George Grant: A Biography 9781442675285

Citation preview

GEORGE GRANT: A BIOGRAPHY

When George Grant died in Halifax in 1988, he was acknowledged as one of Canada's most original thinkers. His best-known books, including Lament for a Nation and Technology and Empire, influenced a generation of

Canadians. But the terms that were often used to describe him - Canadian nationalist, Red Tory, critic of liberalism and Liberalism - failed to capture his central thought. His originality remained elusive. This book sheds light on Grant's early intellectual interests, the centrality of his pacificism, his struggle to educate himself as a philosopher (he studied history at Queen's and law at Oxford), his ambivalent relationship to organized religion, his quarrels with the universities of York and McMaster, and his attitude to Diefenbaker. We also discover the reasons for his sympathy with French-Canadian nationalism, the nature of his debt to Leo Strauss and Heidegger, his admiration for Simone Weil, and his attitude to abortion, which he believed offered a 'poisoned cup' to contemporary liberalism. George Grant: A Biography is the first biography about this fascinating religious and political thinker. Drawing on his many letters, private papers, and published writings, it portrays a man who has been described as 'the most formidable combination of personality and intellect Canada has produced. ' WILLIAM CHRISTIAN is a professor in the Department of Political Studies, University of Guelph.

This page intentionally left blank

WILLIAM CHRISTIAN

George Grant: A Biography

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1993 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada Reprinted 1994 ISBN 0-8020-5922-8 (cloth)

Printed on acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Christian, William, 1945George Grant: a biography Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8020-5922-8 1. Grant, George, 1918-1988. 2. Philosophers Canada - Biography. I. Title. B995. G724C5 1993 191 '. 092 C93-094855-6

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Social Science Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

To Dennis Lee and Charles Taylor in gratitude

This page intentionally left blank

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi CHRONOLOGY XV PREFACE xix

1

They'd prefer ice-cream 3 2 Work for King and Country 8 3 Willie's boy 21 4 Somebody might like me for myself 37 5 An ambitious little pragmatist 56 6 Mysterious forces within man 69 7 Take what you want said God 87

viii

Contents

8 It was easy to lose courage 100 9 Exploring the universe 113 10

The solid basis of qualifications 133 11

Listening to Mozart - I felt such love 151 12

Out of the shadows into truth 168 13 No satisfactory compromise was possible 187 14 Old and dirty and fat 205 15 The fifth column 216 16 Simone Weil 228 17 Lament 240 18 A lone wolf 254 19 Intimations of deprival 271 20 The botched and the bungled 286

Contents ix 21

Museum culture 302 22

Caught up in fates 323 23 Christ's care is for all 339 24 Out of Christian certainties 352 25 No great disaster 366 Epilogue 371 NOTES 373 SOURCES

Archival and interview sources 441 Works mentioned in text or notes 444 Selected secondary sources 447 Bibliography of George Grant's publications prepared by K Mark Haslett 450 INDEX 461 PHOTO CREDITS 473

This page intentionally left blank

Acknowledgments

The customary heading for this section, 'Acknowledgments, ' does not begin to express the sense of debt I have to all the people who helped me with this project. It is no more than the truth to say that without Sheila Grant this book would not exist. At the simplest level, she made George Grant's papers freely available to me, shared her reminiscences, read each draft of the manuscript, corrected untold errors, and made many suggestions for improvement. More important, she kept her husband more or less sane for over forty years. She valued his work and actively worked with him to make it as good as it was. Without her he undoubtedly would have been a profound thinker, but his published work would not have been as good. Charity Grant also helped in many ways. She was the only person who could tell me in detail what her brother was like as a child, and what their family life consisted of. She provided me with much invaluable information at the beginning of my research, and corrected many errors later. I am also grateful to her and to George's Uncle Raleigh Parkin, who spent much of his retirement as the family archivist, and was largely responsible for the magnificent Grant-Parkin collection in the National Archives of Canada. After the death of Maude Grant, Grant's mother, the question arose as to what to do with the hundreds of candid letters Grant had written to her; she had carefully saved almost all of them. According to his uncle, Grant 'took a dim view of any papers being kept by anyone about anything. ' Raleigh Parkin was 'just naughty enough' not to tell his nephew about them. He thought it would be important to preserve them because some day they would 'be important for someone to see because George, whether one agrees with him or not, has made an important place for himself in the intellectual life of Canada. '

xii Acknowledgments The person who would make use of the papers turned out to be me, and I thank Raleigh Parkin for his sense of family, and even more for his guile. Grant himself did not think that private papers of public figures should be open to prying eyes. In 1975 he had gone to Vancouver to deliver a lecture, and his old student Murray Tolmie took him sightseeing and parked looking across Burrard Inlet to the mountains. Grant, who did not much like mountains and thought the scenery in all respects inferior to Terrence Bay, started recounting one of his many anecdotes. The story concerned the disposition of the private papers of one of the most distinguished Canadians of the early twentieth century. Tolmie took the conventional view that the interests of History required that such documents, even though they revealed sexual peccadilloes, deserved to be placed in the public archives. 'Fuck history, Tolmie, ' Grant exploded. 'Just fuck history. ' Joyce Campbell, Barbara Christian, Barry Cooper, Mark Haslett, Kevin Little, and William Kilbourn read the whole manuscript. I am thankful for their advice and even more for their support and encouragement. Geoffrey Bush, Alice Boissonneau, Peter Clarke, Jacob Ellens, Michael Gelber, Louis Greenspan, Henry Roper, and Bill Graf each read parts and saved me from many errors of fact and infelicities of style, such as cliches like this one. Judith Colbert was a model freelance editor, generous in her praise but equally firm in her suggestions for improvement. However, my greatest debt is to Charles Taylor and Dennis Lee. Taylor's fine book Radical Tories convinced me that it was possible to convey a sense of George Grant's formidable personality, and his generous advice and support for my biography came at a time when they were very much needed. Lee, out of love for George Grant, worked very hard to make this a biography worthy of him. Lee's genius as an editor is known to all who have worked with him; I am happy that I can now include myself in that fortunate group. For these reasons I dedicate this work to them both in gratitude. The Social Science and Humanities Research Council supported this project indirectly through the block grant they provided to the University of Guelph. However, my greatest debt is to the trustees and officials of the Earhart Foundation of Ann Arbor, Michigan, who generously funded my research for this project. This book might not have existed without their support. The University of Guelph is a wonderful place to teach and think, and my colleagues were kind enough to give me a year's sabbatical leave in 1991-92 so that I could work full-time on this book. I have always found

Acknowledgments xiii librarians and archivists as pleasant as they are competent. Thank you to the following: the University of Guelph, the National Archives of Canada, the University of Toronto Archives, the Trinity College Archives, the Massey College Archives, the Dalhousie Archives, the McMaster Archives, the Marine Museum of the Atlantic, the Manitoba Archives, the Balliol College (Oxford) Library, the British Library (British Museum), the British Library of Political and Economic Science (London School of Economics). Mark Haslett, whose fine bibliography of George Grant's writings accompanies this work, has been kindness itself in sending me copies of difficult-to-find articles. Donald Grant, Derek Bedson's nephew, supervised the recovery of Grant's letters from the, as yet, unorganized Bedson private papers. Dr Maureen Waugh of Birmingham, Sheila Kindred of Halifax, and Margaret Clark of Guelph discovered better information on places, people, and institutions than I had imagined could possibly exist. Barbara Christian and Erica Lamacraft prepared the index. The following people have helped me in many different ways. I am not going to give individual details of how each one helped, but I can assure them that I remember their help and am grateful: Robert Albota, David Cayley, Margaret Clark, Peter Clarke, J. R. Colombo, Art Davis, David Dodds, J. P. Ellens, Peter Emberley, James Field, Christopher Fisher, Michael Gelber, Charity Grant, T. Hrab, Robert Hulse, Barry Hyman, Sir Anthony Kenny, David Kinsley, Jacques Langlais, Hart Massey, Ken Menzies, Renee Piche, Henri Pilon, Elizabeth Pound, Hamish Raffan, I. Ray, Henry Roper, Anne Saddlemeyer, Peter Self, Dennis Stairs, Frank Stark, Mark Tantardini, Shelley Wild, and Susanna Wild. The close connection between the Grant family and the Queen's Quarterly is now in its second century. I was therefore especially grateful (and Grant would have been touched) that they published a revised version of Chapter 17 in one of their special centenary issues. Some readers might note my consistent use of what I describe as the philosophical 'he' and 'his. ' I employ this usage for the sake of clarity of exposition and simplicity. No other inference should be drawn. George Grant was a remarkable human being. I hope, with all this help, that I have managed to convey his charm and his genius. WILLIAM CHRISTIAN

Guelph, Ontario April 1993

This page intentionally left blank

Chronology

1826 15 September 1831 22 December 1835 8 February 1846 7 May 1867 2 November 1872 1877 July 1878 1 July 1879 14 September 1880 23 April 1882 24 December 1891 25 February 1894 1895 10 May 1902 1902 1903 1 June 1911 19 March 1912 2 September 1913 5 June 1915 23 July 1915 2 February 1916 August 1916 18 December 1918 13 November 1918 6 September 1920

James Grant arrives in Nova Scotia James Grant marries Mary Monro George Monro Grant, GPG's grandfather, born George Parkin, GPG's grandfather, born G. M. Grant marries Jessie Lawson William Lawson Grant, GPG's father, born G. M. Grant becomes principal of Queen's George Parkin marries Annie Connell Fisher Alice Parkin born Maude Erskine Parkin, GPG's mother, born Grace Parkin born Marjorie Parkin born Raleigh Parkin born George Parkin becomes principal of UCC G. M. Grant dies George Parkin heads Rhodes Trust Maude Parkin graduates from McGill William Grant marries Maude Parkin Margaret Monro Grant born Charity Lawson Grant born Alice Parkin marries Vincent Massey Marjorie Parkin marries James Macdonnell Jessie Alison Grant born William Grant wounded in France William Grant installed as principal of UCC George Parkin Grant born Sheila Veronica Allen born

xvi

Chronology

Summer 1921 25 June 1922 about 1925 May 1926 April 1927 15 October 1928 1929

September 1932 3 February 1935 1935 1936 1939 October 1939 1940 Summer 1940 September 1940 October 1941 February 1942 February 1943

1945 October 1945 17 November 1945 Autumn 1946 1 July 1947 September 1947 25 April 1948 Summer 1949 19 April 1950 1950 27 July 1950 1951 26 May 1952 1952 4 August 1954

Grants summer with Sir George Parkin in Quebec Sir George Parkin dies in London Grants buy Otter Lake property GPG enters Brown school GPG enters prep school at UCC Raleigh Parkin marries Louise Cockburn UCC Centenary - GPG sent to camp GPG enters upper school at UCC William Grant dies Vincent Massey becomes High Commissioner in London GPG graduates from UCC - enters Queen's wins Rhodes Scholarship enrols in law at Balliol College, Oxford awarded BA in History from Queen's trains with Universities Ambulance Unit ARP warden in Bermondsey tries to join merchant navy; rejected for poor health returns to Canada begins work with Canadian Association of Adult Education (CAAE) publishes Canada: An Introduction to a Nation publishes The Empire: Yes or No? returns to Oxford - D. Phil, in theology Alison Grant marries diplomat George Ignatieff wardenship of Hart House offered to GPG and withdrawn GPG marries Sheila Allen in London begins teaching philosophy at Dalhousie Rachel Stirling Grant born in Halifax returns to England to finish D. Phil. William Allen Grant born in London awarded D. Phil. Alice Massey dies publishes controversial article 'Philosophy' Robert Anthony Grant born in Halifax Vincent Massey becomes governor-general of Canada Catherine Parkin Grant born in Halifax

Chronology xvii 1956-7 23 April 1957 1959 6 December 1959 1960 1960 1960-61 19611 1 February 1963 1964-7 1964 1965

30 December 1967 1969

sabbatical leave in England Isabel Grant born in London Philosophy in the Mass Age

David Nicholas Grant born in Halifax Grace Parkin Wimperis dies appointed to York University and resigns consultant to Institute for Philosophical Research appointed to department of Religion, McMaster Maude Grant dies chairman, department of religion Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada Lament for a Nation

Vincent Massey dies Technology and Empire; Time as History

May 1971 1972 1974

honorary degree, Trent honorary degree, Mount Allison delivers Wood Lectures at Mount Allison -

1974 1976 1978 1978 1979 1980

honorary degree, Dalhousie honorary degree, Queen's Raleigh Parkin dies honorary professor of humanities, Calgary honorary degree, University of Toronto honorary degrees, Guelph and Thorneloe universities resigns from McMaster and appointed Killam Professor at Dalhousie TV program - 'The Owl and the Dynamo' awarded Chauveau medal by Royal Society made Officer, Order of Canada Margaret Andrew, George's sister, dies retires - honoured at Learned Societies meetings

1980 1980 1981 1982 1984 1986 27 September 1988

1992

English-Speaking Justice

Technology and Justice

George Grant dies in Halifax Alison Ignatieff, George's sister, dies

This page intentionally left blank

Preface

All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true poets must all be truthful. Wilfred Owen It might seem strange to begin a book about a philosopher who became famous as a Canadian nationalist with a quote from a poet about the duty of poets. However, I think it fitting. As a philosopher George Grant was as far from the bloodless rationalist as it is possible to be. He had a poet's imagination and the symbol was more congenial to him than the syllogism. Great artists such as Shakespeare, Mozart, Henry James, and Celine moved him deeply and, from his encounter with their work, he learned as much as he did from his reading of philosophers such as Plato, St Augustine, or Kant. In the modern world he thought that it was the philosopher's task, as well as the poet's, to warn us that the society we are fated to inhabit enshrouds justice in darkness. Wilfred Owen died in battle a week before the armistice and nine days before George Grant was born. Grant loved Owen's poetry; it particularly touched him because his own father, 'a very gentle, strong scholar [had been] ruined by the First World War. ' Grant took the futility of war to heart and pacifism in one form or another was a constant thread throughout his life, from his desire to be exempted from the cadet corps at Upper Canada College, through his service as an air-raid precautions warden in London during the Blitz, to his fury when Lester Pearson's Liberals brought down John Diefenbaker's government in 1963 and agreed to allow nuclear weapons on Canadian soil. I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears; And caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts;

xx

Preface

And buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts; And rusted every bayonet with His tears. Wilfred Owen, 'Soldier's Dream' Like Owen, Grant too was a Christian. When he was young religion was important to him, but what he cared for most was politics, and his pacifism at the beginning of the Second World War was mostly driven by a belief in the needlessness and futility of European wars. He might easily have ended up as a lawyer, a diplomat, or even a politician. The Toronto of his childhood was claustrophobic and inward-looking, and it was a place where it still mattered very much which of the ladies was entitled to pour the tea. His mother was determined that he would rise to a prominence in the world at least as great as that of his father and grandfathers. However, at the age of twenty-one he went to Bermondsey in south London, and stayed there throughout the entire Blitz. Almost daily people he knew were killed or mutilated. He was driven to the breaking point and when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he almost turned his face to the wall. He was close to suicide. Then, in an instant on 11 or 12 December, in the early morning light of the English countryside, it suddenly came to him that all was well, that God existed. That moment was the primal experience of his life. He was, as he said before the phrase became fashionable, born again. How this crisis in Grant's life happened and what its consequences were is the story this book attempts to tell. Before I began, though, there were two problems to resolve. First, should I be the one to write this book? Second, should it be written at all? Although he was a generation older, I knew him for the last sixteen years of his life, and once the matter of the disparity of our ages and intellects was overcome, we became friends. To some people this fact alone should exclude me as his biographer. Modern scholarship holds that the best relationship between a writer and what he is writing about is objectivity. Fortunately Grant thought otherwise. He defended Simone Petrement's biography of Simone Weil by reminding us that 'Boswell loved Johnson, and Bonaventure loved Francis, and these are two of the greatest lives in the western tradition. ' Someone who disliked him, or who did not know him at all, might put a different interpretation on some of the events in his life than I have, though whether they would be right to do so is hard for me to say. I want neither to excuse his failings nor

Preface

xxi

magnify his achievements, only to record for posterity the nature of this remarkable man, neither better nor worse but just such as he was. George Grant, however, made life difficult for any future biographer when he pronounced his judgment that it was always undesirable to write the life of a philosopher. 'The lives of great thinkers are generally not of central interest; what is of interest is their writings. What matters to us about Kant is to understand the Critique of Pure Reason, not how he spent his quiet life in Konigsberg. ' In another context, when asked to speak about his own life, he demurred. When one does an arithmetical sum correctly, that is not an expression of personality; individuality intrudes only when you get it wrong. 'Perhaps I have sometimes hit on something true in my thought. That is what matters. By which of many possible paths one gets there is of interest to oneself, but to others what matters is the truth. ' If George Grant was a philosopher - and he unquestionably was - then this biography should not, according to him, exist. How, then, can I justify writing this book? I might counter-attack. 'Come on, George. Throughout your life you took much pleasure in indiscreet gossip. How many times did you tell the story of General Currie's love for Joan Arnoldi during the First World War (was it every day he wrote to her from the front?), or that Vincent Massey had to pension off five (or ten, depending on the gullibility of your listeners and how expansive you felt at the time) of his father's mistresses after his death, and so on. You can scarcely begrudge others taking an interest in your own foibles. ' Or I might mount a more philosophical defence. 'One of the greatest accomplishments of Western Christianity from St Augustine on was to establish the absolute significance of the individual human personality. The striving of soul for God is a universal phenomenon, but it acquires its meaning in individual contexts. By examining one life in a biography we affirm implicitly that what each individual does here and now matters absolutely, and we therefore attest to the centrality of individual moral responsibility. ' How might George reply to a little judicious Socratic questioning? Would it be possible to persuade him that it was fitting to write his biography? Let us imagine that the two of us are sitting again in his livingroom in Halifax, across the round oak table. Sheila has just served tea, and George refills our cups. On his salt and pepper beard, more white than black now, are crumbs from the sandwiches. Ashes from his cigarette have rolled down his tie. Yet in spite of his customary dishevelment he is dignified. He dresses more formally than many academics, tweed jacket

xxii

Preface

and tie usually. Almost seventy, the intensity of his youth has become a stern nobility. The Romans called it gravitas. It seems wrong to crossexamine him, but the matter is important. I will put my questions. 'In your case there are other reasons for writing your biography. Do you acknowledge the absolute centrality of Christianity in your thought?' 'Let me just say this about that. ' George's eyes gaze into the middle distance while he thinks. [Pause] He opens his mouth, starts to speak but no sound comes out. [Longer pause] 'Yes, it was just absolutely central. ' 'You were denied the wardenship of Hart House because of your pacifism and you made an enemy of the most powerful philosopher in the country, Fulton Anderson, because your 1951 article, "Philosophy" spoke so warmly of Christianity. Did you put your faith front and centre in your writings after that?' 'No, I knew then I had to write indirectly about it if I were to stay in academic life. I also had to make concessions to the spirit of the age to get a hearing for my ideas. But my faith never wavered, and I never compromised on account of it' 'I'm not saying you did, but your Christianity was less obvious to people who did not know you than it might have been. ' 'Of course. ' 'You weren't ashamed of it, were you?' 'My faith in the certainties of Christianity was the central fact of my life. ' 'Did your philosophy arise out of this core of Christian truth?' 'I'll just say this. I knew the perfection of God. I saw the misery of the world around me, and I wanted to understand how it had come to pass that the West, which had received the truth of the Gospels, had departed so far from them. Ever since the war I thought about little else than this. ' 'Credo, ut intelligam?'1

'Of course, of course. Belief came to me first, at the darkest part of the war. Later I sought to understand what it meant to be a Christian in North America in the twentieth century. ' 'You describe yourself as a philosopher, but at the primal level weren't you really a visionary. ' 'I beg your pardon?' 'You saw the unity of big business dominating the university when you were an undergraduate at Queen's. You knew the fate of Canadian sovereignty when you saw a photograph of CD. Howe in the newspaper in 1945. You understood the triumph of the scientific spirit when you were

Preface

xxiii

nearly run out of a meeting in Montreal in 1961. And most of all, you knew God existed when you walked through a gate in the English countryside in early December 1941. None of this was philosophic. You just saw it, and knew that it was true. ' 'Quite, quite, quite. But I didn't understand it. I couldn't see what it meant. That was why I turned to philosophy, you see. I studied Kant and Sartre, then Strauss, Ellul, Heidegger and the rest to help make sense of my experiences. Trying to grasp how it all fit together was hard work; often I thought I would never get to the bottom of it. Writing it down was even harder. And everywhere I went I had to fight, because the businessmen and the scientists were trying to create multiversities in which my kind of philosophy had no place. It was tiring and at times I got very discouraged. ' 'You died an honoured prophet in your own country. ' 'Sometimes I wondered about that. Once, when I was getting an honorary degree, the citation outlining my achievements was actually antiChristian. ' 'But people liked you. You had so many loyal friends. ' 'That's true, and it was one of the great blessings of my life. But from my childhood I always felt I was on show, that I had to put on a performance. ' 'You wore different masks, didn't you? I saw some of them. In public you were usually the intense philosopher; it was the way you could best convey to the world that absolute importance of philosophy. But at other times you played the charming host, the provocative gossip, the lyrical aesthete, the political partisan. They were all genuine parts of you, only exaggerated. ' 'My mother taught me to keep up appearances, so I thought I had to conceal my own reservations and worries. Only with Leo, my nurse, and Sheila did I ever feel completely at ease. And with Arthur. ' 'Your dog?' 'Yes. Will your book have all my best stories in it? My father's family were Highland Scots, you know, and they were cleared, just thrown off their land... ' 'It will have some of them. Many of those stories were part of your mask. Sometimes I have had to make do with less dramatic versions. ' 'Too bad. I always enjoyed telling a good story. '

This page intentionally left blank

1 George Monro Grant (1835-1902), principal of Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. GPG's paternal grandfather

2 Maude Grant (1880-1963), GPG's mother, ca. 1905

3 Maude and William Grant (1872-1935) on their wedding day in the garden of the Parkins' home, 'The Cottage, ' Goring-on-Thames, England, 1 June 1911

4 The Grant children - Alison, George, Charity, Margaret - with their nurse Mrs Don Leo ('Leo'), 1919

5 GPG with his mother, 1920

6 Sir George Parkin (1846-1922) with his grandson, having their picnic on the beach, Cap a l'Aigle, PQ, summer 1921

7 Lady Parkin is holding GPG on her lap. Summer 1921

8 ABOVE: GPG, ca. 1922 9 RIGHT: GPG, ca. 1924

io GPG playing golf with his cousin Peter Macdonnell on their private at Otter Lake

11 GPG with his mother at Niagara Falls, early18930s.He is wearing his Uncle Vincent Massey's hand-me-down clothes.

12 Charity, Margaret, GPG, Alison on the steps of the principal's residence at Upper Canada College, 1932 or 1933

13 GPG with his sister, Margaret, before giving her away at her wedding to Geoff Andrew, 1937

14 GPG when he won the Rhodes Scholarship, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, 1939

15 GPG in London, November 1941, just before he attempted to join the merchant marine

16 Sheila Veronica Allen (GPG's wife), Oxford, ca. 1946

17 Nigel Ffolkes, Sheila Allen, GPG, and Derek Bedson, Oxford 1946/7. Gran dedicated Lament for a Nation to Bedson.

18 Mr and Mrs George Parkin Grant at their wedding in London, 1 July 1947

19 GPG with his daughter Rachel, Halifax, 1948

20 Maude Grant with her grandaughter Rachel, early 1950s

21 GPG with his sons William and Robert, ca. 1957

22 GPG, ca. 1960

23 GPG at his son William's wedding, Terrence Bay, NS, 1971

24 Scott Svmons, GPG, Dennis Lee, and Charles Taylor after their visit to Dundas, 8 July 1980

25 Sheila Grant and GPG, Lighthouse Cove, Terrence Bay, NS, July 1988. The 'farther shore' is the treed ridge in the distance.

26 Sheila Grant, July 1988

27 GPG at Terrence Bay, July 1988. He loved it for its 'mystery and holiness. '

28 GPG's tombstone at the Terrence Bay cemetery

29 GPG inside his cottage at Terrence Bay,July 1988

GEORGE GRANT: A BIOGRAPHY

This page intentionally left blank

1

They'd prefer ice-cream

When William Grant got on the train for Scotland, where Maude Parkin was vacationing, marriage was on his mind. Still a bachelor at thirty-seven he had, until recently, settled on a celibate life of work, work to increase learning, work for Canada. It was a life with which no woman was meant to interfere. Now things had changed. He had fallen in love with Maude, and over the past year his love had steadily grown. They were, in one sense, acquaintances of long standing. They first met twelve years before, in 1898, when William took a position as a history teacher at a private boys' school in Toronto, Upper Canada College. Maude was eighteen and away most of the time, completing her high school in Switzerland. Her father, George Parkin, was principal of Upper Canada and William's boss. William and she got to know one another when she came home in the summers. William liked her then, but his interest was not romantic and their lives drifted apart. She went to McGill to study in 1900 and then, in 1902, he took a position at another boys' school, St Andrew's College. When their paths crossed again, it was not in Canada but in England. After graduating from university, Maude became dean of women (warden) in a residence at the University of Manchester. William had won a first in Greats (Classics) at Oxford, the first Canadian to achieve this distinction, and his alma mater acknowledged his brilliant promise when it invited him to return as Beit lecturer in colonial history in 1906. That same year George Parkin settled with his wife in Goring-on-Thames, a village eighteen miles from Oxford. Parkin had implemented and now administered the Rhodes Scholarships and that meant he had to live reasonably close to the university. It was an easy and pleasant trip from Oxford and William went often to chat with his old principal and help him with a biography of Sir John

4 George Grant A. Macdonald he was writing. The visits became even more agreeable and frequent when their twenty-nine-year-old daughter was there. No perfect moment had come to pop the question while he was with her on that Scottish visit, and as the carriage jolted downhill behind Donach heading for the station in the town of Pitlochry, the pulse in William's neck quivered, the veins tightened, and he felt a great lump in his throat. He could not speak. Anyway they were late for the train and these were scarcely appropriate circumstances to tell Miss Maude what was on his mind. 1 Why should she even consider him, he wondered? He had no money, wasn't particularly handsome, and had no position in the world. Indeed, his only income was his small salary from his new post as a history professor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. He would soon go back to Canada to take up his new job, and that meant he had to declare himself now, or resign himself to life without her. He returned home and brooded on the subject. Finally, almost a week later, he got up his courage and, on 3 August 1910, wrote her a letter. It was not perhaps the most romantic billet doux a lover has ever penned to his beloved. On the contrary, William at first seemed to be suggesting a high-minded and public-spirited alliance between their two families. He offered Maude the opportunity to join his work: together a Parkin and a Grant could do ten times as much for Canada, could tenfold fulfil the purpose for which they came into the world, than they could alone. On reflection, he confessed, these words sounded calculating, as if he valued Maude mainly as a stimulus for his work. No, he did want her for herself; he loved her. It turned out that Maude was not, as he feared, already spoken for. She said yes and the announcement of the impending wedding appeared in the London Times on 1 November 1910. Ten months later, 1 June 1911 capped a week of pleasurable excitement in the villiage of Goring-onThames. The village was full of motor cars and carriages, and the chancel of the church was crammed with a profusion of exotic plants, flowers, and palms. Canon Welch, the vicar of Wakefield, performed the choral ceremony, assisted by the rector of Goring and Canon Sloman of Godmanchester. All brides look lovely, and Maude, dressed in white satin, her veil trimmed with old Florentine lace, impressed the local villagers. Dr Parkin gave his daughter away, while E. R. Peacock, William's old colleague and friend from Upper Canada, steadied the nerves of the groom. Maude entered and left the church to what the local newspaper called inspiriting wedding music and the bells pealed merrily after the service. Following a reception at the Parkins' comfortable home, modestly called

They'd prefer ice-cream 5 'The Cottage', the groom and his new bride set out for their honeymoon at the Italian lakes and in the Tyrol, leaving for their return presents described as both beautiful and numerous.2 After their return from what must have been a pleasant and certainly was a fruitful visit to the Italian lakes, the newlyweds sailed back to Canada and set up home in Kingston. They were joined on 19 March 1912 by their first child, Margaret. Charity followed the next year on 2 September 1913. A middle-aged, married man with two small daughters, William might reasonably have supposed that he would spend the rest of his working life teaching and writing history in the town where he grew up. In June 1915 Maude helped organize the wedding in Kingston of her older sister, Alice, who was marrying a man seven years her junior, William's favourite pupil when he taught at St Andrew's College, Vincent Massey. Massey was a scion of the farm implements manufacturer who created Massey-Harris, 3 and was therefore 'in trade. ' Wags sympathetic to the Parkin clan declared it a good marriage for him, because he had the cash but Alice provided the class. The next month Maude's youngest sister, Marjorie, married Jim Macdonnell, a Kingston lawyer whose future lay with National Trust and the Conservative party. Like William, George's Uncle Vincent and Uncle Jim were drawn inexorably into the Parkin matriarchy, presided over first by Lady Parkin and, after her death, by Maude. For the time being it is worth noting that Massey's relationship with Jim Macdonnell started out badly: Macdonnell served with valour overseas and was decorated, and he resented the fact that Massey, who never left home, rose to a higher rank in the army. The need to come to the aid of Mother England in her hour of danger moved William Grant as well as his brothers-in-law, though considering his age it is somewhat surprising that he was posted overseas. He saw active service first with the 59th Battalion and then with the 20th as major. Maude was determined to be as close to her husband as circumstances permitted, so she moved her family to England for the duration. Their third daughter, Alison, was born in Goring-on-Thames on 2 February 1916. George's own chances of being born were gravely imperilled when his father's unit was sent to France. The horror of the Western Front deeply affected William's life and, through him, his son's. As George explained: 'My father was a Nova Scotian, who had grown up in Kingston, Ontario, and was essentially a very gentle, strong scholar, who I think, above all,

6 George Grant was ruined by the first world war. He was ruined physically; he was terribly wounded. For these people, who had grown up in the great era of progress, to meet the holocaust of the trenches was terrible. ' 4 About the middle of August 1916, Maude received a telegram. Her husband had been injured. He had been brought into No. 10 Casualty Clearing Station with 'a fractured rib, a contusion of the back and a wound of the head. ' This was frightening news and Maude was undoubtedly little consoled to be told by the chaplain that 'in our little word of prayer together we remembered you in the anxious hours which this news will bring to you, '5 for she was not a particularly pious woman. Major Grant, a novice equestrian at the front, had been thrown by his horse, and his injuries were compounded when the horse rolled on top of him. His condition was serious, though it did not seem not sufficiently grave, in the early stages of diagnosis, for his wife to get permission to travel to France to see him. The news over the next few weeks was not good. The chaplain wrote again on 21 August: 'The situation is a peculiar one. Your husband's chest is much better, the head wound is better and really does not count now, and his whole outlook much healthier; but the fall has affected his heart in the most extraordinary way, and his pulse has caused the doctor grave anxiety. The consequence is that in spite of the continuous improvement which the Medical Officer has authorized me to report, and which even a non-medical man can see, nevertheless your husband is if anything a little weaker today. ' Although William eventually recovered, the consequences of his injury were portentous for George. Before William went to France, he received a letter from Toronto asking him if he would consider becoming principal at Upper Canada College. Enrolment had declined steadily since Parkin left in 1902 and it recently hit bottom when just over two hundred boys attended the school. The trustees decided on a change of leadership and they turned for advice first to Vincent Massey, already an influential figure in Toronto educational and cultural circles, and then to a former headmaster, Maude's father, who could be counted on to know who was available throughout Britain and the Empire. 7 Both recommended William. He could never have guessed that his marriage to a Parkin would bring him into such a powerful web of connections. William expressed strong interest when the proposal was first put to him, but declined to pursue the opportunity until the end of hostilities. Honour forbade him to leave the army while he could still be of use. Now that his injury made further military service impossible, he was

They'd prefer ice-cream 7 available, provided the governors offered the very generous salary of $10, 000 a year and guaranteed him a relatively free hand in reorganizing the school. The terms were accepted and, on 17, November 1917, William, Maude, and the three girls, who had continued to live in England while he was at the front, sailed back to both Canada and Upper Canada.8 George in later life blamed his mother for forcing William to abandon his university position at Queen's for the sake of social advancement.9 This seems harsh. William's contemporary letters indicate no reservations other than his military commitments and, when he wrote to the principal at Queen's to resign his history professorship, he explained that he had accepted the Upper Canada position because it presented him with an opportunity to set the tone for education in the province as a whole. 10 Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns A ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead. But the old man would not so, but slew his son, And half the seed of Europe, one by one.11 Wilfred Owen It was Wednesday, 13 November 1918, two days after the armistice. The holocaust of the trenches was over. In the principal's residence in the south-east wing of the main building of Upper Canada College, the three girls - Margaret, Charity, and Alison - were assembled in the living-room, and the older ones, having been told that they were to get a nice surprise, had set their hearts on ice-cream. To their chagrin they were presented instead with the baby brother over whose birth Dr Gallie had recently presided. It was then that they met, for the first time, George Parkin Grant. However, if the girls were disappointed, the boys at Upper Canada had cause to rejoice. To celebrate the birth of their principal's son, they were given a half-day holiday. From his birth until his father's death in 1935, Upper Canada dominated George's life. He would later say that his whole life was a convalescence from growing up in a school run by his father. 12

2

Work for King and Country

In the summer of 1921 Maude's parents, Sir George and Lady Parkin, returned to Canada to spend a summer with their family. The Great Man had been born seventy-five years before in Albert County, New Brunswick, the thirteenth child of a Yorkshire Methodist yeoman who had left the dales of the upper Tees to try his luck at farming in New Brunswick. Six feet tall, handsome with deep-set grey-blue eyes, and charismatic, he rose on ability alone from his farming background to take a prominent place first in New Brunswick, then in Canadian, and finally in imperial education. The pinnacle of his career was the opportunity, in 1902, to implement and administer the Rhodes Scholarships. His knighthood on his retirement in 1920 was his reward for this contribution to the Empire. Along the way, in 1878, George Parkin married Annie Fisher, the daughter of a prominent New Brunswick family. Together they had seven children, five of whom survived childhood: Alice (1879), Maude (1880), Grace (1882), Marjorie (1891), and their only son, Raleigh (1894). The first three children spent their early years in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where Parkin was headmaster of the collegiate school. In 1889 he resigned his post when Lord Milner, one of the leaders of English imperialism, recruited him to travel throughout Britain and the Dominions, preaching the cause they both so deeply believed in, Imperial Federation. One contemporary called him 'the prince of imperialists and their first missionary. ' His own description was 'a wandering Evangelist of Empire. ' 1 It was Parkin's dream that one day soon Canada and the other Dominions would take their rightful place alongside Britain and together they would jointly administer a world-wide empire in which peace and justice flourished. T fear you have a dreamer for a husband, ' he told his wife. 2 Dreamers, though, sometimes miscalculate. Once he set off on a lecture

Work for King and Country 9 tour without leaving his family enough money, and Annie had to strain very hard to make ends meet in his absence. 3 After six years of this satisfying but exhausting work, he was lured back to Canada with an invitation to head Upper Canada College, a post he held from 1895 until 1902. Now Parkin was old and the future belonged to the young. Perhaps someone like his namesake, Maude's two-and-a-half-year-old son, George Parkin Grant, might one day carry on his work. They were together that summer at Cap a l'Aigle on the North Shore of the St Lawrence near Murray Bay, and it was a happy time, walking, talking, fishing, picnicking with his grandchildren in the hills or on the beach. 4 On one emblematic occasion, he invited his grandchildren to accompany him on a picnic; and only George, blond, blue-eyed, pudgy, volunteered to go. Dressed in a white cotton pullover and shorts, he walked barefoot along the beach, holding his grandfather's hand and trailing a stick in the sand. Sir George was relaxed and, for him, casually dressed, wearing a tweed suit and waistcoat, white leather shoes, and a boater. When it came time to eat they sat on the rocks and feasted on oranges and bananas and bacon. Back in England, Sir George recalled that moment in a letter to his grandson. 'I was delighted to get that nice picture of our jolly little picnic on the shore... I am quite sure the other girls and boys wished to be with us. I wish mother could bring you over to England with her, so that we could have another picnic here. ' 5 Everyone knew that this might be the old man's last time together with his family. The Masseys commissioned F. H. Varley to paint Parkin's portrait6 and the vacation was carefully photographed by a skilled photographer. The photograph of the jolly little picnic to which he referred was a beautiful study of the loving relationship between grandfather and grandson and it duly appeared in Parkin's biography. For George the day turned into a nightmare, because, in his mother's eyes, it took on a mythic significance. 'That picture of me on the beach - you know that story was told to me a thousand times - how he had asked for one child to stay with him on the beach and I was the one who volunteered; and Mother would tell me this was my destiny, to carry on this work. '7 Throughout his childhood, George felt overwhelmed by the memory of his grandfather. 'Here was the dominance of a man who was not present; he was the dominating figure in my mother's life. '8 Worse, he was fated to carry with him through life a constant reminder of his forebears, his name. As Parkin explained in the letter to his young grandson: 'It seemed to me that as your own name was George, and both your grandfathers were Georges, and as I knew you had at the College a picture of St.

io George Grant George you also might like to have King George in your room - so here he is. I have talked with him several times, and he is so cheerful and pleasant that I am sure you would not mind having a chat with him yourself, if you should happen to meet him. And when you grow up you will be expected to work for your king and country. '9 Grampa Parkin himself had gently pronounced the doom. There was no way it could be lifted. Two months after he sent the letter, on 25 June 1922, he died in London. In the meantime, until George grew up and could devote himself to public service, his father and his uncles carried the torch for him. Lord Milner, the British politician who was Parkin's patron, had founded the Round Table Movement to promote ties within the Empire, and his protege George Parkin served as the Canadian secretary until his death, when Jim Macdonnell succeeded him. His other sons-in-law were also active in the early 1920s. However, the Great War changed power relationships throughout the world and these world-historical developments were reflected in microcosm in the Parkin clan. The three sons-in-law drifted apart politically. Macdonnell stayed with the pro-British party, the Conservatives, for his whole life. Massey chose more shrewdly and supported the Liberals, the party that thought that Canada's destiny lay in a North American alliance - although Massey was a sentimental anglophile to his death. William Grant himself avoided formal involvement in partisan politics for more public-spirited causes such as the Workers' Educational Association, which he helped found, and was president of the League of Nations Society. Because of the prominence later attained by Vincent Massey and Jim Macdonnell, and indeed George himself, it is easy to exaggerate the eminence of the Masseys, Macdonnells, and Grants in the 1920s. Both George's grandfathers were of humble origins and rose on their abilities alone. They attained prominent educational positions, and these brought them into contact with various levels of the elite both in Canada and in Great Britain, but did not make them rich. The next generation was yet to make its mark. At the beginning of the 1920s Vincent Massey was wellto-do, but he had just joined the family firm. Prior to the war he was dean of men at Victoria College. It was his later political involvement with the Liberal party that led to his diplomatic postings - first in Washington, later in London - and he capped his career with the governor-generalship. Uncle Jim started as a lawyer in Kingston, and was still only a trust officer with the National Trust in Toronto at the age of thirty-seven. Later, in 1939 he became the company's president but he never was parti-

Work for King and Country 11 cularly wealthy since he devoted much of his time to the cause he believed in, the Conservative party. Maude's younger brother, Raleigh Parkin, 10 served in the First World War, was wounded, and never fully recovered his strength. He spent a pleasant but undistinguished career with the Sun Life Insurance Company in Montreal. Even George's father could scarcely be envied his task of reviving a school that had fallen on hard times. After the publication of Lament for a Nation, a writer in the Queen's Quarterly accused George of nostalgia and tried to explain his philosophy on the grounds that he came from a declining social class. 11 The premise was false: starting with the grandfathers they all rose in the world and some, like Vincent Massey, shot up like rockets. The only common traits they shared were that they were Protestants, they were ambitious, and they had all married Parkin sisters. George Parkin's daughters inherited an intense sense of family. Maude and Alice were especially close and they promoted one another's interests with great constancy of purpose. In later life George reflected on this phenomenon: 'One of the deepest kinds of eros that arises from the body is favouring your own. This is a fundamental fact of human nature. The temptations of later life are more hideous and more immoral than the temptations of whether I should do it with X, Yor Z. A very high percentage of parents have wanted their children to have more privileges in society than their talents deserved. '12 No one knew better than he what it was like to be pushed forward by a domineering mother. When William and Maude Grant came to Toronto in 1917 they had no deep roots in the city. William had lived there at the turn of the century when he was an assistant master at Upper Canada, and Maude had lived at the school itself for a while when her father was in charge. Of course, as headmaster of one of the leading private boys' schools in Ontario, William immediately came into contact with his pupils' parents, the prosperous and prominent of Toronto. In itself this might not have given the Grants an entree into the best circles, but they had other cards to play. Sir George was still alive and a man to reckon with; he knew most of the leading political figures in the Empire. Principal Grant, though he died in 1902, was still a legendary figure who had transformed Queen's from a small college into an important university. This background was enough to gain the brothers-in-law acceptance and, as each advanced, the others also solidified their position. Maude's social skills achieved the rest. The Grants may have been only one generation away from the farm on both sides of the family, but they were fairly soon securely embedded near the centre of Toronto society.

12 George Grant Yet it must not be assumed, because they enjoyed a certain social standing, that they were also wealthy. Although William's position paid a very good salary, enough to retain three servants, what money he inherited from his parents (not a large sum), he had largely gambled and frittered away before he met Maude. Wealth is a relative thing and the Grants were the poor relations in their own family. After William's death the family's financial fortunes plummeted, and Maude was able to maintain her place in society only with the help of a pension from Upper Canada. The influence of his male relations increased as George grew to manhood, but the child could be forgiven for thinking that women ruled the world. Undoubtedly the single most formative figure was his mother; in later life George confessed to an 'Oedipus complex the size of a house. ' 13 We can get some sense of the force of Maude's personality from Eugene Forsey's observation that 'she could have run the whole British Empire at the height of its power single-handed. '14 A story George often told gives us an insight into her priorities and her determination. She had been invited to dinner at Government House in Toronto, and in those days what happened at the lieutenant-governor's still mattered very much. To be there, and to be seen to be there, showed that one was as important as the other guests and, just as significant, it established the superiority of those who had been invited to those who had not. On this evening, while William was driving her there, the car broke down. Maude simply announced that she was under no circumstances going to be late for that dinner; so she hailed a taxi and left her husband to manage with the broken-down car as best he could. (She later told the story to her daughter-in-law as a moral tale to teach her to keep her priorities straight. ) George's sisters took after their mother. They must have been strongwilled with powerful personalities, and he always stood slightly in awe of them. This was the gynarchy, as he called it, in which George grew up. One day he came down to breakfast and found his mother and his three sisters sitting around the table. As usual, they had divided the newspaper among themselves and left nothing for him. This morning they were muttering to each other about some news item, 'It's a man's world. ' The little brother found it hard to share their view that it was the women who were the victims; it always seemed to be them who were ganging up on him. At Otter Lake, when he annoyed his older sisters, they picked him up and heaved him into the middle of a juniper bush. 15 There were women who fussed over George, but they were not his mother or sisters. He was doted on by the servants. The central figure in his life was his nurse, Mrs Don Leo, known affectionately as Leo. Born

Work for King and Country 13 Lizzy Stairs, she served as a housemaid at the residence in Manchester when Maude, whom she adored, was warden. After Maude married, she came back to Canada with the new bride. White-haired and small, she pampered the Grant children; they probably took the place in her affections of her own, who both died young. George was her special favourite and she treated him like a little doll, letting his golden hair grow so long that William stepped in, took George to the barber, and had it cut. Leo's affection and tenderness left its mark on George. One of his most powerful childhood memories was being comforted by her when he began to cry over a passage in Uncle Tom's Cabin she was reading to him. 16 William knew that Leo spoiled the children, but when he discovered that she was spending most of her earnings on clothes and presents for George, he decided to set her wages aside, only doling out the money when she needed it. Eventually, when George was nine or ten, William decided that it was best for both George and her that, since she was near retirement age, she should leave their employ and return home to England. She did, and her small cottage in Allerthorpe in Yorkshire became a place of pilgrimage for all the children whenever they found themselves in England. Next in importance for George was the parlour-maid, Sarah. Raised in the slums of Edinburgh, she went to work when she was eleven. She was rosy-cheeked, with sparse brown hair, and so rotund that her starched apron stuck out rather than hanging down. Although she was not very tall, she was imposing enough to children when armed with a broom to sweep them out of the kitchen. 17 A warm motherly woman, she often sat with the children as they ate the tea that Dorothy Drury, the cook, had prepared. 18 She spun out stories of her own childhood and youth, never forgetting to recount the time in her previous employment when she was chased around the dining room with the lieutenant-governor in hot pursuit while she fended him off with St Matthew's warnings against adultery. The children took their main meal at lunch in the nursery, followed by a light tea with bread and butter or cake, and an egg or maybe some macaroni in the evening. At thirteen or fourteen they were deemed fit company for the grown-ups at supper. The final female influence in the family was Lady Parkin, Maude's mother. Annie Connell Fisher came from one of the leading families of New Brunswick, industrialists who counted a Father of Confederation, Charles Fisher, among their number. She had fallen for a poor but charismatic schoolteacher, who justified her confidence in him with a brilliant career crowned with a title. After Sir George's death she lived in

14 George Grant turns with Alice and Maude. Although her husband had been born a farm-boy, he died a knight, and she was now a knight's widow. In England she travelled in good circles, but in Toronto her rank put her at the very top. All doors were open to her; it was up to her to decide whom she honoured. She was, in short, a snob. When she first came to Toronto, she needed to open a bank account. She went to the local branch and the manager asked for references. 'I suppose I could give my three daughters, ' Lady Parkin suggested. 'Who are they?' asked the bank manager. 'Mrs William Grant, Mrs Vincent Massey, Mrs James Macdonnell, ' she replied. 'Your daughters have married well, ' said the manager. On this comment, Lady Parkin rose and left the bank. Her daughters had not married well; her sons-in-law had been lucky to marry Parkins. She opened her account elsewhere. Even in her own family she was known as Lady Parkin. She knew that to play the game meant going to the right dinner parties and having those who were currently fashionable to tea. It was a lesson she taught her daughters well; Alice and Maude were particularly good at it. She shared this affectation with her husband, and in the past it had exasperated many who knew them, not least their son-inlaw. Once, when chatting to his friend Stephen Leacock, William Grant complained about Parkin's remorseless name-dropping. 'Has he no friends below the rank of Viscount?' Grant asked. 'Plenty, ' Leacock replied, 'back on the farm. ' 19 George felt driven to succeed in the world, 20 and he knew that his mother wanted him to be as successful as his grandfather Parkin. His mother was also supremely ambitious in her own right. When she married she was a university graduate and held a responsible administrative position. These were no small achievements for a young Victorian woman, but she wanted more and her chance came when William received the offer from Upper Canada. She threw herself with energy into the life of the school, but her greatest achievement was her success in her chosen role as society hostess. The universal testimony of those who remember her is her unfailing graciousness. This was not a pose she adopted only when she was with those she wanted to impress. For example, towards the end of the Second World War, George took out poet Margaret Avison from time to time. Once, on the spur of the moment, he asked her home for dinner. When they arrived Maude greeted Margaret warmly and said: 'How nice you can keep George company at dinner. I've eaten already but there's enough for you and George. ' She produced a Cornish hen with potatoes and vegetables for each of them and sat at the end of the table chatting

Work for King and Country 15 cheerfully while they ate. Avison suspected that Mrs Grant had quietly given up her own meal so that her son's guest would not be embarrassed, but she could not be certain. This ability to put others at ease doubtless served her well on many occasions among the great and the good. The importance of keeping up appearances was something she drilled into her children. One evening George, his mother, and his sisters were playing cards and a fierce family argument broke out and was getting worse. Suddenly, the doorbell rang and George went to answer it. By the time he opened the door to greet the visitor, everyone was all smiles and the women were chatting amiably to one another. Maude wanted her son to be a success; only half-jokingly he later said that she expected him to become prime minister and never forgave him for failing. However, her world made its decisive judgments about people in subtle ways. The decisions, George once observed, in which a ruling class defines and exerts its interests are made at private social occasions, such as parties. 'A young man with intelligence and ambition may be asked a question by an influential elder. It is understood by all concerned that this is a test, that the answer will determine the trustworthiness of the individual and whether he will be put into a position of power. Many people do not know that this is the way it works. I know, because I gave the wrong answer. '21 It would be nice to know more about this event, but at least the consequences are clear. Maude defined success as social prominence and, even after he became a philosopher, George could never entirely free himself from feeling that he was, in his mother's eyes, a failure. His childhood, George often said, was unhappy. 22 His sister Charity, though, thinks he exaggerated his despondency; and Alison, the closest to him in age, retained particularly happy memories of growing up at UCC in the 1920s. At that time the college was almost in the country, its front facing towards the city, the back opening on to fields. The children roamed throughout the college grounds, playing hide and seek in the corn fields, being shown around the shiny boiler room by the engineer, or climbing the copper beech outside Grant House to watch the masters come in for a meeting. Mike, an Irish gardener, had his own unique way of keeping children in line. In return for a promise not to ruin the corn fields, he took out his blue glass eye and gave it to the child to hold. The greatest excitement, though, was to go out to the side gate of Upper Canada on Forest Hill Road and Frybrook to see the Meet of the Eglinton Hunt - red coats, horses and hounds, and all, a bit of old England preserved for the moment near the centre of Toronto. 23 Horses were not

16 George Grant uncommon then because the roads in the area were not paved and, as George was playing with friends like Philip Foulds, neighbours rode by and waved hello. The motor car was coming, though, and as soon as the Grant girls turned sixteen they were taken to the dirt roads behind the college to learn to drive. George in some moods could also remember many delightful moments; part of his love for literature came from his parents. When he was growing up in Toronto in the 1920s, print was still the dominant medium; and in the evening father or mother read one of the classics aloud to the family, A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens, or Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, or the Iliad. However, broadcasting was beginning to intrude and, as they got older, the children preferred to listen to the Rudy Vallee or Eddie Cantor hours on the radio. When he was a teenager George enjoyed going to visit his elderly relatives, often in retirement homes, so that he could listen to their stories of their lives. 24 Story-telling enchanted him throughout his life, and he himself became a master of the art; many of the tales he later related were those he first heard as a child. Maude's younger sister Grace had married a British scientist, Harry Wimperis, and they lived in London. This connection proved useful for another of George's childhood passions, stamp-collecting. When Alison sent a letter to her uncle, she added a note asking for a stamp or two for her little brother. 'Mother says that George is stamp mad, ' she explained. 25 These were happy memories. There were, however, two guilty secrets he preserved from his childhood. Once, to his shame, when he was short of money, he stole a quarter from his father's table to support his habit of buying candy from a nearby store. On another occasion he mischievously tried to flush some turnips down the toilet. He was caught by Leo and then doubly punished when he tried to lie his way out of it. To these memories we can add the yearly rhythm of festivals: birthdays, Victoria Day and, of course, Christmas. Maude turned birthdays into a grand ritual. She made a crown of flowers for the birthday girl or boy and arranged that, when the cake was cut, the right person got the dime. The table was covered with a special white table cloth that William had bought when he studied in Paris; all the gargoyles from Notre Dame were embroidered on it in red. William never did anything until the last minute and then he would remember and write a piece of light verse. 26 On Victoria Day William got an opportunity to revel in his love of fireworks. Maude generally controlled the family finances, but she relented in the face of William's enthusiasm. He would then go out and spend an uncon-

Work for King and Country 17 scionable amount of money, which went up in flames on the Oval at Upper Canada to the delight of his family, the boys at the school, and the neighbours who came over to watch. Christmas was the most solemn ritual of all. On Christmas Eve, the family decorated the tree, including, in the German style, real candles. Then the door was locked and the children sent to bed. On Christmas morning, the family sat down to breakfast about eight o'clock, before they touched their presents, because William considered it thoughtless to disrupt the servants' routine. Once the meal was out of the way, the family turned to the gifts, of which Lady Parkin's were always the special ones. Then they went to Deer Park Church, at first Presbyterian but after 1925 United Church. (William, to the dismay of his Grant relatives, abandoned the faith of his fathers for the new ecumenical organization. ) The main dinner in the evening was always a Parkin celebration, usually at Upper Canada or at the Masseys'. After the Macdonnells returned to Toronto from Montreal in 1930, Aunt Marjorie might take charge, and dinner then took place at their house. After 1930, though, the Christmas festivities generally shifted to Batterwood, the house the Masseys built near Port Hope on four hundred acres of pleasant Ontario countryside. Batterwood was an elegant place, filled with servants and tastefully decorated. The guests arrived before Christmas and stayed until a few days after. The young cousins were bedded down in rows in the attic, while their parents slept in the guest rooms. On Christmas, Massey played Santa Claus and distributed the presents. In the evenings the guests gathered in the indoor badminton court, temporarily transformed into a theatre, to play charades.27 Batterwood was not George's only direct contact with the privileged life. His parents actively maintained their connection with the old country, and this brought George into contact with what he would later call, in despair, the whole Noverings scene. Noverings was the large though singularly uncomfortable home of Marian Buck in Bosbury, Herefordshire, near the Welsh border. 28 Mrs Buck (a devoted admirer of Grandfather Parkin) was nearing seventy when George was born, and since she had no direct heirs of her own, she proposed, in effect, to adopt George and to train him to continue his grandfather's dream of creating a worldwide political unit out of the British Empire. William, fortunately, was determined that his son be brought up a Canadian, and scotched the plan. However, Mrs Buck exerted constant pressure, both financial and hortatory, to mould George in what she considered the proper Parkin form

18 George Grant until her death in 1947 at the age of ninety-seven. From about the age of four, George was an occasional visitor at Noverings, fussed over by Agnes the cook and Jones the chauffeur. 29 When the summer's plans kept them in Canada, the Grants went to the family cottage at Otter Lake, near Parry Sound. The property, which they bought in the early 1920s, consisted of a big house in which the grownups lived, built around an early log cabin, and several small cabins, devoted to a large collection of relatives and friends of the children who regularly joined them there for fishing and swimming. The groceries were brought in by boat and the more perishable items stored in the ice house in the barn. The most unusual feature of the property was a primitive nine-hole golf course, laid out over an old farm. There were unusual hazards, such as the shaft of an old gold mine, and the rocks, which dotted the fairways, presented an additional challenge since they could be counted on to send the ball flying off in a random direction at almost any moment. There were even printed scorecards. One, which survives from his childhood, reveals that George completed the nine holes of the course, called Janefield, in a mere 98. Golf was to prove one of his lifelong passions and he enthusiastically followed the sport long after he abandoned playing it; his sister Charity continued to play into her late seventies. He also knew what it was to be shipped off to camp. In 1929, during Upper Canada's centenary celebrations, his parents sent him to Cochrane Camp in Temagami, the more or less official camp of Upper Canada. From his letters, he seems to have enjoyed himself. One letter reported 'a circus with: 3 twins; Bonzo maneater; hearty hefto Strongman; and Aloa and her two palpitating queens. ' Another recounted his progress in the manly arts of outdoor survival: 'I have been trying my elementry surtificet (sic) I have got - swimming, trees, rowing, knots, compass. I have to pass my canoeing and stars. I try my stars tonight. I wouldn't be able to try my canoeing yet' Another time he wrote home in excitement: 'When I was on a trip one night I was out fishing and saw a fawn swimming in the lake we followed it to the shore. One time our canoe was only about two yards away from it. '30 In 1931 George was up north again, this time at Georgian Bay, canoeing twenty miles to Recollett Falls, which he found 'very beautiful because of the wildness of the place. ' His trophies included three pike and three pickerel; his only complaint seemed to be that it was 'a great disadvantage having to bring up worms. ' It is likely that he was away that summer

Work for King and Country 19 because Maude had to look after her mother. Lady Parkin was seriously ill, indeed dying from the renal disease that afflicted her for several years. Her last letters show her deeply devoted to her grandson. On 13 July she asked Maude to 'give my precious George a big hug. I can't write but I love him dearly. '31 And on the 31st, she wrote from Batterwood, where she was staying with the Masseys: 'As for George he just seemed more beautiful than ever. He really has a rare nature for a child so young. I do love him. '32 She died on 20 August 1931. 33 It must have been a terrible shock when George got the telegram. He replied to his mother: 'I am terribly sorry about dear Grandmummy; she was so good. '34 Forty years later, his views were the same: 'The person I loved best, as a young person, was Lady Parkin. She was the warm hearted one. I loved Alice and I owe so much to my mother and loved my mother but neither Alice nor my mother were what I would call womanly women; they weren't the gentle, flexible, yielding women that I felt in Grandmother Parkin. I liked a lot of kissing, I felt there was a great deal more (to use modern language) sensuality in Grandmother Parkin. I loved being hugged; I loved the wetness and the softness. '35 The next summer Maude went to France and Spain, and George found himself again up north. 'It is keen up here because there are lots of College boys. Last night there was a regatta dance which we went to. It was lots of fun. '36 Indeed his love for the wilderness was manifested in his first publication, a poem in In Between Times, the college magazine's literary supplement. A Lake

It sparkles in the morning light, It glimmers in the evening shade, The greenish waters deep and clear, Surrounded by the rocky shores, On which pine, birch and poplar bright, Grow, where in the spring the seed was laid, At one end is a beaver's weir, O'er which the water gently pours.37

All in all, this sounds like a tolerable life, comfortable with occasional touches of luxury. Neither of his parents was demonstratively affectionate, but they were clearly devoted to him, and his older sisters were lively and

20 George Grant full of fun. His summers were generally pleasant, spent with his family either in England or at Otter Lake. Except for the last year as a boarder at Upper Canada after his father died, there is little evidence of the unhappiness he claims to have endured as a child.

3

Willie's boy

Fifty years after his father's death, George suddenly had a fleeting memory of the moment when William handed him a book and told him: 'Sherlock Holmes was not killed in his encounter with Professor Moriarty. '1 This was the only kind of image of his father he retained, isolated and fragmentary. Otherwise, he confided to Charity, he had hardly any memory of their father at all and knew nothing of his inner life. 2 Indeed we might be tempted to say that he knew very little about the whole Grant side of the family at all. 'My father's family, ' he declared, 'were Scots, immigrants who had been kicked off their land in the conquest of Scotland by the English, who had been driven from their land in the Highland clearances. '3 This was wonderfully dramatic, but the truth seems more prosaic and George could easily have learned the facts by looking at the biography of George Monro Grant that his father wrote with Frederick Hamilton and published in 1905. James Grant, whose ancestors were farmers from time immemorial, was the fourth of seven sons: 'finding no suitable prospects of a livelihood at home, [he] decided to try his fortunes in the New World, '4 and he arrived in Pictou County, Nova Scotia, in 1826. In 1831 he married Mary Monro, and four years later, on 22 December 1835, she gave birth to a son, George Monro Grant. Like George Parkin, he too grew up on a farm. James Grant was remembered as a man of unblemished life and simple Christian piety, who shared the Scottish respect for education and served as the local schoolmaster in addition to his farming duties. When young 'Geordie' mangled his hand in a farm accident (and, therefore, would not be able to carry on with the family farm), his father encouraged his clever son to go to Scotland for university studies in Glasgow,

22 George Grant and then enter the ministry. He was called to be rector of St Matthew's Church in Halifax in 1863. As a clergyman with a genteel parish, G. M. Grant would have been just respectable enough to propose to Jessie Lawson, the eldest daughter of a prosperous West India merchant, whose family had been in Halifax since 1749. They were married two months before Confederation united Nova Scotia and New Brunswick with Canada. While in Halifax, G. M. Grant was involved in the revival of Dalhousie University, but his big opportunity to make his mark came in 1877, when he accepted the invitation to head a small, financially troubled Presbyterian college. 5 He set off for Kingston, Ontario, with his wife and fiveyear-old son William and presided over Queen's until his death on 13 May 1902. 6 He found an impoverished college offering a general education. By force of personality and hard work he transformed it into an important university. He took as his model the German ideal of research training, which emphasized the training of specialists, and modelled the curriculum on the type of education found in the more eminent American institutions. 7 Aloof and dour, he became one of the towering figures in late Victorian Canada. When his son William returned to Upper Canada College in 1917 he too faced a crisis every bit as serious as his father had met at Queen's. The school was in chaos. Enrolment had plummeted because his predecessor, a intellectually brilliant but administratively inept English schoolmaster, proved unable to cope either with the board of governors or his teaching staff. William Grant set out immediately to revitalize Upper Canada. He persuaded the trustees that they must increase teachers' salaries so that he could hire a better teaching staff. His strategy was to recruit a collection of masters who passionately believed in the importance of teaching, and who could discipline and inspire the students. The proper aim of the school, in his view, was the formation of character, and hence he was less interested in hiring scholars than he was in recruiting men with powerful personalities. Jock de Marbois, fluent in twenty languages, a member of the Legion d'honneur, married to the daughter of the commander of the czar of Russia's Horse Guards, was the most striking, but not untypical. Others such as Nicholas Ignatieff and Ernest MacMillan, who later was awarded a knighthood for his services to music, were equally outstanding masters. Within a decade the school was flourishing again, and more than six hundred sons of the Toronto gentry were attending classes.8

Willie's boy 23 William himself, or 'Choppy' as he is known at the, school to this day,9 was an impressive figure to most of the boys, though not apparently to his son. 'I hardly knew my father, ' George often said. However, as we shall see, many of George's most deeply held beliefs came to him from his father and he never properly understood the extent to which his father influenced his own mature moral, religious, and political outlook. Certain sensitivities, such as the hatred of war and the sense of its futility, he absorbed directly; but many were obscure to a teenager, because they operated obliquely, at one remove, through the curriculum of the school. Maude's son was, to a much greater extent than he ever realized, Willie's boy. The influence started very early. Since William came to Upper Canada as a reformer, 10 it is not surprising that he experimented a little with his own children. He thought that girls and boys were generally sent away to school too young, and he instituted a genuinely private school within Upper Canada for his own children. A Miss Jewett was the teacher and her class consisted of a Grant child or two, along with a few children of friends the same age. About the age of eight, George was sent for a very brief stint in the public system, spending no more than a year at Brown School on Avenue Road, before he entered the preparatory school at Upper Canada. There and in the senior (high) school he was to prove a very good but not outstanding student, generally placing about third in his class. Sport was given its traditional, English public school emphasis at Upper Canada, and this placed George at an immediate disadvantage. He was an awkward athlete and not good at the team sports that the school emphasized. His father was very proud when George was chosen captain of the school's second soccer team, but that was an isolated achievement. Yet his surviving letters from this period show that he shared the school passion for games, although more often than not as a spectator. When his mother was out of town he made sure he kept her up on the latest scores and the memorable deeds of the school heroes. However, 'Choppy' Grant's main reforming thrust was to supplement Upper Canada's academic and athletic program by introducing music and art into the life of the school, and this change suited George much better. On one memorable occasion, at age nine, he sang in Bach's Saint Matthew Passion at Massey Hall under the direction of Ernest MacMillan; but otherwise it was more or less a steady diet of Gilbert and Sullivan (though a school performance of their operettas was less a cliche then

24 George Grant than later). Since the school was all male, the boys played the women's roles and George, with his delicate features and blond hair, was usually recruited. 'My hair is growing awfully long because I haven't had it cut since January 6 and as we aren't going to have wigs he said to let your hair grow. I have a small part not anything as the train bearer because I am just on once. For the rest I am a fairy. '11 In 1933 he was promoted to the role of Saphir in the production of Patience. The review in the College Times was enthusiastic, and though it did not single out George's performance, it did comment: 'The performances were a huge success. The audience, as well as the cast, enjoyed itself, which is after all the acid test of an amateur production... even the unfeminine behaviour of some of the actresses served to give an additional touch of burlesque, which is perhaps the best way of dealing with a subject that has lost its significance in 1933. 12 The following year he played Cleopatra in Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra opposite C. N. R. Stewart. G. P. Grant, the College Times noted, was 'well cast and won much praise. ' He followed that up in 1935 with his performance as Gloria Clandon in Shaw's You Never Can Tell. The review in the school magazine was favourable: 'George [the school caretaker] and Grant were both excellent as mature women. ' George also excelled at public speaking, winning the junior speaking competition in 1934 with a talk on Canterbury cathedral. 'He made a few mistakes in grammar, ' the College Times observed, 'but gave a very interesting talk. He has a very natural style and was the most poised speaker of the evening. '14 This early training later served him well both as a broadcaster and in the classroom. Since in George's case family and school were as one, they reinforced each other. He never lost his love of music and literature. As for art, it was more likely that Uncle Vincent was the main influence. 15 When George was at Batterwood in his youth, Massey used to show him his art collection and ask his opinions of the paintings. Once, when George was visiting, he met F. H. Varley, who had painted George Parkin and other family members through Massey's patronage. George was particularly curious about a picture of Chester Massey he had seen in Hart House, predominantly yellow with the subject's face obscured. 'Was that a new style at this stage, Mr Varley?' asked George in a somewhat precious and pedantic way. T looked at his face and saw that it was nothing, stuffed with money. I just wanted to hide it, ' Varley replied. 16 A piece of light verse George wrote in 1934 confirms the impression that he was quite precocious in his familiarity with contemporary art and already somewhat opiniated about it.

Willie's boy 25 Picasso

On cubes and squares, Picasso The modern critic feeds. 'Oh isn't Pablo too sublime He soars, he builds, he leads. ' 'To think that Spain produced this man!' With rapture they elate. 'Velasquez and El Greco are Completely out of date. ' 'A one man revolution. Our one and only light. ' 'My dear! of course! it is the vogue To be a Picassite. '17 This poem, however, reveals more than an interest in art; it confirms that, even as an adolescent, George Grant's imagination was more poetic than analytic. As he matured as a thinker and a writer, symbols played a key role in how he saw life and how he expressed his vision. In 'Picasso, ' and in a short story published in the same issue, 'The American Breakfast Table', we can see young George's tendency to think and write symbolically. Picasso here stands for modern art, Velasquez and El Greco the older tradition, which the ironic tone of the third stanza suggests that George prefers. 18 In his short story, he uses the breakfast table as a symbol of the American family, which, in George's view, is run by a domineering mother, while the father is only allowed to make unimportant decisions such as political ones. Many times in the future he would use the definite article ('The' rather than 'An' American breakfast table) to heighten perceptions of objects or persons. Art for George was never merely a formal or self-referential activity; it always had a significance beyond itself. When a sculpture by Elizabeth Wyn Wood, 'Reef and Rainbow', was set up at Upper Canada, the boys were ask to write an essay on it. George's showed a side of his nature in addition to the aesthetic, his social compassion: 'A piece of crude tin has been turned into something elusive and interesting... We do not realize that we are set on earth to do more than provide our insides with choice foods. If we could get a vision that would lead us up to the mountain, life would be a much finer place. For a slum clearer is an artist. He takes away ugliness and leaves health and glory. We climb the mountain

26 George Grant through the forests and then through the rocks but we never reach the snowy peak. We have food, clothing and shelter. What else have we got? What are we giving?'19 Passionate, sensitive, intellectual, and deeply moved by art, literature, and music: these elements are already in place. But they were not the sort of thing that would make George respected or even liked at a place such as Upper Canada in the 1930s. It still saw its chief role as teaching boys to be men. They were beaten when they were naughty, or forced to march around the quad in punishment parade. With his awkwardness, his delicate good looks, his interest in the fine arts, he was not one of the boys. 'I felt less of a man than the ordinary boys - and yet I was quite aware that I saw more deeply into the heart of things. '20 It is unlikely he would have enjoyed Upper Canada much even if his father had not been the principal. He also took a precocious interest in politics. His earliest political memory was from 1933 when his father called him in from playing in the spring flood to listen to Franklin Roosevelt's inaugural address on the radio. 21 Yet an interest in politics came naturally to him also from his uncles. Jim Macdonnell was a Conservative and Vincent Massey a prominent Liberal. It was the latter web into which he was first drawn. Massey was president of the Liberal party, and on occasion met his national leader, Mackenzie King, at William's house. George found King charming but an odd combination of prissiness and ruthlessness, 'a sissy gangster, ' as he later described him. Mitch Hepburn, the provincial Liberal leader, was also a visitor, both there and at Batterwood. George met him too. He also served with other young visitors to Batterwood as gofers at the Liberal summer schools Massey ran at Trinity College School in Port Hope. In light of this background, it is not surprising that the man who was to become the Liberal party's bitterest critic identified himself with it when he was sixteen, and he was more than a passive observer. In the 1935 election, Upper Canada carried out a mock vote of its own. George was head of the Liberal committee! He took the matter so seriously that he chided his mother for being out of the country at such an important time, when the Liberals needed her vote 'for freedom and good government. ' 'As last week the fortunes of the Liberals in Canada were going down, I think they are going up gradually though a lot of people think that no party will have a majority. That would be disastrous. '22 When the Liberal candidate, Captain Philpott, came to speak at the school, George was on the platform to introduce him.

