative bodies, and as it became apparent that he thought the Soviet Constitution compared well with the Canadian and, indeed, might be considered superior, I began to fret.5 I might have thought of Rousseau’s contention: because collegiality promotes dependence on others it gives rise to jealousy, self-aggrandizement, and, indeed, social conflict. I  might have remembered how far Rousseau goes to raise Emile in ignorance of others’ opinion of him. Macpherson was arguing that the interdependence of citizens promotes a good society. Rousseau contends that interdependence encourages – to repeat – acrimony, crime, and disorder. But I had set aside Rousseau for the time being; his critique of collegiality did not come immediately to mind. Fleeting memories of conversations in Philadelphia surfaced; surely it had been said, even among our radically socialist crowd in Powelton Village, that the Soviet Union had resorted to show trials, on occasion unjustly imprisoning the accused. On that sunny Toronto day it was Lord Durham who came to my aid. I was well into revising my dissertation on the Durham Report. In my mind I ran through Durham’s defence of the constitutional principle we know as responsible government and prepared my questions: How does the executive government of the Soviet government answer for its decisions? What institutions preserve the right of political opposition and freedom of political speech in the legislative arena and among the public at large? In 1976, as I now believe, many things were known about the Soviet Union’s injustices. Manuscripts had been smuggled out; there had been defectors. But when the lecture concluded, I said nothing on the subject. I was too shy. Nobody in that sunny crowded room ventured criticism.

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6 Our Greatest Constitutionalist

I completed my revision of the dissertation and began to think of looking for a second “great text.” Quite by accident, I found Pierre Bédard, first leader of the French party in the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada and founder of Canada’s first journal of political opinion, Le Canadien. I now regard Bédard as Canada’s greatest political thinker, our greatest constitutionalist. I was reading Fernand Ouellet’s history of Lower Canada (just browsing, reading for general knowledge) when I came across passages referring to Bédard as an advocate of “ministerial responsibility,” that is to say, responsible government, defined as the feature of the British parliamentary system that requires ministers of the Crown to secure the approval of a parliamentary majority on taxing and spending measures.1 Here was a puzzle! Among the Canadian scholars I had consulted for my dissertation, a few were of the opinion that responsible government was not firmly established in British parliamentary practice until the late 1830s. Supposedly Lord Durham learned to appreciate its merits only after talking to reformers in Upper Canada, men like Robert Baldwin. It made a good story. The recommendation that commentators unreservedly approve of – that the colonial legislatures adopt responsible government – originated in the colonies. But if the Canadian historians were right, Pierre Bédard could

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Our Greatest Constitutionalist 27

not have been recommending responsible government. He was too early. Bédard was editor of Le Canadien from 1806 to 1810. I was already sure that it was false to date responsible government from the 1830s. Durham himself argues that it originated in 1688.2 But it was interesting to discover that the idea was circulating in the newly established legislature of Lower Canada shortly after 1791. Clearly, I would have to find out more about this Bédard. Picking through the almost indecipherable pages of Le Canadien on a faded microfilm reel, I found myself immersed again in the Whig constitutional tradition. Bédard had read John Locke, William Blackstone, Charles James Fox, Edmund Burke, and, notably, Jean Louis De Lolme – an author then new to me but, as I shortly discovered, well known in England, the United States, and the British North American colonies and read by both French and English speakers.3 On the subject of political institutions and constitutional law, Bédard and Durham relied on the same sources; indeed, they saw eye to eye. Bédard had the gift of explaining difficult political matters to a broad readership. You can think of Le Canadien as Professor Bédard’s introductory text in British North American Politics 101: his “course pack.” His readers in Lower Canada had lived with the autocracy of New France; they had experienced the limited autocracy of British rule. They knew almost nothing about self-government and the institutions of political freedom. In addition to excerpts from Locke, Blackstone, and De Lolme, Bédard printed documents relating to Britain’s Glorious Revolution of 1688 and to British arguments from the late eighteenth century for reform of Parliament. He followed contemporary debates in the British and the West Indian parliaments. He understood – none better – that there were severe limits to the political freedoms enjoyed by French Canadians in the first decade of the nineteenth century. They

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were living in a conquered province under a colonial oligarchy. Nevertheless, when he described the Constitutional Act, 1791, he depicted it as if it had been – as Upper Canada’s Governor Simcoe originally supposed – the “image and transcript” of the British system.4 He kept up a mocking pretence that French Canadians already enjoyed British political freedoms in full. He was an extraordinary man, “speaking truth to power,” as we say today, and it nearly cost him his life. In 1910, the government of Lower Canada seized his press. He spent long months in a wintry, damp jail. He left Canadians an invaluable store of knowledge about parliamentary traditions. I was soon reading his disciple, Étienne Parent, whose comments on Durham’s Report are informed by Bédard’s analysis.5 I came to regard Canada’s national history as a long avenue of “texts,” – primary documents – informing and rewarding the persevering student: raising questions and challenging received wisdom. Some of my reading was done at the National Archives in Ottawa with the aid of grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (s s h r c ). s s h r c grants sometimes included a small, very welcome, stipend in addition to a research budget. In 1985, I won s s h r c ’s prestigious Jules and Gabriel Léger Award for the study of parliamentary and monarchic institutions in Canada. Not all the primary texts were available in books and journals or microform, and the internet was years in the future. One was sometimes examining the original documents: the very pieces of paper that the author himself (or, very occasionally, herself) had handled. What a pleasure it was to sit at the long tables in the National Library Reading Room in Ottawa with the light streaming through the riverside windows, awaiting the arrival of another box of materials. Unfolding a   nineteenth-century letter – there were no envelopes in those days – puzzling out a missive in which the writer has filled the page, north to south, so to speak, and then, after giving the sheet a quarter turn, filled it again, east to west. Yes,

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Our Greatest Constitutionalist 29

it was a pleasure. But I should not go on in this nostalgic vein. Soon I will be telling you about the joys of running one’s fingers through card catalogues. Numerous projects from those days remain mere dreams and hopes. Leafing through old files I see that at one time I was contemplating an article to be entitled “Canadian Political Thought from A to D: The Good Lord Acton and the Bad Lord Durham.” It used to be said that Acton’s study of minorities in Muslim countries offered a better template for protection of ethnic and religious minorities than did Durham’s scheme of assimilation. Today we know more about dhimmitude and the lives of Christians and Jews in Muslim countries. It might be time to give “Good Lord A; Bad Lord D” an airing. But I know that I will not do it. I determined to read all the political pamphlets by British North Americans in the University of Toronto’s Robarts Library, the entire collection: a delightfully arduous project. I will never get around to it. I entertained visions – again unrealized – of a monumental study of Canada as the senior dominion in the greatest empire of modern times. Should we think solely of Britain’s impact on British North America or, turning the question about, consider the consequences of imperialism for British political thought and the British identity? Should we think about what it meant for the later Empire that Britain’s first colony was thoroughly European, Frenchspeaking, and Roman Catholic? And I began to think, in an unfocused way, of looking for documents connected with the union of the British North American colonies in 1867. Please note, dear friends, that, in my original search for a dissertation topic, I did not give a moment’s thought to Confederation. In Canadian politics courses I had taken at McMaster University, Confederation was seldom mentioned. It was not presented as a subject for sustained study. And, as you may recall, I took no Canadian courses during my PhD years at Toronto. Unstudied, unknown, and unloved, the Confederation texts were blowing in the wind.

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7 Divided Mind

As a limited-contract instructor at McMaster I found myself once again spending evenings in Mac’s basement auditoriums. It was dejà vu all over again except that I was now the person at the front of the class. Almost immediately the deficiencies in my education at Toronto began to tell. In the Canadian section of the course I was required to lecture on Quebec’s Quiet Revolution, Canada’s search for an amending formula, and attempts to reform the constitutional division of legislative powers; the development of the regulatory state; the Diefenbaker Bill of Rights, the provincial rights codes, and arguments for entrenching rights in a national charter. I had been trained at Toronto to hold forth on Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, Rousseau, and Alexis de Tocqueville. Put me down in Ancient Greece, seventeenth-century England, or the United States in the early nineteenth century and I was at home. But about Canada, my own beloved country, the Canada of the 1960s and 1970s, I knew all too little. I should have had more confidence in the fund of knowledge I had accumulated before enrolling at Toronto. I might have reread Corry and Hodgetts. I should have consulted my former teachers at McMaster, now my colleagues. But, as a part-time night-time instructor, I did not have regular ­contact with them. And I was always busy, always in a hurry, rewriting the dissertation for publication, applying for grants,

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Divided Mind 31

putting together Pierre Bédard’s argument, figuring out what it is that lecturers do, fitting in household responsibilities. (Excuses, excuses! I know perfectly well that excuses are no excuse.) I pored over recent textbooks in political science, especially the ones intended for beginning students. I read the daily papers. I took out subscriptions to the Financial Post and the Economist. My efforts bore fruit. I worked up understandable and sometimes amusing spiels on constitutional reform, the Canadian political “identity,” and human rights bills. I began to enjoy teaching. I learned how to hold forth without notes and how to anticipate questions – waiting for them and using them to move the argument along. I would walk into Mac’s basement auditoriums with a spring in my step. It was several years before I tripped up. To put the matter briefly, my jaunty lectures were ignoring facts revealed by my own research. I was juggling two accounts of Canadian political history and political institutions. Today I can write those illuminating words: “juggling two accounts.” At the time, you will understand, all was haze, smoke, and darkness. In the 1960s, Canadian academics produced a revisionist account of Canadian history and politics. In my basementauditorium lectures I faithfully relayed it, using up-to-date secondary sources. But my PhD dissertation had been based on an older account. Indeed, my continuing research relied on the older one. Before I go on, let me declare my true colours. Though I flirted with the revisionist account in my first years of teaching, I have long since returned to the older one. It is the one supported by the primary documents. The older account describes the development of political freedom before and after Confederation. In 1848, the Province of Canada, the Maritime provinces, and Newfoundland adopted the British constitutional principle recommended by Lord Durham and commonly referred to as responsible government, thereby overthrowing the colonial oligarchies:

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the Family Compact and the Chateau Clique – government by “official party.” A short generation later – I am continuing with the older story – representatives from the several colonies drew up a scheme of colonial union that borrowed from the American idea of federal union (the United States was the world’s first true federation) while retaining the essential ­features of British parliamentary government. Responsible government was to obtain at both the national and provincial levels. The achievements of 1848 were not given up. In brief, Confederation combined parliamentary government with a true federalism based on an exhaustive division of powers. That, in a nutshell, is the old account. And it is a good one. The revisionist account of the 1960s either no longer tells the story of the struggle for responsible government or says very little about it. It says little about Confederation. The argument is that many countries can claim to have political institutions that ensure collective and individual freedom. What a study of Canadian history should tell us is how and why our country is distinctive. Surely we have a particular story. Surely we differ from the United States, for example. What made British North America, what still makes Canada, uniquely loveable? Among the authors of the revisionist account were Donald Creighton, Harold Innis, Louis Hartz, Gad Horowitz, and Seymour Martin Lipset. They said less about political institutions, less about freedom, and more about shared historical experiences, immigration, and “culture” – that is, culture in the broad sense, meaning, perhaps, “way of life.” (When he had occasion to speak of “culture” in this sense, Allan Bloom would use the French word moeurs, translated as “manners and morals.”) There is nothing that is wrong and much that is right about the study of manners and morals, culture, call it what you will. The trouble with the revisionist story is that Canadian historians and social scientists of the 1960s gave their

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Divided Mind 33

attention to the cultural dimension while allowing study of our institutional foundations to lapse. We no longer studied Confederation. Listen to Donald Creighton, who has this to say about the Fathers of Confederation: “They were mid-Victorian British colonials who had grown up in a political system which they valued, and which they had not the slightest intention of trying to change by revolution. For them the favourite myths of the Enlightenment did not posses even a quaintly antiquarian interest … [T]hey would have been sceptical about both the utility and the validity of abstract notions such as the social contract and inalienable rights of man.”1 Let me repeat: this is the view I taught in my Canadian politics classes, when I had occasion to mention Confederation at all. A seminal source for the revisionist story was – and still is – Gad Horowitz’s essay “Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism in Canada: An Interpretation.”2 I taught this essay every year in McMaster’s basements and the students were always charmed. Although it juggles ideas by Hegel and Marx, it is not difficult to grasp. It strongly appeals to nationalist sentiment, professing to tell us why Canadians are superior to Americans. It contends that, in British North America, John Locke’s robust idea of individual freedom was modified by a communitarian (i.e., a collegial, or idealist) philosophy that originated with the United Empire Loyalists – the men and women who fled the Thirteen Colonies in the aftermath of the American Revolution – and subsequently developed by the British socialists known as Fabians, who migrated to the colonies in the mid-nineteenth century. Horowitz advances no study of Loyalist statements or socialist writings to support his contention. He says very little about what British North Americans might have been reading on any subject. There are no “great Canadian texts” in his account. He says almost ­nothing about the “struggle for responsible government” or  Confederation. He relies on the idea that much of the

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modern world, with the exception of the United States, exhibits a progression from feudalism to socialism. Modern nations first emancipated themselves from feudalism, with its embrace of cultural hierarchy and community, then, perhaps as early as the seventeenth century, developed institutions of political freedom and equality, and, finally, at some point in the nineteenth century, retrieved from the past a respect for communalism in public life, shorn of communalism’s defence of hierarchy. The result was socialism. (Communal hierarchy is the thesis, political equality is the antithesis, and socialism is the synthesis.) Europe had developed sturdy forms of socialism in the twentieth century – so Horowitz argues – (remember he is writing in the 1960s) and Canada, with its vaunted Loyalist respect for collegiality, aided by the Fabian influence, could be expected to follow course. The United States, in contrast, the country from which the Loyalists had fled, was almost devoid of collegial sentiment and, for this reason, might never progress beyond a crude liberal respect for individualism. In the 1960s and 1970s the study of primary sources declined; textbook authors came more often to draw their materials from other textbooks. Fewer scholars read Lord Durham. Fewer read Pierre Bédard. Versions of the Horowitz paradigm and Creighton’s views proliferated, and, without recourse to the documents, no one was in a position to query their assumptions.

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8 Janet’s Dilemma

To repeat: in the classroom I was arguing for a collective Canadian way of life, brandishing my newspaper clippings and up-to-date textbooks. I was describing Canadian politics as the product of shared beliefs – or as the search for shared beliefs and collegiality: culture in the broad sense. I was telling the revisionist story. In my own research, I was elaborating a picture of British North America’s liberation from rule by oligarchic governments, writing about the development of political institutions that protect the competition of political parties for office, in this way combating the tyranny of prescribed belief. I was ­poring over yellowing documents, old microfilm, and books with dates from the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. I was telling the old story. In the 1960s, Canadians were proposing to redraw the constitutional division of legislative powers between the federal and provincial levels of government. We were searching for an amending formula. We had embarked on the great adventure that Peter Russell calls Canada’s “Constitutional Odyssey.” If I had been able to think of the events of those years in light of my developing knowledge of Canada’s “old story” I might have contributed to the debate. But my divided mind could not cope; I barely understood that I had a problem.

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I was not alone. To the best of my knowledge, from the 1960s to 1992, when, with the failure of the Charlottetown Constitutional Accord, the “odyssey” came to an abrupt halt, no one thought to consult the Fathers of Confederation; no one looked at what they had done and how they had gone about their business. The institutions of 1867 had failed us: that was the prevailing view. Why look back? Eyes on the future: that was the Canadian motto. No other settled liberal democracy has gone through a bone-rattling experience like ours, and we blundered along like amateurs. Our best scholars were of little help. My admiration for George Grant was a constraint on my understanding. Recall Grant’s contention that there had been or might have been a collectivist mode of thought in nineteenth-century British North America, an element of Tory conservatism.1 Grant was looking for a remedy in the past; Gad Horowitz is looking forward. We commonly call Grant a Tory and Horowitz a socialist. What they have in common is the idea that liberal individualism, the individualism of the European Enlightenment, does not of itself suffice for a just regime. We need, in addition, a “culture” of collegiality. Grant was doing his thinking about politics at a time when the world’s citizens had begun, but only begun, to consider whether, in light of the twentieth century’s horrific and continuing wars, and its unprecedented number of state murders, we can still rely on the participatory and equalitarian institutions described by John Locke in the seventeenth century. Is self-government possible? Is liberty possible? Should we be down on our knees, praying for Someone to take care of humanity? These are Grant’s questions. And yet he failed us. He left us with profound doubts about the Enlightenment. He encouraged us to long for a communitarian Canada that we can never have without abandoning our commitment to political liberty, and, in so doing, he inculcated disdain for the institutions of Canadian Confederation and parliamentary government; he inculcated disdain for

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Janet’s Dilemma 37

the merely best possible. I sometimes tell myself that Grant did not lie: liberal democracy is a discouraging proposition, difficult to execute, sometimes failing to deter injustice. Then I remind myself that there is nothing better than liberal democracy – “party government” as we may call it. To repeat: in the 1960s we needed help from our political philosophers and did not get it. The world was attempting to reorganize empires, to reorganize Europe, to found a new world order, to establish internationally accepted ideas of the tolerable and the intolerable in government and politics. And Canadians? In this crucial decade, with barely a glance at our past, we plunged into the constitutional reform “odyssey.” The light-heartedness with which we embarked on the adventure is staggering. We renamed our country – we used to be the Dominion of Canada – renamed our founding constitutional document, and rewrote our history.2

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9 The Great Delayers

In revising the PhD dissertation for publication I reread Locke, Blackstone, and Montesquieu: philosophers who promise liberty and amelioration of the human condition but not utopia; philosophers who advise against attempts to change human nature and, for that reason, prescribe not the best political institutions but, as I have said, the best possible ones – political institutions for what used to be called “fallen man” (i.e., human beings with all their flaws). Sam Ajzenstat likes to note that he has taught almost every course listed in the philosophy department’s catalogue: the ancients, the moderns, and the postmoderns. But increasingly his teaching came to focus on Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel, and he began to think about Nietzsche’s characterization of Kant as the Great Delayer. What is it that Kant was delaying? In brief, our reading and thinking was gradually carrying us away from the politics and lifestyle we had adopted in Philadelphia. But, curiously, we still thought of ourselves as radical world menders. Our parents worried. Sam and Janet had so few possessions. Sam had a good position at a prestigious institution: two years after arriving, he was given tenure. But he dressed like a graduate student. For a few years we relied on a rusty Volkswagen to take the children to a downtown Jewish nursery school, but

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The Great Delayers 39

when they moved to a primary school within walking distance we gave up driving. Our television set broke and we did not replace it. We spent our money on books. We were always in the process of building bookcases and putting up shelves. The children wore clothes from the Amity and Goodwill (supplemented by gifts from the grandparents). We housed American draft dodgers. We maintained our pacifist convictions. And we joined Hamilton Right to Life. In the 1960s and even in the 1970s, the pro-life position, radical politics, and pacifism had the appearance of a coherent agenda – at least in the eyes of some pro-lifers. It seemed to us that as pro-lifers we were conscience-bound to argue that single mothers should receive public allowances. As a Hamilton Right to Life Board Member, Sam volunteered his wife’s services to edit the newsletter. I later took my turn on the board and served a term as president. Some of the people we worked with in those years had been raised in the Catholic Labour Movement and many were staunch New Democratic Party supporters. During our tenure Protestant groups joined; board meetings began to exhibit a certain cultural diversity. We confidently expected to welcome Muslims at some point. In 1979, I became the salaried executive director of the Human Life Research Institute in Toronto (the organization now known as the Barrie de Veber Institute). The oncologist Barrie de Weber was president; Ian Gentles, a pacifist friend from the 1960s, and professor of history at Glendon College, York University, was director. I wrote articles on pro-life issues and prepared books for publication.1 If the institute had been located in Hamilton I would have stayed on. In 1979–80, Sam and I launched the Hamilton branch of Operation Lifeline, the Campaign to Save the Boat People. A phone call from Howard Adelman at York University gave us our instructions. Howard was known to us from our years at the University of Toronto, a fellow member of the Student Union for Peace Action. We were to invite groups of neighbours, or fellow academics, or churches and synagogues to

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sponsor Chinese refugees from communist Vietnam. And with the help of our earnestly left-wing friends, George and Leonore Sorger, born activists and organizers, we were extremely successful. I have forgotten how many families the Hamilton organization sponsored in all. Both Sam and I served on the Hamilton-wide committee. There were public meetings, attended by sponsors and the sponsored. There was a newsletter, of course. With some university friends and neighbours, Sam and I  took responsibility for a particular family, bringing to Canada twelve persons, in all.2 It was a busy year. Sponsors thinking back on the Campaign to save the Boat People tell the same story: it was one of the greatly rewarding experiences of their lives. It called on our time and charitable impulses; it satisfied the desire to “make a difference.” We were on a first-name basis with people who had been exiled from their homeland, who had been in acute danger and lost family members to a violent political convulsion. We were welcoming them to our city and our Canadian way of life. Only gradually did I come to see that they, the sponsored, wished above all to establish themselves in bourgeois life, to enjoy it, contribute to it, and educate their children to contribute, while we, the sponsors, Sam and Janet certainly, were still flirting with rejection of bourgeois life. We ignored the fact that some of the university professors we approached to join us in the Campaign to Save the Boat People refused, telling us that they would sponsor only refugees from right-wing regimes. We bought a house, well built but scruffy, a fifteen-minute walk from the university. (The house is now spruced up and the street is the pride and joy of our neighbourhood association.) Across the road there is a glorious stretch of park; wooded ravine trails lead down to the beautiful corner of Lake Ontario known as Captain Coote’s Paradise. We began to go regularly to a synagogue. But for some years we avoided the large, nearby Modern Orthodox institution.

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The Great Delayers 41

No, on Saturdays we trudged downtown with the children to an antique shul attended by a few old men and women – very few women – whose education and political views went back to the days of their escape from Europe before or just after the Second World War, or to their experiences while serving in the Canadian army during the war. University students attended from time to time, attracted by the combination of Jewish orthodoxy and contrarian cultural attitudes. The rabbi, strictly Orthodox, had left his former well-to-do congregation to take up the study of political philosophy. He wrote his m a thesis on Thomas Hobbes for Sam Ajzenstat in McMaster’s Department of Philosophy, and his doctoral dissertation on Leo Strauss’s “three waves of modernity” with George Grant in the Department of Religious Studies.