Willie's boy 27 Even with this partisan activity, George could not get permission to attend the big Liberal rally on 8 October at the newly built Maple Leaf Gardens, and he was furious. 'Mr. King, 8 Provincial Premiers, Uncle Vincent, Mrs Thorburn and Mrs. Joe Fulford are speaking at the Maple Leaf Gardens to-morrow night. I asked Mr. Parlee if I could go. He refused. Which I think was a very foolish thing to do. He infuriated me beyond measure when he wouldn't let me go... I have just been reading some more about the Liberal Rally. Lionel Conacher the hockey player is going to be there speaking for the Liberals. Damn Mr. Parlee for not letting me go. Curse him. I am simply furious. Why shouldn't I go?... He is a Conservative he told me. Why can't I go? Bah! Bah! Bah!'23 George did not, however, let partisanship affect his judgment. He predicted that the 'Conservatives will get in at School, because most of the boys' fathers are small industrialists. ' The federal Liberal candidate was more sanguine about his own chances. 'Mr. Philpott was under the "impression" that Mr. Grant and Mr. Lang had already converted the college to Liberality and remarked he would be very sorry to defeat his rival both in the school and in South York. ' The school results vindicated George's analysis: Conservatives - 267 votes; Liberals - 53; Reconstruction - 32; CCF - 15. 24 He lost at the College, but nationally, for one of the few times in his life, he was on the winning side. Kenneth McNaught, who headed the CCF contingent at the school, had less reason to rejoice; his party was trounced everywhere. In another very important matter he was out of step with mainstream opinion. With, as we shall see, one important exception, he was a lifelong pacifist. It was required when boys entered the Upper School, as George did in the autumn of 1932, that they join the cadet corps, run by Sergeant-Major Carpenter, who also supervised the gym and sports activities. George's friend Michael Gelber had withdrawn from the cadet corps of his previous school the year before he came to UCC. His mother wrote Principal Grant a letter asking that he be excused. He was summoned to the principal's office and asked why he had come to the school if he were not prepared to abide by its regulations. However, the interview persuaded 'Choppy' that Gelber's reluctance was genuine and principled, and he assented. Later, other boys were also exempted. George, too, wanted out, but his father probably feared that to allow it might be taken as favouritism. George must have thought it very unfair that he alone had no father to intercede with the principal. In these pacifist sentiments, George was soon to be joined by a substantial number of converts. In his Prize Day Address for 1934, William

28 George Grant Grant noted: 'Several friends have presented books to our Library. Of these perhaps the most interesting gift was that of twenty-five copies of Mr. Beverley Nichols' Cry Havoc by Mr. Graeme Watson. These books were devoured by the boys like hot cakes - much to the horror of Sgt. Major Carpenter - and a large number of essays were written about the book. '25 The book was reviewed, unfavourably, in the College Times. 'Cry Havocis a somewhat confusing jumble of arguments against mass murder; some of which, at least, the author hopes will strike home to each of his varied readers... Those who praise it were pacifists before they read it. '26 The book was a indeed a jumble. Cry Havoc27 ranges widely over the arguments for pacifism, from the iniquities of the arms merchants to Christian and Ghandian grounds for pacifism. Yet it contains a number of observations that were bound to appeal to idealistic lads. It mocks the cadet corps because it teaches out-of-date military drills at the same time as it is 'an institution which is, or should be, primarily devised for killing' Its concluding chapter recalls the famous resolution of the Oxford Union: 'That this house will in no circumstances fight for King and Country. ' However, the reviewer was wrong on one key point. Nichols's book was very persuasive, especially for young people, and it made a great many converts, both in Canada and England. Cry Havoc affected George's life as much any book he ever read. By the time he put it down he was no longer just a teenager who hated war; he was a conscious and confident pacifist. After reading it some of his friends, such as Kenneth McNaught, renewed their efforts to secure exemption from the cadet corps. This time McNaught was successful and so was George. They were required to put in not terribly onerous alternative service in the art room, or in helping build the tennis courts. But they did have to endure the ridicule of the corpulent and choleric S/M who wanted to know what they would do if a Hun were raping one of their sisters. 29 One important clue to George's state of mind is a poem, handwritten and undated, but most likely from about this time. It reads as follows: Peace Its echoing and far echoing sounds Reach over earth to where on heaven's throne Almighty God sits in his pomp alone And when he sees he smiles And when on his smile comes life Which is our hope and our salvation.30

Willie's boy 29 Although George's early pacifism was not grounded in religion, he was far more religious as a youth than he let on as an adult. In later life he invariably contrasted his own faith with his mother's secularism. His mother, he always explained, abhorred organized religon, and he traced her distaste to a revival meeting she attended with her friend Ed Corbett while they were students together at McGill. John R. Mott, an important American evangelist, preached. Maude was so disgusted by Mott's attempt to link the spread of the Gospel with the world-wide triumph of the English-speaking peoples that, according to George in an interview with his Uncle Raleigh in 1972, she walked out and said she 'would never have anything to do with organized religion again. '31 This characterization of his mother is far too extreme. It is quite likely that she was uncomfortable with anyone who made emotional professions of faith, and it is unlikely that she herself was particularly devout. Yet the whole family, including Maude, attended church regularly, a practice she continued even after her husband was dead and the children had left home. In fact, George was virtually surrounded by religious influences as a child. Leo found the fact that the Grants were not Anglican vaguely disreputable; so each week she took one of the children with her to the Anglican church for morning prayer, while the rest of the family went, as she called it, to chapel. Mrs Drury, the cook, held weekly Salvation Army prayer meetings in the principal's residence; and George felt the presence of the ecstatic in Grandmother Parkin and associated this with her Anglican background.32 Yet the strongest source of his faith was his father. About the time that George was entering the Upper School, William explained some of his beliefs to his brother-in-law, Raleigh Parkin. 'I believe in the Holy Spirit, ' he wrote. 'That is the major part of my religion. [The best way] of trying to get into touch with it... is to reach up with one's reason, and so up and up till at last the spark of the divine which is in one fuses with the Holy Spirit. '33 As with music and literature, George learned of his father's faith not just at home, but also in the daily services in the chapel at school. For William Grant was someone who was able to make Christianity exciting for the lads. One night in Prayer Hall, his charges were electrified to hear him shouting Luther's injunction, 'Live in the large! Dare greatly, and if you must sin, sin nobly. '34 It might have been the formula his son would live by. Michael Gelber was very close to George at Upper Canada, and recalls George as a deeply religious person even as a schoolboy. 35 This side of George was revealed in his decision to join the religious discussion group that met for tea at John Davidson's. 36 Davidson was a

30 George Grant master at Upper Canada who had been refused ordination because the United Church considered him heterodox. He none the less served as a missionary in China where, presumably, his views were less of a liability. Besides George and Michael, the group included George's cousin Hart Massey, Stevie Leacock (the son of the humorist who had taught at Upper Canada with George's father under Parkin), 37 Bill Goulding, Geoffrey Wasteneys, and about a half dozen more. There were meetings each Thursday and, according to the report in the College Times for 1933, if their discussions 'achieved no other purpose, they have at least shown some of us that Religion is a very much more fundamental and vitally important thing than our Sunday School training led us to suppose. ' The next year the group affiliated with the Student Christian Movement, made a survey of the religions of the world, and studied the issues of war and peace. They also worked towards an understanding of Jesus based on St Luke. It is clear that George was not just a passive participant, since he won the Lower School prize for scripture study. This combination of a sincere Christianity and a concern for international issues, which strongly reflected William Grant's own interests, left its mark on the school. William was an active 'League of Nations man' himself, and the list of visitors to Upper Canada during the early thirties and the nature of their talks indicates that he thought it important to bring the wider world of affairs to the immediate attention of his charges. George was a member of the League. of Nations club run by the history master, Nicholas Ignatieff. The boys met in the principal's residence and read essays aloud, or listened to a talk from a visitor. On occasion they went on pamphlet-distributing expeditions downtown, sometimes wearing First World War gas masks to emphasize the horrors of war. George reflected this interest in his 1935 speech, 'Is the League of Nations a Failure?' Although he placed only third in the competition that year, the College Times declared that he had an excellent knowledge of his subject. He also entered the essay contest sponsored by the Canadian Legion on the topic 'How Can Canada Contribute toward Peace?' and won the bronze medal as the best in the school. It is not surprising that George chose these topics. How many times had he not heard his father, the president of the League of Nations society, speak with disgust about the Great War, when 'the best young, English-speaking Canadians went away to be slaughtered in an absolutely senseless war'?38 When the Second World War came, he wrote to his mother: ' [Daddy] was one of those who tried to prevent what is happening now and although it was a failure superficially, basically it was not -

Willie's boy 31 for next time there will be more of us like him. '39 By 1934 William's health was failing and the family decided to take a vacation together in England. It must have been a wonderful summer for young George. They stayed for a while at Noverings and Mrs Buck acquired a pony, Rob Roy, for him to ride. 40 He and his mother even amicably agreed on which riding boots to buy, a concurrence in taste that, as George remarked, 'does not always happen. '41 He rode over to General Hamilton's, a retired officer who helped Mrs Buck manage her estates, and the general took him to see the local sights. He boasted that now he was an accomplished equestrian. 'I have mastered the pony completely and feel completely confident. '42 He went to Stratford to see Henry V and played in a local cricket match, where he made the respectable total of eighteen runs. Near the end of the summer he reported his sightseeing and his unsuccessful attempts to draw himself to the attention of no less a personage than the distinguished playwright George Bernard Shaw. 'We went to the last night of the Malvern Festival to see A Man's House. We sat in the same row as Bernard Shaw. Mr. McDougall and I tried to make him step onto our toes. The play was very wonderful for the 1st two acts but it rather fell down in the last act. It is about a family in Jerusalem in the time of Christ's entry & crucifixion. '43 No visit to England was complete without staying for a while with Leo in her cottage in Allerthorpe in Yorkshire, and George was taken to the famous sights such as Ripon and Fountain Abbey. He was happy and in high spirits. As he joked to his mother, 'Leo and me are having a wonderful time. She is being wonderful to I. '44 When they returned from their holiday, William went back to work. There was much that needed his attention. There was construction at the school to supervise, the Depression affected attendance, and many administrative matters had simply been let slip because of his poor health. As winter approached he got worse and on 3 February 1935 William Grant died of pneumonia exacerbated by his war wounds. He was sixty-two. It was not just George who was affected; he had lost a father, but the school as a whole had lost a father-figure. All the boys were heart-broken and George doubly cursed, because he had to bear his grief stoically in public, the object he felt of all eyes as he sat in the front row of mourners at the service and stood by the casket at the cemetery. His school friends rallied around him. Michael Gelber and Bill Goulding comforted him and Eddie Campbell, with whom he later lived at Queen's, recalled: 'My friendship with George provided a needed masculine support for him in

32 George Grant his sorrow at the time of his father's death. '45 This must have been important, because he was sixteen and the only masculine presence in his life had disappeared. William was a very good father by all accounts. The worst failing that Alison could remember is that he regularly embarrassed her by talking in too loud a voice about intellectual subjects on the Avenue Road streetcar, but all parents have their unique ways of mortifying their children.46 George's own complaints were largely tied to the problem of having a father who was also head of his school. 47 Of his personal qualities, the one that most struck his son was his intellectual integrity. T remember learning about this virtue [of intellectual integrity] from my father who was an historian of Canada. I remember him spending a week trying to find out who had been present at a particular meeting between John A. Macdonald and Joe Howe. Integrity required that nothing inaccurate or slipshod should be in what he wrote. '48 With William's death, Maude had important plans to make. There would be a new principal for the school and his family would move into the principal's residence. Vincent Massey persuaded the governors to give her a pension of $3000 a year, and Mrs Buck sent money for her, with more to be set aside for George's education at Oxford; but for now Maude still had to find somewhere for George to live. He was duly enlisted for his last year at school as a boarder in Seaton House, where he fell into the hands of the Arch-Tory, Mr Parlee, he who would not let George attend the Liberal rally. By the middle of September 1935 Maude was outbound on the Empress of Britain, sailing for England to stay with relatives and friends for a while. George felt her absence intensely and he never really forgave her for abandoning him when his grief was so great. There can be no doubt that in his new circumstances he did detest the school. 'Boarding is incredibly dull. One lives for the weekend and when it is over one realises that one has done nothing while it lasted. '49 Yet he settled successfully down to work. He found the tension in mathematics so terrific and the master so intimidating that when they met a decade later, he was still frightened of him. His favourite subject was J. H. Biggar's history class, where he read Carl Wittke's History of Canada and Andre Siegfried's Les deux races (in English), and prepared an essay on a topic that figured large in his later thought, 'Is Canada a Nation?' For pleasure he read Hillaire Belloc's Robespierre, with which he found himself in sympathy. Indeed a few years later he even claimed: 'Of course I have always felt that the cradle of my political beliefs lies in France ever since, aged 8, I read H. G. Well's Outline of History about the French Revolution. '50

Willie's boy 33 Egalitarianism and outrage at injustice were deeply ingrained traits of his moral sense. One summer up north he had been reading Mutiny on the Bounty. 'Capt. Bligh he is the worst man I have ever read about. When I am reading about him I feel like hitting him I get so really mad. People talk about British Justice but since I read this book I don't think there is such a thing. '51 He also went to work at the University Settlement as part of a program to help poor immigrant children, though for a while he waited on the permission of his nemesis: 'That is up to Mr Parlee. I would love to. Yet it is mind improving. And that would never do. '52 He also participated enthusiastically in the school's social activities, writing to his mother: 'They have decided to turn the Steward's dance into a baby party. Anyone who wants to attend must dress up as a child under ten. This should be rather fun and I think I will go. All the masters are dressing up which will cause a great deal of excitement. '53 Dancing continued to be one of his pleasures until the injuries sustained in a car accident on the way home from a dance when he was fifty-one made it physically difficult. As for the point of girls other than dancing, for now it remained a mystery he tried to fathom, as he admitted much later, by reading Lady Chatterly's Lover'in the hope that it would prove didactic to my physiological ignorance of sexuality. ' As it happened, it proved not as useful as he hoped in teaching him 'what really happened between men and women in their mating. '54 Although, like most bright students, he worried about his marks, he did well. In spite of a short, violent bout with measles, he wrote a total of thirteen honours matriculation papers, including nine in his Final year, 55 and graduated near the top of his class. There could be little doubt that he would follow his father and grandfather to Queen's.56 Before he moved to Kingston, though, he had one last legacy to inherit from his father, and that was a sympathy for French Canada. 'One of [William] Grant's outspoken enthusiasms was the study of French, and his commitment to this end, along with his honest admiration for the French people in Canada, helped to make him something of a public figure. In 1926 his history of Canada was withdrawn from the British Columbia high schools because of its presumed pro-French and anti-British bias. '57 In 1936 the new principal MacDermott introduced George's history teacher Biggar to the head of university extension at McGill and Biggar arranged for one of his pupils to spend the summer in Quebec. 58 That pupil was George. He first stayed with the family of Victor Morin, a wealthy Quebecois

34 George Grant with a love of literature, poetry, and the history of French Canada, who admired George's father because of his defence of the Jesuits. The Morins were favourably impressed with George: 'My wife and children, ' M. Morin wrote, 'have kept the best remembrance of his sojourn with us and of his amiable qualities. '59 Although his host was disappointed to hear that George did not play polo, he revived on the news that George was an enthusiastic tennis player. 60 His time with the Morins was 'positively heaven, ' except for the occasional nuisance of having to wear a shirt and tie. During the daytime, he painted a good deal, went for long walks, and picked raspberries with the Morins' daughters. 61 Sometimes they went to the Morins' home at 3585 St Urbain Street in Montreal, where he saw the film version of Crime et Chdtiment, which he pronounced a masterpiece. He also followed the Quebec provincial election, which he thought (incorrectly) that the Liberals, led by Godbout, would win. Duplessis, for whom he later developed an affection, he found 'quite awful', and with 'no great qualifications to be premier of a province. ' As Victor Morin observed: 'During his stay with us, he has acquired a good practice of the French language and has observed the characteristics of French people around us. ' One of the things he discovered was the Catholicism of the province, which in turn made him conscious, probably for the first time, of his own Protestantism. He went to mass with the Morins and they reciprocated the courtesy by taking him to the Birks's sumptuous summer home on the other side of the mountain where Mr Birks conducted a Protestant service in an old mill. He was asked whether he would like meat on Fridays, contrary to the Catholic custom at the time, and he concluded that the Morin daughters were anti-Catholic, 'except as a religion to go to Church. ' He did have one unpleasant encounter. There is a young boy of twelve here who always thinks he is right... He loathes the King and Queen which infuriates me and everybody... The other day we were playing chess. He suddenly leant across the table and asked me if I believed in transubstantiation... I was dumbfounded. Thought quickly and said 'No'. He said 'Why' (all in French)(I was now rude). 'Because I don't believe in mysteries. ' (He started to shout. ) I have no idea what he said.6 After about a month with the Morins, he went to stay as the paying guest of a Catholic priest. He found the atmosphere oppressive. T am right in the centre of Catholic rigidity. No more sunbaths. Up at 7. 30 o'clock, no tennis, no water, none of the free and easy Morin life. ' Noth-

Willie's boy 35 ing seemed to go right. When he had a violent attack of hiccoughs during Mass, he was 'sure that for a moment one thought that it was a protest against Catholicism. '64 When he went to Montreal with the cure, he felt that he had to slip away in order to see Peter Lorre in Secret Agent. A biography of Thomas More his host recommended he found 'a trifle bitter for my Protestant taste. '65 And when he thought that he was on safe ground praising the French writer Alexander Dumas, who had 'always seemed harmless to me', he discovered to his shock: 'He is on the Index. Balzac, JJ. Rousseau, Montesquieu, Voltaire, all on the Index. '66 What was worse, he felt personally exploited. 'Yesterday M. Le Cure said we were going to St. Michel. He then said we would be staying at a hotel and naturally / would pay for the bill as it is an extra. What could I do? I should say that already he makes about 50 cents a day out of me. Where the Morins lost a good deal, he is cleaning up. '67 It was all too much. He proposed to his mother that they should go to their cottage at Otter Lake when he got back. 'I am reformed and would be willing to work. ' 68 Before we leave George's childhood, we should note that, in an important sense, George never did: 'I often think people think that I am large and big - but I am saying that I am really a hollow body, not really a man but a child. '69 This was written when he was fifty. He still bore the scars of his upbringing. Central was the feeling of parental neglect, especially by his mother, but also because of his father's death. As a child he felt helpless, but he learned that he could exercise some control over his world by obsessions and superstition. One such was his obsessive desire for punctuality, a trait that he let interfere even with his customary graciousness in dealing with others. He would set out half an hour early even for a casual social engagement, and then sit in the car parked around the corner, waiting for the appointed hour of arrival, or worse still arrive early to find his hostess still dressing. And heaven help students who were late for class. His superstitions, such as not leaving the house when the hands of the clock were at certain conjunctions, also indicate a desire to control or regulate existence: 'I must assert that I would rather have been sane than mad - that I regret what I was - all the crazy manhood fears about homosexuality, and above all compulsions and hysteria; and that it has wasted and corrupted much of my life. '70 A background such as his is also commonly associated with depression, and that too was George's lot throughout his life. There can be little doubt that George doubted his worth. Many factors undoubtedly combined to yield this result. His mother was often busy or away, and he was left in the care of servants. Even when she was with him Maude was

36 George Grant reserved and he felt little warmth from her. It was not that she did not love him; it was just the way she was. But how was a child to know? Leo, his substitute mother, who was more important to him when he was growing up than his own mother, was sent away when he was ten. What had he done, he might have thought, that she would abandon him too? When he needed help he could not get the same support from his parents as Michael Gelber or Kenneth McNaught, because his father was the principal. Nor was he popular with his school fellows. When it came to the physical activities that were so highly esteemed by the other boys at the school, he was clumsy. If he played sports at all, they were individual ones such as tennis and golf, rather than team sports. Perhaps the low point of his stay at Upper Canada was when he saw some graffiti on a wall. Upon inspection it proved to be a list of the All-Sissy Team: George was designated captain. And worst of all, his mother never allowed him to forget that he was George Parkin's grandson, George Parkin's grandson, George Parkin's grandson. How could anyone ever be worthy of that?

4

Somebody might like me for myself

As George put his luggage on the Kingston train at Toronto's Union Station in the middle of September 1936, the ties that bound him to his native city had almost evaporated. The Masseys went to London in 1935 when Vincent was appointed High Commissioner (after Mackenzie King and the Liberals returned to power in Ottawa). They were now living comfortably at 12 Hyde Park Gardens. Thanks to her grant from the Massey Foundation, George's sister Alison was in London studying art. 1 Charity, her degree completed at the University of Toronto, was also in Europe learning German; she later joined her sister. George's friends were also scattering. Michael Gelber, who had in any event withdrawn from Upper Canada a couple of years earlier, now set off for Columbia University in New York. Eddie Campbell, George's sounding-board over many years, was diverted temporarily to the Royal Military College in Kingston. Kenneth McNaught was one of the few to stay in Toronto. Maude was now fifty-seven, somewhat at a loose end and in need of money. In 1937 she began an increasingly tempestuous three-year stint as warden (dean of women) of Royal Victoria College, her alma mater. She was a graduate of this McGill college somewhat by chance. Her father happened to be crossing the Atlantic with Lord Strathcona, who had established the Royal Victoria College. Strathcona said: 'I've just endowed this women's college. Haven't you got a daughter you could send?' So Maude, who had completed her high school in Switzerland, went to the RVC. George needed to find somewhere to live in Kingston. At that time there were no men's residences at Queen's; so he took two rooms in the Misses Fitzgibbons's2 boarding-house at 30 Sydenham Street in Kingston, quite near the campus. It was a modest, red-brick house in a terraced

38 George Grant row, built in 1866, known locally as 'the Goldfish Bowl, ' but it had a reputation, he assured his mother whom he knew cared about such things, as one of the places to live. It was clean and the food was exceptional, but it was expensive, about $3. 50 a week for the rooms alone. 3 He had a number of connections in the town and university, mostly on the Macdonnell side. His cousins Peter and Anne were fellow students and Anne Sedgewick, four years older than George and a friend of his sisters, kept an eye on him during his first year. They had dinner from time to time in one of the greasy-spoon restaurants that flourished in Kingston during the 1930s, or chatted together over coffee for the evening. Anne describes him during this year as 'a cheery, happy person, not overburdened by the cares of the world. '4 Anne was right; George did enjoy the new environment. Instead of being surrounded by boys who were determined on becoming stockbrokers, he found Queen's 'filled with people from the Ottawa Valley, in social terms much simpler people, whom I found infinitely nicer than the boys I'd known at Upper Canada. '5 To many of his fellow undergraduates at Queen's, George by contrast was the typical privately educated kid. Some found his manner charming and refined; others, noting a slight British accent (which he shared with the rest of his family) presumed him rather superior, patronizing, and condescending. And though few knew about his father, everyone knew he was Principal Grant's grandson. He even won the Grant scholarship for history. If he had temporarily escaped the Parkins, it was only to fall into the hands of the Grants. Through Maude, Grandfather Parkin was a living presence in George's life. Principal Grant fell more into the category of a respected ancestor; he had, after all, died sixteen years before his grandson was born. When George was older, he distanced himself from his paternal grandfather whom he saw as a vaguely sinister figure whose domineering nature wounded his more gentle son William. The more George came to see the world through his own philosophical perspective, the more he saw his grandfather as a particularly disreputable type, a secularized Protestant who let slip his faith in the truth of the Christian revelation in favour of the religion of progress and its local manifestation, the Mining School at Queen's. 6 G. M. Grant's influence on his grandson was strong but indirect; it came through the curriculum and the other structures of the institution he had formed. For now, George was an undergraduate almost like the others. He paid his fees of $158, went to the welcoming ceremonies in, of course, Grant Hall, and joined the freshmen in his red pyjamas for the pyjama parade

Somebody might like me for myself 39 on the evening of 9 October. Then he settled down to his studies. He had decided that he wanted to complete his honours degree, probably in history, in three rather than the normal four years, and this decision meant a heavier course load, as well as the completion of reading courses over the summer. In first year he took English and three history courses ('A's), and economics and politics ('B's). Before his father's death George had not been pushed too hard to excel academically. He had done well enough and his father, gentle by nature and knowing about schoolboys by profession, was happy with his son's progress. Now that William was gone, there was no buffer between George and his mother and their intense relationship became even more complex. Even as a child he had felt that there was something precarious about her love for him. Maude Grant was of a class and generation that believed in its right to follow a life of its own, leaving the children to the care of servants when it suited her. In one of his earliest letters we can hear the pain of separation that the four-year-old child addressed to his mother on one of her absences. 'I hop you are well when are you cuming back I hope you cuming back soon by coss I am very lonseme with out you. '7 He even felt these separations deeply when he was having a generally pleasant time seeing the sights in London and staying with Leo in Yorkshire. He was about ten when he wrote the following letter to his mother: Dear Mum, I got on the 10 train and so should have arrived at 1. 33 but on account of the floods we arrived at 2. After seeing you off we went to the Tower and St. Paul's where I forgot my hat which was found a minute after I left. We then went to the Tower which was glorious... When are you coming up here if ever. We both want you very badly.

Maude had a powerful impact on young George's personality as he was growing up, but it was her absence rather than her presence that dominated his being. From the time he arrived at Queen's until his mother's mental faculties declined in the late 1950s his relationship to her was central to his emotional life. He wrote to her almost weekly, confiding in her, asking advice, seeking her approval, probing for signs of her love. Even in his early thirties, after he was married, he could begin a letter to her 'Dearest dearest mummy. ' Throughout his life he was always aware of his mother's intense desire that he succeed in the world. 'My mother programmed me

40 George Grant for ambition, ' as George later put it. This pressure was more intense because there was a self-righteous element to it. The Grants and the Parkins saw their success as something that served the broader public good. His father's earnest proposal to his mother - that they could do ten times as much for Canada together than they could separately reflected this attitude. To make the world a better place one had to succeed personally, and the corollary of this line of thought was that public success was the measure of personal worth. George understood this point of view very well: 'I don't use ambition as a bad word; you know it was an ambition in Mother's case given over to good things. In Grandfather's case, in Mrs. Buck's case, they felt they were serving something bigger. ' 8 This enormous pressure to succeed can be seen indirectly in the guilt he felt at taking time even for innocent diversions in his freshman year. His chief recreation was bridge, a game he enjoyed throughout his life, but he felt that he had to reassure his mother: 'Don't think I play too much bridge. I play only once a week but it is a much cheaper way of having a party than most. Not that I ever have the party. It is always they. '9 When he had the chance to express his native histrionic talent by playing a part in the Drama Guild's current production 'The Wind and the Rain, ' he shifted as much of the blame as possible onto others. 'Do you mind? A very small part. I only did it to please Anne. '10 None the less, he continued his involvement on the fringes of the Dramatic Guild, being pressed into service as a Cockney at short notice when one of the cast became ill, and he joined the Debating Society as well. He also was soon to play another supporting role, this time in real life. The big social news of the new year was his eldest sister Margaret's decision to marry Geoff Andrew. 'Margaret and Mr. Andrew!!!!! Very nice a complete surprise... When I went to see Anne Sedgewick this afternoon she was amazed about Margaret but very bucked up. '11 Andrew had joined the staff of Upper Canada in 1930 and, as William Grant before him, eventually married the principal's daughter. When the wedding came, a very proud younger brother, as the man in the family, gave the bride away. Outside his school work, it was international affairs that held his interest. For Canadians the major event in his first term at Queen's was the abdication of King Edward VIII because of his desire to marry the twice divorced Mrs Simpson. George followed events carefully, and solemnly declared to his mother: 'The best thing now is to support George VI and forget completely Edward VIII who I blame 100%... I think York 8c his

Somebody might like me for myself 41 wife will be perfect and I feel although others don't seem to do that he can live down this stain. '12 Like most politically aware undergraduates of the day he kept a keen eye on developments in the Spanish Civil War, where the left-wing Republic was under threat from Franco's fascist forces. He also followed the growing crisis in Czechoslovakia closely. 13 He read widely for pleasure, but one of the books, Galworthy's Forsyte Saga, struck close to home as he speculated 'whether our family has as many skeletons in the cupboard and whether there are heaps of relations whom I am not allowed to know owing to complications. ' He might well wonder. The web of family surrounded him and he found it especially hard to establish his own identity at Queen's. Not only was he Principal Grant's grandson, but his father had taught there, and Uncle Jim Macdonnell was a powerful figure on the board, serving as chairman while George was an undergraduate. Gerald Graham, one of Maude and William's proteges, then on the history staff, told Maude that 'George carries the fearful weight of his Parkin-Grant antecedents with real aplomb. '14 Not surprisingly, George himself was ambivalent about this. 'I have just been at the Conachers for a party. I have a feeling that you are my complete entree into society; everybody asks your son rather than me. "5 He could be socially successful thanks to his mother's influence, but would people like him for himself? It worried him very much that someone had let slip that his Uncle Jim once said: 'At times I could have drowned George when he was little. ' 'I never realised I was that objectionable. It is a horrid shock, '16 he confessed to his mother. Once the exams for his first year were finished in May he packed up his things at the Fitzgibbons's and set out for Montreal, and then left with his mother on a brief holiday at Tadoussac (where he was undoubtedly reminded of his picnic with his Parkin grandfather). Then he went to spend the rest of the summer as a reader for Professor McDougall, a blind University of Toronto historian, at his cottage near Lake Rosseau. It was another summer in the hands of the Papists: 'It is very hard to argue with such a strong Catholic as I find him to be. A real historian, as he is, feigns ignorance and then evades the point when we had an argument about heretics, the church and State and toleration. '17 George found Professor McDougall to be a formidable curmudgeon, with opinions about things as forceful and various as George himself later developed. 'Mr McD. scorns so much. Cody, Carlyle, all liberal historians (his examples are Macauley, Trevelyan and Fisher), Wagner (I partly understand), Tchaikovsky, all motor cars - in fact everything except the intellectual and medieval quiet and cold worlds that I want to tell him

42 George Grant that there is something of change in the world. He prefers Aristotle to Plato (of which I know little except that to me one has a greater belief in advancement). '18 As usual he was introspective. 'I hope that I am passing through the supremely selfish stage which has been enveloping me and that this job which entails doing exactly as I am told very cheerfully will do me good. ' He also had his pacifism reinforced. 'It is proof that war should be avoided at any cost by the loss of Mr. MacD. 's sight, which I know he misses so terribly. ' Back at Queen's in the autumn of 1938 he could look forward to the next year with some confidence. He had won a scholarship in colonial history, which paid $40, and the works of Shakespeare for his accomplishments in his English course. Best of all, Eddie Campbell would be there. 'I think I am going to enjoy Queen's about 5 times as much with Eddie here'. 19 Eddie had spent the previous year at RMC, but now transferred to Queen's, where he naturally chose to live in the same boarding-house as George, and their friendship blossomed in spite of their radically different outlooks on life. George studied hard and listened to the opera and symphony broadcasts on the weekends. Eddie played hockey and badminton, and listened to big-band jazz. They talked about the girls they were currently dating, and at one point were both taking out Sheila Wallace, the principal's daughter. Tall, slim, and brown-eyed, Sheila arrived on the campus at the same time as George, when her father took up the principalship. George must have been doubly interested in her since she was living in the house in which his own father grew up. The Wallaces, who had just lost their own son, undoubtedly gave a special welcome to George. A new friend this year was Donald C. MacDonald, who was later to have a distinguished career in Ontario provincial politics. 20 Older than George, he was also interested in history and current politics, and they were both members of the International Relations Club and the Debating Society. MacDonald remembers George as a gangling youth, for George was probably now grown to his adult height of 6'11/2 still reasonably thin. George dressed casually, trousers and a Harris tweed jacket, though his hair was a trifle on the long side for the fashion of the day. MacDonald found him a delightful and brilliant young man. George also got to know Sheila Skelton, the daughter of O. D. Skelton, sometime Queen's professor, and a man who played a key role in the development of Canada's Department of External Affairs. Sheila, according to a contemporary, was a sweetheart, slightly plump and full of kindness, warmth, and emotion. Deeply Christian and a strong pacifist, she was also a member of the

Somebody might like me for myself 43 International Relations Club. More important to George, she was his main rival for the history prize. Queen's, in part thanks to O. D. Skelton, was in the process of developing the close links with business and government that was its hallmark over the next half century. 'I remember, ' George later wrote, 'as a young student in the Arts Faculty at Queen's, being taught the strictest utilitarian dogma as if it were objective fact. '21 Businessmen indeed made their presence felt that autumn. Uncle Jim came down to deliver a talk on why university graduates counted for so little in politics. But more serious was the arrival of Sir Edward Beatty, about whom the Queen's Journal enthused: 'During the reunion weekend Queen's grads and undergrads are privileged to have in their midst as guest of honour Sir Edward Wentworth Beatty... Sir Edward is one of the outstanding men in Canadian public life, being among other things President of the Canadian Pacific Railway and Chancellor of McGill University. '22 George was not impressed, and the meeting occasioned an outburst along lines that would be very familiar in his later writings about universities. 'The unity of Big Business certainly degraded Grant Hall as it has never been degraded before. It was abysmal. Cleverly covered up, the subject really was: "We have the money and if you university professors don't do and say what we want, out you get. " '23 This episode is interesting not just because it foreshadows the frequent fights George will have with other businessmen in academic settings; but also because it shows his ability to see a general pattern where others see only particular instances. Uncle Jim and Sir Edward were together; this became a symbol, intensified (as we saw before) with the definite article, 'the unity of big business. ' George saw life through the eyes of a poet. At times it misfired badly and sometimes it verged on caricature, but often, as here, it revealed a useful, indeed brilliant, core of truth. His distaste for Sir Edward was intensified by the running fight he was having with Maude at McGill. A month after Beatty's visit to Queen's George wrote her trying to persuade her not to resign her position as warden. She owed it to the girls in her charge, he told her, and she could accomplish more if she stayed than if she quit. It was hard work, but it was in her nature to work hard wherever she was. Besides, he said, T like Montreal and you do. Everybody up here would tell you that I have turned into the most rabid of Montreal fans. '24 He also learned another lesson in his early days at Queen's, namely that freedom of speech and political action were not principles that could be taken for granted, even in a university setting. Principal Wallace was,

44 George Grant in Donald MacDonald's words, 'one of these people in the 1930s who was really pathological about communism, ' and at one point he actually banned the communists from the campus. George agreed with MacDonald. 'I am just learning a few things I like less about Wallace. (1) He refused to allow a debate on Chamberlain's peace policy (2) He does not allow political clubs of a leftist nature with the result that there are secret ones springing up this year. This kind of thing makes him unpopular with many students. It is a stupid attitude I think. ' Throughout his life George was constantly reminded that there were dangers, sometimes subtle, in speaking one's mind too openly. As Wallace's actions revealed, politics, especially left-wing politics, were very much on the students' minds. The Spanish Civil War, like the Vietnam War thirty years later, was the touchstone of political orthodoxy. Donald MacDonald wrote about it in several of his columns in the student newspaper. George made his own contribution in a book review. In it he praised the author, the Duchess of Atholl, for holding to the 'ethical right' even when it conflicted with her own 'selfish class interest'. She tells the tragic story of a government composed neither of socialists or communists but of liberal republicans who had to face the issue of rebellion when it had no trained army and when a deluded world refused it arms while its rebellious fascist opponents received aid of the fullest kind... Her most damning comparison is between the orgiastic cruelty of Franco's rule and the liberalism, even in conditions of siege, which the government of Spain has shown... Both England's natural interests and her democratic interests are being washed down the drain by a futile policy of unfair non-intervention.25

This review sparked a vigorous reply from a fellow student, J. B. Conacher, 26 and it doubtless did not escape George's attention that Conacher was a Catholic. 27 These extracurricular activities were fine, but George had more work to do than normal because of his decision to take his degree after three years. His courses for 1937-8 were: the Growth of the British Empire with Professor Trotter, who quickly became his hero; the history of modern England with Gerald Graham; two-half courses on Tudor and Stuart history; the Canadian constitution with J.A. Corry; his science course, Geology; and two reading courses. All were 'A's except for one history halfcourse and one of the reading courses. 'I think I am learning what real work is this year and I must continue if I am going to get through this

Somebody might like me for myself 45 course in 3 years instead of 4. This year is at leasttwice as difficult as last. '28 Writing never came easily to him, even when he was young. For example, when he was preparing an essay on 'The Influence of the French Revolution on English Parliamentary Reform, ' it took him 'allot four evenings to write the first three pages laying out the background of England at the time. There was so much to put in and so little space I could afford. ' Even as an undergraduate he was drawn to the grander themes that came to characterize his later work. When Professor Trotter set 'a colossal essay, ' George's choice was 'The Colonial Policy of the Protectorate. ' Trotter told him that even this was too extensive; he must narrow down the field to a topic like 'Cromwell's policy in the West Indies. ' He chafed under the restrictions: 'That kind of detailed history gets me down, ' he complained.29 A capacity for hard and disciplined work was one characteristic George displayed early in life; another was an ability to respond to music, art, and literature with enormous intensity. He had the ability to devote the whole of his attention to a work of art. This sensibility was evident even at Upper Canada, where it made him unpopular. As he matured, it became even more refined. On Saturday afternoons he set time aside to listen to the broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera in New York: 'This afternoon I turned on Tristan and Isolde and tried to get some work done at the same time. So much of it is too long but the Liebestod at the end is one of the greatest things I ever heard. It absolutely tears one apart. Flagstad was singing it... It is funny that after listening to music like that one doesn't want really to listen to other music for a few days because one has been surfeited. '30 The short essay, 'Art and Propaganda', which he wrote for the Literary Supplement to the Queen's Journal, shows a remarkably mature understanding of the relationship between art and morality: 'In modern society where the individual is losing control over his own conscience before the growing encroachments of mass movements, the artistic forms of expression are being perverted into propaganda for the cause of divergent economic and political creeds. Art is no longer the expression of the individual; it is now an effective weapon in the hands of large groups who exploit it for their own ends. ' He experienced art so strongly himself that he could easily see how dangerous it was to let art be harnessed to serve political ends: The effects of this surge of propaganda over the world, both in civilized and

46 George Grant uncivilized countries has devastated the human mind. Satiated with this cheapening drug, the appetite of the public becomes so deadened that it is unable to distinguish between truth and lies concocted for political purposes. The process whereby the individual submerges himself into mass movements becomes accelerated. For if men and women are to negate their individuality so that their aims remain identical for long periods of time in those of their fellows, their finer sense must be drugged to the point where they accept easily the political ideals of their leaders. Propaganda, far more effective and far more insidious than physical force, becomes the means whereby civilization may lose its finer instincts and political freedom may become the despised product of a past age.31 Although Sheila Wallace was so struck by the precocious brilliance of the piece that she remembered it vividly fifty years later, it is doubtful if his fellow boarders at the Miss Fitzgibbons's were much impressed. George was increasingly finding them somewhat of a trial. 'Much as I like it here where I live it is a trifle disconcerting to live only with the Meds and Science students and occasionally I itch to talk shop. The tradition of Science and Meds students here is that pollution by intellectual ideas must be avoided at all costs. '32 He was also worried about money and tried to make economies. He did not go to the Arts Formal to save the $6 a couple ticket, and he tried to save money by not eating or going to movies. 'I am trying to save a few pennies here and there. But my great trouble is that I get hungry about 4. 30 in the afternoon and I am so hungry I can hardly work. ' 33 This general dissatisfaction with his life as an undergraduate at Queen's is clear in a review he wrote of Maynard Hutchins's controversial critique of higher education, The Higher Learning in America. George described Hutchins as a writer 'supremely confident in the undoubted truth of his arguments' and his book as 'a challenge to the people of North America. ' He went on: 'Despite his unconscious colouring of the subject, this book gives a picture which is alarming in an age when democracy must produce an intelligent electorate for its increased efficiency, if it is to exist... Are we going to grovel in an unsatisfactory status quo or are we going to follow an intelligent educational leader like President Hutchins?'34 As with his father and grandfathers before him, the reform of education was central to George's life. Early in February 1938 Principal Wallace called him in and suggested he put his name forward for one of the Rhodes Scholarships his grand-

Somebody might like me for myself 47 father Parkin had been instrumental in establishing. George disparaged the importance of the interview, since Wallace had spoken to others as well, and besides, 'I doubt if I am really good enough. '35 In spite of these self-doubts, he set to work with great discipline. 'An excellent system of work has been devised by GPG. Getting up at seven in the morning & eating my breakfast till eight then working till nine then lectures. I go to bed strictly at eleven o'clock. The trouble is that when one goes to bed one is so tired that one drops exhausted to the pillow only to get up the next day and do exactly the same thing. '36 He began his essay on the social ideas of Disraeli, but the one he was most looking forward to writing was on Laud and Arminianism. These were not tossed off lightly at the last moment: 'Every essay I always have to copy twice or three times to polish the English - I can get fairly good English eventually but I have to copy & recopy but it is worth it. '37 Even in later life, after he had published a great many articles and books, this remained his working method. His first drafts were often stilted and awkward, and he would have to produce draft after draft until he made the text say exactly what he wanted. The hard work paid off, and after second year he won one history scholarship for $150 and another for $75. The money was very useful, since he had given up on the idea of working during the summer of 1938, and had decided to go to Europe with a friend, Alan Watson. The itinerary proved more contentious than he might have imagined. Unlike George, who had already crossed the Atlantic three or four times, Alan had never been to England before and wanted to spend most of his time there. 'How about a week or ten days in France, George?' George was polite in his reply, but wrote in rage to his mother. He did not want to go traipsing around England on a bicycle. France was the country of his dreams, the mecca of his voyage, the raison d'etre of the journey: But to spend about 2 days in Paris of Danton, Robespierre, Madena, Roland, Voltaire, Mirabeau, Richelieu, Louis Quatorze, Mazarin, Marie Antoinette, Marat, Zola, Cesar Franck, Jean Jaures would be for me a heart break. Everybody tells me France is going to be a disappointment. France the country of civilization, of hope for the world, France the country that England has just betrayed and France has to follow England away from idealism. France that is all that is fine and noble, it may be dirty but France is individualism. I can't even think of going to England at all if that is the situation. I would rather hitch-hike around North America.38

48 George Grant Alan appears to have come to some sort of compromise with his francophile friend and, once exams finished, George set off early so that he could spend time with Mrs Buck at Noverings. He worked his way over on a cattle boat. Alison and Charity met their dirty and bedraggled brother at the dock and took him back to the flat to clean him up. Alison was still at her art studies, and Charity had served a brief stint on Uncle Vincent's staff at Canada House until accusations of nepotism were mooted in the Canadian press, and Maude decided that it was best that Charity resign. 39 His sisters were staying with Canadian friends, Elizabeth and Mary Greey, who had used a legacy to set themselves up in London. Mary remembers George as 'tall, thin, and very intense. ' And she was amused by his fervour. 'Why do you think Cezanne the greatest?' he asked her. 'What exactly in his work makes him so different - so important?'40 After he paid homage to Mrs Buck, he returned to London to stay with the Masseys. Since his uncle was the High Commissioner, he was entertained in style; that he might make useful contacts in the process was a fact of life that Alice, Maude, and everyone else took for granted. Otherwise, what was the point of being well connected? So Charity and he went to 10 Downing Street, the prime minister's official residence, to watch Trooping the Colour, and the Masseys invited Alison and him to dinner, where the guests included Robert Menzies. The future Australian prime minister was tremendously impressed by George. 41 George also went up to Oxford to visit his Massey cousins. Lionel gave him lunch at his college, Balliol, where both his own father and George's had been students. Then he took him to see Hart, who coxed for Oxford, 'shouting at the rowers'.42 About the middle ofJune he left London for a bicycling trip with Alan. It was not a meeting of souls. George found that on almost every occasion their interests differed. 'For instance yesterday I wanted to go in the morning to a service at St. Giles. Alan thought that was a waste of time so we didn't go. At Wells (a great place) he spent half an hour in the cathedral and then wanted to go. That time I stayed. '43 They also got talked into going to Scotland, on the grounds that it was cheap. It turned out to be more expensive than England, and when George wrote to his mother about the added expense he was 'in great fury; I am so mad I am practically in tears. '44 At this point he decided, to Alan's considerable annoyance, to abandon him and take up his cousin Hart's offer to drive with Alison to Italy in Hart's car. In spite of George's yearning to see France, they drove straight

Somebody might like me for myself 49 through, though he did see the cathedral at Chartres, and it made a powerful impression on him: 'It is the most wonderful man-made thing I have ever seen'; then on to Geneva and through the Alps to Italy. From Milan they went to Padua, where George received a lesson about superstition; he had been mocking Catholics who in their innocence or gullibility prayed to St Anthony when they lost something. He checked his watch for the time when they arrived in Padua. When he was about to leave he looked at his watch again. It had disappeared. The saint, George declared, had had his revenge for this scoffing. From Padua they went on to Venice, an amazing place and 'very much a temporal city. Commerce as its all engrossing element has left it no mysticism. It is a secular place and in many ways completely Babylonic. It is sensual and pleasure seeking and yet remains a relic of the past. ' They were there for a lottery drawing in the piazza and they sat in the packed square for hours. George was enthralled. After Venice, they went to Verona, iovely in its cool way of laughing at the sun, '45 and then Florence. He found the painting boring, except for Bellini and Giotto, though the souvenir he bought was a print of a Madonna and Child by Fra Lippo Lipi, which afterwards hung in his home; then to Assisi, Capri, Naples, Pompei, Rome. George's only complaint was that he found Hart, an otherwise affable travelling companion, rather inclined to expensive meals and accommodation. The summer came to an end and George sailed on 18 August out of Manchester back to Canada, this time on a regular passenger ship. Back in Kingston, he increasingly despaired of those with whom he shared the boarding-house. He found himself 'getting farther 8c farther away from the people of this house and they make me madder & madder (except for Eddie). ' 'I can talk about girls 8chockey one meal a day but not two, especially as I am in the great period of Weltschmerz that comes to the young. When the world is going up in smoke, I like to hear the other point of view & God knows I do; but I get tired of the Babbittian intelligence into which I find myself sinking. '46 About the end of November he seceded and formed with Ernest Stabler and a couple of others a literary and dining society where the conversation could range over national and international affairs. It was by his account a success, though George's defection doubtless did little to endear him to the other denizens of the Goldfish Bowl. He also skipped the Upper Canada dinner, claiming that it would have bored him stiff. Another organization, which George helped found, got into full swing this year. The Depression of the 1930s did not have a direct impact on

50 George Grant George, but its effects were pervasive. His father had talked at home of his sadness when boys had to drop out of UCC because their fathers could no longer afford the fees, or when old boys came to ask if they could get a job with the construction crews that were putting up the new buildings. One summer his father got him a job working in a meat-packing plant, and the intense class hatred the workers felt for their bosses made a deep impression on him. The previous March he and some of his friends decided they should become vocal about a world that was 'drifting from crisis to crisis without anything being done. '47 So they formed the Social Problems Club and brought in speakers. In October Eugene Forsey, Maude's friend from McGill, addressed the club about civil liberties in Quebec. In December philosopher Gregory Vlastos spoke about cultural developments in contemporary Europe. In February the guest was M. J. Coldwell, a senior figure in the CCF. The Depression created major strains for Canada's federal system and MacKenzie King's government set up the Rowell-Sirois Royal Commission to make recommendations on public finances and the division of legislative authority between the Dominion and provincial governments. It is not, then, surprising that the debating club chose the topic 'The provincial powers should be extended. ' George was assigned the affirmative and, drawing on his experiences in Quebec, he pointed sympathetically to the need for the Quebec legislature to be powerful enough to protect the rights of its own citizens. Under existing constitutional arrangements, it did not have the taxation powers to do so. 'Hence there should be an increase in provincial powers of taxation. Canada is divided economically as well as politically. Democratic government is the satisfaction of local interests and that can be best done by the provinces themselves. '48 The big excitement of the autumn was the Rhodes Scholarship competition, although George's immediate academic future was not dependent on winning it. Mrs Buck had settled the sum of £400 on him at the time of his father's death to provide for his education. This would certainly have been enough to pay for a year at Oxford, and Mrs Buck would doubtless have provided for a second year. Yet George wanted this honour and set to work in earnest. In his letter of application, he stated that 'apart from my academic work my main interest has centred in the discussion of public affairs and more particularly Canada's international relations. ' He mentioned the drama guild, his dining society ('a private club for the discussion of artistic subjects'), and his occasional writing for the Queen's Journal. He added: 'On the whole most of my free time has been used in general reading, more particularly plays, biography and

Somebody might like me for myself 51 French literature, an interest that was stimulated by a summer with a French family in the Province of Quebec. My athletic activity has comprised golf and tennis in the summer months and skiing and badminton in the winter. '49 George apparently felt no need to emphasize that his participation in sports was recreational rather than competitive. When George wrote his paper for the Rhodes committee, he chose the subject 'Canada's Present Position in the British Commonwealth of Nations. ' Tactically, he calculated that since the committee knew his abilities as a historian, he might impress them better with a more topical line, so he 'told about the more recent ideas and how they apply with Canada's sectionalism, Canada's relations with the USA and her economic development. ' He concluded his essay with a plea, which his father would have fully endorsed, for Canada to play an active role in support of the League of Nations, and help make 'that international instrument an effective force in world politics. '50 He planned if he were successful, two years studying law at Oxford and, granted a third year, he would take a law degree, the BCL. In his letter of support, Professor Trotter praised his 'quick active mind and powers of penetration and comprehension above the average which promise well for later achievements. He can already express himself with precision and grace. ' J. A. Corry pointed to 'the important quality of intellectual daring' he possessed. For Gerald Graham, he was 'the best rounded student I have had in eight years of teaching at Harvard and Queen's. ' Professor McDougall, with whom he had spent the summer, said he was 'the kind of youth with whom one can go for a day's walking, and find interest and enjoyment in his company throughout the day. I say this from experience, because I have done that very thing more than once and it is, I think, a very fair test. ' To Nicholas Ignatieff, his old history master at Upper Canada, George gave 'every indication of possessing a first-class mind - fearless, original and prodding, ' and showed a 'strong but sensitive character very much concerned with justice and right. ' Victor Morin, with whom he had stayed in Quebec, 'had frequent occasions of discussing literary and scholastic questions with George Grant, and I have always found him a bright, intelligent young man, well versed in these questions and discusses them intelligently. ' There is one consistent reservation that runs through the letters. McDougall referred to him as 'still rather immature'; Ignatieff observed that he had 'not yet gained great emotional stability'; and Gerald Graham said: 'Still quite young, his judgments on men and events are naturally marked with some immaturity. '

52 George Grant This immaturity was evident in the emotional roller-coaster George was on as the interview approached. At one moment, fortified by Don MacDonald, he was confident. Then his cousin Anne said she did not think he would win and he was depressed. He took the train to Toronto in a state of intense agitation, but the interview went well and he was informed by the committee that he had been successful. He floated back to Kingston. 'I got home last night and I am pleased as anything. I can't help it. I try not to show it openly but I can tell the truth to you. I am pleased for father, I am pleased for Mrs. Buck, I am pleased for you and I am pleased for myself. ' However, he tried to keep his emotions in check and his success in perspective, as he felt his mother preferred. 'The thing that I must remember is that this is only a beginning. This was luck and I must justify this luck. A Rhodes S. is no claim to fame in itself, it is what it produces. I hope it is something. This doesn't mean that I am being stupidly & hypocritically modest but this is not the end of one's existence at all. It is a help towards the end. '51 Indeed there were those at Queen's who thought that George did not merit the Rhodes, that he was not rounded enough, not genuinely active in sports. There were others who whispered that he had only got it because his grandfather Parkin had started the scheme up, or because Uncle Jim had been secretary to the Ontario Rhodes committee. One of the doubters was George himself. Did people like him in his own right, or because of his forebears? 'One nice thing (a secret) - the students are giving me a ring which is nice. Not that I want the ring but it is nice that I am getting it because it shows somebody might like me. '52 As for his destination, George at one point early in 1939 thought that it was up to him to choose. 'Balliol is not inevitable, ' he innocently wrote to his mother. He did not know that Maude had been in contact with the admissions tutor at Balliol as early as the summer of 1938 to put George's name down. When George won the Rhodes, Maude wrote to Balliol again to spread the good news, and to do a little gentle pushing for her son. 'He is just twenty and has I think a mind with some quality in it, so I would like him to become a member of Balliol, as his father was before him. '53 Balliol, then, it was. The Rhodes out of the way, George settled down to win the history medal. He had his heart set on this, though he had to fend off a serious challenge from Sheila Skelton, who not only worked like a demon, but also was taking her degree in the normal four years. As well as his serious activities, George still had time for dancing. Indeed he was almost a de-

Somebody might like me for myself 53 votee of Terpsichore: 'I went to our year dance. I am afraid I am one of the leading exponents of a form of dancing which is very barbaric called trucking or the Big Apple. It is a great deal of fun and for the first time in my life I am an expert. But I expect any day someone from Kingston will write to you and say "that your son dear Mrs. Grant is making an exhibition of himself. " '54 On another occasion he went to the Arts Formal with 'a Kingston girl who has not yet been contaminated (& is never going to be) with a university career. '55 Donald MacDonald remembered the event clearly. 'My most vivid recollection of George during that period was one time there was a dance in Grant Hall. George suddenly arrived with a mulatto, about 5' 10" or 5'n" tall, very stunning, very exotic. Everybody who knew George said: "Where in Heaven's name did George come up with her!"'56 He also played the lead in a play for the drama festival. 'I am a Communist who makes speeches, quotes poetry and mainly makes love. '57 His membership in the guild brought him into contact with, Lorne Greene, who later made a successful career for himself in the United States. Greene was active in drama at Queen's at that time and for a while dated George's cousin. 58 For recreational reading, George was looking at the lives of modern painters - Modigliani, Cezanne, Renoir, Matisse, Van Gogh. And when John Watson, the great Hegelian philosopher died, George was chosen as a pall bearer. 'I really carried, ' he wrote to his mother. All the time, as he studied and wrote his essays, the European situation, as the president of the International Relations Club knew as well as anyone, was deteriorating rapidly. 59 It made him wonder, at times, what the point of his studies was. 'If I am doing this merely as a preparation for war it seems hardly worth while. '60 In 1937 George reviewed G. M. Trevelyan's Grey ofFallodon. The purpose of the book, he argued, was 'to prove that Grey was really a great humanist and a great pacifist who realized after many searchings of his soul that the aggressive nationalism of Germany could not be allowed free rein in Europe. '61 Trevelyan painted, in George's words, a 'devastating scene of a blind Europe approaching the inevitable catastrophe of 1914. ' Events seemed to be moving to the same tragic conclusion once again. 'Happy Easter, ' he greeted his mother in 1939: 'People seem to think that it isn't very happy and that war will be coming damn soon, which is unthinkable. '62 Towards the end of his final year, as war appeared more and more likely, he wondered how he should respond if it broke out. He sat down

54 George Grant and wrote his mother a careful letter explaining, not so much a conclusion, as the ideas that were driving him. He was strongly drawn to pacifism: War is becoming more supreme. Evil is completely predominant if you look anywhere. Force is being used on every side and everyone is hopelessly lost. Perhaps (although this is impossible for any government) force should be given up. The crisis comes of course not here in Canada so perhaps we have no right to express the opinions I am going to. If one is a Christian one must be forced back without doubt that one can never fight. Force cannot vie with force. Christ could have called on the angels to tear the temporal power of Jerusalem into ten billion fragments but he didn't because he realised that by passive resistance he won in the long run because he realised that if he let tyranny, stupidity & foolishness be destroyed they would crop up again. But as he made the permanent protest of nonresistance in the end he would create a far greater victory in his example; of course the world has not accepted the example but it still stands unflinching. Therefore if one is a Christian one cannot fight. Of course if one isn't there is no reason in the world why one shouldn't fight. Sitting on the sidelines and having opinions was easy. He was 'simply furious' that he was living in Canada. 'I would far rather live in the centre of the crisis', he told his mother. But what would he do if he found himself there? But of course when war comes one must not say T won't fight; I won'tfight.' One must [propagate pacifism] so that other people won't fight. I don't think it is nearly enough to just sit still and be killed. Of course again if you say that Christ was not divine then the whole argument is broken through. All I say is that if Christ was right & inspired then one is breaking divine law if one fights however just one's cause is. Because Christ's cause was just but still he wouldn't fight force by force. Of course this does not mean you cannot fight with word & deed reaction & oppression, that you cannot even risk your life under a dictatorship for the sake of asserting your cause.63 The important phrase is: 'If one is a Christian. ' As the letter shows, he had thought through the consequences of Christian pacifism, but he was not sure whether he had taken to heart its fundamental truth. He was a Christian by upbringing, by sentiment. He was not yet a Christian to the

Somebody might like me for myself 55 very core of his being. He would soon get his chance to live in the centre of the crisis, and to test his principles. When war was declared his pacifist friends from Upper Canada, Michael Gelber and Kenneth McNaught, decided that the evil was so great that it must be countered, even if that meant joining the armed forces. George resisted longer. The strain pushed him to the breaking point and it proved a lonely struggle. For now, there was a little time to relax and bask in his success. He did brilliantly in his final year, straight 'A's in all his courses and the history medal. He had only one course remaining to complete the requirements of his degree, and that was the obligatory first-year philosophy course. Although he hoped he could get an exemption, he paid the $20 and worked on it over the summer of 1939. It was to be the only formal philosophy course he ever took: he got a 'B'. 64 Like his father he now had a history degree from Queen's and, also like him, was headed for Oxford. However, ambitious young Canadians no longer went abroad to study classics. To achieve the kind of success in the public world that Maude told him was his destiny, he would become the first lawyer in the Grant-Parkin line. With the Rhodes in place, there was no urgent need to worry about money and so, that summer, he drove with Maude and Charity on an enormous tour of North America. They set out from Montreal, and went first to Calgary, where they stayed with friends. From there, they went to Vancouver, and then down to San Francisco. On the way back George and Charity quarrelled incessantly, so much so that when the trio reached Chicago, Maude took the train the rest of the way home, leaving her children to cope by themselves as best they could.

5

An ambitious little pragmatist

George almost missed the war. He was staying in his mother's flat at the Royal Victorian College at McGill, getting ready to go to Oxford, so entranced reading and rereading Thomas Wolfe's The Story of a Novel that the implications of events in Europe did not immediately strike him. 1 Germany invaded Poland and, when it ignored the British ultimatum to withdraw, Britain declared war on 3 September 1939. Canada followed a week later. It was only when George received a letter from Roland Michener on behalf of the Rhodes trustees that he realized that he had to make a decision. Michener warned him of the dangers of the Atlantic crossing, the hazards of living in England during wartime, and the inevitable concern of friends and relatives back home. However, he said, the trustees had decided that it was still feasible to begin a program of study at Oxford and they left it to each scholar to decide if he would go. Only two of the Canadian scholars, George and a scientist from New Brunswick, W. H. Feindel, decided to take up their awards. 2 George went down to New York from Montreal with his mother, had a farewell dinner at a Swedish restaurant, saw Lillian Hellman's Little Foxes on Broadway, and then sailed on the neutral American ship the SS Manhattan on 4 October, though it stung his national pride to do so. 'It seems very wrong to patronize a non-Canadian boat, but yet it seems much safer. '3 On board ship he met Mary Greey, his sisters' friend with whom he stayed briefly in London in the summer of 1938. The trip was safe and the ship sailed with its lights on at night, but George was sick for four days of the crossing and the steward refused to bring food to his cabin. 'They are not good boats, peace or war, but it got us there, '4 was his judgment of the ship. When they docked, they were met by Mary's sister

An ambitious little pragmatist 57 Elizabeth and Alison, who had moved into the Greeys' small flat in London at 231 Sussex Gardens, near Paddington railway station. George stayed with them a few days, getting his first taste of the London blackout, which he found 'terrifying, ' stumbling 'round in the dark, groping and bumping into people. ' Then it was off to Paddington Station and the short train ride to Oxford. As Michener had warned, the war was transforming Oxford. The Institute for International Affairs, known as Chatham House, had moved from London and commandeered much of Balliol's residence space. Many of the more senior undergraduates had been moved down the road to accommodation in Balliol's great rival, Trinity College. Instead of having a room by himself, George had to double up with R. A. S. Barbour, 5 but the good news was that his room was in the Master's lodgings, so that he got to known A. D. Lindsay6 and his diminutive Quaker wife, who quite enchanted him: 'Mrs. Lindsay is a tremendously determined yet mousy little woman - shy yet assertive - talks to herself and the kind of person who always entrances me - that kind of woman - not beginning to get old who is green - yet in this case driving energy - and conviction. '7 Since he was studying law, he was assigned T. H. Tylor as his tutor. Tylor was legally blind and much admired for his vast memory of case law.8 He quickly got down to work, though he found law intensely difficult and time-consuming at first and thought the law professors reactionaries who went out of their way 'to laugh at anything radical. ' The prevailing approach to law struck him as intellectually restricting: 'In some ways it is disappointing because it is merely stating the law, never asking what it is (as the basis), never asking why it is as it is, never asking what it ought to be. '9 Moreover, the emphasis on English law was a liability, since George would have to study Canadian case law before he was admitted to the Ontario or Quebec bar. He considered three possibilities for a career: a bureaucrat in government, a lawyer in private practice, or a law professor. He liked the idea best of working for government, perhaps as a constitutional lawyer: 'Being a cog in a well-oiled machine appeals to me immensely especially as the lawyer is one of the people who probably does a lot of the oiling. '10 What he was learning from law, he thought, was the quality of mind that he admired in Uncle Raleigh's neighbour, McGill law professor Frank Scott: the 'cold analysis of facts - if A is this then it will be this but perhaps A isn't that - and therefore there will be a different result. After the comparative vagueness of history, this close reasoning of having to draw no other conclusion than is absolutely necessary [is appealing]. '11

58 George Grant George was by all account good at the law. When Tylor and he met with the Master, his tutor said that there were 'glimpses' of a degree with firstclass honours. The report to the Rhodes committee at the end of his first year in Oxford described him as a 'charming man, who has done a very creditable first year's work and shown marked promise'. He missed the coeducational atmosphere of Queen's and found the Oxford regulations - not allowed in pubs, in by midnight - annoying. 'Yet with all these criticisms I am having an absolutely wonderful time. Every day is very full and there are always stimulating new people to meet. ' He thought the 'grand public school chappies' standoffish, but he quickly made other friends. Unlike some of the other colleges, Balliol welcomed students from throughout the Empire. George's interest in international affairs was necessarily academic in the parochial atmosphere of Queen's, but now he met people who could tell him firsthand of a world beyond his experience. He met a Kenyan12 who expressed his views on 'the exploitation of his race by all whites. ' George thought him 'no fool. "3 He was also fascinated by an Indian14 who told him about British rule on the subcontinent. A Czech, who was head of the Labour Youth in Prague and who miraculously escaped death, taught him about life in Central Europe under Nazi tyranny. He also made friends with two fellow Canadians, Ralph Collins from Alberta and Malcolm Brown, a charming doctor from Queen's who had won a Rhodes Scholarship the previous year. During the day and sometimes at night he monitored American radio broadcasts and interpreted them for Chatham House's pundits, who 'with flowing hair and deep foreheads stride up and down in constant conversation. '15 Because of the government departments in Oxford, Hitler threatened to bomb the place and, in response, George joined the auxiliary fire service, a participation in the war with which he felt comfortable, but which he also thought needed justification: 'I have no scruples whatsoever about doing something to defend them although at the same time it may indirectly help a war one doesn't like. It is as if someone attacked Chartres, what the hell, you just couldn't sit still'.16 The thirteenth of November, 1939, was his twenty-first birthday. It was a watershed for Maude as well. 'I've always said I wanted to live till my youngest child was 21 - so after tomorrow, I'm free, ' she wrote to her sister Alice. 17 The Masseys gave him a silver cigarette case in which he kept a picture of Franklin Roosevelt, also his father's political hero, and matches from the restaurant in New York where Maude and he had

An ambitious little pragmatist 59 dined before they parted. 18 Alison came up from London for lunch and they went to see Dark Victory, starring one of George's favourite actresses, Bette Davis. In the evening there was a small sherry party at the college and the guests doubtless included Duncan Menzies, Peter Clarke, and Peter Self. Menzies, now George's room-mate, was an Australian Rhodes Scholar and a devout Methodist, who shocked George by his romantic ideas of military glory. It was Menzies's dream to die in battle leading a charge of the Black Watch. Menzies did die a hero, but not gloriously. He was captured by the Japanese in Burma, tied to a tree, and partly disembowelled. His own troops found him the next day, and the morphine they gave to ease his pain completed what the Japanese had begun. He was awarded, posthumously, the Military Cross. The two others were to prove lifelong friends. Clarke was a year younger than George and attended St Paul's public school before he came up to Balliol. Peter Self had gone to Lancing: ' [Self] is the son of Sir somebody Self. The father is Beaverbrook's absolutely No. 1.... His son... is tall, like a crow... in his enormous billowing gown 8c undoubtedly the mental giant of any of my friends, English or Canadian or American, terrific in the facility he can tackle any problem & with the quality of thoroughness that so often doesn't go with facility. '19 Both Clarke and Self were pacifists as were, according to Clarke, maybe twenty or so of the 150 students at Balliol. For the British students, pacifism was more than merely an intellectual or moral stance: they faced immediate difficulties from the military authorities if they refused their call-up and had to appear before a tribunal to seek conscientious objector (CO) status. Although for members of official religious sects like the Quakers this was routinely given, for those who did not fit into the main line of religious dissent the problem was more difficult. Lindsay explained his own views on pacifism in some of the weekly sermons he delivered in Balliol chapel. They were much discussed among the undergraduates. He sympathized with genuine pacifists and, in the words of his daughter and biographer, 'even felt that the world needed such witness. '20 However, Lindsay had little sympathy for those who did not expect to suffer for their beliefs, who thought that 'because they disapproved of war they should be able to go on with their lives as if the troubles of others were nothing to them. '21 The Master's 1939 pamphlet, Pacifism as a Principle & Pacifism as a Dogma, showed that he, like George's

father, was a committed internationalist and condoned the use of force only as a last resort to defend the principles of international law, on the

60

George Grant

analogy of the need for a policeman to protect us against criminals. The dogmatic pacifist, he argued, went too far and acknowledged no legitimate use of force. What seems to me really to move the doctrinaire pacifist may be put in this way. 'Modern war, ' they say, 'is an evil of such magnitude, so destructive of all the values of Christianity, democracy and civilization itself, that the only possible attitude we can take towards it is to repudiate it altogether - to say here and now that whatever others may do and whatever the consequences may be, we will take no part in it; we will stand entirely aloof from it. Our business is only to witness against it and arouse the conscience of mankind to a sense of what war is. '22 Peter Clarke and Peter Self both appeared before a tribunal in Reading to determine their CO status. It consisted of a county court judge, the head of a seed company, a brewer, and the president of St John's College, Oxford. Geoffrey Bush, a music student who shared a set of rooms with Self and who was also a pacifist, thought the outcome absurd. I suppose that if one is going to have a register of State-recognised conscientious objectors, some sort of tribunal system is unavoidable. The idea, however, that in half-an-hour three people can correctly assess the sincerity of a human being hitherto unknown to them is perfectly absurd... By their fruits ye shall know them: of all my friends the most transparently committed pacifist was sent by these arbiters of character to Lewes Gaol [Clarke], and the least committed [Self] given total exemption from any kind of war service.23 George himself was deeply agitated when he learned about Clarke's fate: 'Tonight I am at wits end. My greatest friend, probably the only young person I know who is a saint, has been refused unconditionally for his Board of Exemption. It means prison - without doubt he is the finest character in Balliol and he must be wasted in p r i s o n . . . One cannot agree with him as he bases his ideas on the complete acceptance of Christianity but my God what a world to waste somebody like that in a prison. '24 He was very upset and wanted dearly to go home. For the next six months this sentiment vied with the one he had expressed while still at Queen's, the need to be at the centre of the crisis. The decision he finally made irrevocably affected his whole life. Maude in Montreal was worried about the strain on her son. She had apparently written to Lindsay about George and got the reply that 'there

An ambitious little pragmatist 61 is no cause for anxiety. '25 However, if Maude was showing her concern subtly, Mrs Buck was more blatant, and George had to fight off her advice: 'Mrs Buck I love but not as a teacher in politics -1 cannot change for her. Neither can I or do I mind that semi-threat. Yet I do not want to give her up. '26 Mrs Buck apparently had her chequebook out to help the young student, on the condition he act like a man. In her George had a formidable adversary who was perhaps even more determined than Maude that Sir George Parkin's grandson live up to his responsibilities to his King and Country. As a Canadian he was not liable to be called up in the United Kingdom, but he felt restless as more and more of his friends and fellow students departed for military service or alternative service or jail. You say that truth and right are hard to come by and that one despairs - At the moment there can be but despair and the search of which you speak is difficult to keep up. Yesterday there was a book I was reading by a Frenchman, Rimbaud, called 'Une Saison en Enfer'. It is intensely subjective yet it is typical of the restlessness, the constant desire for doing, that is here. Not at all the feeling of tomorrow we die but of tomorrow as unknown. All through that atmosphere, the parasitic civilian sits aloof - an unnecessary appendage.27 Yet, at other times, he was full of life and energy; when the weather was beautiful, life was good: 'The sun and the frost have made the country around here shining and bright with people skating -1 haven't been able to because of a sprained ankle - But any person who talks of the unpleasantness of English winters seems crazy. They keep us in perfect comfort, in fact luxury. ' He passed his spare time intensely. He took up squash, on the grounds that it was better exercise than golf and cheaper. He read an American poet named Moody, 28 whom the Master recommended, and was also writing poetry of his own: 'I try & write down for my amusement a lot of things but of course they have always been said so much better somewhere else. Of new things there are relatively few, the fine thing seems to be to say the old things in a different way that brings some more [life] into them or places them in a different light like the Monet lily pool. '29 He picked up Nietzsche's Zarathustra and perceptively understood that it was not a proto-Nazi document at all; on the contrary it had been 'completely misunderstood by most people'. 30 He was just brimming with ideas. There were 'several titles to academic works' that it would thrill him to produce.31 When he read his mother's 'idol, ' the American pragmatist philos-

62 George Grant opher William James, he was impressed. He wrote to tell her that he found it 'absolutely fascinating stuff, not very clear but [full] of brilliance. '32 However, when he tried to express his enthusiasm to his friends over dinner in the Balliol dining hall, one of them deftly interjected into one of George's pauses: 'Pragmatism from its native heath; indeed pragmatism from its native heath!' These new friends of his were not, in the modern philosophical sense of the word, pragmatic. For them, if not yet for George, adjusting oneself to the transcendent was vastly more important than being well adjusted socially. They understood very well their young Canadian friend, whose ambition it was to be a cog in the welloiled machinery of government. Later George agreed with their rebuke: 'I was a sharp, ambitious little pragmatist. ' For the first time in his life he was hearing the language of transcendence, a language he had never heard before, being spoken articulately by people whom he admired: 'I just sort of fell in love with them. I thought they were the greatest people. '33 A pragmatist he may have been, but not a soulless one. As always he loved music and regularly attended the celebrated Balliol concerts, on one occasion taking Dorothy Bose, the daughter of an Indian politician. Dorothy was actually the girlfriend of an American named Ray Cline,34 whom George much admired, 'a boy from Indiana who worked his way through Harvard. He combines the hardness and keenness of the middle west with the good training of Harvard. He is short and thickset with a slouch which would arnuse you - never raises his voice, never shows enthusiasm. '35 That Easter vacation he set off with Cline for a bicycle tour. They spent the first night in Newbury, where they slept in the back of a shop. Then it was off to Winchester to spend the morning looking around the cathedral: 'The inside of Winchester is glorious, soaring belief in what they were building. ' Since it was Sunday, they stayed for a service where George met the Canadian general H. D. G. Crerar. After spending the night in a youth hostel, they pressed on to Salisbury and Stonehenge. Stonehenge George found disappointing, but Salisbury was 'beyond words. The exquisite greyness of its outside against the blue sky & the green grass. ' He admired it, but found it challenging: 'We have no goal like that - no ends - and yet we cannot take theirs. We are hungry yet we cannot eat their decayed meat. We must find something different. ' Except for Easter weekend with Mrs Buck, he spent the rest of the holidays in Oxford. Alison came up one day and they basked in the glorious sunshine as they punted on the Thames. But she reported to her mother that, although George adored Oxford, T think it's a great

An ambitious little pragmatist 63 struggle for him to give it up, but I'm sure it's the wisest course. As it is an intolerable position for him and it's all too difficult... It is hard on him but there is so little of Oxford left. All the worthwhile dons are in various ministries and most of the men in the army. '36 His cousin, Lionel Massey, was about to be posted to active duty. The military situation was getting worse almost daily: 'This has been a ghastly week. Total warfare has started in truth. The poor Dutch just seem to have been opened up 8c swallowed - a terrible massacre. England is no longer fighting for liberty but for her life. ' Balliol was similarly collapsing. Not only were the students leaving, but one by one the dons were taking up military or government work, and the remaining dons, such as George's tutor Tylor, were taking on extra students. He could only see George from 9 to 10 in the evenings, and by that time he was 'so tired from teaching all day that it is hardly worth while. Oxford you must realise is just ceasing to exist. '37 In the afternoons he went to work on a farm 'which is so tiring that one nearly dies - backbreaking digging pour la patrie. ' 'Boy I respect the farm labourer; it is really exhausting work. '38 It quickly became necessary for George to weigh his options when the Master called an extraordinary meeting in hall to indicate that Oxford might cease to function the next year. The warden of Rhodes House, whom George consulted, said that George should go home immediately, and not even wait until the end of the summer. In spite of Maude's urgings to come home, George he was still undecided whether he should stay. As well as Rimbaud, he had been reading Baudelaire, whose highly symbolic poetry he pronounced 'beyond words exquisite. '39 Lines from Les Fleurs du Mal seemed to capture his own dilemma: 'Faut-il partir? rester? Si tu peux rester, reste; / Pars, s'il le faut' (Must I leave? Stay? If you can stay, then stay; / Leave if you must). At Lindsay's suggestion George got in touch with the Canadian High Commission to see if he could volunteer for work. George's mother knew Mike Pearson and his wife Marion well and, since Pearson was a senior diplomat with the Canadian High Commission, George went to seek his help. However, he proved unhelpful and George remarked to his mother that he was 'a nice but bloodthirsty man. '40 If, in spite of further efforts, he still could not turn up anything to do, then it might be necessary to come home. If he did, he would try for some sort of in-military service. Not for a moment do I feel any differently towards t\ This thing or as to the evil that must come in its trail but one cam nd aside from it. If one is to stop such corruption it must be from the in e, not from a holier

64 George Grant than thou attitude. As to what one can do it is so stupid to ask & perhaps it would be better as Peter [Clarke] says to keep oneself & one's friends out... God knows whatever happens now hundreds of people are going to get massacred to pieces. The hate & the waste that has been unleashed now can't be covered by any insurance policies now...41 His alternative, he thought, was to remain in England and join an ambulance unit. By the time France fell, he had moved out of Balliol and was living in a cheap boarding-house. Through two girls he met who had just escaped from France he went to the hospital to see the wounded French soldiers. He was appalled: 'This holocaust makes 1914 seem like a picnic and it is not lack of courage that made France fall but human endurance limits. Hate's most gruesome orgy. '42 But it was Lindsay's advice that finally settled that he should stay. 'The Master told me I would be more of a help and that I should stay - (never repeat this) and so I must. And you probably know his goodness and wisdom are without end and he will be the kind of person from whom Europe will get the sanity and new spirit 'in hoc signo' that will someday let us win out. If one has been in something one has more right at the end to say FORGIVE - which must be said - our cries must be forgiven as theirs must be too. That spirit is of course dying, but it must not die. '43 That was die noble reason; it was true and it was appropriate to tell his mother. He also said he stayed partly for Alison's sake, but he knew it was mostly for his own. At Queen's he had announced that he was in the great period of Weltschmerz that comes to the young. He was now so completely in its thrall that he instantly understood the malaise Baudelaire expressed in his great poem Le Voyage. He too was bored and restless ['Ce pays nous ennuie']. We can almost see him sitting in his room, reading the lines and translating them to himself, nodding his assent. Verse-nous ton poison pour qu'il nous reconforte! Nous voulons, tant ce feu noble brule le cerveau, Plonger au fond du gouffre, Enfer ou Ciel, qu'importe? Au fond de l'lnconnu pour trouver du nouveau! [Pour us some c ooison for our comfort! Our brai that we yearn To dive to he abyss - Hell or Heaven, does it matter? Into the depths. Jnknown to find something new. ]

An ambitious little pragmatist 65 George sensed that this was his chance to live intensely, to break free from the restraining shell of the moderate, conventional world his mother inhabited and in which she wanted him to live and excel. He bought a ticket home, but found that he could not use it. Instead he set off for Mrs Buck's to do some farm work until he could take up the chance to serve actively, but in a non-combatant role. Peter Clarke had introduced him to Vaughan Williams, a pacifist at another Oxford college. Williams recognized that there were a number of conscientious objectors, like himself, who opposed the war for other than religious reasons and who were consequently unlikely to be exempted from the army unless they were able to prove a willingness and capacity to undertake some sort of medical or first-aid service. So he decided to form a Universities Ambulance Unit (UAU) from Oxford and Cambridge students. It had no political ties and was open to any pacifist students, whether or not they had been through their tribunals. The work was unpaid, and every volunteer was responsible for his own support.44 George's own reasons for his pacifism, at this point, were mixed. Much later he explained his motives as follows: 'My attitude to the war had largely been determined by a certain inchoate sense of what harm the earlier war had done to Canada, and therefore a rather vague North American isolationist sense vis-a-vis Europe's conflicts. That is political and I was an entire secularist. I was deeply moved by a group of pacifists I met in Balliol in 1939 so that by the time of the UAU you could say my motives were religious. '45 The claim that he was an 'entire secularist' is surely an exaggeration. From his poem 'Peace' through his letter to his mother about Christian pacifism to his regular attendance at Balliol chapel, he was sympathetic to Christian moral teaching. For now, Christianity reinforced his political stance, but its hold over him was growing and it eventually became central. About the beginning ofJuly 1940 twenty students, of whom fifteen were from Oxford and five from Cambridge, gathered at Hawkspur Green near Little Bardfield in Essex. There was a day-room and a kitchen made from an old army hut, two bunk-houses (each sleeping ten), a prefabricated schoolroom, a goat shed, hen house and reservoir for the water supply, latrines and bathhouse. There was also an office building, called the Chalet, consisting of two floors with a room in the roof and two offices on the ground floor. 46 The unit rose at 7: 30, had breakfast, then assembled for a morning of instruction in physiology and first aid. Lunch was followed by a three-hour route march. Upon return, there was training in bandaging, stretcher bearing, artificial respiration, and the like

66 George Grant until supper and then further practical work until bedtime. When there was time off in the evenings, they played charades, or repaired to the Fighting Cocks at nearby Little Sampford to play the pub's rickety piano. On one occasion they did a reading of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.

The denizens of the camp were an eccentric lot. There was an enormously fat man who was half-Spanish and had fought on the Loyalist side in the Spanish Civil War, whom George described as 'a really well-educated European who is also beyond words kind. ' The nicest was 'a small Jew from Oxford who looks as if he should be selling papers in the Bronx but who got a first in Greats'. Finally there was Hallam Tennyson, grandson of the poet-laureate, who was 'mad and ineffectual but so pleasant, the kind of Etonian who is a success - I find so few of them. '47 The important thing about this group of people was that it was the first time in George's life that he was surrounded by men who shared his artistic sensibility. At Upper Canada he had been the odd boy out, awkward at sports and inclined to poetry: by the standards of the institution, a misfit. At Queen's, he was Principal Grant's grandson dating Principal Wallace's daughter, grandly concerned with world affairs. Here he was a Christian, a pacifist, and an aesthete, accepted as one of the lads for the first time in his life. On one of the marches I found myself next to Hallam Tennyson, whom I had never met and he talked to me of worlds of art and thought which just enraptured me. They were worlds in which I had lived in earlier reading, but which had been entirely private because I took for granted they were not serious because my contemporaries at school and university had not taken them seriously. I had gathered something of the sort in my first year at Oxford, but was enchanted by it in the members of the UAU. I was, of course, meeting directly contemporaries from a society which had some history from before the age of progress, who took the worlds of religion and art and morality seriously. Intoxicating.48 Another member remarked: 'How Plato haunted that little world!'49 The would-be ambulance unit could not live on Plato and poetry; it needed food. This was a particular difficulty, because, given the social background of the group, not only had none of them ever cooked, it was unlikely that any of their mothers had either. Food was something servants brought at the appropriate times. George apparently drew the short

An ambitious little pragmatist 67 straw and was appointed the camp cook, a skill he later assiduously concealed. For now his greatest pride was 'the day I did my first souffle for the doctor who was to take the exam. It rose at the crucial point. What triumph. '50 In his spare time he read Walt Whitman and listened to Brahms on the radio: 'After all the heat, dirt and work it was like some glorious monument to loneliness. ' Occasionally he got up to London, where he indulged his passion for the cinema, taking in Gone with the Wind, 'a powerful movie about the breakup of a world that was out of date - strangely topical. '51 He also ran into novelist E. M. Forster in Bumpuses bookshop on Oxford Street: 'Feeling I would never see it again I was buying a book on Chartres. He was reading something on Matisse. It is a nice feeling to know that one has come into direct physical contact with a man of his high calibre. '52 The ramifications of the fall of France in June 1940 slowly became apparent to members of the ambulance unit. They were training to serve as a field unit but, unless England were invaded, it looked unlikely that there would be a need for their services. George again contemplated returning home, but the influence of the other pacifists in the unit made him more determined than ever to refuse military service. That made a return to Canada more difficult, because he would refuse conscription and might face jail. His arrest might harm his brother-in-law Geoff Andrew, who worked for the government; and it would put paid to any notion he might have of a future legal career. While he was waiting for events to clarify, he took a forestry job chopping down trees at 8/6 (less than two dollars) a day, which he found 'terrifically hard physical labour. ' However, it brought him his first direct encounter with war and death. On Monday last we had a tremendous experience - walking in the woods suddenly all hell broke out above. We saw two planes crash. One only about a field away. So we rushed, I wondering what to do if I met a German. But before we got there a parachutist came down about a hundred yards away very fast - so we ducked down behind the trees - the yokels getting so broad in accent I couldn't understand a word. Then we waited but the big white thing didn't move - so we went forward - the German was dead - broken - the flaxen hair blowing all over his quiet face but his body smashed. Then we went on to the plane, but strangely it was English the pilot was all burned up and all the bullets went off - 8 Germans came down in parachutes all round. One man had been at Cambridge for

68 George Grant eight months. Then last night and this morning they attacked a nearby objective...53 The planes were harbingers of George's future. One of the members of the unit suggested that they should offer their services to the civildefence authorities in one of the working-class areas of East or South London. Eventually, after intense political quarrels with the more leftwing members who thought that the Air Raid Precautions (ARP) was a fraud, they were accepted by the socially progressive Borough of Bermondsey in South London near the docks and warehouses. Many of them took temporary accommodation in the basement of a house in St Johns Wood, and George moved in temporarily with his sister Alison and the Greeys at 231 Sussex Gardens. His dive into the abyss was about to begin. Those who knew him at Oxford realized his emotional and intellectual turmoil. C.K.Allen from Rhodes House wrote to Maude regretting the disruption of her son's education, but recognizing its necessity: 'Inevitably, he has been greatly disturbed by the conditions of the past year, the more so because he has had some difficult personal problems to worry out in connection with this detestable struggle. I don't quite know how he will solve them; obviously, that is a battle which he has to fight alone; but I do profoundly hope that he will see some light at the end of this dark tunnel through which we are all passing, and I have no doubt that he will. '54 George himself felt that his whole being was in the process of transformation: 'This year, not only the fact of being at Oxford but the war etc. have so crystallized some things and disintegrated others that I feel like a different being. There is a wild curiosity to bring this new self and reflect it on the old environment. ' That would have to wait. In the meantime there was a new world waiting.

6

Mysterious forces within man

Bermondsey is on the south bank of the Thames, east of Tower Bridge and about a mile from the Elephant and Castle. It was a tough workingclass district, full of jam factories, breweries, and warehouses near the docks; a substantial proportion of its inhabitants were of Irish origin. George operated out of the Oxford and Bermondsey Club at 42 Tanner Street, one of the Oxford settlement houses established in the poorer districts of the capital. The club grew out of the Oxford Medical Mission and was established by Evangelical churchmen, who believed that the university had a duty to help the poor and that they could best fulfil their social responsibilities by setting up a medical mission in one of the poorer areas of London. They decided on Bermondsey, an area of great squalor and deprivation. 1 The Medical Mission provided free treatment for the poor of the area and also set up a number of boys' clubs, which aimed to provide group activities such as sports, music, and amateur dramatics in a Christian setting. During the Oxford vacations many undergraduates regularly came down to work as volunteers. The O&B, dierefore, was both a social club and a soup kitchen. In his last year at Upper Canada George chose to work with immigrant children at the University Settlement. He was now drawn to a similar sort of institution in Bermondsey. It was the centre of George's life for the next year, not least because of a wild, black-eyed Irish woman about 45 years old, who added looking after George to her other responsibilities of cooking at the club, tending her family of seven children, and trying to ensure that her ne'er-do-well husband kept out of trouble. Over the next year George depended very heavily on Mrs Lovett's friendship. To sleep, George went to an air-raid shelter. There were

70 George Grant two main types of these in Bermondsey, one in the big underground warehouses, which were relatively comfortable and secure, the other in the arches underneath the railway line. These were dank and wet and, with up to 1200 people in them, did not begin to provide adequate sanitation facilities. When a friend from Balliol2 asked George to show a bigwig in the Southern English Air Raid Defence around Bermondsey, the official was simply shattered by the shelters, particularly the railway arches. 'It's as bad as refugees in Asia Minor, ' he said. 'I don't know how you can stand it. ' 3 About five o'clock on a hot Saturday afternoon, 7 September 1940, many East Enders heard the roar in the sky and came out to see what they expected was a display of British aerial might. Instead they saw German warplanes, bombers, that started to deliver their payload first on the Arsenal docks in Woolwich, then on the docks on both sides of the Thames, the Victoria and Albert, the East India, and the Surrey Commercial, setting them on fire. 4 In the days that followed the East End suffered wave after wave of saturation bombing. On 11 September, George wrote to his mother that he was writing in the middle of 'a real rocker of a raid in which one just can't concentrate. '5 George's unpaid job was as an Air Raid Precautions (ARP) warden. He was one of thousands, many of them too old for active service. They worked largely on their own, with responsibility for a particular area. It was their job to make sure that the black out was observed and, once a raid was in progress, to summon the appropriate emergency services, rescue those trapped in the rubble, provide first aid, and, most dangerous of all, investigate unexploded bombs.6 On 15 September the Germans sent four hundred fighters to escort the one hundred bombers. They were met over London by nearly two hundred Hurricanes and Spitfires. It was the day later to be celebrated as the Battle of Britain, when the many owed so much to the few. But an equal debt was owed to the firemen and the ARP wardens who risked their lives and drove themselves to exhaustion to cope with the damage done by Goring's bombers. It was impossible to sleep during the night raids, with the noise from the bombs and the anti-aircraft guns; as soon as they finished, George was out in the bombed-out streets, sifting through the rubble, looking for survivors: 'I helped wounded people - I carried the dead - I evacuated shelters - I lost some good friends - I told people that their relatives were in hospital when I had just seen them taken to the morgue. I told others the truth. For myself I was up 36 hours on end and while it lasted was very near death. I put out innumerable incendiaries. '7 Towards the end of October he made one of his rare excursions from

Mysterious forces within man 71 the East End to the comfort of 231 Sussex Gardens. Alison was worried about her brother's condition, and she wrote to her mother: The worst thing though is happening in the East End, and George is doing magnificent work - too much I fear, as he is throwing himself into it with a will. He looked dead beat when he came on Saturday and we gave him a stiff gin and tonic and sent him to bed and he was asleep in a jiffy and could hardly be roused. He was sweet and seemed happier than for ages. The constant bombing is pretty hard on him and he seemed so tired. '8 Mike Pearson and his wife Marion were family friends of the Grants, but he was there that evening, as he often was, because he had become romantically involved with Alison's flatmate, Mary Greey. The women prevailed on him to give George a bath before putting him to bed. He needed more than a bath. He went to a doctor and learned he had strained his heart and, while he recuperated, he did light work around the hospital. When he recovered, he returned to Bermondsey. As the bombing of East London continued, George, like the regular inhabitants of the area, felt resentful that more posh districts escaped the onslaught. Indeed, it was only after a bomb landed on Buckingham Palace that Queen Elizabeth said she felt she could look East Londoners in the eye. Her visit to Bermondsey in early November was not a great success, though George, who managed to chat with her, found her 'a very great lady, but she works too hard and she looked very tired - but always gracious. '9 On 14 November the Germans changed their strategy and destroyed Coventry. It was only the second night in the past sixty-eight that there was no bombing in London. Things had been picking up anyway as people adjusted to shelter life. The more progressive councils, of which Bermondsey was a leader, started a range of evening classes in the shelters. George got his shelter to form a committee to solve problems and to arrange entertainment. He organized a boxing club for some teenage boys and, when his mother sent him money for his birthday, he decided 'to buy poor little children in these worst part of the shelters dolls. Don't think this is self-sacrifice - but you should see the faces of these little angels. '10 When he went to visit his godfather, Sir Edward Peacock, he extracted enough money to buy a dartboard. 11 Most important, though, he felt for the first time in his life loved for himself, not because he was somebody's relative: 'These people are as fine as my small experience has met. I love them as a group as no other and feel that they accept me as a friend. Of course going out with the men at night on these terrible expeditions and working with the women in the day cuts away all the ordinary formal barriers. '12 Going to the East

72 George Grant End was a decisive experience for him; it divided his life 'into the part before and the part since': 'Never have I loved people as these, yet they have so many vices. But beauty is so fine for it ends loneliness. One is always lonely for something - yet with something beautiful - my God for a moment one thinks maybe one has found something. All the things that people have written about the attainable 8c the unattainable seemed silly - but perhaps they aren't. ' 13 He half fell in love even with the strangers he pulled out from the rubble and tended while they waited for the ambulances to arrive. Others, like Granny Peck, he knew better. She had just been bombed for the second time when George arrived. Her house was on fire and she was sitting beside it, watching it burn. He knew she was dying and he sent for the doctor. While they were waiting for the ambulance, Granny put on her black bonnet and gathered together her cane and the bag of treasures she was able to save from her house, all that was left of her life. She walked down to the ambulance, leaning on George. After they lifted her into it, George kissed her and said, 'Goodbye, Gran. ' Calmly, she replied: 'Don't say goodbye; it's just au revoir. ' Within a week she was dead. 14 These small and great horrors happened almost every day. Once George persuaded a man whose wife had died to evacuate his small daughter. 'You must get that child out of here, ' he told him. A little while later, the news came back that she had fallen into a pond near her billet in the country and drowned. It was up to George to tell the distraught father: 'That was moment number one when I grew up!' he later recalled. 15 When Coventry was bombed, Bermondsey gained some temporary relief, but George reflected: 'It is a brutal world when our success is mainly due to others getting it. ' He feared that the growing American involvement in the war would merely spread the dehumanization more widely. Although he still idolized Roosevelt and prayed for his re-election, he was worried about the Lend-Lease program; it 'may be (God knows) for the best to let Britain have arms, but they [the Americans] are still trafficking in instruments of death. It may be death for the right but it is still cruel death and when they send bombers it is death that is almost inexcusable. '16 My God, he cried, if only we had read Wilfred Owen's poetry more carefully and taken it to heart, maybe this horror would not have happened. Christmas 1940 was a happy interlude. George took Alison to a dance with her ARP comrades; then they went to another at the Dorchester Hotel for Canadian airmen on leave (Aunt Lai, as all the family called Alice Massey, and Vincent had moved to the luxury hotel for the du-

Mysterious forces within man 73 ration; they reckoned it safer than their house). On Christmas afternoon Alison had a tea party. George and some American guests played cribbage on the floor, the gramophone sounding the latest tunes in the background as they ate their Christmas cake. On Boxing Day he and Alison went to see Bette Davis and Charles Boyer in All This and Heaven Too; all his life it remained his favourite film. It added up to 'eight parties drank consecutively (not too much) for three days - danced, kissed a least 200 people under the mistletoe and generally rushed around as I have never rushed before. '17 It was a relief to head off for Allerthorpe to be fussed over by Leo. When George returned to Bermondsey after Christmas, it was like coming home. In spite of the horrors of war, the 'darkness, wet, dirt, smells, germs, sickness and general unpleasant physical conditions that have been part of Bermondsey, "8 he was among friends: 'One lorry driver who had crushed his hand paid me the greatest compliment the other day. He said as we walked down the street, "You always are my right 'and and now that I'm 'urt you'll have to be it real. " Some of them are regular rats but most of them are grand... I love them and it is that love that makes one's work easier. '19 Another friend was an old ARP warden who could not get around much, a big man who had lived a full life and had 'an easy salty tolerance and fine observational power. ' He sat with his pipe in his mouth, telling stories of wild birds he had seen, or of the curious traits of his wife or neighbours: 'In this same sub-post are the toughest, roughest crowd of courageous people - who have worked at their ordinary jobs all day and at ARP all night since September. They would save any man's life & steal any man's property. My greatest pride here is that I can melt into them & sit there & they are natural. '20 George loved the people of Bermondsey very much. Once during a raid, he was sitting looking at the Christmas card Professor Trotter had sent him, a woodcut of a woman and child. As he looked around he saw a similar woman and child in the shelter, dark and Irish, descendants of those who came in 1832 because of the famine. She had been bombed out of two homes, her children had been sick, but she held her family together, determined that they survive. On another occasion, George was in The Raven and the Sun, the pub across the road from the Oxford and Bermondsey Club, 21 when a man and his wife came up and said: 'You must come and see the Irishman. ' George thought that 'the Irishman' was some peculiar Bermondsey expression and, his curiosity aroused, he accompanied them. At first he had not recognized the woman, but then he realized that he had helped her during a bad air raid and got her

74 George Grant safely to a shelter. The woman was a Londoner, her husband Irish, and the 'Irishman' turned out to be, indeed, someone straight from Ireland. When they arrived they found him in bed with two bottles of whiskey. Whenever the Irishman said something, the Cockney woman translated and her kind, lisping husband complained, 'Sure and he can understand an Irishman better than a bloody Cockney, ' and then a fight started. After two stiff drinks George tried to leave. Another argument. 'Sure and the lad's not going to disappoint us. ' 'But you don't want to give him a drop too much. ' George was barely able to stand when he was allowed to slip away.22 In the first week of February 1941 Burgon Bickersteth came by to visit George and to look around Bermondsey. 'Uncle' Burgon was warden of Hart House, a very fine neo-gothic building that the Masseys had given to the University of Toronto. It served as a social club for male students and Vincent Massey still kept an active and watchful eye over it, since he was particularly interested in the Hart House String Quartet and the Hart House Theatre. Bickersteth had been in charge of the House since 1921 and was a close friend of the Grant family. He was currently on leave from Hart House, serving as an educational adviser to the Canadian army. The long and detailed letters about his war experiences he sent back to Canada were duplicated and circulated to a socially prominent readership in Tory Toronto that grew to some two hundred names, most of whom Maude would have known. Two of Bickersteth's letters gave a very sympathetic and detailed account of George's experiences in Bermondsey. In Canada, as in England, there was an intense and pervasive antagonism towards able-bodied young men who did not enlist. Bickersteth clearly intended to lessen, if he could not eliminate, the hostility to George's pacifism among Maude's influential acquaintances; but it may be that his letters merely served to make George's non-combatant role more widely known. One evening George met Bickersteth at the Oxford and Bermondsey Club to take him on a tour of the shelters for which he was responsible. They first went to a comparatively commodious shelter in the basement of the Abbey Factory where George introduced 'Uncle' to Mrs Burk, who had been living there ever since September when her house was destroyed. Christmas, she said, was wonderful, thanks to George: 'Why, we're a real family party - all know each other and we 'ave lovely concerts. Why George 'ere, 'e and some of the others arranged a fine party on Christmas Eve - games and tea and dancing and I dressed up as a pirate -just think at 73, ain't that ridiculous?'

Mysterious forces within man 75 When they went out into the blackout, their mood became more grim. The scene looked like the terrible battlefield at Ypres in 1918, 'great gaunt walls, twisted steel beams, piles of rubble. ' They were now on their way to visit one of the shelters beneath the railway arches. In Bermondsey, 61 Arch and Stayners St Arch were the most famous; they were especially big because they were beneath the many platforms and tracks of London Bridge Station. As Bickersteth went in he looked up at the ceiling. It was 'like a vast crypt with one section opening into another and side aisles and domed chambers opening off, so to speak, the main thoroughfare - catacombs on a vast, lofty scale. ' Everywhere there were beds about a foot high, their rough lumber framework hidden by blankets and bedding of every description. The beds in each row touched one another and there gangways down the middle. Some people were already in bed, others were sitting or walking about; there were children playing, children crying, children asleep. Trains rumbled overhead. Here was a soldier on leave standing by his wife and twin daughters. Beyond, a brother nursed his small sister who only now was getting over the shock of being bombed. From everywhere there was noise, laughter, even snores. At Stayners half a dozen lads aged twelve to fourteen ran up to George to ask him about the boxing gloves he had promised them. Some people lay on a bed playing checkers. People were passing up and down the gangway, hailing friends, standing in groups talking; a radio was blaring in one corner. In the far distance was a canteen, lavatories with corrugated walls, nurses in uniform patrolling, apparent confusion and yet a curious kind of order; everybody had a place. After visiting a few more shelters in the subway stations, they went to The Raven and The Sun. Once they were past the heavy blackout curtain at the door, they came into the brightly lit bar. The radio blared in the background and the people, packed in like sardines, shouted to make themselves heard. George introduced 'Uncle Burgon' to his friends - Albert Tongue, the lorry driver, his eighty-year-old father, Mrs Whybrow, his sister, and others. Further lubricated with a round of Guiness, Albert told of his journeys around the country and described the effects of the Blitz on Portsmouth, Manchester, and Bristol: 'Do you see Mrs Fuller over there?' George pointed her out to Bickersteth across the room. 'When her husband died she fortified herself before the funeral with three stiff whiskies and hid the bottle under the table when the parson arrived. Then she pulled herself together and put on a long face to go out into the street to enter the horse-drawn carriage behind the horse-drawn hearse. I held her hand

76 George Grant through the service, but as we walked away from the grave she casually remarked of her dead spouse, "Well 'e was a fair devil 'e was. "' About 10: 30 they crossed the road to the Oxford and Bermondsey Club, where Mrs Lovett cooked them some fish and chips and Bickersteth met her 'spineless' husband, Albert. George and Bickersteth sat there for an hour or more, talking about Toronto and Upper Canada and Hart House. Then they set off for the shelter. The night was clear and calm, except for some gunfire in the distance and shrapnel bursting in the sky several miles off. They groped their way through the dark entrance to the shelter. A few electric lights were still burning, and a couple of hurricane lamps hung from the rafters, in case the Germans hit the electricity supplies. All the bunks were occupied except for two, which were set aside for George and his guest. For a while they sat and talked in whispers; then they slipped off their jackets and boots and got into their bunk-beds. Bickersteth was allotted the lower, while Mrs Lovett slept above. There was no partition with the next bunk, and Bickersteth slept head to head with a stranger. When they awoke at 6: 30 the next morning, they saw old Mr Tongue, dressed in his overcoat, sitting on a packing case, staring into the distance. Fifteen minutes later Mrs Lovett awoke, slipped gently to the ground and disappeared, only to return in a few moments with a jug of hot tea and some mugs. Bickersteth reached for a penny for the cuppa. 'What yer doin'?' she said. 'No penny for guests. '23 The authorities knew that railway arch shelters offered an illusory security. In Alone: The Blitz Churchill recorded that he was aware that 'there were several large shelters, some of which held as many as seven thousand people, who camped there in confidence night after night, little knowing what the effect of a direct hit would have been upon them. I asked that brick traverses should be built in these as fast as possible. '24 For George's friends in Stayners, the strengthening did not come in time. On Monday, 17 February 1941, when George was out, Stayners suffered a direct hit and was 'smashed to ribbons, ' with enormous casualties, possibly over three hundred dead. It is possible, though we cannot be certain, that George lost a girlfriend in the destruction. In a journal he started keeping some eighteen months later, he refers to 'the memory of that girl, that squadron leader's wife - the luxuriant healthy English country one - so meant for complete physical life & with her husband away. I thought of her leaning against me in the night saying "Stay" - a thick hot voice. '25 'Why does one learn to depend on a person like that? Was it that she gave me sexual peace & a sense also of real manhood for

Mysterious forces within man 77 the first time 8c then to find it broken into by the shocking suddenness, & worse completeness, of death?'26 More than this we perhaps shall never know. George's own account, written some five days after the hit, is almost numb: 'My railway arch was hit and most of my friends in Bermondsey were eliminated or in hospital - so there it is. I was out but came back to find it after it had happened. I thought I had seen the worst - but this was the end. '27 George survived this disaster physically, but emotionally it ate at his spirit for several years. He leaned heavily on Mrs Lovett and also turned to Aunt Lai for comfort, which she gave entirely. Aunt Lai also joined Bickersteth in trying to rescue George's reputation back home from those who accused him of lacking patriotism or courage or both. She wrote repeatedly to Maude and others in Canada trying to persuade them of the importance of what George was doing: 'George's work demands courage, self-sacrifice, great intelligence and balance and of course endless sympathy and understanding and you would be more than proud of him (as we are). He has gained in character and stature all the time. Hart has a great admiration for him. '28 Alice also helped in other, more practical ways, sending him out to buy a new pair of shoes with rubber soles: 'We try to keep him from going about with wet feet. ' Mike Pearson, too, did what he could. He came to Bermondsey to spend the night with George in his shelter and reported back to the Masseys 'what a marvellous job he is doing. '29 Soon after, when he was posted back to Ottawa, he met Charity, who was now working in the capital, and he repeated the message: 'George is so well known down in Bermondsey that everywhere we went the people all shouted "Here Comes George."'30 By contrast, Mrs Buck was constantly badgering him: 'Uncle Burgon says she writes regularly of my mental health & sends me long letters that the only way for any human being to achieve decency and strength is through joining the British army. ' George countered this assault by complaining that she refused to 'take or try & find billets for my evacuees. They have talked to me of patriotism all my life & have now refused to do the small thing of saving these children. '31 At times he felt he was living in hell. All around him there was destruction: Southwark Cathedral, hit by a large bomb; All Hallows, Barking, a shell, the roof gone, some of the walls still standing; Chelsea Old Church, which 'gave one a sense of having kept in itself the excitement, passion, dreariness and exaltation of Anne Boleyn & Thomas More and the less turbulent spirit of its quieter members. '32 And Virginia Woolf, the novelist, dead by her own hand, depressed by the war: 'The papers today say

78 George Grant that Virginia Woolf committed suicide - one had known for a long time that she had died but that she killed herself is to me very sad. Her books always gave me such a sense of dignity and calm that one felt that she must have within herself reserves of understanding that would surmount any catastrophe. '33 His own sanity was saved by the onset of spring: 'Spring with the daffodils. The sensual pleasure of sight that one gets from the radiant fresh yellowness - the clean restful greenness - the form of them - such life and gentleness - the easy splendour of England in the spring - winter is over. '34 He was also sustained by music, Grieg's superb piano concerto, 'a magnificent lyrical work'; and, at one of the famous lunchtime concerts, he 'heard Myra Hess 8c Irene Scharer playing two pianos. They were filling in for someone... yet one had the consciousness that even such superlative players were playing above form. '35 Mary Greey decided to return to Canada to be closer to Pearson, and she quit her job with the War Office. To fill in the time until she got passage, she asked George if he could get her a job in Bermondsey. He got her one working for 'some female snobs. ' 'She plans to go home at the end of June, ' George wrote to his mother, 'and I think it is for the best though she hates the idea. I think it is for the best and I hope she gets married. '36 Marriage was not in the cards for Mary, at least not to Pearson. Part of the explanation for George's later hostility to Pearson stems from the fact that George thought, fairly or not, that he had strung Mary along. However, her temporary move to Bermondsey did have one happy, though slightly longer-term, effect; she introduced him to a young conscientious objector, Steven Smith, who was working at her settlement house while he was waiting to go up to Oxford. Five years later, at a party in Oxford hosted by Smith, George met his future wife. 37 When Mary left, she took with her a small seventeenth-century Spanish crystal cross that George saw in a shop and was unable to resist. He sent it for Charity to wear and, he wrote to Maude, 'I hope you and Chippy love it as I have loved it. '38 On 17 May 1941 Bickersteth came down again. Actually, they met first at Bickersteth's club, the Travellers, for a meagre tea, and then sat on the grass in St James' Park, watched the ducks, and talked. Then they took a taxi across Waterloo Bridge and walked the couple of miles to Bermondsey, past the ruins of the Old Vic theatre and the Elephant and Castle pub. They dropped in first on Albert Tongue and his family, and they all went off together to The Raven and The Sun. After a few drinks they toured the shelters and stopped at the Oxford and Bermondsey Club for

Mysterious forces within man 79 bangers and mash about ten in the evening. They then carried on the round of the shelters, arriving to sleep at the Abbey Factory Shelter about 1: 30 AM. In the morning George said, 'Will you see a boy called Pat Connolly? He's in the Club now. ' 'Of course, if you want me to, ' Bickersteth replied, 'but why?' 'Because, ' said George, 'until Saturday evening he was one of a fairly large family - father, mother and two sisters and a brother. One direct hit killed them all and he alone is left. '39 Nothing further of the dimensions of the Stayner tragedy happened, but lesser tragedies continued to gnaw away at George's spirit: 'Destruction that means so much to one, for here one had picked up the remains of Mr. Grey the newsagent - here one had comforted his son - here the Waves had lost their house - here the Peeneys have lost theirs - here one had caught a looter - here one had ducked for a near bomb - here one had put out incendiaries - and so on. It is difficult to understand how much this vicinity means to this people. ' He could not believe that German airmen would do something like this if they knew in detail the misery they were causing: 'Often have I wanted to take a German airman to some of the more outlandish sights one has come across. Let them see the tiger-like footsteps that they leave behind - imprints that are left on other people's lives. There is something so furious about High Explosive, it rents & tears and breaks and shatters everything that stands in its way - it takes the air as its ally and does more destruction by blast. Fury upon fury. '41 George knew from personal experience the incredible effect of a high-explosive blast. A raid had finished and he was doing the rounds, checking the smaller shelters. He went downstairs to one, a billiard and pool room, and opened the door. He saw a man standing at the billiard table, his cue in his hand. Motionless. A little blood had trickled from his nostrils; that was the only sign that he had come to harm. On another occasion George opened the door to a shelter and saw forty people sitting around the walls; then he realized that they too were all dead from a high-explosive blast. At other times people caught fire and George had to play a hose on them to extinguish theflames.42 All the suffering made him very homesick: 'Last night I dreamt about CANADA so realistically, so vividly that when I awoke a wave of such disappointment swept over me that I could have run and run to escape from here - faster than the wind... What a waste of living this war is. ' He felt 'like a silly fluttering bird caught in the cage of his own making who wants to fly north to nest in the spring. I could be a scarlet tanager but one is only a floppy sparrow. '43 If he could not come home, and in truth he could never have contemplated leaving the people in Bermondsey

8o George Grant during their travail, perhaps a little bit of Canada could come to Bermondsey in the form of sugar for the sustaining cuppa: 'Money is the thing here that won't buy everything. Food is the thing that is vital. Sugar is the one we need most. Good sweet hot tea is undoubtedly the best thing for shock or tired nerves. It is what keeps England going. Several nice friends let me have the tea they don't drink but sugar is a vital problem. '44 Slightly later he perked up enough to asked for his brown linen jacket and a pair of shoes with crepe soles, since clothes were rationed. And he longed for chocolate. As increasing numbers of nights passed without raids, George found more time to read. He found that, because of his war experiences, he could now understand Hemmingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls in a way that was not possible even a few months earlier. Like many North Americans he especially liked reading Dickens, in this case the Pickwick Papers, living as he was in the same streets and alleys that Dickens portrayed. He also felt spiritually close to his mother as he read Thomas Mann's Lotte in Weimar 'in the long reaches of the night' and knew that Maude was also reading it in Canada. What really moved him, though, was a 78 record he had recently purchased: 'The other day I bought a record of Marian Anderson singing 'Softly Wakes my Heart. ' She is Ceres and Aphrodite rolled into one - that glorious liquid passionate confident voice moves me as no other singer does. Flagstad doesn't sing as well. Gigli sings better but without the tremendous sense of assurance. '45 Later in the summer Leo came down for a visit: ' [Leo] is the best and finest of the English country tradition. She's hardly the size of a pin's head now. When I lifted her up and gave a big kiss in the middle of Paddington Station, she lowered her eyes and blushed like a girl of sixteen. '46 George also took his sister to the Bermondsey ARP dance. Alison recounted the event in a letter to the Greeys: 'I looked very chic especially by the way I wore my face Lop-sided and slightly inflamed. George was master of ceremonies and I spent most of my time with the Clements... I was taken over to the pub and when I asked for whisky they gave me small glasses of it absolutely neat which made my hair curl. Two people asked me point blank why George brought me instead of his girl who used to work at the Time and Talents. '47 By the late summer Alison was in the process of settling affairs for the flat, since Elizabeth and Mary Greey were both back in Canada. George was still very worried about Mary and the emotional strain of her love for Mike Pearson, and he wrote to his mother to plead for her understanding: 'Mary obviously will turn more & more upon Mike. All I want to say

Mysterious forces within man

81

is to understand & try 8c help. If you have ever seen Mary & Mike together you would know how absolutely suited they are for each other & how each adores the other. They are both far too fine to ever let it interfere with his children & wife but please try to understand it & make it a natural easy thing. ' 48 As the air raids lessened in their frequency and intensity, George began to feel restless again. In midst of the bombing he could contemplate the horror of annihilation, 'the way a bomb can descend & in the space of a second destroy even the most intricate - delicately balanced human personality. '49 Now, to his shame, he confessed he was becoming bored. It is terrible to admit it - but having been kept alive 8c interested by periodic blitzes - this last three weeks peace has been a little ennuyanl - that is the word - I am kept alive so much by physical excitement that a lull has a kind of unbearable dullness. It is all combined with my perpetual wanderlust - to settle down is almost unbearable & however many great advantages there may be in settling down in Bermondsey even here it is intolerable. Now I am about ready for China or South America or Mexico or any place. It is weakness because it means one can't tackle any problem except superficially. If I conquer this time it may help me conquer for other times - let us hope so.50 On the morning of 22 June 1941 Londoners learned the reason why the bombing had diminished. Hitler had decided to take his biggest gamble and invaded Russia. The fighters and bombers had been steadily transferred to the East and would clearly remain there for the foreseeable future. For England, London, Bermondsey, and Tanner Street this was a welcome development, but George saw its other side as well. To him it seemed a further, inexorable movement in the spread of evil and violence to encompass the whole world. The mess the world is in is difficult to understand - given a glorious world - of sun and green and ourselves - we have corrupted ourselves and our fellows. We have not controlled our progenitive instincts with the result that the world is too well populated - we have not controlled our acquisitive instinct with the result that the wealth of the world is not well divided. We have not controlled our pride so that we always want to put something over on somebody else. We have not controlled our frustration so that though we think we are the best in the world, we are always dissatisfied. Then suddenly this cauldron of folly and stupidity, pride and selfishness boils over and results in this welter of hate -

82 George Grant both sides proclaiming that they are fighting for the noblest of motives. To anyone with sensitivity the logic of suicide seems impenetrable. Thank God one isn't too sensitive...51 But of course he was sensitive, supremely so, both in an aesthetic and spiritual sense as well as in the more immediate personal way. He was also faced once again with the problem of what do to: 'The sad thing is that I am getting accustomed to Bermondsey - it is part of me. My whole being is in the process of metamorphosizing... It is the beginning of a terrible emotional impotence that will eventually leave one sterile and useless - this process is already in progress and yet one cannot prevent it. '52 But the pressure on him to enlist was ubiquitous and unrelenting. His cousins Hart and Lionel had both signed up and in May 1941 the Masseys received news that Lionel had been wounded and captured by the Germans. Although Alice never compared him unfavourably to her son, George surely made the comparison and found himself less noble and heroic than Lionel. Noverings continued to volunteer its opinion that George should enlist. Now Uncle Burgon joined the bandwagon. So did Alison, though she 'would not have the presumption to advise me. ' 'Please do not write to people that I am depressed, ' he begged his mother. 'Anyway it is a bore to be always considered depressed. ' But depressed he was, not least because no one seemed to understand why he had acted as he had. His pacifism was not, as old UCC friends such as Philip Foulds thought, a total opposition to the idea of killing. It was the dehumanizing brutality of modern war that held him back: 'To kill for some purpose seems to me utterly justifiable. '53 He was just twenty-two, physically exhausted from the bombing and emotionally drained by the tragedies he had witnessed. It was his duty as a Parkin to serve his king and country. He could no longer resist the universal pressure. He decided to join the navy. 'I am going to try to get into the navy or the merchant marine next week even though I think it is one of the stupidest, most useless, basest actions I have done. But people expect it so there one goes... When young one was given the most luxurious of lives - a fine chance and education and now one pays the piper as one has to do futile and terrible things. As to "spiritual integrity" that is a thing that just doesn't count - one should have realised it ceased to count when the war started. '54 He left Bermondsey and moved into Hart's flat with the Masseys in the Dorchester hotel. He turned to his godfather, Edward Peacock, for advice because he thought that Sir Edward, who was a director of CPR, might use

Mysterious forces within man 83 his contacts get him on a Canadian Pacific boat, explaining that he preferred the merchant marine because he could be with the kind of people he knew and loved in Bermondsey. Peacock, however, passed him on to Uncle Vincent. Massey had a 'long very charming (just as nice as possible) talk' with George, 'really taking great pains & being very kind & fatherly.' Although Massey affected not to give advice about his choice of services - that is, either the merchant marine as a seaman or the royal Navy as a rating, with the later possibility of a commission George felt he was being pushed in the direction of the navy when Massey took him down to see the senior officer of the Canadian Naval Service at the High Commission; the officer in turn passed him on to someone at the British Admiralty. However, George was determined on the merchant marine and, as Alice wrote to Maude, was 'very dear about it and beyond a certain point we did not feel we should influence him.'55 Time passed and it took him far longer than he expected to find a ship: 'You wouldn't think that it would take such an infernal amount of difficulty to become a shipboy on a merchant vessel or anything they want me as - but that it does - and heaven upon heaven it looks as if I may not make it. It had seemed such a perfect glorious means of hiding myself from all eyes till the war is over.' In the meantime, he spent his mornings and afternoons writing a book about his war experiences.56 In the evenings he roamed 'these long, dark, blacked-out streets wandering, talking to strangers, prying into new corners - or else I go to see a friend & wander with him through the city.'57 'London is an amazing conglomeration of desires. It has no unity yet a great cohesion that binds it together — so that each section — each atom of each section is bound up to all the other atoms. The terrific organism which had no purpose that showed itself only in queer kaleidoscopic pictures gradually settles itself as one gets to know it better into an enormous formless heart so that the streets of Chelsea are connected with Russell Square & the squares of Mayfair even with the courts of Bermondsey.' When he stayed at home in the evenings, he read. He wrote to Maude to ask for the issue of a poetry magazine devoted to Canadian poetry: 'It is strange and futile to talk of Canada as my native country - but it is just about as much my native country as anywhere else so I might as well know about it.'58 When he got it, he was disappointed, except for a few lines by EJ. Pratt. Why, he wondered, 'should the poets of a young expanding country like Canada be pessimistic? Why do they ally themselves with the defeatism of Auden and Eliot of this country instead of the hope of the USA?' He also re-read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment,

84

George Grant

which he compared with Tolstoy's War and Peace. 'Though not as wide or as rounded asWar & Peace, its intensity & power makes it to me the unmatchable novel. Tolstoy's novel always gives the impression of being above human standards, of coming from the kind of mind which it is not silly to call sublime - but Dostoevsky is right inside man - perverted & corrupt but with such diseased energy that the best side of him triumphs.' Most surprising, though, was his continuing enthusiasm for American pragmatism. Passing a book shop I saw a small book of John Dewey on education ... the first essay on His Pedagogic Creed is the complete justification, written well, of father's life ... When I was younger I often wondered why daddy gave up a brilliant academic career for teaching. This is the answer and coming on top of work in Bermondsey it is the complete answer ... Without forcing myself to be North American my whole mental being is caught up in that tradition. In philosophy my favourite philosophers are William James and John Dewey, Frank Lloyd Wright in his buildings or writings stirs me. Robert Frost or Hart Crane in poetry. It isn't a feeling I push upon myself; it is one that just seems to come. I hope that I survive the war to be able to contribute to that tradition 8cbring Canada more into line with it ...59 Towards the end of October George was finally able to get things moving because of his previous experience as a deck-hand on the cattle boat, and he went for two weeks training as a seaman. Aunt Lai had his photo taken. It shows him very thin, very handsome, dressed in a turtle-neck sweater and the kind of tweed sports jacket he favoured to the end of his life; his brooding eyes burned intensely at the camera. She sent a print to her sister and got her nephew outfitted with 'all sorts of warm blue things.' George bought oilskins and the rest of his gear in preparation to set off for Middlesbrough at the mouth of the River Tees in North Yorkshire where he would join his ship. He had only to complete the formalities, including a medical examination, before he set off. When he saw the doctor he was told the news. He was unfit for service: the chest X-ray revealed a tubercular lesion. George rarely in later life recounted the details of what followed. If he did, he usually said simply that after the medical examination, he deserted. In a technical sense this is correct, because the ship sailed before the documentation arrived about his medical condition, and he was, for a while, posted as a deserter. In fact, he suffered what most of his family considered a nervous breakdown. He heard the word tuberculosis,

Mysterious forces within man 85 assumed the worst, and panicked. George seems first to have gone to Peter Clarke in Stepney. Clarke remembers George arriving on his doorstep 'in a frightful stew,' but then disappearing before Clarke could find out what had happened. Worried, Clarke tried to phone Alison, but she was incommunicado at the War Office. He then alerted Malcolm Brown in Oxford to keep an eye out for George in case he might turn up there. Instead George headed for Liverpool, where he foolishly tried to sign on to a ship unofficially. This effort came to nothing and he marked time working in demolition, thanks to the influence of parents of someone he knew from Oxford. In the evenings he continued to haunt the docks, but eventually he gave up. Hungry and tired, anxious about his health and filled with despair, he came back to Oxford in late November. Without a ration card it was impossible to get sufficient food. So he returned now out of necessity to what he previously did out of patriotism; he got a job working as a farm labourer at Quainton, ten miles north of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, about thirty miles from Oxford. While he was there, on 7 December 1941, the Japanese naval air force attacked the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, inflicting heavy loss of life and materiel. America entered the war. When George heard the news he was stunned. Then shock turned to hopelessness, and for three days he hovered on the brink of suicide, 'certainly nearer than I have ever been or ever hope to be. It didn't just seem worthwhile to struggle.' Although American entry into the war, added to the Russian resistance, meant the virtual certainty of Hitler's defeat, it brought 130,000,000 more people into the war, 'an experience which will only create greater ill will, greater misunderstanding that will take them farther from the face of God.'60 In those short days in early December, he rose regularly in the darkness and rode his bicycle from his lodgings in town out to trim the roadside hedges or perform other rural duties. He felt isolated from the other workers, whom he found callous; but, although the farm work reduced him almost to physical prostration, the quiet of the countryside gave him time for meditation. In his spare moments he could retreat into total solitude.61 The countryside around Quainton consists of rich, rolling fields, many of them used for grazing. One morning, likely on 11 or 12 December, as the first rays of the sun lit the darkness, George was riding his bicycle along the narrow country road between the hedgerows; then he turned up a gated road. A considerable nuisance to travellers, these roads had gates across them every quarter-mile or so to keep the sheep or cattle from straying. With nothing much apparently in his mind, George Grant got off his bicycle to open one of these gates, walked his

86 George Grant bike through, and closed the gate behind him. As he did so, it just came to him at once, in a moment and forever, that all was finally well, that God existed.62 When he wrote to his mother to explain what had become of him in the two months since he went missing he spoke to her of a spiritual journey and of being born again.63 He had travelled far in the three years since he won his Rhodes Scholarship. 'It is just not a journey that one could call up or down. It is merely to a different plane of existence. Spiritually it has been so far that it is as if it wasn't the same person who started out ... there is no fear for my mental health as just recently I feel as if I had been born again. Gradually I am learning there are unpredictable tremendous forces - mysterious forces within man that are beyond man's understanding driving him - taking him along courses and over which he has no or little control ...64 On Christmas Day he felt 'like a piece of stick being carried by the strength of the current ... So many Christmases one does not have the time to think of Christ & though we are crucifying him now - more and more I understand the glory of him.'65 Credo, ut intelligam: understanding originates in belief. For the rest of his life George Grant attempted to think through the meaning of this experience and the truths to which it pointed.

7

Take what you want said God

Take it and pay for it

Nepotism literally means helping your nephew, and this help might extend, in the appropriate circumstances, to setting the police on him. When no one heard from George, Massey pulled a few strings with the British authorities and found that his ship had sailed without him. He passed the news on to Alison who had transferred back to London from Oxford in the autumn and was now living with Kay Moore and another friend over a dairy1 just behind Buckingham Palace.2 One evening in January George suddenly telephoned. Alison was out and Kay answered: 'Where in God's name have you been? Alison's beside herself with worry.' Try as she might, she could not get George to come to the flat, and he extracted a promise not to tell Alison he had called. The best she could manage was to arrange to meet the next day for lunch in Regent's Park, near where she worked on Baker Street. George arrived the next day looking gray, ill, gaunt, and sad, and told Kay the story of his rejection by the merchant marine and his flight. Kay begged him to let her tell Alison that he had surfaced, but he threatened to disappear again if she told anyone: 'People are worried about you, George,' Kay urged. 'They would worry more if they knew what was wrong,' George replied darkly. A few days later, though, he appeared at the blacked-out house about 10:30 in the evening and rang the bell. 'Don't tell Ally I'm here,' he said. 'I just wanted to see where she lived.' Kay told him he damn well better come in and marched him up to the sitting-room. She pushed him down into a chair and went to get Alison. When Kay came to Alison's bedroom, she found her lying on the bed, crying about her little brother. Everyone knew that George had to go home, and his relations, as usual,

88 George Grant were prepared to pull strings; but even with an uncle who was High Commissioner and a godfather who was a governor of the Bank of England, it was not easy to get a westbound passage at the height of the war. In the meantime he stayed with Alison and Kay, living on the top floor of the house. He was extremely depressed and emotionally volatile. On one occasion, when the women were having some Polish officers for dinner, Kay came in and found George slumped on the floor in front of an empty fire, wearing his work clothes with a tea towel tied about his waist to keep his pants up. She eventually persuaded him to light a fire, and then he disappeared to change for dinner. He reappeared, nicely dolled up, and wearing his old UCC tie: 'Do you think these foreigners will recognize that it's a sign of being in the gentry?' he asked. He then picked up the jar that contained the half-crowns for the electricity, took one, laid it on the sofa and said: 'Give me two and six and I won't mention the Polish politicians who collaborated with the Germans.' Then he took another out: 'Another two and six if I don't mention the Russians.' Then another and another. Alison sat in the armchair, looking furious. However, when the Poles did arrive he was charming, though he insisted on acknowledging Poland's traditional ties with France by addressing them from time to time in French in spite of the fact that they spoke only Polish and English. Although her flatmates found this sort of behaviour amusing, or at least forgivable, the strain of these months took their toll on Alison and her relationship with George never fully recovered. Sometime towards the end of February George finally sailed home. He had suffered, according to his godfather, 'far too severe a strain upon his physique, and particularly his nervous system,' and he needed change and rest.3 Aunt Lai made sure as many people as possible knew what George had been through. 'I do not suppose anyone will ever know how much comfort and help that dear, tall, calm person gave to so many through those awful days. I have never seen anyone so calmly and quietly, without saying a word to anyone, so live the Christian spirit that is in him. How proud his Father would have been, and how proud his Mother must be. He has never shirked danger, he has never shown any fear and he has gone on doing this quietly without a word to anyone.'4 And Vincent Massey wired Maude: 'George, on doctor's advice, home soon. Needs love, understanding and rest. Has done marvellous job. We are very proud of him. He now needs care. Love, Massey.'5 Although George had been brought to a very low point by his experiences, his excitement must surely have soared as his ship slipped into its berth in Montreal. Even when he was waiting to join the merchant ma-

Take what you want said God 89 rine his fantasies revolved around seeing his mother again: 'I believe that the merchant navy may carry me to Canada, which would be terrifically exciting ... It would be overwhelming ... Since we said goodbye on that dock in New York I have longed to see you.'6 Maude took him to her home at 7 Prince Arthur Avenue in Toronto. The house had belonged to Lady Parkin, and Maude bought it from her sisters and brother in 1940 when she resigned from the Royal Victoria College. She gave him her own bedroom on the top floor of the house, looking on the back of the Park Plaza Hotel. For the next year this was to be his sanatorium while Maude nursed him back to health. He came home gaunt and exhausted, weighing probably no more than one hundred and sixty pounds. All through the year Maude, under Dr Feme's supervision, poured milkshakes and other nutriments down his throat, and he gained weight at a gratifying rate: 'I believe George weighs 200 lbs. His tummy looks as if he were going to have twins,' Aunt Lai gossiped to his cousin Peter.7 Although naturally he was expected to lose weight when he got out of bed and began to exercise, he never did, and an increasingly rotund figure characterized his adult life. The tubercular lesions were inactive and the initial prognosis was favourable. George soon received an overture about a job. Mary Greey was staying with Charity in Ottawa, and when Pearson learned through her that George was back, he responded quickly and generously. 'I wonder if there is any chance of your coming to Ottawa. I should be very, very glad to see you. Have a good rest first, get fit, and then come down here and look us over. There should be some worthwhile work here for you; I would be very happy to help you find it.'8 It may have been through Pearson's good offices that George was offered a post in April 1942 with the National Film Board. This he rejected, apparently because of the board's involvement with wartime propaganda, though he was reassured that this was only one aspect of the board's work, and that after the war it would concentrate mostly on work of an educational nature.9 In any event George's health, both physical and emotional, was not recovering as quickly as everyone had hoped. Sarah, the maid (who had left Mrs Grant's service the previous year), more or less announced that she was returning to look after George. Her love meant a lot to him. The world saw a portly and dignified woman, but when she came to his room and sat down on the chair he saw just the 'old bairn': 'The weight of her body settles like a bag full of sand onto the chair, spreading out from where her buttocks are on the chair & her legs spread out over the edge of the chair hardly touching the ground.

90 George Grant Her neck disappears as her head settles down right on to her shoulders so that it looks like a stone on a bag of sand.'10 She brought him his meals and talked to him through dinner, just like in the old days at Upper Canada. To minister to his spirit Maude summoned a friend whom she much respected, Humphrey Carver, an English architect, then about forty, who was teaching at the University of Toronto's school of architecture. Carver, who had not seen George since before the war, found him irrevocably changed. During their many conversations he came to the conclusion that the key to George's emotional devastation in the war arose from the fact that he was entirely on his own, and not insulated by the discipline and order of the armed forces.11 Carver, and Michael Gelber who was temporarily stationed near Toronto, were among the few men to call on George regularly during his year in bed, because most of his contemporaries had enlisted. He had to make do with friends of his mother, like Joan Arnoldi, or of his sisters, like Sue Wild, who often came to tea; but since he liked being fussed over by women, the absence of men was not a great hardship. Elizabeth Greey was now renting the ground floor flat from Maude. She came to 7 Prince Arthur a year before George, after her bout with TB and her release from the Hamilton Sanatorium. She was the secretary of the Toronto committee of the Canadian National Committee on Refugees, an organization that was trying to get Jews and political refugees who had escaped from Germany into Canada. She, like most people, enjoyed George's company and found him a captivating and intelligent companion. She also experienced the great generosity of which he was capable. Once when they were talking, she told him that because of her illness she was unable to have children: 'I will marry you,' he declared, a proposal received in the spirit in which it had been offered. Even with all this solicitude from friends and careful tending by Maude and Sarah, it took until October before George's spirits began to recover. As he lay in bed looking at the pattern of lights on the back and side of the Park Plaza and listening to the rustle of the yellow chestnut leaves outside his window, he was filled with 'a glorious sense of rest - of having thrown off the sickness - the first sane & peaceful moment since that June 1940 - or I suppose May 1940, the first moment of life's overpowering worthwhileness since the February 17th episode 1941 - a year and a half to feel like that. Is it real - or is it a romantic stewing in the guise of one's sorrow to take so long to recover?'12 Like most invalids he listened to music on the radio and read. He was

Take what you want said God 91 deeply moved by a performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.13 'Listened to Toscanini conducting the Rhapsody in Blue with Benny Goodman playing the solo clarinet - evidently asked by Toscanini to do it - an amazing performance - glittering - blatant, colourful - all the qualities that Gershwin wanted in it... Goodman was amazing on the clarinet - it was like a wild shriek of New York's triumphant life. What genius of Toscanini to ask him!'14 He meditated on Wilfred Owen's poetry: 'Owen in the intensity of his temporariness is the lasting one. Poetry is not criticism; it is not analytical interpretations of theories of history; it is not erudition. It is, and of course there it sticks. I cannot say what it is. What I can say, however, is - Owen is poetry.'15 When he read a 'hopelessly inadequate' article on War and Peace he reflected that this book was the greatest symphony in the world. The themes of family, war, and politics were intricately interwoven and the climax was magnificent: 'After the tumult & the shouting, comes the wonderful peace of the family life like a great placid theme from Bach & then the end, the discourse on history, on God in history, on man in God - on Life itself & more than life - the most profound yet simple - beautiful yet overwhelmed by the consciousness of sin - optimistic yet founded on the rock of little hope.' 'Of course,' he observed, remembering his discussions with Lindsay, 'it would be the Master's favourite book.'16 He also read widely on politics and world affairs and wrote an article on India, a topic that particularly interested him thanks to his Indian friends at Balliol. In it he tried to stress the point that we have to think of the East as our equal, 'not only because it is the right thing to do but because we will pay in terms of their hostility in the future. Of course the old chickens, coming home to roost, stay.'17 He wrote a second piece, about England: the theme was 'that all this talk about England going to be a reactionary element at the peace table is tommy-rot - she is much more likely to be a progressive force than the U.S.A. or Canada.'18 In domestic politics, although his predilection was for the CCF, he admired Mackenzie King's Liberal government, which was 'like that of Walpole's, a regime mightily attacked at the time of its being by the more lively members of society, yet one that we will look back to as a ministry of great prudence, not that it is the best ideally but that it is so much better than any practical alternative, in fact the best possible.'19 George's fundamental interests were political and he was trained as a historian. He did not become a philosopher simply by the act of passing through that Buckinghamshire gate. Nor did he instantly become a particularly pious man. Indeed most of those who saw him at this time do

92 George Grant not remember any unusual or unexpectedly keen interest in religion. George usually spoke of the experience as a conversion, but that does not mean that he had been utterly transformed from a secularist or an agnostic into a believer by his wartime experience. Rather the religious feelings he manifested as long ago as the Religious Discussion Group at Upper Canada carried through at Queen's. In England they were greatly intensified at Balliol by people like Peter Clarke, whom he admired for his selfless dedication to his Christian principles, and A.D. Lindsay, who showed him that it was possible for a distinguished intellectual to be a committed Christian. These feelings were reinforced by the summer he spent with the other bright young men from Oxford and Cambridge training to form an ambulance unit. Through the Oxford and Bermondsey Club he encountered the evangelical tradition in the form of social work, and his compassion was aroused by the suffering he saw on every side during the Blitz. His experience of God at the bleakest moment of the war was less a rejection of his past than it was the culmination of a long development. The private journal he kept sporadically during his year in bed records only a few religious reflections, but they are very important and clearly establish the pillars of his later thought. The first, on 5 November 1942, is a meditation on a short story by Tolstoy titled 'God Sees the Truth but Waits.' Aksyonov is falsely accused of murder, flogged, and sent to Siberia. Twenty-six years later he meets the real killer, Makar. His whole being is seized with rage and despair and, when he discovers Makar digging an escape tunnel, he has his opportunity for revenge. He can turn him in and see him savagely flogged. Instead he protects him. This act of compassion moves Makar to remorse and he confesses and asks forgiveness, but Aksyonov no longer needs even to forgive his enemy. 'May God pardon you! It may be that I am a hundred times worse than you.' Freed from rancour, he is now at peace with God. 'Immediately his heart grew lighter. He ceased to yearn for home, and felt as if he never wished to leave the prison.' He had never been abandoned by God; God was always there, waiting for Aksyonov to turn to him with a pure heart. For many Christians God's existence is proved by His providential ordering of the world. European history, over the past century, did not seem to be so ordered, and George, especially after his experience of German bombing in Bermondsey, could easily have come to the conclusion that there was no God. Instead he drew the lesson from Tolstoy's story that God's apparent absence from the world is itself providential. Aksyonov suffered twenty-six years of terrible injustice, but God was not

Take what you want said God

93

absent. He was always there, but hidden. The moment Aksyonov turned to Him, he found Him instantly. George reflected on this story in his journal. God sees the truth but waits. Personally it is a great emotional discovery of God, the first glimpse of that reality - not amateurish or kind, not sentimental or moral - but so beyond our comprehension that the mere glimpse is more than we can bear. God not as the optimist, nor as the non-mover, but God who sees the truth but waits. God waited through the selfish nationalism & ignorant self-seeking of the nineteenth century; God waited through the struggle of the first war & through the continuance of our sloth and greed & our ignorance from 1918-1939. He saw the truth. He saw what the policies that we were following would mean. He saw that each individual sin multiplied in countries & continents would bring us down to this, yet HE did not intervene; he waited. Of course the approach to God is - I know not how. For me it must always be Credo, ut intelligam. The opposite of that is incomprehensible.20 Still thinking about the story the next day, George added another entry in his journal: 'Art is wonderful - it is part of all - it is the beauty that gets us nearer to the final and ultimate reality but the reality of living is greater, nobler than the art itself. The depth of one's own feeling is deeper than any art one could produce.' His own philosophy, as the years progressed, was inspired in exactly this way. It grew out of his direct encounters with life. He did not ask the authors he read what they thought was true. Rather, he looked in their works for intimations of experiences they both shared, and then asked if their writings could help him understand the world better. On 13 December he reflected on a Spanish proverb he had chanced upon: 'Take what you want said God - take it and pay for it.'21 What did it mean? For George it taught the absolute affirmation of individual moral responsibility. As he later put it: at all times and in all places it always matters what we do. What a tremendous truth for men and societies. With the individual he or she can choose to be cruel, to want power, to be oversensual, to be decadent, to be (like myself) slothful. He can take any or all of these things. He can take them, but will pay for them. Also with nations, they can take empire, or power or wealth, or on the other side isolation & irresponsibility; they can take them but will pay for them ... As you sow, so shall you reap is the terrible & [true]

94 George Grant pronouncement of the law of human life. It is not an improving aphorism; it is the truth. Sow violence and you get violence - sow greed, you get greed. One pays and pays and pays for everything.22 A rather pedestrian application of this maxim manifested itself when he received a letter from Mrs Lovett, his old friend from Bermondsey. Her husband had refused to support her and, faced with mounting expenses, she took what she needed. Now she and one of her sons had been caught and convicted, and were awaiting sentence for theft. George was beside himself with guilt and impotence: 'I have been criminally negligent not to have sent her any money. Do you know of anything I could sell?' He wondered what he could get for the few things he owned: a gold watch, a gold sovereign Leo had given him, the Canterbury psalter. 'Because they mean absolutely nothing to me beside Mrs. Lovett [and her family], who quite truthfully saved my life. They possessed me with their love, for it was just there - not wanting anything.' Then he turned his fury against the war: 'We sit here thinking we can have a war and not pay for it, not pay for it. Do you realise this woman and her family have been smashed by the war? The people who never got anything from the peace are destroyed in every way by the whole process of war and the high 8c mighty, the propagandists, the safe can get up & say "Oh war Oh wonderful for freedom."'23 George had been ordered to stay in bed until Christmas, and even by March 1943 the doctor was insisting that he not do too much. He was still considering a legal career and consulted Roland Michener, who suggested he might be able to take up his Rhodes again and return to Oxford.24 George decided, however, that his first imperative was to get a job and earn some money,25 and in February 1943 he began work with the Canadian Association of Adult Education (CAAE). The fact that his father was one of the founding members of the organization, and that his mother had long been friends with its director, Ed Corbett,26 certainly helped him land the position, but it was not a sinecure. The pay was only about $2700 a year and, since funding for the association was precarious, so was George's job. Indeed, by the summer he was already making inquiries about the possibility of other positions, writing to his old professors at Queen's, Trotter and Corry, to see if they could line him up with a teaching position for the autumn. Although he recognized that he had few qualifications for the academic world, he could boast that over the past year he had tried to renew and extend his mental processes by some stiff reading.27

Take what you want said God

95

George spent at least part of the summer relaxing at Uncle Raleigh and Aunt Louise's cottage at North Hatley near Magog in Quebec's Eastern Townships. The big event was the federal by-election in Stanstead, and the high point an appearance by the great French Canadian nationalist leader, Henri Bourassa. George drove over with his Aunt Louise, Hugh MacLennan, the novelist, who had a cottage near die Parkins, and Mason Wade, 'an American Catholic up here on a Guggenheim studying French Canada ... [who] is no fool and knows what his religion means and entails.'28 To get to the election rally they drove through the glorious landscape of the Eastern Townships, which George loved because it contained the two essentials: 'it is lived in, fertile & with the mark of man's touch and at the same time it is powerful, strong & wild.' The meeting was on the steps of the main Catholic church. There were microphones in the west windows, and fleur-de-lis flags and crosses were everywhere. Six or eight priests looked on from the upstairs gallery of the presbytery next door. The large crowd included mostly workers and farmers. Suddenly, a honking of horns & in an open car - the old man arrived. Against all my judgement it was the most moving moment I have ever had in Canada. The first feeling of being a Canadian since returning from England. He stepped from the car - the old man helped along by a young man. His fine Gallic face - white beard - and the crowd - not very excited up to that - going wild - & wild with a feeling that this was their man & they really loved him. He walked down the centre aisle - shaking hands with an elderly cultivateur here & another one there - and as he reached the platform they sang & mind you everybody sang 8c deeply moved O Canada.29 Compared to Mackenzie King, a fat and ridiculous little man, here was someone who was not only a leader of a party, but a man of principle. This man had an idea - a bad idea, a pernicious idea. He was something in the realm of morality - not merely a man whose end was office. Woodsworth was the only other Canadian who has ever given me that feeling & these people believed in him. He represented in some basic way the aristocrat of 'leur pays.' A young man got up to introduce him. Here was a danger. A young fellow called Laurendeau,30 editor of Action Catholique, bitter, Catholic, the real fascist, evidently the brains behind the Bloc. Far too urban, too smooth, too passionate without solidity, for the agricultural audience ... Then Bourassa. Again wild cheers. An old man's voice - tired - but what a show.31

96 George Grant When the results came in with a Bloc Populaire victory, George was not surprised since the constituency was 60 per cent French: 'I suppose we are going to pay & pay & pay and that the French may really go racialist. As in most other things the next 50 years are going to be vile to live through - they are also going to be glorious - for if we struggle hard enough, we can keep alive some good & good must always win for it is the uppermost thing in the heart of man.'32 When he returned to the CAAE's offices at 198 College Street in Toronto in the autumn George threw himself into his job with all the enthusiasm his doctors allowed. He had no inkling, at this point, how much the next two years would affect his mature views of politics and education. He joined Jean Morrison, a permanent CAAE employee, and together they set about preparing a considerable experiment in public broadcasting, the Citizens' Forum. These radio programs were modelled on the Farm Forums, which had been in operation for several years. They followed a basic pattern. Once a week, on a Tuesday night, Morley Callaghan chaired a panel discussion that was broadcast across the CBC national network. Members of the public gathered in groups in church halls or friends' living-rooms to listen. Before each program, they read a study guide, prepared each week by Jean Morrison and George. After the broadcast there was a discussion based on questions in the guides. At the end of the evening, each group's secretary submitted a report to the provincial secretary, who in turn sent a summary to George as national secretary. George then synthesized the national results and made a report for a subsequent broadcast. His job also required him to serve as a field organizer, though he did less of this than he thought desirable, both because funds for travel were extremely limited and because he had to remain in Toronto to write the study guides. In spite of these problems, he managed to visit all nine provinces, and by the end of his first term as national secretary, about 1215 groups registered for the first season. If the CAAE were to build on this initial success, it needed to sustain these groups and organize more. To achieve these goals the CAAE had to help each of the provincial committees and lobby for funds and other kinds of support from the provincial ministries of education. Adult education generally (and Citizens' Forum in particular) was politically sensitive, and an experiment in public broadcasting in the autumn of 1943, when the Forum was launched, required even more delicate handling. The governing Liberal Party was unpopular and the social-democratic CCF was riding high in the public-opinion polls. Most

Take what you want said God 97 of the adult educators inclined to the political left and 'believed that unless postwar plans had the support of informed and vigorous public opinion, the Canadian people could easily be manipulated. The CAAE hoped to guide the process of public enlightenment towards a more just social order.'33 To this end they organized a nation-wide conference in Montreal for September 1943 to coordinate the various interested groups. One person's public enlightenment is another's propaganda. When the Liberal government got wind of the direction in which Citizens' Forum was moving, Brooke Claxton, who was parliamentary secretary to the prime minister, tried to block the broadcasts at the highest levels of the CBC.34 George, although critical of the attempts by the social activists to highjack the Forum for their own ends, staunchly defended the Forum's right to free speech against government pressure.35 In January 1944 George came to Montreal to help his old friend from Queen's, Ernie Stabler, conduct an institute to train group leaders. Stabler vividly recalled 'walking with him along Sherbrooke Street. His health was broken and I sensed he was in a deep depression.'36 George was certainly in a bad mood as far as his work was concerned. Back in Toronto he threw himself into office politics with a vengeance. He sarcastically suggested that the committee chose the speakers for the broadcasts because they seemed to prefer the middle of the road and the mediocre: ' "Gentleman let's sit on the fence,"' George parodied them, 'and put on our opinions. Anybody else is either too young or too old; everybody else might be too reactionary or might be too progressive. Let's toe the middle of the line carefully & quietly, for when all is said & done a careful, pragmatic and self-centred view of the world is after all the truth. Neither badness nor goodness is any good, just plain dullness.'37 George also began a campaign, which eventually proved successful, to supplant Morley Callaghan as chairman of the panels, because he though Callaghan's approach harmed the broadcasts. 'The CAAE must impress on Callaghan that it is not his woolly ideas that go over the air, but a wellplanned and thought out script ... The CAAE has too great a stake in this to let Callaghan (however charming a person he may be) take away from the effectiveness of it. We are not going to get really effective participation by people, unless the broadcasts are clearer and better ordered.'38 In his spare time, he sought refuge within the family's circle of friends. One of these was the octogenarian historian and clergyman, George Wrong,39 an anglophile who took a particular interest in anyone like George who had gone to Oxford. A close friend of Vincent Massey (he officiated at his wedding), he had built a summer place, Durham House,

98 George Grant less than a mile from Batterwood. Other young people also came to call, such as Miriam Anglin, who read to him twice a week now that he was blind. She and George increasingly got on well together and soon Charity was teasing George about his girlfriend. Miriam was a doctoral student at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, which was affiliated with St Michael's College at the University of Toronto, where she was working on a thesis on St Thomas Aquinas. They talked a lot, especially about philosophy and religion, but also about politics and world affairs. Miriam found him kind and appreciated his great sense of humour. Together they went to some of Reg Stewart's summer Prom Concerts in Varsity Arena, to performances at Massey Hall, and to the odd play at the Royal Alex. They visited friends together and, in the evenings, George often went to the Anglins' house, first on Clarendon and then on Spadina. When she came to Prince Arthur, Miriam found Mrs Grant charming, relaxed, full of fun: 'She didn't make anything more out of things than was there. She was a very pleasant hostess. She had all the social graces.' The furthest Maude ever went in objecting to George dating a Catholic was one morning just before breakfast when George had come in very late after an evening with Miriam: 'Will you be going to early Mass today, dear?'40 The conditions of wartime made for strange relationships. Before the war Miriam was going out, and had an understanding, with a doctor named Des Magner. At the beginning of the war he was posted to England and was away for almost five years. Her relationship with George was romantic but not physical. She was playing it loose and easy, and so apparently was George; but it was perfectly obvious that they were at ease with each other and glad to be together. They were lovely times, 'dreamdays' as she later described them. There was great affection between them, but George never stuck his neck out. The closest he came to declaring his feelings was his Christmas gift for 1944, the love poems of John Donne.41 Towards the end of November Dr Magner finally got leave and permission to return home. He wrote asking Miriam if she still wanted to marry him. She replied that they had better wait until he got back, to see how they felt about one another after such a long absence; but when he got home a couple of days before Christmas, they decided to marry. George arrived a few days later at Miriam's brother's in an agitated state, desperately trying to find out about Miriam's impending wedding. It took some time for his spirits to recover. He was still fragile early in the new year. He went to the University of Toronto Library to take out a book