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10 Knocking on the Academic Door

At my doctoral defence, my advisor, Peter Russell, had recommended working up chapters for publication in academic journals. Always the contrarian, I declared that I was working on the book. I was having trouble giving up the toil and excitement of the dissertation-writing years. I applied for a research grant, took off for London, and spent two happy weeks in British libraries. (And chilly nights in a lonely bed and breakfast.) Among my discoveries was a draft of Lord Palmerston’s instructions to Lord Durham on the latter’s appointment in 1832 as ambassador to Russia. It begins: “Statements have reached this government, which if true tend to show a deliberate intention on the part of the Russian Government, to break down the nationality of Poland, and deprive it of everything which either in outward form or general substance gives to its people the character of a separate nation.” Here was a document to think about on long London evenings! Durham was known to sympathize with the Poles. Indeed he was regarded generally as a spokesman for national liberation. He favoured the Norwegians’ bid to free themselves from Sweden and Belgian attempts to throw off Dutch rule. Palmerston had every reason to think that Durham would find it difficult to refrain from expressing outrage at the Russian treatment of Poles, and he let Durham know that,

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although he might remonstrate, he should say nothing that  would commit the British government to direct intervention. The document sets out particulars of the Russian campaign: “The abolition of Polish Colours; the introduction of the Russian language into publick acts, the removal to Russia of the national library, and publick collections … the suppression of schools and other establishments for publick instruction; the removal to Russia of a great number of children on the pretense of educating them at the publick expense; the transportation of whole families to the interior of Russia; the extent and severity of the military conscription, the large introduction of Russians into the public employments in Poland, the interference with the National Church.” Canadian scholars like to describe Durham’s proposal to unite Upper and Lower Canada in one legislature as an attempt to “break down” the French-Canadian nationality.1 The term “break down” appropriately describes the czar’s treatment of Poles, but to use it of Durham’s recommendations obscures the gentle and attractive character of his proposals – and their far more potent threat to particular and rural ways of life. Consider Durham’s insistence that the government of the united province enjoy all the rights and privileges of the British Parliament, including the principle of responsible government. It is fair to say that he wished to see the French assimilate. But he thought of them as assimilating to modernity, with its prospects for economic prosperity and political selfgovernment, and he assumed that assimilation would be brought about by creating conditions to ensure the cooperation of French and English on a footing of equality. Gerald Craig and other historians argue that Durham failed to foresee, as the Tories of Upper Canada had, that the French Canadians would join forces with English-speaking reformers. But if the Upper Canadian Tories could see that the cooperation of reformers was likely, Lord Durham, Mr Clever, surely

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could. He interviewed the Tories; he read their statements. Moreover, he was a parliamentarian: he understood the workings of party politics. And he knew all about the able and ambitious man’s craving for political power and office. Let me repeat: he believed he was offering French Canadians the opportunity to take their place in the Parliament and the Executive Council of the united colony of Upper and Lower Canada. They would come in good time to govern French and English. He was not proposing to get rid of a bunch of troublemakers but to harness their talents. That the French could not remain as they were he believed wholeheartedly. Without the opportunity to participate together with the English in a parliamentary regime, they would find themselves subordinated to English-speakers: hewers of wood and drawers of water. In Durham’s philosophy such political and economic subordination is intolerable; it leads to civil war; no self-respecting people, and certainly not the French Canadians, would put up with it. He plays with the idea that the British might have left the province entirely to the French. They might have forbidden British immigration to British North America. In a passage that reminds one of Machiavelli, he argues: “There are two modes by which a government may deal with a conquered territory. The first course open to it is that of respecting the rights and nationality of the actual occupants; of recognizing the existing laws, and preserving established institutions; of giving no encouragement to the influx of the conquering people, and merely incorporating the Province under the general authority of the central Government. The second is that of treating the conquered territory as one open to the conquerors, of encouraging their influx, of regarding the conquered race as entirely subordinate, and of endeavoring as speedily and as rapidly as possible to assimilate the character and institutions to those of the great body of its empire.”2 The “first mode,” he continues, is appropriate in the case of an old and long-settled country in which little room is left for

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colonization. The second should be adopted “in a new and unsettled country” where “a provident legislator would regard as his first object the interests not of the few individuals who happen at the moment to inhabit a portion of the soil, but those of that comparatively vast population by which he may reasonably expect it to be filled.” One wonders: Did Durham have a copy of The Prince open while he wrote? For both Durham and Machiavelli the crucial consideration is whether the conquerors intend to live in the conquered province. I revised the book draft, persuaded myself to let the manuscript go, and then, like so many beginning scholars, discovered that the process of getting a book accepted, especially a first book, can take years. Oh, the agonies of the peer-review process! The book must be approved by two academic readers appointed by the publisher. You revise to meet the readers’ qualms and write a report on your revisions. The manuscript, your report, and the readers’ comments then go to s s h r c ’s Aid to Scholarly Publications Committee. Months pass. Months pass. I remember thinking that I should have taken Russell’s advice: articles were the thing. An article on Lord Durham’s Whig liberalism did not interest editors at the Canadian Journal of Political Science (c j p s ), and they did not forward the manuscript to referees. “Would be of greater interest to historians,” they said. A piece sent to the Canadian Historical Review went to referees, but the response was discouraging. One reader found the argument “silly.” A one-word report! I have forgotten the second reader’s comment; negative, of course. But tucked in with it came a note on a half-sheet, in cramped handwriting, from “David Bercuson,” advising me to submit elsewhere. My arguments, he said, “appeared to be well supported by research.” I turned to the Review’s list of editors. Professor Bercuson of the Department of History at the University of Calgary was editor in chief. I was immensely encouraged. Michael Atkinson, then my colleague at McMaster, intervened with the cjps to say that editors were required to referee

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submissions by a doctor of philosophy in political science. I sent the cjps a second piece, entitled “Modern Mixed Government: A Liberal Defence of Inequality.” (There is nothing like a provocative title!) Favourable reports came back.3 The Political Thought of Lord Durham came out in 1988.4 I had a book, an article or two, and research grants, including a major award – the Jules and Gabrielle Léger Prize. My career had begun. At this point I learned my second lesson about publishing: few people read academic books. After you have spent years on the doctoral dissertation and additional months or years on revision; after you have received enthusiastic reports from your publisher’s referees – at the moment when you are expecting to turn the world around with your extraordinary ­insights, the book dies on the shelf. It will sell primarily to academic and legislative libraries. I am exaggerating. I had readers. But in those early days few liked the argument. I remember meeting a stony-faced young scholar at the Canadian Political Science Association’s annual meetings. “You’re asking for the assimilation of the French Canadians,” she said. “Ah, well, yes,” I replied. “But really …” “You are as bad as Pierre Trudeau, arguing for the assimilation of the Indians in his White Paper,” she said. “You’re worse.” Jacques Vallée, a scholar noted for his study of Alexis de Tocqueville’s visit to Lower Canada, wrote an interesting and indeed favourable review for Le Devoir.5 Vallée knew that the Durham Report was a great text, but not great in the simple sense, meaning that it compelled agreement. No. Like me, he regarded it as a text that posed and illuminated political problems of significance. Durham and Tocqueville could be called comparative sociologists. Tocqueville’s reputation is secure, of course. But Durham compares well. Both think deeply about possibilities for the persistence of particular nationalities; both think about parliamentary and congressional institutions in a

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Knocking on the Academic Door 47

modernizing society. They write about the role of religion and religious education as modernity advances. They anticipate the demise of their own aristocratic class. Tocqueville was known and admired in Britain; both the Liberals and the Philosophical Radicals read him. Not a few of Durham’s associates and aides on the Canada Mission were Radicals, followers of Jeremy Bentham and James Mill. But, although they moved in the same circles, I do not think that Durham and Tocqueville met. You, dear reader, could introduce them. A dialogue between them on assorted topics would interest both political scientists and historians. I can assure you that Lord Durham was familiar with the last chapter of the first volume of Democracy in America. He probably read it just at the time that he was completing the report. Tocqueville is the “French writer” mentioned on page ninety-one of the standard complete edition.6

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11 Enter Peter J. Smith

Quite a surprising amount of your time as an academic is taken up with the task of refereeing manuscripts and grant proposals. One does not need a permanent job. As soon as you publish something in an academic journal the requests begin to come in. I understand the editors’ point of view: “Aha! Another shoulder to the wheel.” There is usually little by way of remuneration. Later in your career you may be asked to review the oeuvre of individuals who are being considered for tenure or promotion. You may sometimes assess an entire department, a process that entails a visit to the campus, much reading, and many interviews. In academe, we take in each other’s washing. One learns from the process. In the early years I was given books by women to referee, not necessarily women in my field – on the assumption, I suppose, that women naturally understand books by women. I did not turn down such requests, even when I considered myself under-­ qualified. One lists ­publications for which one has served as referee in one’s c­ urriculum vitae; the search for items to plump up that document is a vital operation for the junior scholar. In this way I read Perspectives: Philosophical Essays on Method and Morals, edited by the feminist philosopher Christine Overall.1 The general thrust of contributions to this volume

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Enter Peter J. Smith 49

is to suggest that women are more sensitive than are men to the role of collegiality in politics and in personal and academic affairs. Confronted with an issue on which persons ­differ, male scholars conscientiously seek to define and describe participating parties and their arguments. They thus satisfy the conventional academic requirement to be objective and leave themselves free to build a case for the position they find convincing. But this approach, with its search for the convincing case – and indeed, the requirement to be objective – may blind them to complex patterns of shared beliefs. So went the argument. Was the c j p s asking me to objectively review a critique of objectivity? Should I be asking myself whether the critique was convincing? I wrote a bold review, strongly recommending the volume. There are unstated but effective rules for refereeing and reviewing. (Or so I had been led to believe.) You may not reject a manuscript simply because you disagree with the author’s conclusions. If it has enough substance to interest readers, if the line of argument is clear, if facts and arguments are supported by exposition and references, you must put differences of opinion aside and recommend acceptance. You may ask for corrections of fact; you may suggest that the author consider this or that argument in future articles. If you are reviewing for a journal you may offer to write a short, formal comment for publication, setting out points on which you disagree. I began to fancy myself a competent referee. I consulted my colleague John Seaman for advice on difficult manuscripts, and he was always helpful. And then there arrived from the c j p s a manuscript entitled “The Ideological Origins of Canadian Confederation.” Peter J. Smith’s “Ideological Origins” is now famous; it vies with Horowitz’s article “Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism” for first place on undergraduate reading lists in the Canadian Political Thought category. But in 1987 I rejected it. I could not understand the argument and, insofar as I could, I thought it was wrong. Let me repeat: against all the

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rules of academic refereeing, I recommended rejection because I did not understand the piece. And I have not until now admitted my transgression. Imagine my surprise to see the article in the c j p s short months later.2 The author was now revealed. I had never heard of Peter J. Smith. I reread it. In print, it had acquired authority. Indeed, it now appeared to be an entirely novel and important contribution to Canadian political thought and Canadian history. Smith was arguing – to quote from his initial paragraph – that the “ideological origins of the Canadian federal state may be traced to the debate that ­characterized eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British, American, and French political culture, a debate between the defenders of classical republican values and the proponents of a rising commercial ideology formulated during the Enlightenment.” I have no excuse. I might argue in my defence that I was confused because the manuscript said nothing about Gad Horowitz, who was, as I have said, the ranking expert. And it said almost nothing about my research. Smith alluded to my article “Modern Mixed Government: A Liberal Defence of Inequality.”3 But he said only enough to indicate that it might be worthy of attention. I reread Smith’s article. It has this notable feature, which is of great interest. It relies on primary documents. I could not warm to “classical republicanism” as an ideology, at least not classical republicanism as Smith describes it. But my likes were not the issue. The question was whether an ideology answering to the description of “republicanism” influenced events in the British North American colonies in the first half of the nineteenth century. On this second reading, Smith ­convinced me. What is more, as I came to see, I had evidence from my own research to support the thesis. I was familiar with the British anti-parliamentary thinkers of the early nineteenth century. Jeremy Bentham, famous for referring to the doctrine of human rights as “nonsense

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Enter Peter J. Smith 51

on stilts,” opposed the contestation of political parties for office. As he says in one passage: “Tories and Whigs – both parties … will be seen to possess the same separate and ­sinister interest; an interest completely and unchangeably opposite to that of the whole uncorrupt portion of the people.”4 Bentham’s disciples in the British Parliament, the Philosophical Radicals, necessarily operated as a minority party. But they dreamed of establishing a government to speak for the British population as an undivided whole.5 The Philosophical Radical John Arthur Roebuck, agent in the British Parliament for the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada and Louis Joseph Papineau’s close associate, hoped to see Bentham’s prescription triumph in French-speaking Canada. Roebuck and Papineau did not refer to the Radical form of government as “republicanism.” But it answers the description. The dream of a people’s democracy, a one-party democracy – a “republic,” if you like – has a history in British political thought. I concluded that Smith had unduly magnified the influence of the argument for a people’s democracy. He had failed to see that the argument for parliamentary democracy and the contestation of political parties was also circulating in British North America. But I was not for that reason bound to reject his argument outright. It would seem that, in the British North American colonies, the concept of democracy was in flux. It might be correct to say that Smith and I each possessed part of the puzzle. Were we to combine our efforts we might bring into focus the true character of political debate in Canada in the years leading to Confederation. It was time to get in touch with the author of “Ideological Origins.” We had things to talk about. I was wrong to reject Smith’s article. But two excellent developments ensued. I saw at last the stark contradiction between Gad Horowitz’s account of Canadian history and mine. And I acquired a research partner. It happened in the spring of 1989.

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I was invited to a conference at Trent University to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Lord Durham’s report. The occasion had an “imperial” feel, with distinguished British and Australian scholars in attendance. The Province of Quebec was represented by, among others, Stéphane Dion. All present acknowledged that publication of a new book on the Durham Report was a notable event, although few agreed with Ajzenstat’s interpretation.6 Peter Smith was not present, but a number of scholars alluded to the school of political thought upon which he draws and the historians whom he cites. It is sometimes called the “ideological school.” Among the prominent scholars Smith cites are Bernard Bailyn and J.G.A. Pocock.7 Perhaps the most eminent Canadian at the Trent Conference was Donald Smiley, then teaching in the Department of Political Science at York University. He had liked my book on Durham and was familiar with my article on Pierre Bédard.8 I, in turn, was indebted to his book, Canada in Question, both for its exposition of parliamentary institutions and its discussion of the distinction between society and government. In his first chapter, Smiley asks: “Does Society decisively ­determine Government – or is it the other way round? In a  formal sense, is Society the independent variable and Government the dependent variable? Or, to put it yet another way, do the ‘causal arrows’ run from Government to Society or in the other direction?”9 I am not sure that it was entirely clear to me in 1989 that Gad Horowitz’s supposition that, under the influence of our Loyalist past, Canadians had an embedded preference for generous social services committed him to the idea that society is the independent variable. Indeed, it took me some time to see that the Hartz-Horowitz thesis, C.B. Macpherson’s “German Idealism,” Peter Smith’s “republicanism,” and Bentham’s anti-party stance have this in common: all suppose that the social character of a country is and, more important, should be the independent variable. I could see this much,

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Enter Peter J. Smith 53

however: Smiley’s question – “Society or Government?” – could be used to frame a dialogue between Ajzenstat and Smith. Smiley could see it too. At the end of the Trent Conference, he asked me to organize a panel on Canadian political thought for the Canadian Political Science Association’s meetings the following spring, with a view to publishing the papers in the Journal of Canadian Studies (j c s ). I phoned Smith and we agreed to cooperate on the panel and on the j c s project. The special issue of the j c s on Canadian political thought appeared in the fall of 1991.10 Organizing the Learneds panel – or, as it turned out, panels in the plural, and editing the articles for publication required a surprising amount of work.11 Matters sped up when Smith and I discovered email. But we agreed that we could have used the time and energy to put out a book. And so, with a hop, skip, and a jump we were into a new project, a collection of essays on the ideologies of pre-­ Confederation British North America. We wrote the volume’s introduction together, arguing that the element of historical determinism in the Hartz-Horowitz thesis is unconvincing and not well supported by documents of the period. We reprinted Horowitz’s article, with his permission, of course. Chapters by Smith and Louis-Georges Harvey established the presence of a republican ideology in British North America; articles by Ajzenstat, Colin Pearce, Rainer Knopff, and Robert C. Vipond offered evidence of a parliamentary ideology. Smith and I wrote a concluding chapter together as a ­dialogue, and, in the process, I gained a new appreciation for his views. Republicanism’s insistence on political participation as a dignified mode of life, perhaps the single most dignified mode for an individual, has an appeal perhaps as old as Aristotle; an appeal as modern as Jeremy Bentham. As I have suggested, a Canadian historian like Peter Waite can regret

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the absence of “national goals” in the British North America Act. Our lives as Canadians might be better in some not clearly defined fashion if we could think of ourselves as building a country by contributing to substantive national goals about which there is a measure of agreement, goals defined in our founding document. That is the contention. Peter Russell regrets the Canadian Fathers’ inability to “invent” a sovereign people; he regrets, again, the paucity of national goals, a shared vision of our country. At the time I was writing with Peter Smith I could not see as clearly as I  would later that Waite’s view, and Russell’s, offers too few  safeguards against oligarchy and, indeed, tyranny. Nevertheless I managed to keep my side of the argument going, and, between us, we produced at least a sketch of the liberal-republican debate as it found expression in British North America at the time of Confederation. Canada’s Origins: Liberal, Tory, or Republican? appeared in 1995.12 I had once and for all rejected the Hartz-Horowitz thesis. I was now arguing forthrightly that Canadian history exhibits no permanently entrenched “Tory” influence. There were Tories in pre-Confederation Canada, of course; and Liberals and perhaps Republicans, but no one party could claim to represent the defining essence of British North America. I do not know whether Smiley saw Canada’s Origins, the book he inspired. He must have been ill at the time of the Trent Conference, and he died in 1990. Smith and I continued the partnership. At the first meeting of Jack Granatstein’s Organization for the Study of the National History of Canada, we read a paper. We then cooperated on an article for an undergraduate text edited by Mark Charlton and Paul Barker.13

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12 The Failed Siege of McMaster

In the spring of 1989, I was interviewed for a tenure-track position at McMaster to teach Canadian politics and public law. I was familiar with the process. Over the years I had applied to a number of universities in southwestern Ontario. You give a lecture and meet groups of students, colleagues, and administrators. You talk about topics of supreme interest to you, if not to them. There is a pleasant lunch and a visit to the bookstore. The occasion is enjoyable even when you have reason to think that you will not qualify. More than once I thought I had a job nailed, only to discover weeks later that revision of the university budget had made a new “hire” impossible. At McMaster I was given the usual schedule of appointments: the dean of social sciences at such and such a time; the undergraduate student committee on appointments later in the day. I seemed always to be arriving too early for my appointments. The dean of social sciences had not had time to read my c v. The students knew very little about me and I could not win them over. I was not invited to lunch. I was not asked to give a lecture. Hours went by while I sat with a cup of coffee in familiar campus locales. Friends would sit down. “What are you doing here at this time of day, Janet?” The dean asked about my current stage of research. I did not have a good answer. In a public law class the burning

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questions for the students would have to do with present-day issues, in particular, the development of law under the then new regime of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I had no publications in that area. I had no publications on twentiethcentury Canada! I might have said more about my collaboration with Peter Smith. Looking back, I am at a loss to say why I avoided the topic. I had a strong suspicion that my volunteer and part-time work would not count in my favour. I said nothing about the reports and articles I had written for the Human Life Research Institute. I had another grant proposal pending. I was then of the opinion that a fuller picture of pre-Confederation thought would be appropriate, something to flesh out the SmithAjzenstat argument. Perhaps I was thinking of those unread pamphlets on responsible government in the Robarts Library at the University of Toronto. But, in the spring of ’89, I did not know whether I would receive the award. I decided to describe my involvement with a group of academics that was then meeting regularly at the University of Toronto to discuss prospects for constitutional reform. Called the “Membership and Ethics Committee,” it was headed by Howard Adelman of York University and Joseph Carens of the University of Toronto, and handsomely funded by s s h r c . We read and discussed current political thinkers – among them Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre – with a view to assessing the justice of what, after three decades, was still the topic in Canadian political science: Quebec’s threat to leave Confederation. Much of the discussion at the group’s meetings concerned, as one would expect, the prospect for introducing this or that particular constitutional reform. We also bent our minds to the general problem of legitimating reform. The prevailing view at York and Toronto, and indeed at most universities, was that Canada’s governments had done too little to involve the Canadian public in the process of drafting constitutional revisions. Reform of Canada’s fundamental law should not

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The Failed Siege of McMaster 57

be left to politicians: “men in suits.” So the argument went. “Ordinary Canadians” should be consulted. But the more we talked at those meetings in Toronto, the more I found myself thinking that popular participation in constitutional reform might well have the effect of making the Constitution appear to be little more than the product of partial interests and thus not legitimately foundational. I broached the argument at the Toronto meetings. Some participants were interested, but only some. On my desk at home I had begun to making notes under a heading derived from Machiavelli’s Discourses: “Unhappy is the country that is required to reform its constitution.” In the following year or so I collected my thoughts on the topic. Sam and I talked at length about the consequences of entrenching social and economic rights, Sam arguing forthrightly that to give substantive policies constitutional status – a right to old-age security, let us say, or housing, or health care – reduces the scope of political debate and deliberation. As the lists of constitutional rights and entitlements expands, the parliamentary and democratic character of the country shrinks. There could be no objection to parliamentary legislation providing old-age security, health care, and so on, Sam said, because parliamentary legislation can be modified, perhaps improved as times and demands change or, indeed, abandoned if new circumstances required.1 Yes, just a few months after the McMaster interview I was ready to say, thanks to Sam and our good conversations, that participation by political interest groups in constitution making was damaging respect for the Constitution – the lesson I had taken from Alan Cairns – and more, threatening to ­damage the day-to-day operation of Parliament. But at the time of the McMaster interview my thoughts were not yet in order. In brief, at the McMaster interview I chose to talk not about my book with Peter Smith or our plans for further collaboration but, rather, about a question that was burning in my

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mind, an unrehearsed question that to my interviewers must have sounded naïve, if not perverse. If only I had been able to talk about it well! But I was not. I had enough sense to refrain from mentioning Machiavelli. I made croaks and noises about Alan Cairns. It was not an impressive performance. “Surely you believe that some constitutional changes are necessary, Janet?” “Are you saying that the Canadian population at large should not be invited to submit proposals for constitutional change?” “Where do you stand on the idea of a national referendum on reform of the Constitution?” Good questions. I had no well-formulated answers. The lecture that Peter Russell gave in 1991 as outgoing president of the Canadian Political Science Association expressed well the near-consensus among political scientists in those years. The formula of 1867 is outdated. The successful introduction of a Canadian charter of rights and freedoms in 1982 might be regarded as a step in the right direction but there was more to do, and that “more” should reflect the participation of a broad range of citizens.2 The job at McMaster went to an eminently well-qualified young woman whose profile and interests – I have to admit – fitted the job description like a well-made glove. The idea that I should leave academe got a boost. I would still be able to do a little writing on the side, I thought. And it was surely time to contribute more to the family coffers. There were years when I earned nothing. Without Sam, I could never have pursued an academic career. We went through lean times when the children attended postsecondary institutions in Toronto. We were determined to see them graduate without the burden of student loans. Home repairs fell behind. Even book buying slowed. We did not put off trips to academic conferences or visits to the older generation.