Take what you want said God 99 and discovered that Miriam was the last borrower. He sat down and burst into tears. Many years later, Margaret Andrew, George's oldest sister, found herself at library school with Miriam. She asked her brother if he remembered her. 'Of course,' George replied, 'she was the only woman other than Sheila that I ever seriously thought of marrying.'42

8

It was easy to lose courage

His love-life was in a shambles. At work things were not much better. In the first year of the Citizens' Forum the local groups were overwhelmingly middle class; the urban working class stubbornly refused to show much interest. Across the country, there was not enough coordination because the various regional organizations had too much autonomy, for no better reason than that the CAAE lacked both staff and travel funds to exert more centralized control.1 Many of the problems arose, George complained, because Corbett paid too much attention to Jean Morrison's advice and ignored his. Many political radicals of the 1930s and 1940s believed that education was important so that the average citizen could play an effective role in a democratic society. They thought that the best way to educate the adult citizenry was through small groups.2 On this topic George agreed with them. Their experiments, he thought, had proved that the ordinary Canadian could develop sensible views, even in such an arcane field as foreign affairs. 'Groups of ordinary citizens all across the country have met and discussed Canada's place in the world, and have come to conclusions that have all the colour and progress and sanity that many of our experts lack ... They feel that a new world order must be born and Canada must play her full part in building it.'3 Although international affairs were George's particular concern, he accepted the view that the Citizens' Forum could not achieve full effectiveness until it was able to bring people together, not just for common discussion, but for joint action: 'Out of this discussion and action a fuller group consciousness is being born,' George proclaimed. But the fusion of theory and practice rarely took place. The Farm Forum was able to encourage local groups to become active and involved in their rural

It was easy to lose courage 101 communities and had sponsored many worthy local endeavours. Few such benefits arose from the Citizens' Forum, but there were two in which George participated. Through Ed Corbett he became involved in the Civil Liberties Association of Toronto (CLAT). The organization was broadly based and he served not only with such leaders of corporate Toronto as Clifford Sifton and Sir Ellsworth Flavelle, but also with prominent leftwingers like Charlie Millard, Andrew Brewin, George Grube, and Ted Joliffe, the provincial leader of the Ontario CCF. It was a good chance for George to size up Toronto's capitalists and labour leaders. One issue that CLAT and CAAE pursued jointly was the campaign to restore the property and civil rights of Japanese Canadians.4 George was also part of the new movement for public housing in Toronto. His mother's friend, architect Humphrey Carver, was a social activist who had been a member of the CCF's League for Social Reconstruction. He organized the 1939 Housing Conference and remained at the centre of most of the developments in community planning and housing after that date. Canada's federal system, which required concerted action by national, provincial, and municipal governments, made effective action difficult. There were other obstacles. Business interests, as expected, opposed public housing, but there was also surprising resistance from the more prosperous section of the working class, who objected to subsidies for their less successful brethren. By May 1944 the housing issue had reached a critical stage and George shuttled between meetings in Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto.5 The importance of George's contribution is not clear, but on 24 June 1944 there was a meeting at Carlton Street United Church, which brought into being the Citizens' Housing Association (later called the Citizens' Housing and Planning Association [CHPA]. It was established to alert the various levels of government to housing needs and to promote sound community planning in the City of Toronto. With about three hundred individual and twenty-five corporate members, and a budget of less than $400, its primary aim was the creation of publically financed low-rental housing, but it also sought to promote slum clearance as a basis of a decent standard of living. CHPA is best remembered for the creation of Toronto's Regent Park housing development.6 After spending his holidays at Otter Lake reading Jane Austen7 and campaigning for Uncle Jim, who was the Conservative candidate in Muskoka, George returned to his desk at the CAAE's College Street headquarters in early September. There were a number of pressing organizational matters. In the past year, George had been national secretary, and co-

102 George Grant author of the weekly study guides. The CAAE decided for the coming season to try to get someone else to serve as national secretary, so that George could work full-time on publications.8 As it turned out, Isabel Wilson, sister of historian Donald Creighton, was hired to take responsibility for the publications, though illness prevented her from joining as soon as she was needed. Meanwhile, as national secretary, George turned his attention to the desperate need for trained field staff, since involvement in the Forum's broadcasts had fallen by about a third from the previous year. Morley Callaghan's chairmanship of the broadcasts continued to worry the organizers. George took the minutes for the meeting at which the matter was discussed. They record the view, shared strongly by George himself, that Callaghan's manner on the radio sometimes irritated people, and that he seemed to force his own views on the speakers and make them play down their own. The main difficulty, the minutes note, appeared to be Callaghan's attitude towards the project: 'it's just a show to be put on and Mr. Callaghan really hasn't much respect for the idea of discussion. This attitude is reflected in what he says on the broadcasts.'9 When the Forum began its second series of broadcasts on 7 November 1944, George as the national secretary noted that this was a year in which 'significant new things are happening in the world. After five years of struggle victory seems at last in sight, and the fall of the Nazi barbarians appears imminent. No longer can we think in terms of things to come — but of things already here. As the objective of victory becomes more certain, the objective of a peaceful and ordered world becomes more pressing.'10 Shortly after Christmas 1944 George was at a housing committee meeting. 'Who is The Appalling Woman in yellow?' he wrote in large screaming letters on the bottom of the agenda of the young woman he was sitting beside. She wrote the name in reply. 'Oh,' said George, his head inclined to one side, his eyebrows raised, and his eyes twinkling. 'And Who Are You?' he wrote again in handwriting so large it seemed to scream. This was how Alice (Eedy) Boissonneau recalled her first encounter with George, the beginning of a relationship that never quite rose to the heights of romance before it subsided into a lifelong friendship. In political matters, Alice found him compassionate and sensitive and he helped her write short housing brochures. Personally, though, he was totally wrapped up in himself. 'George never needed books. He had plenty of books. He had plenty of people, plenty of meetings, plenty of drinks. And he had his mother to talk to. There wasn't even a teeny

It was easy to lose courage

103

weeny crack anywhere that anyone outside could crawl into ... George had the Law on his side. He had Righteousness. (Heaven knows I didn't.) He had to go to meetings, that was logical. He wassick, perfectly simple. He just jolly well didn't need anybody, and least of all, me.'11 When she came down Prince Arthur Avenue to visit, the street 'had a coolness that was like cool fingers placed over your forehead. Plumy, green, it seemed always evening here - the lush plumy elms ushered you along like fans, cooling and enfolding.'12 Usually George was at home, but once when she came, George was out and Maude greeted her. ' "Do come in, won't you?" your mother said, inviting me into the living room and sitting down with me, looking kind and discerning, putting on and taking off her tortoise shell rimmed glasses ... "We were talking about Science," I said. "We think Science may be a Bad Thing. Think of all the awful things Man has done with it." ... "Well I don't know," she said. "Science has done a great many Good Things," she answered, very seriously, playing at "the game."'13 Science as a Bad Thing. This radical thought would be with George for many years. With increasing subtlety and depth he extended his understanding of how science achieved such importance in our lives and how it was harmful. How did he first come to this view? Not from his mother, who thought science had done many good things. Nor from his associates in the adult-education movement. According to George, they were 'very deeply held by progressive liberalism.'14 It was the war that drove him 'out of the bourgeois altruistic liberalism' in which he had been raised because of 'the enormous, almost limitless repugnance' he felt towards the modernity that manifested itself there.15 In detail, it was his awareness over and over again in the slums of Bermondsey that the woman and her child with whom he sat in a shelter during a raid could easily be annihilated by a single bomb, which in an instant could 'destroy even the most intricate, delicately balanced human personality. Not only is the beautiful mechanism of the body torn, ripped, masticated by the tiger-like violence of the high explosive, but the existence of the person knitted with his thoughts, passions, ambitions, inhibitions is destroyed.'16 He had also seen at first hand the impact of Western industrial civilization on his friends in Bermondsey: 'The boys and girls I know in London whose work has no coordination with the rest of their lives, who seek, after a tiring day in their factory, escape in the movies, or alcohol or the less productive experiments of sex, are merely typical of the fact that there has been no kind of adjustment to keep the individual in line with the changes of the industrial world.'17 It had by now

104 George Grant spread around the globe: 'The whole world is in it now. We gave the Japanese western industrial civilization & heavens they are using it.' He summed up this terrifying vision in Food for Thought, the bulletin of the CAAE: 'When we see the flamethrower and the rocket bomb as the symbol of 1945, it is easy to lose courage.'18 If it was the horror of the war that made him think about the impact of modern science and industrial civilization on human beings, it was his associates in the adult-education movement who stimulated him to ponder science's implications and alternatives. He did not like their solutions. Were there better ones? 'I had to spend my life thinking out what were the consequences of not thinking progressive liberalism.'19 He had certainly come to the realization by early 1945 that he did not share the pervasive liberalism of his friends and colleagues. Alice Boissonneau was impressed and confused at the same time (as many others would later be) by George's symbolic use of language, in this case regarding liberalism. 'Of course you're a "liberal,"' you would remark tolerantly, as if that would excuse anything, simply anything. As if I would go on, saying dreadful things and thinking dreadful thoughts (O awfully crude naive thoughts - compared to your complicated ones) and nothing else would ever be expected. 'Ohh' you would remark gasping, when I would flick in a comment. 'Ohh' you would gasp, without waiting to hear the rest. And what a 'liberal' was in your mind, what it meant exactly, I never really knew. 'Oh of course I'm in a roomful of "liberals'" you would say tolerantly making a sweeping gesture with one hand (and the walls seemed simply lined with them like a museum.) 'I shouldn't say that.'20

Many of his colleagues and friends in the adult-education movement were social democrats or communists, but to George they were all liberals or progressives because they shared a sincerely held goal, the creation of well-adjusted citizens for a democratic society. They were not wicked, but perhaps their well-meaning do-goodery was worse. They preached education for the sake of democracy. This sounded good as a slogan but it made a travesty of education. Education mattered in its own right, as more traditional educators such as his father understood. Progressive education originated in pragmatism and he had read the leading thinkers such as John Dewey and William James with care, and enthusiasm, before he came home. From his new religious perspective he now saw that they started from the false premise that traditional education was somehow cut off from life. The truth was that both types of education aimed to pro-

It was easy to lose courage 105 duce a child who can look at life clearly. Traditional educators taught classics, history, and philosophy, not in an effort to detach ideas from reality, but so that people might have 'a strong, tough instrument with which to analyze reality.' This was hard work for a child, but necessary: 'The fallacy of progressive education is that so often it has believed thought was easy. The material it gave children to fashion their brains on was not tough enough. The result was inevitably sloppy thinking.'21 For the time being there were more urgent problems than educational reform: he had to think out instead the implications of the Allied victory, which looked more and more certain as 1945 progressed. Instead of his earlier pacifism he now accepted a position close to his father's League of Nations internationalism and similar to what Lindsay advocated in his sermons in Balliol Chapel and published in pamphlets in the early stages of the war. Even during the war George had acknowledged that there were circumstances in which the use of force was justified. The question was a matter of degree. He was now more prepared than before to acknowledge that force could be used to defend a just international order. He advanced this moderate internationalist position consistently in the brief articles he wrote for Food for Thought in the early months of 1945. It was important, he argued, for the Citizens' Forum to study international affairs to create an informed public opinion that could promote peace by demanding that Canada fulfil its international obligations: 'Eternal vigilance is, as always, the price of freedom and of international security. That is why Citizens' Forum must study international affairs.'22 He also saw a direct relationship between the attempts to build a better society at home and the international situation: 'What is the use of better city government, what is the use of planning better cities, of building better houses, of seeing that our schools become the most alive institutions of their kind, if every twenty five years we are going to be swept into the holocaust of war and the fruits of our labour destroyed? We think of the peace loving people of Denmark and Norway, of Great Britain and the Soviet Union, who worked hard for a better and freer society within their own borders, only to have it dashed down by invasion and bombing.'23 On V-E Day, 8 May 1945, the streets of downtown Toronto were filled with people celebrating the Allied victory. George did not join the revellers but went home after work with Isabel Wilson. Alice Boissonneau came along later and found them 'enclosed at the end of the room in the winy darkening light in front of the little alcove, like in a booth playing poker and drinking drinks.' George was 'in a remote, difficult

106 George Grant mood, but relaxed, sardonic, with the drinks.' Maude was sick, so they went over to Prince Arthur to clear up. Isabel and I followed you obediently to the apartment along Prince Arthur Avenue. You were aloft - on a high stony terrain - you felt like being cruel and mean evidently. 'Why does So and So look so sad?' - you said cruelly - as if no one had a right to be sad but you. And Isabel replied normally, with the proper warmth and the proper sarcasm. She emanated a warmth always ... Isabel and I followed you upstairs to the apartment. You shut us into the living-room with beckonings, whisperings, and so on - in appointed chairs. It was amusing - the mystery, the strangeness and our implicit obedience ... Evidently your Aunt Marjorie thought you a wastrel - it was VE Day - a cousin had been killed - you should not be celebrating ...24 After a few more drinks, however, George plunged into a depression: 'I was in Toronto, and everybody was cheering. I really never cried so much in a day in my life. It was a sense of the ruin - people who had died, people I loved. I felt very lonely in Toronto that day.'25 The Americans stood to profit most from the victory, but that prospect did not especially distress him. On the contrary, he had recently affirmed that his 'whole mental being' was caught up in the North American tradition. Like his father before him, he had idolized Roosevelt and was at his most fulsome when it came to praising American novelists, poets, and philosophers. A look at a popular26 nickel pamphlet he wrote in 1943 confirms his generally North American perspective. Titled Canada: An Introduction to a Nation, it brooded on our relationship with the United States, with which our economy was inextricably linked,27 and with whom friendly relations were absolutely necessary.28 Canada was, he wrote, American by nature.29 We also shared a similar culture: 'The everyday life of the ordinary English-speaking Canadian is much the same as that of his neighbour across the border ... In recent years indeed this similarity has grown by leaps and bounds, as the ways of the larger country have influenced the smaller one more and more. Movies, the radio, magazines, and swing music, come up to Canada from the south and mould Canadian tastes into an American form.'30 However, there were practical, tactical reasons for not abandoning our alliance with the United Kingdom. We were also British by tradition and it was only by sticking to Great Britain and the Commonwealth that Canada could have any bargaining power with the United States.31 Com-

It was easy to lose courage 107 posed as we were of French Canadians, who did not want to become 'a hopelessly small minority in a unified Anglo-Saxon continent,'32 and of English, who did not 'want to be ruled by people who had so recently harried them to final exile,'33 we had two strong motives for maintaining our independence and a separate Canadian nation. To this end, with 'our own radio corporation ... modelled on the lines of the British, we Canadians have been able to encourage native talent and foster Canadian ideas. More recently the National Film Board has attempted to do the same thing for Canadian films.'34 There was something distinctive about Canadian life, but whether it came from surviving British traditions or particular Canadian conditions, George was not certain. His whole perspective, in an instant, was about to change. Through his involvement with the Civil Liberties Association of Toronto he had met Judith Robinson, the journalist daughter of 'Black Jack' Robinson, long-time editor of the Toronto Telegram. She was twenty years older than George and, by the time he met her, she had already established a reputation as a highly principled columnist committed to fighting injustice. She was also celebrated for her charm and biting wit. This latter sometimes got her into trouble and George often recounted a story from her Globe and Mail days that showed the feistiness he admired in her. Towards the beginning of 1940 she was in a meeting and George McCullagh, the Globes publisher, whom she thought a windbag, was talking about how important it was to get the United States into the war: 'Give me half an hour alone with Roosevelt,' McCullagh proposed, 'and I can guarantee you America will enter the war.' 'On whose side?' Robinson enquired. She was one of the few people George met at this time who did not share the progressivist view of politics and education, and she helped him formulate his alternative position. Shortly after she left the Globe and Mail in 1940 Robinson founded a weekly newspaper in Fort Erie, the News, which she was editing from Toronto when George returned home. Its policies were so critical of the Liberal government's war effort, which it thought too feeble in Britain's support, that she was investigated by the RCMP as a possible subversive. A Tory with a strong social conscience and a intense dislike for corporate capitalism, she consistently denounced, first in the News and, after 1953, in her column in the Telegram, the Liberal hegemony in Canadian politics and the policy of integrating Canada more closely to the United States. Better than anyone else he had ever met, she understood the geopolitical impossibility of independence on a shared continent. To the end of his life George spoke of her with affection and respect, and he acknowledged

108 George Grant her great influence on him when he dedicated Lament for a Nation to her. The fruits of his discussions with her were not long in coming. One day late in 1944 or early in 1945 George was in the long, narrow living-room on Prince Arthur, sitting on one of the tan sofas beside the fireplace. A mirror at the end of the room reflected the cool, clear colours of the room, the flowing curtains, the many photographs of friends and relatives in their frames, the books lying about in a way that declared this to be a family to whom such things mattered. At work he had been giving a great deal of thought to the question of what kind of country Canada would be after the war. He picked up the evening paper and immediately his eye was drawn to a photograph of C.D. Howe, Mackenzie King's powerful American-born cabinet minister, angrily confronting strikers who had invaded the locker-room at his golf club. At that moment George saw 'the kind of political and economic decisions that were being made by Howe that made it absolutely clear that we were committed totally to being part of [the United States].'35 He now saw that the fight to save an independent Canada was more difficult and more perilous than he had supposed in his earlier pamphlet. It was vital, though, that it succeed and he tried to explain why. He published an article, 'Have We a Canadian Nation?' in Public Affairs in the spring of 1945 to show what it meant for Canada to continue to be British and why we could no longer defend the British character of Canada by an appeal to tradition alone. Now he sought a deeper defence of the Canadian spirit than tradition, one based 'on certain conscious ideas.'36 Here he explicitly outlined for the first time his theory that Canada was a conservative nation, whose European heritage was a key element in its identity. 'Where the USA broke away from its past and its connections with western Europe, we never did.'37 This did not mean merely a defence of property rights, although we shared with the United States the 'belief in the individual's inalienable and indestructible rights, which is the chief pride of western civilization.'38 Our conservatism took the form of a belief that freedom should neither endanger the freedom of others nor disrupt the pattern of social order. For us, order and selfdiscipline were natural elements of freedom, and we revealed this in our respect for law and authority, in an educational system rooted in the strict disciplines and in our adherence to 'sane and orthodox religions rooted in the past.'39 If Canada were to continue to exist as a nation, 'we must expound those values and traditions of decency, stability and order that have been the best basis of our national life.'40 There were great merits to striking

It was easy to lose courage 109 a middle way between the liberal individualism of the United States and the collectivism of the Soviet Union, and Canada could be a unique inspiration to the world: 'We will be the compromise between the individualism of the USA and the extreme social order of the USSR. Also in a small country like Canada, it will be easier to work out the problems of democracy in the industrialized age than in the USA where the units of power are so enormous that only a Roosevelt can control them.'41 But it was only by understanding our character and making a conscious choice to maintain it that we could preserve our independence: 'If our entertainment criterion is Frank Sinatra and philosophically and religiously we accept the materialist claptrap from the USA - then we will in effect have given up those values that are essentially Canadian and we might as well become part of Leviathan.'42 In books such as Imperial Federation: The Problem of National Unity (1892), Round the Empire (1892), and The Great Dominion: Studies of Canada (1895)

George Parkin spoke of the Divine Mission of the British Empire to spread justice and civilization around the world. Without imperial union, Parkin thought, the empire would not fulfil its destiny, and in 1888 he predicted that it would abdicate its leading place in the world within fifty years to Russia and the United States.43 His grandson had accepted this general line of argument first while still an undergraduate at Queen's in 1938 when he wrote his essay for the Rhodes Scholarship competition.44 Even at twenty, he had put forward the view that without Canadian membership in the Commonwealth, the need for military security would drive Canada into closer ties with 'her immensely stronger neighbour.'45 'By maintaining her connection with the Commonwealth, Canada can increase her bargaining strength in any disagreement with the U.S.A.'46 There was another benefit. Canada, balanced between the two great empires, could play an altruistic role in the world, promoting 'AngloAmerican political, social and, as she has partially done, economic cooperation, which seems to be the most important factor in the struggle for the maintenance of liberalism in the widest sense.'47 In his 1945 pamphlet, The Empire, Yes or No?, which sold for twenty-five cents, George Grant analysed the question of Canada's future by looking at the dynamics of postwar imperialism. He agreed with his grandfather Parkin that Canada could survive as a independent state only within the British Commonwealth. Otherwise we would 'soon cease to be a nation and become absorbed in the U.S.A.'48 It was only by balancing 'our geographic North Americanism with our political Britishness'49 that we had become a nation, a 'distinctive product of the ancient civilization of

no

George Grant

western Europe with its maturity and integrity, with the best of North American life.'50 By maintaining our links with the British Empire, we had a counterbalance to the pull of the two great continental empires that would vie for supremacy in the postwar world. Those in Canada (whom George does not name, but he certainly has C.D. Howe and the Liberals in mind) who wanted to break our links with the British Commonwealth are 'the bad Canadians,' the true colonials who hoped to 'destroy our nationhood and submerge us in the U.S.A.'51 Macdonald, Laurier, and Borden had created a nation dedicated to the extension of different political and social concepts. A separate Canadian identity was necessary to preserve this distinctiveness, because it was not yet clear whether the extreme American emphasis on individual freedom or our approach, which 'put balance far more on the side of order or the good of society,'52 was better. Thus, it was 'important that this continent should have this diversity of social philosophy.'53 As a purely political argument, this was as far as he could go. His conclusion was that, as a member of the British Commonwealth, Canada was more open to the world and could make a stronger contribution to a lasting peace. It also allowed a third option between the American 'right of the individual to do as he likes,' and the other extreme, the Soviet, 'wherein the individual has been subordinated to the good of society as a whole, and his acts are ruthlessly curbed for the sake of general order.'54 These arguments were cogent and pressing, but there was another, deeper development in the modern world to which he alluded only in his last paragraph. Under the influence of Marxist economics and Freudian psychology, a new human being was arising in the world, 'brutal and unreasonable, unethical and material, and who is ruthlessly dominated by his appetites.' This new creature was the enemy of Christian man, ethical man, man the reasonable, moral being who stands before God and history, whom the 55 new man regarded as 'a last remaining fragment of the dark ages.' For those who still believed, like George, that Christian man was the 'finest flowerofalthatwesterncivilizationhasproduced,'theBritishCommon-wealthrepresentedthelastbesthope. Amen,GrandfatherGrantmight have said. As he had written in theQueen's Quarterly in 1897: 'We have a mission on earth as truly as ancient Israel had. Our mission was to make this world the home of freedom, of justice, and of peace, and to secure these ends the British Empire was the highest secular instrument the worldhadeverknownworldhadeverknown5.'6Empirewasthehighestsecularinstrumentheworldhadeverknown5.'6Empirewasthehighestsecularinstrumenthe.' world had ever known.'56

It was easy to lose courage 111 How would this defence of the British Empire in terms of Christian principles be received? He did not have to wait long to find out. When he bumped into two luminaries from Queen's, Professors Corry and Macintosh, on the street in Ottawa, Macintosh said: 'I don't like people who give up radical politics for the consolation of religion.'57 George was shattered; he later declared that these were the 'most savage words ever spoken to me by an older man I had respected.'58 It was the first of many bitter lessons of what might happen should he be too open about his Christianity. It was also a mark of how far he had moved from the secularized Protestantism that Corry, Macintosh, and others had inculcated into the generation of students who went into government and were now using their power to transform Canada in ways George abhorred. With the victory of the Allies in Europe, George needed to make some personal decisions. A year earlier, in May 1944, Ed Corbett, George's boss, was in England and dropped in to see Vincent Massey. He praised the tremendous promise George showed both in administration and in purely intellectual work. He also raised with Massey the question of whether George should carry on in Canada or take up his Rhodes again after the war. After this visit, Vincent sat down to write Maude that both he and Corbett were strongly of the opinion that George should return to Balliol after the war: 'His is a problem which applies to a great many men of his own age whose work has been interrupted by the war, and the tendency is for them to feel that time is passing and that they must get into their permanent work as quickly as possible. I am sure that in most cases this is wrong. At George's age a delay of two or three years in taking up one's job means so little later on.'59 It appears that Massey did not get a satisfactory answer to his first letter, since six months later he was on the attack again: 'I have been wondering what George has decided to do about his Rhodes Scholarship. I do hope that he still intends to take it up when his health permits. The more I think about the matter the more firmly I am convinced that it would be most unfortunate if he did not have the two years at Balliol which he is so wonderfully qualified to profit by. Don't let him get the feeling that the years are passing too fast.'60 Late in May 1945 George wrote to C.K. Allen at Rhodes House in Oxford to ask if it was possible to return after the war. Instead of law, however, he indicated that he wanted to enrol for a degree in theology. As he explained to Allen, although he was a member of the United Church, he would very much like to take his theology 'within the great Church of England tradition.'61 His mother was not much impressed by

112 George Grant his proposed change in direction. When he told her of his desire to study theology, she observed: 'George, you have always been the poseur of the family, but this is the worst pose of all.' For Maude the ministry was no longer an appropriate occupation for an ambitious young man. As George reflected later: 'The Western world for generations now - in Canada later than the others, starting about 1900, in the United States and England before this - put every pressure to keep clever people out of the clergy. Everybody thought it was just a disaster when people went into the clergy.'62 In this attitude, Maude was not untypical of her milieu. After all, George once noted, one of the leading Protestant churches in Toronto, Timothy Eaton Memorial, was named after the founder of a department store chain instead of one of the saints. Formal approval to resume his scholarship and return to Balliol was granted on 28 July 1945,63 but Oxford had to wait for the autumn. He stayed on with the CAAE until 15 June to plan the next season's broadcasts. He had already gained important new experience when he appeared on the end-of-the-season broadcast of Citizens' Forum. Lionel Gelber, Michael's brother, wrote to congratulate him: 'Your voice was excellent and the matter well and clearly phrased. I hope you will speak more often.'64 The Toronto radio station CKEY invited him to chair a radio discussion group once every five weeks.65 The contacts he made in broadcasting through Citizens' Forum and his experience on radio brought him welcome income in the future and in the late 1950s helped catapult him to national prominence. But now it was just a question of packing up for Oxford and saying his farewells. For Alice Boissonneau, it was a poignant moment: 'I was shaking hands with you remotely, outwardly firm and ironic, inwardly wistful, saying "Oh do write," and "good-bye." It was strange like saying "Good morning" in church. I was not really there, you were not really there, you had gone much earlier.'66

9

Exploring the universe

When he arrived at the lodge at Balliol, the porter told him that his new room was 'I' on staircase 23. It was Peter Clarke's old room. George's return to Oxford was complicated by the fact that, when his luggage arrived from Liverpool, the bottom was torn open and many of his things had been stolen. However, he was, fittingly, philosophical: 'With things so short, of course such dishonesty is inevitable.' The academic situation was, if anything, worse than when he left. The Lindsays were away and C.K. Allen was still installed in Rhodes House. So many fellow Rhodes Scholars disliked him, George observed, that 'he must do the British Commonwealth grave harm.' Now twenty-seven, he saw the young undergraduates and, as Massey anticipated, began to fear that life was passing him by.1 It was not even particularly clear what program he should follow, although he knew that whatever he decided on, he was going to study, in the wake of the American attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 'sub specie atomic bomb.' He sought advice from Nathaniel Micklem, professor of theology and principal of Mansfield College. Witty and eloquent, both poet and politician, Micklem had taught New Testament literature and criticism from 1927 until 1931 at Queen's, where he made friends with the Macdonnells and through them with Maude and William.2 Micklem warned George off an undergraduate theology course because he lacked an adequate background in Greek and Latin, and because he was not, for the moment at any rate, a candidate for the ministry.3 Moreover, he thought that the undergraduate program would not let George do what he really wanted to do - 'explore the universe.' Instead he advised George to seek permission to do a D.Phil., somehow mixing theology and law. George was dubious because of the notorious difficulty of the Oxford D.Phil., but Micklem argued that it was 'a colossal degree in the aca-

114 George Grant demic world & would be useful.'4 Allen doubted the wisdom of this advice, since he thought George needed a 'real academic discipline,' which that the more structured course by examination would provide, and he expressed his fear that, 'in his present uncertainty of mind,' to attempt a thesis might 'accentuate the religiose tendency that I imagine is something of a danger to him.'5 When the Master returned, his advice tipped the balance. George was admitted to the D.Phil, program with the intention of undertaking 'research on some subject connected with Calvinism.'6 Lindsay assigned George to L.W. Grensted as his tutor.7 Grensted was a man of deep faith and moral courage, as his pacifism, his association with the Oxford Group, and his commitment to spiritual healing demonstrated. He was not, however, a philosopher. As George had no specific topic in mind, Lindsay helped out with the suggestion that George might look at the Scottish theologian John Oman8 for his thesis, and promised to help. However, he was now sixty-six years old. Worn down by the war, constantly on the verge of illness, he gave George little practical assistance.9 George was unimpressed with his tutor, whose mind, he jibed, was that of a vacuous Victorian who thinks he is modern. As for the others, the 'rest of the theology school - except for one or two - are the worst form of Protestant schoolmen, without even a Church behind them to justify dogmatism. In fact with all the faults of the R.C. Church & none of their real toughness. All in all many of them have been a grave disappointment. None of them have the fire or life that seems necessary.'10 He was, however, excited by the prospects the D.Phil, opened for study. It was a pin on which to hang 'two years work reading Descartes - Plato - Aristotle - Calvin - Luther - St. Thomas - Marx - Freud - & my beloved and, at the moment overwhelming, enthusiasm - Pascal.' He was glad that he had chosen theology over law, even in the face of his mother's disapproval: 'If I had studied law, I would have hated it & not spent much time on it & certainly not been able to contemplate two years at Balliol.'11 The main stream of Oxford philosophy did not much interest him either. He seems to have attended, at least twice, an evening seminar offered by two of the most distinguished analytical philosophers at Oxford, Gilbert Ryle and AJ. Ayer, devoted, as it happened, to a demonstration that Heidegger's thought was vitiated by a misuse of the verb 'to be.'12 'They simply saw philosophy as the errand boy of natural science and modern secularism. They were uninterested in the important things I wanted to think about.'13 By chance he happened upon a lecture by Austin Farrer14 on Descartes and fell in love: 'I knew this was why I had

Exploring the universe 115 come to Oxford. I suddenly heard a great philosopher like Descartes being wonderfully articulated. So I always just went to his lectures ... It was just wonderful for me; it gave me an entrance - how to do it. This was a highly articulate, well-educated Englishman who was also a priest of the Anglican church.'15 George's relationship with Farrer was not close, but on one occasion when Farrer asked George for a drink, 'I had the only direct vision I ever had. I saw the golden eagle of St John descend upon him.'16 Oxford provides its education in a variety of ways and among the most important are its various intellectual clubs. One of these was the Origen Society, of which George was president in 1946. It ran a scholarly program and featured papers with titles such as 'Pascal and the Nature of Belief and The Relevance of New Testament Eschatology.' More important for George, though, was the Socratic Club run by the Christian apologist and Oxford English don C.S. Lewis. To George, Lewis seemed 'a wonderful human being. He looked like a great, big English butcher, who might be selling meat behind a counter.' However, once he started speaking he was most impressive - direct, clear and lucid.17 George probably saw the bright green poster announcing the meeting on 15 October 1945, and was doubtless attracted by the topic, 'Nature and Reason.' The meetings always began at 8:15 PM with two speakers, ideally one an atheist and the other a committed Christian. Discussion followed until 10:30. As it happened, this meeting was one of the rare occasions on which Lewis himself was one of the principal speakers.18 George was enthralled: 'What sense! What clarity! What importance! It was just what I had come back to Oxford to hear. My breath was taken away with gladness. From then on the Socratic Club was a centre for me.'19 It was also where he bumped into Sheila Allen from time to time. He first met her when Steven Smith, the pacifist to whom Mary Greey had introduced him, invited him to drop over to his digs one evening. George soon fell into discussion with a charming Greek student, John Simopolis, and spent the evening debating the question whether one could judge other people's good or bad actions when their motives were unknown. He hardly noticed Smith's slender, dark-haired, beautiful friend. Sheila, by contrast, was immediately smitten. She had never met anyone like George, who combined the appearance of a large teddy bear with the capacity for eloquent and lucid discussion. George seems not to have remembered their first meeting and, if he noticed Sheila's admiration, he doubtless took it for granted, since he was used to doting women. Even more than usually, he was absorbed with

116 George Grant himself and his own concerns. A little later Smith invited George to a small party of eight people and this time he did notice her: 'I said, "Oh God, I won't go to this party; oh I've got to go to this party, I owe it to the guy," and I met my wife. And this has been the great event of my life.'20 At the time he was somewhat less flattering; he told Sheila that what attracted him was that she dressed well, not like the typical Oxford woman. George again was charming, captivating. He also made the tactical mistake of being the first to leave, and his departure gave the remaining guests a chance to dissect him. The general consensus was that he was unusual, clever, amusing. Then somebody said: 'I wonder what he'd be like to be married to.' Sheila replied, at once: 'Oh he'd be great, but he'd never be there. He wouldn't be around much.' Like everyone else she saw only his wild, ecstatic side. It was only after she married him that she discovered what she calls 'the Scottish family side.' Although he did not like responsibility, 'it was bred in him. One did one's duty; that very solid, reliable side of him was a bonus.'21 A precocious George once told his shocked parents that his failings arose because he was the product of tired loins, since his father was fortysix at the time of his birth. Sheila had an even greater excuse, since her father was forty-nine when she was born in Blackheath in southeast London on 6 September 1920. Her grandfather ran a business supplying horses for the Royal Mail and he had passed the business along to his youngest son, Hugh Allen, at a rather awkward time, just when motorized vans were being introduced. He sold up and passed a desultory and unhappy retirement in gardening, photography, and volunteer work. He was an Anglican, but he married Phyllis Watkins, a Catholic, and Sheila and her older brother Tony22 were brought up as Catholics and educated in Catholic schools. Sheila Veronica Mary Allen, like George, was a pacifist. She went up to St Anne's College, Oxford, before the war to read English, but when war broke out she worked as a nursing auxiliary in the Red Cross. She spent the first four years in a busy London hospital and the last two in a military hospital in Oxford, more like a combination of convalescent home and workhouse. This latter work she found rather dull. Although she found nursing rewarding, she never wanted to train as a nurse because she found the physical and mental strain too great.23 A history of the war tells us some of the hardships faced by the young women who served like Sheila. Probably the most arduous and exhausting job performed by women in the front line was nursing. State registered nurses were bolstered by thousands of

Exploring the universe 117 auxiliary nurses who were given only a few weeks' emergency training, often with the Red Cross or the St John Ambulance Brigade. They provided care and comfort for the injured in air raid casualty wards, at first-aid posts, and in bombed-out houses where heavy rescue teams searched for survivors. The conditions they worked in were often primitive, overcrowded and dangerous ... for all this they received just 25 shillings a week - barely enough on which to survive.24 After the war she returned to her old college where she was reading English. Their courtship proceeded at a stately pace. George invited her for tea at his rooms in Balliol and insisted they go to chapel to hear Lindsay preach. Another evening he took her for a cheap but scarcely romantic dinner at the municipal kitchens. They often ran across one another at Balliol concerts or in bookstores. Whenever they did George conveyed the impression that there was a unique and mysterious, but undefined, bond between them; but he never made anything explicit. For the moment, in any event, he was distracted by one visitor after another. Peter Clarke came down one weekend and Gerald Graham another. Michael Gelber, 'sweet as ever,' came through with '45 RCAF chappies' whom George showed around Balliol. His cousin Lionel arrived to lay down the law to Lindsay; the Masseys had concluded that he needed to shape up as Master if he were to continue to head the college. George also got the happy news that his sister Alison was engaged to diplomat George Ignatieff, whom she met through the High Commission while she was living in London. Ignatieff was the brother of Nicholas Ignatieff, who had taught George history at Upper Canada before he entered active service in the war. Intentionally or not, George echoed the thought his father had written to his mother: 'They should make a super pair and should do a lot for Canada.'25 They were married on 17 November 1945 and Uncle Jim Macdonnell gave the bride away. George did not stick exclusively to his old friends; he made new ones, though they were mostly men his own age who, like him, had returned to complete their education after the war. One of these was Geoffrey Bush, another pacifist, who spent the war as assistant warden of a hostel in Wales for unbilletable children. Bush successfully completed his doctor of music degree that autumn. As he returned to Balliol after his successful examination, he saw George sitting on a bench across the quad, waiting for him: 'He could tell from my demeanour, even at that distance, that I had passed; he advanced towards me with his arms outstretched and his face lit up as if my success was the happiest thing that

118 George Grant had ever happened to him in his entire life. Delight in a friend's good fortune does not come naturally to most people; on the contrary, as Rochefoucauld observed 'there is something in the misfortunes of our friends that is not altogether displeasing to us.' But it came naturally to George, and I was deeply moved by it.'26 Bush recalled going to George's room one morning, to find him reclining on a sofa. 'What are you doing, George?' Bush asked. 'Thinking about the love of God,' was the reply.27 George spent a lot of time that autumn thinking about God's love. He had, in his own words, returned to Oxford 'undisciplined, uncharitable and deep rooted in sin.'28 At times he was filled with 'gloom and loneliest introversion.' He was also homesick: 'I stood in tears amid the alien corn.'29 'I find that I love England - and think it is the greatest country on earth, [but] Canada is in one's heart in a way that this country can never be.'3° However, his mood as ever was volatile; his spirits lifted immediately when Bush pushed a piece of music dedicated to George under his door, and he added a note to the gloomy letter he had written to Alice Boissonneau: 'This piece of paper has been slopped with beer from a party I gave last night for my birthday.'31 At other times, when he was sad, he read the last twenty or so verses of 1st Corinthians, chapter 15,32 or contemplated the life of Martin Luther, 'that great peasant with his feet set on the ground seeking with all his heart & soul & mind a gracious God.'33 Over the Christmas vacation he retreated as a paying guest to Upper Hill farm, outside Quainton, where Peter Clarke now lived. His most memorable experience was an encounter in the village church with the affected English literary critic A.L. Rowse, 'at his most fluty and exquisite. "Dear boy - this heavenly church with these divine rococo monuments etc, etc ruined by the too horrible horrible hands of those nineteenth century barbarians" etc, etc.'34 Most days he walked in the countryside, read, and thought. He had brought Plato's Republic with him and began to study it seriously for the first time: 'What a book it is - what a superb book.'35 Such 'pure, clear nobility as Plato's Republic' made him realize that 'really true thought is worth thinking.'36 Then he dashed off a sonnet to his mother and went to London for Christmas. He stayed for a few days with Lionel at the Dorchester and since Aunt Lai was ill, the Christmas festivities were re-arranged at Aunt Grace's. There was no way, even in London, that George could escape the Parkin connection at Christmas. He and Lionel had great talks about Canada and its future and George tried to prepare his cousin for his return to

Exploring the universe 119 Canada after such a long absence.37 He then decamped for Mrs Lovett's, where he promptly fell ill and was appropriately mothered: 'Mrs Lovett put me to bed & kept me in bed all day. It has been a real warning to me so don't worry.' Lest his mother feel a trifle jealous, he sent her 'thanks for all you did for me for so many years - when I felt there was absolutely no future - when time & time again I let you down and you never seemed to mind.'38 He barely got back to Oxford when Aunt Lai decided that it would do him good to make some useful, high-level, connections. So she invited him to lunch at the Dorchester in honour of the visiting Canadian delegation to the United Nations: 'Apart from all the Canadians there was Cripps & Bevin - the Lord Chancellor, Eden and Cranborne. I kept looking at somebody two places from me who seemed vaguely familiar. Had we met before? Of course it was Cadogan the Permanent Head of the Foreign Office. I had seen his picture with Churchill, Roosevelt & Stalin ... St. Laurent, Graydon & Knowles ... The whole thing was a great thrill & something to be remembered.'39 Amidst the postwar austerity and rationing, it must have been nice to sit down to lobster at the Dorchester. Later on in the spring he came for another dinner at the Masseys where he met Lord Camrose, R.A. Butler, and the future Conservative prime minister, Harold Macmillan, whom he found ruthless, tough, and brilliant, but mistakenly decided was not warm enough to be the Conservative leader. On still another occasion he was a guest along with the British prime minister and HRH The Princess Alice.40 Just before the Masseys left London to return to Canada, he had a quiet dinner with his aunt and uncle. Massey opened up personally to him for the first time and George saw the warmth underneath the superficial aloofness. 'God how I pray things will go well for them in Canada - for he is an imaginative & sensitive man & does care for the best things for Canada.' It struck George how inherently alike his two uncles were and how different: 'It is so interesting to compare him to Uncle Jim. Both so having the qualities that the others lack & yet both having so many of both their good & bad qualities together. Uncle Vincent imaginative, intelligent with ideas, etc.; Uncle Jim morally imaginative, virile, etc. Both of them never quite sure of themselves - yet both of them in their different ways always knowing that Canada must be based on the great ideas of the past - made present & alive. That is why one must respect them both.'41 When he popped up to London he usually stayed with Mary Greey, who was living with a succession of lodgers at 46A Porchester Terrace

120 George Grant Mews. After continuing her affaire with Pearson in both Ottawa and New York, she returned to London and was now involved with historian Gerald Graham, who was in the process of getting a divorce. While he and Mary endured the long wait for marriage, George often comforted them. Since he could rarely resist the temptation to meddle a little, he wrote to his mother to try to bring her on side. He feared that she was intervening in a contrary direction and was pushing Graham's wife not to grant a divorce. He pleaded with his mother to realize that Mary 'is now so desperately in love with him, in a way she never loved Pearson ... if you try to stiffen Emily [Graham] against divorce, you may break Mary.'42 Beneath all this sociability there festered a soul that was still sick at heart about what he had seen in Bermondsey. As he confided to Alice Boissonneau, for the past three years he felt he was sinking into a bottomless despair, 'that was not exciting but just continuously depressing - in which one's awareness of the richness & intensity of life was gradually frittered away.'43 But early in 1946 he happened upon the novels of Henry James and his recovery began. It was one of the decisive moments in his life. 'Almost all reality has stopped for me since a week ago. I started to read Henry James. No Bible, no poetry, no books except Dostoevsky's novels - and those certainly no more - have ever so completely absorbed me & brought a whole sept (?) of life into one's existence. I feel like those lines of Keats' [On first looking into Chapman's Homer] 'Then felt I like some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken."'44 James's 'tremendous discipline of words' swept him along, especially The Wings of the Dove, which he read through three times and dreamed of making into a movie. This morning I awoke in the country feeling, even after my usual nightmares, that God's grace was truly with me. One of the wonderful [things] James has done for me is that taking one to the quietest point of pessimism, he thereby renews one's faith, that however low life takes one, it still cannot take one so low that grace leaves one & the desire to live departs. In one's petty way one has had bad moments & is sure that in the future there are worse to come but however much it would be the easy thing & the romantic thing to do I cannot like Milly Theale in The Wings of the Doveturn my face to the wall.

If Henry James was his therapist, Henri Bergson and Immanuel Kant awakened his intellect. He found Bergson glorious and even went out and bought, a rare extravagance for the perennially cash-strapped student, a 'big expensive edition' of Bergson in French. It was largely Lord46

Exploring the universe 121 Lindsay's influence47 that led George to these thinkers. As Dorothy Emmet explains: 'What Lindsay seems to have done was to rub Kant & Bergson together in his mind, and approach the both through a knowledge which starts from thinking of ourselves as exploring a largely unknown world by acting on it through our bodies, noticing changes we have initiated and comparing them with changes we have not.'48 However, he was also led to Kant through Farrer's lectures, which he was still attending assiduously. He wrote to his mother that a lecture Farrer gave on Kant was 'the best hour of thought' he ever heard, the kind of thing one would expect at Oxford, 'the best in the world - and not a trace of 2nd rateness.'49 The minor irritations of living in England, though, were beginning to bother him. The climate did not suit him; the expense was colossal; and he had a 'complete need for living in a society of my own i.e. Canada.'50 He was beginning for the first time to feel middle-aged, and he wondered whether he might be able to land a job at Queen's, or perhaps at Upper Canada. Only if he could squeeze some more money out of the Rhodes trustees, might he stay for a second year. The spring, as usual, perked up his spirits. He boasted that he was thin and brown from playing tennis when Charity and Mary Greey came up from London for the first Balliol postwar dance. George formally took his sister, but he arranged for a friend to escort Sheila. He was in such an expansive mood that, although he kissed half the girls at the ball, Sheila could not get too terribly angry. Later he took her to the dance at her own college, St Anne's. It was less than a triumph, since he spilled beer on her ball gown, and he told the head of her college that she could not know much about music if she admired Beethoven. The evening was such a disaster that George apologized with Shelley's lines from Prometheus Unbound: 'To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates / From its own wreck the thing it contemplates.'51 In addition to Sheila, George introduced Charity to his other friends. These included Alan Brunton, 'a poor, neurotic, brilliant product of the slums of Manchester, who has faced up to the depth & intensity of life,' who went on to lecture in philosophy at University College, Wales; and Derek Bedson, 'a strange Winnipeger whose best qualities are his kind heart 8c decency - his worst an ineffectiveness.'52 He also would have included three others who returned after the war: Geoffrey Bush, Peter Self, and Christopher Fisher, a mathematician much in demand as a viola player. Together, the group of friends enjoyed themselves enormously. Once, when Bush gave two concerts of his work, 'there was a gathering of the clan i.e. that group of friends who centre around Peter Self &

122 George Grant Peter Clarke, myself 8c Geoffrey Bush. We danced, drank, played poker & bridge, listened to the music, talked endlessly. One of the happiest 8c wildestly foolish times of my life, rather like the Marx brothers at their best - or worst.'53 Another time, Peter Self asked him to come to his home in Brighton 'for detective stories, Kant, St Augustine & golf.'54 During the summer vacation, George toyed with the idea of going to France with Charity, but she decided to return to Canada. Instead, George went up to London for a Garden Party at Buckingham Palace. Afterwards he went to see John Gielgud55 (whom he thought an emasculated actor - fine technique and sensitivity, but gutless) in a dramatization of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.

Back in Oxford he received an unsettling letter from Sidney Smith, the president of the University of Toronto, inquiring whether he was interested in the post of warden of Hart House at the University of Toronto, currently held by Burgon Bickersteth, who wanted to retire. In the letter Smith explained that when he and Bickersteth got together to canvass possible names for the next warden, they kept coming back to George. Smith broached the matter with Vincent Massey, who expressed concern that there might be criticism because of the family connection, but Smith assured him that he personally had no reservations. He also recommended that George consult Bickersteth, who was in England, before replying. What followed irrevocably altered George's life and, for the time being, knocked 'Kant and Bergson out of the window.' George immediately wrote to Maude seeking her advice. He remembered Charity's experience before the war and he too was worried about the charge of nepotism. He was even more concerned, in a resonance of the Fitzgibbons's boarding house, whether the doctors and engineers would think him a real intellectual. He wondered also if his personality was sufficiently outgoing. He knew that he got on well in small groups, but worried about larger ones. However, he did not mind giving up theology, ias there could be no better parish in Canada than Hart House.'56 George hustled down to see Uncle Burgon in Canterbury for the weekend. Bickersteth liked what he saw. He thought George young and enthusiastic, with an excellent mind. He was a 'Canadian through 8c through', but he was also 'a cosmopolitan, completely at home in Great Britain and possessing a European sense'; he also knew a 'considerable amount about music and art and holds views worth hearing on both.' He had presence; he was tall and imposing; his health had improved; he could get on well with the Masseys; he had learned to administer through the CAAE; he knew and understood Hart House. Finally, he was 'deeply religious in the

Exploring the universe 123 best sense and has become tremendously interested in theology. He is United Church but oecumenical in his outlook.' As for defects, Bickersteth listed four: George was comparatively young; Hart House might prove more administratively demanding than George thought; he had no experience commanding men; and he lacked the ability to get on with people quickly. None the less, Bickersteth made it clear that he favoured the post being offered to George.57 Back in Oxford, George consulted Micklem, who assured him that taking the post at Hart House need not mean abandoning his academic interests. That concern set aside, he still worried about the charge of nepotism; however, he concluded that 'one's religion is worth nothing unless one is big enough & strong enough to use it for what one thinks in an ignorant way is God's Kingdom.' He also thought that thanks to spending the past months under Henry James's influence, 'I really went to the depths & came up with a will to live & to accomplish.'58 On 7 August 1946 he wrote to Sidney Smith indicating his interest and outlining his limitations, to which he added: 'The first two years of the war, I was a pacifist.' However, he concluded that 'for anybody whose prime interests are education and religion, the thought of such a job is very exciting. If one cannot try to make the Christian attitude to life (in its broadest sense) understandable to young people in one's own country, one had better give up one's religion as unreal.'59 Before he made his final decision, he wanted to hear from his mother. He also wrote to Uncle Jim, who cabled back that he was unhesitatingly in favour. On 19 August George wrote to Smith to say formally that were he offered the wardenship, he would accept it. However, he added that he should like to be able to complete his D.Phil., not just because of his deep interest in theology, 'but also the feeling that one should not be at a University without proper academic qualification.'60 Having taken this important step, he set off to Allerthorpe for a few weeks with Leo: 'I sit like Proust half overcome by the horror of the past and half with a remembrance of how absolutely glorious our childhood was. To be loved as we are by Leo gives one the terrible pause of responsibility. She has become smaller and older and the goodness of her life is shown in the tremendous dearness of her face.' He proposed that he, Alison, and Charity (but not Margaret because she had children) send Leo some money so that she could hire a man to do work in the garden.61 In the afternoons he walked in the flat countryside, and in the evenings listened to the Prom concerts on the radio and exchanged letters with Sheila. When he arrived back in Oxford in September, instead of living in col-

124 George Grant lege, he shared digs at 52 Stjohn Street off Wellington Square with an English friend, Nigel Ffoulkes,62 and Winnipeger Derek Bedson. George's friendship with Ffoulkes was short-lived, because George, with his love of gossip, indiscreetly told Ffoulkes's current girlfriend too much about her predecessor. Bedson was a friend for the rest of his life. While George was preparing to move to his new lodgings, Bickersteth was back in Toronto, lunching with Smith and making the final arrangements for George to succeed him. A phone call from Maude to Bickersteth completed what seemed to be the final piece in the puzzle, confirming that George would interrupt his studies at Oxford and return to Toronto to take up his new job at the beginning of January 1947. Bickersteth considered this decision appropriate: 'After all,' he wrote to his mother, 'Hart House is sufficiently important to come first. I had to decide in 1921 whether I would give up several other possible jobs and throw in my lot with Hart House. In any case I think George can finish up his thesis and eventually take his degree, though it may take longer.'63 Smith then met with Vincent Massey and Colonel Eric Phillips, the chairman of the board of governors, and they decided to offer George the post. After clearing the letter with Bickersteth, Smith wrote to George on 23 September to offer him the position of assistant Warden until June so that he could understudy with Bickersteth, followed by the wardenship at a salary of $5000 with free living quarters and free board in Hart House. Financially this was a generous offer. Smith also added that he did not want to thwart George's endeavours towards a D.Phil., and that the degree would stand him in good stead as warden. However, 'speaking for myself, I trust, however, that we will never consider in this University that a doctorate is a sine qua non of an appointment to an academic post in even the severest disciplines.'64 In his determination to hold the formal degree George proved more perspicuous than Smith. On receipt of this letter, George discussed the matter with Gerald Graham and with Sheila. Sheila advised him to accept the offer, even though she feared his departure might end their relationship. Considering the deal done, he went out and bought for £6 a complete set of St Augustine he had been eyeing and also ordered a suit for the substantial sum of £25. While waiting for term to begin, he played tennis or golf every day, and he wrote to his mother begging for six golf balls, as they apparently were unavailable in postwar England. He read Turgeniev, and went to Stratford to see Measure for Measure and Marlowe's Dr Faustus. Then he popped up to London to see Mary Greey and take in the new play with Olivier, Fear.

Exploring the universe 125 In between, he tried to get some work done: 'It will be a busy term as I am giving a lecture on Calvin's Doctrine of Election to one society, on Bergson to another, on Augustine at another.' He was also writing some articles for Chambers's Encyclopedia on Canada, a project Gerald Graham secured for him to help with his perennially tight financial situation.65 In Toronto Bickersteth was looking forward anxiously to returning permanently to England, where he could pass his retirement with his brother and his blind, elderly mother. He wrote home saying that George's appointment was a virtual certainty, and he met with the president to discuss an appropriate time for the announcement. It would have to be after the 24 October meeting of the board of governors, which would give its final approval. Massey decided that it would not be appropriate for him to be present, so that the governors might feel free to discuss details without embarrassment. Vincent proposed to write a statement for the press, which Smith would read as if it came from him: 'Vincent is very good at wording this kind of thing and it is very essential that George's qualifications and especially the magnificent war work he did in Bermondsey should be properly stated,' Bickersteth observed. Everyone was anxious that the matter be settled by 1 November, when Massey set off for a trip to Western Canada.66 However, this schedule proved impossible because the matter first had to be referred to several board committees, most particularly the Hart House Committee, which did not meet again until 25 October, the day after the full board met. The new schedule was as follows: 'if this committee agrees (as it most assuredly will) then Sidney Smith will cable to George at Oxford and tell him to go about securing a sailing to bring him here by Christmastime, because the confirmation of his appointment by the full board will only be a matter of routine.' In any event, Bickersteth thought the matter was effectively settled and wrote to tell George that it was just a matter of time.67 At the 25 October meeting of the Hart House Committee, the deal began to unravel. The minutes list as present R.A. Bryce (chairman), Sidney Smith, Mr Justice Hope, Beverley Matthews, Arnold Gaine, C.E. Higginbottom, and W.R. Cowan (comptroller, HH). They mention only that the question of Bickersteth's successor was 'discussed at length, and it was agreed to defer the matter for further consideration.' Bickersteth explained the background to his mother: 'There is no doubt that George's appointment will come up at the Governors meeting on 14 November but there has been unexpected delay in getting the unreserved support of the Hart House Committee of the Governors. On this there

126 George Grant sit about 8 governors who are supposed to take a special interest in Hart House affairs. Actually they don't. Their chief contribution seems to be to examine our estimates and the auditors' reports.'68 However, on this occasion, led by Bryce, they took a very keen interest in the House. Their concern was that George's war record as a pacifist would make it difficult for him to deal with the many returned servicemen who had enrolled at the U of T. Smith persuaded them to adjourn to think the matter over. In the meantime George was waiting impatiently in Oxford so that he could book his passage home: Tn all truth God has been so good to me as far as this world goes - after the mess I have made of life - that one shouldn't grumble about such minor issues. In many ways if the whole thing didn't come through now it would be a splendid test of my quality, as I have counted in my heart so much on it.'69 The next meeting of the committee was scheduled for 7 November, and Bickersteth and Smith plotted almost daily to smooth the way for George. When the meeting finally came, its minutes report coldly: 'No recommendation in this connection is being made at the present time by the President.'70 It appears that the opposition to George's appointment had spread, and he was now opposed not just by Bryce, but also by Mr Justice Hope, Mr Borden, Mr Matthews, Mr Walter Gordon, and Mr Kelley.71 Bickersteth estimated that George's appointment would still carry in the board, with between twelve and fourteen of the twenty or so governors voting in favour. However, since the six to eight who opposed were determined in their opposition, Sidney Smith feared that they would broadcast their opposition, and that George would start work with 'two strikes against him.' It was a great blow to Uncle Burgon: 'I do not think I have ever been more depressed about any occurrence than I am about this. It makes one almost despair of Canada. That there should be some half dozen Governors who cannot recognise moral courage - great moral courage when they see it - and, if that was not enough, physical courage as well. They take the view that if these thousands of ex-servicemen heard that George had refused to join up in 1939 they would make it impossible for him. I know they would not. They are not thinking about the war at all. It belongs to an age which is past. They are concerned only with the present and the future and if George was an efficient and sympathetic warden (as he would certainly be) he would be accepted on his merits at once.'72 The person who was not surprised by these developments was Maude: 'She had always anticipated opposition in narrow, small-town Toronto on this particular score.'73

Exploring the universe 127 The distasteful task of writing to George to explain the situation and to ask him to withdraw his name was left to Smith. Smith explained that the opposition to his appointment arose because several board members knew of his earlier attitude to combatant service in the war, and they believed that George's pacifism was widely known. 'While these members of the Committee would admit the honesty and integrity of your earlier attitude, they wonder whether it would be fair to the Wardenship, and indeed to you, to appoint you to it and thereby subject you immediately, as the holder of one of the most important positions in the University, to private and possibly public comment of an adverse character. I declared at the meeting that by 1942 you had changed your attitude.'74 Not only did George try to join the Merchant Marine in 1941, he also recanted his pacifism in The Empire: Yes or No? in 1945. There he wrote: 'In 1940 we saw that it was not the pious talk of idealists that stopped fascism and the forces of evil, it was the practical co-operation of the free nations of the British Commonwealth. Some always knew this lesson; some learned it very late (like this writer). But let us all remember it after the war and never forget it.'75 To this defence, his opponents replied darkly: 'It is always difficult and sometimes impossible to allay damaging rumours.' George was finished. He received Maude's cable informing him that the offer was withdrawn on his twenty-eighth birthday. The letter, which Smith sent by air, arrived instead by sea mail and was not in George's hands until early December. He wrote a polite reply, withdrawing his name. Of course I see clearly the point about the impossibility of taking on such a job as the Wardenship of Hart House under the circumstances and also indeed quite understand the fairness of the objections you mentioned. The difficulty, touchiness, and great importance of these next years at the University would make it foolish to contemplate anything that might produce friction in the student body. Also men - who may have had sons in the armed forces - could never feel happy about appointing to Hart House, somebody who had not taken on that responsibility.76

In one sense George was glad to have the matter settled. The uncertainty and worry had left his 'alimentary canal a small Gethsemene.' 'Take what you want said God - take it and pay for it.' These were the words that George had inscribed in his journal in the bleak days of 1942. He did not repudiate them now: 'The whole thing has been settled well & properly in an intellectual way; yet another part of me is not settled & it is mainly

128 George Grant over the disappointment of not being home at Christmas ... You must see that the Board of Governors are in their way right. One cannot have the plums after being a pacifist & it was wrong of me ever to have thought I could. And it is only the wrong part of myself that wants them.'77 He did, however, regret buying the books and the suit. George Grant did not choose the life of a philosopher, though he could, of course, have declined it when it was offered. This fate presented itself initially as a sort of consolation prize. Sidney Smith was a gracious man and he was determined to do what he could to find George some acceptable alternative to the wardenship. It is not clear what other inquiries he may have made, but we know he contacted his good friend, George Wilson, the dean of arts at Dalhousie University in Halifax. Wilson, a pacifist in the first war, had been arrested while a graduate student at Harvard as a result of an administrative blunder. However, his brief incarceration added a certain cachet; he was known as someone who had gone 'to jail for his conscientious objections to bearing arms.' The philosophy position was coming vacant at Dalhousie, and Wilson at Smith's urging was prepared to offer it to George. George's formal qualifications were limited to the one first-year philosophy course he had taken at Queen's, but his incomplete doctoral studies counted for something. George expressed interest but he lacked enthusiasm; he wanted to be closer to his mother and, just as important, he felt 'that the rot of materialism & the real North America is nearer Toronto, so I would rather be there.'78 The Hart House wardenship was eventually offered to George's old history master from UCC, Nicholas Ignatieff, Alison's brother-in-law. George himself had originally proposed Ignatieff s name when he and Bickersteth had spent the weekend discussing various possibilities. The press release on his appointment heavily emphasized Ignatieff s martial virtues. The outgoing warden, it noted, 'had served in France with the British Army from 1914-1919 and had been awarded the Military Cross and Bar.' His successor, who had joined the army 'on the outbreak of war' and been awarded the MBE and the United States Medal of Freedom, was currently on the staff of the Department of National Defence in Ottawa. In February Sheila's father died and George was quick to respond. T just do know that immortality is a fact, and that all the dearness and beauty that your father has been will be lifted up, and God will take away all the insecurity of his last years.'79 Sheila's grief at her father's death was compounded by her uncertainty concerning George's future plans. She

Exploring the universe 129 knew how she felt about him, but she also saw that there were other women in his life in whom he also seemed interested. And she could not yet know the depth of the attachment to his mother. Meanwhile the process of installing George at Dalhousie was grinding on. George wrote to Dean Wilson to explain that, although he would not have his D.Phil, completed by the end of the summer, his studies were 'on that border line where science, philosophy and history meet and therefore it has been concerned with technical philosophy. Having studied History at Queen's and Law at Oxford before the war, I changed to Theology simply because the war posed me with problems for which we needed an answer. That seems to me the beginning and end of philosophy.'80 The anonymous letter of reference, possibly written by Micklem, that was sent on his behalf was more direct about his shortcomings. Although he had a 'clear and vigorous mind and the ability to express himself accurately and forcefully - as well as with a good deal of wit,' his formal study of philosophy had not been extensive and was largely limited to Aquinas, Kant, Bergson, and Whitehead. He was 'far from an accomplished scholar, but has the ability and the inclination to become one.'81 However, these limitations mattered less than they might, the writer went on, because George would prove an outstanding teacher. On grounds of scholarship I do not think that he deserves consideration. As a teacher, however, he would probably be extremely good, for a number of reasons. The teaching of philosophy is near enough to impossible at best; and certainly it is only possible when one can relate a doctrine to the thoughts and questions which happen already to be in the minds of one's students ... Grant has an appreciation of the state of mind of Canadian students, such as I have met with in very few Canadians and no foreigners. He has also a most unusual ability in dealing with people and in appreciating points of view which are not his own. I have no doubt that he would take his teaching seriously.82 Apparently Dalhousie was persuaded. On 13 April President Kerr cabled his offer of a position at $3000 and on 15 April George sent a telegram accepting the post, though he feared, he wrote to his mother, that he was going to be 'teaching philosophy at a specialized technical place that all universities are becoming.'83 He had gone to Leo's for her eightyfifth birthday, and was reading an existential novel when the offer came. He wrote the same day to Sheila: 'I am definitely going (that is d.v.) to Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia to teach philosophy next year - good news, eh?'84 Soon he took the train to Blackheath to spend

130 George Grant a long weekend with her at her mother's, see some plays, visit friends, and meet Derrick Grant, his father's cousin, 'as I have spent so much of my life with my mother's family.'85 He never noticed that Miriam Anglin or Alice Boissonneau were in love with him until it was too late. Would he lose Sheila, too? Would he let her, in the words he loved of Richard Hooker, loosely through silence to pass as in a dream? He later complained that she should have made her interest more obvious; that she should have invited him to Blackheath more often. 'I often thought of it,' she replied, 'and I wanted to. But I didn't want to look as if I were chasing you.' One evening, at the end of April 1947, George phoned Sheila in Oxford and left a message with her landlady. He often rang her up late at night and said, 'I'm in a phone box; you've got to come.' Usually she could not. This night the message was different: 'Come to my rooms at 9:30 tomorrow morning,' Thursday, 1 May. This summons was no more pre-emptory than usual, but Sheila was not sure what was up. She suspected matters were coming to a head; either he might never see her again, or ... What she did not know was that George had been scurrying around, seeking advice. He went to London to see Mary Greey, not least because he wanted to know whether he was in any way committed to Elizabeth, to whom he had made that grand offer of marriage five years before. He also had a long chat with Annette Wilson, Peter Self's girlfriend, in the Balliol quad while he tried to decide what to do. Now he had decided on a course of action and he spent the day going to the various places he knew she frequented in the hope of finding her. He had failed, hence the summons. When Sheila arrived, George's surly landlord was still clearing the breakfast table. George handed her a letter in which he tried to lay all his cards on the table, and Sheila read it through. She knew it contained something vital to her happiness, but it was so convoluted and indirect, and she was so nervous, that she could not put her finger exactly on what he was saying. It never managed directly to ask Sheila to marry him, but in the indirect conversation that followed the matter seemed to be settled and the crisis averted. A kind of change, subtle but total, of the sort that only Henry James could chronicle, had taken place in their relationship. Together they went out into the beautiful Oxford May morning and walked about. They first chanced on the market where, George bought Sheila some irises, and then they called on James Doull, George's classicist friend who later joined him at Dalhousie, whom they found reading Crime and Punishment in a Serbo-Croat translation. Sheila found him very sweet. Then they visited other friends. Marriage still had not explicitly

Exploring the universe 131 been mentioned, and it was only when they were walking along Broad Street and George said, 'My mother's aquamarines will come to you,' that Sheila finally grasped that they were going to get married. Two weeks later, they went down to London. 'We are just in town for the day,' George wrote to his mother, 'and I have bought Sheila an engagement ring. An eighteenth century ring with a sapphire. We bask in the golden air.'86 It might well have been then that they called on Sheila's mother, Mrs Allen. She opened the door, saw George and Sheila together, and said: 'I wish I were dead.' George always liked to say that their relationship went downhill from there.87 In fairness to Mrs Allen, she had just lost her husband, and she was distressed that her daughter, by marrying a Canadian, would depart for the northern wilderness and be lost forever. Her worry brought about exactly the result she feared. The initial plan was for George to sail alone to Canada and spend the first year alone in Halifax while Sheila finished her degree. However, her mother made such a possessive fuss that they decided they should get married as soon as practical, and that Sheila would sit her examinations in June, guaranteeing a poorer result than she otherwise would have secured.88 The letters that Sheila received from George's mother and sisters might have frightened off a less-resolute soul. To prepare her arrival in the new world, Maude gave her a lesson in North American usage, such as using streetcar rather than tram. Margaret offered herself and Geoff as 'an advertisement - at least to ourselves - for holy matrimony,' though she admitted that George thought it had made her mentally and morally complacent.89 Alison told Sheila that she had not seen her brother for years, and 'then under somewhat of a strain,' but his letters were so ecstatic that she wondered 'how he can get close enough to the ground to get pen to paper.'90 Even Charity, the sister to whom George was closest, wrote to warn Sheila: 'I am afraid you have taken on a lot when you agreed to marry George because we are a large and rather octopuslike family. I am devoted to George and I know that marriage to him will be worth a great deal although in lots of ways I think he would be a difficult husband.'91 Some forty years later, Charity's judgment was that God sent Sheila to George; she may very well have been right. A year or so earlier, George had received a parcel from Canada. 'Ah Laura Secords or some goodies,' he said and licked his lips. But no, he was wrong. It was 'another book on sex & religion from Mrs. Foulds. For nearly a decade that pertinacious matriarch has pursued my fleeting libido across two continents & now that I am studying theology she probably is rejoicing in having me in a corner.'92 When his mother's

132 George Grant friends were not overseeing his moral development, his own were. As a pre-wedding present Gerald Graham presented George with a very thick book on sex and marriage. George lumbered the tome back to Blackheath, but arrived on Graham's doorstep early the next day. He was so enraged by the book's contents he tried to rip it apart, but frustrated by its enormous bulk, he had come to return it. Mrs Allen refused to let George stay in Blackheath before the wedding, so Aunt Grace Wimperis took him in. Sheila had to supply the food, drink, and flowers, as well as deploy her clothing ration coupons on an appropriate dress, one that she could also use after the ceremony. Mary Greey came back from Switzerland to get her flat ready for the reception. The day before the ceremony, George got his hair washed and cut at Austin Reed's on Regent Street. They were married at 3 PM on 1 July 1947 at St James, the parish church of Paddington, in Sussex Gardens, a few yards from the flat in which Pearson gave George his bath. Derek Bedson was best man and Sheila's brother Tony gave the bride away. At the reception Gerald Graham ended the toast to the bride: 'When the coffee pot is thrown at breakfast, I hope George will sometimes be on the receiving end.' He need not have worried; over the next forty-one years of deepening love, the coffee pot was flung vigorously more than once in both directions. The first few days of married life were spent in the flat of one of Sheila's school friends, while Sheila tried to unravel the red tape that prevented her from getting a passport in her married name. Then they were off to Paris for their honeymoon, where they stayed in a hotel recommended by Canadian diplomat and diarist Charles Ritchie. They visited Versailles and George's favourite, Chartres. When they returned to London they went immediately to see Mrs Allen and, just as important, Wo, Sheila's old nanny. They then went up to Allerthorpe to present the new bride for Leo's inspection. With Sir Edward Peacock's help, they got passage on a boat to Montreal, where they caught the train for Toronto. As they came closer and closer to Union Station, George became increasingly frenzied at the prospect of seeing his mother again. Sheila was not at all pleased. Neither was Maude when she discovered that her son was already far along on the steep descent to sartorial oblivion for which he was in later life to win a kind of renown. One morning when he arrived unshaven at the breakfast table, Maude warned: 'When one comes to breakfast en deshabille, love dies.'

10

The solid basis of qualifications

The train set off from Union Station in Toronto and carried George and Sheila past Kingston and all his memories of Queen's; to Montreal, where his mother had studied and worked; then down the Saint John Valley, through Sackville and Truro into Halifax. This was the ancestral journey in reverse that his grandfather had taken when he set off to become principal of Queen's. Indeed G.M. Grant's memory was still green in Halifax: 'It is most appropriate that you should associate yourself with Dalhousie,' wrote President Kerr of Dalhousie in his letter of welcome, 'because your grandfather's name is one with which we still conjure here. When he was Minister of St. Matthew's Church in Halifax he took an active interest in the College, which at that time had fallen on evil days ... Your presence here will be a kind of sign to the community that Dalhousie is true to her best traditions.1 It would be George's academic home for the next thirteen years. Kerr also assured George that his approach to philosophy was very welcome; he personally was 'fully satisfied that Philosophy and Theology must go hand in hand.' For the immediate future George had no worries about whether his approach meshed with his colleagues. There were none; he was the philosophy department. His Irish predecessor, H.L. Stewart, educated in Oxford and the Royal University of Ireland, had taught at Dalhousie for thirty-four years. To succeed him, George thought, was a considerable advantage because everybody 'at Dalhousie so clearly dislikes him that anyone changing his ways will be applauded at first.' Once he had surveyed the landscape, he threw himself into lecturing with all his intense energy and powers of concentration and he started out as he meant to continue.

134 George Grant How did George become such a good teacher? In part he had a natural theatrical flair, which had bloomed as Cleopatra at Upper Canada and in the Drama Guild at Queen's. The other part of the explanation is even simpler. A teacher's son, he thought good teaching mattered and he worked very hard at it. He explained his recipe to his mother: 'To give oneself in [lectures] means three things which take all one's energy. (1) A-i Preparation is necessary & often about subjects I am not trained in 8cthis means extensive reading & thinking. This first year I am not going to be able to do much work but just prepare 8c give my lectures. (2) Preparation of stories, examples; that, particularly in an elementary philosophy course of 125, is vital. (3) Great emotional concentration at each hour of lecturing.'2 Because of the overcrowding at Dalhousie with the returned veterans in the autumn of 1947, George gave his lectures in Philosophy I at first in Coburgh United Church Hall. He chose as his main textbook A.E. Taylor's Does God Exist?; but, in spite of Kerr's assurance that his theological approach was welcome, he was much criticized by other members of the faculty who thought his textbook was Christian propaganda rather than real philosophy. He liked his students, especially those from the rural areas, because he found them wonderfully unspoilt by futile ideas of progress. Sometimes he shocked the students by stopping in the middle of a lecture and telling them to write down what beauty was, not what other people said about it but what they, the students, thought beauty to be. The better students learned to take ultimate questions very seriously and they were thrilled because George introduced them to the adventure of philosophy, not final visions but an appetite to learn about the most important questions. At times, as he paraded around the classroom, instead of using the blackboard, he scratched some words in the window's winter frost. At other times he used the tail of his fraying Oxford academic gown to wipe the blackboard clean. Inevitably even the good students were distracted from time to time not by speculations about justice and beauty, but by more mundane matters such as the large hole in his shoe, his trailing shirt-tail, or whether the necktie he was using as a belt would serve its intended purpose. Everyone was fascinated the day he absent-mindedly tied the two ends of his necktie into knots. The inevitable contrast between the formality of his style - he generally wore a tweed jacket, trousers and a tie - and the rumpled and stained reality captivated students for forty years This effort and intensity he put into his large classes; to the small senior philosophy classes, with only a handful of students, he gave no less.

The solid basis of qualifications

135

If a student asked him a question for which he had no satisfactory answer (and there were many, especially in the early days), he devoted whatever time it took, sometimes days, to reading and thinking about the answer. It was very time-consuming: 'We go to four different clubs four nights a week (religious discussion groups, etc) lecture all mornings, prepare the lectures or see the students in the afternoons & try & see friends in the meanwhile.'3 His lessons went on outside the classroom too. Some students came to think that the tavern at the Lord Nelson Hotel, to which they often retired, should be considered a part of the university. With his students he was never off duty as a teacher. Once, when he was walking across the campus with a group of them, a moth flew up and one of the students grabbed it in his hand and crushed it. 'Why did you do that?' George asked. 'It's just a moth,' answered the student. 'But it was life,' was George's rebuke. He also drew them into his own enthusiasms, and made them think about themselves in new ways. 'What musical instrument would you play if you had a completely free choice?' he might ask them. One student had the wit to turn the question back. 'What would you play, Professor Grant?' 'I would like to sing for Mozart.' If he ever heard music in the small listening room in the Arts Building, he invariably came and joined the students, expressing his opinions and challenging them about theirs. The Grants' arrival in dull, gray postwar Halifax meant finding some place to live. For the first month they stayed in a succession of boarding houses, an experience they found squalid. Finally they found a place in the McKays' house at 438 Quinpool Road, where they rented three rooms from Mrs McKay while her husband, the distinguished political scientist R.A. McKay, was away on sabbatical. Mrs McKay helped them out with extra bits of household equipment such as a carpet sweeper, a mop, and washing-up bowls. Sheila especially loved her first encounter with a Canadian fall, and they walked through the red, orange, and yellow-hued woods down to the Arm to look at the sea. An English professor, delighted to find an Oxford graduate to help with the tedious chore of marking papers, gave her essays to correct, and the $150 helped to make ends meet. Sheila also ritually joined a fortnightly Reading Circle for Faculty Wives where 'one woman read a very interesting paper on Paris. It was very pleasant, but one did feel no one was very interested in Paris, and it was mostly an excuse for getting together over a cup of tea.' She was also still young enough a bride to think that she could resist George's sartorial decline. 'He always shaves, leaves the house at 8.30, has begun

136 George Grant to drink skim milk, and keep his hair well cut. I think you'd be pleased with him,' she wrote to her mother-in-law.4 Even with George's short hair they managed to distress fashionable Halifax. Sheila had left the Catholic church before she met George and she was not at all sure that she wanted to go to church. George persuaded her to attend the local United Church on Oxford Street, little knowing that the local gentry considered it plebeian. As it turned out, they found the experience unedifying: the only topics that seemed to interest the congregation were the prohibition of alcohol and the denunciation of sex. They went only three or four times. Although it was clear they loved each other, their very vocal rows also shocked the Haligonian bourgeoisie. However, if they offended some of Halifax's arbiters of taste, they were lionized by the Lauries. Colonel Laurie was a powerful figure in the university, chairman of the board. He came from a substantial Halifax family and he solidified his position by marrying very well. Laurie floored George soon after his arrival by asking him whether he was a streetcar or a trolley-bus Christian. 'What do you mean, sir?' 'It's simple. Are you a Christian who is straight on the rails to his Saviour, or are you one of those that wander about all over the place?' George found Laurie a 'nasty Tory' and a 'mean man,' and chafed at the constant insincerity on his part that the relationship required. Sheila had the easier time because she usually got to talk to Mrs Laurie instead: 'I had a nicer time dian George, as I was in the back of the car with Mrs. Laurie, while he had the Colonel all to himself. I liked her a lot - the wonder is how she can not only stand her husband, but apparently adore him.'5 Laurie was, for George, just the latest of a line of businessmen that stretched back through R.A. Bryce at Toronto, Sir Edward Beatty at McGill, and Uncle Jim at Queen's to Uncle Vincent and the others who surrounded his father at Upper Canada. These businessmen, benign in their intentions towards the institutions they served, nevertheless pushed and pulled, caressed and bullied, to transform the university into an appropriate instrument to serve the needs of the progressive capitalist societies of North America. Dalhousie was, in substance, no better than the rest. Although Kerr, a United Church clergyman, was a competent administrator, George thought that his faith was weak and that he lacked vision and imagination: 'Everybody is so moderate and so competent when we need something so much more ... Here at any rate the technicians are the main people and the discouraging thing is that the students want something more, but all the money goes to the sciences.'6 From the beginning he found Halifax parochial and never intended to

The solid basis of qualifications

137

stay as long as he did. In fact, over the next few years, there were continual rumblings that Queen's might make him an offer. He was very interested. It would mean that he was closer to his mother and also nearer the centre of North American life: 'The battle for the North American soul must be fought in the central area of the U.S. & Canada & eventually I want to be there.'7 None of the soundings from Queen's, though, ever offered the kind of independence he treasured at Dalhousie, where he enjoyed complete freedom to teach what he wanted and could change the philosophy courses as he thought fit: The only disadvantage is that Nova Scotia is so far away from the central stream of North American life that it is, therefore, not as much a crusade to teach philosophy.'8 Still he felt that he was not completely independent as long as he did not have his doctorate. He resented the fact that Kerr seemed to push him towards the degree 'just for die sake of words after one's name'; this he considered 'blasphemy against truth' and it made him mad.9 The university also added financial pressure. George was to receive two hundred fifty dollar raises for each of the next two years, but nothing more until his degree was complete: 'The tough little Kerr will try & keep me for as little as possible. I don't care too deeply about a great increase in salary - but I do care about being in a position to shape the philosophy department for the teaching of philosophy is a mess.'10 To show his independence he applied for a Humanities Research Fellowship and submitted his resignation to President Kerr. It was a negotiating move, but under the circumstances George thought he needed to make a point in response to Kerr, who 'had been going on about the difficulty of men trained in philosophy getting jobs; it was necessary to let him know quietly that one wouldn't put up with anything.'11 It was a brave thing to do since Sheila was six months pregnant. While waiting for their first child to be born, there was little in Halifax for the impoverished couple to do, and they spent much of their spare time listening to the gramophone that the Masseys had generously given them as a Christmas present. George's current enthusiasm, in spite of what he had said to Sheila's principal, was Beethoven: 'I am going through a stage where Beethoven is my idol. Every moment of the day his music surges through my mind, particularly his late period music. The wonderful thing in life is to know that there are always new revelations. It is infinite.'12 In January Charity came to visit and brought what George liked best, gossip: 'Some of Charity's confidential news about Toronto is depressing. The business community sees itself as a ruling class and I have much sympathy with the necessity of ruling class - but boy oh boy

138 George Grant if their main aim is the pursuit of wealth and that is their only aim, God help us. I don't see much help in the leaders of labour to counterbalance them.'13 Almost from the beginning George was in great demand as a speaker. His time in adult education had left its mark on him, and his classroom extended beyond the boundaries of the university. When a CCF club in Halifax approached him after being refused by some other professors, George accepted, although he was not enthusiastic about the task: 'One just has to lay down that one is going to do that as a basic prerogative or what does education mean?'14 George prepared, with his usual care, a speech for the meeting. The audience consisted of a chairman, a very old clergyman, who announced he was 'carried', and two stone-deaf old ladies!15 The reception was better on 5 December when George spoke to the Queen's alumni dinner at the Lord Nelson Hotel 'on present social and political conditions in France and England, from personal experience.'16 He also renewed his contact with Citizens' Forum when, at Frank Peer's request, he recorded a four-minute talk for one of its broadcasts. Later Lothar Richter, a close friend, asked him to speak at the end of January to a joint meeting of the Home and School and the Labour unions; and he considered the meeting sufficiently important to miss his darling Charity's arrival. In February he went down to Lunenberg to deliver another talk. He was also faculty adviser at Dalhousie to the International Student Service and, in a weak moment, was persuaded to judge the campus beauty contest. Mahatma Ghandi's death brought him back to the wider world. Sheila responded to the assassination by writing a memorial on Ghandi, but George's thoughts turned to more general political reflections. 'The British were truly civilization at its best - just, firm, caring only for this world 8c the bayonet used fairly. My God the Empires we are going to get now. The Russian, indeed, the most awful - but the American Empire kinder, certainly, more just perhaps - but not so different.'17 His analysis of international politics was dominated by the idea, which he had already advanced in The Empire: Yes or No?,that the postwar world would of necessity be divided between the three great empires, the American, the Russian, and the British. When a Liberal politician like Pearson made a speech that ignored the role of empires, George was furious at his stupidity. Did he not realize that for the past five years Canada had been 'a mere satellite like Bulgaria on the borders of a great Empire - yet the Liberals went on saying sovereign, independent nationalist Canada is playing its fine & noble role in the U.N.'?18 George set to work on a piece

The solid basis of qualifications

139

about Canadian politics, in which he planned to denounce the Liberals and explain why their rejection of Britain drove Canada unwittingly into the orbit of the United States. The Tories were always fair straight & honest that civilization was only maintained by the bayonet & rightly. Woodsworth & Co. preached honest pacifism - redemption. Bennett or Woodsworth were both right - depending on what choice you make. Dafoe, Skelton, King were misguided prigs - who used the slick double talk of liberalism & whose job must now be, having refused to recognize the facts of life, to prepare for atom warfare to spread the civilization of Hollywood.'19 If the theme was a classic, so was the delivery. For the next forty years George charmed his fans and infuriated his detractors with lines like 'prepare for atom warfare to spread the civilization of Hollywood.' It was the honing of the style that had so charmed Sheila. Alice Boissonneau captured George's expansive and provocative style perfectly. 'You would tramp up and down with your hair all sleeked flat and your eyes like two opaque blots - hurling out statements to the Right and to the Left (literally) and even if one didn't agree one had to marvel, one simply had to stand and marvel (or sit usually) while you were stamping around the room as if you were marking tracks the way you make winter "pie" in the snow.'20 Other than Sheila there were two people at Dalhousie with whom George could not be so cavalier. One was James Doull, George's friend from Oxford. Doull was short and stocky, and for many years he thought deeply and published little. A Nova Scotian, six months older than George, he had studied at Dalhousie, Toronto, and Harvard. George met him at Oxford after the war, where he went after his classics training because he thought it important to learn more about science. George held him in the highest esteem and, when he heard that Doull was going to Dalhousie, he wrote in praise: 'Of all the Canadians of my generation, he certainly has the clearest intellect of any I have known. Nothing I would ever have to say about philosophy will compare to his knowledge of it.'21 This admiration for Doull never diminished. It must be remembered that however gifted George was as a philosopher, he was still only minimally trained. James Doull became George's graduate seminar: 'I had to teach philosophy [at Dalhousie] when I really didn't know any. Doull, who was my own age and really educated in a way I was not, led me into Rant and Plato. I will never forget once, walking down the street in Halifax, he showed me what the image of the sun in Plato's Republic meant. Everything that I had been trying to think came together. He was

140 George Grant the person who made me really look at western philosophy.'22 They met regularly and talked for hours, though Doull often seemed to be making George prove each time that he was really in earnest about becoming a serious philosopher.23 When George needed a critic for an draft chapter of his doctoral thesis, he sought out Doull who read the twenty-two pages of text and returned twenty-six pages of comments. The other formidable presence was George Wilson, dean of arts and professor of history for fifty years, from 1919 until 1969. Born in 1890 on a farm near Perth, Ontario, he studied history at Queen's where he was one of William Grant's favourite students. He was born into a 'simple, unpious, uncritical, believing world' that was 'comfortable in its simple convictions.'24 A doubting adolescent, he became a sceptic when he read William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience. He turned first to

philosophy for answers, but soon was drawn to history, 'something definite and concrete ... the historian was the spectator who surveyed the whole field of knowledge, who entered into every human activity and to whom nothing that man had ever done or thought was without interest or without value. Man and man's actions, his successes and his failures, his crimes and his follies were all grist to the historian's mill.'25 As he matured he held to his ideal, 'to be a detached observer of life, to live in the world but not to be a part of it.'26 He began to wonder whether the whole human story was perhaps a play put on by the gods for their own amusement.27 He feared the meaninglessness of existence and, though he struggled to stave off pessimism and despair, he gave his autobiographical memoir the nihilistic title All for Nothing? For George, Wilson was a puzzle. He acknowledged freely that he was an extraordinary man, the most admired figure on the campus, 'beloved by the best members of the staff even when they see certain weaknesses & beloved by the students.'28 There could also be no doubt that he was a man of discerning judgment, since he had pronounced Maude the greatest woman he had ever met.29 He was the 'real enigma and power' at Dalhousie. George was 'moved to the point of loving him' but he hardly knew 'where he is to be trusted on the issue of action. On issues of the mind he is incomparable in his wisdom and yet when it comes down to it the wisdom doesn't carry over.'30 Although George always found Wilson a frustrating and slippery administrator, it was his bleak vision of existence that George found so chilling: 'Wilson is enigmatic, always. He has started again this tremendous pressure on me - that I should despair about the ultimate goodness of the

The solid basis of qualifications

141

universe.'31 It sometimes seemed to George that the dean had taken a special interest in him, as unwelcome as Colonel Laurie's. My main grouse with life is that that devil Wilson is after me again to teach me to despair & that life is vain & above all that all the simple joys of this world are a delusion. He does it subtly & knows what to say that will touch me ... the logic of his position is suicide & so if I joined him that is what I would do ... He continually asks me for walks & talks & I am utterly dead after them. And above all one hates oneself that one's belief in Jesus is not great enough to withstand the deadliness of his personality 8c be able to love him through it & because of it.32 The constant bombardment from Wilson reinforced George's own chronic sense of self-doubt. Every accomplishment was meaningless, he wrote to his mother, except the most profound, and he despaired, in spite of all the advantages he had been given in his life, whether he could ever accomplish anything genuinely worthwhile.33 He was so filled with these worries and self-doubts that the impending birth of his first child made him wonder whether he should continue in academic life. He enjoyed the students and their friendship, and already young philosophers were beginning to arrive on the doorstep, prepared to talk until they were forcibly pushed out. Although George and Sheila sometimes refused to answer the door, on balance, George found these visits both pleasant and necessary. They showed that at least some people understood the necessity of philosophy when Western civilization was crumbling: 'What is life for, when everything is breaking up & civilization coming to an end? Therefore their pessimism must necessarily be acute - having been brought up on these futile ideas of progress. When that breaks they have nothing ... Therefore in light of such pessimism philosophy has something to say. But it takes time.'34 Perhaps his responsibilities as a father meant that he should take the necessary steps to provide some sort of Christian framework in which to raise his children. A decade before the idea became fashionable, he remembered his farm work in England and toyed with the idea of becoming a hippy. Sheila and I are more & more thinking of becoming with friends farmers so that there would be some kind of communal & religious life that will survive when the real breakdown of industrial society comes. (I shouldn't say Sheila & I - because it is really only me). It would be hell of course - the hard physical

142 George Grant work I would loathe - but it seems to me that when the communal framework of western civilization breaks - there must be if possible a few communal frameworks of religious health so that the next civilization may draw on the greatness that this has been -just as European civilization drew on classical.'35 When Rachel was born on 25 April 1948, however, she was an urban, not a pastoral, baby. With MacKay's impending return, the Grants had to find somewhere to live, and they moved to a house with eight flats at 6 Oxford Street. Its windows looked over the Arm and, although it was expensive at $85 a month unfurnished, they thought it too good to refuse and signed a three-year lease. Maude exercised her grandmother's prerogative and came down to help out with her granddaughter. George arranged that J.W.A. Nicholson, 'beloved Mr. Nicholson,' christen the baby. 'He is a mighty & innocent soul, certainly the noblest & simplest Protestant minister I know in Canada. Like a human rock of Cape Breton granite. He was tried for heresy in 1911 & is a strong CCFer as he honestly & simply believes that in a few years human beings could become as fine as Jesus.'36 George was not disappointed with the ceremony: 'He did it beautifully - none of the mystery of an automatic redemption that Sheila & I deplore in some christenings, particularly RC ... Rachel looked sweet in her christening robe with a little lace added & gurgled very sweetly at Mr. Nicholson - afterwards I held a pudgy and adorable hand while it pushed through a cake Sheila made which had R.S.G. 1948 on the cake.'37 For the next year George was acting head of the philosophy department and he spent the summer working on his thesis. The big piece of practical news was that an aunt of Sheila's had died, and left a substantial legacy to her sister. Aunt Kate, who was eighty-two and a spinster, kept a little of Aunt Fanny's money, but decided to divide the rest between her fourteen nephews and nieces. Sheila's share amounted to the substantial sum of £800. There was, however, a difficulty. Postwar Britain was subject to very strict exchange controls, and getting the money to Canada might prove difficult. While the lawyers worked on that problem, George settled down to another year of large classes and demanding students. Then Kerr dropped the bombshell that powerfully confirmed George's thoughts on the nature of universities. He announced Dalhousie's intention to create a graduate school, particularly for work in the sciences. George led the fight against it in the university senate, but on 2 November they lost the vote, which meant, George thought, that 'probably they won't care about real & effective teaching in Arts.'38 'This is of course very ridiculous as they haven't got enough staff to give a decent BA &

The solid basis of qualifications

143

now they even talk of Ph.D. in the Maritimes. My department has 310 students with me the only full time teacher & they call that philosophy. The physics department has822times as much spent on it as on philosophy barring equipment - so they can do graduate work while we can't even do undergraduate work in Arts. Well this graduate school is sheer evidence sans doutethat Dalhousie is going to be a technical college. So there is little hope of getting real philosophy done here. So it makes me want to go.'39 The affair revealed to him starkly and immediately how powerful were the science departments, especially when they were supported by the businessmen on the board, how they could consume the resources of the university, and how incomparably weaker was a department like philosophy. It reinforced for him the necessity of having 'proper qualifications,' especially his doctorate, so that he could stand up to them with better hope of success: 'I must get this D.Phil. & thereby have some qualifications to teach & not be utterly at the beck & call of the businessmen. Any university I will be at, I will be in fights over policy 8c I must have the solid basis of qualifications.'40 He sat down to write to Kerr to demand more resources for philosophy: 'You will quite understand that no philosopher and certainly no Christian in this year 1948, could accept the assumption that the study of nature should be so disproportionately pressed at the expense of die study of the deeper questions of human existence.'41 There could be little doubt this time that, unless something were done, George meant to resign. A meeting was arranged with the president, who gave in with surprising ease to George's two main demands, a second philosopher and an arrangement for grading assignments by senior students. In fact Kerr went further and proposed Doull as the second man in philosophy. George was delighted because Doull had 'the keenest philosophic mind of any representative of his own generation'42 that he had met. His own approach to philosophy was from the side of morals and theology; Doull's was from the side of science. They would thus be complementary. However, although George continued to pursue the possibility of a position at Queen's, they seemed unwilling to offer him a position at a rank comparable to what he had at Dalhousie, and 'rank means control over what you teach, which is the main thing. For most people still teach philosophy as if there were still a civilization in North America, instead of teaching it as if the old traditions were completely finished and one had to build new ones. The degree to which the scientific civilization has swept away Christianity is appalling. God sees the

144 George Grant truth - but waits.'43 George decided to complete his D.Phil. and applied for a year's leave of absence. His interview with Colonel Laurie was unpleasant: 'What a fool! He thinks a university is a barracks & he can talk to the teachers like NCOs.' However, Kerr was more pleasant and the leave was arranged, with the understanding that George return to Dalhousie for a year. As an incentive he was offered the departmental headship and the rank of full professor if he were successful: 'So far as I see, I will stay here & build up the philosophy department,' and that suited him except for being so far away from his mother.44 In 1948 the CAAE's monthly magazine, Food for Thought, asked him to review R.S.K. Seeley's The Function of the University. He countered Seeley's idealism with his own experience of power relations in the academic world. Provost Seeley, George conceded, 'talks pleasantly about the necessity for businessmen and professors to recognize each other's problems.' But lie misses the vital point: 'At no place does he mention the inescapable facts that Canadian universities are run by businessmen and that they serve a community where among all classes the ethic of material success is overwhelmingly predominant. Can either of these facts be doubted by anybody who knows the score?' The final direction of the university will be set by those who have power within it, the businessmen. And whatever they might say about the spiritual realities at a university, they will guarantee that practical subjects will be favoured over the more contemplative, 'the physics department will grow and grow in relation to philosophy.'45 The next summer he set down his ideas on universities more fully in response to a request from Gerald Graham. There he observed that, although universities should be the repositories of the western tradition, and that the responsibility of scholarship was to keep that tradition explicit, in fact Canadian universities signally failed in that endeavour as they became more technical. How should people like Graham and he respond? Ideally, non-technicians should fight 'to convince the society & to convince it ruthlessly that it cannot hope to exist if it puts its faith in techniques and not in wholeness,' but in Canada little could be expected from this quarter since Canadian philosophers, historians, and classicists seemed bent on turning even their own subjects into technical exercises. We must always remember, George continued, that universities were inherently institutions for an intellectual elite, and that the 'degraded democratic trend' of universities had to be reversed. Professors had to fight to keep class size down for the sake of their students and to give

The solid basis of qualifications

145

themselves time for contemplation. That means they had to fight to assert their influence over the ruling structure of the university, and it was best if half the board were elected by faculty. In general, the two extremes were impossible. Neither 'the academic idealist who believes that in the gasping, soulless death of the West, it is possible to build a real university' nor 'those who say you can do nothing' were right. 'Clearly,' George concluded, fine universities in the great tradition cannot be created in Canada; but we must try & out of that attempt something may come.'46 Although George was happy to get away from Dalhousie, the year started badly as soon as he and his family boarded their ship. 'Never recommend anyone to cross Furness-Witty. They are only semi-passenger boats and quite poor. It was prodigiously rough.'47 Then it got worse. Not long after they arrived, Mrs Allen's house where they were staying was burgled and the whole downstairs ransacked, though little was taken. They had trouble adjusting to food rationing until parcels of Klim and butter and bacon started arriving from Maude. For a while it looked as if they would never get access to Sheila's money and, until Sir Edward Peacock intervened, they had to depend financially on Sheila's mother. All this was very upsetting for George, as Sheila explained to Maude: T am frankly worried about George - he's very depressed and listless. It will probably pass. But if it doesn't we will go somewhere else or perhaps go back to Canada ... Mother adores having us, but her own restlessness and nervousness strongly affect George ... She just is a very difficult person to live with and any son-in-law would find that.'48 Until more appropriate arrangements could be made, George retreated to the dirty old billiard room, its ceiling still not repaired after the war, on the top floor of the house at 63 Blackheath Park in south-east London. There he worked away on his thesis. For a while he even had to cope with further uncertainty while he awaited formal permission from Oxford to complete his degree. The difficulties with Mrs Allen increased exponentially when she learned that Sheila was pregnant with their second child. It was not clear which of her many complaints were primary, that it would tie Sheila down, that it would spoil her figure, or that a young baby in the house would intolerably upset the routine. The tension was unbearable and whenever George could he got away. Often he visited Angela Croome, a friend who lived nearby in Blackheath, to confide his troubles. Occasionally he tripped down to Brighton to visit Peter Self's father, Sir Harry, whom he much admired: 'It really is always the nicest house to go to. Sir Harry is a tough old Cockney who is Administrator of the Nationalised Electricity Board & also President of the Modern Churchman's Union -

146

George Grant

a really modern theologian.'49 One time the strain became so great that he went up to London to stay with the Grahams for a couple of days. He toyed with the idea that dealing with his mother-in-law might prove a valuable training in loving one's enemies, but eventually he decided that the effort was really beyond him. 50 The difficulties with his mother-in-law made him realize even more clearly how great was his debt to his mother and how dependent on her he continued to be. On her seventieth birthday he wrote to tell her how much he loved her: More than anyone else my debt to you is beyond any possible statement, for you have always forgiven me all my selfishness and always reached out to help me become more worthy of you. Nobody I have ever met has your wonderful way of reaching out to other people of all sorts & conditions and loving them in a real practical sense when it costs you something to be good to them. Though it may not be a way you like it put, you have been since I was a child the person through whom I have known something of what God's love must be like.51 However, his great admiration for his mother did not mean that he accepted her every decision, particularly where religion was at stake. He had asked his old school chum, Michael Gelber, to stand as godfather to the new baby. Maude apparently wrote expressing reservations about choosing a Jew. George rebuked her firmly: I am afraid I quite disagree with you about what you say about [Michael] as godfather. When you apply an adjective like 'Christian' what does it mean to you? To me it means those who have some vision of the Father. Now in that religion Our Lord reveals to us the Father as no other. But what is important is the vision of God. Most of my generation have no real vision of God. [Michael] has. The question arises would you rather have as the child's godfather a man who believes God is a Father or somebody who accepts the Christian Church as a useful organization to keep society decent - a conventional Christian.52

William Allen Lothar Grant arrived on 19 April 1950 at a small maternity home, 'Stonefield,' Kidbrook Park, Blackheath. Any fuss he caused in London was mild by comparison to the excitement he ignited at 7 Prince Arthur. Maude was so swept along by pride, as Charity explained, that she longed to commit a very grave solecism.

The solid basis of qualifications

147

You are quite right that mother is killing herself with excitement. A grandson called William Grant is just what she has always wanted you to have. Of course she is doing her best to conceal that it is any more pleasing than having a daughter but she has been telephoning and telegraphing all over the lot. She was put in a dreadful conflict over the notice in the paper because she has strong feelings that notices should be restrained and not give the name of the child. But she wanted the world to know that his name was William.53 Minor complications kept Sheila in the maternity home for over two weeks, and George's work was distracted by the need to look after Rachel and keep her out of Mrs Allen's way. When he could, George continued to struggle with his thesis. As with most of his work, Sheila was an active partner; she wrote the thirty-twopage appendix to his thesis, 'Oman's Classification of Religions' while she was regaining her strength in the maternity home. Even with her help he thought it the hardest academic work he had ever done; but by the middle of June he was finished. His fate was 'in the arms of God.' He felt, whatever the outcome, that he had 'learned prodigiously,' not surprising given how little philosophy and theology George knew at this time. But what had he learned? Perhaps the most important problem with which George was trying to grapple in this work was a three-sided relationship, between God and Nature and Man. The scientists who began to arise in die sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, he argued, made understanding this relationship supremely difficult because they equated knowledge of nature with control over it. Consequently man was cut off from nature, and 'became blinded to the witness of nature in feelings, which is the foundation of all other relations to nature.'54 John Oman, the Scottish liberal theologian whose book The Natural and The Supernaturalprovides the focus of the thesis, proposed instead that we regain our vision of nature as 'a realm through which God speaks to His children and through which they do His Will. That is, he is interested in demonstrating in modern language his own dim partaking of that vision of nature which received the glory of each lily of the field, and understood the meaning of each sparrow tfiat fell, and yet was able to pass beyond the love of nature and die upon the Cross.'55 Because modern science had cut nature off from the divine, it consequently misunderstood what a human being was, since it 'detached reason from its proper role as a function of human personality.'5 Oman knew that a 'person' could be understood only as a being characterized

148 George Grant by autonomy of volition, of insights, and of consciousness and that, independent of its relation to God and His world, the concept of person was meaningless.57 This understanding Oman drew from Kant. Yet to fathom human nature fully, George argued, we have to go beyond Kant and come to terms with the fact that it is man's 'essence to be gripped by Something Other than himself. The essence of that Other we find to be Love. In the consciousness of being enfolded by Love is man's peace, but that enfolding in no sense destroys our autonomy. Freely, in our contemplation, we must reach out to that embrace. The appalling difficulty of describing that meeting is seen from Plato to St. Augustine, from St. Bonaventure to Bunyan.'58 Because Oman accepted this concept of persons, he was led to reject the modern idea of progress: 'He makes clear that the categories of development are not easy to reconcile with the autonomy of persons.'59 As he studied Oman, George finally understood why his mentor, Lord Lindsay, had recommended him: both Oman and Lindsay shared a common political position, a mixture of Calvinism and liberalism that was most obvious in Lindsay's numerous writings on political theory.60 Yet, Oman's political theory proved inadequate when tested against the greatest moral challenge of his life - whether Britain should participate in the First Great War. In this crisis Oman had written to justify British involvement. 'A practical theologian,' George declared 'can fairly be judged by his theology of politics.'61 Why did Oman fail? There was a deep metaphysical inadequacy at the heart of Oman's philosophy: he completely rejected the possibility of mystic aloofness as a possible moral stance. Why did metaphysics or theology matter? They mattered because ideas were at work in the world. In Oman's case he had inherited the Puritan variety of Calvinism, 'which views politics as the call to serve the glory of God in the world ... He inherits that strange blend of theological liberalism and the vigour of Calvinist determination that has done much to produce the pattern of modern democracy in Great Britain and North America. From such a union a new democratic blend of natural and revealed theology must arise. As the thesis comes to its conclusion it becomes more and more clear that, however much George admired Oman's decent, liberal theology, he found it wanting. Part of its failure arose from the political and intellectual climate in which Oman was raised: 'Oman once writes of nineteenth century European Christology that the strength of the German writers lies in their insistence on first principles, while the strength of the British wri-

The solid basis of qualifications

149

ters lies in their moderation, their understanding of every day life and their willingness to live in the half lights of truth.'63 It was a failure of which George thought Oman, too, was justly charged. Decency and moderation make good politics, but bad theology and philosophy. Finally, Oman's theology fails because of his rejection of the pre-Kantian tradition of philosophy. The Christian revelation puts in question some aspects of Platonism, such as its tendency towards an intellectualist ethics, its inability to find joy in God's world, and its incipient dualism. Oman accepted this criticism of Plato, but George thought that Oman's own conception of intellectual intuition made him, whether he realized it or not, deeply indebted to Platonism. No modern theology, George affirmed against Oman, can adequately respond to the challenge of modern science unless it is prepared to consider the truth revealed in the conjunction of ancient Greek metaphysics and the Gospels.64 Although George rarely in later life referred to his thesis (if he did, he dismissed it as something he wrote just to get the degree), it is clearly a much more important piece of work than he was prepared to admit.65 In it he first develops four broad themes that form continuing threads throughout his later philosophical thought. First, modern science has cut us off from nature and hence from the possibility of approaching the divine through nature. Second, the success of modern science is, in some important way, linked with Calvinism and its emphasis on will. Third, the preoccupation with will as the fundamental characteristic of human beings has weakened the grounding for human moral equality, which depends on man's relationship to God. Finally, the true test of any philosophy is its capacity to give moral guidance during a crisis. Faced with the question of participation in the First World War, Oman's liberal Christianity failed its great test. This was the thesis George submitted and, while waiting for his oral examination, he took Sheila and the babies up to Allerthorpe for Leo's inspection. He was sure, and with reason, that she would be impressed: 'William is adorable - where Rachel is a young golden animal, he has the loveliest most tender big blue eyes you ever saw.'66 Towards the end of July he took the train for Oxford, full of apprehension. His examiner was no less a figure than Austin Farrer, whose lectures George had so admired. He walked into the room and - anticlimax. Farrer asked one apparently irrelevant question, 'Do rabbits in traps feel pain?' then pronounced the thesis very good; the whole affair lasted ten minutes, substantially short of the three hours George expected. Neither Grenstead67

150 George Grant nor Allen68 had expected him to complete it, but, in his tutor's words, he had 'managed it - with quite a bit to spare.'69 Important or not, George now had his formal qualifications. The question now was, Should he use them? On 27 July 1950, the day after former Prime Minister Mackenzie King's funeral, the Canadian government decided that Canada in principle would contribute to the war that began in Korea on 25 June. George always accepted the fact that empires behaved according to their own dynamics and, in this conflict, he had no doubt that Canada should support America. Individuals, though, have a moral economy of their own. They should act as they must, and be prepared to accept the consequences: 'The terrible demand for a person like me is that though clearly the American Empire is incomparably finer than the Slav one, I don't think Jesus died for the support of Empires - yet as a North American I can see no alternative action for myself which is not the stretch back to 1939.'70 Oman's practical theology had failed its great test. George was determined that his own would not: 'It is so silly to go on teaching when the world is what it is.'71

11

Listening to Mozart - I felt such love

On their return to Canada the Grants went directly to Toronto so that the proud grandmother could see young William Grant. Then they took a short holiday at their cottage. After the strain of England, watching the light glistening on Otter Lake was bliss. George was doubly happy since the Ignatieffs were able to join them. With his doctorate completed, he had been promoted and was now the George Munro Professor of Philosophy at Dalhousie. He remembered that President Kerr had assigned him an errand, to see if he could find someone, preferably Scottish, to teach philosophy at Dalhousie. He had come up empty: iIndeed the more I saw of young European philosophers the more I wondered how they would understand & fit intq the Nova Scotian pattern. Science is so objective and certain that the background of the teacher is not of its essence. Philosophy because it deals with such personal mysteries does depend on the teacher's understanding and sympathising with the background of his pupils.'1 Personally, though, he had good news to report. Vincent Massey had been appointed to head a Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences in April 1949. Father Henri Levesque, one of the commissioners, suggested that there should be two papers on the study of philosophy in Canada, one for French Canada, the other for English Canada. Norman MacKenzie, president of the University of British Columbia, recommended George for the study of philosophy in English Canada, possibly on the advice of George's brother-in-law, Geoff Andrew. George was enthusiastic: 'Particularly they wanted to know why philosophy has never been of central importance to Canadians. It gives one great scope.'2 Back in Halifax the Grants had the luxury of a big house and garden at 20 Kent Street that they rented from Vibert Douglas, a Dalhousie

152 George Grant geologist who was on sabbatical for the year. George continued to work at his report as much as his substantial teaching duties permitted. By the middle of October, Sheila had read it over, suggested improvements, and sent it in. She thought it 'very fine' but feared that it would not prove popular.3 A week later, George was writing Maude to see if Massey had dropped any hints as to how he liked it: 'It is certainly de profundis - but then it is only honest. He may think it is not at all the kind of thing he wanted - but as there hasn't been much philosophy in Europe for a hundred & fifty years, it is unlikely there would be much in Canada.'4 He had reason to worry, since he had just set in motion a train of events that would plague him for years. As he observed almost forty years later: 'Once, very early on, I wrote a piece directly about Christianity and got my ass kicked thoroughly in a way that was quite expensive.'5 His nemesis was Fulton Anderson, a Prince Edward Islander by origin, a Dalhousie graduate, and now head of philosophy at the University of Toronto. When Anderson heard that George had been given the brief for the Massey Commission, he was livid.6 With considerable justification, he objected to such an important job being given to a very junior colleague. It was not their first unpleasant encounter. George had enraged the influential academic with a three-paragraph review of his book The Philosophy of Francis Bacon,in the Dalhousie Reviewin 1948. The first paragraph celebrated Bacon's importance and urged the need to study him as one of the first to adopt the view of nature 'which on the one hand has given us ether and penicillin, and on the other hand mass production and scientific war.' The second was flattering: '... by a distinguished graduate of Dalhousie ... not a popular essay ... a careful and exact examination of all Bacon's writings.' The sting was in the final paragraph. Anderson had not come to terms with Bacon's limitations, nor had he passed judgment on the consequences of Bacon's philosophy for the contemporary world. For instance ... what meaning is there in Bacon's attempt to cut off truth humanly discoverable from the revealed dogmas of religion? Its only implication is that the truths of religion are not rational but arbitrary. Therefore it leads to an exaltation of the truths of natural science, and such an exaltation, coupled with man's original sin, leads straight to the grinning mask of scientific humanism at Hiroshima. An even greater criticism of Bacon could be made at the ridiculousness of attempting an identification of metaphysics with natural science, however generalized. This book is a useful study of an earlier philosopher of natural science. It could have been an important one if Professor

Listening to Mozart 153 Anderson had judged how that philosophy had helped to bring us to the barrenness of today.7 This criticism from an uneducated pipsqueak was too much to bear. According to George, Anderson was so furious that he telephoned Kerr to demand an apology or, failing that, George's dismissal. Nothing came of this outburst, but it is not difficult to imagine his rising fury as he read George's royal-commission report. The opening sentence was a call to battle: 'The study of philosophy,' George declared, 'is the analysis of the traditions of our society and the judgment of those traditions against our varying intuitions of the Perfection of God.' Yet this activity was no longer practised in the universities of English Canada, except the Catholic ones, most notably the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, an institution he had come to know and respect through Miriam Anglin. Most universities had allowed themselves to become narrow technical bodies that awarded doctorates on topics such as the excreta of rats. How had it come to pass that we were so driven by immediacies and had lost sight of the eternal? There were explanations for this, both great and small. Our pioneering background was one. It allowed little time for luxuries like speculation; sureness and confidence were necessary for survival. Action was required and therefore contemplation was discouraged.9 That was the local eddy. The broad current was the 'scientific world of the west,' which formed our 'spiritual climate': it was concerned with 'knowledge for power' and had forgotten the need for 'those disciplines that once had been considered a potent influence in preventing us from becoming beasts.'10 Universities had become notable instruments of this change, led by his grandfather's own institution, Queen's. It had severed its ties with the Presbyterian church and consequently 'the content of the teaching in the Faculty of Arts at that university is found to be almost entirely secular.'11 Canadians needed to address and resolve their own problems. They could not turn to foreigners, because any work of revival must 'be carried on within a context of Canadian teaching impregnated with our history and the form of our institutions and ideals.'12 Nor were we likely to find such contemplation in philosophy departments, especially those like Toronto's, which (as Anderson's book revealed) neglected philosophy to study its history. Vigorous thought about fundamentals was to be found elsewhere. The names George mentioned with respect were Charles Cochrane, a classicist, Northrop Frye, the literary critic, and Harold Innis,

154 George Grant the economic historian.13 These were the Canadian thinkers 'who have shown themselves willing to go beyond scholarship to more general questions of human import.'14 One option for institutionalizing this kind of reflection was the creation of Institutes of Humane Studies, on the model of the Pontifical Institute. In affirming the 'dependence of philosophy on theology,' such bodies could restore the vitality of thought about the universe: 'In closing, the present writer has no alternative but to repeat once again his conviction that the practice of philosophy (and for that matter, all the arts of civilization) will depend on a prior condition — namely the intensity and concentration of our faith in God.'15 Philosophy without faith had no saving power. Anderson had been angry enough when George was asked to write the report; he was shaking with rage once he read it. He denounced George to anyone willing to listen, even colleagues from other departments he chanced to meet on campus. Not satisfied with private denunciations, he convoked a conference on Canadian philosophy to crush him. Professor Grant's piece on 'philosophy,' he declared, was in itself insignificant; it invited serious attention only 'because of the circumstances of the publication.'16 Grant's thought was muddled because he did not specify clearly what he meant by faith; the piece was historically inaccurate when it claimed that positivism and pragmatism dominated Canadian philosophy in the 1920s and 1930s. If his recommendations were followed, it meant the destruction, not the salvation, of philosophy in Canada: 'One could hardly conceive of a more potent means to confusion within provincial foundations and endowed institutions than an attempt to accommodate philosophic teaching in faculties of arts either to the temporary predilections of social thinkers or the conflicting doctrinal persuasions which find adherents in religious denominations and theological faculties.'17 Led by Anderson, the philosophical establishment had closed its ranks against the rebel. The dispute briefly spilled over into the public domain when B.K. Sandwell wrote about itin Saturday Night on 12 July 1952. Sandwell shrewdly noted that it was not George's more abstract comments that stirred up the hornets' nest: 'It was his general denunciation of the philosophy departments of the Canadian universities (other than Roman Catholic ones) for not doing their job, his crediting of other university departments with most of the best current philosophical writing, his definition of the task of philosophy as being "the analysis of the traditions of our society and the judgment of those traditions against our varying intuitions of the Perfection of God," and finally his denunciation of "the dream of

Listening to Mozart 155 modern philosophy - that it might free itself from its traditional dependence upon the theological dogmas of faith," a dream which he says Canadian philosophers have shared with the rest of the western world.'18 Sandwell's treatment was neutral, but so hostile was the general reaction that when Queen's historian Arthur Lower commented briefly but favourably on George's report, Sheila sent it along to Maude: 'Most of George's fellow philosophers seem to have disagreed profoundly, so it is nice that Lower thought so well of it.'19 So vigorous was the reaction against him in English Canada that George was somewhat bemused by the sympathetic response in French Canada: 'My difficulty is this - the Catholics praise me to the skies - the French Canadians took me up terrifically in Quebec - and as you know I am farther from being a Roman Catholic than almost anybody in Canada.' He attributed this difference to the demise of the Protestant tradition to which he belonged. 'The Protestant tradition is so dead that it couldn't be less interested in what I say. And the secularists who are the dominant tradition in Canada think I am an obscurantist when my trust in reason is so overwhelming. In the whole matter all which really worries me is that the Protestant tradition has lost all interest in ultimate matters and leaves it to the Roman church. They are training their men so brilliantly and we are training the people of our tradition to be technicians.'20 George's reputation took a pounding, and there were serious practical consequences. He had gravely jeopardized his chances of getting a job in Ontario and hence would remain separated from his mother. In some moods he thought that the best way to answer Anderson was to 'write good stuff, teach well and live on as best one can. I am very lucky to have the freedom I have. Nova Scotia is supreme from now on and, if I don't get something done, it won't be anybody's fault but my own.'21 However, he was still angry and frustrated. 'As for Fulton Anderson to hell with him.' I know God exists. Plato shows to those who listen that one cannot avoid that conclusion. The face of Anderson's scepticism and secularism is all around the world ... At the personal and practical level I am always unsure and confused but at this level I know I am right, not because of the T but because the arguments are irrefutable. And nothing could be more important than this because in the next years the future of the world is tied up with those who have rational love of God. All I hate about it is the bitterness engendered and the fact that good work may be prevented by that bitterness. As to the controversy

156 George Grant one cannot speak wrongly when one has Plato and Augustine and Kant behind one. The issue is not really God but whether philosophy is a practical study which can help men to live.22 The lesson he learned from the controversy was the need to be more subtle: 'Life has been too long for me and I had to learn at too great a price not to be frank about what one believes.' He resolved to respond to his critics obliquely. So he decided to write two articles, one on Bertrand Russell and the other on Plato, that would 'even farther say what I mean.' As he reflected on his experience later: 'I knew from that that you had to write fairly indirectly if you wanted to live, particularly in the academic community.'23 'Pursuit of an Illusion: A Commentary on Bertrand Russell' is a withering and scornful attack, not so much on Russell, who is its target, but, just as George had announced to his mother, on the whole tradition of sceptical philosophical writing, in which he included Anderson. Russell is convicted of the gravest of philosophical blunders, inconsistency. Although he denies the possibility of knowing moral truths, Russell tells people how they ought to live, in spite of the fact that he should have made clear in his writings that this word 'should,' according to him, has no rational content. Acknowledging his debt to Plato and Kant, George declared that only if reason and desire were understood as intimately bound in consciousness, was it possible to order one's desires in a hierarchical order, and hence to commend one action as inherently superior to another. In his doctoral thesis on Oman, George had affirmed the absolute importance of grounding human personality in its divine origins. It is the fundamental equality of all souls before God that made it possible to understand the moral appeal of democracy. Now he developed this thought further: 'Only on such a conception of reason as I have outlined can equality, and therefore democracy, rest. To transpose into a different language, the conception of reason presenting to all men the idea of a highest good is just the Christian belief of the image of God in all men. The denial of this by Russell and others is the denial of the only possible theoretical ground for democracy.'24 In short, although Russell was often celebrated as a 'great advocate of human reason as against the obscurantism and mysticism of the older philosophy and theology,'25 he was instead himself an irrationalist. 'Philosophy means simply the love of wisdom, and wisdom means knowledge of the true end of life. If men are not rational they cannot reach such knowledge and therefore the attempt is the

Listening to Mozart 157 pursuit of an illusion. This is why Russell is such a confused thinker. Calling himself a philosopher, he has tried to convince men that philosophy is a waste of time.'26 Pleased with his article, George wrote to Maude that it 'is meant (between ourselves) as a complete answer to Anderson et al, though done indirectly. If you read it you will see there (indirectly also) an expression of the essence of my faith.'27 When Cambridge University Press re-issued Oman's The Natural and the Supernatural George briefly toyed with the idea of turning his thesis into a book, but he abandoned the project because he 'did not want to produce a book which patronised a tradition which is admirable but fundamentally failing because it did not face the profound division between Christianity & progressivism (in its best, its liberal form).'28 Intellectually, thanks to his conversations with Doull, he was probing more deeply into Plato; and when Maude sent him his father's copy of Plato's dialogues, George looked at them several times a week, convinced that Plato was the philosopher and theologian.29 Towards the end of 1951 he agreed to review a book, Waiting on God, by the virtually unknown French philosopher Simone Weil.30 He read it with growing astonishment; over the next decade her ideas slowly took root at the centre of his thought and to the end of his life her insights into the divine and her philosophic explorations of these intuitions were the standard against which he judged all other contemporary philosophy. His brush with the eternal did not mean he had lost all interest in the transitory. Politically he was coming increasingly to identify with the Conservative party. He disliked the Liberals because they had 'gained votes in this country by appeals to nationalism for two generations first by a refusal to be close to the power that once could have maintained peace and now by attacking the Empire that has taken its place.'31 Although he admired many CCFers, he rejected the party because of its Utopian politics. Little, he thought, could be accomplished through the political sphere; that truth was recognized in the best conservative tradition: 'I am more and more a solid conservative in the sense that government's function is negative (except where necessary) and salvation is through personal religion.'32 Uncle Jim Macdonnell was urging him to get involved in politics, so he contacted the local Conservatives; but he soon lost interest because he found such involvement distracted him from his primary duty, which was to think philosophically. It was ultimately important, he reminded himself, to remember that 'the Good transcends history and that out of all this agony God was somehow bringing in His Kingdom.'33 However, when

158 George Grant the 1953 elections rolled around, he toyed with voting Liberal, both provincially and federally. The local reason was that he thought Angus Macdonald, the Liberal premier, was a stronger man than Robert Stanfield, and that he represented Nova Scotia pretty well. Federally, he was influenced by his strong support for public broadcasting and he did not 'trust the Tories not to fiddle around & cut away at the CBC.'34 None the less, he broadly supported the Conservative position and wished his uncle well: T hope above all that all goes well with Uncle Jim's campaign. I dream about it often.'35 By now the Grants were living at 143 Pepperell Street, but in February 1952 a flat in a house Dalhousie owned at 200 University Avenue, larger and cheaper, became available. The house, which now contains the Dalhousie economics department, was rented from the university and the Grant children used the campus as their backyard. They were living there when their third child, Robert Anthony, was born, and James Doull was asked to serve as godfather. As they were preparing for this move they read the announcement on 25 January 1952 that the Queen had appointed Vincent Massey the first Canadian-born governor-general. George preferred an Englishman for the post, but conceded that if it had to be a Canadian, Uncle Vincent was fine: 'He has got his heart's desire and it is a harmless one. He will do the job well.'36 The appointment created a family crisis, though, when Massey asked Maude to be his chatelaine at Rideau Hall. Alice Massey had died on 27 July 1950. When she was dying Maude went down to Batterwood to be with her sister; Massey, who did not like being with the sick, kept his distance. On one occasion he came to her room and Alice told him that she wanted her fur coat to go to Maude. After Alice passed away, Massey took Maude aside and said he could not afford to give her the coat. He also added diat Alice always spent too much money on Christmas presents and there would be none this year. When he was offered the governor-generalship, he asked Maude, whose gracious manners everyone admired, to serve as his hostess. Maude refused; she could not afford the clothes required for the position. Massey said to her, 'But I will pay for them.' Maude replied: 'I would never put myself in a position to take anything from you, Vincent.'37 George's feelings about his uncle were always ambivalent. He remembered, as a child, that each time he returned to Toronto from Batterwood Massey would measure out to the penny the fare for the journey, with nothing extra for an ice-cream cone or some other treat. In London, although the Masseys were good to him, it was Alice more than her

Listening to Mozart 159 husband to whom he felt grateful: 'I can never say thank you often enough for what she did for me in the early days of the war. She was one of the rare people who didn't make me feel I was a leper.'38 Massey, who did his best when George came to him about joining the navy, was a good friend; and it is fair to say that in some ways he acted as a foster father after William's death. Perhaps that contributed to the ambiguity of George's feelings. So, when he read in the newspaper that Massey was making a vice-regal visit to Halifax, he wrote to his mother in terms that suggested his uncertainty of his uncle's affections and his fear of rejection. 'Should I make any effort to see him? I have no particular desire to do so - but would like to do simply the right thing. Nothing depresses me more than making an effort to see somebody who couldn't be less interested in seeing me.'39 When the heralded visit arrived, George waited for a message. None came. He went up to the university, where the governorgeneral was to make a courtesy call: 'He spoke to all members of the Senate (and therefore spoke to me) and said "How nice and how is Sheila?" That is the only communication of any kind we had with any of them.' He still expected that once Massey realized they had not been invited to any official gatherings, he would get in touch. There was not even a call from Lionel, George's cousin, who was serving as his father's private secretary. George was heartbroken and wrote his mother a letter, which he begged her not to disclose even to Charity: 'It is written simply because I have been hurt and I love you so much that the only way of getting over it is to communicate to you. I am aware as I say that you do not like me to be intimate with you, but I am not capable of anything else towards you.' After that his agony poured forth. Why did it matter so much to him? Part of him took it as symptomatic of the contempt in which businessmen held philosophers. The snub was just one of 'the continual blows we get from the business men and the society of wealth which pushes us around and from the democracy which is so debased that it admires greed.' There was more to it than that, however; it showed he also counted for little even in the family. But the hurt goes deeper; it is the relationship to one's past. I know that they were busy. I know that they probably thought we would be asked somewhere. But when Lionel and [his wife] Lillias found we were not going to see them, they should at least have phoned to say they were sorry. Particularly they should have phoned having seen me at the college. It is for me the need I

160

George Grant

suppose of that world of family unity which you and Aunt Lai and Uncle Jim and Aunt Marjorie and daddy built up. It is probably always hard for one to grow up and for me life has been continually a process of remaking oneself and this yesterday was probably (and in a few days I will probably see it as such) the working of the wonderful mystery of God's providence, by which through hurt He leads one to know what is worth trust and what is vanity and pride. But the personal hurt is very hard.

He recognized the matriarchal role Maude played within the family. Indeed he was proud of his mother for it, and yet he felt that, for him, the price had been very high. I suppose the hurt is at bottom a hurt in assessing my love for you. I have always felt the time and love you expended on the broader family was worth it, for even if it meant a less close relation between you and me, it meant that you beautifully bound a larger family together and that the particular evil was made well by the larger good. Now I suppose the sense of waste is deep in me, because I have been excluded from the larger family and have not had the intimacy with you. What I am doing in writing this letter is then really making one last beseeching request for love from you. I know you will consider this mere jealousy and I do not ask it in any sense as taking away all that you and Aunt Lai meant to [each other] (I love and respect that). But I do not think it is jealousy. I will never admit to you that I am not making a fair request. To request love is always of course ridiculous because it is either there or it isn't.40 It was not in Maude's nature to be able to respond to her son's raw emotional need, but she reacted in her own, more formal, way. The next time Massey came to town she made sure that George and Sheila received an invitation to dine with the lieutenant-governor, the premier, and all the other VIPs. Maude even bought Sheila the material to have an evening dress made for the occasion, an extravagance that was beyond the reach of George's salary. For a brief period, George tried to stay aloof from university politics and get on with 'the infinite reserves of Plato's thought.' He thought that he was making sufficient theological headway to 'put down with some clarity the grounds on which the non-Roman churches should stand in Canada.'41 His attempts to stay neutral in the fights between Wilson and Kerr, however, caused difficulties since both men tried to recruit George for their own side. Kerr continued to press and, when he formally asked

Listening to Mozart 161 George's advice on teaching loads at the university, George thought that this issue was too important to stand aloof. University education, he replied, must be aristocratic in the best sense: it should attract those with the greatest intellectual ability. And the most aristocratic part of a university should be its philosophy department: 'Under the mysterious providence of God, not many men or women are intended to understand life "sub specie aeternitatis." We must grant that in their strange way those students who do may become the most important members of society. While at college they need the close and careful attention of teachers.' This central position for philosophy was difficult to sustain, he thought, because Canadian society was a blend of democracy and plutocracy. In universities this took the form of the representation of the wealthy on boards of governors, and these influential people found it difficult to accept the ideal of the contemplative life. It was more congenial to them to view universities in terms of what they understood, either as high schools, or as factories so that they could talk about productivity. No dramatic changes could be expected in the short run. The slow working of good will was the only weapon the president had; to wield it he would have to hold firmly onto 'the central spiritual principle of the university.'42 Giving advice on spiritual principles to the clergyman Kerr only infuriated the secularist Wilson, who hammered away at George's faith: 'He confuses my work by disliking me for not joining him in his despair. He implies that the philosopher who is not a sceptic is a dishonest philosopher - which is of course silly. I have at last passed through the stage of being hurt by the man & see his hurt and therefore respect him for that hurt. But it has taken me a long time and a lot of concentration to be balanced about it.'43 George felt that Wilson could not forgive him for the attitude he took to philosophy - that it was intimately bound up with belief in God - and used his influence to try to undermine George's position within the university. Wilson had written to Carl Webber, a mutual friend of James Doull and George, to say that George Grant was so far from being a philosopher that it was not even funny. Webber repeated the remark once when he and George were discussing Wilson's character. George was so deeply upset by Wilson's scorn that he cried. In the spring of 1952 Nicholas Ignatieff, the warden of Hart House, died. George mourned his passing: 'Oh how universities need men of his strength & gentleness. Aristotle has a word to express the highest type Greek society could produce, a man who was gentle because he was so

162 George Grant strong.'44 He wondered, however, whether there was any possibility that he might be offered the position that had been denied him six years earlier. The idea appealed to him because it might get him out of the circle of quarrels that was wearing at him at Dalhousie, 'the insanely poisoned atmosphere. The men in charge of the university - Kerr Laurie - haven't a clue about what they are doing, while the opposition, Wilson and company, seem to me entirely negative in what they want. What am I to do in a quarrel between obscurantist-debased Christianity vs. Wilson's hatred of Christianity? Get out.'45 He would seize the Hart House opportunity should it arise, because there was little chance of landing an attractive philosophy position: 'The little report I wrote for the Massey Commission has caused so much bitterness among the philosophers that there is little chance of me moving philosophically. There are liberal men in charge of most of the universities and while the liberal regimes last, I won't have a chance in philosophy.'46 When his hopes for Hart House were disappointed, George quietly began to look around for another sort of job, because he was beginning to become discouraged by his constant struggles: 'It won't be in philosophy because all the secular universities in Canada would be in the same shape - the same generation of tired cynics and hedonists are in charge of them and such men have no strength to stand up to the bomb makers. Anyway I am not very interested in necessarily being at a university. The real substance of my disagreement with Anderson & Co. is not really a theoretical subject to be held in the confines of a university but a way of life that all men must strive for. Therefore I may try and take philosophy out into the practical world. Of course I am not such a fool that if I can't find a job I will leave here.'47 The previous year, the Korean conflict had also provoked him to consider his situation carefully. He concluded that, were a full-scale state of war to develop, it would be impossible to stay at a university. His plan, he confided to his mother, had always been to stay at Dalhousie a few years and then become a minister.48 However, he did not intend to leave academic life merely for money. When he was offered a job writing advertising copy at double his Dalhousie salary, he turned down the offer, calling the job the lowest form of animal life.49 George intended to spend the summer writing an article called 'Lawyers and Philosophers,' discussing what each could do for the other, drawing presumably on his own brief study of the law. He thought that, now he was beginning to understand Plato, he was able to pass beyond his initial reaction against liberalism to assess both its strength and where

Listening to Mozart 163 he thought it limited: 'Taking Plato into my thought has been the biggest intellectual step I have ever made.' He also planned to write a long article on 'What does Philosophy make of the myth of the Fall?' Neither of these has survived and they were perhaps never written. George often set off down intellectual paths, but found the scenery so engaging that he never arrived at his destination.50 The attractions of philosophy seemed obvious on the surface, but there were hidden costs. George thought himself a 'naturally egocentric, ambitious person' who wanted to have his cake and eat it too. The more he delved into philosophy and held to his principles, the greater his conflict with powerful establishment figures such as Wilson and Anderson, whose support he needed to advance his career. His philosophy, which he described as faith seeking understanding, was carrying him, in the language of his favourite passage in the Bible (John 21:18), whither he would not go and demanded changes in himself that he knew were necessary, but none the less were hard to make.51 As his family grew he was continually tempted to give up academic life. He was especially worried that he might selfishly be doing his children a disservice by remaining at his calling. University professors were not well paid and he feared that he was becoming a 'proletarianized intellectual,' and his children would not have the cultural opportunities he had enjoyed. People in other fields - economists, political scientists, natural scientists, mathematicians - could earn extra money on the side. Philosophy was not respected in North America; indeed it was a 'dying art.' The only lucrative option was to write 'popular pap' like his predecessor H.L. Stewart. Rather than do that, he preferred to become a business executive.52 Yet because he had faith, he could survive: 'Otherwise I would be finished.' He made the decision that in spite of the temptations he would not take on extra teaching responsibilities in the summer: 'One thing I must not do is to start to earn money in the summers or I will become barren and empty of philosophy and then I might as well throw in my hand as a philosopher.'53 As it turned out, he was instead kept busy with unremunerative activities. In December 1951 he went to the founding conference of the Maritime philosophic association at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. Most of the participants were Roman Catholic priests. 'It is a sad commentary on a Protestant world that the R.C.s should be the standardbearers of philosophy and that we to whom it is our life blood should use it sparingly ... On the whole, though we of the other tradi-

164 George Grant tions were outnumbered, I was proud that our traditions produced a greater sense of profundity than the R.C.s - less clarity - but what does superficial clarity matter in such matters.'54 In 1952 he spoke at the Dalhousie Faculty Club on philosophy and science, gave a talk to the medical students, and went down to Bridgetown to deliver the opening address to a gathering of four hundred teachers. He thought this latter a considerable responsibility, especially given that he was allowed little time to prepare his talk. In it he took on his former hero, the American pragmatist John Dewey, whose ideas gave rise to the doctrine of progressive education. Pragmatists thought knowledge useless unless it could manipulate the world, George told the teachers, and, therefore, they support education not as a means for truth but from its usefulness in creating well-adjusted, happy human beings. Knowledge in their view is successful only to the extent that it leads to money, comfort, success, and power. Instead George urged a return to the Christian conviction that man is a 'free, rational being whose destiny is to live in the light of God.' True education, as Plato said, consisted in leading men from 'finite chains to the love of the infinite.' The pragmatists lost sight of the fact that, although earning a living was important, it was only a means so that one can live for now in the world while one prepares for a fuller and richer life. Nova Scotia's advantage was that the mass society had not yet fully penetrated there. Time was short, but it was still possible to preserve the wisest and best from the ancient spiritual tradition, and not be swept away by the new worship of technique and self-expression, prosperity and power, which exalted usefulness above truth, and convenience and worldly success above knowledge. He continued this theme in a series of articles written for Food for Thought, the journal of the adult-education association for which he had worked during the war. In 'Philosophy and Education' (1953), he defined education as 'any means that brings the human spirit to self-consciousness,' and he pointed to Socrates as a saint in whom knowledge of his own mind led to the presence of absolute mind, in other words to God. In this activity, government should be education's servant, never its master. To those who said that spirituality was best left to the churches and universities, rather than the adult-education movement, George replied that rational contemplation was not widely encouraged in the churches, and young people in universities were not ready to understand and partake in the deepest experiences of art, morality, and religion. As cynicism and despair increased, it was the task of adult education to

Listening to Mozart 165 present an alternative. 'When men encounter nothingness they are at last driven to seek reality. As in the pointless universe the days are spent in the beauty parlours, at the cineramic feelies or in the search to prolong a dying virility, in the days when there is always economic plenty and even cruelty has become tedious, then will be the moment to speak of education, of the journey of their minds to liberation.'55 In spite of all this intellectual activity, George found time for a few relaxations. One of these was billiards with his new friend Jim Aitchison, a man he deeply admired for his solid common sense. George boasted to his mother, 'I am becoming quite a shark,' but Aitchison warns that one must give the full standard allowance for Grantian hyperbole here. Aitchison also enticed George back onto the squash court on one memorable occasion. However, the important discovery of George's life, early in 1952, was Mozart. George had been moved by many different composers in the past: Gershwin when he was lying in bed with TB, Bach when in England, even Beethoven's late quartets in Halifax. As he had with Sheila, he now fell in love totally and irrevocably: 'You mention in an earlier letter,' he wrote to his mother, ' The Magic Flute by Mozart. It is strange that you should mention it as our great investment since Christmas has been in a copy of it. And it has been the great experience of my life, as far as art goes, since Henry James. There is a tenderness and exquisiteness about it that takes me into it. My imagination just lives & grows in it. It is amazing to think that he wrote it as he was dying and could write in a letter to his wife at the same time 'The ice is around my heart" - it is sheer absolute perfect mystery.'56 The feeling never passed, nor even wavered. 'Listening to Bach or Mozart,' he said thirty years later, 'I don't want any drugs. It is sheer ecstasy. The only time I have ever felt unfaithful to my wife was listening to Mozart - I felt such love. Mozart to me is just the lute of God. Mozart must have had an eternal model. His music is like partaking in eternity.'57 The gramophone was just one of George's increasingly frequent encounters with the technological world. Sheila's birthday in 1952 was the occasion for another; he bought her a second-hand Electrolux vacuum cleaner and noted proudly: 'They really do change one's life.'58 Awashing machine about which George on occasion waxed lyrical in speeches was, in Sheila's view, a less satisfactory manifestation of technique, since it regularly spilled all over the floor. But the crowning glory was the acquisition of a 12-year-old car that by all accounts was everything one might expect. Former students still recall the unique experience of sitting on the bare springs in the back seat while George drove about muttering

166 George Grant increasingly profane comments about the difficulty of finding somewhere to park. Although George might denounce industrial society, he was never insensitive to the fact that it contributed greatly to the liberation of human beings. When he spoke to the Community Chest in Halifax in 1953 he reminded his audience that there was a good side to the new mass world: surplus wealth made earning a living easier and thus generated leisure: 'In the pre-industrial age the mass of people were so tied to back breaking labour that only the very few had the possibility of any freedom from the continual task for twelve or fourteen hours a day of earning just enough to stay alive.'59 When he thought of his own family, he was forced to conclude that industrialism was a blessing. Without machines Sheila would be a slave to the daily chores of life. Halifax, he warned, was not yet as dehumanized as New York or Toronto, but it too was becoming a large, impersonal city. The 'great question' was how to maintain free personal life. What was missing in the mass society was love, or charity in St Paul's sense, 'that force that binds people together as persons. One sees this force sometimes in the unity that exists in a true marriage. One sees it in the unity that exists in a true family. A family in which love does not operate has no unity and must inevitably fall apart. So in a community the only thing that holds it together is love or charity.'60 Democratic legislators and progressive educators, who thought that we could take the goodness of man that springs easily from the human heart for granted, were wrong. Great love was the rarest of human qualities. The progress of North America towards an industrialized, mass society devoid of love was driven home each time he visited Toronto: 'If sometimes I seemed strange in Toronto,' he wrote to his mother after a visit, 'it was that it was all such a great impression to me. It is my job as a philosopher to try and see the industrial society as it is with all its virtues and its failures or else my philosophy will be a barren intellectual game and you cannot imagine how overwhelming an impression the expanding society like Toronto is to an outsider ... I really learnt something as well as having had the loveliness of just being at home.'61 That summer, as they were pottering about with the children in their capricious car, they turned down a dirt road and eventually came to the ocean at a village called Terrence Bay. It was wilder and more beautiful than Peggy's Cove, and George immediately wanted to buy a piece of land, a field, and to build a shack on it. It was a centre for bootlegging, petty crime, and Roman Catholicism; these eccentric traits eventually became exotic virtues as intriguing as the failings of his various Slaun-

Listening to Mozart 167 white and Jollimore neighbours. The desire to possess some land drove him powerfully and, although he recognized that to buy it committed him to living his life in Nova Scotia, 'that is not a bad idea anyway.'62 But for this year at least Terrence Bay would have to wait. As usual, money was tight.

12 Out of the shadows into truth

Just before Christmas 1953 Sheila told George she was pregnant again. It would be their fourth child. The news sent George into a prolonged fit of introspection. He freely acknowledged thatjohann Sebastian Bach was a great artist, and he had twenty children; so to be father of only four should not disturb his own creativity. His main worry was that he wanted his children to be educated to the best of their abilities. In the world in which he had been raised it was possible to live comfortably as a successful teacher. Now society did not esteem teachers and consequently did not pay them well. It was worse for him because few philosophers had much chance of earning extra money and his own philosophy was especially repugnant to the modern world. However, life was simpler in Nova Scotia, and they were helped along by 'wonderful American machines.' 'Of course,' he wrote home, 'my great weakness is that I care tremendously for the pleasant things of civilized existence - not so much the material things as the civilised way of life that you so wonderfully taught us and I have a fear of what my children will be like without them. Of course this is a failure of faith in God and yet that failure exists. Yet I am caught because I do not think I could give up philosophy for other aspects of life that bring more money.'1 If we were to choose a year in which George's thought showed the first intimations of its mature form we most likely would point to 1954. As an undergraduate history student at Queen's he had chafed at the minutiae of history, and he found law at Oxford frustrating for the same reason. At postwar Oxford he had finally hit his stride; he wanted to explore the universe, to think about the big questions. He knew he was out of step with the mainstream of contemporary philosophy. The analytic school arose in Oxford and spread throughout the English-speaking world

Out of the shadows into truth

169

precisely because most philosophers had concluded that the tradition of intellectual inquiry that started with Plato and Aristotle had been given its chance over the previous two millennia and had failed to produce definitive answers to the great questions. Philosophy from now on must restrict itself to questions for which there were answers; the mysteries were be relegated to the realm of the irrational, which is to say poetry and theology. For George, not to think or speak about what was happening in the world was impossible. Never had the Christian civilization of Western Europe stood more in need of lucid thought about the relationship between it and the divine. As early as 1940 he had spent an evening with Arnold Toynbee, the philosopher and historian, and came away convinced 'that even if civilization goes down now - it is merely temporary as there is something essentially a part of God in man's make up.'2 His year in Bermondsey under saturation bombing confirmed for him the decay in European civilization. Then, while he was still at Oxford after the war, he read Charles Cochrane's Christianity and Classical Culture, and he saw instantly the parallels between the decay of the Roman civilization and the impending collapse of the civilization that arose from it, our own. Thanks in large part to Cochrane he learned that it was not necessary to abandon history for the sake of philosophy; any comprehensive understanding would embrace both. In a radio talk on the CBC in October 1954 he sang Cochrane's praises. Cochrane was 'like a clear deep river, winding certainly to the sea. He goes right to the heart of the matter.'3 What he found so remarkable about Cochrane's work was not just his deep historical learning, but the fact that a book about events so many centuries ago was so vitally important today: 'It is surely true that our civilization - the civilization of the west - has reached point where the signs of its intellectual, religious and moral disintegration are present at every point. Internally we have only to look at the breakdown of our educational and religious traditions our desperate trust that the problems of the human spirit can be faced by psychological manipulation or political arrangement.' This book also explained why it was of central importance to think clearly through the philosophical presuppositions of the modern age: 'Above all, what he so brilliantly sees is that men reap in practical action - what they have sown in their philosophy.' Or as he put it in an article he wrote at the same time about the philosopher of science Karl Popper: 'As the tradition disintegrates, the worst tragedies will occur where great responsibility operates in metaphysical confusion.'4

170 George Grant In May he came to Toronto to speak to the National Conference on Adult Education. In his address he offered an understanding of what he called now 'the expanding economy.' What he meant by this was a 'society which holds that the control of nature by technology is the chief purpose of human existence and so from that belief a community is built where all else is subordinated to that purpose.'5 Although this dream was always important to mankind, in the last three hundred years it had become central. It was in this talk that George first spoke of this dominant belief as a religion, around which government, schools, universities, and churches were increasingly organized, 'the religion of the manipulation of nature for short-term economic gains.' What was so powerful in this faith, as existentialists like Sartre understood, was that mankind had found a new and genuine type of freedom in the modern scientific world: 'I do not only mean freedom at the practical level, but also the theoretical freedom which has arisen with modern thought ... Both theoretically and practically the scientific society can make possible our fuller humanity.'6 Seen in this light, life in the expanding economy might seem better than at any earlier time, and that was how most moderns authentically experienced it. However, Simone Weil taught that all education aims at 'the cultivation of the faculty of attention, so that ultimately attention can be paid to the infinite.'7 Education, and especially adult education, ought to lead, in words he attributed to St Augustine,8 out of the shadows and imaginings into the truth: 'After all, the man we call supremely free was sufficiently maladjusted to his community to die on a cross, and there is no reason to believe that we are so much better than the people who put him to death. Education is to take men into the unlimited, where there is no security, no rest and no peace - except perhaps, to make a joke, the peace that passes all understanding.'9 His return this time to Toronto had a powerful impact on him and, although he had been with 'an orgy of friends' like Isabel Wilson, Frank Peers, and his sister Charity, he thought that for the children's sake Toronto was best avoided. I just can't begin to tell you my impressions. It has been so colossal an impression. Mainly for us it is that unless we are called to be destroyed we must stay in Nova Scotia. This place I have seen this time really well, and it is just beyond belief. You just can't imagine what we are producing. It beats Lewis [That Hideous Strength] or Huxley [Brave New World] - because it is in a way I haven't been able to define softer and cruder. For the children we just have to stay

Out of the shadows into truth

171

where they have some sanity - for the children I have seen are being pushed and driven. It really is so fantastic that all I am is one screaming nerve.10 The angst could be put aside temporarily, though, and George stayed a few days longer to appear on 'Fighting Words': '$80 for half an hour's talking. I just didn't think I could turn the money down.'11 Perhaps stimulated by his revulsion of Toronto, George and Sheila decided to take the big step of buying land at Terrence Bay from John Hezron Jollimore. On a beautiful, wild day they went down to pay for the land. As they stood by the shore watching the cormorants skim along the water they were drenched by the spray. The water-smoothed rocks, almost cliffs, on the other side of the bay brought home their longing for, and separation from, the eternal. They were both intoxicated by its beauty.12 George was as usual caught up in the heavy round of teaching that was his lot at Dalhousie. He was now offering his courses in the new arts building, which he disliked and regularly called with studied contempt Kerr's Erection. Philosophy I, the introductory course, was based on Plato's Republic before Christmas, and Kant's Critique of Practical Reason

after. After teaching courses on medieval philosophy, modern philosophy since Descartes, Philosophy of History, and Logic and the Scientific Method early on, he settled down to offering senior classes on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, ethics, and early Greek philosophy. He taught a graduate class on St Augustine, and from time to time a course on morals and politics with his friend, political scientist Jim Aitchison. He jealously guarded his right to offer the courses he thought most important and with the appropriate content, and he was still as determined as ever to fight the attempts of the business community to interfere with the curriculum: 'I see no alternative to fight when one is pushed into being a slave because in my opinion it is wrong to let the rich get away with it. I am, as you know, a conservative in politics - that is I think change is dangerous - but it is exactly that conservatism which makes me so mad at the way a lot of wealthy people think they can dominate in their spare time as subtle an institution as a university.'13 He turned down a chance to go to Japan in the summer of 1955 because he wanted 'to get on with thought and not waste time on trips to parts of the world I have little in common with.'14 However, he did get up to Ontario on several occasions. Sheila was glad he could get away, because the past year had been exhausting, and George was again very depressed. At the end of May he attended a conference on the philosophy of education in Toronto sponsored by the Ontario Teachers' Fed-

172 George Grant eration, stopping over in Montreal for his cousin Elizabeth Parkin's wedding to the son of American poet Ezra Pound. The trip picked up his spirits, and being able to spend more time with the children now that classes had stopped also helped: 'We don't do very much but work 8c read & listen to music and go on picnics. I feel a thousand times more alive every day - recovering from the battering last winter.'15 At the end of June Fulton Anderson arrived in town. George wrote to Gerald Graham that he honestly admired Anderson, whom George thought suffered because of his alcoholism and homosexuality: 'He doesn't think he is God and, moving around among philosophers, I find that the unforgivable vice is this thinking you are God.' George, however, thought the esteem was not reciprocated, and that Anderson considered him 'a bit of a charlatan.'16 This summer, 1955, Maude sold the property at Otter Lake. She was now in her mid-seventies and was no longer capable of looking after it. She also considered selling her house at 7 Prince Arthur, quite possibly under the relentless pressure from the Park Plaza Hotel, who wanted to tear it down to serve as a back driveway (as they eventually did).17 George had spent many happy summers at Otter Lake and he was sad to see it go, though in later years he had nightmares about the place, and it filled him at times with foreboding. As she regularly did when she came into a little money, Maude divided the proceeds among her children. George was very much hurt by this decision; as the only son he expected the cottage to come to him. Maude had acted fairly, and that ought to have pleased the philosopher. But the little boy inside the grown man still wanted some sign that he was his mother's favourite. In truth Otter Lake would have been a considerable burden to him, now that he had his own place at Terrence Bay where the children could play among the wind-stunted trees or go swimming in Lighthouse Cove. He thought that his father 'would have liked to think of another William Grant chasing butterflies 8c picking strawberries on the Nova Scotia rocks.'18 Filled with paternal pride, George wrote Maude about each of her grandchildren. Rachel has suddenly taken over reading in a big way and it is hard to get her away from books. She is a strange, frail little thing - but a pretty one. She lives in her own world. William has taken up natural history - so that his whole life is dominated by it. You can imagine what a pleasure Grand Lake was - snakes & snails & leeches and fish and deer and above all toads and beetles ... Robert is a gay, lovely, actor - much the handsomest and very winning in his ways.