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13 Happy Home in the West

Later that same year, 1989, I was awarded the grant from s s h r c for the further study of pre-Confederation political thought. It was tenable for three years and included a stipend. I would have time to pull together a book and advance – at last – to the study of Confederation. So I told myself. Mere days later I was offered a sessional appointment for two terms at the University of Calgary. I wrote to postpone the s s h r c grant and flew west. It was a good year. In the first term I came back twice (or was it thrice?) to see Sam and give papers. In December Sam joined me in Calgary on a half-year sabbatical. In preparation for our reunion I bought a queen-sized mattress for the bedroom floor, a second breakfast coffee cup, and second table setting. I bought a table and chairs. A Jewish man has to have a table at which to eat the Sabbath evening meal. The children – now adults – visited at the mid-winter break; we went to Banff. Calgary is beautiful! The sun shines endlessly; the air is ­nectar. The exhilarating dry coldness of the winter has no counterpart in my experience. The idea of temperature ­vanishes. We would open the sliding glass doors in our third floor walk-up, strip off all our clothes, and let the cold sun pour in. (A bit late I realized that a cold sun can still burn.

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And I had exposed to that effective sunlight parts of my body never before so boldly uncovered.) I introduced Sam to pancake breakfasts at the university. (Western dress was optional: Sam bought cowboy boots.) And midnight fire alarms: in our building alarms went off once or twice a term. We would grab the essentials and run down to the snowy yard; someone might have a guitar; you would meet the neighbours. I taught the course in introductory politics, using the text written and edited by department members Mark O. Dickerson and Thomas Flanagan.1 I also used a volume of readings edited by Dickerson, Flanagan, and Neil Nevitte, which included Gad Horowitz’s article entitled “Conservatism, Liberalism, and Socialism in Canada: An Interpretation.”2 I had used these texts in McMaster’s basement rooms, with considerable success. But in Calgary I could not make lectures swing. They were adequate, but only adequate. I wonder: If I  had had a second year in the department would I have ­improved? Dickerson and Flanagan were themselves lecturing to other sections. The course was huge. I devised a senior-level undergraduate course entitled Women in the History of Political Philosophy, reviving ideas about Rousseau on women’s education that I had once hoped to use as a chapter in my dissertation on Rousseau for Allan Bloom. The political science department at Calgary was jumping with ideas. Discussions were about matters of substance, and although arguments were sometimes heated they were almost always civil.3 There were frequent visiting speakers; I  remember especially Alan Cairns and Kenneth Minogue. Sam Ajzenstat made an appearance as a “visitor.” Every Friday afternoon, members of the department met to describe their latest research. All attended; if you could not attend you wrote a note of apology to the presenter. A major topic of discussion was the role of the judiciary in the determination of public policy. Ted Morton and Rainer

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Knopff were publishing the materials that would powerfully contribute to the national debate on the consequences of adopting a constitutional bill of rights. Having failed to win the McMaster appointment I could not expect to teach in the area of rights and constitutional reform, but I was eagerly ­following developments. There was a second, tangentially related topic: western ­dissatisfaction with Confederation. Alberta was demanding a larger role in Canadian affairs, and it seemed to a number of political scientists at Calgary that, in the Canadian federation under a national government constrained by parliamentary rules, Alberta’s voice would remain unheard. The case for the “referendum,” the “recall,” and instruction of parliamentary representatives was elaborated. Preston Manning’s Reform Party was weighed in the balance. Sam and Janet did not participate directly in these fraught discussions, but, since none of the members of the “Calgary School” has been shy about publishing, we, like the rest of Canada, are now informed. The Calgarians gave parliamentary government a qualified vote of confidence. The importance of the debate and the decision for Canada’s future cannot be exaggerated. As a guide to the substance of the discussion, I recommend Rainer Knopff’s supremely effective “Populism and the Politics of Rights: The Dual Attack on Representative Democracy.”4 There were other matters about which we kept politely quiet. I could never think of Calgary as a city. It had the amenities of a city: splendid classical music, for example. Mario Bernardi was conductor of the Calgary Philharmonic: What could be better? It had a fine concert hall, delightful art galleries, museums, and parks. And we enjoyed them all. But to our circumscribed eastern Canadian minds – to mine, at any rate – Calgary was too exposed. For people brought up in Toronto the word “city” brings to mind the huge green forest that is our native habitation, the vast spread of mature trees stretching east and west along the lake, and north up the

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world’s longest city street, sheltering homes, shops, factories, regions, rivers, and ravines. Allan Bloom came to Calgary to promote The Closing of the American Mind, which was then soaring to the top of the North American bestseller lists. He spoke at the Paliser Hotel, and his proud students from the University of Toronto, Janet Ajzenstat, Rainer Knopff, and Ted Morton, were there to hear him. He faced a hostile audience. I do not remember anyone in the audience speaking in defence of the Western canon and the study of “great books.” The argument was that Bloom had ignored the contributions of women, Asians, and Africans; he had ignored the once-colonized nations and was in effect proposing nothing less than the return of colonialism. I had never heard anything like it. When we met him after the talk, Mr Bloom said that he had had worse receptions.5 Sam and Janet attended the “Learned Societies” meetings at the University of Victoria. You will remember that Peter Smith and I had been given the task of organizing a day of meetings on Canadian political thought. I caught up with Smith on plans for the special issue of the j c s . And then it was time to go home. We returned to Hamilton to reclaim our house and to renew acquaintance with our several cats, our neighbours, and home chores. My future in academe was still uncertain. I would once again attend the sessions on constitutional reform conducted by the Membership and Ethics Committee at the University of Toronto. I had the award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. But, yes, I could see the end approaching. Now, if ever, was the time to make the break. But at the end of the summer McMaster’s political science department offered me another one-course contract to teach introductory politics. And the Department of Philosophy invited me to give a course of my own design in its master of arts program for high school teachers, known as “the M.A. (T).”

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I  was back in the academic picture, hanging on by my fingernails. I recalled the course on women in the history of political philosophy that I had given at Calgary. Would the M.A. (T) students enjoy a similar offering? Mary Wollstonecraft appeared out of the blue. “I understand your students will be high school teachers of English,” she said. “Mostly women, I suppose? Why not assign A Vindication of the Rights of Women?” “Your book!” I said. “The book in which you assess the education Rousseau describes.” Good idea. We’ll read parts of it, certainly, and I will add readings from Rousseau’s Emile.” She smiled. “And,” I went on, “We will have John Locke on marriage, the family, and women’s property rights.” Wollstonecraft sighed. “Do you think the Locke is necessary?” she asked. “It’s an area in which I have some competence,” I said. “We’ll include twentieth-­ century commentators, feminists who specialize in political philosophy.” Another smile. “And commentators who are critical of the feminist interpretations,” I went on. “I am looking ­forward to it,” she said politely.

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14 The World Remade

In 1992–93, Brock University in St Catharines offered me a sessional appointment in Canadian federalism and public law. I bought my mother’s 1981 Volvo. (She charged me a dollar.) I would make the drive from Hamilton three days a week. And right on the heels of that offer, within hours as it seemed, came the grand prize. I hit gold. Gold – oil – however you spell it: riches! The tenure-track position in McMaster’s Department of Political Science had fallen to me after all. The department’s first choice had taken a job elsewhere. Thoughts of a career with an advocacy group scattered like mist when the sun comes out. McMaster did not want me immediately; the position was guaranteed for the following academic year. I postponed the s s h r c again. As a temporary employee at Brock I would not  have been justified in drawing on the award. At Mac, where I would be a permanent employee, I would be entitled to use it to reduce my teaching load, enabling research in the pre-Confederation field. The Brock department was friendly. The students were ­rewarding. With the McMaster position pending, I began to pull together notes on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Professor Carl Barr’s assistance was invaluable. I was his sabbatical replacement; I used his reading lists and

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course schedules. I was also replacing Garth Stevenson, a notable expert on federal-provincial relations; I used his ­outlines and suggested readings. All in all I acquired from Calgary and Brock an invaluable preparation for the McMaster position. While I had been at Calgary, the most significant political event of the half-century occurred. The Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed. I had failed to notice. I knew the simple facts but lacked a sense of the events’ significance. I might say by way of excuse that, in our Calgary walk-up, Sam and I had no television set. We were not receiving a newspaper. The radio was always tuned to classical music stations. But I remember no discussion of the matter at the university and no discussion at the Learneds that spring. The swiftness of the event, the surprise, had left political scientists without words, or paradigms, or, for goodness sakes, lecture notes. One person who clearly understood what had happened was Allan Bloom. At our talk after his presentation at the Paliser Hotel in Calgary he had said how extraordinary he found it that his audiences expressed deep discontent with the political institutions of the West, the very institutions that the populations in Eastern Europe, newly liberated from Soviet dominance, had declared themselves eager to adopt. During my year at Brock I caught up with the subject. William Mathie, chair of the political science department, asked me to run an hour-long discussion on current affairs once a week for any and all. We gathered in a comfortable room – soft chairs, soft lights, coffee on the warming pad. No lecturing was required; I was to act as impartial seminar ­leader. The usual campus politicians turned up to hone their speaking skills and lend a little gentle heat to the occasion. And then, towards the end of the term, a more formidable figure arrived, a pillar of one of Canada’s communist parties. He held forth at length and with professional ease on conditions in Albania under the communists. He said nothing about the

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collapse of the Soviet economy. Rather, he assured us that proof of communism’s excellence was to be found in Albania. Albania was a model of justice, inter-ethnic cooperation, and economic plenty. The students were confused and, indeed, not interested in the topic, but I found it surprisingly difficult to derail the speaker. Mere months later the Albanian regime fell, revealing the truth about that pathetic country. At one point the intruder – I can only think of him as such – launched into a vitriolic denunciation of the State of Israel, the first of its kind that I had heard. (Not the last; no indeed.) I consulted Mathie, admitted my inability to conduct an even-handed discussion, and we cancelled sessions for the remaining two or three weeks in the term. The following year, I had a similar experience with the Membership and Ethics Committee, the research and discussion group that Howard Adelman and Joseph Carens were leading. We acquired a new member, whose subject was the excellence of the communist regime in India’s Kerala Province. Justice, equality, and economic prosperity prevailed, or so we were told. Canadians could learn from the example. Everyone listened politely. I have no idea what the others in the group were thinking. We were academics; he was a colleague. But I was soon busy with preparations for my courses at McMaster and stopped attending.

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15 On the Inside

I came to McMaster in 1993 with the rank of assistant professor. I was fifty-seven years old and fourteen years from my PhD. I had three academic books to my credit,1 journal articles, reviews, and chapters in edited books. My office had tall windows, two desks, and shelves to the ceiling. I purchased table lamps, pictures, and plants. The one flaw was the view. On a pedestal in the courtyard below was a headless bronze bird, a long-legged giant of a thing, with huge womanly breasts. Female. And brainless. The aging art historian at the back of my mind told me that it was a sculptural masterpiece. No doubt. I had eight years to go. Retirement at age sixty-five was then mandatory. But in that happy first year I did not give the matter a moment’s thought. The great thing was to have arrived and to have been admitted to the freedom of a university. I had been a McMaster graduate student, a part-time lecturer, a faculty wife. Now I was an insider with responsibilities. I was expected to participate in the affairs of my department and in the affairs of the university. I had colleagues in other departments and other faculties. I joined McMaster’s interdisciplinary group, Pluralité et Alterité (Plurality and Otherness; “Pluralt” for short), which was dedicated to the study of textual interpretation. As I had learned in my undergraduate studies at McMaster, and

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graduate studies at Toronto – as every first-year student learns, or should learn – a “text” (i.e., a literary composition or legal document) typically yields more than one interpretation. Scholar A says that it means so and so, while scholar B holds fast to the notion of such and such, quite the opposite. So the argument develops. Multiply the readers and you ­multiply the readings. The responsible reader supports her  interpretation with an argument, as I do not need to say.  But  supportive arguments are themselves subject to interpretation. No scholar escapes the dilemma. I had done my best to follow Allan Bloom’s instructions: strive to understand your text as the author understood it. But Bloom had not said that one could arrive at the definitive interpretation; he had argued merely that one was obliged to try for it. He had told us to welcome difficult passages: a text that appears on first reading to be simply wrong as analysis or description, or indeed morally objectionable, may uncover shortcomings in your own presuppositions. The moment when you want to abandon the project or throw the book across the room may be the moment of revelation. Pluralt rejected the idea that at bottom there might be a “correct” interpretation, or, indeed, a better one. A rich text allows many interpretations: that was Pluralt’s motto. Rejoice! Borrow and develop ideas. Be interesting! Did I worry about the wisdom of associating myself with such a resolutely postmodern group? Only for a moment. I was curious. And I liked my new associates, many of whom were from the languages departments. Poetry, movies, popular culture, high culture, religious doctrine: all was grist for the mill. Pluralt organized lectures and seminars and publicized them widely. We brought in European speakers, including the French philosopher and social commentator Jean Baudrillard and the Belgian theorist Chantel Mouffe. And we were successful. McMaster’s largest auditoriums could barely contain

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our audiences. I remember a seminar with Jean Baudrillard on Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s depiction of rape as the typical human interaction. Some people came away baffled, but no one was sorry to have attended. (I couldn’t help contrasting Baudrillard and Allan Bloom. When he was lecturing on Rousseau’s depiction of the solitaries, male and female, in the primal forest, Mr Bloom was  serious but, let me say, more fun than Baudrillard. Baudrillard instructed with a heavy hand. Bloom appeared always to be enjoying the discoveries he and we were making. If we were uncomfortable with a teaching, he would laugh at us gently; he would let us know he was enjoying our shyness. And that, on one level, he approved of it.) In 1996, Pluralt convened a day-long conference on the interpretation and revision of the Canadian Constitution, inviting, as speakers, philosophers and political scientists from Ontario and Quebec. Though the national referendum of 1992 had rejected the hugely ambitious package of constitutional reforms in the Charlottetown Constitutional Accord, many – dare I say most? – Canadian scholars still hoped that the reform process would be reopened. We called the event “Should We Keep Talking?” And, as expected, it was well attended. We talked. And talked. I am now unable to account for things I said that day. In the round table discussion that concluded the event I burst in with this statement: “I’ve had a change of heart reading the papers for this conference. I see a new phase of constitutional debate emerging … Something new is happening. Something surprising, something very bold.” I have a record of the statement; it was reproduced in a summary of the event.2 I must have been carried away by the success of the occasion. After the muddle of my original interview for the McMaster position, at which I had so signally failed to pull together my thoughts about constitutional reform, I had done some hard work and, under the auspices of the Membership and Ethics Committee (chaired by Howard Adelman and Joseph Carens,

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you will remember), published an article arguing that the continuing discussion of constitutional reform was driving a wedge between French and English. In brief, our strenuous efforts to reconcile the Canadian “solitudes” were thwarting reconciliation.3 In my Brock year I had teamed up with Brian Howe to publish opposing views on entrenching social and economic rights. Howe favoured entrenchment: fundamental matters of economic and social equality should not be left to the back and forth of parliamentary debate. Drawing on my discussions with Sam Ajzenstat, I opposed entrenchment. It would gut the responsibilities of our provincial and national legislatures, diminish our national discussion, and sap confidence in the parliamentary system. We published our dialogue in the Brock Review. It was reprinted in a popular textbook on Canadian political issues.4 At an international conference in 1992, I had said more, incorporating insights from Donald Smiley and Alan Cairns: Canada’s three decades of constitutional wrangling had eroded the distinction between constitutional law and statute law, in this way undermining the idea that the Constitution as superior law can be the ground on which parties and persons with deep-seated, substantive disagreements about matters of policy may continue their deliberations without offending the sense of equal participation in Canadian nationhood.5 To repeat, well before the Pluralt Conference of 1996 I  had  arguments in print to suggest that wrangling about ­constitutional reform is injurious. But on the day of the conference that vein of thought did not present itself. Pluralt’s director, Caroline Bayard, made arrangements to publish the Keep Talking proceedings in Constitutional Forum, a journal emanating from the Centre for Constitutional Studies at the University of Alberta. To plump up the issue, we added an essay by Frank Cunningham that had been presented at a previous Pluralt event. It was entitled “The CanadaQuebec Conundrum: A Tri-National Perspective” and seemed

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to fit right in; it argued that the remedy for Canada’s constitutional woes was to work towards a system of constitutional “orders,” English, French, and Aboriginal.6 (All Gaul was divided into three parts. All Canada comprised, or should comprise, three “orders.”) Reading Professor Cunningham’s piece with an editor’s eye, I was taken aback by this assertion: “It is no surprise to find the right wing in Canada opposed to Aboriginal rights, multiculturalism, Quebec self-determination and, through their economic policies, to Canadian self-determination as  well.” What did Cunningham mean by “Canadian self-determination”? He depicted even Finance Minister Paul Martin as an enemy of Canadian self-determination. “[The] man we need to worry about is Paul Martin.”7 In the final years of Chrétien’s Liberal government, Martin took steps to pay down the national debt and to reign in government spending. Some Canadians thought the measures timely and prudent. Some thought them ill advised. Cunningham seemed to be saying not only that Martin’s budgets were ill-advised but that they were ­un-Canadian. The suggestion was that promulgation of right-wing economic policies offends the Canadian sense of national identity: true Canadians necessarily gravitate to the economic policies of the political left. My academic conscience kicked in. On the day of the conference I had not only temporarily lost sight of the idea that the campaign to reform the Constitution might be exacerbating hostilities among organized political interests and undermining respect for parliamentary debate, but I had also forgotten the idea, a corollary of my rejection of the HartzHorowitz thesis, that politics in a liberal democracy should not be constrained by a priori cultural and ideological assumptions. In the excitement of discussing issues with colleagues, revelling in my new-found status as an academic insider, and – no doubt – hopeful of securing approval, I had betrayed conclusions I had reached after years of reading and thought.

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In editorial comments on the Cunningham article, as Caroline and I were preparing the final copy for publication, I allowed myself a quip: “There are bound to be readers amused by Cunningham’s suggestion that resolution of Canada’s constitutional dilemmas requires conversion to socialism!” The furor that ensued! Professor Cunningham was very angry.8 He e-mailed the conference presenters, accusing Janet Ajzenstat and Caroline Bayard of “socialist-baiting.” I wrote to say that responsibility for the quip lay with me alone. Caroline said that she too had signed the Introduction and shared the responsibility for the offensive comment. (What a gallant woman; I know that she had been uncomfortable with my comment.) Cunningham was not mollified. He said: “No one to whom I have shown the comment has interpreted it as anything but a slight.” Professor Peter Russell wrote around to argue that Janet Ajzenstat had failed to distinguish revolutionary socialism from social democracy. (He was  lecturing a woman who had been a member of the Socialist Party of America! I had known what it was like to be scolded by social democrats for associating with communists. On the subject of socialism’s varieties I was not inexperienced.) Russell suggested too that, at bottom, Janet Ajzenstat and Frank Cunningham were quarrelling about the “neutral constitution.” Here he hit the mark. I was indeed attempting to defend constitutional neutrality. I was arguing that a good constitution should tolerate deliberation of all ideologies, including, bien sur, the varieties of socialism. Cunningham, in contrast, was arguing that a good constitution should ­reflect the country’s culture. (Recall Donald Smiley’s question: “Does Society decisively determine Government – or is it the other way round? In a formal sense is Society the independent variable and Government the dependent variable?”9) Since Cunningham had convinced himself that

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the Canadian political culture enshrines a bent towards generous provision of social services he quite naturally concluded that the Canadian Constitution should protect a “left-wing” agenda. I took from the Keep Talking squabble this insight: I had given too little thought to the idea of constitutional neutrality. Russell was apparently of the opinion that constitutional neutrality is difficult or impossible to achieve. But perhaps we should be saying that, insofar as a country falls away from the ideal, equal justice and freedom of political speech is impaired. I was itching to get back to my keyboard and research files. I was now prepared to focus directly on the question of constitutional neutrality. The argument in British tradition is that neutrality allows and encourages the continuing contestation of political parties for office, thus forestalling oligarchy and promoting individual freedom. While I was polishing up the quip to which Frank Cunningham objected, I was drafting a paper on A.V. Dicey, Britain’s foremost constitutional scholar in the late nineteenth century. Work was going slowly. I had the title – “Reconciling Parliament and Rights: A.V. Dicey Reads the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms” – and a promising first sentence: “In the Law of the Constitution, A.V. Dicey makes the apparently absurd claim that parliamentary sovereignty secures rights.” Dicey was defending a hallowed tradition. The English Parliament secures individual rights: so Montesquieu argues; so Voltaire contends. (To this list we can add Jean Louis De Lolme, Lord Durham, and Pierre Bédard.) But English constitutional law also includes the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, which, in the standard definition, makes the ­endearingly old-fashioned assertion that Parliament can do anything but make a man into a woman or a woman into a man; that is, Parliament can do anything in the realm of the

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naturally possible. What then prevents parliaments from ­running wild? I knew there was an answer. I had formulated it on occasion and yet it kept slipping away from me. So my thoughts were going in my first years of employment at McMaster. But I had obligations. The undergraduate class in public law, a full two-term course on the Canadian Constitution, was demanding my attention.

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16 The Law Class

It was a golden age for the study of law. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was barely ten years old and the Supreme Court was still defining rules of interpretation. The class was officially limited to fifty students but was always oversubscribed. By now I was well prepared. Teaching at Calgary and Brock had given me an invaluable boost. So had years of attending sessions on the interpretation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms at the Canadian Political Science Association’s annual meetings known as the Learneds. Friends from the University of Calgary and Brock University were ­usually among the paper-givers at those meetings. My dissertation advisor, Peter Russell, was often in the chair, and the issue of contested interpretations of the law and the constitution was front and centre. “Law” and “rights” courses were springing up in most universities. Mac was no exception. In a typical year I would have students who were already familiar with issues of judicial interpretation as presented in the Women’s Studies Program, or Aboriginal Studies, or the Department of Sociology’s ­seminars on rights of the disabled. The class might include students with first-hand experience of the victims’ rights movement or feminists dedicated to assisting women “caught in the toils of the criminal courts.” Sometimes I heard from

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students who had worked at summer jobs beside young people who were fulfilling their community work requirement in conformity with sentencing provisions in the Criminal Code. Lectures and seminars were far from one-way sessions. I began to supervise students who were writing undergraduate theses on a comparative topic, usually working with George Breckenridge, who teaches American politics, or Karen Bird, who compares American and European approaches to protection of free speech. Thesis students would make their debut as lecturers in the law class, equipped with handouts and overheads, describing their projects and fielding questions. It was not long before some of my students were accepted into law schools. They, too, would visit. In the first eight weeks we studied the tradition of British and Canadian law before the introduction of the Charter, with an occasional glance at the United States, relying on selections from F.L. Morton’s primer, Law, Politics and the Judicial Process, and famous pre-Charter rights decisions like the Alberta Press Case (1938) and Saumur v. Quebec and Attorney General of Quebec (1953) in Russell, Knopff, and Morton’s Federalism and the Charter: Leading Constitutional Decisions. But well before the winter break the students would be turning to the ground-breaking decisions in the post-Charter years and cracking open Knopff and Morton’s general introduction, Charter Politics.1 It is impossible to over-emphasize the importance of Russell, Knopff, and Morton in the development of Charter studies in political science departments. They taught us the parameters of judicial interpretation; they took us through the 1982 document clause by clause. So much might have been done by any good introductory text. But they did more. As political scientists familiar with the legislative process, they were in a position to open up questions about the impact of entrenching rights on parliamentary government. Before 1982, most political scientists expected Canada’s ­superior courts to maintain the time-honoured Canadian

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tradition of judicial self-restraint. They regarded the Charter as a codification of rights Canadians had long enjoyed and a salutary reminder that Canada, like Britain, exemplified the principle of limited government. But it was soon clear that the judiciary was abandoning self-restraint. The courts were participating with the legislatures – one might say competing with them – in the determination of public policy. Recall the issues that made the news in the mid-1980s, among them, access to abortion, the regulation of immigration, and Sunday shopping. Prior to the Charter it was Parliament or the provincial ­legislatures (or, in the case of Sunday shopping, city councils) that made the rules on these matters. The law was not static, you will understand; it was reconsidered from time to time as public opinion changed or as a new political party took office. Trudeau had relaxed abortion restrictions; the refugee-­determination process had supporters and detractors; Sunday shopping – which stores might stay open, for  how long, and on what days – was an ongoing issue. Canadians were divided on these matters; individuals and organized groups expressed opinions and advanced criticisms, some arguing for the status quo, some for change. There were well-established avenues for expression of opinion – I am still speaking of the pre-Charter era – the media, parliamentary committees, academe, the extra-­ parliamentary apparatus of the political parties, local constituency offices, think tanks. To put it bluntly, before the Charter, the citizen’s right to object to laws and policies, or to express support, was well established. And the legislatures might well respond. Canadians were required to obey the edicts of Parliament and the legislatures but did not have to like them. And, to repeat, they were entitled to say whether they liked them or not as loudly as they pleased. (Politics in a liberal democracy is traditionally noisy; if citizens are too quiet the political scientist worries: Is the quality of democratic life declining?)