Out of the shadows into truth

173

Catherine is blossoming every day - a sweet lovely little girl with big blue eyes and full of life.19 When Uncle Vincent came down again he had learned his lesson well, and George and Sheila were invited to a small dinner with the lieutenantgovernor and the new premier, Henry Hicks (who later became President of Dalhousie). George immediately took to Hicks, whom he thought as premier had a 'good solid sense of Nova Scotia.'20 He was also inclining federally to Liberal Prime Minister Louis St Laurent, 'the best of the lot - with some understanding of quality.' By contrast, he was appalled by the Conservatives, who were not 'conservative in any sense I can understand but representative of the world of salesmen, who scorn the wisdom of the past.'21 In August he returned to Ontario to participate in an institution that his father had helped to establish, the annual Couchiching Conference. George was always good at talks like this and he was now in full and confident stride. 'I don't intend to discuss whether we are going to be blown up or whether the human race is going to be sensible enough to survive,' he began. His topic was 'The Minds of Men in the Atomic Age', but he was not going to talk about nuclear war or aid to underdeveloped countries. His concern was with the 'mass scientific society,' something he pronounced 'totally new in the experience of the human race.'22 We now worshipped a new god, economic expansion through the control of nature.23 But this god was false, because the 'goal of human existence is not to be found in the world of nature - but in freedom.'24 And to be free is to be ruled by 'the eternal world of truth and goodness which is there to be realized by every thought and action in our lives.'25 After attacks on the schools and universities, and the culture that saw 'girls in Woolworth's selling all day till they are exhausted and then [are] peddled a dream of heaven from Hollywood and NBC,'26 he turned to the churches. North America, he said, was formed by Protestantism, and the central riddle of our history was why 'Protestantism centred as it was on a great affirmation of freedom and the infinite has been the dominant force in shaping a society which is now so little free and so little aware of the infinite.'27 The type of minister who was held up as ideal was one who 'has become the active democratic organizer who kept the church going as a place of social cohesion and positive thinking a la Norman Vincent Peale.' Amidst the orgy of self-congratulation that suffused society, we must remember the maxim: 'Take what you want, said God, take it and pay for it.' It was too early to tell whether freedom and love could be

174 George Grant realized in the technological world. Ultimately, that did not matter. Whether good triumphed in the world or not made no difference at all to our own individual moral responsibility: 'What is certain, beyond doubt, is that whether we live at the end of the world or at the dawn of a golden age or neither, it still counts absolutely to each one of us that in and through beauty and anguish, the good and evil of the world, we come in freedom upon the joy unspeakable.'28 When he was done, he set down his notes and apologized: 'Since it is possible that some of my remarks will be quoted in the Halifax Herald before I return to Nova Scotia, I want to offer my profound apologies to the minister, the congregation and governing body of the United Church of which I am a member. It would have been fairer to them, and more thoughtful on my part, if I had communicated to them, directly and personally, the values and perceptions which I have communicated to you tonight. I apologize for failing to show them this courtesy.'29 Paul Roddick, who was at the session, was deeply moved by George's remarks: 'Although his speech appeared to challenge many fundamental theological precepts of the Christian religion, I felt at the end that I had never before listened to such a profoundly religious man ... It was the first time I had ever listened to anyone who seemed to be driven by spiritual, almost mystical, imperatives which profoundly affected his perception of the world around.'30 At the reception following the session, George mentioned that he had to get back to Toronto to catch a plane in the morning and hinted for a ride back to town. Roddick offered him and a woman broadcaster a lift. They set off, but about three miles from town Roddick began to smell gas, which turned out to be a fine spray of fuel coming from the carburettor. They were on a lonely stretch of road and it was unlikely that another car would pass until morning. Should they go into Orillia or wait? George declared that he was happy with whatever Roddick decided. When the car stopped, George and the broadcaster were discussing the origin of 'black' Irish and the 'red' Irish, and trying to determine which strain the lady belonged to, and they happily returned to their topic while Roddick decided what to do. He could see the lights of Orillia in the distance and decided to take a chance. They made it into Orillia without mishap, drew up on the side of the street, and Roddick turned off the motor. Somehow he found a mechanic and, while he was attending to this urgent practical matter, George sat on the curb beside the road, totally unconcerned about their predicament and completely

Out of the shadows into truth

175

absorbed in abstruse matters, as if he and the broadcaster were having a discussion over coffee at the Faculty Club. The mechanic tightened the bolts on the carburettor and by 1:00 AM they were speeding down highway 400, with George riding in the front. His eyes fastened on the speedometer as the speed increased. At a hundred he turned to Roddick and said: 'Do you realize that we're going a hundred miles an hour?' There was no hint of anxiety in his voice, more surprise bordering on awe. 'It's perfectly safe,' Roddick reassured. 'We could probably go safely a hundred and ten. It's a very good road. There's no need to be worried.' 'Oh, I'm not worried,' George replied. 'It's just that I've never gone a hundred miles an hour before except perhaps in a plane. It's a truly marvellous experience.'31 Dr Johnson once commented about Edmund Burke: 'If a man were to go with Burke under a shed to shun a shower, he would say, "This is an extraordinary man." If Burke should go into a stable to see his horse drest, the ostler would say, "We have had an extraordinary man here."' Many people felt the same way about meeting George. This was the only time George and Roddick met, but almost forty years later Roddick could remember the occasion and observe: 'I don't suppose I ever developed such a spontaneous affection for a man in such a short time as I did that night.' Few men, though, are heroes to their older sisters. George had come up to Toronto a few days early so that he and his mother could go to the new festival in Stratford. George announced this plan to Charity, who asked what play they would be seeing. 'Oedipus Rex,' George replied. 'This I've got to see,' exclaimed Charity, no doubt thinking that the play might have been written for her oedipally fixated brother. George was, as he feared, none too popular with his Protestant brethren back home. An off-the-cuff comment about Billy Graham had ruffled a lot of feathers and misleading press reports created the impression that George was a Roman Catholic attacking Protestantism. He was reprimanded by Colonel Laurie, the 'streetcar' Christian, who must by now have thought George a very errant trolley-bus: 'Colonel Laurie wrote me a rather sweet letter the other day taking me to task for criticizing Billy Graham & asking me to forego further criticisms of such an instrument of God.'32 George was not a man easily intimidated and, when he delivered the J.W. Ansley Memorial Lecture at Assumption College in Windsor at the end of October, he managed to slip in a swipe at those who thought of religion as a 'kind of emotional certainty and volitional commitment a la

176 George Grant Billy Graham.'33 A few such polemical comments aside, the lecture 'The Paradox of Democratic Education' was a very serious piece of reflection on the nature of education within a Christian and democratic context. The central mystery of democracy, he observed, was human equality. It was clear that human beings were not equal in their talents, but Christianity insisted 'on the more mysterious truth that all persons being called by God to salvation are equal before His Majesty.'34 This point, as we have seen, he learned from Oman, and it was reinforced by his subsequent study of Kant. Secularists who denied the fatherhood of God could have recourse only to the obvious inequality of people's abilities. What possible grounds could they have for claiming that people deserved equal treatment? They were, however, consistent in following the progressive educational ideas of theorists like John Dewey in preaching the debased view that the aim of education was to adjust people to their society. A more profound understanding of education, a leading forth of the soul towards God, could be found in Plato's writings, but most people rejected this view because it appears anti-democratic and elitist. We are left with a paradox, that 'if as the Deweyites claim their philosophy of education is the truly democratic view, then democracy is a state of society in which true education cannot flourish.'35 This paradox was a genuine problem and the more he contemplated it, 'the harder it is to Find reconciliation either at the level of thought or action.' If progressive and secular education were necessary for a democratic society to succeed, a religious faith was equally necessary to supply the metaphysical basis of democratic equality. Consistency between metaphysics and ethics was central to George's position and it was therefore necessary to think through the implications of this profound dilemma. To know how to act, he said in language he later rejected, we needed the right values, and to have the right values, we had to know what was real. For the materialist, pleasure or comfort was the greatest good, but the Christian could understand that 'the highest activity possible for man is redemptive love, which of necessity includes in itself suffering.'36 In itself his belief in remedial suffering was enough to distinguish his thought from most of his contemporaries. In its name he now rejected progressive education: 'A position which, practically, seems both decent and feasible in the short run, may still be false philosophically and so can only be disastrous in the long run.'37 He concluded by pointing to St Augustine who lived, as George learned from Cochrane, in an age in which everything was collapsing around him. Yet Augustine did not despair because he knew that the true world was

Out of the shadows into truth 177 beyond this one: 'He knew that despair was wrong, because despair always assumes that the issue of history lies finally with ourselves. But clearly it is not with ourselves that the ultimate issue lies. Our hope lies rather in One who is power and reason and love, Who has indeed most manifestly shown us that power and love and reason are in Him, One eternally.'38 In this lecture George came very close to articulating the problem about which he thought for the rest of his life. The one pole of his thought was his Christianity, his abiding faith in the transcendent and eternal, the gift he received as he passed through the gate at dawn that English morning. This faith never wavered, and through his reading of Simone Weil, he came to understand it better. The other pole was the phenomenon of freedom, which had become central in the Western world. At its most rudimentary, this freedom was revealed in Sheila's relationship with the wonderful American machines that relieved her of drudgery, and therefore let her live a freer life than was possible even a hundred years before. Machines existed in antiquity, but never before had human beings defined and understood themselves primarily as free. George recognized this as an authentic phenomenon and agreed that such freedom was a genuine good for human beings. Before freedom and transcendence could be reconciled, they first had to be understood and, for much of the 1950s, George assiduously combed the writings of the European existentialists in an attempt to illuminate the meaning of freedom and understand why it commanded such respect. He turned to novelists like Dostoevsky and philosophers such as Kierkegaard, Marcel, and Heidegger. It was most unusual for anyone in English-speaking Canadian philosophy departments in the mid-1950s to take such a keen interest in contemporary European thought, but, as he had indicated in his controversial report to the Massey Commission, he understood the role of philosophy differently than most. The thinker who most commanded his attention at this period, though, was Jean-Paul Sartre. There is no doubt about his genuine, though brief, admiration for him. For a while he had a photograph of Sartre on the bulletin board in his office and he pointed it out to students who dropped by for a chat. 'Just look at it,' he would say, 'what a face!' Sartre's play, The Flies, moved him so deeply that it permeated his dreams throughout an entire winter; and he was willing, for now, to declare The Roads to Freedom the greatest modern novel. In light of this enthusiasm George was an appropriate choice to deliver the talk on Sartre in the CBC's prestigious 'Architects of Modern Thought' series. He gave a dress

178 George Grant rehearsal for his address at the University of Western Ontario on his way back from delivering the Ansley lecture in Windsor, and the full version was broadcast on 9 November 1955. Existentialism, he declared, was no passing fad, 'for it expresses something true about the very heart of human life and has expressed that truth with greater clarity and certainty than any previous philosophy.'39 Existentialists tried to understand human beings in terms of their subjective freedom, which meant 'the ability to transcend ourselves.'40 Man was different from the other animals because he was free to choose how to live. This was most clear in our relationship to death. Animals were driven by a impulse to stay alive; for humans life was a choice, because suicide was an option. Sartre's moral greatness arose from his courage in breaking completely with the old theological tradition; he was, explicitly, an atheist who saw the eternal world as meaningless to human life, yet who affirmed the absolute significance of human freedom in spite of that: 'This is the paradox of Sartre's thought: out of the absolute negation of denying all meaning to our life, he attempts to illuminate the reality of freedom and subjectivity.'41 Heidegger and Jaspers were greater systematic philosophers than Sartre, and Marcel was ultimately wiser.42 But Sartre was an able philosopher and one of the supreme artists of this century.43 This panegyric was one that, in later life, deeply embarrassed George. Indeed he contemplated reprinting his talk in Technology and Justice 'to show what folly one writes in the past. I think one's thought does deeply change. I think lesser people should admit that they have written some stupid stuff in their time.'44 He wondered how he could ever have praised this 'French litterateur masquerading as a philosopher?'45 Sartre, he decided, was after all 'just a plagiarist of Heidegger,'46 and his existentialism was no more than a clever cafe atheism.47 In 1959, when the CBC invited him to speak about Dostoevsky, he accepted because he needed the money, but he turned the chore of preparing the text over to someone in whose judgment he had more confidence, Sheila. He offered to look after the children and clean the house if she wrote the text. With a few minor changes he read Sheila's analysis of the Russian novelist over the air and told all his friends how much better it was than he could have done. It always amused, and pleased, him whenever someone told him that something Sheila had written that had appeared over his name was one of the best things he had ever done.48 These grand questions were never separate from the intimacies of his own life. As his family grew up he also began to think seriously about his

Out of the shadows into truth

179

religious affiliation. He had never been keen on public worship or institutional religion, and Sheila's and his involvement with the United Church was brief and disappointing in 1947 when they first arrived in Halifax. In 1950, when he contemplated the institution to which he notionally owed allegiance, he described it as pusillanimous and weak and filled with fools and place seekers, but went on to say that it was 'the only institution that is worth anything in Canada.' He respected it for its principles; in that way, if no other, it excelled the trade unions and chambers of commerce.49 By 1952, in spite of the fact that he published a religious poem in the United Church Observer, his doubts were increasing. Although he accepted the need for religious institutions of some sort, he was repelled by the ignorance and ugliness of the United Church. It retained, he thought, one supreme advantage - namely, that it was not chained to such 'meaningless business from the past - as for example the Apostolic Succession,' and it avoided the 'ruthless totalitarianism' of the Catholic church. He was also struck by the fact that the best, most alive students came from religious backgrounds, while the rest lacked any sense of transcendence and mystery.50 By October 1953 he acknowledged his considerable confusion as to his church connection. He was absolutely determined that his children be brought up in some branch of the Christian church, but none was without its problems. The United Church was ugly and scornful of the intellect. He found most theologians at Pine Hill Divinity School in Halifax decent people, but of poor intellectual calibre. The Roman Catholic Church's 'doling out of rewards and punishments is more repugnant to me than almost anything else I know because it is a corruption of the best, which is always the worst.' He inclined strongly towards the Anglican church, though his family's tradition of non-conformity, the apostolic creed, and the doctrine of the virgin birth made even that option difficult. By the spring of 1955 he was still debating the sort of ecclesiastic organization in which to bring up the children. Vulgarity, complacency, and dislike of the intellect had finally separated him from the United Church, but the residual elements of Catholic theology still held him from the Anglican: 'Yet also I believe Christianity to be true & certainly it understands human existence in a way most modern thought does not begin to. Also in some relative way institutions are necessary 8c I will my children's part in them. Well I suppose God will lead us where He wants us to go and that may be out of the church.'51 God's will or not, George saw a statement on Anglican principles on Canon Puxley's desk at King's College one day when he was visiting and

180 George Grant asked to borrow it. It reconciled him sufficiently that Sheila and he went to a series of evening meetings offered by the Anglican bishop of Halifax, William Davis. On 31 March 1956 George was confirmed a member of the church and Sheila was also admitted.52 While they remained in Halifax, they were not particularly regular in their attendance, since George found the local Anglican clergy poorly educated and theologically poorly trained.53 As each child was born, George chose and asked friends to stand as godparents, though no baptisms other than Rachel's took place until what is known affectionately in the family as the mass baptism in 1961. As the children grew up, George attended services regularly and was active in the church, sitting on committees and helping in parish organization. The children took part in Sunday school, where Sheila was a regular teacher, and in the choir. It was not until the abortion question came to the fore in the 1970s that George again began to question his denominational affiliation. While he was preparing to be received into the Anglican church, the governor-general invited him to a weekend at Government House from 18-20 February 1956, at which writers and academics could mingle and exchange ideas with politicians and civil servants. George went up a day early to spend some time with the Ignatieffs, and then made his way to Rideau Hall to meet the assembled editors, professors, freelance journalists, and writers from across the country. Massey gave two large dinner parties that included the cabinet and thought the gathering a great success.54 George found the weekend upsetting because he felt increasingly estranged from Uncle Jim: 'Strictly between ourselves I found myself very far away from him when we met in Ottawa & again here & I think he felt the same. I do not say this was either our faults, just the facts of the world. I think it is basically that I am getting more & more cynical & broken - where there is a simple streak in him which is wholly admirable - but which is far from me as I become increasingly brutalized. Indeed somebody has to carry out Canadian politics & we are lucky that men of his ilk are still about. I expect it is partly because he accepts the business community with a lack of cynicism which amazes me.'55 The trip also gave George a chance to see his mother at 7 Prince Arthur, where she was suffering from lumbago. This visit was important because George had applied for sabbatical leave for the 1956-7 academic year and planned to spend it in England with his family. He won a Nuffield Travelling Fellowship and that contributed towards the cost. He was not certain he would return to Dalhousie after his leave. Although he recognized that, for a poorly paid teacher with a family, living in a simple

Out of the shadows into truth

181

little town like Halifax was attractive, he felt more and more bored with its narrowness and pettiness.56 In his leave application he explained that he wanted to write a book on the freedom of the will, a concept he thought was central to the logic of the social sciences. We have inherited, he argued, conflicting accounts of the meaning of freedom. From the ancient Greeks came a tradition that taught that freedom was the gift of truth, which we acquired through our reason. That had long been the dominant position in the West, but it was now under challenge from the existentialist tradition. In this latter view freedom was something that human beings had absolutely as human beings, regardless of their rational capacity or achievements; this view of freedom as something primal to human beings entered Western thought from Hebraic, that is biblical, sources. There was no satisfactory reconciliation of these rival accounts in modern Western thought. George proposed to clarify the differences between them. The conclusion to which he eventually came was that the Biblical or Hebraic understanding of freedom as something human beings willed for themselves was at the heart of the problem of modernity.57 He had already been working on the problem for some time and he had set his initial ideas down in an article, The Uses of Freedom' (1956), that appeared in the Queen's Quarterly. One might have expected from its title and beginning few paragraphs that it would be a piece of philosophy in the analytical style, making the sort of logical distinctions George spoke about in his fellowship application. However, no matter what his intentions, his thought was so firmly anchored in the world of his experience and its paradoxes that the argument was soon rooted in an analysis of society and politics. As he observed, 'the theoretical question about freedom has been both accentuated and hidden by pressing practical difficulties, which are indeed breathtaking in 1955.'58 Philosophy for him was nothing if it were not tested directly against the world, and his ultimate aim was to understand North America and to understand how it could believe in a vision of freedom as the ability to get what one wants.59 A few years earlier he had suggested that the key to this puzzle lay in the fact that North America was the end-product of Protestantism. Now he refined the analysis further and specified the particular form of Protestantism, namely Puritanism. This, at its heart, was a biblical faith that believed God acted in history, and that history therefore must be understood as a series of meaningful unique acts. Within this providential order human beings were called to act so as to bring God's kingdom on earth. Thus, Puritanism brought 'into the western

182 George Grant world a fresh interest in action through its intense desire to shape the world to God's purposes.'60 Over the past three centuries a close relationship between Protestantism and science had arisen because they both, for different reasons, wanted to transform the world: The history of reform in the Englishspeaking world cannot be understood outside this relation.' 61 Yet as the reformist spirit lost any sense of the transcendent and began to take the world more and more as an end in itself, the idea of freedom as the ability to change the world took increasing hold. Its attractiveness was fuelled by the residual element of altruism from Protestantism allied to a growing self-centred hedonism.62 Noble as was its inspiration, nothing could prevent the liberal democratic faith, once severed from the transcendent, from falling into the most vulgar pleasure seeking. If the sovereignty of God is denied and the presence of the infinite fades, our North American society, both Canada and the United States, 'will become increasingly ruled by pleasure and force.' 'How God shall reconcile the world to Himself is not a matter we can comprehend.'63 It was, though, a matter on which he could meditate, and on 8 May 1956 he sailed with Sheila, Rachel, William, Robert, and Catherine from Halifax for England to do just that. This time they did not make the mistake of staying with Sheila's mother, but rented the first two floors of a lovely house at 18 Morden Road in Blackheath, close enough, George thought, to Mrs Allen for convenience without being threatening. Its owner, the son of novelist Joyce Cary, had gone to Paris to serve at NATO. The basement conveniently contained a nursery school, to which Robert was despatched. An old friend, Sir William Fife, got Rachel into a very good school across the road; young William had to hike across the heath for his. He probably did not much mind the trip because his Uncle Tony soon had inducted him into the mysteries of his great love, coleoptera, and beetles thrived on Blackheath. George's old friend from Bermondsey, Mrs Lovett, came twice to babysit for a few days to give Sheila a holiday, and they were able to hire a English char named Doris to help with the housework. George found the change of continent intellectually exhilarating. He reported to his mother that this was the first time since he had known Sheila that he had 'taken a step in thought which she cannot follow.' For the first time in years, he felt that he was making 'philosophic progress,' though he admitted that Sheila had such a 'powerful mind that it is a question whether I will go back to her or she come on.'64 The step he

Out of the shadows into truth

183

considered such a breakthrough was a foray into Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization, though his enthusiasm did not last long. His interest in Marx's thought was of longer duration; the first chapter of the new book he was writing was a 'hymn of praise to Karl Marx, as one of the supreme prophetic geniuses.'65 He also renewed his acquaintance with the Oxford philosopher Michael Foster. Foster was a Hegelian who felt himself increasingly isolated by the dominance of analytical philosophy at his university, and his growing despondency led to his premature death. His bookMystery and Philosophy, which is roughly contemporaneous with George's visit, shows that they were both wrestling with very similar problems. Foster proposed that the fundamental characteristic of the modern world was that it debased mystery. Every thing not understood was treated either as a problem for the scientist to solve, or a puzzle for the philosopher to resolve. Foster insisted that, for the Christian theologian, there are facts of our experience, 'which remain mysterious even when understood, because, though understood, they exceed our comprehension.'66 The presence of God in the world could not be discovered by science because of God's inherent hiddenness. When He made Himself known, it was by an act of will or grace, not because He was compelled to do so by human beings.67 George commented: 'Today the scientists' attitude to nature of controlling it is not so important as asking, can it [in principle] be controlled?'68 Most people who were attracted to Marx thought he had created a great philosophical system. George recognized its power, but deemed it a 'philosophical farrago.'69 Marx's greatness, rather, was that 'he was a liberal who understood Biblical religion.'70 Freud and Marx were 'the most cosmological thinkers,' whom George thought it necessary to destroy in the name of the transcendent; but, before he attempted that, he wanted to learn from them.71 To understand why the world was as it was, it was important to understand the ideal in the name of which people attacked the transcendent: they did it in the name of putting an end to human suffering. Christianity taught that suffering may lead to God and is, therefore, sometimes good. The Marxist replies that this doctrine may have served some purpose when man could not control nature, but now it is increasingly out of date. His ideal takes us into deep water for it raises the question of how much evil is necessary to the divine economy ... Now the question it seems to me is this. Is

184 George Grant it that human happiness in the world is an adequate end? One of the Christian arguments is that because of the Fall, happiness is not possible, that the Marxian Utopian dream of a pleasant life in this world will always be poisoned by human sin. I find this a particularly repellent argument - but of course it is not an argument - but a statement of fact (and more power to it for being so). Now apart from whether this is a fact or not - & whether indeed the argument is true (it certainly has some appeal and is indeed the basis of all fundamental conservatism) where does it lead you? - namely to the place where the evil was necessary to man's destiny as was the redemption that turns one away from it.72 These speculations on the necessity of evil were crystallized when Kay and Charles Gimpel came to dinner. Kay was Alison's flatmate during part of the war and her husband Charles was a war hero who fell into German hands and was tortured by the Nazis. George never felt able to speak to him about faith, because, as he asked himself, 'How can I say to him I believe that the world is ultimately good?'73 In the light of Gimpel's suffering, such a comment seemed facile, coming from someone who had not suffered torture. War was more than ever on George's mind in 1956 because it was the year of Suez and Hungary. Egypt had seized the Suez canal and the British and French in conjunction with the Israelis combined, in the face of American opposition, for a joint military action to recover it. George found that he sided emotionally with the Israelis, because that was 'one of the few causes I feel deeply about and the fanatic religious nationalism of the Arabs is pretty unpleasant.'74 However, he thought it a great mistake that British Prime Minister Anthony Eden had involved the United Kingdom in the crisis, and he was so criticial of the indecisiveness of the Americans that had resulted in British intervention that he hoped Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic candidate, would beat Eisenhower, the Republican incumbent, in the 1956 presidential elections. He also condemned the Canadian response, for which Lester Pearson was later awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, as a lot of moralizing without responsibility. These sentiments did not, however, compromise his belief that pacifism was a noble moral stance for individuals. When he appeared on a broadcast of 'Fighting Words' recorded in London, he affirmed that he had been in the past and was now a pacifist. It was, he observed, a position only a few could adopt: 'I think it's completely impractical in terms of getting what you want in this world. Presumably the two great pacifists in history were Jesus & Ghandi - one was put to death in a miserable way and one was

Out of the shadows into truth

185

shot ... You have to be at the highest level of sainthood to think that you can carry this through.'75 George's ambitions were altogether more modest. He was not a saint; he was something different, a Christian and a philosopher. It was his task as a philosopher to understand the Word and, through that understanding, to bring himself and others closer to the divine. He was at once attracted and repelled by the staggering renunciation of the world he saw in the saints he most admired. In one of his rare criticisms of someone whom he genuinely did consider a saint, he noted that when Simone Weil wrote about the family and its character, she wrote as someone outside the family and seemed to have little understanding of what family life involved. It is a paradox, George noted, 'that people who are single have more time for philosophy, yet just write junk because they are so outside it.'76 George took great delight in being with his children and was thrilled at Christmas when the family put on Sleeping Beauty. Rachel, he said, was very keen, and William was the 'most innocent wicked witch.'77 It was good that George loved children so, for he had so many of them. Sheila was pregnant again and they were just able to take in a performance of Mozart's opera Cosi fan tutte at Glyndebourne, complete with the traditional picnic in the meadow amidst the sheep, before the baby was due. Unlike their previous children, Isabel was born at home, with a midwife and nurse in attendance, on St George's Day, 1957. George claimed he enjoyed the experience, 'pushing almost as hard as Sheila,' though Sheila recalls that his contribution was restricted to making sandwiches for the midwife. Since his daughter was born on Shakespeare's birthday, he thought she might become a great woman playwright: 'In the world which is coming women are going to have much more time and freedom of the mind.'78 In the meantime there was time to visit with George and Alison and their boys who were passing through London; to go down to Devon to spend a weekend with Peter Clarke and his wife, George's cousin Anne; and to spend a weekend in the countryside with Peter Self and his wife Diana. Just before they were about to sail on the Empress of Scotland from Liverpool back to Canada, W.G. Adams, the warden of All Souls College at Oxford, and an old friend of George's father, sounded him out on whether he was interested in becoming principal of a university college in Ireland. It did not take George five minutes to turn the invitation down, since he knew that he wanted to stay in Canada. Even Suez made

186 George Grant him realize how profoundly he was committed to North American life. He was now sure that he wanted to bring his children up 'somewhere in North America.' He was also increasingly certain that it would not be Halifax.

13

No satisfactory compromise was possible

When George came up to Toronto towards the end of August 1957 for a Student Christian Movement conference in Bala, he made the trip mostly to see his mother. With her brother and sisters living elsewhere, the hard responsibility for Maude's care lay with Charity, and she had warned George what to expect. Maude had been showing signs of senility for some time; she forgot things, she repeated herself. Now it was much worse; more and more often she wandered from Prince Arthur and then was unable to find her way home. The loss of control was especially poignant in Maude's case because running other people's lives had been a central aspect of her own. Her behaviour made Vincent Massey uncomfortable and he let his vice-regal duties serve as an excuse for avoiding his sister-in-law. George invited Maude to come to Halifax and live with them. When she did come for a visit in October, George again saw at first hand the problems Charity faced. When his mother took her four-year-old granddaughter Kate on little walks to look for beautiful autumn leaves on the sidewalk, sometimes both of them got lost. Maude was now seventy-seven and there was no hope for improvement, only the certainty of continual decline. The family decided to apply for her admission to a private institution in Guelph, Ontario, that was highly regarded for its care of the senile. In the midst of these worries about his mother the CBC contacted George to ask him to inaugurate a new experiment in educational public broadcasting, a sort of university of the air. Intellectual lectures on radio had been a success in the United Kingdom; would they succeed in Canada? It was a gamble, but Lewis Miller, who had studied with George at Dalhousie, was now working for the CBC, and he believed that George

188 George Grant had the right combination of personality and intellect to pull it off. George felt strongly about the importance of public broadcasting. He believed in the adult-education movement and, besides, the money was good. He therefore agreed to prepare a series of eight half-hour radio broadcasts, followed by a ninth in which he would answer listeners' questions. Happily while he was on sabbatical he had worked on certain problems relating to freedom and modern science. He had draft chapters of the beginning of a book, but it remained incomplete. In the CBC talks, he planned to address these questions, but he also intended to answer the question of what philosophy could appropriately accomplish in the mass age. He first began to think about the kind of world the future would bring, at least in general terms, fifteen years before. George was twenty-two and had just left Bermondsey when he concluded that, whatever the outcome of the war, England was finished as the dominant world power and the future belonged to North America. He explained in a letter to his mother: 'European civilization has been greater than ours is now - but we have the promise - we have the future - for us there is hope and there isn't much hope here ...'1 The postwar North American world was something prodigiously new and, as such, called out to be understood. George's first attempt to explore it led to his theory of the expanding economy, but this concentration on economics seemed too limiting. He sensed that he was missing something important. Increased prosperity led to the introduction of labour-saving devices that freed human beings from the necessity of constant toil. This was an important practical change. However, even more significant was the fact that most people in the Western world believed that it was their moral and political freedom that made them human. George accepted that human beings were better for the increase in their freedom as well as for their consciousness of it. What he now began to understand was that these achievements were gained at a cost: they cut us off from an awareness of the unchanging moral order, and this loss was tragic. We seemed to be, in the strict, logical sense, on the horns of a dilemma. There were only two alternatives and neither was acceptable. We could only affirm our subordination to the divine moral order by rejecting the view that subjective freedom defined human beings, and vice versa. Yet the highest human life seemed to demand both. Could these rival claims be reconciled? As he put it in a letter to Derek Bedson: 'All the futility and pride of the humanist generations can be seen as necessary to God's purpose as that negative moment out of which a proper reconciliation between

No satisfactory compromise

189

faith and freedom (that is a faith which included within itself freedom) would appear.'2 'Philosophy in the Mass Age' tried to show the need for this reconciliation. The radio broadcasts started on 6 January 1958 and continued each Monday until 10 March. George began by explaining that something new had arisen in the world and he called it the mass age. The techniques of mass production, standardized consumption and education, wholesale entertainment, and almost wholesale medicine meant that the mass age extended to human beings not just at work, but also at home. Wherever it appeared, it had two distinguishing characteristics. First, it was scientific, that is, it concentrated on the domination of man over nature through knowledge and its application. Second, it involved the dominance of some human beings over others. It reached its fullest incarnation in North America, the only society that has no history of its own before the age of progress, and therefore no restraining traditions inherited from the older order.3 George's first task in these lectures was to show how the mass age had come about; his second was to explain why it was inadequate. In the past, human acts were restrained by the belief that there was an order in the universe that human reason could discover and it was man's duty to bring his life into harmony with that divine order. Mankind did not make this moral law, but it was none the less our duty to live within it.4 Education, in this context, meant being led to wisdom. Wisdom, too, had a clear meaning: seeing the ultimate purpose of human life and, hence, how to live one's own life.5 Yet modern philosophers like Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre rejected the idea of a transcendent and determining moral order in the name of our freedom to live as we choose.6 The view of freedom as the power to order the world according to human preferences itself had deep roots, George argued, in our spiritual heritage. It came from Judaism via Calvinism, the biblical tradition that celebrated the will as the instrument for overcoming evil in this world. St Augustine synthesized Christian revelation (will) and classical philosophy (transcendence) and had preserved both ideas in the West for a thousand years, but since the fifteenth century that synthesis had progressively broken down.7 The biblical tradition gained ascendency as another Christian idea was transformed. Christians had understood history providentially, that is, as the progressive movement of the world towards the kingdom of God. This faith had now been secularized; as belief in God diminished under the assaults of enlightened thinkers from Voltaire to Freud, the

190 George Grant idea of providence was replaced by an optimistic humanism, the belief in progress. Science and technology rather than God became the means of redemption.8 This set of beliefs was incarnated in the virgin soil of North America in its radical, Puritan form. In one of the central lectures, George turned to a sympathetic interpretation of the thought of Karl Marx as a brilliant illumination of how the religious idea of providence came to be transformed into something secular. Marx, George insisted, was properly understood as a religious thinker in the sense that his philosophy of history was the modern equivalent of a theodicy, the vindication of divine providence in the face of the presence of evil. Marx justified the suffering of the proletariat as meaningful because it led to the ultimate liberation of mankind.9 Marxism, however, had failed in the West because it treated human beings merely as objects in the world and failed to address the question of subjective freedom, the phenomenon that George had identified in his Sartre lecture. Even if exploitation were overcome and a society could exist in which there was no division between the freedom of the individual and the harmony of the whole, it was still open to anyone to question the point of it all, the meaning of existence.10 Marxism could succeed in the East but fail in the West because the knowledge of each person as free subject was not part of the old religious cultures of the East. How should the philosopher respond to these changes in the world? First, George was clear that it was not the philosopher's role to 'speak in detail about how the contradictions of the world will be overcome in the temporal process.' Rather the philosopher's task was to 'think how the various sides of truth which have made themselves explicit in history may be known in their unity.' He had already identified the two key elements. The one was the truth of natural law, that man lives within an order that he did not make and by which his actions are judged. The other is that man is free to build a society that eliminates the evils of the world. Since both these assertions seem true, the difficulty is to reconcile them, to 'understand how they can both be thought together.'11 In contrast to the confident optimism of Werner von Braun, the American rocket scientist, who declared that 'man belongs to wherever he wants to go,' George reminds us that there will always be evil and we must be prepared to respond to it. The quality of our response defines us. He turns to Simone Weil, whom he describes here for the first time as a 'modern saint,' to explain: 'To manage to love God through and beyond the misery of others is very much more difficult than to love Him through and beyond one's own suffering. When one loves him through

No satisfactory compromise

191

and beyond one's own suffering, this suffering is thereby transfigured; becomes, depending upon the degree of purity of that love, either expiatory or redemptive.'12 The existentialists deny the permanence of evil. They were driven by a rage for action in their belief that it was possible to create a world 'where children do not starve, where men are not unemployed or burnt up by napalm.'13 Their actions were noble, the justification for them wrong, because they denied the existence of 'an unconditional moral authority of which we do not take the measure, but by which we ourselves are measured and defined.'14 To refute the existentialists, though, required proof that without the conception of moral limit 'all our actions, our strivings, our decisions, our agonies' would count for nothing. Only a great artist could state the affirmation in the concrete; only a great philosopher could show how it could withstand any argument brought against it. When George denied that he was either of these and that, therefore, for him this conception remained in part a matter of faith, he was not being modest.15 He genuinely could not yet fathom the mystery of the real and simultaneous existence of God, evil, and human freedom. Yet the world moves on whether the philosopher understands ot. Indeed, in their daily lives philosophers face challenges and need to respond to them. John Oman, when tested by the moral challenged posed by the Great War, failed because his philosophy was too muddled. A philosophy that does not lead to moral action, George concluded, is deficient. However, George recognized that the moral and philosophical position he was defending had itself been debased into an ideology in the modern world. The belief in an unchanging moral law seems to lead to a conservative political stance, since conservatism understands the truth of order and limit, both in social and personal life. Yet contemporary conservatism's apparent practical moral certainty is illusory, since what passes for conservatism in Canada means little more than the justification of the continuing rule of the businessman and 'the right of the greedy to turn all activities into sources of personal gain.' It is therefore impossible to express the truth of conservatism without seeming to justify capitalism. George could not, at this point, give clear answers, but he suggested what was needed: a careful theory in which the idea of limit includes within itself a doctrine of history as the sphere for the overcoming of evil.16 A morality that does not scorn joy and relates it to suffering may arise out of the dissatisfaction of some of the nobler artists, scientists, and

192 George Grant metaphysicians. It was impossible to predict whether this will happen in 'our particular civilization.'17 One could only hope that the alienation of the brightest youngsters from technological civilization gave hope that profound philosophical thought was arising and they 'herald what may yet be, surprisingly, the dawn of the age of reason in North America.'18 The lectures immediately established George's reputation among academics across the country as a dynamic, original, and powerful thinker. Rex Williams from Copp Clark was sufficiently impressed that he approached George and asked him to revise it for publication. Philosophy in the Mass Agewas published the next year, 1959; the book confirmed the original impression. Robert Fulford, one of George's first and most faithful admirers outside the academic community, reviewed it in the Toronto Star. He praised the radio lectures as 'stunningly effective.' 'Grant's talks, obviously the product of a supple and curious mind, were models of their type - learned but clear, original but persuasive, highly personal but intensely communicative.' Although the published version lost 'Grant's marvellous radio personality,' the compensation was a chance to absorb his ideas more slowly and carefully.19 Co-publication in the United States was also a modest success. Sydney Harris, a columnist for the Chicago Daily News called it an unsatisfying book for those looking for answers to fundamental questions, but a useful one for those looking for the fundamental questions themselves. Its one hundred pages contain 'enough suggestive material for a dozen books.' Grant, he said, was 'worried and confused - and his book asks us to share his concerns and address ourselves to the ultimate problems of man's nature and destiny.'20 However, George was never more than a hair's breadth from controversy, though this one was of a more academic sort. When the second edition of Philosophy in the Mass Age appeared in 1966, George, as he liked to do, added a preface. In it he claimed that, at the 'theoretical level, I considered Hegel the greatest of all philosophers. He had partaken of all that was true and beautiful and good in the Greek world and was able to synthesize it with Christianity and with the freedom of the enlightenment and modern science.'21 This comment, together with the praise he continually bestowed on his friend and colleague, the Hegelian philosopher James Doull, has given rise to a substantial discussion among commentators about George's own Hegelian period in the 1950s. Joan O'Donovan, for instance, speaks of'the reluctant Hegelianism of Philosophy in the Mass Age,'22 and suggests that within the space of a few years, he 'moved from a cautious and qualified acceptance of Hegel's understanding of history to a radical and seemingly unqualified rejection of it.'23

No satisfactory compromise

193

This debt to Hegel and to Doull was undoubtedly important, but it has to be considered together with George's other acknowledgments of his intellectual debts. For example, in 1961 during a TV program on Kant, George declared: 'It was Kant who illumined me as far as philosophy went, who taught me to be a philosopher.' And in 1972, he wrote to his old Queen's professor J.A. Cony: 'Since 1947 I would call myself a Christian Platonist and the deepest good fortune of my life has been to find that as I have come, even slightly, to understand Christianity and Platonism, I have found myself more deeply held by them, except in certain unimportant details.'24 Other important evidence is found in his notebooks for this period. Sheila Grant, who has examined them carefully, thinks that they confirm her recollection that even at the time he often expressed serious reservations about Hegelianism and that he never expressed for Hegel the prodigious love he showed for other writers such as Plato, Simone Weil, and Kant. In a letter to her in 1957, at the heart of his supposed Hegelian period, he expressed strong reservations. If a philosophy of history were possible, he wrote, then Hegel was onto 'something prodigious' when he argued that history was the unfolding of freedom in the world. But to say that it was prodigious did not mean that it was true, only that Hegel had declared what the mass of modern men believed to be true in a deeper and more profound way than anyone else. The strengths of Hegel's philosophy were: (1) it faced the existence of evil and understood it correctly; (2) it did not reject the old theological tradition, but attempted to bring it within a progressive view of history; and (3) it had a consummate knowledge of the intricate, empirical facts of history. In spite of these strengths Hegel failed, 'as I tried to say to James [Doull] the other night and when I say failed I do not mean to imply anything about whether success is possible - though if it is not possible then we must just accept an impotence in a kind of act of acceptance of evil, which is what I think Hegel and James do and which is perhaps the true religious act. - he failed to show how those who accepted his philosophy should act in the world - a supremely social philosophy ends up with an implied hiatus between philosophy and social policy.'25 To understand why George read Hegel and also why he thought he had learned so much from him in spite of the fact that his philosophy was not ultimately true, it helps to break George's overall philosophical project down into three parts. The first and most important question was, What is true about God and morality? The Gospels adequately answered this question from a practical point of view, but to understand the divine

194 George Grant in a complete and coherent (that is, philosophical) way it was necessary to study Plato and St Augustine among the ancients and Simone Weil among the moderns. These were his highest authorities, because whenever he was puzzled about the meaning of something in the Gospels, their writings provided an intellectually satisfying answer that was consistent with the Gospels' teaching. George was also interested in the answer to two other questions that did not seem, on the surface, to be much related to the first one. They were, however, clearly related to one another. First, he inquired about the fundamental characteristics of the modern world: What makes it what it is? Second, how has it come to be? To answer these questions, he turned to a wide variety of sources different from the first. Some were little more than illuminating fragments, such as Werner von Braun's comment, 'Man belongs to wherever he wants to go.' Others, such as the pedagogical writings of Dewey, he found useful precisely because they were shallow. Their very shallowness made it easy to see aspects of the modern, because they unwittingly exposed its presuppositions. Yet his admiration was reserved for those who penetrated deeply into the nature of the modern and laid bare its essence. Sartre was the first of these guides, then Jacques Ellul, and Nietzsche. As he explained to his senior philosophy class at Dalhousie in 1959, he found the contemporary German philosopher Martin Heidegger so important because his late works give us insight into how the particular world we inhabit came into existence: 'Western thought has floated out upon a great tide of nihilism, and the origin of that nihilism is what happened to philosophy somewhere between the time of Parmenides and Plato.'26 George's interest in apparently contradictory philosophies such as those of Plato and Hegel, or Simone Weil and Heidegger, is perfectly intelligible once it is understood that he was turning to different thinkers for answers to different questions. The puzzle that continually recurred was that, when he compared the answers to the two previous questions - What is true about God? What is the character of the modern world? - they seemed incompatible. He could not see how, as he liked to put it, one could think together the eternal truths given by the first study with the character of the modern revealed through die second study. Other than leading to moral action, George's other test for a philosophy was that it must be both comprehensive and coherent. He knew that, for now, his was not, though he could take some consolation in the fact that he knew of no other thinker who could pass both tests.27

No satisfactory compromise 195 Hegel deserved attention, and his thought was prodigious, because it gave a powerful explanation of the unfolding of freedom in the world. Most people nowadays accepted this development, and they also thought that the remorseless spread of freedom throughout the world was good for human beings. Yet to say that a philosophy like Hegel's was prodigious was not to discuss its truth or falsity. George thought that the Platonic idea of an eternal moral order was true. What he hoped to learn from Hegel was how this moral and metaphysical fact could be reconciled with the modern experience of subjective freedom. Hegel seemed to teach that the process of the unfolding of freedom was still taking place. Perhaps, George thought, the fact that the process was still incomplete was the key to understanding why it had not yet been reconciled with the eternal moral order. Might it not be possible, once free subjectivity came into full existence in the world, to affirm both Sartre's view and Plato's without contradiction? He concluded that he had to watch even more carefully what was happening in the world: 'We in North America are at a stage where new and vital images have to come from God to man and I want to open myself to those new images as they are given.'28 The Soviets succeeded in putting a satellite, Sputnik, into orbit around the earth in 1957 and, as he reflected on this phenomenon, George came one step closer to understanding the character of the modern world. Most people thought that the communist East and the capitalist West represented rival destinies for humanity. Sputnik convinced him that Russian Marxism and American capitalism were in essence the same. Sputnik was a symbol that they were merely alternative versions of the same technological mass production. Soviet Marxism was a 'well thought out humanist faith,'29 and its understanding of philosophy was 'quite outside such a concept as the pure desire to know.'30 The contemplative ideal stood in opposition to both Russia and America. He developed this insight in a talk he gave on the CBC as a year-end review on 27 December 1959 under the title 'Christ, What a Planet.' 'What fascinated me most in 1959 was watching the North American ruling classes being forced to recognise what was happening in the world. After all, how could this not be central for a Canadian? Our destiny and our children's destiny in the world are so much bound up with the kind of society this capitalist and managerial elite is bringing into being. More important, any sensible person knows that the society that is emerging in North America is what will eventually appear everywhere.'31 The modern world attracted and repelled him at the same time, but he

196 George Grant thought that if he were ever to see the direction in which it was moving, he had to experience modernity in its fullness. Consequently he felt isolated in Nova Scotia and he began to think seriously that he should leave Dalhousie. In the summer of 1958 McGill invited him to Montreal to discuss the possibility of an appointment to its theology school. He was not much interested in the job. The ecclesiastics there, he said, put the organized church higher than the truth. Besides they wanted him to do several jobs, which meant twice as much work as at Dalhousie, and they did not seem likely to offer a salary that made living in Montreal possible. Still, he thought it could do no harm if the news of the offer reached the right ears at Dalhousie, and a memo from the dean to the president in July 1958 shows that the rumour had been effectively spread. George was not really upset that the job was unattractive, since 'the thought of the mystery and holiness of Terrence Bay' made remaining at Dalhousie attractive.32 That summer he arranged with a carpenter from Dalhousie to build what he rightly but affectionately called a shack. George bought the necessary supplies on the carpenter's instructions and then together, in their spare time, they drove to Terrence Bay to work on it. Often both sets of children came too and they took a picnic. While the children played by the water or climbed up to the lighthouse, George and the carpenter quickly erected the cottage. Later in life he returned to Halifax mostly to be near it; it is there he is buried. His love for it was very great. He was away for part of the summer of 1958, earning a little extra money, travelling about central Canada with Allan Wargon and making a program on belief in the modern world for CBC television. He interviewed a number of prominent Canadians including K.C. MacDonald from the National Research Council and his old UCC schoolmate Robertson Davies, then editor of the Peterborough Examiner, about their religious beliefs. Wargon remembered the summer well: 'In discussion, though we often disagreed, I found him always intelligent and enjoyable; in ordinary matters of living I found him a great baby. But he had delightful sides. Women were among our subjects of conversation and observation and more than once he cried: "Oh, I'm becoming filled with lust - I yearn for my wife!"'33 Apparently his desires were fulfilled, for their sixth and last child, David, was born in December 1959. It was in 1959 that his departure from Dalhousie began to appear imminent. One day the phone rang at the apartment at 200 University Avenue. George answered. At the other end of the line was Maynard Hutchins, former president of the University of Chicago, now heading the

No satisfactory compromise 197 Encyclopaedia Britannica. George had never met him, although he had favourably reviewed one of his books while still at Queen's. 'Are you George Grant?' he asked. 'I want you for my encyclopaedia.' And he mentioned a salary that staggered George. 'You come down and see me.' George went to Los Angeles to meet Hutchins and discuss the prospect of working for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The high-powered people he met treated him well and he found Hutchins charismatic. However, the discussions about how to organize the encyclopaedia were prolonged, intense, and bitter. The dispute was whether to continue the encyclopaedia in its current, positivist form, or to transform it into a contemporary version of Diderot's great work, and try to assess the modern world from a comprehensive and critical perspective. George thought that this was possible since there were able young professors in North America who were 'aware of the emptiness of the older academic tradition.' An encyclopaedia should bring together all knowledge under a principle of meaning that gives order and cogency to the work as a whole. It was most appropriate to do this in North America because here mass society had been taken almost to its limit, and consequently the absence of meaning was more evident to sensitive and intelligent Americans than to the members of any other society.35 Such an encyclopaedia, he argued in a memorandum he wrote for Hutchins, might not appeal to many people, those merely looking for facts. But man's increasing mastery over nature could lead large numbers of people freely to seek rational meaning in existence. They might be eager for a new synthetic approach. 'It is a wager which the Board can decide to take or not. If our society is moving to a more rational way of life, then it is worth taking. If our society is falling apart, it is not. In the latter eventuality, the present Encyclopedia neither did much harm nor much good, except to provide certain people with incomes which they could probably earn by selling some other commodity.' George eventually concluded that he had been brought in to state one extreme position clearly, but that Hutchins had little intention of hiring him. By May, however, George was actively pursuing another possibility outside Los Angeles at Claremont College. He was determined to leave Dalhousie and the provincialism of Nova Scotia, which he considered bad for his children. Although he preferred to stay in Canada, he thought there was little chance of moving in Canada, because the 'scholar humanists' who controlled philosophy appointments in Canada found his philosophical stance suspect. It was also important for his work to be in a highly advanced and explicitly industrial society like California. He

198 George Grant wrote to his Uncle Raleigh for advice and awaited developments.36 In the middle of June 1959 George went down to Claremont for a twoweek visit to see if he liked the place and they him. The third day after he arrived Charity called to say that a place was available for their mother in a nursing home, but it had to be taken up immediately.37 George made his apologies and flew back from California to Toronto. Sylva Gelber, Michael's sister, took George and his mother the sixty miles to the Homewood Sanatorium in Guelph and, as they drove, they chatted distractedly to ward off silence. Did his mother love him? Did she really love him best? The answer was locked forever within her head. After years of proving his love to her and trying to extract a lucid, unmistakable sign in return he would never know with the certainty he wanted. George assumed that his family difficulties had ruined his chances with Claremont, but to his surprise they contacted him again in early November and invited him to visit again. He was still interested. Halifax, he thought, had many fewer potentialities for evil than California, but it also had much less potential for good. The question to be decided was whether the believing Christian should 'live outside the modern world (at its most modern) or in it?'38 Events were moving rapidly and George and Sheila explained to the children that they might be going to live somewhere they no longer needed snowsuits. Then, in late November, George received a pleasant surprise in the mail. Murray Ross, who was the YMCA representative on the Citizens' Forum during the last years of the war, was now president of the new university, York, that was being established in Toronto. He had always liked George and, when he heard that he was unhappy in Halifax, he wrote to offer him a position in York's philosophy department. George was delighted because he could fulfil a dream he thought closed to him because of his quarrel with Fulton Anderson and the Toronto department - living in his home town again and being closer to his mother. He considered the matter for a couple of weeks and then wrote to Ross indicating his keen interest, explaining his offer from Claremont and the need for a firm commitment from York. 'At the last moment,' he explained to Derek Bedson, 'I just drew back from California.'39 Although he would miss the peacefulness of Nova Scotia, Toronto was what he needed. On 4 December 1959 Ross wrote before the board met and offered the position of associate professor at a salary of $11,000 a year, with a contribution towards moving expenses. He followed this letter with another on 9 December enclosing a copy of York's mission statement, itself dated 3

No satisfactory compromise

199

December. The document justified the creation of a new university in Toronto, not just to prevent overcrowding, but 'to provide for some variety in higher education.' Every university develops, or should develop, its own distinctive educational program, and these different programs provide for the needs of different groups of students. This is as it should be, for not all human potentialities can be developed in precisely the same manner ... Only a general education dedicated to liberation xan produce such people. Knowledge must be acquired in relation to other knowledge, in relation to art, to ethics, to philosophy indeed to the universe, which it is precisely the task of a university to report upon, represent and constantly keep before the student ... The aim of York University will be to produce a student who understands himself, the society of which he is a member, and the world in which he lives. George must have thought that this statement was written just for him. He could imagine few things more congenial than the establishment of an alternative approach to the study of philosophy in Toronto. He had been sharply critical of the U of T's historical approach to philosophy almost a decade before in his 'Philosophy' report to the royal commission. When the mission statement spoke of knowledge in relation to ethics and philosophy, or the importance of the self-understanding of the student, it made this new university seem just what he had campaigned for his whole academic life. On 17 December he wrote to Dean Archibald to offer his resignation from Dalhousie, effective September 1960. When he came up to Toronto at the end of December to deliver 'Christ, What a Planet,' he had tea with Ross at his home. In George's words: T pulled my self-courage together and said, 'This is what matters; I want to have freedom to build the kind of Philosophy [department I think is important]." He said, 'This is why we want you; you're the kind of fellow who'll do this."'40 The formal letter of appointment was sent on 28 January 1960 and the appointment was announced to the press on 1 February; George would also serve as founding chairman of the new department. He knew that the University of Toronto had never been a possibility; so he was glad things had worked out in this way, and he could return to his home town. George may have been the first appointment to the new faculty; he certainly was the first to resign. The skein began to unravel on 10 February when York's registrar sent George a copy of the University of Toronto's calendar, with the comment that since York was teaching fewer

200 George Grant courses than Toronto in its first few years, it was possible to provide a fuller course description. He invited George to write a paragraph on the first-year course in philosophy, and noted: 'We will, of course, be teaching the University of Toronto course in philosophy and with your permission I will show your paragraph to the Faculty of Arts Office before including it in the Calendar.'41 Upon receipt of this unhappy message, George went to consult his friend, Jim Aitchison, who knew Fulton Anderson well, explained the circumstances, and asked whether he should write directly to Anderson and express his misgivings. With George's consent Aitchison drafted a letter on his behalf; however, the letter offended Anderson, who responded angrily. In an attempt at mitigation, Aitchison wrote again to explain that the letter was his and not George's. The steely reply was that George was responsible for the letters he signed. This development did not augur well for a successful resolution of the problem.42 At this point matters got worse and rapidly. Writing directly to Toronto was an innocent mistake, but one it proved impossible to correct. There was clearly no goodwill between George and Anderson on which to draw. The history of bad blood between them began when George had criticized Anderson's book on Bacon; his 'Philosophy' report for the royal commission just made matters worse. Their personal relationship was no better than their professional connection; George had reacted with disgust once when Anderson made a pass at him at a party. Anderson was a giant of a man and as pompous and proud as he was large. He wrote George firmly and brusquely to explain that for the first four years of its existence, York would be under the tutelage of the University of Toronto. 'This means,' he wrote, 'as the President of York has expressly told me, that the courses in the two institutions will, during this period, be identical. Philosophy lb does not include Ethics, nor does its subject matter encroach upon the courses in the History of Philosophy which will follow in the second and third year.'43 The other person with whom George was forced to negotiate was Marcus Long, a former United Church clergyman, now a cynical secularist in George's view. Long, as secretary to the department, wrote to outline 'the established tradition' in the first year, 'to stimulate interest in philosophy by discussing some major problems at an elementary level. The following list is offered for your guidance: substance, quality, quantity, space, time, causality, mechanism, teleology, God, value. We have found it useful to provide the students with alternative points of view on the topics. We also introduce, at an elementary level, some of the out-

No satisfactory compromise 201 standing philosophers.' The general approach could be seen by looking at Long's own book, The Spirit of Philosophy. George could choose his own textbooks or supplementary readings, but he had to follow the same general subject-matter. That requirement particularly excluded teaching ethics in the introductory course, and it also made it undesirable to introduce Plato into the first-year course, as George always did, because it would overlap with the second-year course on Greek philosophy.44 To George these arrangements were completely unacceptable. George turned for help to Murray Ross, writing on 27 February to explain his predicament. He had realized, he said, that York was to be under the guidance of Toronto, but he had not understood that this arrangement entailed teaching identical courses. He explained that when he wrote to Anderson about teaching Plato's Republic, the greatest book on what makes a good life, Anderson replied 'civilly but forcibly' that York students were to follow courses identical to Toronto's. George was shocked: 'I had understood when I accepted your offer that the York teachers were going to have some freedom in what they taught and how they taught it. The minimum condition of there being any freedom is for the teacher to have some say in the setting and marking of the papers of the courses he teaches ... I do not relish the prospect of being "in statu pupillari" to the U. of T.'45 He relished even less being under Anderson's thumb. Ross replied on 4 March 1960 in an attempt to defuse the issue. He acknowledged that the four-year arrangement involved less freedom that one might prefer; but he thought there were more advantages than disadvantages and proposed that they wait until George arrive on campus to pursue the matter more fully. George was not the only new faculty member to object to these arrangements, and in recognition of the general discontent, President Ross sent a memo to the teaching staff on 22 March: We are now engaged in negotiating with the University of Toronto the precise terms of our temporary affiliation with this University. It seems quite clear that during our period of affiliation our academic programme will be under the jurisdiction of the Senate of the University of Toronto, that our students will be required to write the regular University of Toronto examinations, and that successful candidates will receive a University of Toronto degree. I think it is quite important that the members of our staff who are not familiar with the Toronto courses should write Mr. Smith or myself for detailed information on the courses they are to teach next year.46

202 George Grant That his students had to write U of T exams added yet another layer of control. The more George thought about the situation, the angrier he got. He had accepted the York post because it promised an educational alternative to Toronto, but it was under Toronto's thumb. He had given supreme importance as a teacher to his freedom to decide the content of his courses, and had completed his D.Phil, so that he had sufficient status to protect his autonomy. He did not pursue openings at Queen's because he feared he might have to sacrifice some independence. Now he was not allowed to decide so fundamental a matter as the content of the first-year course; someone whose approach to philosophy he held in contempt would tell him what he could teach. Anderson, he thought, was not being stubborn; he was being vindictive. There were matters on which it was not possible to compromise, and the nature of philosophic education was central among these. George talked the matter over and over with Sheila. One evening they left their six children with a babysitter and went out to a restaurant for dinner: T can't do what they want me to. I just have to quit.' With Sheila's total support, he sat down on 14 April to draft his letter of resignation. Key to his decision was the practical need to use Marcus Long's textbook, which, contrary to its claim of objectivity, he believed really took the side of nineteenth-century philosophy against classical philosophy. More than that, this book was not a work of philosophy; it was a work about philosophy. Its tendency was to encourage scepticism among students; it introduced them to a lot of opinions, but it did not direct them to the real task of trying to make true judgments about those matters. Some people suggested that he compromise and use the book, but attack it in class. That, he allowed, might be fun, but it would also be unjust. The weaker students would be faced with two conflicting accounts and an exam to be set and marked by Toronto examiners. It also demeaned philosophy: students would ask why he used a book he disliked, and he would have no answer except the degrading one of the necessity of earning a living and liking his home town: 'Such considerations would not stand up against the unflinching moral judgements of which youngsters are capable.' The use of an alternative textbook placed an unfair burden on students, especially the marginal ones, who were required to write Toronto exams. This brought the argument back to Long's The Spirit of Philosophy. Let me make it clear that I consider the practice of religion and the practice of philosophy two distinct human activities. I do not think that philosophy can

No satisfactory compromise 203 prove or disprove Christian doctrine. My position on this matter is illustrated by the fact that the philosopher I admire the most in North America is Leo Strauss at Chicago. He is a practising Jew and I would have no hesitation in saying that he is a better philosopher than any practising Christian I know on this continent ... I do not ask that the textbooks I use should be directed toward the spread of my religion (I suggested the works of Plato and Russell neither of whom are in any way identified with the Christian Church and neither of whose philosophies do I think are completely true.) But I could hardly be expected to use a book which misrepresents the religion of my allegiance.47 Unexpectedly Ross not only accepted the resignation, but did so quickly. On 20 April he wrote back to George: 'I need not tell you that I was very surprised by the contents of your letter of April 13th and that I was disappointed at the conclusions you have reached. Since receiving your letter, I have, of course, given the matter a good deal of thought, and I feel I have no alternative but to accept your resignation ... Although I greatly regret your decision, I respect the convictions which led you to make it.'48 When he received this reply, George overcame his intense dislike of the long-distance telephone, and called Murray Ross on 25 April to say that he would still like to go to York and would agree to any reasonable steps to that end. Ross agreed to pursue the matter and get back in touch. What George did not know (and was not told until he had moved to Toronto) was that under the terms of the agreement between York and Toronto, the U of T's approval was necessary for any hiring, and at this point it was unlikely that Anderson would have agreed to his appointment unless George bowed the knee. George might not have been paranoid, but he did think a lot of people were out to get him. In this case, it is likely he was right. The decision was taken, but there was to be a long denouement. George Tatham, a friend of Charity's, set to work as a mediator. He contacted Ross and assured George that the matter was still capable of satisfactory settlement. Ross had proposed a conference early in the fall between all the departments, using the delay to allow the U of T departments to cool down. George was not to worry about final exams: 'A satisfactory compromise will be possible.'49 Given his experience with the University of Toronto over the Hart House appointment, George could be forgiven for not being so trustful. He felt he could not take any further initiative with York without it appearing that he was not serious about his resignation. He told Tatham though that the idea of the general situation being worked out by the two universities together, rather

204 George Grant than department by department, 'seems to me eminently reasonable and presents a solid way of getting over the difficulty.'50 However, until something happened from York, he was unemployed and began to write to other universities. The idea of humbling himself before Dalhousie was not an option. He had, in any event, irrevocably decided to leave. On 10 May Ross wrote George a letter suggesting the matter was closed; he had to make arrangements for teaching philosophy at York for the next year,51 and his hiring was now complete. However, on 12 May Ross wrote again to say that he was going to be in Halifax for a couple of hours on the 19th and invited George to meet him at the airport.52 It was a meeting George never forgot. 'You could never put your finger on any point; nothing happened in the interview for three hours, but I was extremely worried about having no job. He'd certainly been trained in group dynamics and undercutting; I felt just absolutely impotent. I picked him up at the airport and we drove around and went to a restaurant. Then there was a whole lot of things about 'George boy,' 'you've made,' 'what are you doing?' I was trying to explain it again and it was all fading; it just drove me mad.'53 George was wild with anger and frustration; he went to Jim Aitchison, who comforted him, and George was forever grateful to Aitchison for his friendship that day. He needed it because as soon as Ross returned to Toronto, he sat down to write an official vindication of his own conduct, which portrayed the whole fiasco as entirely George's fault. It ended icily: 'I wanted to convey to you, in our talk in Halifax, our friendly intent toward you. It is obvious that the situation has changed at York and that there cannot be a full-time appointment for you here in the immediate future.'54 George was forty-one, married, had six children, and was unemployed. He decided anyway that his family would move to Toronto. Like Dickens's Mr Micawber, he could only hope that something would turn up.

14

Old and dirty and fat

Ed Andrew came down to Halifax in August to drive the Grants' car to Toronto. Like any good philosopher George miscalculated the amount of money his young nephew needed and Ed, forced by necessity to be resourceful, did odd jobs along the route to earn gas money. George and his family flew. Coming in from the airport, he was roused from what Kant called his 'dogmatic slumbers' by the new society he saw around him: 'I remember being gripped in the sheer presence of the booming, pulsating place which had arisen since 1945. What did it mean? Where was it going? What had made it? How could there be any stop to its dynamism without disaster, and yet, without a stop, how could there not be a disaster? And part of that experience was the knowledge that I had come home to something that never could be my home.'1 Philosophy for him arose from these lived experiences, from 'the most immediate and concrete experiences of our lives, both public and private.' Charity had found a house for them at 132 Farnham Avenue,2 just down the road from Upper Canada College. The older children attended Brown School, where their father had once briefly been a student. Susanna Wild, whose mother had taken her to see George the day he was born, was living with her family on Alcorn Avenue at the bottom of the hill. The families were roughly the same age and saw a lot of each other. The Wilds' friendship meant a lot to him that year, and perked him up often when he was depressed. George recounted one time when, on the subway heading home, he met the Wilds' effervescent daughter: 'I felt old and dirty and fat. At Wellesley, Shelley got on. Here was this young, glowing character. She came rushing over and sat down beside me.' 3 Throughout the year George was almost in despair about how to provide for his family in the future. For the moment, though, his problems

206 George Grant were not pressing. While he was looking for a job, one of the inquiries led to Mortimer Adler and the Institute for Philosophical Research in San Francisco. Adler was a colleague of Maynard Hutchins and for 1961 they were collaborating on a project, The Great Ideas Today 1961, a review of recent developments over a wide range of topics. George was hired to write two pieces: an entry on philosophy and religion, and a manuscript titled The Idea of Freedom, a summary of a vast work undertaken by Adler's Institute. Adler agreed that George could work out of Toronto, rather than move to California, and for this he received a salary roughly equivalent to what he would have earned at York. To someone for whom true philosophy originated in lived experience, there could be few less appealing prospects than reading and writing a report on some fifty books on philosophy and religion, selected not because they were true, profound, or even interesting, but only because they had been recently published. Under the circumstances George acquitted himself with honour. He balked at only two, Quine's Word and Object and Roth's Judaism. These he turned over to Sheila for assessment, and duly incorporated her analysis into the final 25,000-word review article.4 It might well be said that with this intensive immersion in contemporary philosophical and religious thought George effectively completed his formal training as a philosopher begun so casually as Queen's twenty years before. On the question of Hegel's influence, we can note that although he describes Kant and Hegel as 'the two leading geniuses' who were in disagreement about how wisdom was to be attained,5 it was the study of Kant's moral philosophy that was 'indispensable to anyone who would like to understand the moral ideas of modern Europe.'6 And it was St Augustine who was 'the greatest Christian philosopher and theologian of the ancient world (and perhaps of all times).'7 Abstract speculation, though, was always brought back to earth. As he told Susanna Wild: 'I finished that thing for the Encyclopedia, and I was lying in the bath, and I concluded after a while that I'd really rather my children were good than happy.'8 By contrast to this bloodless piece, he delivered a much more profound and passionate address to St John's, the Anglican college in Winnipeg. After his encounter with York, he had been disappointed that so few people understood why he felt it necessary to resign. He concluded that he had to fight the question of Christianity and the universities openly, and to warn his church that 'the young faithful cannot be left like lambs among the ravishing wolves of secularism in the universities.'9 Since he delivered his talk on 1 November, All Saints' Day, he reminded his listen-

Old and dirty and fat 207 ers that saints were the 'crowning glory of the church' before whom 'the practical organisers and the intellectuals of the church must stand in awe.'10 Christian education, he went on, had to avoid two dangers. On the one side there was Tertullian, who had asked what Athens had to do with Jerusalem. He meant, Why did Christians who knew the Gospel need philosophy? On the other there was Origin, who so subordinated Christianity to philosophy that Christianity became little more than 'a watereddown philosophy for the masses.'11 George himself could speak about the place of a believer inside the mass secular university, since over his thirteen years at Dalhousie he had learned 'the difficulties, traps, suspicions, agonies that are involved in such a situation.'12 Mass technological education took place in North America increasingly in large and powerful institutions, which produced rudderless people who have never been taught to think deeply about the philosophical and theological traditions of the West. In the past the dangers to society from secularizing education were fewer. The necessity of constant and prolonged physical labour had been a protection in two senses. The most obvious was that it left little time for most people to be educated out of their religious faith. More subtly, the sheer necessity of hard physical labour taught people 'the attention and discipline necessary to give life direction and intensity.' Modern technology will remove the masses from that necessity, and this blessing is one for which we can thank God.13 However, it will be necessary to replace the training for attention with education so that life did not become 'a frittering away in listless and increasingly perverted pleasures.' 'Mass leisure without mass education can obviously only lead to disaster. Even mass leisure with flaccid mass education will lead to disaster.'14 He had gone to Winnipeg, as it were, to preach for a call. Soon after he resigned from York he wrote to Derek Bedson to warn him and help other 'Christians outside the universities to know what gates of evil these secular universities can be. Educated Christians have a traditional respect for universities because they founded them and it is therefore hard for them to recognise that universities can be sources of evil as well as good.'15 He also asked his friend's advice about jobs. Since Bedson was clerk of the executive council in Manitoba he had connections of the most useful kind, and quickly turned up two possibilities that he thought might interest George. The first was the presidency of Brandon College; the second a comparable sort of position at St John's in Winnipeg. Whatever one might say about the quality of the education at Balliol after the war, the friends one made came in useful.