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After the introduction of the Charter, some issues that had been regarded as policy and thus open to revision by the back and forth of legislative debate came to be defined as “rights,” whose parameters should be determined by the judiciary in courts of law. I have to admit that I do not entirely understand how this change came about. As Peter Russell reminds us, the courts of common law had always interpreted statutes and policies, and interpretation necessarily has the effect of altering the sense of the law, sometimes expanding and ­sometimes restricting its scope. True. And yet in Canada after 1982 there was an abrupt and substantial change. Citizens began to pay attention to judicial proceedings, examining not only the outcomes but also the judicial arguments. The judiciary continued to profess, as judges always have, that their primary intent was to oversee the orderly development of constitutional law, but they were now surrounded by crowds of citizens following cases in the news, poking their democratic noses into everything, sometimes applauding judicial decisions, sometimes grumbling. At some point in the 1980s these crowds demanded admission to the courtroom. Before the introduction of the Charter, the judiciary traditionally admitted only groups and individuals that could demonstrate a straightforward interest in the dispute before the court, preferably a material one. Groups and individuals gaining admission were known as “friends of the court.” The argument now was that, with the courts’ assumption of a broader policy mandate, the definition of “friends” should be expanded.2 By the end of the decade group representatives were appearing in court regularly not only to describe the effect of a statute or policy on their members but also to argue for particular interpretations of the legislation in question, not to mention particular interpretations of the Charter. Groups that achieved the status of “friends” preened themselves and boasted; groups that did not, sulked.

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The courts’ assumption of a policy mandate and the expanded definition of “friends” had a dampening effect on public deliberation, both in and out of Parliament. In those first Charter years, debate about the merits of Canadian policy on abortion and like social issues did not die away. It continued; it sometimes became more acrimonious. But it was accompanied by the uneasy feeling that there ought not to have been dissent after the Supreme Court had spoken. The dissent seemed, in some important sense, unwarranted. And the idea that unlimited public debate and deliberation is a precious feature of a free society took a beating. I would typically begin a class or seminar with an exposition of the interpretative clauses and judicial precedents of importance in the case before us, and then, with a nod to Knopff and Morton, ask: “Should this matter have been determined in the courts or in a legislature?” I would “academize” the discussion, to use a phrase favoured by Stanley Fish.3 Instead of a knockdown-drag-out battle about abortion, or the merits of providing welfare to refugee applicants, or public morality and Christian observance in a multicultural society, we would embark on questions about the “how” of political decision making. I told myself that it is one of the great advantages of the Knopff-Morton approach that it facilitates such an approach. All understood, surely, that the larger questions still loomed. I did not encourage the students to ask whether there is a place in today’s university for consideration of those larger matters. As I remember, Fish too avoids this question. It is surely permissible to study only procedural questions in a political science class. Ours is for the most part a downto-earth discipline. And yet the fact remains that, by “academizing” the issues, I was relinquishing a long-established traditional space for reasoned deliberation about social and moral issues: the university classroom. In 1997 I won the Faculty of Social Sciences teaching award on recommendations from the law class. I began to entertain

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ambitions. I expanded the section of the course devoted to criminal law, punishment, rehabilitation, mediation, and the process of “truth and reconciliation.” And why not devise a graduate program? Or a senior-level seminar in which we could set issues of judicial policy making in historical context? It would include the Alberta Press Case (1938), in which Chief Justice Duff boldly asserts, but never establishes to anyone’s satisfaction, that parliamentary government suffices to protect free speech. As a class we could take it on ourselves to supply missing premises or steps of ­argument. We would look at Roncarelli v. Duplessis (1959), in which Justice Ivan Rand pulls from thin air the idea that the rule of law is constitutionally secured. In such a graduate course, I found myself thinking, we would be able to take our time; we could go back to Blackstone and Montesquieu. We might read Jean Louis De Lolme!4 By the summer of 1996, I had polished the article on Dicey and sent it to the cjps .5 I knew that everything I said in the article was true. I also knew that I had not said everything. Just how did Dicey’s argument describing nineteenth-century Britain relate to Canada in the 1990s? I had given the piece a bold title: “A.V. Dicey Reads the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.” But it said very little about the Charter. Dicey was not hostile to a constitutional bill of rights; he admired the American Bill of Rights. But on the crucial point he was adamant: a diminution of parliamentary sovereignty impairs rights. The complete formula for rights and freedoms in the Westminster system requires parliamentary sovereignty. Today, Canadians are convinced that security for rights requires limits on legislative sovereignty. While I was wondering how to pursue the question, whether to bid for a graduate course, and whether to begin again with a thorough reading of Blackstone, the phone rang …

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17 The Confederation Texts

A pleasant voice said: “Bill Gairdner here.” What did I know about Confederation and “Canada’s founding documents”? My first thought was that Gairdner, whoever he was, was not an academic. No one in academe spoke of a Canadian “founding.” The Americans had had a “founding.” The Fathers of Confederation had merely put together a “deal,” and an ­incompetent one at that. So said received wisdom. But I was intrigued. Ian Gentles of York University (and the Barrie de Weber Institute, where I had formerly been the ­executive director) had given Gairdner my name. He had also, it appeared, handed over a complete copy of the 1865 debates on Confederation in the old Province of Canada. And Gairdner had read the material – all 1,032 pages. Here again was someone who liked primary texts! We arranged to meet at McMaster’s Faculty Club (now the University Club). I made inquiries. William D. Gairdner was a businessman with a PhD in literature from Stanford University. He had published several books on Canadian politics and one, a runaway bestseller, on the Canadian ­family. He was indefatigable and, in the opinion of quite a few reviewers, politically incorrect from start to finish. At lunch it emerged that his current project was a history of modern democracy. The chapters on Europe and the United States were shaping up. But Gairdner, as I soon

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realized, is a patriot; he could not bring himself to write about modernity’s origins without telling the story of his own country, and he was having trouble finding Canadian data. Secondary sources were not proving helpful.1 I think that what he had in mind at that first meeting was to bring out a new edition of the debates on the Province of Canada, with commentary by himself, Ian Gentles, and, perhaps, Janet Ajzenstat. He said later, in a letter to the Donner Canadian Foundation: “There is a book of passionate, interesting material to be assembled by scholars who know how to tease out the spirits of Montesquieu, Rousseau, Burke, Locke, and others who haunt these pages and point to the fascinating conflicts that were common fare in our founders’ day and that echo still.” My task was to find out whether other scholars had been writing recently about the Province of Canada debates. I promised to scout around. I had been looking forward to the study of Confederation – at some point – within a year or so; when I had prepared myself. Why had I delayed? I remembered a conversation with Kenneth McRae about the Province of Canada debates. We were having dinner at Brock University with a roomful of scholars, preparing to hear a lecture on “great books” (Allan Bloom’s territory). Sweet evening freshness streamed through a bank of open doors; the table conversation flowed; Sam Ajzenstat was ­present, as  was my daughter, then a graduate student in religious studies. I told McRae that I was thinking of taking up the 1865 debates. He usefully informed me that the Government of Canada had reprinted the debates in 1951 with an index of subjects, adding, “but the debates are very low-grade ore, Janet, very low-grade ore.” I was familiar with the idea; yes indeed. As I remember, neither McRae nor I discussed the matter of debates in the other British North American colonies. I found that Peter Waite’s abbreviated edition of the Province of Canada debates was long out of print.2 There appeared to be no publication available like the one that

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The Confederation Texts 83

Gairdner was contemplating. Ged Martin had a book with a promising title: Britain and the Origins of Canadian Confederation.3 Martin shows us that there was a climate of opinion in Britain favouring Canadian federation but concludes that most of those holding this view were ill informed. He says almost nothing to suggest that there were serious and able men in the British government and perpetrates the usual notions about the Canadian Fathers: they, too, were ill-informed. As I said in a short piece for the Review of Constitutional Studies, Martin “invites the idea that the events of history are caused by nothing more than the push and shove of petty, short-sighted, selfseeking individuals. He certainly says nothing to promote the idea that there can be a sustained argument for constitutional government, liberal institutions, or federalism.”4 All in all it seemed that surprisingly little was being written about Confederation. I prepared a report for Gairdner and Gentles. And the rush was on. It did not let up for more than two years. At a first meeting (Bill, Janet, and Ian), I suggested that we expand our study to include debates from the other provinces. I had in mind Calgary professor Barry Cooper’s complaints about central Canada’s arrogance in assuming that the defining influences in Canadian history occurred before the settlement of the western provinces. British Columbia had come into the federation in 1871. Had there been legislative debates? Ian consulted Michiel Horn, a colleague at York. As Ramsay Cook’s student, Horn had written an essay on the debates on Confederation in the b c legislature. They were of great interest, he reported, containing an excellent discussion of the principle of “responsible government.” And what about the notoriously reluctant province, Nova Scotia? We would certainly have to look at the situation in the Maritimes. We drew up a grant application for presentations to the Donner Canadian Foundation. I began to think about a field researcher, someone to locate the debates. I visited Robert

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Vipond, then chair of the political science department at Toronto, and a fellow member of the Adelman-Carens discussion group on Membership and Ethics. He recommended Jeffrey McNairn, a recent PhD in Canadian history with a good knowledge of political science. Jeff proved to be available for a six-month period. I began to think of inviting the participation of another senior historian. Ian Gentles’ field of expertise was English history and the English Civil War. As a scholar of repute he would certainly be of help in keeping us on the academic straight and narrow. He was well positioned to comment on historical references in the debates. But surely we needed someone with more knowledge of British North America in the Confederation years. (Perhaps I was still trying to disguise my own inadequacies in that area.) I thought of the historian Paul Romney, whose book Mr. Attorney had been highly recommended by Peter Russell.5 Bill phoned him and we had our fourth author / editor. I drafted a grant proposal and budget, and Bill took them to the Donner Foundation. We met our Stoddart editor, Don Bastian. It was my first experience of working with a trade press. I was used to the hands-off approach favoured by academic presses. Bastian called us in frequently, nudged us along, took us out for lunch (always Japanese food), shared his conception of the book’s design, and queried our decisions when he thought appropriate.6 I checked with Mills Memorial Library at McMaster to make sure that the Province of Canada debates were available in full. I asked my department head to draw funds from my s s h r c research grant to release me from courses in the spring term. And I asked the dean of social sciences for a sabbatical to start the following September. The book came out in the fourth quarter of 1999.7

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18 Making the Book

Bill liked to speak of “bringing the Confederation debates alive.” We would recapture our “founding arguments” – “arguments” in the plural. We did not suppose that we would uncover a single argument or single ideology. I would have been surprised, to say the least, if we had uncovered only the ideology of hierarchy, deference, and communalism predicated by the Hartz-Horowitz thesis. And we did not; there is no trace of it. Canada’s Founding Debates is a hefty, oversized tome, encyclopaedic in character. At an early meeting we decided – with some reluctance – to organize the material thematically, ­giving up the attempt to convey a sense of the historical development of events in each province. Thematic organization would facilitate comparison of arguments in the several venues. We drew up our list of contents: twelve chapters under five broad headings – Liberty, Opportunity, Identity, The New Nationality, and Constitution-Making. We made the crucial decisions as a group: we were always in touch by e-mail, and Paul made the trip from his home in Baltimore several times. We faced the problem of interpretation squarely. Readers would be given notice that the four author-editors did not espouse a single political ideology or endorse a single interpretation of the texts. Comments were to be signed and would

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appear as footnotes. We were to think of ourselves as engaging in a “conversation” with the Fathers and with each other. So it began. Some of the archival texts were well preserved, some not. After weeks of trying to scan fading microfilm, Jeff stepped up to the task like a hero and typed the debates into his laptop. He would mail me a fat swatch of Xeroxed material, and I would send out the message: “We have the debates from the Nova Scotia Upper House,” or “Jeff’s found adequate reports of the Newfoundland debates in the provincial newspapers.” I would then set about cutting and sorting the speeches according to theme, province, and legislative chamber, while respecting, insofar as possible, the development of the debate and the sense of deliberation. When the cut for a legislature was finished I mailed out the packages, and Bill, Ian, and Paul would begin assembling their notes and commentaries. Two things struck me on my first reading. The first is the grace and passion of the legislators’ language. As Alan Cairns later said in his review: “They knew who they were.”1 The second is their emphasis on liberty and human rights. In every legislature the question was whether joining the proposed union of colonies would preserve the colonial population’s individual liberties and the right of self-government gained in 1848. For each of the twelve chapters we provided a short introduction, usually little more than a page, explaining terms (“responsible government,” “legislative union,”) and addressing at most one point of controversy. These essays were unsigned; I would send around a draft for approval. The introduction to the section entitled “What Is a Canadian?” posed the greatest difficulty. I wrote and rewrote it, trying to do justice to all perspectives. No one was entirely happy with the final result. The same process gave us a general introduction, but here matters went well, and Paul Romney’s contributions were crucial in that instance. Paul and I then wrote a bibliographic afterword.

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Making the Book 87

In December of 1997 Christopher Moore published 1867: How The Fathers Made a Deal.2 We immediately read it. Moore had made the same trip through the archives as had our researcher Jeff McNairn. Those dusty old records had been ­disturbed twice in the same two-year period, after years of neglect. Moore’s 1867 was the first book-length treatment of Confederation in forty years. Its importance cannot be underestimated. It thoroughly debunks the idea that Canada is a Tory party invention, made by Tories for Tories. As Moore shows, and as we were ourselves discovering, there was a determined attempt in every province to send Liberals and Independents as well as Tories to the Charlottetown and Quebec conferences. Almost without exception those involved in drafting and ratifying the union document were of the opinion that a legitimate legislature should allow the unbiased contestation of political parties for office. They were arguing for constitutional neutrality.3 In a telling passage Moore recalls asking Donald Creighton why Nova Scotia’s premier, Charles Tupper, refused to go to the Charlottetown Conference of 1864 unless accompanied by the leader of the opposition. Mindful of the long, drawnout constitutional wrangling of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Moore remarks: “I could not imagine any of today’s imperial first ministers ever considering such a proposal.”4 But Creighton had no explanation. He did not appear to understand the ramifications of the question. In the last months, a serious quarrel developed among the author-editors. We smoothed it over. Or rather, I knuckled under. The question concerned the process of putting the Constitution drafted at Quebec to the people in each province. The Colonial Office was of the opinion that a vote for union in the colonial legislature would suffice to bring a colony into the federation.5 Most colonial legislators agreed. But in each colony there was a minority that held out for a “household vote,” or referendum.6

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Let me say how I see the matter today. All participating in the process of uniting the colonies agreed that the people in each colony should be consulted by one means or another. Without a “yea” vote in the legislature, or a legislative vote reinforced by household vote, a province would not be included. The Lockean idea of popular sovereignty was indeed alive in the Confederation debates. I took this observation to my co-authors. Gairdner was sympathetic. Gentles and Romney demurred; the conventional wisdom among students of British North American history at that time found no tradition of popular sovereignty. The Americans “got” popular sovereignty. The British North Americans got merely parliamentary sovereignty. I argued – again in vain – that Locke does not oppose popular sovereignty to parliamentary sovereignty. In Locke’s opinion, a good political constitution exhibits both features. But I was not then fully in possession of the argument, and, in the end, Gairdner and I deferred to the historians. Thus the short essays prefacing the last two chapters of Canada’s Founding Debates leave it open for the reader to conclude that some of the colonial legislators wished to acknowledge popular sovereignty, while others did not. Time was running out. Stoddart wanted Canada’s Founding Debates out before 2000, the millennial year. At the n-th hour Stoddart called me in. Don Bastian’s excellent book design would require pictures. Pictures of what? From where? My art-historian self recalled the procedure. There are picture archives. I asked the dean of social sciences for a grant to employ a student. An eager young woman turned up at my office; she had been a student of Gad Horowitz’s and was an enthusiastic admirer of his ideas about communitarian democracy. I kept our good conversations focused firmly on the matter of illustrations. She scoured the Toronto archives and returned with photocopies of promising pictorial items. I telephoned archives farther afield. I discovered unexpected treasures in Mills Memorial Library at

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McMaster. (Have I said what an excellent library it once was?) I then turned to a company that specializes in securing copies of the requisite size and photographic definition; the same company handled copyrights. I was spending money like water, using my s s h r c grant, the Donner money, bits and pieces from departmental funds, and special grants from the university’s senior management. I sent quarterly reports on our progress to the Donner Foundation. At one point I got a snappish reply. Were there no records of spending? How inexperienced I was! Of course there were financial reports, correctly drawn up by Research Records at McMaster with the invaluable assistance of Mara Gianotti, executive secretary in the Department of Political Science. Paul Romney wrote short biographies to put with the portraits. This was a busy time in Paul’s life. He was reading proofs for his book on the interpretation of the Canadian Constitution by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.7 This brief description of Paul’s argument by the historian Christopher Moore gives you a sense of the book’s importance; it appears on the volume’s back cover: “Fifty years ago, after Donald Creighton set out a history of Canada that left no room for the great classic issues of rights, freedoms, and responsibility, Canadian political thought fell into a sleep which has promised to last a century. In Getting It Wrong, Paul Romney begins to hack away the brambles from the tower where the great issues lie comatose. A dark age in the writing of Canadian political history may be ending.” A professional editor, Rosemary Shipton, joined the team, assisted by a fleet of proofreaders. I spent weeks on the vexatious business of recovering speakers’ full names – weeks and a trip to Ottawa. Our materials sometimes gave us only a speaker’s surname (“Mr. Campbell”) or office (“The Attorney General”). Bill and I opted for a professional indexer and miraculously found the funds. It is an excellent index of its kind, but Bill

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was disappointed that there are no references to the Bible or to Christianity. There is an entry for “Jews” but none for “Christians.” All I can say by way of excuse is that the indexer’s decision to exclude Christians was in line with the academic mores of the 1990s. In December of 1999 we were done, and in January, at Massey College, Toronto, on the winter’s stormiest night, we had a big bash of a launch with speeches, food, and wine. People attended in heavy winter gear, one man – you may not believe this – in an orange wetsuit.

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19 Human Rights

Our editor, Don Bastian, wrote the official “promotion”: “Never before have Canadians been able to sample all of their nation’s founding debates. In fact some of these historical speeches have never been available. With the publication of Canada’s Founding Debates, we have recovered our ‘historical birthright.’” True, true! We had shown that the thirty-three men who drafted the Quebec Resolutions in 1864, and the legislators who debated the merits of union in the colonial parliaments, understood the tradition of British constitutionalism. They did not think of themselves as endorsing something good because it was Canadian, or British North American, or because it expressed particular historical experiences, like the migration of the Loyalists from the Thirteen Colonies to the British North America territories. No: they thought of themselves as endorsing universally good institutions, institutions necessary to guarantee the competition of political parties for office, thus ensuring political liberty. They appeal to John Locke and William Blackstone. Some quote Thomas Hobbes, some Sir Edward Coke. They draw arguments from Edmund Burke, especially Burke on the issue of parliamentary representation and political deliberation. Many were familiar with John Stuart Mill’s Representative Government. They paid attention especially to Mill’s argument for an effective second chamber.

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They studied ancient political alliances (sometimes referred to as “confederations”). Thomas D’Arcy McGee and Joseph Cauchon published general books on the nature of federalism. Some referred to the Federalist Papers by the American Fathers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay; all knew of them. Many referred to aspects of the American Constitution and some to clauses in the constitutions of individual American states. Some took an interest in the secessionist Constitution of the American South. Some cited the example of New Zealand, which had experimented with a form of federal union in the previous decade. They read European constitutions. They were familiar with British history. They knew, if only in outline, the story of the English Civil War and the arguments for the restoration of the English Parliament in 1688. In each province the legislators drew lessons from local history. The Canadians rehearsed the story of the 1837–38 rebellions and the arguments for and against the 1840 legislative union of Upper and Lower Canada. They told the story of the union’s aftermath. Lower Canadians reeled off facts about life in the colony under British rule. George-Étienne Cartier was lavish in his praise of British political institutions and the security provided for individual freedoms; he was not the only French Canadian to speak in that vein. All recalled their provincial “struggle for responsible government.” On parliamentary institutions they cited Lord Durham’s report of 1839. They read British newspapers of the 1860s. Recall that, in those days, the British were contemplating an extension of the franchise, continuing the process of incremental electoral reform, one notable milestone of which was the Great Reform Act of 1832. They routinely read records of debates in the British Parliament. Canada’s Founding Debates has become an academic bestseller and will remain on the shelves as long as there is a Canada. It tells a grand story – one to make Canadians proud.

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Human Rights 93

In the spring of 2000, I was invited to address a national, yearly conference on Canadian affairs attended by legislators, academics, businesspeople, students, and journalists. I would be describing Canada’s Founding Debates to people who were familiar with parliamentary procedures and politics; many very familiar indeed. Would they be satisfied to hear how the author-editors had uncovered the debates and made a selection? Surely they would want to hear something about the substance of the debates. Mere hours before I was due to talk I realized that I had not given enough thought to the fact that the debates had the character of deliberations about a treaty. The speakers in the colonial parliaments could not alter a word of the document on the table: those discussing union before 1867 could not alter the Quebec Resolutions; those discussing union afterwards could not alter the British North America Act. All the passionate words, words, words uttered in those years of ­deliberation came down in the end to a simple either / or: Should the colony join or not? Speakers hold forth on liberty, political representation, the upper chamber, political opportunity and economic prosperity, the nature of “political man,” colonial and national identity, relations with the United States and with Britain, the prospect of war, the process of constitution-making: all to aid a yea-or-nay decision. The crucial decisions had been made at Quebec. Had we been too enthusiastic in our evaluation of the legislative debates? They offer a riveting survey of opinions of the period. Did they have additional importance? In the end I talked about the process of making the book and ended with a remark to suggest that the debates had defined the colonies’ political agenda for the immediately following decades. There was polite applause and a great deal of interest in the book, but I felt like something of a failure. To repeat: I did not then fully understand why the matters settled at Quebec had to be referred to the colonial parliaments. The Fathers of Confederation thought it necessary;

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the British government concurred. It seemed appropriate, of course, but why? I wanted to be able to say that reference to the colonial parliaments was required to satisfy the Lockean idea of popular sovereignty. But remember that two of my ­co-authors had queried the idea that the colonial legislators were cognizant of the popular-sovereignty issue. Yes, as we all knew, they sometimes cited Locke. But had they really read him? I was arguing from a position of weakness; I had not resolved my thoughts. Now I was wrestling with the fact that the colonial legislators could not alter the Quebec agreement. I had a puzzle with two dimensions and I could not “think the dimensions together.” (George Grant would urge his classes to “think together” apparently unrelated or even contradictory assertions. These were moments of high anxiety for Grant’s students!) A.V. Dicey rescued me. I had been exploring the idea that parliaments secure our rights and reached the conclusion that surety for rights lies in the fact that, in the ordinary way of things, parliaments do not settle matters permanently. The Constitution allows the contestation of parties for office – and requires “frequent” dissolution of Parliament. The rules of parliamentary debate require records of dissenting opinion. Thus arguments are never dismissed permanently. And in this continuing process of argument and dissent, challenge and counter-challenge, lies the best hope for individuals and ­minorities who believe their freedoms have been unduly limited. I reread Donald Smiley’s The Canadian Political Nationality (1967). What a master Smiley was! I miss him. We need him still. Here he is on parliamentary government: Stable, majoritarian democracy is incompatible with the existence of permanent minorities. If a self-conscious group is always outnumbered and if its members perceive that most of the issues resolved by government are decided contrary to its vital interests, it will almost inevitably

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Human Rights 95

r­ egard democratic institutions as the instrument of oppression and strive to undermine and eventually to replace them. But established democracies are not like that at all. They are sustained under circumstances in which there are a great variety of actual and potential cleavages (majorities and minorities) in society and where public policies are the resultants of struggles between various combinations of sentiment and interest, some of them ­relatively stable and others forming and reforming as ­particular issues arise. As a citizen I am in the minority today, tomorrow it may be otherwise. Certain aspects of my interests are badly ­attended to by the public authorities, in respect to others I do well. Those I oppose on this issue, I join as allies on that. In my political behaviour I am pulled in one direction by the traditional loyalties of my family and in the other by the dominant sentiments of those with whom I work, and I end up by not feeling or acting positively in one way or another. In brief, democracy proceeds by the rule of “tolerable” because “varying” majorities. Those who make this argument – Smiley or A.V. Dicey, for example – are contemplating an existing and long-­established institution, the British Parliament. Policies, arguments, parties, participants come and go; the institutions of parliamentary government continue in essential form, militating against high-handed permanent resolutions. The situation for the men assembled at Quebec, and the ratifying legislators in the provincial parliaments, was different. They were making or assenting to the creation of new legislatures. They were being asked to agree to a permanent settlement. Thus the question they faced was this: Did the draft Constitution before them contain the features necessary to preserve parliamentary deliberation? The typical anti-Confederate argument took this form: we in Nova Scotia (let us say) do very well with our provincial

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legislature. All domestic matters are settled by our own government after due deliberation. All matters can be reviewed and amended. We are free to debate all political issues in the public arena, to argue for repeal of unsatisfactory political measures, and to vote out an unsatisfactory government. But if Confederation wins the day, some matters affecting Nova Scotians will be settled by a national legislature, in which Nova Scotians will be in a minority. We may have to live with laws that we cannot countenance and that we cannot see any ­prospect of changing. We will be giving up our present, perfect right – secured in 1848 when we toppled the colonial oligarchy – to live by laws of our own making. A year after Canada’s Founding Debates appeared I attended a conference on comparative political foundings organized by the political scientist Anthony Peacock. Professor Peacock included excerpts from Canada’s Founding Debates in the package of required readings. American academics at the conference were polite, fascinated, and confused. No one had told them that Canada had had a founding, let alone one that might be compared with their own important event. “I see,” said one. “What we have in the conference readings are excerpts from your ratifying debates.” Ratifying! I had the word. The Canadian Constitution was drafted at the Quebec Conference and ratified by a yea vote in the participating ­colonial parliaments or legislatures. I would have to take another look at the documents on the  drafting of the British North America at the Quebec Conference of 1864. Where were they? On my office shelves at home was a tattered edition of G.P. Browne’s Documents on Confederation (1969). It had the eye-blistering orange cover of the Carleton Library paperbacks of that period, tissue-paper thin pages, and fell apart if you so much as glanced in its direction. I wrote a note to myself to see about republishing the Browne volume. “Think about writing an essay or a new introduction,” I told myself. The project was deferred.

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20 Return to the Law Class

The law class never recovered from my absence. During the year and more I devoted to Canada’s Founding Debates the ­department voted to allow admission to third-year courses like mine without a previous credit in Canadian politics. Colleagues told me not to worry: “You’ll be able to run them through a course in Canadian legislative institutions and ­policy making before starting on the legal material.” But the students were reluctant to start with party politics and legislative debates. (Still less did they want to hear about Confederation and the history of Parliament.) They wanted to visit the field of action; they wanted to study Canadian courts! I could no longer ask my question: Which is the better venue for determining policy, courts or the legislatures? For years the law class had benefited from excellent lectures by Will Coleman and Michael Atkinson in the six-unit secondyear course on Canadian institutions and policy. I should have been more grateful. Retirement was approaching. I would soon be required to give up the office at McMaster. I looked around my narrow home study, familiar ground, never entirely abandoned. I bought a new computer (Apple, thank you for asking), a heavy-duty metal table (i k e a ), packed away seldom-used books, scrubbed the floor, hung new pictures, and tidied shelves.

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21 Retirement as Career

Clearing out the office I filled recycling bags and boxes by the  dozen. Student records, teaching evaluations, letters of  recommendation for students and colleagues: out, out. ­Off-prints from academic journals? Out. Reduce! Reduce! Lecture notes? Course packs? Out. I turned up copies of a paper I had distributed to students in William Mathie’s Liberal Studies Program at Brock, in which I described Canada’s two political ideologies as Liberalism and Romanticism: staid, prudent Liberalism and vaulting, perfectionist Romanticism. Discard the idea that modern history reveals a progression from the conservative “right” to the socialist “left,” I said. Think in terms of the distinction, familiar in philosophy and in the study of literature, between the classical liberal thought of the seventeenth-­ century and the romanticism that emerges at the end of the eighteenth. Think of a continuing opposition between the European Enlightenment and the Counter-Enlightenment. The piece was written in a jaunty style using verbal contractions and short sentences. The Brock students had liked it. Perhaps McMaster’s would too. I put copies on a table outside my office door. And immediately took them back. There might be more to say. I called to mind notes I had made – again during the Brock year – on “Evil Futures.” I remembered discussions with Sam

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Ajzenstat. Is civil war the worst political evil? Is oligarchy ever tolerable? “Liberals and Romantics”; “Evil Futures”: I had two catchy titles. Perhaps a third would materialize. “Three’s lucky,” I thought. Take advantage of your retirement, Janet. You will find something to do with the manuscript. Start with the liberals. What does the classical liberal regard as the greatest evil, the summum malum? Not a difficult question: liberals see in romanticism’s craving for the perfect society the origins of the Nazi Holocaust, the Soviet gulags, the killing fields of Cambodia, the deliberate inculcation of ­famine in Ukraine under Stalin, the “ethnic cleansings” of the Balkans, and the horrendous death toll, perhaps more than 50 million persons, under Chairman Mao’s regime in the People’s Republic of China. A government that murders its citizens is the summum malum. So says the liberal. But how does the romantic explain the state murders of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? It was in my mind that romantics chiefly regret liberalism’s readiness to settle for the less than perfect. But at this point my intellectual imagination failed. And the intellectual adventure began. I discussed my developing manuscript with family members. (You will remember that I was in the process of retiring; I was spending more time at home.) They surprised me by taking the project seriously. I had been thinking of it as a jeu d’esprit. They wanted a hands-on philosophical argument. And they told me that I was unacceptably biased, all too ­obvious in my preference for the Enlightenment. I was unable to see romanticism’s attraction, said my daughter, Oona Eisenstadt. I was unable to see its element of truth, said Sam. The fact is that I was in over my head. Study of the Counter-Enlightenment enables a powerful critique of the Enlightenment, which – the family was right – I was by nature and training reluctant to consider. To qualify for a “minor” in political philosophy at the University of Toronto, I had been required to read selected

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works, the standard ones, by Plato and Aristotle, Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau. (I was not required to take courses, you may remember.) I had read Hegel’s Introduction to the Philosophy of History; I read Tocqueville, of course, and John Stuart Mill. I remember the examination well. I sat beside a stack of borrowed books in front of Mr Bloom and an ancient eminence who may have been from the philosophy department. I saw immediately that the two men were delighted to be in a position to converse about books with which they were each intimately familiar. They politely and conscientiously remembered to ask me a question from time to time. “How would you translate Hegel’s term, Aufhebung, Mrs Ajzenstat?” Then they would be off again, talking together, comparing insights. It was an agreeable morning. I passed, needless to say, and, as I believe I have said, was declared qualified to teach political philosophy at the undergraduate and the m a level. It was years before I came to see that, chiefly, I had been asked to read the political philosophers of the sunny uplands. Among the moderns, I had read, at best, the Great Delayers, the thinkers concerned to defend Enlightenment tenets against the Counter-Enlightenment’s assault. Now, almost three decades later, I was contemplating a trip to the dark side. The proper thing would have been to read Fichte, Francke, Freud, Hamann, Herder, and so on through the Romantic alphabet of authors. I did not. The best thing I can say in my defence is that no one with a university education, no one who does any serious reading, escapes contact with the Counter-Enlightenment; no one born in the twentieth or twenty-first century escapes. As Lionel Trilling observes, the arts and sciences are today infused with “a bitter line of hostility to civilization.” Hostility to civilization: there could not be a better definition of the Counter-Enlightenment.1 Sam Ajzenstat came to my rescue with two books. The first was Isaiah Berlin’s The Roots of Romanticism, a series of lectures

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delivered in 1965 but not published until after Berlin’s death.2 Berlin had deliberately postponed publication, hoping to improve the work; he succeeded in writing a great deal on related topics but failed to produce the anticipated last word on romantics and romanticism. In the world of modern political thought Berlin is usually slotted into the “liberal” category. And that word “liberal” calls to mind prudent thought. But if the author of Roots of Romanticism is a liberal, he is, in this one book at any rate, a highly imprudent one. For pages, indeed chapters, he abandons the liberal camp. The second book was Judith Shklar’s After Utopia: The Decline of Political Faith.3 Shklar uses the distinction between the Enlightenment and the Counter-Enlightenment to trace “modern man’s decline of confidence” in metaphysical certainty. She differs from Berlin in this one important respect: she does not herself adopt the romantic perspective. After Utopia is a sober book. In 2003, I published the jeu d’esprit under the title The Once and Future Canadian Democracy: An Essay in Political Thought.4 The Introduction boldly announces that the author is using the distinction between the Enlightenment and the Counter-Enlightenment to describe the decline of confidence in the institutions and practices of Canadian parliamentary democracy. I kept the jaunty style and verbal contractions of the original essay. (What a quarrel I had with my highly professional McGill-Queen’s University Press editor over those contractions. I retained verbal contractions for that one book. But I will never use them again.) Reg Whitaker reviewed The Once and Future Canadian Democracy in the Literary Review of Canada: “Defence of parliamentary institutions is not fashionable these days, but Janet Ajzenstat has never been one to court fashion.”5 (My daughter gasped when she read the review. “Is he in love with you?” she asked. “Of course not,” I said. “I barely know the man. He is charmed by the argument.”) Whitaker adduced

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considerable additional evidence for my thesis, summarizing political arguments in Thomas Mann and directing readers to Northrop Frye. He noted – it was a point of considerable interest to me – that I had drawn attention to the “odd disinclination of Canadian intellectuals to recognize the degree to which Enlightenment institutions have worked and continue to work in this country.” He had criticisms. I had failed to provide a full account of the factors leading to the demand for constitutional reform in the 1960s. (The charge is correct.) He also said: “In the end, Ajzenstat is better at demolition than construction … Her title promises the ‘once and future’ democracy, but most of what we get are visions of ‘evil futures,’ set up as scarecrows by both liberals and romantics to frighten off their opponents.” He had a point. And yet – surely Whitaker gave too little to the idea that, in a country with a parliamentary form of government, the political culture, the character of the country, can never be exactly defined. It should never be exactly defined. It will be at any point in time whatever the populace, the majority of the moment, determines. As I argue above, the Fathers of Confederation deliberately refrained from describing national goals in the document they drafted at Quebec. There is no predetermined Plan Canada, and in that fact lies security for our liberty – our ability to challenge would-be oligarchs. William Mathie took me to task for my inadequate description of the beloved teacher to whom both he and I are indebted – George Grant. The charge had a sting. But Mathie was impressed by the book’s last chapter. Entitled “The Three Deaths of the Canadian Constitution,” it argues that the long Canadian struggle to reform our foundational institutions has damaged confidence in Canadian democracy and the very idea of parliamentary democracy and deliberation. In short, it carries forward the chain of thought initiated by my participation in the Membership and Ethics Committee, chaired by Howard Adelman and Joseph Carens. It is highly

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critical of Keith Spicer’s Citizens’ Forum on Canada’s Future: Report to the People and Government of Canada (the Spicer Report), in which Commissioner Spicer maintains that Canadians need “stronger political leaders,” leaders with “­vision and courage,” who will not “govern by the polls or play sterile partisan games.”6 I said that Spicer was using the language of Romantic totalitarianism.7 That Canada is governed by “partisan games” should be our boast!

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22 Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

My colleague Barbara Carroll says about retirement: “You have less time than you thought you would. But you have more money.” True. True in my experience. To get her ticket to retirement the McMaster professor visits the Human Resources Office, which some people – I am one – know as “Death and Resources.” You determine the size of your post-retirement salary by making a guess at the number of years before you. When do you expect to die? Or so I understood the resources officer to be saying. And you must consider your spouse. “Do you wish your spouse to receive a monthly allowance after your death?” The underlying question looms but is not posed or answered: “And how is his health?” “My spouse?” I said. “We’re taking about Sam Ajzenstat. I’ve always thought of him as my husband.” We use “spouse,” said the officer pleasantly. She was an attractive ­person with a famous Hamilton name. I would have put her age at nineteen. A year later Sam arrived at mandatory retirement. He sailed through the interview. I was present but do not remember what was said. No doubt there are papers somewhere. It proved surprisingly difficult to find a home for Sam’s books. As a colleague said, Sam had an academic gentleman’s library, perhaps ten thousand carefully selected volumes from the Western canon and beyond. We packed the precious heart

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of this collection for transportation home. Some books still languish in their cartons, under beds and in our damp cellar. And then – a stroke of luck! Wilfrid Laurier University opened a branch campus in Brantford. It had a library to stock. Sam donated seventy-five cartons of his best books – classics in ­literature, philosophy, music, and the history of science. We spent hours at his office, packing and addressing boxes for delivery by inter-university mail. To give us air we left the door open and colleagues would drop in to chat, sometimes picking up a book or two for themselves before the cartons were sealed. “Oh, I’ve always wanted the second volume of that one.” We announced a front-lawn book sale. Sandor Ajzenstat drove in from Toronto with long tables, chairs, and gallons of lemonade. Friends gathered. Our local second-hand bookseller made a satisfactory number of purchases. “Thank you,” we said. “I’m not worried,” he replied. “You’ll be around to buy some of them back.” (And we have.) Books by Marx sold well. Novels sold. Texts in political science did not. We did not put out the volumes on Shakespeare. Or the Judaica, or the poetry. Arranging leftovers from the sale on our already crowded cellar shelves, I uncovered items from my early years. John Buchan’s Memory Hold-the-Door went back on my work-a-day shelves, as did Glen Hughes’s three-act play Mrs. Carlyle, which had been an assigned text when I was in grade 12. The delightfully high-spirited and clever young woman in Act One marries Thomas Carlyle, the mid-nineteenth-century intellectual known for his sparkling conversation. He soon neglects her. She pines in the countryside, struggling to manage a rundown house on an inadequate budget while he makes the rounds of London salons, exercising his conversational gifts to the delight of women and men alike. By the last act she has been brought quite low. I cannot imagine what I made of the play when I was young. I cannot imagine what my teachers meant by assigning it. (I went to a girls’ school.) It would still

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go well on stage, believe me. (Soulpepper Theatre, are you paying attention?) We meet John Stuart Mill, Mazzini, Garibaldi, and other notables, English, French, and Italian. We hear excellent talk. A high point is the episode in which the sole and original copy of Carlyle’s The French Revolution is destroyed. Carlyle had given it to Mill for his opinion, and Mill’s cleaning lady, finding a heap of scribbled paper on her employer’s tidy desk, had thrown it on the fire. To his credit, Carlyle at once rewrote it. He boasted ever after that the second version was the better one.

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23 In Demand as Expert: The Canadian Senate

The Once and Future Canadian Democracy did not find its readership.1 But Canada’s Founding Debates continued to do well with legislators, think tankers, and bureaucrats. It is less often read in academe, or so I believe. Senator Serge Joyal invited me to describe the Fathers’ perspective on bicameralism for inclusion in an ambitious collection of essays on the Canadian Senate, originally entitled The Senate You Never Knew.2 I argued that the founders regarded the Senate as an essential component of parliamentary government. It is a forum for countering the government’s tendency to use its dominance in the elective house to push through measures antithetical to the interests, and indeed to the rights of political minorities. (I did not, and this I regret, cope with the fact that Upper Canada – that is, Ontario – came into Confederation without an upper house.) I relied on my knowledge of Lord Durham, John Stuart Mill, Pierre Bédard, Jean Louis de Lolme, and speeches in the Confederation debates. But Durham, Mill, and company were of no help when it came to elucidating the Canadian Senate’s constitutional obligation to represent the interests of British North America’s regions. Their observations were based on knowledge of the British unitary system. The British North Americans had designed a federation.

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But Durham, Mill, de Lolme, and company were of no help when it came to elucidating the Canadian Senate’s constitutional obligation to represent the interests of British North America’s regions. Their observations were based on knowledge of the British unitary system. The British North Americans had designed a federation. The overall guidelines are clear. The Fathers of Confederation intended the Parliament of Canada to legislate only on matters of equal concern to every individual in every province and region. Parliament was to be strongly discouraged from passing laws of importance to regions, “races,” or provinces. (H.L. Langevin explained: “We are considering the establishment of a confederacy – with a central parliament and local parliaments. The central or federal parliament will have control of all measures of a general character, as provided by the Quebec Conference; but all matters of local interest, all that relates to the affairs and rights of the different sections of the confederacy, will be reserved for the control of the local parliaments.”)3 Hence the question: How can Senators represent the provinces and regions if forbidden to entertain provincial and regional matters? At the time I was writing for Senator Joyal, this perhaps obvious query had not come into focus. My contribution to his important book is deficient in this respect. The answer came eventually as the consequence of a ­conversation I had with Jennifer Smith, the distinguished Canadianist and political theorist at Dalhousie University, during a session of the Canadian Political Science Association (the Learneds). I speak of a “conversation”; but some who witnessed the exchange claimed to have seen a quarrel. We may have raised our voices. I did some hard thinking afterwards. Smith had flagged the missing question, and I am now grateful. When she later asked me to contribute to a volume of essays on the Senate, I was ready. The founders meant senators to bring to national debates not local issues but, rather, a local perspective on national matters. Thus the task of senators

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from Quebec is to ensure that the English-speaking majority in Parliament does not entertain measures that will curtail the rights of French-speakers in the Province of Quebec or in the country as a whole. They are to see that English speakers do not demote the status of the French as equal subjects of the Crown.4 A similar argument can be made with respect to members of the Commons. To repeat: the expectation was that legislators in the Commons would contribute to the national debate on matters of concern to all Canadians and refrain from invading legislative areas assigned to the provincial legislatures. I do not need to say that Canadian parliaments have been less than completely successful on this count.5 A year after the publication of The Once and Future Canadian Democracy, I was still brooding about the fact that it had not effected a complete change of view in Canadian historical and political studies. I decided to write it again, as a sober book. “You need a sober title at any rate,” said Sam. He suggested one – The Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament. I adopted it and settled down to work. The first step was to discard the Liberal / Romantic distinction, or, rather, to note that, whatever their party affiliation, with very few exceptions Canada’s founders represent the Enlightenment; Canadians today enjoy that precious possession, a constitution grounded in the political thought of the seventeenth century. True. And yet my brief trip to the dark side had taught me something about the Enlightenment. The excellences of the parliamentary regime come to light when we focus on the idea that the seventeenth-century thinkers are more modest in their ambitions than are the Romantics. The institutions that Locke prescribes are not intended to improve people’s natures. He does not propose to abolish or tame raw political ambition but to use it.6 In parliamentary regimes ambitious leaders play by the rules, leaving office when voted out by the populace, or an adverse decision in the popular house, because they know that, should their fortunes

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change, should the voters indicate their approval, the Constitution will once again accord them legitimacy. I had roughed out the first chapter, when the phone rang.

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24 “Your Publisher Is on the Line”

It was McGill-Queen’s University Press, asking me to supervise a new printing of Gerald Craig’s edition of Lord Durham’s Report on the Affairs of British North America. The plan was to retain Professor Craig’s Introduction, add an introduction by Ajzenstat, and commission an afterword by a French-Canadian scholar. A short conversation ensued. How delightful to find that the Durham Report was still in demand! “We sell a few copies every year,” was the response. Then I recalled myself. I would have no time for the project. I was embarking on a new study of Confederation to be entitled The Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament. My caller wished me well and hung up. Immediately there was a clamour at the back of my mind. Previous editors and commentators were speaking, among them: Sir Reginald Coupland, Beit professor of colonial history at Oxford University; Sir Charles Percy Lucas, editor of what is now the standard unabridged edition of the Durham Report; and H.E. Egerton, another Beit professor. They told me that to supervise an edition of the Durham Report had once been considered an excellent task for the astute observer of history and government and was still, surely, a worthy one. Canadian editors chimed in: Etienne Parent, Marcel-Pierre Hamel, Denis Bertrand and Albert Desbiens, and Gerald Craig. “Do it,” they said.