208 George Grant In spite of assurances that he could delegate most of the administration at Brandon and concentrate on raising the academic standing of the institution, he declined the position when it was offered him. He worried about moving the children and making the sacrifice for what was not a 'real evangelical job.'16 However, he was still interested in the other possibility. As for St. John's it would interest me greatly - much more than the possibility you mentioned over the phone. My reason is the following: in the body of Christ there are many functions all necessary to that body - but mine is theory - theology and philosophy and I am determined to stick to that function rather than go into administration. I would be willing to do administration in a theological college because that would be serving an end which is related to my thought - but this administration of large secular institutions is largely having to pander to the pushing aims of the boom world. I will write to Archbishop Barfoot setting out my qualifications.17 While these negotiations were progressing, George was presented with a third opportunity to consider life in Manitoba late in 1960. Historian W.L. Morton, on leave in Oxford, heard of George's difficulties. He wrote to Bill Sibley, head of the philosophy department at the University of Manitoba, wondering whether there was any way to help George. It might be a lost cause, Morton said, but he was writing from Oxford, the home of lost causes, and George's type of philosophy merited support. Although they were not planning any immediate additions to the staff, Sibley was able to persuade the president to authorize an approach, and George was invited for an interview and then to dinner at the Sibleys. Like many people before and after, they were fascinated by his little idiosyncrasies and mannerisms, 'which somewhat set him apart from the rest of the crowd.' 'Both my wife and I well recall the interesting afterdinner chat, and ingrained in our memories is the spectacle of cigarette ash constantly dropping from George's cigarette on to his rather ample frame - so much so that we kept wondering all night whether he would set himself on fire.'18 On 9 January 1961 Sibley was able to write offering George a job commencing at the beginning of September at the rank of associate professor and with a salary of $n,000.19 He could have stayed in his current job for another year or two, but the more he came to know Hutchins and Adler, the more he felt uncomfortable with them. They were good philosophers, he concluded, but as Aristotelians they lacked the transcendent mysticism and ecstatic side of

Old and dirty and fat 209 Christianity. Their philosophy was 'all tangled up with greed and power' in a way he did not like and that he had not understood when he first met them.20 That discovery meant that he wanted to get back into the academic world. Ironically, the very secularization of higher education that George feared was, above all in Ontario, about to unleash an unprecedented wave of university expansion. The creation of York was only one manifestation. McMaster University was originally founded as a Baptist college, and eager youngsters such as Harold Innis came from the Ontario countryside to the main building on Bloor at Avenue Road in Toronto to be educated within the framework of their faith. It was the merits of just this type of Christian college that George had sung in Winnipeg, but its sort was rapidly disappearing. In 1930 McMaster moved to a larger site in Hamilton, and consistent with Baptist traditions, accepted no state support. However, by 1957 it became evident that the university needed a larger income than private donations could provide. H.G. Thode had built an impressive research team in chemistry and nuclear studies. It was clear that government funding was necessary for further expansion, and to acquire it McMaster became non-denominational. A separate, affiliated divinity college was established.21 President George Gilmour, himself a theologian and an exceptional undergraduate teacher, feared the divinity school would become merely a professional institute, setting its main task as the training of ministers. As a separate administrative entity its courses and concerns would not be central to McMaster's future undergraduates.22 He decided in 1959 to create a department of religion, and he persuaded Paul Clifford to found it. Clifford was an Oxford-educated Englishman who had joined McMaster in 1953. They were now looking for suitable additions to the faculty of the new department. Clifford first heard of George Grant when Canon Michael Creal, a Toronto clergyman who knew George, rang him up in late November 1960 and told him of George's availability.23 William Kilbourn, who had been deeply impressed when he heard 'Philosophy in the Mass Age' on the CBC, heard of George's difficulties with York. He independently contacted George, whom he had not previously met, to tell him about the new department.24 On 10 December 1960 George wrote Paul Clifford a brief letter stating his background and his interest in a position. In it he declared that his chief concern was that 'the truth of Christianity should be given a fair and intellectual hearing in the universities of Canada. My experience of that question has altogether been in a highly secularized university where

210 George Grant indifference and hostility combine to produce certain difficulties. It would therefore be of the greatest interest to me to understand the question in the very different setting of McMaster which has kept a certain connection with the Church.' Intellectually he wanted to understand the relationship between the truths of philosophy and science and those of revelation. The work on the Bible that most impressed him was Eric Voegelin's Israel and Revelation, a book he thought helped youngsters understand the categories of the Bible in the modern age.25 Clifford was impressed and suggested George contact the dean. Towards the end of December or early in January George arrived at Herb Armstrong's office. Armstrong was a geologist with a lively mind and a cultured intelligence; he was amused rather than offended by the fact that George showed up looking for a job with traces of several meals on his jacket. Armstrong liked him instantly, and the feeling was strongly reciprocated; they soon became friends. After George explained his qualifications and the train of events that had left him looking for a job, Armstrong pursued the matter. This led to an invitation for an interview with the president. George had met Gilmour once before, at an SCM weekend, and at breakfast was abusive to him about something he had said. He now approached the president's door with some trepidation, but Gilmour greeted him with a big smile, and said: 'Come ye in peace or come ye in war?' At the end of their talk, he presented George with his own black homburg hat, as a token of friendship. George kept it for special occasions like weddings and funerals. By 18 January his immediate future was settled; he could turn down the offer from Manitoba, and he was grateful he could rule out going to the United States: 'It means a great deal to myself and my wife and children not to have to become Americans.'26 His new job, as he saw it initially, was to teach Christian doctrine to non-divinity students. At Dalhousie, he felt that he had to be very careful how he drew the line between philosophy and Christianity. Now, he thought, he could speak more directly: 'It has not been philosophy but Christian doctrine that has got me through the vicissitudes of life, and I think there is a crying need for young people to know what Christian doctrine is.'27 His future satisfactorily settled, he could now turn his attention to what was proving an increasingly hectic year. The uncertainty and his worries about money led him to undertake whatever lucrative opportunities presented themselves. One of these was a series of four television programs on great philosophers, which were broadcast on four consecutive Wednesdays, beginning 12 July 1961. Eric Koch and Lewis Miller at the

Old and dirty and fat 211 CBC felt that George had both the philosophical and creative ability to make the programs work. The format combined interviews with George by Harry Mannis, punctuated by dramatizations of philosophical conversations, to illustrate the points George was making. He wrote two of the philosophical dramatizations himself, those on Kant and St Augustine. Miller contributed those on Plato and Hume. The quality of the production was very high. The main difficulty was getting the actors to stick to the closely written script. Most, like Barry Morse, were of the method school of acting and thought they should start with a general idea and then improvise. The programs were popularizations of philosophical ideas, but the central themes of George's thought come through clearly: that Plato, whose Republic-was the most influential book other than the Bible for the Western world, taught us that justice was what measures and defines us; that in St Augustine the two sources from which all our wisdom comes, Greek philosophy and biblical religion, are united; that if he could save only one book out of modern civilization, it would be Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. He was frustrated in his efforts to teach philosophy by television because 'one can ask attention from people for so short a time.'28 However, he was so moved by Black Montreal actor Percy Rodriguez, who played St Augustine, that he hoped to write a play for him.29 From the CBC's point of view the only difficulty in working with George was keeping him neat when he was on camera. They solved the problem by buying him a suit to change into when he arrived at the studio. In between sessions they kept it and got it pressed. It worked; George never looked more presentable. He also received another remunerative offer, to help set the direction for a progressive new political movement in Canada. After the CCF had been devastated in the Diefenbaker landslide of 1958, a movement began to create a new party allied to organized labour, which could free itself of the CCF's increasingly oppressive political legacy rooted in the years of the Great Depression. The election in 1960 of Jean Lesage's Liberals in Quebec with their commitment to a Quiet Revolution added increased impetus to the mood of change. A group of intellectuals, many based in Montreal, decided with the aid of a grant from the Boag Foundation of British Columbia, a trust for socialist education, to publish a collection of essays, Social Purpose for Canada. As the founding convention of the new party became imminent, work began in earnest, and George was invited to join the group of contributors. The invitation can probably be traced to a family connection. Frank

212 George Grant Scott, poet and constitutional lawyer, had for decades been one of the intellectual pillars of the Canadian left, and was now at the centre of the New Party movement. Scott was at Oxford with George's uncle Raleigh Parkin. They were neighbours and lifelong friends in Montreal, and Aunt Louise was also very close to Scott, whose politics she shared. If, as seems likely, the Parkins proposed his name, the other contributors were not unhappy with the suggestion. George was a welcome addition to their number. It was an academically distinguished group that included his old friend Kenneth McNaught and a relatively unknown Quebec law professor and journalist, Pierre Trudeau. On first blush the invitation was somewhat odd, because George had not been actively involved in 'progressive' politics in Halifax. His attempts to work for the Conservatives fizzled out, and his temptation to deviancy was to the Liberals. However, Philosophy in the Mass Age, which reached a national audience, spoke kindly of Marx and was radically critical of modern capitalism. If you disregarded his Christianity, (and most of the academics surely did not believe that it lay at the core of his thought), then he would make an articulate addition to their group. Why did George do it? At one obvious level, the answer was the same that George gave for undertaking most projects of this sort. It paid $1000, a substantial sum for a man with six children and uncertain job prospects. He surely would not have done it, at that time in his life, for nothing. However, he shared the group's belief that a new world was emerging that needed a more profound response than American liberal capitalism or Soviet Marxism. Once involved, he got caught up in the spirit. There were pleasant meetings in Montreal, followed by receptions at the Parkins', and there was one wildly enjoyable weekend at a cottage on Lake Memphremagog, where Michael Oliver remembers George sprawling across an armchair, seeming with his great bulk to take up not just the chair, but the whole room. His article for Social Purpose for Canada proposed an ethic of community as an alterative to the ethic that drove state capitalist mass society. The language sounds socialist, but the analysis of contemporary North American society is a development of his earlier arguments in 'Philosophy in the Mass Age,' working out in greater detail and with more illustrations the ideas advanced in his radio lectures. Mass society meant 'the radically new conditions under which our highly organized technological society makes us live,'30 a set of circumstances so novel and so different from the past that nobody can describe them adequately or fathom accurately what

Old and dirty and fat 213 is coming to be in the world. What was key about the new society was that it gave human beings a sense that they now had complete freedom to make themselves.31 Yet contemporary capitalism had not in fact expanded human spiritual potential. Routine, boredom, and monotony balanced by banal pleasures were the norm. Although state capitalism was an effective practical system for producing and distributing goods,32 it was impossible to believe that a just and creative society might spontaneously emerge as technological affluence increased.33 It was necessary to discover a new and better ethic that must have at its core an enunciation of the principle of equality, and one soundly sustained lest we end up, as happened in communist regimes, with only lip-service paid to the ideal:34 'Equality should be the central principle of society since all persons, whatever their condition, must freely choose to live by what is right or wrong. This act of choosing is the ultimate human act and is open to all. In this sense all persons are equal, and differences of talent are of petty significance ... Our moral choices matter absolutely in the scheme of things. Any social order must then try to constitute itself within the recognition of this basic fact of moral personality which all equally possess.'35 This enunciation George described as 'an essentially religious foundation for equality.'36 The religious basis was the only one adequate to serve as a guide in the immensely difficult social practice of treating each person as important.37 As he learned from Oman and Kant, there was no point in treating people equally, unless there was something intrinsically valuable about personality that made all persons uniquely valuable and made it morally necessary to respect their rights, even when it did not serve our interests or inclinations to do so. Although this religious affirmation was theoretically necessary, George suggested that in the short term all those who believed in the central importance of equality could work together. The history of Canada demonstrated that 'common political ends can be sought without theoretical agreement.'38 The main reason why George thought it worthwhile to attempt an alliance with his new friends was the lesson he learned from working for Citizens' Forum during the war. The left genuinely cared about education, and education was the key when it came to responding to the mass society. The very form of human existence created by the mass society made imperative a struggle for equality of participation in order to escape 'the civilization of the ant-heap.' Technology created free time, but it was up to us to transform it into creative leisure: 'To overcome the impersonality of the mass society, new relationships in work and leisure must be developed and lived out; indeed new relation-

214 George Grant ships at every level of human existence - in art, in sex, and in religion.'39 George ended with a warning to those who thought that socialism was the culmination of the age of progress. 'It would be folly, of course, to think that these new experiences will come easily or inevitably. Human sin is a historical constant, however much the forms of it may vary from era to era.'40 When the founding convention of the New Democratic Party (NDP) took place in the summer of 1961, he could not go because he was too busy moving to his new house in Dundas, just outside Hamilton, but he regretted not accompanying Aunt Louise.41 In the election the next year he made one of his rare forays into practical politics. He was approached to stand as the NDP candidate; he declined, but worked hard in the NDP campaign as the campaign agent in his home riding of Hamilton West.42 He hoped the party would do well; if it were smashed, 'that would be an end of restraint on capitalism.'43 He thought it funny when he shared his concerns with Eugene Forsey that they were 'two socialists whose main political interest was that the Conservatives hold off the Liberal threat.'44 In spite of this enthusiasm, his connection with the New Democratic Party survived the publication ofSocial Purpose for Canadafor little more than a year. After he broke with the NDP he re-established contact with other, more radical critics of North American civilization, the New Left. While Aunt Louise was in Ottawa at the NDP's founding convention, George was engrossed in more domestic matters, specifically moving to a house his family would live in for the next twenty years. When he was in Toronto a few years earlier, he was appalled by 'the new large modern houses of the prosperous - and as for the little glass houses, they would be hell.' Instead, he wrote to Sheila that their family should have 'a thousand doors and an old fashioned Victorian house.'45 They got their dream house and five acres of land as well at 80 South Street, Dundas.46 Dundas is at the head of Lake Ontario and was the point from which settlers moved into south-western Ontario on Governor Simcoe's road. Because it was one of the first towns with manufacturing, it had a longestablished middle class. It was in one of their houses that the Grants now lived. With the end of the Second World War, Dundas had renewed its growth, and became part of the dynamic civilization of the Golden Horseshoe.47 The large brick house, built about the middle of the last century, has high ceilings and generously proportioned rooms. Most visitors felt that its noble decay was the perfect objective correlative for George. Sheila put

Old and dirty and fat 215 it somewhat differently: 'This house would be pretentious if it weren't so run down.' The setting added to its charm. To the children the long driveway seemed a fairyland where each year flowers came up and shrubs burst into bloom like magic. A stream ran through the bottom of the ravine, its slopes exploding each spring with lilacs. Before the Grants bought it the house had served as the centre for Anglican retreats for the diocese and George, with his enormous physical presence and eccentric manner, was soon known as 'The Bishop' in the neighbourhood.

15

The fifth column

While Sheila continued to sort out the new house and make arrangements for such essential matters as schools for the children, George was busily preparing for a series of direct confrontations with some of the most powerful forces that were shaping the modern world: psychiatrists and social workers on the one hand, natural scientists on the other. His willingness to confront them was, in a way, carrying on the family business. Like his grandfathers and his father, he too was a public moralist. In an age before mass electronic communication, his grandfathers and his father addressed their fellow citizens in a variety of ways. Principal Grant, the preacher, favoured sermons on topical issues;1 Parkin's medium was the public lecture; William Grant's was the school assembly hall, the League of Nations Society, and the Workers' Educational Association. To reach a wider audience they wrote their books and pamphlets. They eschewed political partisanship and, like the good Victorians they were, dedicated themselves to the res publica. As George wrote in a book review in 1964: 'Written and spoken sermons are a necessary part of the common good and liberals have as much right to them as anybody else.'2 Even before he started work on Lament for a Nation (itself a great piece of public moralizing) he gave much thought to his rival moralists in what came to be known as the caring professions. He first attacked progressive education, inspired by Dewey and its doctrine that the teacher's proper role was to ensure that pupils were well adjusted to their society. In the early 1960s, in part because of his mother's admission to Homewood Sanatorium, he turned his attention to the medical profession, in particular to psychiatry. In 'Conceptions of Health' (1962) he took aim at Freud and some of his American followers. Even in its origins, he argued, Freudian psychoan-

The fifth column 217 alysis was ambiguous about the relationship between modern science and its impact on man.3 In practice its own techniques implicitly accepted the ideal of controlling nature, but theoretically it understood that the gaining of power over nature was the principal cause of alienation in modern man.4 Freud's later writings made this paradox ever clearer. His treatment of the death instinct led to therapeutic pessimism: man could never live freely with his natural instincts; at best he could sublimate them.5 When the centre of psychoanalysis moved from secularized Jews living in the alien atmosphere of Vienna to respected doctors practising in New York and Chicago, this tension disappeared. The American medical profession had no theoretical reservations about modern science and accepted without question that the goals of modern science were good. When psychotherapy took over the leading role of providing mental health in a mass society, it did so as an extension of the practical 'dogoodery' of liberal Protestantism: 'Psychotherapists adjusted themselves to the needs, desires, and interests of the industrialized, democratic, capitalist society. Finally, as responsibility for the mass society grows, the very immediacies of practicality push the profession farther and farther away from clarity about its ends.'6 Yet as psychiatry became more influential, the weakness of its position grew more apparent. It understood human health in terms of adjustment to society, but that society itself was dynamic and constantly changing. Therefore, psychiatry could not tell us definitively what a healthy personality required. There was another, perhaps more serious, failing. Because psychiatry saw life only as pleasure through adjustment, it rejected such an elemental aspect of the human condition as expiatory suffering: 'If the Christian is to be in true repentance before the Cross, he must face some of his past acts as sins,' George reminded his readers.7 Christianity's incomparable truth was 'never to forget that suffering and death must be included in health as much as life and gratification. Nowhere has modern psychotherapy more mirrored and influenced our society of progress than in the way it disregards death or looks at it with stoicism.'8 Because of his explicit atheism, Freud was an obvious target for George, but when the CBC asked George to speak again in the 'Architects of Modern Thought' series in 1962 on Freud's great rival, Carl Gustav Jung, they might well have expected a sympathetic treatment because of Jung's reputation as a religious, almost mystic, thinker. Instead George took his attack on psychiatry to the airwaves. Although it was to Jung's immense merit, George allowed, that he studied the past not as a home of error and superstition but as something from which to learn, his

218 George Grant interest in religions and myths, particularly those of the East, like Freud's, was subordinated to the mental heath of human beings.9 Jung was not concerned with the truth or falsity of any particular religion, 'nor, as far as myth is concerned, with what transcendent reality is manifested in it.'10 It is this indifference to the truth of myth and religion that irrevocably separates him from those who live in myth: 'They are concerned with being open to reality; he is concerned with it as a psychological aid.'11 In disregarding the ultimate truth of religion, Jung was patronizing it: 'Is one more a friend of western religion if one directly assails it like Freud or if one covertly patronizes it like Jung?'12 In these articles George wrote as a philosopher and used philosophy to explain the inadequacy of psychiatry, but his original hostility was, like most of his insights, intuitive. He had encountered psychiatry first as early as 1945 through his friendship with Alice Boissonneau, a social worker, and he was instantly sceptical of its claims. 'You would leaf over the articles, the technical psychiatric details,' Boissonneau wrote, 'muttering "God - God," then shaking yourself, having worked yourself up into a state, your hair by this time falling again over your forehead, your eyes gleaming, you would rise from the couch, swaying, braced and clenched, throwing the book down, throwing one trench-clad arm out saying "What they need is Love!"'13 His philosophic task, as he now had come to understand it, was to reveal the inadequacies of the dominant modern approach, including psychiatry. By doing so, it might restore to us the possibility that we reconsider the ancient alternatives. He made this need to be open to the past clear when he addressed the Canadian Conference on Social Welfare in a paper titled 'Value and Technology' (1964). The good-willed pragmatism of their profession in a simpler age, he told them, was no longer adequate now that man is defined by reference to freedom. Social work, to be effective, relied on social science and, once the writings of Max Weber took hold in North America, social science accepted the ideal that interpretation should be value-free, and hence it became, in George's view, rudderless. The bureaucrats of the new mass, imperial culture had prospered because they had long drawn strength from the great myths of Protestantism that were taught in the small towns across the continent.14 Yet for decades now it had been thought good that people be emancipated from these myths, which stood in the way of progress and hence were old-fashioned. This emancipation stripped life of meaning, and people turned elsewhere to give purpose to existence. Many consequently found comfort in pseudomyths. This was a mistake; it was better to try to live profoundly in the

The fifth column 219 ancient myths. Social workers, from the nature of their work, encountered the problem directly. Professionally, they had to deal with the problems thrown up by contemporary mass society, and therefore they had to work within its values. Personally, however, they needed to seek 'that serenity and felicity which comes from being spectators of all times and all existence,'15 and that necessity was likely to put them at odds with the dominant beliefs. George knew full well from personal experience what courage it sometimes takes to confront directly the commanding dogmas of the age. When he was filming the interviews for his TV program on belief in 1958, he met Dr D.KC. MacDonald of the Solid State Physics Group at the National Research Council (NRC) and Dr. Wilder Penfield, the internationally renowned director of Montreal Neurological Institute. George had asked them their views on matters of faith, and they courteously reciprocated by inviting him to deliver a talk to one of their informal symposia on self-regulation in living systems. On 20 October 1961 George delivered a short paper that he modestly titled 'Some General and Incoherent Comments.' Much of the argument in the short paper is technical, and reflects George's reading in contemporary philosophy. Towards the end it heated up when he turned to the role of the behaviourial scientist, who, he suggested, was either concerned with knowledge of man as a whole, and therefore saw his science as part of philosophy, or was 'concerned with knowledge about man for particular practical ends.' If the latter was true, he contributes in our society to the realization of the universal and homogenous state, whose first premise is unlimited technological advance. And the universal and homogenous state is a tyranny.16 As soon as the question period began, members of the audience leapt to the attack. There was a torrent of questions, some even boiling over into abuse. At one stage someone called out from the floor, 'Can't someone stop this man from talking nonsense?' The controversy spilled over into lunch and afterwards. Many in the audience were very angry about George's suggestion that their work was preparing the grounds for a tyranny. George was so upset that he feared there might be a group of angry scientists waiting to waylay him at the airport. No intellectual encounter ever shook him so profoundly. MacDonald, stunned himself by the ferocity of the onslaught, wrote to smooth the waters. He wondered, he wrote, whether this was 'the first time that you had been confronted with a group, who might reasonably be considered your intellectual peers, who found the idea reasonably

220 George Grant acceptable that man might be in quite a broad sense a machine? Do you perhaps find it incredible that anyone who tries to think seriously about the problem of man would sincerely doubt that he had what I suppose you might call a "spirit"?'17 George replied that it was essential that scientists consider the political implications of their assumptions carefully since, whether they liked it or not, they wielded great power in modern society and they were not really trained to exercise it. Because scientists believed that the pursuit of knowledge was good, they implicitly accepted the idea that any means were justified for carrying it out.18 George explained why he thought the scientist's confidence misguided: 'Above all, these days, I am very agnostic about nearly everything - agnostic not in the sense that it leads me to think the universe is worth nothing, but that it is a mystery, and that its meaning as a whole is a fantastic mystery. I don't believe as a philosopher that there are easy solutions to the kind of question we have been discussing. But sometimes the North American assumption that there is some practical technique for facing every situation appals me.'19 MacDonald, who thought the discussion important, invited George up to Ottawa at the beginning of 1962 to meet some other scientists. George came away from these meetings deeply impressed. The scientists he met were well educated and clever, but there was no doubt that they were as strongly committed to their view of objective science as George was to his own understanding of the centrality of subjectivity.20 This was another lived experience to incorporate into his thought. Scientists like these, Harry Thode or Herb Armstrong for example, were rapidly taking charge at McMaster, and George came into frequent contact with them both. Soon after his arrival in Dundas, he met McMaster psychologist Abe Black, a neighbour who soon became a close friend. Black was a distinguished researcher, and his work on aggression in human beings was funded by the Pentagon. This military connection might have made any friendship between the two impossible, but Black was very open with George about his reservations about his work and the use to which it might be put. The two of them had long conversations about science and its role in the modern university.21 Through these formal and informal meetings with scientists George took their measure, and he quickly came to the conclusion that the role of the new department of religion must be carefully thought through if it were to prove effective in countering their influence. He saw the department as a place where the dialogue between religion and the modern world could continue.

The fifth column 221 To the extent that the department of religion dealt with the 'phenomenology of religion' he did not anticipate any problems with colleagues in other departments. However, when he and his departmental colleagues passed beyond phenomenology to the truth of the matter, they would face a vast variety of prejudices, particularly that of 'objectivity.' 'I would say that a large number of our colleagues [outside the department] would deny the possibility of "philosophical theology," let alone any theologizing from within the acceptance of revelation.' The new department needed to be clear about the function in life for which it was training students, and an answer such as a general education, 'is not a sufficient answer in our highly technical society.'22 In a sermon to a student service delivered on 6 October 1961, he chose to speak about the scene between Jesus and Pilate because it threw light on the kinds of things the department of religion should attempt. In its teaching, he suggested, the new department should imitate 'this conversation, this dialogue between the transcendent truth of the soul and the wisdom of the world [that] has gone on in western society from that day to this. It is the tension in their meeting which has more than anything else given western society its greatness and only in so far as western society keeps that tension has it anything valuable in it.'23 To foster this dialogue the first problem he had to address was the curriculum, and even this was difficult because 'the curriculum as it is based in our modern secular universities is radically at odds with Christianity.'24 There was widespread suspicion of the department of religion among those who accepted the now-dominant faith of objectivity and progress. Hence his department had to avoid the one extreme of objective positivism and the other of religious propaganda. The curriculum must take religion seriously, without forcing students to accept positions in which they did not genuinely believe.25 What should this curriculum be? The core of the curriculum, he thought, should be 'a clear, factual knowledge of Christianity - that is a knowledge of Judaism and the New Testament. Subsidiary to this there must be some factual knowledge of the Mediterranean civilization and its traditions (other than the Semitic) which were brought under Christ by the Fathers. Obviously, also, in a later year when the student has some knowledge of Western religion, he must look at the other religions of the world.'26 The question remained, which? Part of the answer was practical; there was already a program of Islamic studies at McGill and it was inappropriate to duplicate those efforts. Moreover, since Islam is also a Semitic religion and McMaster had already decided to concentrate on Christianity and Judaism, it might be better to

222 George Grant study a different religious tradition. However, there was another, more fundamental, consideration. George had spoken about the appeal of pseudo-myths to the social workers and the most important of these was popularized Buddhism. He had already addressed this problem in the 'Philosophy and Religion' article he wrote for Adler before he came to McMaster. There he noted the 'wide popular influence that Buddhism is now exerting in the West, and particularly in the United States.' Its following had increased: 'Zen artists paint Zen pictures and Zen poets compose Zen poems. The voice of Zen is heard in the novels of J.D. Salinger and Jack Kerouac.'27 But it was spreading in a simplified and vulgar form. Unless students were taught the real thing, Buddhism in North America would become 'a superficial cult for sensationalists rather than a source of disciplined spiritual riches.'28 Therefore, he thought, they should study the great religious traditions of India and China. What criteria should they use in their recruitment? George and Paul Clifford decided to look for faculty members who, as much as possible, lived within the religious traditions they were called upon to teach to the young. At one level, the desire to bring together philosophically inclined believers was based on St Anselm's celebrated formula, so important to George - Credo, ut intelligam, understanding arises out of belief. Far from being in conflict, George thought that philosophy, especially the Greek philosophical tradition, was an essential part of Christianity: 'The exclusion of all Greek wisdom from modern Protestant thought is driving me to distraction. I cannot understand it. One does not have to be a liberal to see wisdom outside biblical categories.'29 George had lost any hope he ever had about North American departments of philosophy. They were too deeply mired in positivism, historicism, and analytical philosophy to generate alternative approaches to the modern world. As he George once observed, often when you describe someone as a philosopher, you mean nothing more than that he teaches in a philosophy department. Real attempts to grapple with the problems of existence were, as he had argued in his 'Philosophy' report to the Massey Commission, to be found mainly among political scientists, historians, and professors of literature. George now intended to add a new source of philosophical alternatives, the department of religion at McMaster: 'Clearly to meet the needs of young North Americans in their present dilemma, a department of Religion must pass to that which quite transcends scholarship - namely thought.'30 The religion department had to be radical in the deepest meaning of the term. As one of his students from McMaster explained:

The fifth column 223 In the first class that I took, which was Plato's Republic, there was a sense of excitement, passion and the absolute centrality of the need for justice. His insistence on the absence of justice in the world we inhabited and the difficulty even of thinking in the world we inhabited of what justice might be, I found stunningly exciting. This starkness was not pessimistic. I found it enormously liberating to learn that you could think about these things. He considered the religion department a sort of fifth column in the university.31 Being a fifth columnist was a dangerous and difficult activity. George had learned as long ago as the 1930s, when Principal Wallace banned leftwing clubs at Queen's, that free speech could not be taken for granted in a university. He was determined to raise the great theological issues at McMaster, but he knew that to do so he had to make 'a lot of ironic concessions to the secularists, because the secularists pretend to believe in free discussion, but they don't. They believe that there are only certain forms of discussion that are allowed. Therefore I wanted to get around them.'32 He had also encountered comparable hostility when he tried to discuss the concept of the universal and homogenous state at the NRC symposium. Because of such experiences he knew immediately what Leo Strauss meant when he argued in his book Persecution and the Art of Writmg-that any philosopher who challenged the central beliefs of his age had to write subtly and cautiously if he hoped to avoid persecution. The writings of this great German-American political philosopher was one of the most important formative influences on Grant's thought. Strauss, who was born in Hessen, Germany, in 1899, was raised an Orthodox Jew and educated at the universities of Marburg, Hamburg, and Freiburg, where Husserl was the professor of philosophy and Heidegger his assistant. In 1932 he left Germany and in 1938 he emigrated to the United States.33 Emil Fackenheim, the great Hegel scholar at the University of Toronto, had mentioned Strauss's writings in the late 1950s while George was still at Dalhousie, and George acknowledged a particular debt to Strauss'sWhat Is Political Philosophy?,a collection of essays, and Thoughts on Machiavelli, probably Strauss's most controversial work.34 George was an unusual admirer, because the vast majority of Strauss's partisans were former students, and most were either Catholics or Jews. The phrase 'the universal and homogenous state,' which George first used at the NRC meeting in Montreal amidst such controversy, had come to him through Strauss's collection of philosophic essays, What Is Political Philosophy ? There he encountered what appeared, superficially, to be a rather scholastic dispute between Strauss and the Hegelian Alexandre

224 George Grant Kojeve35 about whether ancient or modern political thought gave the fuller account of tyranny. Curiously, instead of taking sides, George acknowledged that he learned important, though partial, truths from each thinker. The more he read it, the more illuminating and important he found the dispute; subsequent to reading it he began to describe himself as a political philosopher. Before studying this debate George, as he suggested in Philosophy in the Mass Age, was inclined to hope that the working out of the dialectic of ancient and modern philosophy might eventually lead in the West to the overcoming of the realm of necessity and the realization on earth of the most complete human freedom within a moral order. This was a Hegelian position and Kojeve too was a Hegelian. His masterpiece was his Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, the fruits of six years' line-by-line study of Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind. Allan Bloom calls Kojeve's book 'a careful and comprehensive study,' 'the most authoritative interpretation of Hegel.'36 George agreed that Kojeve had seen deeply into the nature of modernity, and his writings clarified for George both how modern, technological society might come into existence, and also what its character was. George analysed the debate between Strauss and Kojeve in one of his most important articles, 'Tyranny and Wisdom (1964).' Kojeve thought, George explained, that the modern world was moving remorselessly towards the universal and homogenous state. This political order would be worldwide (universal), and consequently war would no longer take place, since there would be no nation states to fight. It would also be a regime in which class domination no longer existed (homogenous), and therefore one in which there was no class warfare. The Christian dream of the brotherhood of man would, therefore, be fulfilled without the need for the Christian God. Kojeve, whose tough, atheistic interpretation of Hegel George thought was closer to the original than that of his British epigones,37 believed that 'the universal and homogenous state is the best social order and that mankind advances to the establishment of such an order.'38 George admired this argument because it helped him to see what was missing in his earlier analysis of the phenomenon he had previously tried to understand first as the expanding economy and then as the mass society. Thanks to Kojeve he could now see more clearly the goal towards which the process was moving. Strauss, however, convinced him that the universal and homogenous state, far from being the best human order, would be the supreme tyranny, radically destructive of humanity.39 If we accept that conclusion,

The fifth column 225 then modern political philosophy led to dehumanization, and it was necessary to turn carefully to political thought before Machiavelli, especially to that of the ancient world.40 By careful study of the ancient philosophers it might be possible to understand their teaching that the highest good for human beings was wisdom rather than domination.41 Perhaps it was possible to learn from them how to create a natural society, one not destructive of humanity. If true, this insight was of 'immediate practical interest for any person living in modern industrial society.'42 In Strauss's own political philosophy George found a resonance of his own: 'Strauss' position asserts an eternal and unchangeable order in which history takes its place and which is in no manner affected by the events of history. For Strauss ... philosophy is the excellence of the soul. There cannot be philosophy in this sense unless there is an eternal and unchangeable order.'43 This is the order to which George had pointed in Philosophy in the Mass Age, the order that we do not measure and judge, but by which we are measured and judged. It was the order into whose existence he had been granted an insight in the Buckinghamshire countryside near dawn on that day in early December 1941. Strauss was the only contemporary thinker he had encountered who was trying to wrestle with the political consequences of such a vision. Hegel's attempt to synthesize Greek philosophy and biblical morality had once attracted George. Through Strauss he came to accept that Hegel had not adequately synthesized the two, but instead held an 'incomplete and one-sided account of Biblical theism itself, and ... certain errors in his political philosophy stem from that misinterpretation.'44 When he considered Strauss's own position on biblical revelation, however, he found a 'remarkable reticence,' and could not decide whether Strauss thought that the Bible has 'an authority of revelation which has a claim over the philosopher as much as over other men.'45 There were, indeed, to be found in his writings 'occasional passages where he shows contempt for certain forms of Biblical religion.'46 Ultimately, unless Strauss were prepared to be clear about this central question, George argued, his political thought was incomplete.47 Kojeve helped George understand the dynamics of the modern world, Strauss the wisdom of the ancient. Neither could show how the two could be reconciled. In an attempt to encourage Strauss to consider this question, George sent him a copy of his paper. Strauss replied: 'Your statement is without any question the most thoughtful statement about my intention that I have ever seen. It is both broad and deep. I am deeply grateful to you.'48

226 George Grant George's quest for suitable appointments to his department brought him back into contact with Leo Strauss a few years later. In January 1965 he wrote to Strauss to express his 'enormous sense of debt for every word you have written' and to ask a favour. The religion department, he explained, introduced students to the Bible and to Greek philosophy, but also necessarily introduced them to modernity. For that purpose George wanted for his 'very new and experimental department' someone who not only lived within Judaism, but who also had studied with Strauss.49 In reply Strauss thanked George for his flattering remarks, observing: 'You are one of the very few people who have not been my students who seem to think that I am doing something useful.'50 When Philosophy in the Mass Agtfwas reprinted in 1966, George wrote a new introduction that praised Strauss and concluded: 'I count it a high blessing to have been acquainted with this man's thought.'51 He sent a copy to Strauss 'because my sense of debt is so great.'52 As a reward he was added to the select group who received mimeographed transcripts of Strauss's seminars.53 Leo Strauss was the thinker from whom he had learned more than 'from any other contemporary writings.'54 He was now to add another name to the list. Late in 1965 Canadian Dimension invited George to review two books by Jacques Ellul, a contemporary French sociologist. The Technological Society first appeared in French in 1954, but had not been translated until 1964. Propaganda appeared in French in 1962 and in English in 1965. George thought they were wonderful, 'the most important of all required reading for anybody who wants to understand what is occurring in the "advanced" societies during our era.'55 In the 'Introduction' to the second edition of Philosophy in the Mass Age, he wrote that, concerning 'practical questions,' The Technological Society made plain the structure of modern society 'as nothing else I have ever read.'56 This was high praise and it was genuine. Even in retrospect, George was willing to credit Ellul as a thinker who recognized technology's presence at every moment of Western society, and saw 'the modern as it is in the concrete detail around us.'57 In short, George thought Ellul superior to Kojeve in his understanding of the dynamics of the modern world; he now began to use 'the technological society' as well as 'the universal and homogenous state' as a short hand to indicate its character. What was missing in Kojeve, he now recognized, was a systematic way to understand the modern experiment in all its novelty. This deficiency Ellul rectified when he defined technique as 'the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity.'58 This insight, worked out

The fifth column 227 through the book, arose from a quality for which the French were notable in the West, 'a desire to see things as they are.' 59 Kojeve had helped George understand where the technological society is headed. Ellul let George see more clearly the unity behind the many individual manifestations of modern technology and how its spirit permeated every aspect of contemporary life. He thus contributed an answer to the question, What is technological society like right now?60 However, neither of them, in George's view, was able 'to answer satisfactorily the historical question which seems to me essential: Why did the civilization of technique first arise in Western Europe?'61 Here Hegel was still superior meeting of classical philosophy, post-Cartesian philosophy, and biblical religion in its Christian form. This was now the problem to which George intended to direct his attention. Indeed, he made the striking suggestion that, in order to understand modern technique, it was necessary to 'look more closely than does Ellul at its intimate relation with Biblical religion.'62 George genuinely admired Ellul, but only for his sociological accomplishments. When Hugh McLennan wrote to George to say that he had been reading 'the latest book of your favourite man, Ellul,'63 he was had been reading ;the latest book of your favourite man, Ellul,'63 he was wide of the mark.

16

Simone Weil

George's 'favourite man' was, in fact, a woman. He had made it clear in the introduction to the second edition of Philosophy in the Mass Age that 'concerning practical questions' he admired Ellul, but 'concerning the more difficult and more important theoretical questions'1 his greatest debt was still to Leo Strauss. In the hierarchy, philosophical clarity was higher than practical insight. Above both, however, was charity and, for George, that meant Simone Weil. 'Beside Strauss,' George once told a class, 'Simone Weil is a flame.'2 He acknowledged her importance to his thought unequivocally: 'Of all twentieth century writers, she has been incomparably my greatest teacher.'3 The reason why Miss Weil stood so high in his admiration was that she was 'both a saint and a philosopher ... She was a saint in the sense that she gave herself away to the divine charity. She was a philosopher in the sense that she wrote carefully and clearly about those matters which in the tradition philosophers have considered the most important.'4 Simone Weil was born in Paris in 1909, the daughter of a middle-class Jewish family. Her intellectual precociousness was obvious, even in the presence of her brother Andre, older by three years, who became one of the world's greatest mathematicians. After studying philosophy, she briefly taught school before she became involved in left-wing politics, but the intense compassion she felt for all who suffered from injustice soon led her in a quest for spiritual understanding. In June 1940 she and her family fled Nazi-occupied Paris for the south of France, where she worked on the land and meditated deeply about the divine. She recorded her thoughts in a series of notebooks that her friends published after the war. While she was working for the Free French in England she developed tuberculosis and died in Ashford, Kent, on 24 August 1943 at the age of thirty-four.5

Simone Weil 229 Chance sent George one of her first collections of essays to be translated, Waiting on God, to review in 1951. He continued to read her throughout the 1950s, but it was not until a forty hour train ride from Toronto to Edmonton in June 1958 that he really tried to grapple with her thought. The first day was sheer frustration: ' I really am going to give up trying to be a philosopher. I just know nothing after reading Miss Weil.'6 Perhaps, he thought, he should just earn enough money to cut himself off from the world and live with the children. On the train on the way back he tried again, but got no further: 'I have been reading Miss Weil but she gets on my nerves and her absolutist mysticism is tiring.' Although her ideas left no place for the pleasantness of life, he pronounced them 'nearer the truth than anyone else.' And what he read had a powerful effect on him: 'It affects me with a great moodiness as to how one should spend one's life. It makes me react against this raging pursuit of knowledge into a more rounded view which gives some place to the social virtues and bliss of mysticism.'7 An opportunity to learn more arose when the Ignatieffs were posted to Paris. George could stay with his brother-in-law and his sister while he carried out research for a philosophical introduction to Simone Weil's life and thought. While still thinking about Strauss (and before he discovered Ellul) he set out for France at the beginning of June 1963. It was the first time he had been to Paris since his honeymoon and, as always, France was special for him. He loved the public places like the Louvre, but, to his dismay, he found mass society much the same whether it took the form of capitalism as in North America, or Gaullism as in France: 'It will be hard to hold things from the past. Strauss has really seen this.'8 Then he got to work on his interviews. He met Simone Weil's friend and biographer, Mile Petrement, several times at the Bibliotheque Nationale. She was about fifty-five but seemed younger, was short, 'an absolute blue-stocking - but of a French kind. She walks with a cane and has bad TB. She has a smile like an angel. She is a person of obviously the highest beauty of character and she has loved Simone Weil most intensely.'9 He could see her only in the later afternoon for an hour because she had to care for her senile mother. They talked in French, but the cultural barriers were greater than the linguistic ones. Slowly they began to communicate, and George developed a great respect and affection for her, though he found it impossible to discuss Simone Weil critically with her because Weil had been so much 'the centre of her life.' He was also much impressed with Simone Weil's mother: 'A very ancient, very small, very amusing Jewish matriarch who lives in the same

230 George Grant flat and sits in the room of Simone Weil with a maternal love which still blazes forth.' Although he saw Mme Weil daily, and was given access to important articles about science that her daughter had written, he was particularly pleased to learn that Simone Weil's greatest indulgence was to lie in bed of a morning with a cup of coffee and an Agatha Christie murder mystery.10 A saint who shared his own weakness for detective stories seemed less austere and more human. Most memorable, though, was the day when George was leaving the flat and Mme Weil recited to him Herbert's poem 'Love,' which was central to Simone's life.11 In his spare time he made a pilgrimage to Chartres and then, with his sister, to Vezelay, whose cathedral he now pronounced the greater, with its great romanesque doorway of Christ and the Zodiac. He also began to explore the great medieval religious sect, the Cathars, which Simone Weil had admired, and toyed with going to Toulouse and Albi, the area where they had flourished. He also entertained his twelve-year-old nephew, Andrew. Once he took him to a nice restaurant for dinner, and later they went to see the movie Lawrence of Arabia. George had apparently known Lawrence's sister in London, and this heightened his response to the movie. It had barely started when he burst into tears, and he continued to sob intermittently throughout the movie. At the more explicit parts, he put his hands over Andrew's eyes, saying, 'This is too terrible. Don't look at it.' What made this incident particular agony for his nephew was the fact that in the row behind them was a party of English schoolboys who found George's reactions particularly droll and giggled. For Andrew, though, George's passionate response to art had a positive side as well. He remembered the time that George came home with a record of the music of Monteverdi, Simone Weil's favourite composer. He put it on the record-player, and went almost into a trance while he listened to it. From that visit on, Mozart and Monteverdi above all composers were important to Andrew.12 From his visit to Paris in 1963 until the summer of 1966, the main task George set for himself was to write a biographical work to introduce Weil's thought to the North American audience. It was a task he undertook with considerble theoretical hesitation. Warriors and founders, statesmen and bureaucrats, even artists and scientists accomplish exposable results and their biographies take shape from these. With the greatest artists a surd of mystery remains untouchable because the models which they imitate do not belong to space and time, so that no biography will prepare us for what we will hear when we listen to Mozart's music.

Simone Weil 231 Nevertheless the music is there to be listened to and the biography is of some assistance to that listening. But the saints are those who empty themselves, who give themselves away ... The saint's life is always therefore the denial of biography.13 George made a sharp distinction (some would say too sharp) between the saint's life and the philosopher's. He thought that because he loved his wife, children, country, the things that were his own, so much he could never be a saint; and he certainly knew he was rather too fond of Sheila's sumptuous cooking and several large gins before dinner to imagine himself ascetic. Yet, George's personal strengths or failings were not at issue here. His praise for the saints was his affirmation, as a Christian, that the life of charity was higher than the life of thought. It was the fact that Simone Weil's life was so completely suffused with charity that made it so worthy of deep meditation.14 Even by itself, however, her thought was very important. She was, George affirmed, a philosopher of a very high order: 'From the body of her work there emerges an account of reality, massively sustained in its consistency. That is to say, over a vast range of subjects, she enunciates an account of reality that does not seem to us after thought about it to have internal contradictions.'15 What was it that Simone Weil helped George to understand? At the lowest level, she helped him formulate what kind of department Religion should be at McMaster. Weil, raised by free-thinking parents, never considered herself Jewish and accepted Christianity as an adult, but she was never formally baptized. Although the reasons were complex, one important factor was that she came to God not just through the Gospels, but also from her reading of the Bhagavadgita, the Iliad, and Plato.16 She stood, as she understood her own position, 'at the intersection of Christianity and everything that is not Christianity: all the ancient wisdom of mankind that the Church has repudiated and excluded, the traditions banned as heretical, even the limited goods that resulted from the Renaissance and the Enlightenment,'17 above all the spirituality of the Cathars and the civilization of Languedoc. To some extent McMaster's religion department with its Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and lovers of classical philosophy reflected a similar diversity of inspiration. More profoundly, her central concern mirrored George's own. As he explained: 'Perhaps if one were to single out one subject that more than any other binds the whole [of her thought] together one could put it in her own words: "I am ceaselessly and increasingly torn in my intelligence and in the depth of my heart through my inability to conceive simulta-

232 George Grant neously and in truth, of the affliction [malheur] of men, the perfection of God and the link between the two.'''18 Weil was concerned, in the purest way, with theodicy: How did evil come to exist in a world created by a perfect and all-powerful God? This problem troubled George too, and for the past twenty years he had been trying to understand an analogous and related problem: What was it in the character of the modern world that had taken modern human beings so far from the divine? His theories of the expanding economy, the mass society, the universal and homogenous state, the technological society were his successive attempts to understand the condition of modern man. To this end he had studied a host of thinkers so that he might understand its character better: St Augustine, Kant, Oman, Sartre, Marx, Hegel, Weber, Kojeve, Strauss, Ellul. Although each contributed insights the others lacked, all of their answers seemed ultimately unsatisfactory. In trying to understand the rise of technology, he found himself constantly making six important points. First, Christianity was the main force that had shaped the intellectual heritage of the West. Second, Protestantism affirmed the centrality of subjective consciousness, and this affirmation is a primal good for human beings. Third, North America experienced Christianity most powerfully in its Calvinist form. Fourth, this form of Christianity encouraged human beings to subordinate nature to their wills, in large part out of the charitable desire to feed the hungry and heal the sick. Fifth, the belief in soul and divinely imposed limits, which hitherto had restrained this science of mastery, was decaying rapidly. Sixth, modern technological civilization was therefore the direct descendant of Christian Europe. Here then was a powerful and disturbing paradox. Christianity was the source of the belief that there was 'an eternal order which men did not measure and define but by which we were measured and defined.'19 Equally compelling, though, was the fact that Christianity seemed partly responsible for the creation of an age that had 'destroyed as living options all other traditions but itself.'20 How could this be, considering the perfection of the Gospels that had been given to the Church? He found a possible solution to the paradox while contemplating Simone Weil in the early 1960s, when he read Philip Sherrard's The Greek East and the Latin West (1959). Sherrard argued that the early Western church (Roman Catholic) made a profoundly important theological mistake when, at the Third Council of Toledo in 589, it proposed that the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, proceeded from the Son as well as from the Father. This doctrinal addition to the Creed, known

Simone Weil 233 as the filioque clause from the Latin word for son,21 received papal confirmation in 1014 and proved a major source of conflict with the Eastern tradition (particularly the Greek Orthodox church), which considered it heretical.22 The distinction is difficult for non-theologians; indeed, it remains as obscure to most historians of church doctrine as it appears to have been to many of the learned participants in the original dispute. Sherrard himself admitted that, in itself, 'the issue may appear to be of a quite abstract kind, even a mere question of words.'23 However, Sherrard thought that the Eastern church remained closer both to the Gospels and to Platonic philosophy by affirming that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father alone. The Eastern position, with which George sympathized, believed that: The Christian Revelation makes it quite clear what is the single divine principle. It is the Father. The Father is the unique, all-embracing source and font of all divinity and of everything that is ... Thus, there is one God, not because there is one Essence, or one power, but because there is one Father; and it is the infinity of the Father which 'contains' both Essence and power, not in the sense that the Father is composed of Essence and power, but in the sense that - and this is the limit of explanation - both Essence and power are also of the Father.24 The theologians of the Western church, by contrast, tended increasingly to stress 'the idea of the Summum ens, of the absolute One in whom no distinctions of any kind could be admitted.'25 For them, the Essence of God was identified with Being Itself. 'What may be said is that the emphasis placed, first in Augustinian, and later, and to a greater degree, in Scholastic thought, on the idea of the absolute simplicity and nondifferentiation of the divine Essence considered more or less exclusively as an ontological principle, as pure Being, made it impossible for the Latins to admit the Trinitarian doctrine maintained by the Greeks.'26 As much as it was possible to do so in a sentence, Sherrard summed up the dispute as follows: 'One might say that while for the Greeks there is one God because there is one Father, for the Latins there is one God because there is one Essence, one divine and entirely simple Being.'27 It is not clear how important George found the details of this debate. For him the filioque controversy was less an episode in the beliefs of the early church than it was an important and illuminating symbol (though

234 George Grant probably the one that had most perplexed his readers). Something fundamental, he realized, was at stake: nothing less than the nature of God and the question of how far reason could go in understanding the divine. The filioquedebate symbolized for George the fundamental shift in the threefold relationship between Man and Nature and God, which he had first systematically explored in his doctoral thesis. As he later explained in an interview with some students, the theological disagreement between the Eastern and Western churches was paralleled in the philosophical differences between Plato and Aristotle. 'You'll just have to allow me as a Platonist to speak. You'll remember that in 509b of the RepublicPlato says that the Good is beyond being. Therefore what divides Platonists from the Aristotelians is that the Aristotelians say that the fundamental question is the question of Being and the Platonists say that it is the question of Good.'28 He now thought that he saw a way of accounting for the condition of the modern West without holding Christianity itself responsible. Previously he had thought in terms of Catholicism and Protestantism as the main divisions of Christianity, and his effort was devoted to understanding how they differed and how their differences affected the development of the civilization based upon them. Now, he speculated, the nature of Christianity and the fate of the West could better be understood by treating them both as rival versions of Western Christianity. They could be considered together because, when they accepted that God was Being, they both affirmed the intelligibility of the divine. As he wrote to a friend in 1965: 'I am afraid we are living in an era in which western Christianity is going to be eaten up. Some of the Roman Catholic liberals are as foolish as ours. I do not mean by this anything to do with the truth of Christianity -just its western manifestations.'29 As usual for George, the metaphysical theory meant little unless it could be tested by its practical moral consequences. His understanding of the dispute between the Eastern and Western churches gave him a new and powerful perspective. He now thought that it was possible to account for the nature of the modern technological world by showing that it had arisen partly as the consequence of a false understanding of Christianity, one that had been spread throughout the territory that acknowledged the supremacy of the Church of Rome. This doctrine spread widely and became firmly embedded in the religious thought of the West because the Roman Catholic church believed that the institutional church should triumph in this world and in pursuit of this aim it should vigorously compel obedience to its doctrines.

Simone Weil 235 The notion that triumphalism had caused great harm to Christianity struck him powerfully when, a few years before in Halifax, he reread another important work of Eastern (or at least non-western) Christianity, Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov where he found the terrible words that Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor addressed to Christ: 'By accepting the world and Caesar's purple, you would have founded the world state and given universal peace. For who is to wield dominion over men if not those who have taken possession of their consciences and in whose hands is their bread? And so we have taken the sword of Caesar and, having taken it, we of course rejected you and follow /mw.'3° Now he saw that Dostoevsky's critique meshed with Sherrard's, so that he could make a sharp distinction between Western Christianity, a particular historical form of Christianity, and the timeless simplicity of the Gospels, that is, the primal and uncorrupted truth of the Christian revelation itself. When he used the term 'the Eastern Church' George generally did not have in mind the actual Orthodox churches of Greece or Russia; it was, for him, another symbol, this time of a Christianity more attuned to Platonism, one that accepted the ultimate mystery of God better than did the Western church. 'The Eastern church did not want thefilioqueclause; but it had the most profound reasons about the mystery and majesty of God. When I read the arguments, I'm on the Eastern church's side, because it's essentially Platonic against the Aristotelian.'31 His study of Simone Weil reinforced this conclusion. She was, he provocatively suggested, on the 'extreme wing of Greek Christianity.'32 That fact put her at odds with the Western church, but not necessarily with Christianity itself, since 'Christianity was more than western from the beginning, and eastern or Greek Christianity included in itself things that have been lost in the west. In saying that Simone Weil belongs to this Greek Christianity, I am not saying that she was near to the institutionalized form, namely the Greek Orthodox Church - because I am taking Greek Christianity to be something much wider than this - I include in it much that has disappeared from the world.'33 Understood in this sense, Greek Christianity is the 'nearest of any of the forms of our religion to Indian religion.'34 According to Simone Weil, its last appearance in the world was the civilization of Languedoc and the religion of the Cathars. In the West Christianity now existed in a degenerate form and the causes of its decay were many and diverse. Some were very ancient, such as Constantine's identification of the political and military successes of the Roman Empire with Christianity. Another was the addition of the filioque clause to the Creed. Although this addition was consistent with

236 George Grant Augustinian theology, it encouraged later Catholic philosophers, especially St Thomas Aquinas, to exaggerate the extent to which God's presence in Creation could be understood by reason. Later Protestant interpretations, such as Luther's and Calvin's, rejected the authority of Rome but they too accepted the general principle of the intelligibility of God and, drawing on their understanding of the Bible, believed that nature could, and should, be subjected to human will. The rise of the new science, pioneered by figures such as Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes, took this phenomenon further by altering the understanding of the character of reason. In the older, Greek/Platonic, tradition, reason was what led us to the good life. In the newer tradition, reason became merely a tool we used to impose our will on nature. There was still much thinking to do to work out this argument in detail. However, George knew that he had broken with the central traditions of Western Christianity. He now believed that, instead of bringing human beings to God, it was a barrier that stood between them and the divine. His new task was a formidable one: How could he begin to recover the theological richness that had been lost? One way was to remain open to other authentic sources of religious inspiration. Over and over again George told people that he could not have made the slightest sense out of the God of the Bible without Plato's account of the Good, the Agathon, in book VI of the Republic. The idea seemed so eccentric in the modern world that few took it seriously. However, George meant it absolutely. Plato taught him that God was 'beyond Being,' and therefore there was nothing whatsoever one could say about God, not even that He/It is.35 In the strictest and most literal sense the nature of God was ineffable: its mystery could not be spoken. Because God / the Good could not, even in principle, be known, philosophy supplemented but did not replace the spiritual exercises of the saints as a way to the divine. Simone Weil related, in a passage George deeply loved, how she came to Christ: Chance - for I always prefer saying chance rather than Providence - made of a young English Catholic a messenger to me. For he told me of the existence of those English poets of the seventeenth century who are named metaphysical. In reading them later on, I discovered a poem ... It is called 'Love.' I learned it by heart. Often, at the culminating point of a violent headache, I make myself say it over, concentrating all my attention upon it and clinging with all my soul to the tenderness it enshrines. I used to think I was merely reciting it

Simone Weil 237 as a beautiful poem, but without my knowing it the recitation had the virtue of a prayer. It was during one of these recitations that, as I told you, Christ himself came down and took possession of me.36 Although the lives of the saints could bear witness to God's existence, no philosopher could ever prove it. However, Simone Weil was such an important figure for George because, even in the twentieth century, she combined philosophic genius of a high order with a holy life. George did not combine the two. He was a philosopher, albeit a religious one. Philosophy, George thought, was the oyster knife that lets you open the oyster to see the Lord. The proper role of philosophy is to help us understand how unphilosophic we are. We might call this use of philosophy 'negative theology,' but by negative we would mean that it involved 'the destruction of certain beliefs which may be considered to do harm to the core of Christianity.'37 'Modern assumptions stand between one and Christianity,' he wrote to Derek Bedson, 'and the purpose of thought is to wipe them away.'38 Negative theology is positive in its effects because, if successful, it leads to the restoration of the possibility of direct contact with the divine. If this contact occurs, it will happen because beauty has awakened love, as happened to Simone Weil herself. In the future many of George's friends and critics alike would criticize his writings because they offered no guide to praxis - they did not tell people what they should do. In George's view, these people were asking the metaphysically impossible. No philosopher, not George, not anyone else, can ever do more than destroy the false understandings that separate us from the divine. There will never be a definitive philosophical doctrine about God: no one can say what in principle cannot be said. Truth is forever enshrouded, not in obscurity, but in mystery. Simone Weil also clarified for George another important matter about which he had thought since the mid-1950s: the nature of will. He had studied Kant's writings carefully and Kant treated the will as intimately related to individual moral freedom. George's historical reflections led him to the conclusion that this emphasis on the will as a positive force had come into Western thought from the Bible, and then prevailed in the United States as a consequence of the accident of history that led a particular form of English-speaking Protestantism to triumph in North America: 'In the United States, the Protestantism was of a more unflinching, more immoderate and less thoughtful sort than in England. The

238 George Grant Puritan seekers after a new world were escaping the public demands of an Anglicanism which at its heart was not Calvinist. This rougher Protestantism was more suited to the violent situation of conquering a new continent, first emptied of its French and Spanish opposition and some easily conquered Indians.'39 From there it spread, with American economic and political influence, throughout the world. From their contemplation of the Crucifixion in the light of Platonic philosophy both George and Simone Weil concluded that it was necessary to reject this dominant tradition of Western Christianity that understands human beings primarily as the manifestation of their will. 'The Calvinist form of Protestantism was a strong breaking forth of that primal and unfathomed affirmation, because "will" and exclusivity were so central to its theology. Calvinist theological voluntarism made it utterly a modern western theology as distinguished from the theologies of the Platonic world.'40 This Platonic-Christian account, by contrast, had taught that it was in Christ's total emptying of personality - not my will but Thy Will be done - that He came to be at one with the Father:41 'So deep does this go in our culture that thinking outside personality language is very hard for us. Yet this is what we must do if we are to read Simone Weil. The concrete, the personal, the particular has some preliminary meaning in talking about human beings, but it is according to her not ultimate. In as much as we partake in the universal we partake in the divine. In this sense Plato is her master and she takes him seriously in a way that nobody can who makes the language of personality final.'42 These philosophical and theological errors made themselves felt in the modern world, as George had told the progressive educators, psychiatrists, and social workers in the 1950s and early 1960s, and therefore they needed to be analysed and exposed. Social workers and doctors seemed concerned only with happiness through adjustment. George thought this view shallow. Christ's suffering upon the cross redeemed mankind. On adifferent,butpersonal,levelhehadbeenbroughttoGodbythesufferinghesawonallsidesinBermondseyandthemiseryanddespairhe experienced when he thought that he would die young of tuberculosis. 'When we think of the lamb of God who takes away our sins, we think also of how it was done - the sorrow unto death, the bloody sweat, the scourging, etc., etc. In his mass in C minor, Mozart puts the "qui tollis" to music which catches in its staggering rhythm, the horror of the journey to Golgotha.'43 In his death Christ was, as well as God, universal man. No matter what else might be our fate in life, death is inescapable for human matter what else might be our fate in life, death is indescapable for human

Simone Weil 239 beings. As George understood Simone Weil's teaching at its highest, the message was the same as Tolstoy's in 'God Sees the Truth but Waits.' God is always there for those who turn to him: ' [Affliction] always includes in itself physical pain, but it is more than this. It is the pounding in upon men that they are really nothing, by the blind force of necessity and of social and personal degradation. The final affliction to which all come is death. The only difference between people is whether they consent or do not consent to necessity.'44 All this George could agree with, but even a saint and a philosopher did not command blind obedience. In the summer of 1966 he postponed work on the biographical introduction to Weil's thought until he could resolve two problems. Why did she criticize Aristotle? Why did she identify Plato and Christianity so closely? While he tried to see the answer to these questions clearly, he set to work on a book about modernization and ethics, hoping that in the meantime 'by reading and thought these questions about Simone Weil's thought will sort themselves out in my head.'45 He even offered to return his summer stipend because he had not completed the Weil project. Such an offer, for a Canadian academic, comes as close to unworldiness as is imaginable.

17 Lament

As often as he could stand it, George got into his old car and drove north on Highway 6 from Dundas to Guelph, past the campus of the Agricultural College to the stately grounds of the Homewood Sanatorium on Delhi Street.1 By now Maude no longer knew who he was. If she acknowledged him at all, she mistook him for the man who had always been the most important figure in her life - her father.2 By the beginning of 1963 she was fading, and George stood by her bed in tears, begging her, 'Let go, mother, let go.' On 3 February she too faced the final affliction; she died of pneumonia at the age of eighty-two. The funeral was held at the Church of Saint James the Less in Toronto. Although not a devout woman, Maude drifted back to the Anglican church after William's death, and Charity recruited Graham Cotter, a family friend, to conduct the burial service and preach a brief homily on Christian belief. After the funeral, Vincent Massey came up to George and extended his hand in a gesture of formal condolence. Deeply wounded by the way Uncle Vincent had abandoned Maude in her declining years, George snubbed him by refusing to take his hand. He had not read Henry James without profit. With some of the money from his inheritance, he engaged, at forty-five, in his last act of adolescent rebellion: he bought a dark-blue Chevrolet convertible. Maude's funeral took place against a political backdrop that made her son a national figure. Uncle Jim Macdonnell served briefly in the Diefenbaker cabinet before standing aside for a younger colleague, and in the 1962 election Diefenbaker was reduced to a minority position in the House of Commons. Criticism of his leadership, which was suppressed when he commanded a massive majority, quickly surfaced now that he might be an electoral liability. By the time of Maude's death, as many as

Lament 241 half the cabinet wanted a new leader. The issue that became central was the matter of nuclear weapons for Canadian troops, both at home and abroad, a principle the government appeared to have accepted in 1959 when it agreed to acquire weapons designed with a nuclear capacity. By 1961, however, the government's views had changed and it increasingly saw its role as a mediator in nuclear disarmament negotiations. Most of the cabinet still wanted to go ahead with the acquisition, but Howard Green, the secretary of state for external affairs, supported by Diefenbaker, hesitated. After intense manoeuvring within the cabinet and an acrimonious debate in the House, the Liberals led by Lester Pearson, the New Democrats, and Social Credit combined to defeat the government on 5 February, just two days after Maude's death, and forced a general election for 8 April 1963.3 George knew at once where he stood in this crisis. The night before the key vote he phoned Tommy Douglas, the NDP leader, to try to persuade him not to defeat the government. He had liked the NDP because of its support for social measures he thought intrinsically good, like state medicine, but he was enraged 'that they were voting Diefenbaker out in the name of a servant of the United States like Lester Pearson.'4 The NDP, he concluded, were a 'kind of vacuous extension of the Liberals' and he heartily regretted having had anything to do with them. 'The last years have cleared my head greatly and I am now an unequivocal anti-progressive.'5 After the government fell, he wrote to Diefenbaker expressing his support and admiration for the speech defending his government's actions that he delivered in the Commons prior to dissolution. George quickly followed up this private statement with public support for the Conservatives, even going so far as to help organize coffee parties for the local candidate. The election saw the Liberals win a minority government; they could now implement their policy of accepting nuclear weapons for Canada. George returned to the attack. At the end of July 1963 he spoke on CBC 'Viewpoint' about the nuclear test ban between the United States and the USSR. This was a matter, he said, that should be cause for rejoicing for nearly everyone in Canada. Only those with a 'hidden love of death' could oppose it. Both superpowers had decided it was necessary to stop the spread of weapons 'except to minor satellites such as Canada.'6 The most important development, however, occurred over the winter as he set aside his research on Simone Weil and began work on an article to explain the meaning of the recent political events. He had started, he wrote to friends in Montreal in January 1964, a 'long piece called "A

242 George Grant Lament for a Country" which is just about Canada becoming part of the universal and homogenous state. It is finally true that one's hope must lie in the transcendent - but what a business it is putting off one's finite hopes.'7 The long piece soon grew into a small book. It had required, he explained to his sister Charity, great concentration in the midst of his teaching responsibilities, but he found it therapeutic, 'in the sense that understanding tragedy is the way to meet it.'8 It also apparently required support of a more immediate kind. His daughter Katie gave her mother a note: 'Please! Please! Make a Siniman Scrudal cake. It will give Daddy energy for the book.'9 As he was finishing his essay, he started to look for somewhere to publish what he now called A Lament for a Nation. As he explained to Gaston Laurion, whose French translation was published in 1987, the title alluded to William Dunbar's incomparable medieval Scottish poem, 'Lament for the Makaris [makers],' an appropriate source, he thought, considering the conquest of the Highland Scots by the English at Culloden.10 The poem's refrain, Timor mortis conturbat me (The fear of deathden.10 Th overwhelms me), comes from the Office of the Dead,11 and the poem reminds us to consider the temptations of this world in light of our mortality: Our pleasure here is all vain glory, This false world is but transitory, The flesh is frail, the Fiend is sly; Timor mortis conturbat me.

Politician and professor alike are equally subject to death's sway: He spares no lord for his piscence [power]; Nor clerk for his intelligence; His awful strike may no man flee; Timor mortis conturbat me.

Since everyone must eventually face death, we must live in contemplation of God: Since for the dead remedy is none, Best is that we for death prepare, After our death that live may we; Timor mortis conturbat me.

Lament 243 On 18 February 1964 George wrote to the editor of the Queen's Quarterly, to see if he might be interested in publishing his pamphlet. Albert Fell replied that, although the description aroused his curiosity, at 25,000 words it was too long for the QQ. He suggested George try the University of Toronto Press.12 Although George was prepared to consider the Press because he preferred his work be published in Canada rather than the States, he was more than sceptical at this point of anything to do with the University of Toronto. Indeed, his letter to Frances Halpenny seemed bent on persuading her not to publish it: 'Its content may be such as to exclude it from your press, because it is the Canadian established classes (particularly the Liberal party) who are considered most responsible in what I consider Canada's demise. Diefenbaker is criticized, but not from within Liberal assumptions. Neither will it be favourably received by any socialist as it does not presume the world is getting better and better.'13 The same day he wrote to the U of T Press, he sent a letter to Ramsay Cook, the historian of French Canada, asking advice about a possible publisher. He described his book as 'very ruthless about the Liberal party's responsibility for the destruction of our independence vis-a-vis the United States; it is hard to think that it would be published in certain quarters.'14 Cook replied promptly, suggesting McClelland and Stewart, or if that did not prove possible, that George write a short piece in the Canadian Forum. In the meantime his friend Paul Clifford had been in touch with another publisher, Dent, who expressed an interest. At the beginning of March 1964 George wrote to them, saying that his book would soon be finished, but warning them that it was not gossipy, but a 'closely written book and full of passion and regret about Canada. It starts with a lot of factual material about Canadian history, but ends with a logic which is deeper, about the age of progress. Its conclusions are, therefore, not likely to appeal to many people. I say all this not, I hope, to scare you off, but to say that although I would be obviously willing to changes wordings, etc., I would not be willing to turn it into a popular book, either in style or content.'15 Towards the end of June George felt that his work was almost completed, and he wrote to his old Oxford chum, Derek Bedson, to ask if he might dedicate the work to him and to Judith Robinson, the journalist he so much admired whom he had met through the Civil Liberties Association, 'Two Lovers of their Countiy, One Living and One Dead.' Bedson was a close Diefenbaker adviser before he joined the Manitoba civil service. He kept George up to date on politicians and policy.16 Robinson had died in a car crash in December 1961 and George always remem-

244 George Grant bered his discussions with her at the end of the war. He described her as one of his greatest teachers about politics: more than anyone else she made him aware of the fragility of Canadian nationhood on a continent shared with the United States. Lament was in Dent's hands at the beginning of the summer, and on 29 July Dent editor John Campsie wrote to say that it had been 'read and highly praised by two or three people here' and that there was no difficulty getting a decision to publish his book. However, their publishing schedule prevented early publication, and if George still wanted that, it was best to try elsewhere.17 Now George took Cook's advice and sent it McClelland and Stewart. Like many authors he felt his work had fallen into a black hole and, at the beginning of September, he was writing to Jack McClelland to see if he had reached a decision. McClelland in fact acted with despatch, as publishing goes, and sent the manuscript to James M. Minnifie, a Canadian journalist working in Washington.18 Minnifie's report was positive, and McClelland and Stewart agreed to publish it, though by the end of October George was again writing to urge them on: 'I am sorry to keep bothering you, but I wonder when we could meet about the manuscript on Canadian affairs. I am a slow worker and would like to get going at any changes you suggest, as well as some changes I have in mind.'19 The contract to publish was not signed until 13 January 1965. On the recommendation of Claire Pratt, the in-house editor, McClelland and Stewart assigned the manuscript to one of its top editors, freelancer John Robert Colombo. Colombo edited about three pages of text, and then arranged to meet George in a restaurant in East York for coffee. He was amazed when, in the absence of a spoon, George took off his glasses and used one of the arms to stir his coffee. If Colombo thought he might be dealing with a crazy eccentric, George worried that the Establishment had set a Liberal on his work with a mission to emasculate it. However, by the next time Colombo saw the book, they could both relax. It had been transformed. George took some of Colombo's editorial suggestions and Sheila polished the style and helped heighten the impact with effective quotations. Now the text, in Colombo's word, sang. Masterpiece is not a world to use lightly, but Lament for a Nation merits it. In ninety-seven pages George distilled his years of study of theology and philosophy, together with his knowledge of history and his acute attention to the daily passage of political events. The former adult educator put it all into a book that was instantly accessible to the broad reading public, but rewarded repeated reading by academic philosophers.