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I thought of Chester New, professor of history at McMaster University and author of the standard biography.1 An office tower in Mac’s arts complex is named after him: Chester New Hall. “Hello, Janet,” he said. “It’s nice to know that someone at the university is at work on Lord Durham again. Do I understand that you have already published a book?” “I have, Chester,” I replied. “And I could hardly have done it without the assistance of the excellent bibliography in your volume.” “Yes, yes,” said countless authors of books, chapters, articles, translations, and mentions. “Do it. You will not be invited to lecture at All Souls, Oxford. You will not have buildings named after you. You will not become Dame Janet. But you will be continuing in an honourable tradition.” I phoned back. “I’ll do it. Do you think we can persuade Guy Laforest to write the Afterword?” The old questions surfaced. Is liberal democracy appropriate for every nation or nationality? But perhaps I had said enough on that subject over the years. I had brought questions forward, at any rate. Looking through sheaves of yellowing paper from the dissertation-writing years, I came across a sixty-page wad entitled “An Essay on the Historiography of Lord Durham’s Report.” I remembered: before embarking on the dissertation proper one wrote a preliminary essay. I must have put weeks – months – into the task. I had been asked to do some serious work in those Toronto years. There they were: the Beit professors, the Oxford worthies, the authors of introductions and booklength commentaries.2 I recalled an old controversy. With the grant of responsible government a colony’s executive council would answer to the majority of legislators in the elective chamber in the way that British governments answer to the British House of Commons. Would it not follow that the colony would become in all respects an independent, self-governing country? Did Durham foresee colonial emancipation? Did he welcome it? In The

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Political Thought of Lord Durham I had gone a long way towards saying that he did.3 I am still of that opinion. The Oxford scholars – the worthies – insist that Durham knew as well as anyone that responsible government might well result in emancipation. And indeed Durham makes the point plainly: “I know that it has been urged, that the principles which are productive of harmony and good government in the mother country, are by no means applicable to a colonial dependency.”4 “It is said,” he goes on, “that a colony which should name all its own administrative functionaries, would, in fact, cease to be dependent.” But the worthies refuse to accept the idea that Durham would tolerate emancipation. Durham was an imperialist; so they argue. Thus they conclude that Durham did not recommend responsible government proper. He recommended at best a truncated form of responsible democracy, a truncated form of parliamentary democracy. In brief, they contend that he proposed to reserve crucial governing powers for the British Parliament. The argument depends on this crucial passage: The matters which concern us [in Britain] are very few. The constitution of the form of government – the regulation of foreign relations and of trade with the mother country, the other British Colonies, and foreign nations – and the disposal of public lands, are the only points on which the mother country requires a control ... This control is now sufficiently ensured by the authority of the Imperial legislature, by the protection which the Colony derives from us against foreign enemies, by the beneficial terms which our laws secure to its trade; and by its share of the reciprocal benefits which would be conferred by a wise system of colonization.5 The passage clearly says that both the colonists and the imperial administrators wish to encourage immigration to British

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North America, expect to coordinate policy with respect to foreign affairs and trade, and admire the parliamentary form of government. In the Political Thought of Lord Durham I argue that Durham saw no need to formally restrict the powers of the colonial parliaments because he believed that the colonists would see it as advantageous to consult British interests. (In Canada today governments often see it as advantageous to maintain cooperation with other countries and with international organizations despite differences of political opinion. Behind a façade of respect, discussions, tacit disapproval, and bargaining continue.) The Oxford scholars, in contrast, insist that Durham meant to forbid outright all colonial power to pass laws respecting public lands and immigration, international trade, foreign affairs, and the operations of parliament. A case can be made for the Oxford view. Readers must decide for themselves. But let me note that, in more than one passage, Durham insists that British interference in the domestic affairs of the colonies was eroding colonial affections. “Practical relief from interference by Great Britain,” he said, would “strengthen the present bond of feelings and interests; … and the connection would only become more durable and advantageous, by having more of equality, of freedom, and of local independence.”6 Loosening the formal ties of Empire would strengthen the imperial connection! And consider this passage in which Durham muses on the consequences of uniting the British North American colonies. “I am, in truth, so far from believing that the increased power and weight that would be given to these colonies by [federal] union would endanger their connexion to the Empire, that I  look to it as the only means of fostering such a national ­feeling throughout them as would effectually counterbalance whatever tendencies may now exist towards separation.” He continues:

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The colonist of Great Britain is linked, it is true, to a mighty Empire; and the glories of its history, the visible signs of its present power, and the civilization of its people, are calculated to gratify his national pride. But he feels, also that his link with Empire is one of remote dependence; he catches but passing and inadequate glimpses of its power and prosperity. He knows that in its government he and his own countrymen have no voice. While his neighbour on the other side of the frontier assumes importance, from the notion that his vote exercises some influence on the councils, and that he himself has some share in the onward progress of a mighty nation, the colonist feels the deadening influence of the narrow and subordinate community to which he belongs. The Oxford scholars invented a term for the constitutional reform arrangement they ascribe to Durham: “diarchy.” It suggests a form of shared rule. The colonies would be independent only to a degree, within permitted limits. I can see that such legalistic slicing and dicing might be welcome in high imperial councils. I can see that it might be rewarded with promotions and honours; but frankly, I have difficulty taking it as anything other than self-serving nonsense. In the seventeenth century Britons argued that self-­ government and political independence were the right of every people. Now, in the nineteenth, they were building an empire in which Britain would be pre-eminent and overseas populations subordinated. Does a sense of guilt inform the Oxford scholars’ argument? It may be so. Canadian commentators, those in English Canada at any rate, dutifully adopted the idea of diarchy. (Only some used the term.) Thus still today the standard teaching among English-speaking Canadians asserts that, in 1848, the colonists of British North America were granted only a limited form of responsible government.

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Gerald Craig says: “The grant of colonial self-government that Lord Durham was prepared to make … was wholly ­genuine, but it was also extremely limited in scope.”7 The mind stutters; Craig is asking us to imagine a form of self-­ government – self-government – that is both wholly genuine and extremely limited. Canadians today should worry about this old controversy. Recall that, in his review of The Once and Future Canadian Democracy, Reg Whitaker thanked me for drawing attention to the odd disinclination of Canadian intellectuals to recognize the degree to which Enlightenment institutions have worked and continue to work in this country. Let me suggest that our confusion about the grant of responsible government and its consequences for political emancipation is one source of the disinclination.8 We do not see the magnitude of what was done in 1848. We do not see the importance of what was done in 1867. There remains the idea that in 1848 British North Americans received only limited self-government; there remains the idea that the British gave us Confederation, that British North Americans were at best junior partners. Canada is said to be a “young” country, an immature country. At some point in my musings I recalled that, with the publication of Canada’s Founding Debates, I had resources not available to me during the dissertation-writing years. You will remember that I completed my original study of the Durham Report in the 1970s without knowing that the ­report and responsible government were discussed at Confederation. Now I had the Confederation debates before me. At Confederation the colonial legislators had lived with responsible government for some twenty years or more. They would surely have something to say about the experience. I could give them a ring, so to speak, ask them to testify. “After the introduction of responsible government in 1848 did the British interfere in the affairs of your province?”

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I can tell you immediately that almost without exception participants in the ratifying debates report that each province adopting responsible government in 1848 was thereby rendered “free,” free in the way that an independent country is free. Indeed, after 1848, speakers feel comfortable using the term “country” to refer to their province. In Nova Scotia’s Legislative Assembly, Stewart Campbell said: “I am a free man. I claim the right and attributes of a free man, speaking in the presence of a British free assembly.”9 It should be noted that, in speaking of a “British free assembly,” Campbell is referring to the province’s Legislative Assembly. Nova Scotia’s William Lawrence boasted: “We are a free ­people, prosperous beyond doubt, advancing cautiously in wealth … Under the British Constitution we have far more freedom than any other people on the face of the earth.”10 Far more freedom than any other people on the face of the earth! Let me say it again: the reference to the British Constitution refers to the form of government obtaining in Nova Scotia. In Nova Scotia again, the legislator John Locke said that, “after obtaining responsible government we have become so free that we require nothing more in the way of independence.”11 In New Brunswick, John Mercer Johnson boasted: “We want nothing better than British institutions, for under them we have as much liberty, and a little more, than they have in the United States.”12 Newfoundland’s George Hogsett said: “We have here a constitution for which the people nobly fought, and which was reluctantly wrung from the British government. We had the right of taxing ourselves, or legislating for ourselves.”13 In the same legislature, Ambrose Shea said that responsible government had brought “virtual independence.” He claimed, moreover, that the colony had legislated tariffs “hostile to the commercial interests of England.”14 The legislators I cite above are anti-Confederates. They fear that in a colonial federation their province will lose the

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perfect autonomy obtained with the grant of responsible government in 1848. The Province of Canada would be all too likely to interfere. But Anti-Confederates in the Canadian legislature faced the same dilemma, not unlike that of the Atlantic Antis. Canada’s Constitution is the world’s first regime to marry federal and parliamentary institutions. The task of “thinking together” federalism and British institutions did not prove easy. Consider David Christie’s assertion in the Province of Canada debates: “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are the unalienable rights of man, and … to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. This is the secret strength of the British Constitution, and without it a full and free recognition of it no government can be strong and permanent.”15 I was coming to see that imperialism offended both the Enlightenment and the Counter-Enlightenment. It clearly challenged Enlightenment assumptions about the primacy of self-government, human rights, and parliamentary institutions. But Romantics too had reason to reject it. No doubt on one level the sheer adventure of colouring the globe pink appealed to the Romantic imagination. Nevertheless, it is a central tenet of Romanticism, German Romanticism certainly, that each country, each people, has its “genius”; each makes its particular contribution. You can imagine the Romantic running behind the imperialist, crying: “You, the imperialists, with your chatter about the White Man’s Burden are offensively forcing on humanity a demeaning uniformity, in imitation of the dreariest uniformities in your domestic legal codes.” I began to make notes for a book to be entitled, let us say, Empire: The Enlightenment and the Counter Enlightenment. But the task would be enormous. Moreover it would require a thorough knowledge of the Romantic philosophers, something that, as readers know, I have not accomplished. I advanced a

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short summary of the argument in the introduction to the new edition of Lord Durham’s report.16 A simpler idea put itself forward. I might confine myself to Canada’s story as Senior Dominion in the British EmpireCommonwealth, arguing that the colonists’ assertion of British rights, and their insistence on equal competence to define their own regimes, was a signal contribution to the political thought of the nineteenth and indeed the twentieth centuries. Always in my mind was the idea that too little has been ­written comparing the American and British American foundings. Moreover, it is irksome that, when a comparison is  attempted, it is usually assumed, on little evidence, that Canada’s origins are inferior. Ours is an old Constitution, I told myself, indeed one of the world’s oldest. Political scientists date parliamentary government from the seventeenth century; 1688 is the conventional date. On this understanding Britain’s is the first modern Constitution. The American Constitution is the second and the Canadian the third (with the Australian following closely.) As I have said, the Canadian Constitution was the first to unite parliamentary institutions and American-style federalism, a formula that some new countries and some European states have since adopted. A bald statement to this effect might suggest that British developments from 1688 influenced the authors of the American Constitution, while American developments influenced Canada. Let me argue, rather, that a comparison of the three constitutions uncovers a significant and continuing debate on means to guarantee individual rights. The British rejected the idea of a constitutional bill of rights beyond what is necessary to ensure party government and parliamentary freedom. Full and free deliberation open to reconsideration in subsequent parliaments and in the extraparliamentary arenas suffices. The Americans were divided,

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or so I am supposing, some siding with the British view, although I do not suppose many explicitly acknowledge the debt, others insisting that a bill restricting congressional deliberation is required. The great majority of British North Americans accepted the British remedy. The book I conjure in these rambling thoughts would ­include an analysis of British debates in 1791 on the grant of legislative assemblies to Upper and Lower Canada; subsequent British North American dissatisfaction with the Constitutional Act, 1791; American debates on the US Bill of Rights; and the continuing discussion of the pros and cons of party government in Britain and in the British North American colonies. One thing must be noted. As I argue above, the British North Americans read Hamilton, Jefferson, and company. They read the American Constitution. They were proposing to adopt a form of that remarkable US invention, true federalism. It has been suggested that Cartier derides the American Constitution in this statement: “[The Americans] had adopted a federation for the purpose of carrying out and perpetrating democracy on this continent; but we, who had the benefit of being able to contemplate republicanism in action during a period of eighty years, saw its defects, and felt convinced that purely democratic institutions could not be conducive to the peace and prosperity of nations.”17 But I am convinced by Cartier’s use of the phrase “purely democratic institutions” that he did not mean to refer to classical liberal democracy – that is, British parliamentary democracy. He takes the term “purely democratic institutions” to refer to populist democracy: one-party rule, with it consequent oligarchy and tyranny. What bothered Cartier is that the American president represents both a political party and particular ideology, and the country as a whole. The president “wears two hats” as Canadians sometimes put it.

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25 The “Revisionist Account” Revisited

Eventually I put aside all thought about books I would never write and settled to the task of producing a sober account of British North American union. The result, as I have said, is The Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament. It makes copious use of quotations from the Confederation debates on responsible government, popular sovereignty, individual rights, the Canadian identity, and the process of constitutionmaking.1 In 2009, it won the Osgoode Society’s inaugural John T. Saywell Prize for the best book on Canadian legal and constitutional history in 2007 and 2008. A year or two later, it won the Seymour Martin Lipset Prize, an award given by the Canadian Politics section of the American Political Science Association.2 I now had two single-authored books calling in question the Hartz-Horowitz thesis. About the first, The Once and Future Canadian Democracy, Barry Cooper had said: “Ajzenstat’s ­demolition of the right-centre-left myth of progress is complete. She has driven a stake through its heart.”3 Professor Cooper was mistaken, alas. The myth of progress still flourished. Textbooks could still be found to argue that the typical Canadian is more inclined than is the typical American to favour the common good over individual liberty. What in chapter 7 (above) I call the “revisionist account of Canadian history and politics” remained in the political

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science curriculum, only sometimes challenged. It remains in the hearts of George Grant’s students and admirers, and in the hearts of the many graduates of introductory politics courses over the decades from the 1960s. Charles Taylor lends his great reputation to the revisionist account. Canada, he says, is “about collective provision” and “tolerance of rules and restrictions that are justified by the need for public order.”4 These are our defining values, he contends, distinguishing us from Americans. We are less individualistic, less rights oriented. (I do not know that Taylor anywhere acknowledges a debt to Louis Hartz and Gad Horowitz.)5 He suggests that British North Americans ­acquired their preference for collective provision and tolerance of rules and restrictions “way back when,” as “a corollary of the drive for distinctiveness in the face of the American colossus.”6 In Canadian Idealism and the Philosophy of Freedom: C.B. Macpherson, George Grant, and Charles Taylor, Robert Meynell describes Taylor, Macpherson, and Grant as Canada’s greatest political thinkers – great, in his view, because they offer the definitive description of Canadian politics and national culture.7 All three, he contends, find the language to describe Canada’s bent towards collectivism and social democracy in Hegel’s German Idealism.8 Recall the sunny afternoon at the University of Toronto in the 1970s when I heard C.B. Macpherson praising the collegial character of the Soviet Union but was too shy to ask a question. We knew a few things about the Soviet Union in 1977. We know more today, now that Russia has opened its files. The Soviet Union was a murderous tyranny, one of the worst in human history. Millions passed through its slave labour camps. Some today put the figure at 10 million deaths. Recall, too, Stalin’s murder of Ukrainian farmers and their families in the attempt to force the collectivization of farmland. But Meynell seems to have read little or nothing about Russia’s crimes. He remains enthralled by the “idealist” vision

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of shared values. The system that Macpherson praised in the 1970s is something Robert Meynell would still recommend for Canadians’ adoption. At a stretch I can almost see the attraction. Yes, it might be pleasant to find that everywhere you went people welcomed you and your ideas: “You put that argument very well, Janet; I have been thinking along those lines too.” One’s sense of “self” would expand. One’s idea of self would be enhanced. Who hasn’t wished on occasion for an audience that was thoroughly approving? Who hasn’t joined, or thought of joining, a club or clique of “correct-thinking people”? But Meynell is not talking about a clubby gang of friends, or a political party, or an advocacy group. He is recommending the Soviet Union in C.B. Macpherson’s description, a regime designed to constrain, indeed suppress, dissent. In the Soviet Union dissenters, and their families and co-workers, could be sent to death camps. On the subject of Janet Ajzenstat’s writings, Meynell is scathing: in the book I wrote and edited with Peter J. Smith (Canada’s Origins: Liberal, Tory or Republican) I make the mistake of looking for Canadian-American similarities. I should have been looking for differences.9 To understand why and whether we should love our country we must first see that we differ from our neighbours and how we differ. He argues, moreover, that the cultural influence of the United States is endangering our sense of Canadian identity. The contention is familiar. It was a staple of the Canadian politics textbooks used in the 1960s and 1970s. (Teaching Canadian politics in the 1960s and 1970s I, too, did my best to inculcate it. How could I have seen it as anything but offensive, an outright assault on freedom of thought and inquiry?) Meynell is equally critical of Robert C. Sibley, whose book on Hegel’s influence in Canada is entitled Northern Spirits: John Watson, George Grant, and Charles Taylor – Appropriations of Hegelian Political Thought.10 In Meynell’s view, Sibley, although appreciative of Hegel, nevertheless too closely resembles

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Ajzenstat. “Like Ajzenstat,” he says, “Sibley concludes that Canada is not substantially different from the United States and argues for the surrender of Canadian sovereignty to the global liberal empire led by the United States.” After reading this passage I wrote to Sibley, who promptly denied saying anything to allow such an interpretation. He added: “The Hegel I value is the one who sought to balance the claims of freedom with the claims of community by means of institutional order.” He also added: “In any case I’m sure [Meynell’s] book will appeal to those nostalgic for a Canada that never was.” When I taught McMaster’s undergraduate course in the ­history of political philosophy, as I did on occasion, especially in the early years, I would describe Hegel’s idealism, if only briefly. He is a major thinker who illuminates a perennial question, one not unrelated to Lord Durham’s preoccupations: Are the political institutions that foster political freedom and individual rights compatible with a nation-wide communal life? (Or, as Peter Russell might put it: Do freedom and individual rights require the “invention” of a national communal purpose?)11 Like Durham, Hegel is juggling two political “goods.” The first is the freedom from oligarchy and civil war, and the security for individual rights that parliamentary democracy promotes. The second is the particular sense of history and national character that sometimes, perhaps often, grows up in countries over the years. Are these goods in tension? Insofar as you have the one, is the other threatened? The worrisome aspect of Meynell’s Canadian Idealism – and Charles Taylor’s essays on Canada – is that they do too little to acknowledge the dilemma. They do not explore the idea that to describe one ideological position as inherently more in keeping with the established character of a country injects a note of absolutism into politics. At one point Meynell comes close to admitting that the intellectual tradition he describes is not the tradition of all Canadians, and for this reason

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cannot be said to define the country per se. But he does not develop this train of thought; the implied tradition of Hegelian idealism is not explored and is not acknowledged as a matter requiring sustained reflection.12 Louis Hartz, Gad Horowitz, and C.B. Macpherson are men of the political left; Charles Taylor is a man of the moderate left. They leave Canadian readers with the impression that Canadians as Canadians prefer the left or moderate left and should prefer it. Of course some Canadians, perhaps many, would be glad to see the welfare state extended. (I might be such a Canadian myself.) Undoubtedly many are prepared to tolerate restrictions on individual freedom. But, as my Calgary colleague Rainer Knopff likes to say, on matters like these reasonable people may reasonably disagree. In the British parliamentary tradition reasonable disagreement is the heart and soul of politics, and electoral and legislative institutions are admirable because, and insofar as, they ensure continuing deliberation on matters of disagreement. On one level Canadians understand perfectly well how parliamentary government works. We expect to see the opposition party or parties challenge the legislative program embraced by the government of the day. We understand that parties, groups, and individuals can oppose the government’s program without incurring a charge of treason or disloyalty. We describe Canada as a free country and are proud to be counted among the world’s liberal democracies. On another level, confusion reigns. Under the tutelage of Hartz, Horowitz, Macpherson, Taylor, et al., many political scientists and historians continue to think that Canadian politics should reveal a preference for “collective provision,” to use Taylor’s term. Canadians as Canadians do and should ­accept limitations on individual freedom. Our confusion is undermining our respect for freedom of political speech and our confidence in parliamentary government.13 During the years of our “constitutional odyssey” Canadians attempted to entrench national values in a Canada

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clause. We threw everything into the hopper: principles, programs, and dreams. The Canada Clause in the Charlottetown Constitutional Accord of 1992 resembles the agenda of an everlasting and hotly contested political meeting. We could have spared the effort. Parliament is an endlessly contested meeting. But it has no permanent agenda, and in that fact lies its effectiveness. Matters are not settled definitively: there are no permanent losers; there are no permanent winners. Recall Donna Greschner’s description of the good legislature. What is wanted, she says, “is a process that not only hears all voices but takes all experiences and aspirations into account.”14 Parliament indeed hears all voices and takes into account all experiences and aspirations. Though in any one year – in any one Parliament – the description may  fall short, it remains that issues and arguments can be raised again. Courts are designed to settle disputes and discourage debate. Parliaments, in contrast, are meant to keep issues alive, rescuing losers, offering minorities another chance, pulling down dangerously ambitious leaders of all political stripes, challenging budding oligarchies, and providing the best safeguard yet invented for individual and group rights. Let me remind readers again that, in 1864, the delegations from the provinces gathered in Quebec to draft a union constitution included Independents and Liberals as well as Conservatives. The inclusion of all parties was deliberate and well considered. All participating knew that the national legislature they were designing should be open to party competition. To repeat, though they did not use the term, a “neutral constitution” is what they intended. Recall John A. Macdonald’s statement: “We will enjoy here that which is the great test of constitutional freedom – we will have the rights of the minority respected. In all countries the rights of the majority take care of themselves, but it is only in countries like England, enjoying constitutional liberty and

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safe from the tyranny of a single despot or of an unbridled democracy, that the rights of minorities are regarded.”15 By the “minority,” and “minorities,” as I have said, Macdonald did not mean, or did not mean exclusively, ethnic or religious minorities. He was referring to the opposition party or parties in the Assembly, in the Upper House, and in the population at large. His statement powerfully endorses responsible government and party competition. Richard Cartright advances a similar contention: “I think that every true reformer, every real friend of liberty, will agree with me in saying that if we must erect safeguards, they should be rather for the security of the individual than of the mass, and that our chiefest care must be to train the majority to respect the rights of the minority, to prevent the claims of the few from being trampled under foot by the caprice or passion of the many.”16

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26 Double-Duty Retirement

Sam and I went to concerts more often. There were suddenly more available. Hamilton reopened its long-neglected Conservatory of the Arts. Toronto unveiled its splendid glass Opera House. We continued to attend McMaster’s Stratford Shakespearian Seminars. (Those were the glorious Richard Monette years.) Sam would speak to the McMaster crowd about Shakespeare’s “difficult” plays, including the late Romances. On the c b c ’s Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, he would talk about the librettos of “difficult” operas. Friends would ask why he focused on librettos: “Sam, the words don’t count. Librettos are often silly; they are sometimes little more than fairy tales. It’s the voices. If there is to be singing there must be words, but in opera the words are not the important thing.” Sam always found a way to show that operas soar where the situations described in words inspire the composer to draw out of himself or herself (seldom “her”) new musical effects. We talked. My conversations with Sam have been one of the great pleasures of my life: we discuss political philosophy, the “modern condition,” issues in social conservatism, manners and morals, our reading, movies, current projects, newspaper headlines. (We do not gossip; at our synagogue gossip is strongly discouraged.) But after retirement we did not have more time for conversation, as I had hoped. We had time, but

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not more time. Of course, as I do not need to say, many people like to talk to Sam. With the help of our long-time friend Anne Leavitt, then at  King’s College, Nova Scotia, we found our way to the Association for the Study of Core Texts and Courses (a c t c ). It meets annually, usually in the United States, and is attended by students, teachers, and academics in great books programs. The classic Western canon is not ignored, but works of philosophy and literature from every culture and tradition make a strong appearance. At a typical session four to six related papers are presented, each followed by robust discussion. Scholars of all ages are present, seasoned academics with great reputations as well as junior graduate students. a c t c is, I do believe, a place where Allan Bloom would feel at home. He would certainly be welcome as a keynote speaker. The focus remains on the texts, and, if more than one interpretation emerges, all join in discussion. The nasty tendency of scholars to protect their reputations – a phenomenon that sometimes mars meetings of the Canadian scholarly associations – is noticeably absent. For one a c t c session I prepared two sets of overhead slides, the first comprising quotations from the ratification debates in the British North American legislatures and the second setting out parallel passages in Locke’s Second Treatise on Government. I argued that it would be helpful to show the British North American material to a class on the political philosophy of the seventeenth century and helpful again to show excerpts from Locke in a class on the Canadian Constitution and responsible government. Sam and I attended study sessions at local synagogues on rabbinic literature. Jews call such sessions “learning.” If someone says that she and her husband cannot be present on an occasion because they will be “learning,” you do not ask what they are learning. The term “learning” in this context admits of only one object. We had always enjoyed “learning.” Now we had more opportunities. I had never been convinced by Allan

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Bloom’s suggestion, following Leo Strauss, that John Locke inserted biblical references into the Second Treatise on Government for reasons of prudence – that is, to avert the wrath of religious authorities.1 There are so many references, all so apt. Moreover, the idea of ignoring Locke’s words, the idea of explaining away uncomfortable passages, seemed – well – “un-Straussian.” Strauss is the political thinker who ­supremely teaches us to pay attention to arguments and passages that make one uncomfortable. Some recent authorities incline to this view.2 Rabbinic commentary on the Bible can be thought of as the fons et origo of the British common law tradition and the deliberative tradition in British parliaments. The rabbis of old, meeting as a court to discuss disputes about the application of biblical laws, were careful to preserve both majority and minority opinions. In practice, Jewish tradition usually conforms to the majority view. All agree, nevertheless, that a full appreciation of the majority argument requires reflection on minority perspectives. Let me describe one class. We were discussing a difference of opinion between the prominent Jewish philosopher Maimonides and his disciple Nahmanides about whether, supposing it could be recovered, one should open the legendary Book of All the Medical Cures. Maimonides, who was a physician, argues stoutly that the discovery or recovery of such a book would be a great boon. Nahmanides, also a physician, contends that were we to find the volume we should seal it shut. Opinion today is inclined to side with Maimonides, as I do not need to say. We want longer, fuller lives; we want a cure for aging. But Nahmanides’s perspective has not been entirely forgotten. George Grant, who surely had no direct knowledge of Nahmanides, captures his view perfectly: “Interference with human nature seems to the moderns the hope of a higher species in the ascent of life; to others it may seem that man

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in his pride could corrupt his very being. The powers of manipulation now available may portend the most complete tyranny imaginable. At least it is feasible to wonder whether modern assumptions may be basically inhuman.”3 I made time to work on the new edition of G.P. Browne’s Documents on Confederation, a compilation of materials based on Sir Joseph Pope’s Confederation Documents, supplemented by a judicious selection of letters, notes from informal meetings, and colonial office memoranda. Browne was an admirable scholar. His notes and lists are an indispensable source for the student attempting to map the process of drafting the Canadian Constitution.4 The new edition retains Professor Browne’s lucid introduction, which recounts events from 1858 to 1867. In a private e-mail communication, Christopher Moore wrote a generous and welcome assessment: “Having these documents available again seems to me a sine qua non for any serious Confederation studies scholar.” We had trouble finding a copy of the original volume suitable for scanning. The pages in the one on my shelf were badly yellowed and tissue-paper thin: they would break free and float around as you read. At one point I thought I might have to type out the entire volume of 377 pages. Proofreading would have been a nightmare. Joan McGilvray of McGillQueen’s University Press put out a call on the internet, and Paul Romney responded; he had a copy in fair condition. I believe his was the only response. Canadians came within an ace of losing this valuable collection of documents. The materials – the individual letters and Foreign Office documents – are available elsewhere, it is true. The fact remains that Browne’s arrangement is supremely intelligent, enabling readers to follow and appreciate the dialogue between the British and the British North Americans on the Canadian founding.

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27 Return Trip to Primary Texts

In the year 2000, the historian Ian McKay published an essay that drew from arguments by the political philosopher Antonio Gramsci a “prospectus” for reviving Canadians’ sense of large themes in Canadian historiography.1 To say that the piece attracted attention would be an understatement. At its 2009 meetings, the Canadian Historical Association celebrated the publication of a book of commentary on McKay’s essay, edited by Jean-François Constant and Michel Ducharme.2 I was invited to join the panel of discussants. For the afternoon I would be an honorary historian. Noting McKay’s reliance on Gramsci, I asked myself whether an early twentieth-century Marxist could indeed illuminate our understanding of the Constitution Act, 1867. Addressing the historians I said: “I do not think there is any question but that arguments by good theorists can be helpful, whatever their provenance. There is a dimension of political philosophy that asks perennial questions, transcending time and ideology.” But the fact is that McKay’s conclusions appalled me. He was perpetuating the tired old picture of the Fathers of Confederation as low-minded careerists, not particularly well-educated and not qualified to entertain theoretical issues. I continued: “It is not his dependence on Gramsci that impairs McKay’s account of Canadian history, but his ignorance

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of facts on the ground. He has not read the primary sources. He argues, for example, that ‘The Fathers [of Confederation] were convinced that they did not need to attain the approval of mere human beings for the political order they were designing for individuals.’”3 “For decades this was the standard view in Canada,” I said. “It is entirely false; Professor McKay has not read the ratification debates in the colonial parliaments. He appears to be ignorant of the fact that there were ratification debates. The Fathers made every effort to attain the approval of the populations that would be governed by the new constitution. The question was not whether to consult the people. On that point all were agreed. The question was how to consult them.” “And consider McKay’s suggestion that at Confederation the  English-speakers betrayed the French,” I continued. “McKay argues that ‘the exercise in liberal state formation we call Confederation was sold to the French-speaking Lower Canadians as a divorce from Upper Canada that would guarantee their distinctive language and religious traditions.’” I said: “Correspondence with the Colonial Office from 1858, the documents from the Quebec Conference of 1864, and the debates in the Province of Canada Parliament in 1865 point to the idea that it was George-Étienne Cartier who led the campaign for federalism. In all probability it was Cartier who drew up the first draft of the division of legislative powers as we have it in the Quebec Resolutions. We could argue that Cartier ‘sold’ federalism to Macdonald and Brown. Certainly the ratifying debates show Cartier and George Brown working in close cooperation.” (It is often said that Brown disliked Cartier. It may be true. But both knew that individual likes and political preferences should not influence debates on political founding.) “The French Canadians were not junior partners in Confederation,” I told the historians. “They were founders. They knew they were not designing a constitution for English speakers alone, just as all knew they were not designing a ­constitution for Tories alone.”

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“And” I went on, you do not have to turn to Marxists for lessons about the baseness of human nature, or the crassness of political ambition. You find the same teaching in the Enlightenment tradition. Think of John Locke, William Blackstone, and Edmund Burke. British tradition acknowledges the powerful role of personal ambition; it acknowledges the role of class interests. Parliamentary government works because it harnesses base motives. It enables ambitious men and women to satisfy their desire for political power, but – note – it provides the reward of office only to those who accept the contestation of parties and freedom of political dissent. Thus potential oligarchs accept the people’s decision in an election not so much out of a feeling that the people’s decision is right in an absolute sense, or right because it reflects the nation’s history and culture but because they know that when the tide of political opinion swings their way, they will in their turn be able to invoke the legitimacy that attaches to the popular vote. And then, as part of my plea for examination of primary documents, I launched into an account of my experiences at the University of Toronto. “In the 1970s,” I said, “Allan Bloom gave me the instruction that guides my research to this day. I was to look for ‘great texts’ in Canadian political history and study them as one studies the great texts in the Western canon.” A few years later I returned to my comments on McKay. I thought: “The search for great texts. Yes, I have done that, with some success, and help from friends.” And I sat down to write an intellectual autobiography, with the title Discovering Confederation: A Canadian’s Story.

end

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Notes

Preface 1 Allan Bloom, The Closing of the America Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987).

Chapter One 1 F.H. Underhill, The Image of Confederation (Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Publications, 1964), 3. 2 Peter Waite, The Life and Times of Confederation, 1864–1867: Politics, Newspapers and the Union of British North America (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963), 325. 3 Professor Russell gave the address in 1991. The statement can be found in Peter H. Russell, Constitutional Odyssey: Can Canadians Be a Sovereign People? (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 33. 4 Robert Meynell, Canadian Idealism and the Philosophy of Freedom: C.B. Macpherson, George Grant and Charles Taylor (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011), 209. 5 John A. Macdonald, “Canadian Legislative Assembly, 13 March 1865,” in Canada’s Founding Debates, ed. Janet Ajzenstat, Paul Romney, Ian Gentles, and William D. Gairdner, 209–10 (Toronto: Stoddart, 1999).

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Chapter Two 1 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, introduction, translation, and notes by Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979). 2 Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987). 3 “[Strauss] re-interested us in America by teaching us how to read our country’s political texts and demonstrating how wise they are. Suddenly we discovered how much there is at home to attract our intellectual efforts.” See George Breckenridge, “Introduction,” in Confronting the Constitution: The Challenge to Locke, Montesquieu, Jefferson, and the Federalists from Utilitarians, Historicism, Marxism …, ed. Allan Bloom (Washington, d c : a e i Press, 1990), 6. 4 Kenneth McNaught, The Pelican History of Canada (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, u k : a e i Press, 1969), 93. 5 Gerald M. Craig, ed., Lord Durham’s Report (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1963), 146. 6 Ibid., i. 7 Lord Durham’s Report on the Affairs of British North America, edited with an introduction by Sir C.P. Lucas, k c b , k c m g , 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912). 8 Janet Ajzenstat, The Political Thought of Lord Durham (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988). It received mixed reviews. The historian Ramsay Cook liked to describe Ged Martin’s reaction: “Lord Durham’s political thought? I didn’t know he had one.” Martin is the author of a book denigrating the report. See Ged Martin, The Durham Report and British Policy: A Critical Essay (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1972). Cook appreciated my argument and wrote about it sympathetically. He also enjoyed telling Martin’s joke.

Chapter Three 1 My public school library let students borrow two books a week. My mother bought books – Swallows and Amazons, The Railway

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2 3

4

5

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Children. She had a good eye for classic stories. Aunts and cousins sent books. But I was sometimes reduced to the Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew. John Buchan, Memory Hold-The-Door (Toronto: The Musson Book Company Ltd., 1940). I must have been a dour child. My mother gave me a copy of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Lacking the charm of the Gibsons (my mother’s side of the family), Janet, ever the reader, would have to have printed instructions for getting along in the social world. It was easier to settle for “Art and Arch” because I had read and treasured C.W. Ceram’s Gods, Graves, and Scholars: The Story of Archaeology. Though I knew about painting and sculpture from Sunday trips to the art gallery, those delightful outings remained experiences of opinion and appreciation. Gods, Graves, and Scholars informed me that the study of art had a systematic dimension; there was a science; one could accumulate knowledge about the history and make that knowledge one’s own. Taking a chance as I write this note, I type Gods, Graves, and Scholars into the search engine Google. For goodness sakes, there are 600,000 entries. Amazon.com appears on my screen (“Hello Janet”); the book is in print and the price is reasonable; it is selling now for not much more than when I first read it. I could buy it for my granddaughter; I could join Gods, Graves, and Scholars on Facebook! I remember 28 August 1963. Shortly after 6:00 am I phoned for a taxi and was told that nothing would be available for an hour. “But my husband has to get the train for the March on Washington,” I said. “We’ll be right there,” said the voice. And they were.

Chapter Four 1 J.A. Corry and J.E. Hodgetts, Democratic Government and Politics, 3rd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965). 2 George Grant, Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1965). Scanning my

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shelves as I write this note, looking for the first edition, I easily pick out three or four later editions, “desk copies” for courses I later taught. 3 Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (London: Routledge, 1945). 4 Socrates says of the city: “When one of its citizens suffers anything at all, either good or bad … all will share in the joy or the pain.” See The Republic of Plato: Translated with Notes and an Interpretative Essay by Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books), 142. 5 The Republic is the “broadest and deepest analysis of “political ­idealism” ever made. See Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 127. 6 Grant, Lament for a Nation, 68.

Chapter Five 1 Few students read the book. They took a chance: surely the one novel on the course, and the final book assigned, would not appear on the examination. See Bloom’s essay on Flaubert in Allan Bloom, Love and Friendship (New York: Simon and Schuster), 209–29. 2 Harvey C. Mansfield, “Party Government and the Settlement of 1688,” American Political Science Review 58 (1964): 933–46; Mansfield, The Spirit of Liberalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979). I also read at this time Mansfield’s guide to Machiavelli’s political thought entitled New Modes and Orders: A Study of the Discourses on Livy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979). 3 C.B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 1962). When Macpherson’s Essays in Retrieval came out we snapped it up. (There is now a new edition of Possessive Individualism, with an introduction by the University of Toronto philosopher Frank Cunningham.) 4 This is the place to say that relations between Allan Bloom and C.B. Macpherson were always cordial. Bloom was grateful for the

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Notes to pages 24–8

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cordiality; he remarked on it often in the sessions with his tutorial leaders. 5 C.B. Macpherson’s The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977) develops the themes of that afternoon’s talk. It defends the Soviet Union and expresses admiration for Africa’s one-party systems of government. Recall, as you read it, the millions of state murders in the Soviet Union and in sub-Saharan Africa.

Chapter Six 1 Fernand Ouellet, Lower Canada, 1791–1840 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1980), 63, 88–90. 2 Gerald M. Craig, ed., Lord Durham’s Report (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1963), 60. 3 Jean Louis De Lolme, The Constitution of England; Or, An Account of the English Government, edited and with an introduction by David Liberman (Indianapolis, i n : Liberty Fund, 2007). It was first published in English in 1776. Liberman’s excellent introduction traces the book’s influence on British and American politics but, alas, says nothing about its supreme importance in British North America. 4 David Schneiderman directs me to a letter from the governor of Quebec, J.H. Craig, to the (British) secretary of state for war and the colonies, Viscount Castlereagh. Craig argues that the members of the French party in the legislature “either believe or affect to believe that there exists a Ministry here, and that in imitation of the Constitution of Britain that Ministry is responsible to them for the conduct of Government” (Correspondence from Governor Craig [Lower Canada] to the secretary of state for the colonies, Viscount Castlereagh, in Statutes, Treaties and Documents of the Canadian Constitution, 1713–1929, ed. W.P.M. Kennedy [Oxford University Press, 1930], 224). So the governor of Lower Canada understood very well what Bédard was doing! 5 Jean-Charles Falardeau, Étienne Parent, 1802–1874: Biographie, texts et bibliographe (Montréal: Les Editions La Presse, 1975).

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Notes to pages 28–40

Chapter Seven 1 Donald Creighton, The Road to Confederation: The Emergence of Canada, 1863–1867 (Toronto: Macmillan, 1964), 4. Peter Russell cites this passage in Constitutional Odyssey: Can Canadians Become a Sovereign People? (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), 10–11. He accepts Creighton’s verdict: the Fathers of Confederation, he supposes, had little knowledge of British parliamentary traditions and no interest in a philosophy of rights. 2 First published in the Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science in 1966, “Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism” has been reprinted many times. It is still read in courses in political science and Canadian politics. For a convenient source, see Janet Ajzenstat and Peter J. Smith, eds., Canada’s Origins: Liberal, Tory or Republican? (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1995), 21–44.

Chapter Eight 1 George Grant, Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1965), 68. 2 The British North America Act, 1867, is now called the Constitution Act, 1867.

Chapter Nine 1 Sam and I each contributed a chapter to the institute’s major publications in those early years: Ian Gentles, ed., A Time to Choose: Life, Women, Abortion and Human Rights (Toronto: Stoddart, 1990). 2 Canadian Immigration required each sponsoring group to adopt a particular identifying label. I named our small group “Wakefield,” after Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the member of Lord Durham’s entourage who specialized in immigration issues. I wondered if, in the future, anyone would reflect on the coincidence. Sam Ajzenstat was Wakefield’s president.

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Chapter Ten 1 “Lord Durham could not know as clearly in 1839 what we know today, that it is foolhardy and naïve to speak of breaking down the customs of a well-established and organized ethnic and cultural community.” See Gerald Craig, ed., Lord Durham’s Report (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1963), x. 2 Craig, Lord Durham’s Report, 47. Compare Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. and ed. Robert M. Adams (New York: W.W. Norton,) chap. 5: “How One Should Govern Cities or Princedoms That Lived Under Their Own Laws Before They Were Conquered.” For both Durham and Machiavelli the first and guiding principle to consider is whether the conqueror wishes to encourage migration to the new terrain. A comparison of Durham and Machiavelli on this topic would make an interesting journal article. I will never get around to it. 3 Janet Ajzenstat, “Modern Mixed Government: A Liberal Defence of Inequality,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 18, 1 (1985): 119–34. 4 Janet Ajzenstat, The Political Thought of Lord Durham (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988). 5 Jacques Vallée, “Lord Durham versus Alexis de Tocqueville.” Le Devoir, 21 January 1989. 6 Lord Durham’s Report on the Affairs of British North America, vol. 2: Text of the Report, edited with an introduction by Sir C.P. Lucas, K.C.B. K.C.M.G. 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912 [New York: Augustus M. Kelly, 1970]), 91. Lucas himself was not able to identify the “French writer.”

Chapter Eleven 1 Christine Overall, Lorraine Code, and Sheila Mullett, eds., Feminist Perspectives: Philosophical Essays on Method and Morals (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988.) The contention

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that women are inclusive thinkers while men are more comfortable taking sides owes much to Carol Gilligan’s argument that women have “a different voice.” See Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, m a : Harvard University Press, 1982). 2 Peter J. Smith, “The Ideological Origins of Canadian Confederation,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 21 (1987): 3–29. 3 Janet Ajzenstat, “Modern Mixed Government: A Liberal Defence of Inequality,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 19, 1 (1985): 119–34. 4 Jeremy Bentham, “Plan of Parliamentary Reform,” in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. John Bowring (New York: Russell and Russell, 1962) 3:527–8. 5 Janet Ajzenstat, The Political Thought of Lord Durham (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988), 52–72. 6 The Trent Conference papers were published in the Journal of Canadian Studies, “Durham and His Ideas” (special issue) 25, 1 (1990). 7 Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, m a : Belknap Press, 1969); J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). 8 Donald V. Smiley, Canada in Question: Federalism in the Eighties, 3rd ed. (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1980). See 301n9, which reads: “Durham was a liberal and one of a very advanced kind. It has been the orthodox view in Canada that Durham was right and progressive in his advocacy of responsible government and wrong and reactionary in his advocacy of the early and complete assimilation of the French. Ms. Janet Ajzenstat is writing a doctoral dissertation in the Department of Political Economy of the University which challenges this conventional wisdom in asserting the coherence of Durham’s political thought and I thank her for letting me read her work.” 9 Smiley, Canada in Question, 3. 10 Journal of Canadian Studies, “Canadian Political Thought” (special issue) 26, 2 (1991). It is officially the summer issue but in fact came out in November 1991.

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11 See ibid., 2 (Introduction). 12 Janet Ajzenstat and Peter J. Smith, eds., Canada’s Origins: Liberal, Tory, or Republican? (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1995). 13 Janet Ajzenstat and Peter J. Smith, “The Tory-Touch Thesis: Bad History, Poor Political Science,” in Crosscurrents: Contemporary, ed. Mark Charlton and Paul Barker, 84–91 (Toronto: ­Nelson, 1998). Nelson Wiseman supplied a defence of HartzHorowitz in the same volume (pp. 72–83).

C h a p t e r T w e lv e 1 See Janet Ajzenstat, “The Decline of Procedural Liberalism,” in Is Quebec Nationalism Just? Perspectives from Anglophone Canada, ed. Joseph H. Carens, 120–36 (Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1995). This is the volume that emerged from the University of Toronto-York University discussion group. See also my essay, “Constitution-Making and the Myth of the People,” in Constitutional Predicament: Canada after the Referendum of 1992, ed. Curtis Cook, 112–31 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994). 2 Russell developed this position in his academic bestseller Constitutional Odyssey: Can Canadians Become a Sovereign People? 3rd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004). It is still in print and still powerfully conveys the idea that, to the extent that it r­ emains unreformed, the Canadian Constitution is deficient.

Chapter Thirteen 1 Mark O. Dickerson and Thomas Flanagan, An Introduction to ­Government and Politics (Scarborough: Ontario Nelson Canada, 1990). 2 Gad Horowitz, “Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism in Canada: An Interpretation,” in Introductory Readings in Politics, ed. Mark O. Dickerson, Thomas Flanagan, and Neil Nevitte, 126–41 (Toronto: Methuen, 1983).

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Notes to pages 60–70

3 Shadia Drury’s opinions on the political ideas of Leo Strauss irritated more than one member of the department. But when Shadia, following the Calgary tradition of generous hospitality, entertained Sam and Janet at her pleasant country club, we avoided controversial topics. 4 Rainer Knopff, “Populism and the Politics of Rights: The Dual Attack on Representative Democracy,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 31, 4 (1998): 683–705. The article begins: “In Canada as elsewhere representative democracy is under attack by the forces of populism and the judicialized politics of rights.” 5 The following year I heard Allan Bloom at Convocation Hall in the University of Toronto. The crowd was deeply angry: Bloom’s position was derided as thoroughly elitist – antithetical to the best traditions of a Canadian university. There was a good deal of antiAmerican feeling in the air and something like a hint of violence. It was the last time I saw and spoke to Mr Bloom.

Chapter Fifteen 1 The three were: Janet Ajzenstat, The Political Thought of Lord Durham (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988); Janet Ajzenstat, ed., Canadian Constitutionalism, 1791–1991, (Ottawa: The Canadian Study of Parliament Group, 1992) (the publication of this volume marked the two hundredth anniversary of the Constitutional Act, 1791); and Janet Ajzenstat and Peter J. Smith, eds., Canada’s Origins: Liberal, Tory, or Republican? (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1995). 2 Constitutional Forum 8, 4 (1997): 139. Proceedings of the 1996 Pluralt Conference, “Should We Keep Talking?,” published by the Centre for Constitutional Studies, University of Edmonton. 3 Janet Ajzenstat, “Decline of Procedural Liberalism: The Slippery Slope to Secession,” in Is Quebec Nationalism Just? Perspectives from Anglophone Canada, ed. Joseph H. Carens, 120–36 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995). 4 Janet Ajzenstat and Brian Howe, “Does Canada Need an Entrenched Social Charter?” in Crosscurrents: Contemporary Political Issues, 2nd ed.,

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Notes to pages 70–80

5

6 7 8

9

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ed. Mark Charlton and Paul Barker, 493–506 (Scarborough, o n : Nelson, 1994). As I note above, my arguments on the Social Charter owed much to discussions with Sam Ajzenstat. Janet Ajzenstat, “Constitution-Making and the Myth of the People,” in Constitutional Predicament: Canada after the Referendum of 1992, ed. Curtis Cook, 112–31 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994). Frank Cunningham, “The Canada-Quebec Conundrum: A TriNational Perspective,” Constitutional Forum 8, 4 (1997): 119–29. Cunnningham, “Canada-Quebec Conundrum, “127. This is perhaps the place to note that, although Gad Horowitz and I disagree about matters of constitutional law, we have remained on friendly terms. Sam and Janet participated in the insightful and sometimes hilarious “speed theory” conferences at the Learneds, on current trends in political philosophy, organized by Gad Horowitz and Shannon Bell. It was, for several years, an annual postmodern event. Now Gad, Sam, Shannon, and Janet sometimes meet at the opera in Toronto. Donald Smiley, Canada in Question: Federalism in Question, 3rd ed. (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1980), 3.

Chapter Sixteen 1 Resources: to the post-1982 decisions in Russell, Knopff, and Morton, and the Knopff and Morton updates, which arrived in the mail at intervals, I added academic commentary, of course, and Ian Benson’s summaries of newsworthy cases published in Lexview by the Centre for Cultural Renewal. 2 See Ian Brodie, Friends of the Court: The Privileging of Interest Group Litigants in Canada (Albany: State University of New York 2002). 3 Stanley Fish, There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech: And It’s a Good Thing Too (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 4 In my first and second years of retirement I did give a one-term graduate course on security for rights in the parliamentary tradition. One term was barely enough to pose the question. The students were loyal, but puzzled.

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Notes to pages 80–4

5 Janet Ajzenstat, “Reconciling Parliament and Rights: A.V. Dicey Reads the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 30, 4 (1997): 645–62. The referees’ responses were gratifying: they wanted to know why no one else was addressing the topic; they wanted to hear more on the subject.

Chapter Seventeen 1 Gairdner likes to tell the story of his trip to Chapters Bookstore. He asked the clerk to show him everything on “the Canadian founding.” “You mean the American founding,” she said confidently, and led him to a shelf containing the familiar American histories and biographies. “We can order anything you wish,” she said. When he insisted that it was Canadian material he wanted, she recommended a visit to a Canadian government bookstore. 2 There is now a new edition: The Confederation Debates in the Province of Canada, 1865: A Selection Edited and Introduced by Peter B. Waite, with a New Introduction by Ged Martin, Carleton Library Series 206 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006). In “Suggestions for Further Reading,” Martin duly notes the publication of Canada’s Founding Debates, contending that the editors perceive an impressive intellectual discourse, even in communities as small as British Columbia, and the Red River, and insist on the continuing relevance of views expressed then to the Canada of today. 3 Ged Martin, Britain and the Origins of Confederation (Vancouver: u b c Press, 1995). 4 Janet Ajzenstat, “Confederation without Tears, without Fears, without Canada: Chilly-Climate Historiography – A Review of Ged Martin, Britain, and the Origins of Canadian Confederation, 1837– 67,” Review of Constitutional Studies 3: 2,350–2. 5 Paul Romney, Mr. Attorney: The Attorney General for Ontario in Court, Cabinet and Legislature, 1791-1899 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, published for the Osgoode Society, 1986).

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6 The trade press typically offers authors an advance and then works to help you earn it. The academic press collects from public sources enough, or almost enough, to cover costs before issuing the contract. Indeed, when it comes to academic books in this country, governments pay the author to write the book, with a stipend attached to a research grant, then pay the publisher to publish it, through s s h r c ’s Aid to Scholarly Publications, and finally reimburse academic readers the cost of purchase by allowing them to write it up against their research budget. 7 Janet Ajzenstat, Paul Romney, Ian Gentles, and William D. Gairdner, Canada’s Founding Debates (Toronto: Stoddart, 1999 [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003]). The volume includes excerpts from the debates on Confederation in the parliaments and assemblies of British Columbia, the Red River Settlement, the Province of Canada, the Maritime provinces, and Newfoundland from 1864 to 1873, with brief historical essays, an afterword on Canadian historiography, and notes by the editors. The French-language edition (Laval University Press, 2003) includes an essay by Stéphane Kelly and Guy Laforest. The book is an academic bestseller and will be read and consulted as long as there is a Canada.

Chapter Eighteen 1 Alan Cairns, review of Janet Ajzenstat, Paul Romney, Ian Gentles, and William D. Gairdner, eds., Canada’s Founding Debates, in Canadian Journal of Political Science 34 (2001), 847–8. 2 Christopher Moore, 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1997). 3 They did not use the term “constitutional neutrality.” It was not in the vocabulary of that period. It is nevertheless appropriate. 4 Moore, 1867, ix–xiv. 5 Documents on the Confederation of British North America: A Compilation Based on Sir Joseph Pope’s Confederation Documents Supplemented by Other Official Material, edited and with an introduction by G.P.

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Notes to pages 87–103

Browne (new introduction by Janet Ajzenstat), Carleton Library Series 215 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009). 6 The matter is discussed at length in Janet Ajzenstat, The Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007), chap. 2. 7 Paul Romney, Getting It Wrong: How Canadians Forgot Their Past and Imperilled Confederation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).

Chapter Twenty-One 1 See Lionel Trilling, The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays, edited and with an Introduction by Leon Wieseltier (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2000). Trilling’s students at Columbia College read Yeats, Eliot, Joyce, Conrad, Proust, Kafka, Mann, and Gide. As “prolegomena” to this literature, Trilling assigned Fraser, The Golden Bough; Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals; Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents; Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground; and Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich. See also the essays in Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge m a : Harvard University Press, 1973). 2 Isaiah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism (The A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, National Gallery of Arts, Washington, d c , Bollingen Series 30:45, ed. Henry Hardy (Princeton, n j : Princeton University Press, 1999). 3 Judith Shklar, After Utopia: The Decline of Political Faith (Princeton n j : Princeton University Press, 1957). 4 Janet Ajzenstat, The Once and Future Canadian Democracy: An Essay in Political Thought (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003). 5 Reg Whitaker, “An Ill-Fitting Political Coat: A Prominent Analyst Tries with Mixed Results to Demolish Right-Centre-Left Thinking in Canada,” Literary Review of Canada, June 2004, 22–3. 6 The Spicer Report (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1991), 8. 7 Ajzenstat, Once and Future Canadian Democracy, 188.

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Chapter Twenty-Three 1 A sterling exception is Dennis Baker’s splendid use of my ­arguments in his Not Quite Supreme: The Courts and Coordinate Constitutional Interpretation (Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2010). 2 Janet Ajzenstat, “Bicameralism and Canada’s Founders: The Origins of the Canadian Senate,” in Protecting Canadian Democracy: The Senate You Never Knew,” ed. Serge Joyal, 3–30 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003). 3 Langevin is speaking in the Canadian Legislative Assembly, 21 February 1865. See Janet Ajzenstat, Paul Romney, Ian Gentles, and William D. Gairdner, eds. Canada’s Founding Debates (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 297. 4 Janet Ajzenstat, “Harmonizing Regional Representation with Parliamentary Government: The Original Plan,” in The Democratic Dilemma: Reforming the Canadian Senate, ed. Jennifer Smith, Institute of Governmental Relations, published in association with the School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University, 27–33 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009). 5 I am not forgetting that there are areas of shared jurisdiction in the Constitution Act, 1867: notably agriculture, immigration, and the administration of justice. Nor am I forgetting that the ­national Parliament was to retain the power to “reserve” and to “disallow” provincial legislation or that it appoints the provincial governors general. Nevertheless, one can say with confidence that, as a general rule, the Fathers of Confederation meant each level of government to refrain from interfering in legislative areas reserved to the other. Though the term “water-tight compartments” comes into use only years after Confederation it describes the Canadian founders’ intentions. 6 Note Richard Cartwright’s tart comment on republican virtue. “[The British Constitution,] while it does not require the possession of those impracticable virtues which most republican institutions demand from their votaries, does nevertheless presuppose a

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Notes to pages 112–17

reasonable amount of discretion at the hands of those who are entrusted with the carrying out of its details” (Cartwright, Canadian Legislative Assembly, 9 March 1865, quoted in Ajzenstat et al., Canada’s Founding Debates, 19).

Chapter Twenty-Four 1 Chester New, Lord Durham: A Biography of John George Lambton, First Earl of Durham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929). 2 I wrote the “Historiography” in Mills Memorial Library at McMaster, relying on Chester New’s bibliography and often consulting volumes that he had donated to the university. New was a prominent member of McMaster’s Department of History. 3 Janet Ajzenstat, The Political Thought of Lord Durham (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988), 42–51. 4 Gerald M. Craig, ed., Lord Durham’s Report (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1963), 142. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., 160. 7 Ibid., vii 8 A splendid exception to the prevailing view is John Ralston Saul’s defence of responsible government as a grant of political freedom and, indeed, political independence. See, for example, his Louis Hippolyte La Fontaine and Robert Baldwin (Toronto: Penguin Group, Extraordinary Canadians, 2010). 9 Stewart Campbell, Nova Scotia House of Assembly, 17 April 1866, in Janet Ajzenstat, Paul Romney, Ian Gentles, and William D. Gairdner, Canada’s Founding Debates (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003 [hereafter c f d ]), 60. 10 William Lawrence, Nova Scotia House of Assembly, 17 April 1866, in Ajzenstat et al., c f d , 371. 11 John Locke, Nova Scotia House of Assembly, 16 April 1866, in Ajzenstat et al., c f d , 242. 12 John Mercer Johnston, New Brunswick House of Assembly, 2 July 1866, in Ajzenstat et al., c f d , 180.

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13 George Hogsett, Newfoundland House of Assembly, 23 February 1869, in Ajzenstat et al., c f d , 98. 14 Ambrose Shea, Newfoundland House of Assembly, 21 February 1865, in Ajzenstat et al., c f d , 219. 15 David Christie, Province of Canada Legislative Council, 15 February 1865, in Ajzenstat et al., c f d , 176. 16 Lord Durham’s Report, an abridgement of Report on the Affairs of British North America by Lord Durham, edited by G.M. Craig, introductions by G.M. Craig and Janet Ajzenstat, Afterword by Guy Laforest, Carlton Library Series 1, 208 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007). 17 George Etienne Cartier, Canadian Legislative Assembly, 7 February 1865, in Janet Ajzenstat et al., c f d , 176.

Chapter Twenty-Five 1 Janet Ajzenstat, The Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007). 2 I was co-recipient of the Lipset Prize. Professor Stephen Clarkson also received the award that year for his book Does North America Exist? Governing the Continent after n a f t a and 9/11 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008). 3 Janet Ajzenstat, The Once and Future Canadian Democracy: An Essay in Political Thought (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003). Cooper’s statement appears on the back cover. 4 See Charles Taylor, “Shared and Divergent Values” (1991), in Reconciling the Solitudes: Essays on Canadian Federalism and Nationalism, ed. Guy Laforest (Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1993), 156, 158–9. 5 Gad Horowitz, “Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism in Canada: An Interpretation,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 32, 1 (1966): 143–71. Louis Hartz, ed., The Founding of New Societies: Studies in the History of the United States, Latin America, South Africa, Canada, and Australia (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1964).

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Notes to pages 122–7

6 Taylor, “Shared and Divergent Values,” 156, 158–9. 7 Robert Meynell, Canadian Idealism and the Philosophy of Freedom: C.B. Macpherson, George Grant, and Charles Taylor (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1977). 8 And see C.B. Macpherson, The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). 9 Meynell, Canadian Idealism, 4–6, 231n4, 232n7, 269n47. 10 Robert C. Sibley, Northern Spirits: John Watson, George Grant, and Charles Taylor – Appropriations of Hegelian Thought (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008). 11 Peter H. Russell, Constitutional Odyssey: Can Canadians Be a Sovereign People? (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 33. 12 Meynell, Canadian Idealism, 209. 13 Meynell suggests at one point that the cultural influence of the United States is endangering our sense of ourselves as Canadians. See Meynell, Canadian Idealism, 8. The argument is familiar; it circulated in the 1960s and 1970s; it was popular with George Grant’s students. But few Canadians have been ready to give up American music, stories, movies, and popular and academic literature. And why should we? Today a tap on the ­internet key calls up opinion, argument, and entertainment from the seven continents. It is ridiculous – it is offensive – to suppose that Canadians, in the name of Canadian nationalism, should avert their eyes and close their minds. And it is ridiculous to suppose that Canadian art and opinion cannot appeal in the United States. 14 Donna Greschner, “Commentary,” in After Meech Lake, ed. David E. Smith, Peter MacKinnon, and John C. Courtney (Saskatoon: Fifth House, 1991), 224. This is the place to admit that I may be misusing Greschner’s observation. It is likely that she is of the opinion that Canada does not have legislatures that “hear all voices.” 15 John A. Macdonald, Canadian Legislative Assembly, 13 March 1865, in Ajzenstat et al., c f d , 462. 16 Richard Cartright, Canadian Legislative Assembly, 9 March 1865, in Ajzenstat et al., c f d , 18–19.

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Chapter Twenty-Six 1 Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 201–51. 2 See Eric Nelson, The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought (Cambridge, m a : Harvard University Press, 2010). Nelson summarizes a wealth of scholarly opinion on the influence of biblical and rabbinic thought on Hobbes, Locke, John Milton, John Harrington, and others. See also Jeremy Waldron, God, Locke and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke’s Political Thought (Cambridge, m a : Cambridge University Press, 2002). 3 George Grant, Lament for a Nation (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1965), 94 4 Documents on the Confederation of British North America: A Compilation Based on Sir Joseph Popes’ Confederation Documents, supplemented by Other Official Material, edited and with an introduction by G.P. Browne (new Introduction by Janet Ajzenstat), Carleton Library Series 215 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009).

Chapter Twenty-Seven 1 Ian McKay, “The Liberal Order Framework: A Prospectus for a Reconnaissance of Canadian History,” Canadian Historical Review 81 (2000): 617-45. 2 Jean-François Constant and Michel Ducharme, eds., Liberalism and Hegemony: Debating the Canadian Liberal Revolution (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009). 3 Ian McKay, “The Liberal Order Framework,” in Constant and Ducharme, Liberalism and Hegemony, 633.

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Index

Acton, Lord John Dalberg, 29 Adelman, Howard, 39, 56, 66, 69, 84, 102 Ajzenstat, Sam, 12–15, 38–41, 57–8, 60, 70, 98–100, 104–5, 109, 128–9 Ajzenstat, Sandor, 105 Aristotle, 30, 53, 100 Atkinson, Michael, 45, 97 Bailyn, Bernard, 52 Baldwin, Robert, 26 Barker, Paul, 54 Barr, Carl, 64 Bastian, Don, 84, 88, 91 Baudrillard, Jean, 68–9 Bayard, Caroline, 70, 72 Bédard, Pierre, 26–8, 31, 34, 73, 107 Bentham, Jeremy, 9, 47, 50–3 Bercuson, David, 45 Berlin, Isaiah, 100–1 Bernardi, Mario, 61 Berns, Walter, 21–2

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Bertrand, Denis, 111 Bird, Karen, 76 Blackstone, William, 9, 27, 38, 80, 91, 134 Bloom, Allan, 7–9, 18–21, 23–4, 32, 60, 62, 65, 66–8, 82, 100, 129, 130, 134 Breckenridge, George, 8, 76 Brieger, Peter, 16 Brown, George, 133 Browne, G.P., 96, 131 Buchan, John, 11–12, 105 Burke, Edmund, 9, 27, 82, 91, 134 Cairns, Alan, 57–8, 60, 70, 86 Campbell, Stewart, 117 Carens, Joseph, 56, 66, 69, 84, 102 Carroll, Barbara, 104 Cartier, George-Étienne, 92, 120, 133 Cartright, Richard, 127 Cauchon, Joseph, 92

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Charlton, Mark, 54 Christie, David, 118 Coke, Sir Edward, 91 Coleman, Frank M., 24 Coleman, Will, 97 Constant, Jean-François, 132 Cook, Ramsay, 83 Cooper, Barry, 83, 121 Coupland, Sir Reginald, 111 Craig, Gerald, 8–9, 43, 111, 116 Creighton, Donald, 16, 32–4, 87, 89 Cunningham, Frank, 70–3 De Beauvoir, Simone, 13 De Lolme, Jean Louis, 27, 73, 80, 107–8 Debbs, Eugene V., 13 Desbiens, Albert, 111 Dicey, A.V., 73, 80, 94–5 Dickerson, Mark O., 60 Dion, Stéphane, 52 Ducharme, Michel, 132 Duff, Chief Justice Lyman Poore, 80 Durham, Lord, 8–9, 25–7, 29, 31, 34, 42–7, 73, 92, 107–8, 111–15, 124 Egerton, H.E., 111 Eisenstadt, Oona, 99 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 100 Fish, Stanley, 79 Flanagan, Thomas, 60

25973_Ajzenstat.indb 156

Flaubert, Gustave, 23 Fox, Charles James, 9, 27 Francke, August Hermann, 100 Freidan, Betty, 13 Freud, Sigmund, 100 Frye, Northrop, 16, 102 Gairdner, William, 81, 83–6, 88–9 Gentles, Ian, 39, 81–4, 86, 88 Gianotti, Mara, 89 Gramsci, Antonio, 132 Granatstein, Jack, 54 Grant, George, 16, 18–20, 36–7, 41, 94, 102, 122, 130 Greschner, Donna, 126 Gzowski, Peter, 12 Hamann, Johann Georg, 100 Hamel, Marcel-Pierre, 111 Hamilton, Alexander, 92, 120 Hartz, Louis, 32, 52–4, 71, 85, 121–2, 125 Harvey, Louis-Georges, 53 Hegel, G.W.F., 7, 19, 33, 38, 100, 122–4 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 100 Hobbes, Thomas, 23–5, 30, 41, 91, 100 Hogsett, George, 117 Horn, Michiel, 83 Horowitz, Gad, 32–4, 36, 49– 53, 60, 71, 85, 88, 121–2, 125 Howe, Brian, 70 Hughes, Glen, 105

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Index 157

Innis, Harold, 32 Jay, John, 92 Jefferson, Thomas, 120 Johnson, John Mercer, 117 Joyal, Senator Serge, 107–8 Kant, Immanuel, 7, 38 Knopff, Rainer, 53, 60–2, 76, 79, 125 Laforest, Guy, 112 Lambton, William, 9 Langevin, H.L., 108 Lawrence, William, 117 Leavitt, Anne, 129 Lipset, Seymour Martin, 32 Locke, John, 24, 27, 33, 36, 38, 63, 82, 88, 91, 94, 100, 109, 111, 129–30, 134 Locke, John (Nova Scotia legislator), 117 Lucas, Sir Charles Percy, 111 Macdonald, John A., 5, 16, 126–7, 133 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 23, 44–5, 57–8 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 56 Macpherson, C.B., 24–5, 52, 122–3, 125 Madison, James, 92 Maimonides, 130 Mann, Thomas, 102 Manning, Preston, 61 Mansfield, Harvey, 24

25973_Ajzenstat.indb 157

Mao, Zedong, 99 Martin, Ged, 83 Martin, Paul, 71 Marx, Karl, 14, 33, 105, 132, 134 Mathie, William, 65–6, 98, 102 McGee, Thomas D’Arcy, 92 McGilvray, Joan, 131 McKay, Ian, 132–4 McNairn, Jeffrey, 84, 86–7 McNaught, Kenneth, 8 McRae, Kenneth, 82 Meynell, Robert, 3–4, 122–4 Mill, James, 9, 47 Mill, John Stuart, 91, 100, 107 Milner, Lord, 12 Minogue, Kenneth, 60 Montesquieu, 9, 38, 73, 80, 82 Moore, Christopher, 87, 89, 131 Morton, Ted, 60, 62, 76, 79 Mouffe, Chantel, 68 Nahmanides, 130 Nevitte, Neil, 60 New, Chester, 112 Nichols, James, 21 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 38 Ouellet, Fernand, 26 Overall, Christine, 48 Palmerston, Lord Henry John Temple, 42 Papineau, Joseph, 51 Parent, Étienne, 28, 111

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158 Index

Peacock, Anthony, 96 Pearce, Colin, 53 Plato, 18–20, 23, 30, 100 Pocock, J.G.A., 52 Pope, Sir Joseph, 131 Popper, Karl, 18, 20 Rand, Justice Ivan, 80 Roebuck, John Arthur, 51 Romney, Paul, 84–6, 88–9, 131 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 7, 21, 25, 30, 38, 60, 63, 69, 82, 100 Russell, Peter, 3–4, 8, 21–2, 35, 42, 45, 54, 58, 72–3, 75–6, 78, 84, 124 Seaman, John, 49 Seeger, Pete, 15 Shea, Ambrose, 117 Shipton, Rosemary, 89 Shklar, Judith, 101 Sibley, Robert C., 123–4 Simcoe, Governor John Graves, 28 Smiley, Donald, 52–4, 70, 72, 94–5 Smith, Jennifer, 108

25973_Ajzenstat.indb 158

Smith, Peter J., 49–54, 56–7, 62, 123 Socrates, 19 Sorger, George, 40 Sorger, Leonore, 40 Spicer, Keith, 103 Stalin, Joseph, 99, 122 Stevenson, Garth, 65 Strauss, Leo, 8, 19–21, 41, 130 Taylor, Charles, 56, 122, 124–5 Thomas, Norman, 13 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 23, 30, 46–7, 100 Trilling, Lionel, 100 Trudeau, Pierre, 46, 77 Tupper, Charles, 87 Underhill, F.H., 3, 5 Vallée, Jacques, 46 Vipond, Robert C., 53, 84 Voltaire, 73 Waite, Peter, 3, 5, 53–4, 82 Whitaker, Reg, 101–2, 116 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 63

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