Lament 245 What alchemy produced it? We clearly must first mention the proximate cause, the fall of the Diefenbaker government on the nuclear arms question. As George said in an interview in 1973, 'My motive for writing that book was rage, just rage, that they'd brought atomic weapons into Canada.'20 Except for the period following his decision to join the British merchant marine late in 1941, George was a pacifist. As we have seen, like Lord Lindsay, he distinguished between two sorts of pacifism. There was pacifism as a moral stance, adopted in the full knowledge that the practical consequences, such as jail for Peter Clarke or loss of a job for George himself, were likely to prove bitter. Christ and Ghandi had shown how high the price might be. The other stance might be known as tactical pacifism, or better, internationalism. This view said that negotiation and diplomacy must be pursued as far as was reasonable, and then farther. Force must only be used with the greatest reluctance, and in the very last resort. This was not only morally correct; it would prove an effective policy. What sort of pacifist was George? He had always been an internationalist, but now the existence of nuclear weapons tipped the balance back towards a more absolute pacifism: 'For years I was immobilized after the war by the fact that I saw my pacifism had been wrong, but there was no feasible alternative. Catholic doctrine on the just war had convinced me, but now most Catholic theologians are saying that the use of modern weapons is "intrinsically wicked" for the Christian. The upshot of this is that one hopes for disengagement from the [NATO] alliance.'21 Christian pacifism provided the moral outrage; the rejection of internationalism intensified it: 'Diefenbaker's and Green's nationalism was taking the form of a new kind of neutralism, a simple refusal to accept any demand from the present imperialism.'22 Diefenbaker himself was 'no pacifist, no unilateralist, nor was he sentimental about Communism. If nuclear arms were necessary for North-American defence, Canada would take them.'23 What so distressed George was that there seemed to be an alternative for Canada to accepting these hideous manifestations of technological destructiveness, but that no one other than Diefenbaker and Howard Green seemed to see the significance of the choice: 'Green's appeal to a gentler tradition of international morality had little attraction for the new Canada, outside of such unimportant groups as the Voice of Women.'24 The second ingredient was the death of his mother. In one of his most memorable metaphors, he spoke of the disappearance in Canada of the dream to build a more ordered and more stable society than the United

246 George Grant States. This hope was now extinguished: 'We find ourselves like fish left on the shores of a drying lake. The element necessary to our existence had passed away.' And he talked about the character of a lament, 'to cry out at the death or at the dying of something loved.'25 Once when he was talking with his friend, McMaster artist George Wallace, Wallace said that after the death of each of his parents, he produced a sculpture that was for him part of his grieving. George replied, 'I did too; I wrote Lament for a Nation under the same circumstances.'26 For George the passing of his mother involved the loss of his last direct, powerful tie with a past in which family and imperial politics were intertwined. Grandfather Parkin had not been just a sentimental anglophile; he was a tub-thumping charismatic evangelist, an activist and organizer carrying the good news of Imperial Federation not just across Canada but throughout the Empire. Here was a man who thought that the values of British civilization mattered, and who had devoted his life to that belief. G.M. Grant also stood and was counted when the time came. In politics he had always distrusted his local MP, Sir John A. Macdonald, whom he held responsible for much of the corruption in Canadian political life; but when free trade, Commercial Union, was proposed by the Liberals in the 1891 election, he was side by side with Sir John against it. He believed Commercial Union inevitably brought political union in its train,27 and he strongly believed that Canada's best interests lay in maintaining the British connection. His Oxford-educated son William took up the cause in his turn. It was therefore not thoughtlessly that George lamented the passing of Canada as a 'celebration of memory'; in this case, the 'memory of that tenuous hope that was the principle of my ancestors.'28 His mother's death and the fall of Diefenbaker's government were, of course, not causally related; it was their accidental conjunction that allowed him to see clearly that the dream of sustaining in Canada any sort of alternative to American civilization was irrevocably extinguished. It also helps explain the intensity of his response: his philosophic imagination transformed his personal grief into political passion. The third ingredient was the right Honourable John George Diefenbaker, not in his concrete reality, but as George's most famous symbol. We noted this aspect of his imagination as early as his poem 'Picasso' at Upper Canada. At Queen's when he saw Uncle Jim and Sir Edward Beatty on the platform of Grant Hall, they became symbols of 'the unity of Big Business.' George pigeon-holed almost everyone he knew in this way. Vincent Massey was 'an ambitious Methodist'; Jim Macdonnell a 'small

Lament 247 town Presbyterian lawyer.' Grandfather Parkin and his own father were 'abstracted from capitalism.'29 This one was a tough rabbinical Jew; that one a sweet evangelical Protestant. And so on. The characterizations were often insightful, sometimes ludicrous. But what this close identification of people and abstractions allowed George to do was to carry over the intense emotions he felt towards the individuals onto the abstract level. Few thinkers have ever responded with such intensity as George did to ideas. Perhaps he did so because the dividing line between the individuals and the abstractions they represented for him was often blurred. Diefenbaker, for George, was 'the apotheosis of straight loyalty.'30 There can be little doubt that Diefenbaker, the man and the beleaguered politician, was grateful for George's support. The Conservative leader subsequently asked George to write speeches for him and prepare background papers. When he went to New York for a visit to the United Nations, he took George along. He later paid George the highest compliment possible, short of inviting him on a fishing expedition: he asked him to write his biography. He could never quite understand or forgive George for declining this offer.31 There is only one plausible explanation why someone so prickly about criticism reacted to Lament in this way: he read the reviews that portrayed it as a pro-Diefenbaker book, but never actually read it through. Lament is a systematic indictment of Diefenbaker's government. His administration, according to George, was confused and inconsistent; his response to the Canadian predicament bewildered.32 Diefenbaker mistook rhetoric for policy, and stuck with the rhetoric even when it failed to work.33 His vision of Canada floundered, because he was never specific about what Canada should be. A prairie populist (another of George's characterizations), he appointed the epitome of Toronto Toryism, Donald Fleming, his finance minister,34 and his own small-town free-enterprise ideology was 'entirely inadequate' to come to terms with the society that had arisen in Central Canada since the war. His inept response to economic difficulties lost the support of the ordinary people of Ontario and associated the Conservatives again with unemployment and recession.35 His relations with the civil service, though flawed on both sides, invited 'the writing of a picaresque novel.'36 He had even forgotten that R.B. Bennett's Conservative government had created the CBC to prevent the use of the airwaves for private gain, and attacked this central national institution.37 And, despite his electoral success in Quebec he was unwilling to recognize the rights of French Canadians as a community.38 This flaw arose from another of Diefenbaker's characteristics: 'His baptistness

248 George Grant made him pick the most godawful French Canadian lieutenants.'39 For those who missed the point of the book (and there were to be many over the years), George summed it up during a CBC 'Venture' discussion on the future of Canadian nationhood on 27 June 1965: 'My book is not a defence of Mr. Diefenbaker. There is a whole chapter saying that he had no constructive nationalist legislation when he was in ... Before the Defence Crisis I saw nothing in his favour, just nothing. I thought he had a very poor regime. If that wasn't implied in the book, then I must write very unclearly. Over the Defence Crisis, I see the hero of this book as Mr. Green, not as Mr. Diefenbaker.' Without the defence crisis of 1962/3 Diefenbaker would have shown himself as nothing more than 'a romantic demagogue yearning for recognition.'40 These events revealed his 'deeply held principle for which he would fight with great courage': 'Nothing in Diefenbaker's ministry was as noble as his leaving of it.'41 Yet, for all this criticism, in Diefenbaker George sensed a nationalism similar to his own. The pamphlets he wrote in 1943 and 1945 had explored the means by which Canada could preserve its independent identity in North America. On this issue he agreed with his grandfathers that only by maintaining a strong imperial connection could Canada survive the destructive pull of the United States. To be independent, Canada must also be British. He repeated this theme in Lament. 'Growing up in Ontario the generation of the 1920's took it for granted that they belonged to a nation. The character of the country was self-evident. To say it was British was not to deny it was North American. To be a Canadian was to be a unique species of North American.'42 George gave Diefenbaker partial absolution for his failures, because there were so few successful alternatives. De Gaulle was his favourite contemporary politician, but the Gaullism George encountered during his visit to Paris in 1963 was not possible in Canada because we lacked the depth of tradition.43 The other possibility, 'Leftist' nationalism, was attractive only in less-developed countries whose people wanted industrialism, but feared they were being thwarted by the American empire. This was not the case in Canada. The decisive factor, in Canada's case, was that the large corporations, where real power lay, knew nothing of loyalty, only interest. That directed them south. Ever since his father's sympathy to French Canada and his mother's connection with McGill had led him to spend time and make friends in Quebec, George was open to that province. It was a place he knew and loved. This encounter was the fourth element. He had experienced

Lament 249 French Catholicism when he was young, and it made a powerful impression on him. In other circumstances its oppressiveness would have made him its enemy, but now George saw it, faute de mieux, as the only sustaining bulwark against the inroads of the universal and homogenous state. Catholicism might not be pretty, but it was tough. 'To Catholics who remain Catholics, whatever their level of sophistication, virtue must be prior to freedom.' George feared that, eventually, even it would not prove tough enough. The concept of the universal and homogenous state, which he absorbed in his reading of the Kojeve-Strauss controversy, he now used again, with brilliant effect, to analyse the worldwide expansion of American capitalism, 'a dynamic empire spearheading the age of progress.'44 Nothing could block it; even secular conservatism had no strength to withstand it. The belief that science should lead to the conquest of nature was now ubiquitous. Conservatives could delay, but they could not prevent, its triumph; they would fail because, in their hearts, they too thought it was right. There were, by contrast, those for whom the universal and homogenous state was the proper object of human striving. For them the disappearance of Canada was not just inevitable, it was good because it was a step on the road to total human liberation.45 The Liberal party's accomplishment was not that it caused the development - it had too little power for that - but that it managed it with a minimum of fuss. They were to politics what Deweyites, the progressive educators, were to education: they made people comfortable with necessity. Why did George always speak of the disappearance of Canada as necessary? The final element that constituted Lament was his reading of political philosophy. George turned to another work by Leo Strauss, Natural right and History, which helped him see that the apparent conflicts of his contemporary world - progress/reaction, liberalism/conservatism, socialism/capitalism - were ultimately unimportant. They were rival interpretations of the same viewpoint, namely, that it is characteristic of human beings to have complete freedom to change any order that stands in the way of technological advance.46 No modern Western regime could survive if it took seriously the possibility that there was an eternal order by which we were measured and defined. This analysis gave George a perspective on the destruction of Canada's independence different from his grandfather Grant's. G.M. Grant saw the Great Republic as an aggressive predator and he warned his countrymen to guard their independence with vigilance. He put it in language that was somewhat earthy for a clergyman: 'Our position under the protection

250 George Grant of the United States would be precisely similar [to that of a kept woman]. I wish no such harlot's independence for my country.'47 In his grandson's view Canada had done worse. A kept woman at least got money; Canadians had simply been seduced. Over the years the independence of Canada had been continually eroded, not so much by the external actions of the Americans, as by the increasing acceptance of the attractiveness of the American vision of modernity. He cited the example of Frank Underhill who, according to George, turned away from the Left and expressed in his seventies his belief that liberal hope lay with the corporations and not with doctrinaire socialism.4 George could not unequivocally condemn those who succumbed to the beguiling allure of modernity. He too experienced the exhilaration of freedom and he had carefully studied the arguments for it in the writings of Sartre, Hegel, and Kojeve. He knew the practical worth of modern technology every time Sheila washed the clothes in her machine or the doctor gave antibiotics to one of their sick children: 'Those who criticize our age must at the same time contemplate pain, infant mortality, crop failures in isolated areas, and the sixteen hour day.'49 How could he persuade his compatriots to turn away from the science of mastery, particularly if they no longer understood the significance of redemptive suffering? Yet it might be possible that the assumptions of the age of progress were false. Modern science led not just to penicillin but to nuclear weapons. And the assumptions of modernity were just that, the postulates of particular men in particular settings, who believed they preserved what was true from antiquity, while correcting its errors. Plato and Aristotle had not seen their own work in that light, as preparation for a future in which they would be superseded. They thought that the mark of a philosopher was to present a complete teaching that was valid for everyone everywhere.50 To judge that claim was a move beyond political philosophy, beyond Strauss, to the metaphysical assertion that 'changes in the world take place within an eternal order that is not affected by them.' It was here that George was blocked again. He still could not yet see how it was possible to preserve freedom (which he accepted as a primal good for human beings) without accepting the modern view that it was man's essence. Nor could he explain what science would be if it were something other than the conquest of nature. Canada's independence no longer served anything the world thought good. Formal annexation by the United States would eventually come, and when it did it would have only a minor impact. It was fated because

Lament 251 most North Americans accepted the modern understanding of what was good for human beings. Yet these secular developments did not settle the issue. William Dunbar in fifteenth-century Scotland reminded us to heed the inevitability of death and turn to God for comfort. The Latin passage from Virgil's Aeneid that concludes Lament also reminds us of the soul's yearning for the afterlife. The significance of these two allusions can be illuminated by a remark George made to his mother when he was still at Queen's: 'My trouble is that I am a true Lutheran in that I seek out my own personal salvation and don't try and affect others.'51 He had never thought that true salvation was possible through political action and he did not think so now. Was George a pessimist? It was an epithet that intensely annoyed him. Did he think there was nothing Canadians could do? Of course not. The one thing needful was always possible. It was always open to any human being at any time or place to orient his soul to God. God's love and God's grace were always sufficient: the fear of death need not perturb anyone. The pessimist denied the ever-present possibility of salvation; this was foolish and a sin. God sees the truth, but waits until we turn to Him. George consistently rejected the idea that the solution to the modern predicament might be found beyond the individual, on a national or international level. Some people, for example, imagined that God might directly and decisively intervene in the working out of earthly affairs; this possibility George rejected as inconsistent with his understanding of the divine. Still others thought that nuclear war might erupt, and its fell consequences might convince its miserable survivors to reconsider the assumptions that led to it. This solution was too horrible to contemplate. The only genuine possibility was that 'enough human beings might wake up and see that technique was destroying them spiritually and try and move against it.'52 Even if this were to happen, it is impossible to say when it might begin. Even once it began, its victory would likely take centuries. It was not a practical alternative for the immediate future. To those who thought he was trying to provoke a nationalist response in a last-ditch effort to save Canada, he replied firmly: 'Because people quite rightly want finite hopes, people have read a little book I wrote {Lament for a Nation) wrongly. I was talking about the end of Canadian nationalism. I was saying that this is over and people read it as if I was making an appeal for Canadian nationalism. I think that is just nonsense. I think they just read it wrongly.'53 Lament was a nationalist work only in the most restricted and tactical way. Matters, he knew, could advance more or less quickly. On the practical level, Canadians were better off if

252 George Grant they retarded the process of continental political integration; residual nationhood was better than none: 'I think it a dreadful loss for human beings when they have to lose taking part in the practical life of their society. My Lament was also a lament for the loss of the possibility of taking part in politics.'54 It was just that he thought this misfortune had already irrevocably come to pass. His judgment now was no different than when he wrote to Paul Clifford in 1961: 'Nationalism is not a great thing in the Christian life.'55 Lament was published on March 27, 1965 and the immediate reaction from George's friends was mixed. James Doull thought it 'as exasperating as it is brilliant,' and accused him of giving up the battle before it had been fought.56 Jim Aitchison told him that it would shake a lot of people out of their complacency, but did not find the full argument 'anywhere near convincing.'57 However, author Farley Mowat praised it as a 'veritable masterpiece.' 'I have never before read, and never expect to read, a more succinct, accurate and damning appraisal of the "Canadian" decline ... I find it a bitter thought that it should have come too late to make any difference ... Your book is a tremendous tour-de-force and I admire both it and you very much indeed.'58 Hugh McLennan, Uncle Raleigh Parkin's friend, wrote in a similar vein: 'I have spent the last two nights not so much re-reading Lament as studying it. The book is so closely written that one reading is quite insufficient. It is also beautifully written, and one of the most civilized (in the cosmopolitan sense) books on the destiny of this country I have ever read. No political scientist could possibly have written such a book. It is a noble one.'59 Maude's old friend from McGill, Eugene Forsey, also wrote in admiration: 'I can't claim to understand all of it (I shouldn't have expected to, for I don't move on your intellectual level), and I am dubious about some parts; nor am I quite so ready to lament what may not be so irretrievably lost as you believe; there is still some fight in me, as I am sure there is in you; in fact there is probably a great deal more in you. But it's a powerful work.'60 George took this mixture of praise and criticism from his friends in good part; he reacted more sharply to a correspondent from Edmonton: 'Thank you very much for your letter and poem. The poem is indeed insulting, as it accuses me of lack of courage, and what is worse, valetudinarianism. I do not think I lack hope, because in the Christian sense I interpret hope as a supernatural virtue, and courage is what is necessary in the world.'61 When Frank Underhill sent a copy of a review in which

Lament 253 he attacked the book and defended Canadian liberalism, George archly replied that there were two points with which he took exception: '(a) When you state that I was annoyed with yourself. I tried to state your position as fairly as you tried to state mine. (b) I really think there is a lot of snobbery of an unpleasant kind in many intellectuals' approach to Diefenbaker. Perhaps I should look at the mote in my own eye because I feel the same snobbery about the ambitious little bureaucrat who is your leader.'62 He did not write Lament to pay Pearson back for the way he had treated Mary Greey; that was just a bonus. Another critic was close to home and not so easy to dismiss. Jim Macdonnell, who been more than anyone George's mentor in practical politics, wrote to express his regret about certain features of the book. He was impressed, he allowed, with his nephew's knowledge of political philosophy, less so with his understanding of the 'personalities of men active in public life today.' He told George that he had criticized the civil service and Queen's unfairly, and warned him that he appeared in danger of treating any successful businessman as a public enemy. As for his general attitude towards the Conservatives, Macdonnell said with dignity: 'I think we have played a not unworthy part in this last twentyyear period of anxiety and confusion.'63 Here at least was someone who did not mistake the work for a pro-Conservative book. At a cocktail party at the Macdonnells' someone asked George about his new book. Aunt Marjorie changed the topic firmly: 'The less said about that, the better.'

18

A lone wolf

Whatever happened to his country during his lifetime - whether it remained a satellite or was absorbed into the United States - George knew that he was fated to live in Canada in the mid-twentieth century and that, therefore, he would need to make certain moral choices. The better his philosophy, the better those choices could be. As American involvement in Vietnam slowly increased, opposition to the war grew both in the States and elsewhere. Through the impact of the writings of Herbert Marcuse and others, criticism of American policy broadened into an attack on Western capitalism and imperialism. Its intellectual centre was on American campuses, and Harvard on the east coast and Berkeley on the west gradually assumed the leading roles. Abroad, the Sorbonne in Paris and the London School of Economics were in the forefront of protest. Student opposition to the war expanded to include a broad campaign for social and educational reform. Those who considered themselves the most radical called themselves the New Left to distinguish themselves from the older Marxist and socialdemocratic parties. In Canada there was an annual summer meeting of the student movement and in 1965 it was held just outside Montreal, with representatives from across the country. James Laxer, who was then president of the Canadian University Press, strode into the meeting and announced: 'This is the book you all should be reading.' He held up Lament for a Nation.1

Lament had been well received. It was widely reviewed, from the Brandon Sun to La Presse, and the reviews were generally favourable. William Morton called it 'an anguished book by a deeply disturbing author'; it should be 'meditated on by every Canadian concerned with the present state of the nation.'2 T.E.N. in the Hamilton Spectator said it was 'chal-

A lone wolf 255 lenging, provocative and brilliantly written.'3 Philosopher David Gauthier inhisreviewfortheTelegrammaintainedthat,evenifitwerewrong-headed,itdeservedt'heseriousattentionofeveryCanadianwithaninteresti headed, it deserved 'the serious attention of every Cannadian with an interest in - or even curiosity about - the future of his country.'4 Time magazine noted that Lament was high on Canadian best-seller lists, 'and deserves to stay there.'5 In French Canada Claude Ryan reviewed it for Le Devoiron 26 July 1965. It was, he wrote, 'a rare exercise and, whether he agrees or not, the reader will find in these severe pages some of the most lucid ideas yet written on "Canada's crisis.''' Not all the reviewers uniformly praised his book. Peter Newman, writing in La Presse, called it 'un curieux melange de declarations a teinte religieuse et de pretentieuses allusions litteraires.'6 Even the sympathetic reviews, like Morton's, complained: 'He goes too far. This outburst must be called what it is: a spate of wild and whirling words.' And Claude Ryan observed: 'He is ultra-ideological and draws on highly abstract sources far removed from his facts. And he comes to a dead end - he notes an approaching demise but gives no advice to the man of action.' However, as Robert Fulford noted in The Canadian: 'Almost every major newspaper published a long review, and even those critics who found it incoherent or dead wrong paid it the compliment of taking it seriously.'7 right or wrong, George was now famous. However, as Laxer's praise of Lament suggests, George's appeal extended beyond the mainstream of Canadian political opinion. On the surface this alliance between George, the hulking, middle-aged Johnsonian Tory (who had recently broken from his flirtation with the NDP) and the radicals (who found it bliss to be alive and to be young a very heaven) was implausible. However, they both shared a common hatred of the impact of capitalism on human life, and George sincerely loved these students and their noble protest. For the New Left, what appealed was not George's transcendent Christianity, but his devastating critique of the power elite of contemporary Canadian society. They too lamented the passing of Canadian political independence, they despised the connivance of the Liberal government of Lester Pearson in the Vietnam conflict, and they responded to Lament's analysis of the homogenizing forces of modernity. To George, pacifist from his teenage years, student opposition to war in Asia was a hopeful sign in a country whose leaders had brought down the Diefenbaker government to bring nuclear weapons onto Canadian soil. George saw what was happening to Vietnam as simply a more brutal manifestation of what was happening to Canada. His country's crime was

256 George Grant compounded because, having let its own independence slip away, it was now conniving in the destruction of another country's: 'I think the Vietnam war was an atrocious war on the part of the Europeans to maintain their power right around the world, first the French and then the Americans, whom I take in civilization to be an epigonal civilization. I was living in a place very near to where personnel bullets were being made to be used against the Vietnamese.'8 But George was also intrigued by the possibility that this rebellion of the young might prove a harbinger of spiritual renewal. For Jacques Ellul, in the foreword to the revised American edition of The Technological Society, had allowed a possible escape from doom: 'If an increasing number of people become fully aware of the threat the technological world poses to man's personal and spiritual life, and if they determine to assert their freedom by upsetting the course of this evolution, my forecast will be invalidated.'9 George also hoped that might prove possible: 'The best of these youngsters are no longer sure of the virtues of the technological world.'10 The 1960s pioneered the teach-in, the ultimate combination of lecture, pep rally, and demonstration. The most important of these in Canada was held from 8-10 October 1965 in Varsity Arena at the University of Toronto. His nephew Michael Ignatieff and future Ontario premier Bob Rae were among the organizers. A high tech link-up with closed-circuit television carried the proceedings to campuses across Canada and the United States. The big star, of course, was an American, Yale professor and anti-war activist Staughton Lynd, but the atmosphere was electric when George came to the microphone. It was as powerful and charismatic an address as he ever made. He glanced at Sheila and Charity in the audience and the buzz of conversation died down. George's crisp, clear words resounded over the PA system throughout the arena. T speak,' he said to the flower-children, 'as a Canadian nationalist and as a conservative.' Canada had become a satellite of the United States and so it was now also necessary to speak as a citizen of North America. The New Left arose in the struggle to ensure the civil rights of America blacks and, as a conservative, he felt sympathy for the students' protest against this historic injustice and also for their outrage against the emptiness and dehumanization that North American society produced. The new world that was being built on this continent inherently denied the possibility of human excellence, and universities were being asked to do no more than provide personnel to feed the vast technological apparatus.

A lone wolf 257 Yet the New Left was wrong when it believed that the current system would collapse from its internal contradictions. It was stronger than ever: 'The American system with its extensions into western Europe seems to me supremely confident and to have the overwhelming majority of its citizens behind it.'11 The audience visibly sagged under this analysis. But then George brought them to the heights. I am not advocating inaction or cynicism. Nothing I have said denies for one moment the nobility of protest. Nothing I have said denies that justice is good and that injustice is evil and that it is required of human beings to know the difference between the two. To live with courage in the world is always better than retreat or disillusion. Human beings are less than themselves when they are cut off from being citizens. Indeed one of the finest things about the present protest movements in North America is that they try to give meaning to citizenship in a society which by its enormity and impersonality cuts people off from the public world ... The new politics of protest have tried to overcome those pressures and to give new meaning to citizenship. Nobody should attack them for that.12

Vast expectations were dangerous, he warned; the politics of Utopia too readily leads to despair. Moral fervour must be put in the service of reality. Action without thought is a waste of time. To be active and effective citizens, people must be free, and that involves knowing the truth about things, 'without simplifications, without false hopes, without moral fervour divorced from moral clarity.'13 Ghandi, the greatest figure of this era, 'was interested in public action and in political liberty, but he knew that the right direction of that action had to be based on knowledge of reality - with all the discipline and order and study that entailed.'14 North America was in the forefront of the world in accepting the dominance of technique. It was required for Canadians to discover with the greatest clarity, where in 'this mammoth system' we could use our 'intelligence and our love to open up spaces in which human excellence can exist.'15 For a Canadian that meant to work for a 'country which is not simply a satellite of any empire.'16 The speech was a triumph and, for a while, it made George the darling of the New Left. Two days after the Teach-in Clayton Ruby, who was then with the federal staff of the Students' Union for Peace Action (SUPA), wrote to George to thank him for his participation. 'We respect and agree with your analysis of the Canadian scene, but disagree with your conclusions.'17

258 George Grant George replied that he had been very moved and convinced by Staughton Lynd's speech, and that there were 'many questions' that he wished to discuss with the student leaders.18 Meetings subsequently took place at a house at 75 Spadina Avenue in Toronto where Matt Cohen and Art Davis were living. The house, it turned out to George's amazement and pleasure, once belonged to Miriam Anglin's family. The high point was a seminar that lasted over a weekend and involved about twenty-five people, the inner circle of SUPA, among them Art Davis, Matt Cohen, Ken Drushka, Clayton Ruby, Art Pape, Anthony Hyde, Danny Drache. Many of these subsequently made a considerable reputation for themselves; George made a big impression on them. Encounters with him were always memorable, not just for his formidable intensity in discussion, but also informally. He and Matt Cohen sometimes down Spadina to the riviera Restaurant, had a milkshake, and talked about recent events, things they were reading. Cohen found him 'a real teacher by nature, not just by profession.'19 'To spend an afternoon with George Grant, to be questioned about various books and their meaning, was to realize that what little one "knew" was known by a mind completely imprisoned by preconceptions of which - until meeting Grant - one had hardly been aware.'20 Early in 1966 George met with Louis Greenspan and a couple of the other SUPA leaders at Greenspan's house with a more practical mission, to write a pamphlet denouncing Canadian collaboration in the American war effort. George still remembered vividly what it was like to be on the receiving end of saturation bombing, and the main thrust of the document was to argue that the devastating bombardment of South Vietnam was an atrocity, regardless of the justness of the war as a whole. They decided to prepare a petition and on 28 February 1966 go to Ottawa for a silent vigil of forty-eight hours in front of the Parliament Buildings. George sent copies of the petition to his friends asking them to sign it and take part in the vigil. As he explained to Kenneth McNaught: The reasons for doing this seem to me something like the following: (1) For whatever motives, it seems to me that the U.S. has got into a position where it is massacring masses of Vietnamese. Canada is more and more implicated in this, and the thought of us being implicated in a long and growing war between Asia and North America is too terrible to contemplate. (2) I think it is important that those of us of the older generation who are Canadian nationalists should join these young people and show them that there are some older people in this country who are willing to speak about this matter - and not simply the older radicals. This joint effort means that the document will be a

A lone wolf 259 compromise, as it already is. The older generation joining this will also mean that it can work within constitutional government. The students concerned wished to start out with civil disobedience, and they have now agreed to have a silent and legal vigil. I am not convinced that this action will accomplish much in the present ferocious circumstances, but I do not see how a Canadian nationalist cannot express himself on this matter at the moment.21 Some of his friends agreed; others like Hugh McLennan thought it too shrill: 'Along the lines of your declaratione I would go a certain way but cannot accept its tone of hostility to the Americans, though at the moment I dislike them and their leaders. It sees to me unjust to use the word "genocide" of them when they could really commit genocide but in fact are not doing so at the moment.'22 George was a particularly big catch for the SUPA radicals, not just because of his academic standing, but also because he was now a major media star. Not only had Lament brought him national attention, but he was also appearing almost weekly on television with the young left-wing political scientist Gad Horowitz in a series of programs on politics. However, in his absence, and possibly when he was in Edmonton for a teachin on the Canadian identity (with Laurier LaPierre, Gad Horowitz, and student leader Joe Clark), the SUPA leadership decided on a dramatic change in plans: they intended to disrupt Parliament with civil disobedience. When George heard the announcement, he felt betrayed that they had used his name without his consent, and he reacted fiercely. Civil disobedience, he wrote to the editor of the student newspaper at McMaster, was a liberal doctrine from which he wished to disassociate himself. 'In a constitutional regime, civil disobedience should be a last resort and should only be used when the government is directly responsible for an undoubted evil. It is both foolish and irresponsible to propose civil disobedience as a threat to a government with which one wants to hold rational discussions to persuade it to change its policies. The terrible events which are unfolding in Vietnam are not going to be helped by denying the principles of constitutional government in Canada.'23 He accepted that civil disobedience was sometimes appropriate; but the Canadian regime had shown itself willing to listen to peaceful protest and, therefore, it was inappropriate to break the law. Earlier he had invited Pierre Trudeau, Prime Minister Pearson's parliamentary secretary and George's old acquaintance from Social Purpose for Canada, to address the vigil. Now he wrote to alert him of the altered intent: 'As I cannot

260 George Grant approve of such threatening the Government, I thought I should let you know of the changed circumstances as I see them.'24 He had given his young friends fair warning, when he spoke to the teach-in, that he appeared before them as a nationalist and a conservative. There was an alliance between them, not a community of interest. I should have made clear much sooner the fact that there is a vast gap between those who think there is no alternative to action within the operations of constitutional government (even if that can include civil disobedience) and those who are essentially revolutionaries. I think also the confusion was caused on both sides by the deep horror of what is happening in Vietnam and the desire to do something about it. Well, the past is the past, and I have certainly learned a lot, although obviously there is not much point to that if it is at the expense of any possible effectiveness about Canada's place in the world.25 George's rift with the SUPA radicals over civil disobedience did not mean for a second that he had modified his own views on American policy in Vietnam. On 15 May 1966 he addressed a demonstration in Toronto for peace in Vietnam. The desire to stop the war, he argued, should include all decent people, regardless of party or political philosophy. President Johnson's war was unjust and waged by atrocious means; it aimed at genocide and all North Americans of good conscience should continue to protest until it was brought to an end. But, some students thougt, these protests seemed useless since the war continued to escalate. Perhaps, George replied, matters might have been even worse without them. Yet even if protest were totally ineffective, it was still good to bear witness: 'We must keep alive in our society the recognition that there is a difference between truth and lies ... A society in which the difference between truth and lies disappears is a society doomed for debasement ... This is the one service the protest movement must perform in this society. It must break through the curtain of lies and half-truths and tell what is really happening in Vietnam.' So great was George's revulsion against American policy in Vietnam that he vowed not to set foot in the United States until the war ended.27 Even if he were sometimes annoyed by them, George genuinely liked the students he met in the anti-war movement. He loved their energy, their idealism, their moral outrage. When it came right down to it, he just liked young people, and for his own family the sentiment was greatly magnified. As a father George was inconsistent in the attention he gave his children. He had a high opinion of the office of philosopher to which

A lone wolf 261 he was called and, when he was wrapped up in his work, he seemed aloof. He compounded this problem because he had been encouraged, beginning with Leo, to believe that his concerns ought to have a privileged place in the hierarchy of family values. Sheila generally shared his estimate of the importance of his work and also coddled him, so that the children quickly learned that they were not to bother father when he was deep in contemplation. However, even when he turned to them, and that was often, he usually erred on the side of intensity rather than indifference. Even love, when intensely focused the way George was capable, could prove a frightening experience for young children. Anyone who was with George over a long period of time heard each child described as 'my heart's darling' several times, and every time he said it he meant it. George was probably not an alcoholic, but he certainly drank too much for his own, or his family's, good. His drinking exacerbated his emotional volatility, and the children had to learn to detect the danger signs on the frequent occasions when the wine with dinner on top of the gins before made him likely to overreact to something they might say or do. Dinner, under these circumstances, was often very trying. His enthusiasms themselves, often so intriguing to outsiders, could be hard on the children, when they wanted to talk about their interests and he was so involved with his own. His quarrels with Sheila were also unnerving. While their fights were usually in private, they were always loud enough to be heard by the children. Perhaps their most dramatic domestic encounter was the time George scratched Sheila's favourite record to spite her: she retaliated by taking it from him and breaking it over his head. Yet when he was good he could be very, very good, and his children grew to love aspects of his playfulness. Everyone revelled in the great games of murder, which George's native histrionic talents and love of detective stories turned into memorable occasions. The game was especially good when cousins came to visit. Everyone gathered in the livingroom of the sprawling house in Dundas. They picked cards from a deck that told them who was the detective, who the villain. The lights went out; the dread deed was done. The action flowed upstairs and downstairs until the murderer was discovered. Then, if there was time, there might be a game of charades, just as in the old days at Batterwood. When the children were young George and Sheila loved to read to them, just as Maude and William had read to theirs. It was a practice that George heartily commended to a friend: 'For amusement I have been rereading A Tale of Two Cities - what a genius. Do you read aloud to your

262 George Grant boys? With proper cutting (because of ennui, not because of impropriety) that might be a marvellous book to read out loud, because it gives such a wonderful sense of "history" which is so lacking in the education of young North Americans.'28 It was not the sense of history that struck the children. Kate remembers when her parents took turns reading A Tale of Two Cities aloud to her. As the climax came, the emotion proved too much for George and he began to weep. In tears he handed the book to Sheila, but she too was soon deeply affected by the pathos. Mother was sobbing, father was crying, and poor Kate really did not have the slightest idea why. When she asked her older brothers and sister, they teasingly refused to explain. George did not have many hobbies or diversions. His two great pleasures at this stage in his life were floating about in an above-ground swimming pool he had installed beside the house and taking Arthur for walks. If there were ever a man made for the love of a good dog, it was George. On the rare occasions when Sheila was away from home, George brought Artie to his graduate seminar, where he would lie quietly in a corner, possibly wondering whether his master would ever finish a sentence. George had served as chairman of his department since 1964, and in October 1966 he wrote to the principal to remind him that, when he undertook the chairmanship, he had not wished to hold the post for very long. The department was now, he thought, sufficiently settled that someone else could take on the job.29 The activities of the past few years had taken their toll and he now had an ulcer as testimony to the intensity with which he reacted to every problem he encountered. For a while he started drinking gin and milk. The milk, he told his friend Eugene Combs, for the ulcer, the gin for the brain. Outside the university his fame continued to grow. He often appeared on TV; he was invited to Calgary as a distinguished guest at the university; and Alex Colville, the great painter, whom George had met at a conference in 1962, wrote to say that he was dedicating the half-dollar coin in the new Centennial series to him: 'You may know that I designed some new coins - while I was working on the design and the model of the 50cent piece I thought of you (or rather of your ideas) and it occurred to me that the concept of my design has some relation to your outlook. In any case I am enclosing one of these as a gift to you - I do this as a tribute to you.'30 It was a lone wolf, howling at the moon. Colville's coins were just one part of the frenzy of celebrations for Can-

A lone wolf 263 ada's hundredth birthday in 1967. George's cousin, John Fisher, 'Mr Canada,' was appointed centennial commissioner to preside over the year's festivities. George was equally involved in his own efforts to refine our understanding of the Canadian identity. Cy Gonick asked George to write a piece for his Winnipeg-based magazine, Canadian Dimension, and he responded with 'Canadian Fate and Imperialism.' In it he began for the first time to speak seriously of the idea of fate. It was an attempt to clarify Simone Weil's concept of necessity. 'To use the language of fate is to assert that all human beings come into a world they did not choose and live their lives within a universe they did not make.'31 Our particular fate as Canadians was to be bound up with the interplay of various world empires. The fate of the vast majority of Canadians was to live entirely within the forms and assumptions of the Western tradition. They were, whether they liked it or not, fated to be second-class members of the Western industrial empire centred in the United States of America that was spreading its influence throughout the world, including Asia: 'What is being done in Vietnam is being done by the English-speaking empire.'32 The two great northern European civilizations, the French and the British, who colonized North America had brought their civilization there, and the more modern, the more liberal - the British - triumphed. Even the early Canadian settlers, who had not wanted to be Americans, did not differ 'in any substantial way which questioned that modernity.'33 For a while Canadians had preserved an element of distinctiveness. Canada's fate was settled with the 'insane war of 1914,' which killed many of the best English-speaking Canadians and left its survivors cynical and tired. It set English against French Canadians by compelling Quebec to take part in a war 'they knew not to be theirs.' Finally, it compelled the British ruling class to subordinate its interests to America's: 'The elimination of Great Britain as an independent source of civilization in the English-speaking world greatly increased the pull of the English-speaking Canadians to an identity with the centre of that world in the United States.'34 Alone and without the sustaining power of British civilization, Canadians felt the full force of the homogenizing power of modernity in its purest form, since the United States was, in one of George's most celebrated phrases, 'the only society on earth that has no indigenous traditions from before the age of progress.'35 The erosion of Canadian sovereignty, although fated in this way, was a matter of genuine loss, something to be lamented, as he had put it in

264 George Grant his book. The language was secular, but the central concept was theological and came from his reading of Plato through Simone Weil's eyes. Love of the good (God) was the highest end for human beings, but people first encountered the good not absolutely, but in the things that were their own, their friends, locality, traditions, country, or civilization. To reach God it was necessary to pass beyond this love, but also to pass through it. Canada's fate was to be part of North American civilization and that meant that the Vietnam war was the action of our civilization. Some people on the New Left thought that the best response was dropping out through drugs or anarchic rebellion. This was not a genuine option, because, following Aristotle, George believed man to be by nature a political animal. Yet the religion that held the civilization of the West together was the religion of progress, the belief that the conquest of human and non-human nature gave meaning to existence. Canadian nationalism mattered because it was valuable for practical men to limit the extent to which Canada was involved in the imperial adventures in Asia and South America: 'Is one not glad that Canadians are not actually fighting in Viet Nam? This is due to what sovereignty we still possess.'36 But ultimately it was not the existence of Canada that mattered. That meant little compared to the fate of Western civilization, 'the kind of existence which is becoming universal in advanced technological societies.'37 In the summer of 1967 George was again invited to address the Couchiching Conference and he persuaded Sheila to take a few days off from the children and come with him. In the soft warmth of the early August evenings they sat looking over the lake; it was a pleasant respite from the intensity that surrounded his everyday existence. The topic was President Johnson's Great Society, but George with his acute sense of time and place could not entirely forget his previous visit and the attendant controversy. Johnson's speeches, he averred in an aside, were 'often good Marxism coated with Billy Graham.' Religion, he went on more seriously, was 'what men bow down to'38 and the Great Society was held together by a new and powerful religion, technological mastery. That mastery, as it found embodiment in the universal and homogenous state, was becoming increasingly tyrannical. As he had also said in 'Canadian Fate,' it was not possible for us to meet the immoderation of technique with an immoderate retreat from society: 'Man is by nature a social being; therefore it is a kind of self-castration to try to opt out of the society one is in.'39

A lone wolf 265 What could you do if fate had destined you to live in a tyranny, as it had destined us? And George made it quite clear that he thought that 'the technological era is coming and is going to be a tyranny.'40 The answer was twofold. At the practical level, you could try to limit it. That was what he was doing by teaching about ancient religions and ancient philosophy at McMaster. But you also had to live through it, and how you lived through it was important: 'At all times and in all places it always matters what we do.' Even if we could not prevent our fate, it was still possible to cultivate the virtue of openness. 'This quality is the exact opposite of control or mastery. Mastery tries to shape the objects and people around us into a form which suits us. Openness tries to know what things are in themselves, not to impose our categories upon them. Openness acts on the assumption that other things and people have their own goodness in themselves; control believes that the world is essentially neutral stuff which can only be made good by human effort.'41 In our era this virtue was not an easy one to achieve; it 'requires daily the enormous discipline of dealing with our own closedness, aggressions and neuroses, be they moral, intellectual or sexual. To be open in an age of tyrannical control will above all require courage.'42 The philosopher might describe participation in politics as an essential human need. For the man, it was still something of a pleasure. Although George's involvement was not blindly partisan,43 for the most part he identified with the Conservatives, 'my party.'44 When Diefenbaker died in 1979, the Globe & Mail asked George to write a memorial.45 It was affectionate but critical. George rapidly catalogued Dief s many political failings: his old fashioned rhetoric, his massive egotism, his messianism without content, and his appalling choice of French Canadian colleagues. In spite of these shortcomings and others, Diefenbaker had one redeeming virtue, the most important one for political leaders, loyalty. His fundamental principles were loyalties that he did not put in question. People knew where they stood with the Chief. Even this was limited praise, because political virtues are not those needed for the contemplative life: 'The latter require that one be open to everything, and this includes putting everything in question.' In fact Diefenbaker's very strength led directly to his downfall. His nationalism was not ideological, and he just assumed, without sufficient thought, that Canada was part of his being in a way that the United States was not. His nationalism was old-fashioned, out-of-date in the technological age; but his courage was admirable and, 'whatever else he may have been, he was not false.' George respected the Chief, but his reputation as Diefenbaker's biggest fan had little substance.

266 George Grant By 1967 the hunt was on for Diefenbaker's successor, and a leadership convention was scheduled in Toronto in September. The field rapidly narrowed to two leading candidates, Duff Roblin, premier of Manitoba, and Premier Robert Stanfield of Nova Scotia. Curiously, although George came to admire Stanfield later, he did not do so now. He had even considered voting Liberal against Stanfield in the 1953 Nova Scotia provincial election, and he still thought of him as 'a rather ungenerous Whig of extremely limited horizon.'46 He preferred Roblin, most likely because his friend Derek Bedson, who worked for him, genuinely admired the Manitoba premier. George thought that Roblin was the leader most likely to respond effectively to the two most important problems facing Canada. The first was to rethink Confederation in a way sympathetic to French Canada. The second was for Canadians to regain control over the wealth of their own country: Tt is within this context that Premier Duff Roblin appears the outstanding candidate for the Conservative leadership ... All his speeches and actions show him an intelligent and sane nationalist.'47 He did what he could to help Roblin. On 13 August he appeared on the TV series 'The Other Eye' to explain the reasons for his support. He wrote to friends, asking them to sign a public letter.48 He contacted Roblin directly to offer his 'active support, both privately and publicly, in any way you deemed useful.'49 When W.L. Morton phoned to ask him to sign a public letter, he replied that his name could be used in 'any way you like.'50 Much has been written about George as a Red Tory, a term devised for him and a few others by his TV co-host Gad Horowitz. It was not a term he liked, and he thought it vulgarized what was most important in his own thought. The epithet 'red tory' can only be used if you look at the practical part of my book and not at the philosophical. Horowitz was only concerned with the practical. I think philosophers are more likely to have sympathy with conservatives than with liberals, but, as I say in my book, modern conservatism comes out of modern assumptions as much as modern liberalism. Much of this labelling arises because people cannot distinguish any longer between ideology and philosophy. Ideology is the perverted form that philosophy often takes in this era.51 Indeed he had written to Conservative publicist George Hogan to say that what he most disliked in the general economic situation of North America was the concentration of power that was taking place in Washington,

A lone wolf 267 and that he would not have found it impossible, were he an American, to vote in 1964 for right-wing Republican candidate Senator Barry Goldwater, as he would also earlier have supported General Eisenhower. In Canada, by contrast, he supported a strong federal government to maintain Canadian independence: 'This is a contradiction that I find difficult to reconcile as far as [concerns] practical Canadian politics at the moment.'52 However, he took no further active part in the leadership campaign. In August he and Sheila set off for a holiday in Greece, where he found that 'the ancient things passed our highest expectations.'53 Canadian politics, though, were not forgotten. When they visited the shrine at Delphi where the Pythian priestess had pronounced Apollo's oracle, Sheila stood on the very spot and, after awaiting the inspiration, pronounced a dream she had the previous night: 'Roblin will lose to Stanfield.' George always recounted the story with awe; whether real or feigned, it was difficult with him to know. On 30 December 1967 Vincent Massey died in London. His body was flown back to Canada and on 5 January a funeral service was held at St Mark's Church in Port Hope. George made his last visit to Batterwood to pay his respects to a man whom he did not much like but who, for good or ill, had sometimes played the role of a second father. A couple of years later, after Batterwood had been sold and its contents dispersed, he wrote sadly to Aunt Louise and Uncle Raleigh: 'My little hobby is collecting little bits of china when I have a dollar and as a relief from bureaucracy. It is to me sad to find in all the shops of Toronto & Hamilton pieces for sale marked from Batterwood. I can see Hart would not want it, yet I hate to see Alice's lovingly collected things spread wholesale.'54 Uncle Vincent's death was not a great blow, but it did coincide with an important change that was slowly taking hold of him. He wrote to Halifax friends Nita and John Graham to explain his deep need 'to be far away within myself and therefore an impossibility to speak about the most important matters. I know that a certain period of my life has come to an end and that I must reform myself to move on - but in doing that I have to retreat away from converse with people - even those who are most meaningful and most interesting to me.'55 At more frivolous times he returned to Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization and responded to it with eccentric enthusiasm. 'For about half an hour after I read the book, I did try to crawl on my hands and knees and sniff at everything - but my wife brought me back to common sense.'56 More seriously, he turned anew to Tolstoy and Jung, finding out all sorts of things about himself

268 George Grant that he felt he ought to have known years before: 'In the busyness of the last years my intellect had got detached from my roots and it is wonderful to begin to feel more whole and less driven by neurotic tensions of one kind or another.'57 When Cy Gonick wrote him in January 1968 to invite him to join the new nationalist group, the Committee for an Independent Canada, George sent his good wishes but declined to participate: 'I hate recommending things as good when I won't have to bear the burden of them, and I am turning more and more to certain philosophical matters.'58 He had found two new enthusiasms. About 1967 a colleague, Ed Alexander, translated Heidegger's The Question Concerning Technology, and

George's graduate seminar spent the whole year studying the mimeographed pages. His son William, to whom he later dedicated Time as History, had turned, in the adolescent rebellion and perplexity that the 1960s exacerbated, to Nietzsche. Nietzsche's nihilism made a strong impression on William, and his father began to read the German philosopher initially to see what it was that appealed so strongly to his son. He was overwhelmed by what he found. His friend, James Doull, agreed that his recent discoveries were important: 'Heidegger and Nietzsche, who have drawn your attention anew, seem to be authors very relevant to Anglo-America and needing far better interpretation than they have had. They are occupied with the restoration of the tradition, while we still race madly on towards its ruin.'59 George was now determined, more than ever, to devote himself to philosophy. Of course, in the conventional sense, he had been a philosopher since the end of the war, but his activities were more those of the public moralist than the private philosopher. Since he now proposed to a greater extent to withdraw from die world, he needed to understand in what sense it was good for a human being such as himself to do so: 'What does it mean for philosophy to be the height for man? I do not know because I do not know what philosophy is. As I have said it is not [what contemporary] professors of philosophy [say it is]. But deeper, the activity is lost for us in the modern world. Therefore when I say Aristotle says that philosophy is the height, I see that he says it, but I do not know what he means. I do not say I am a philosopher. The best recapturing of what philosophy is Heidegger's What Is Philosophy?It is something Greek.'60 Yet Heidegger was only part of the solution, since George was a Christian and Heidegger was not. Christianity taught that Greek philosophy was not the height for human beings because charity was the highest duty for a Christian. To that extent Christianity cut him off from the Greeks,

A lone wolf 269 but it did so in a way that revealed the existence of something that transcended politics: 'Christianity is clear about that - the kingdom of God or charity transcends the city. Therefore it makes me open to understand what is meant by an activity transcending the city - not simply as a finite transcendence - but absolutely.'61 These thoughts marked not just his disagreement with Heidegger, but also were a sign of the wide gulf that now separated his thought from Leo Strauss's. Charity, though, was soon to prove more than a mere theoretical concern. His sister was dean of women at University College, a part of the University of Toronto. Charity was a tough, competent administrator, extremely conservative in her moral views and completely out of sympathy with the permissive attitude of the sixties to drugs and sex. Her brother sympathized with the difficulties she encountered with the students and the university administration: 'I wish you weren't in the position you are - above all because you have lived in your own life the responsibility, the absence of which in the liberal world has been greatly responsible for the present wild commitment of the young to freedom. The establishment liberals recklessly attacked traditional morality & religion & the results leave the young in a terrible position.'62 However, George's own children, like many others, found the moral and political vision of the sixties attractive. Rachel, their eldest daughter, left Trinity College and moved into Rochdale, a cooperative residence at the corner of Bloor and St George that was part of the New Left's attempts to integrate learning and living. Robert and, to a lesser extent, his older brother William were active in the anti-war movement. The day after Robert's first anti-war demonstration, which was rowdy, Charity came to lunch. George recounted proudly that a policeman's horse had nearly knocked Robert over. Charity was appalled, and the more she expressed her disapproval, the more vigorously George defended his son. A few days later, they decided to get together to sort matters out. The meeting began badly. Charity chastised George for showing up dressed so disreputably. George explained that he had meant no offence: 'As for my clothes I will try to do better when we meet. I just did not know that I offended you on that score. They come from long bad habit which I think stems from my sense that my body is such a disaster that I could never present it to the world. But I will be careful to make an effort when we meet, and I am sorry that it should have annoyed you.'63 His sons, she went on, picking up the matter that concerned her from their earlier conversation, were engaged in lawless behaviour, escalating to violence. No, George replied, protest was not the same as anarchy. So

270 George Grant it went, with George determined to defend his children, and his sister equally set to save them from what she thought was George's feckless indulgence. When at Christmas 1970 she did not include William in a family gathering, George took this 'as a sign that our long relation was at an end.'64 Sadly, in spite of intermittent efforts on the part of both to heal the breach, their previous intimacy could never be restored. They were both too driven by their stubborn sense of propriety to compromise. Since his teenage years he had been closer to her than to anyone in the family other than Maude. Not least would he miss the happy visits to Toronto to gossip with his sister.

19

Intimations of deprival

One odd thing about the impact of Lament for a Nation in the years following its publication was that reactions to it were often perverse. It was a strong attack on the failures of Diefenbaker and his government, but it turned people who had been clamouring for Diefenbaker to step down into loyal supporters who cried when the Chief was finally driven from office.1 It had a comparable effect on the New Left. It argued with enormous cogency that Canada was finished as an independent nation in North America, yet it was one of the most significant factors in creating the Canadian nationalist movement of the 1970s. According to James Laxer, who ran for the leadership of the NDP on a nationalist platform in 1971: 'Lament for a Nation is the most important book 1 ever read in my life. Here was a crazy old philosopher of religion at McMaster and he woke up half our generation. He was saying Canada is dead, and by saying it he was creating the country.'2 In his review article on Lament for the Marxist Quarterly F.W. Park explicitly raised the possibility that the book was intended to have this paradoxical effect. 'It is barely possible to imagine that ... George Grant intended to shock Canadians into a defence of the interests of their country, the common interests of English and French-speaking Canada, against pressure from the United States.'3 Reflecting on the same paradox after Grant's death, Matt Cohen observed: 'Those of us who read the book preferred to see the lament as apocryphal, and to misunderstand Grant's obituary for a failed nation as a vision of a still-possible future.'4 At all times and in all places it always matters what we do. The significance of that thought eluded both George's friends and critics alike. When most of us genuinely think a cause hopeless, we admit defeat. The world has pronounced its judgment and continued struggle is a waste of

272 George Grant our time. George believed that we were judged by a higher court and held accountable to a different standard. When we were finally asked how we responded to the moral crises of our age, the bombing of Vietnam or the practice of abortion for convenience, George at least would not have to say in his defence: 'I thought the cause doomed, so I gave up and accepted the inevitable.' Judging him by their own standards other people misunderstood his willingness to persevere. It was in this spirit, then, that George continued to take an interest in Rochdale after Rachel left, and the consequences for him were particularly happy. The alternative-education seminars it sponsored brought George into regular contact with poet and editor Dennis Lee. Lee had first encountered George's thought when he read 'Canadian Fate and Imperialism' in Canadian Dimension. It was, for him, an epiphany, the first writing 'that made any contact whatsoever with my tenuous sense of living here - the first that seemed to be speaking the words of our civil condition ... I realized that somehow it had happened: a man who knew this paralysing condition first-hand was nevertheless using words authentically, from the very centre of everything that had tied my tongue.'5 For months he felt liberated from the bleakness that had enveloped him; through George he found his poetic voice: 'To find one's tongue-tied sense of civil loss and bafflement given words at last, to hear one's own most inarticulate hunches out loud, because most immediate in the bloodstream - and not prettied up, and in prose like a fastidious groundswell - was to stand erect at last in one's own space.'6 George recalled that when he first met Lee he was struck that, of all the academics who were moved by the Vietnam war, Lee was 'the one who saw that at the heart of those events was an affirmation about "being,"' and also that Lee understood that the 'technological multiversity was not outside that complicity but central to it.'7 The relationship between the poet and the philosopher would prove mutually nourishing. Its first fruit was a two-part article George contributed in 1967 to the New Left periodical This Magazine Is About Schools, edited by his former student Bob Davis. He dedicated it 'To Dennis Lee - In Gratitude.' Its explicit topic was the university curriculum, a subject to which he had been giving considerable thought. George had been elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1964 (an honour of which he was especially proud, since he shared it with his father). At the Royal Society's meetings in 1967 on the academic study of religion in Canada he was asked to deliver a paper and he chose to defend departments such as his own against the charge that they were little more than theology schools in disguise. The

Intimations of deprival 273 distinction he made was as follows. Traditional theology took as its starting place a unique revelation of deity, and it was the believer's responsibility to understand the relationship between that knowledge and everything else. The task of the modern secular university - or as he now preferred to call it, the multiversity, since it no longer presumed the unity of all knowledge - is to understand the nature of what is. Since some form of religion is coeval with man, it was necessary for the multiversity to come to terms with religion, not least the dominant belief of modernity, modern liberalism, 'itself a religious faith.'8 The phenomenon of religion could be studied from several perspectives, such as psychology, sociology, philosophy, or political science. Classics departments needed to study Greek religion; French scholars had to understand Jansenism to come to terms with Pascal. George had readily acknowledged that the German sociologist Max Weber had taught him much about the Puritanism that was part of his inheritance from his ancestors. However, there was a danger that needed to be avoided and that was reductionism, the view that the reality of religion lay in its psychological or sociological origins: 'The proper study of religion has indeed to sail successfully between the Scylla of covert indoctrination and the Charybdis of reductionism. Such a course will be no easier than that of Odysseus, but to refuse to attempt it in our modern multiversities will be to exclude something which is essential to the understanding of man and his place in the universe.'9 He then explained his own department's choice in insisting that its students know both ancient religions and modern, and that they study both Western and Eastern faiths: 'The heart of any university is its curriculum. The curriculum expresses what the department considers its subject to be.'10 'Wisdom in the Universities' took up the same theme, and pushed it further: 'The curriculum,' it began, 'is the essence of any university ... It determines the character of the university far more than any structure of government, methods of teaching, or social organization.'11 Who, then, decided the curriculum? George had had plenty of time and opportunity to meditate on that topic. What was taught at Upper Canada was determined by what the business elite of southern Ontario thought important for their sons to know. At Queen's Uncle Jim had kept the university up to scratch on behalf of his class; Sir Edward Beatty made his influence powerfully felt at McGill. President Kerr at Dalhousie had to check with Colonel Laurie before he made any important decisions. At McMaster its president, Harry Thode, a theoretical chemist whom he much liked and respected, invited George to accompany him to meetings of the Univer-

274 George Grant sity Presidents' Committee, where important decisions were made concerning the nature of the rapidly growing system of higher education in Ontario: 'I went because I loved Thode and I observed it as high comedy.' But he found that Thode and most of his fellow academic leaders had 'no theory that could prevent the great multiversities being born.112 He now tried to think through what he had learned, to transform his lived experience into philosophy. The central goal of Canadian society, he suggested, was to keep technology dynamic within the context of the continental state structure. The dynamism of technology has become the dominant purpose of Western civilization. All society's members, from the corporate executive to the union member, the farmer, and the university administrator, accepted mastery over nature as their common religion.13 The curriculum of Canadian universities existed 'to facilitate the production of personnel necessary to that type of society.'14 There may be local variations as to how integrated any university is, but the general direction is clear: 'The chief job of the universities within the technological societies is the cultivation of those sciences which issue in the mastery of human and non-human nature.'15 George now posed his standard question, basic to him from his early days as a historian: How has this come about? To answer it he turned in a new direction. The distinguishing characteristic of the modern social sciences, he declared, was that they aspired to be 'value-free.' The distinction arose in the European tradition of Kant and Nietzsche and had been elegantly formulated by Weber.16 Talcot Parsons and Harold Lasswell reformulated it in liberal Protestant terms to suit the American scene as a blending of Nietzsche and the YMCA. Modern social science was based on this distinction and hence was well adapted to serve the purposes of the ruling private and public corporations. Because social scientists have been taught to treat values as manifestations of irrational preferences, they ironically find themselves in the position of accepting without question the dominant purpose, mastery, given to them by their society. Although they think that they can reject all metaphysics, they unwittingly accept the metaphysical roots of the factvalue distinction as a religion, that is, a doctrine beyond question. The decisive moment for this faith came in the late nineteenth century when Nietzsche showed that history could not provide man with a framework or horizon within which to live a meaningful life. North America was most vulnerable to this development because of its Calvinist inheritance and because its institutions and traditions were less securely grounded in

Intimations of deprival 275 the older modes of understanding. The commitment to value-freeness or objectivity rapidly spread throughout the university curriculum. But the barrenness of this vision of a value-free social science and the consequent inhumanity of the technological civilization it spawned drove human beings to seek meaning in other ways than through the intellect; in their thirst for meaning they turned to rebellion through art.17 It was the consequences of this sterility that George addressed in the second part of his article. The West had rejected, he argued, the two traditional accounts in terms of which mankind has understood existence, philosophy and revealed religion, which see life in terms of good and evil. It now accepted purpose and value only as the creations of human will, that is, as something arbitrary. Yet the public realm required a conception of the highest purpose of human life and it consequently adopted one: 'Western men live in a society the public realm of which is dominated by a monolithic certainty about excellence - namely the pursuit of technological efficiency is the chief purpose for which the community exists.'18 Modern liberals, whether positivists or existentialists, have made a simple but fundamental mistake. They thought that by ridding mankind of its religious and philosophical inheritance they were serving the liberation of the individual. Instead they were enslaving him to the religion of mastery: 'The tight circle then in which we live is this: our present forms of existence have sapped the ability to think about standards of excellence and yet at the same time have imposed on us a standard in terms of which the human good is monolithically asserted.'19 There was a therapy to escape the 'tight circle of modern fate,' but it was slow and difficult. It involved 'the reliving of buried memories of what the greatest, whether western or eastern, have known of human excellence.' This could not be recovered by technical scholarship, but by those who sought for a truth in the past that was hidden in the present: 'Human excellence can be rediscovered only by those who are able, even in the midst of this present, and "en pleine conscience de cause," somehow to assert the beneficence of nature.'20 George revised this article for a book of essays,The University Game, that Dennis Lee and Howard Adelman published with the House of Anansi. Anansi was a small, creative operation that specialized in contemporary Canadian writing. In his capacity as an Anansi editor Lee approached George in early 1968 about the possibility of a new book, or failing that, a collection of essays. Over the next months Lee from Anansi's offices at 671 Spadina Avenue in Toronto and George from his home on South

276 George Grant Street in Dundas exchanged their idiosyncratically typed letters discussing the contents of the new volume. Lee was initially worried that there was too much repetition in the original group of essays George suggested to allow them to be reprinted togedier without substantial revision.21 George countered with an alternative selection, but now he began to worry that he had moved beyond some of his pieces from the early 1960s and feared he might need a long time to complete the work. Lee encouraged him: his essays were 'of great service to people who are only beginning to think their way into a critique of Nordi American society at a deep level.'22 Lee was not an uncritical editor. He opposed two of George's suggested inclusions - 'Religion and the State' and an unpublished essay 'Man made Man,' - because he thought they lacked 'both the beauty and the inner moral authority' of some of the stronger pieces. Indeed 'Man made man,' at its weakest, was 'reactionary rather than conservative.' It invoked the name and the idea of excellence rather than excellence itself. These defects, he flattered, were apparent only because of the strength of George's later work: 'How your passion and thought have come to cohere, in the superlative pieces, is something that takes my breath away.' Although he responded intensely to George's writing, Lee lacked the philosophical training to understand certain aspects of George's work; he tried to exclude the very important article about Strauss and Kojeve on the grounds that it was difficult for the layman.23 On this last piece, George dug in his heels. He wanted it in the collection, and Lee agreed with the addition of a short introduction: 'Let there be "Tyranny and Wisdom." Your suggestion is good, and the introductory note could certainly speak to the hesitations I had.' The final collection included 'Religion and the State,' 'Canadian Fate and Imperialism,' 'Tyranny and Wisdom,' and 'The University Curriculum.' At the beginning of April 1968 George started to write two new pieces, one on 'Technology and Nihilism' to begin the book, and another on 'Nihilism and the Tradition' to stand at the end. Lee had no doubt that he was working with George on a very important book and he understood that George's true genius was as a philosophic essayist. George himself always thought in terms of the big book he intended to write. When he was sixteen, he contemplated a book on painting called 'Monet et Moi.' In 1940 he had proposed that he and Charity write a book together. By 1946 he intended to write a great work on St Augustine. In 1955 it was a book on freedom of the will; in the 1960s one on Simone Weil. In 1972 he announced a 'massive book' called

Intimations of deprival 277 'Techniques and Good.' At the end of his life he was planning 'a long book about poetry & philosophy - centring on Celine,' and another responding to Heidegger's criticism of Plato. He never completed any of these works and the failure to do so weighed heavily on him at times. Lee knew better. This book of essays, he predicted, would make George 'the biggest goddam culture hero since McLuhan. You'll be a household word within 5-10 years, and the crimes of thought perpetrated in your name will make you puke. And I repeat, I'm not being rhetorical. I can really see this happening.'24 George spent the summer revising his old essays and preparing the two new ones. The first of these appeared under the curious title 'In Defence of North America.' The title was puzzling. Throughout the 1960s, George was as fierce a critic of the United States as anyone on the continent, but he accepted that the destiny of the world lay in this continent. It was a view he took as early as 1941: 'American culture has its basis and its traditions in Europe but my answer must be: "Alright but if its traditions & basis are with you, its hope, its power to grow and the glory that it will finally bring forth will be something new built upon itself out of that land.'''25 He insisted that Canadians understand that they too share the vision that the drive to technology means the liberation of mankind. What North America needed was a defence against itself. That was difficult because as moderns, 'we have no standards by which to judge particular techniques, except standards welling up with our faith in technical expansion.'26 To defend North America it was necessary to rediscover the practice of contemplation that has been lost in the Calvinist drive to free theology from everything but its biblical roots. Was it possible to do so? Yes, George could bear witness to that; he personally knew 'the pervasiveness of the pragmatic liberalism' in which he had been educated. For him it had 'taken the battering of a lifetime of madness to begin even dimly to grasp that which has been inevitably lost in being North American.'27 He had touched Greekness, not as antiquarianism, but as a living thing. In Europe he had felt the remnants of a Christianity that still held in itself the fruits of contemplation. By that touching I do not mean the last pickings of authentic theology left after the storms of modern thought (though that too) but things more deeply in the stuff of everyday living which remain long after they can no longer be thought: public and private virtues having their point beyond what can in any sense be called socially useful; commitments to love and to friendship which lie rooted in a realm outside the calculable; a partaking in the beautiful not

278 George Grant seen as the product of human creativity; amusements and ecstasies not seen as the enemies of reason.28 Instead we now live in the winter of nihilism, where technological progress becomes the sole context 'within which all that is other to it must attempt to be present.'29 George called his concluding essay simply 'A Platitude.' A platitude is, of course, a commonplace remark, especially one solemnly delivered. This was irony and more. The argument was lucid, elegant, and profound, at one level as far from the banal as possible. However, the truths he now spoke were only obvious in the older, suppressed tradition. Seen from that perspective there was nothing original or meritorious in his remarks. Our vision of ourselves as essentially free, he pointed out, arose only after our ancestors' systems of myth, philosophy, and revelation had decayed. Whatever one might call what humanity has lost - superstitions, taboos, sacred restraints - did not conceal that there has been some loss, some deprival. The desire to overcome chance so that freedom might prevail depended on the destruction of the old tradition; it has triumphed so completely that what was lost could be understood even as deprival only with great difficulty. In Lament George had reflected on the line from the Countess's aria in the Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro, la memoria di quel bene, the

recollection of that good: 'One cannot argue the meaninglessness of the world from the facts of evil,' George wrote, 'because what could evil deprive us of if we had not some prior knowledge of good?'30 He returned to the theme now. We can no longer speak the language of what belongs to man as man. We cannot talk of the excellences that define the height for man. To speak of the good that belongs to man is to 'pass some antique wind.' But the very silence is both loss and opportunity; for in the quiet we can hear, if we listen hard enough, 'the intimations of deprival.'31 We can see the good we have lost when we notice what is missing: 'To reverse the platitude, we are never more sure that air is good for animals than when we are gasping for breath.'32 At the moment when we are closest to despair, we might find sustenance in art. To conclude his short piece, George recalled Milly Theale in Henry James's The Wings of the Dove. Milly turned her face to the wall. George defiantly rejected this response. 'In such a situation of uncertainty, it would be lacking in courage to turn one's face to the wall, even if one can find no fulfilment in working for

Intimations of deprival 279 or celebrating the dynamo. Equally it would be immoderate and uncourageous and perhaps unwise to live in the midst of the present drive, merely working in it and celebrating it and not also listening or watching or simply waiting for intimations of deprival which might lead us to see the beautiful as the image, in the world, of the good.'33 By early 1969 Technology and Empire was printed, published, and ready for sale. George completed his rewriting in great pain, as his ulcer flared up again under the stress. Lee was so proud of the work that he suggested, only half jokingly, that there might be a Nobel Prize in it for George. As it turned out, it created a minor stir by not winning an award. Because the book came out early in the year, it was inadvertently left out of the books submitted to the judges of the governor-general's award for nonfiction. When the short list was announced, and George's name was not on it, poet Eli Mandel and Dennis Lee put together a declaration protesting the book's exclusion, and the protest and its response, complete with the normal misunderstandings and misrepresentations, circulated for a while in the press. The book did not make the splash of Lament, nor did it sell as well. Where the earlier book sold 7000 in its first six months and well over 50,000 over the next twenty-five years, Technology and Empire had slower, but still substantial, sales. It was a publishing success, but not a triumph. Because of his involvement with the New Left many of the reviews were in student newspapers or by members of the New Left themselves. Most reviews were highly sympathetic with regard to his critique of technology, capitalism, and the Vietnam war and equally critical of his religious stance. James Harding in The Chevronsaid that Grant was 'hung up on religion.' It was a world-view he could not take seriously. However, Grant's 'insights into scientism, whether of the capitalist, behavioralistic or the communist marxian form, are indispensable for any understanding of the technological society.'34 Peter Sypnowich, writing in the Toronto Star made the same point: 'George Grant's critique of the technological society is absorbing until he ventures into faint-hearted pleas for religious revival. In the end he is shaking a tambourine and telling us to prepare to meet our Maker.' Nairn Kattan wrote that Grant's religious stance amounted to little more than a simple, intellectual game: 'Aussi recuser le monde actuel en ne faisant appel qu'a des valeurs religieuses du passe finit par etre un simple jeu intellectuel.'35 Bob Rae, writing in The Varsity Review, like many other activists, objected to its apparent quietism. It was a 'brilliant and distur-

280

George Grant

bing book,' he wrote, but 'it was never intended to be a tract for practical action, or a primer for social and political liberation, which is both its limitation and the source of its supreme honesty.' 36 Possibly as a consequence of the publication of Technology and Empire the CBC invited him to deliver the ninth in the series of radio broadcasts named in honour of his uncle, the Massey Lectures. Their purpose was to 'enable distinguished authorities in fields of general interest and importance to present the results of original study or research.' In the same way as Lament brought together the many strains in George's experience, and fused them together into a new and original unity, Time as History represented another philosophical advance. The talks were broadcast weekly from 12 November to 10 December 1969. In an informal address about this time at the University of Toronto, George reminded his audience of his early training: 'Before I became a philosopher I studied history and still think very much as an historian.' It was a side of him that he identified with his father: An historian ceases to be an historian if he tampers with the facts - an obvious platitude. This was brought home to me early from my father who was a professional historian. He had written a history of Canada used in the high schools of this province [W.L. Grant, Ontario High School History of Can (Toronto: Ryerson Press ca. 1922)]. This book was criticized by the Orange Order because it praised the Jesuits. The minister of education in the way of politicians sought a compromise - eliminate the page about the Jesuits and we will keep your book. 'No,' said my father. 'History is history, and is not to be changed.' So he lost the money he needed. Let me say that he was not a person in sympathy with the beliefs of the Jesuits.37 In coming to terms with the affliction of the world, George had turned to historical exposition, explaining the unique character of the new world as a consequence of its partial inheritance of its European character through Calvinism and Weber. In the mid-1960s he began to study Friedrich Nietzsche seriously; it was, however, not his first encounter. That had occurred while an undergraduate at Balliol at the beginning of the war, and he then perceptively rejected the claim of the Nazis that Nietzsche was one of their teachers. Lately I have been reading Nietzsche. To say that he is completely misunderstood by most people would be an absurd understatement. To say that he was the forerunner to such bestiality & cruelty as the Nazis is absurd. 'I love him

Intimations of deprival 281 whose soul is deep even for wounding & whom a slight matter may destroy.' 'Pity is the cross upon which he is nailed who loveth mankind.' That kind of thing is not like what he is supposed to be. He uses the theory of the 'blond animal' in utter derision, yet people say that that is the basis of Nazidom.38 This was brilliant for a twenty-one year old; now it got even better. George had already argued that Weber developed the fact/value dichotomy in an effort to insulate the universities from political interference. Behind the concept of value, George now came to understand, lay the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. 'Weber's sociology must be taken, more than anything else, as a commentary on his engrossed encounter with Nietzsche's writings.'39 Therefore, to understand the modern world, it was necessary to come to terms with the thought of its most profound analyst. Yet before George could deal explicitly with Nietzsche's thought in such a public forum as a series of radio lectures, he had one important difficulty to clear away. Leo Strauss strongly believed that Nietzsche was a writer of such intoxicating destructiveness that he should not be discussed in the presence of people without philosophic training: his ideas might do them harm. Strauss agreed entirely with George about Nietzsche's central importance, but he thought it more prudent to attack his epigones like Weber and Freud, rather than confront the master directly. George thought this view no longer appropriate. 'Strauss said that Nietzsche had a right to think what he thought, it was dubious if he ever should have written it down, and it was even further dubious that he should have ever published it. My willingness to read Nietzsche and even to teach it, is that now a hundred years later, everybody is surrounded by popular Nietzscheism, popular existentialism, therefore they ought to read the source of it, with his intoxicating rhetoric.'40 Nietzsche's leading ideas had become platitudes for positivists, existentialists, psychiatrists, and behaviourial social scientists, but they ignored 'the subtler consequences of extremity'41 that lay concealed within his thought. They thought it was possible to live decent lives while accepting a radical philosophy; 'the nobility of Nietzsche is that he did not.'42 An earlier generation of historians like William Grant thought that, through the honest application of the techniques of their craft, they could reach the truth about the past. George, through his reading of Nietzsche, came to a different conclusion. It was no longer possible to understand the past as history because in the modern world all time, both past and present, had become indistinguishably history: ' [The historical sense] is the apprehension that in the shortest moment we are never the

282 George Grant same, nor are we ever in the presence of the same. Put negatively, in the historical sense we admit the absence of any permanence in terms of which change can be measured or limited or defined. In Nietzsche's paradoxical phrase, we are required to accept the finality of becoming.'43 In the nineteenth century, this view of the world, called historicism, was nourished by beliefs inherited from Western Christianity. Those who once believed in the beneficence of Divine Providence now put their trust in the doctrine of progress instead. The Calvinists thought man could will his salvation; their heirs believed that he could build a better world through science. Yet they were protected against the logical consequences of their secularized Christianity because they still, sentimentally, acknowledged the existence of divine limits on human action. Then Nietzsche announced the death of God, and meant by it that Christianity was finished as a social force in Europe. It no longer existed as a system of values that gave meaning to life.44 For Plato, in his famous phrase, time was the moving image of eternity; that is, the eternal was primary and changes in the world took their meaning from their relationship to that which did not change. Now Nietzsche said, and men believed him, that time was history - and nothing more. Mankind was like a mariner, alone on the sea under an overcast sky, without charts or compass. Some would drift as the current took them, but others might choose a course and strike out boldly, willing their fate - whatever it might be. For those latter, Nietzsche taught, the situation was not a disaster, but an opportunity, the greatest ever offered to mankind, the life of absolute freedom. George 'brushed against' the thought of Nietzsche in these lectures because he had 'thought the conception of time as history more comprehensively than any other thinker.'45 Nietzsche more than anyone else he had studied to date had made clear the steps through which Western Christianity had passed on its way to the age of progress and the religion of mastery. On that subject he thought that Nietzsche bravely and lucidly had simply spoken the truth. The truth, but not the whole truth. Those who listen with attention in silence might still hear the intimations of deprival. The conception of time as history was not, George affirmed, one in which it was possible to live a fully human life: 'It is not a conception we are fitted for.' Nietzsche's noblest doctrine, amor fati (love of fate), was a guarantee that dynamic willing would be carried on by lovers of the earth and not be twisted by hatred and hysteria against existing.46 But how, George asked, was it possible to love fate unless 'within the details

Intimations of deprival 283 of our fates there could appear, however rarely, intimations that are illumined; intimations that is, of perfection (call it if you will God) in which our desires for good find their rest and their fulfilment.'47 Human beings were not beyond good and evil because only 'the desire to become perfect does in fact make us less imperfect.'48 We live in a civilization that conceives time as history. To overcome this fate, more than thinking is required; we also need remembering. Remembering is not unthoughtful, but it is a kind of thought that cannot be expressed in propositions. We need to look beyond the public realm to the shattered traditions of our past. To find them we need reverence, and George held out the hope that just as religion was coeval with mankind, so perhaps reverence too 'belongs to man qua man and is indeed the matrix of human nobility.'49 This was not a call for revolution or a promise of redemption. The present darkness was a real darkness that the light of truth could penetrate only dimly: 'Nevertheless, those who cannot live as if time were history are called, beyond remembering, to desiring and thinking. But this is to say very little. For myself, as probably for most others, remembering only occasionally can pass over into thinking and loving what is good. It is for the great thinkers and the saints to do more.'50 Our word radical comes from the Latin radix, which means literally the root of a plant, or figuratively the base or bottom of something. By this criterion George Grant was as radical a thinker as Canada, even North America, has produced, but he never believed that philosophic radicalism necessarily led to revolutionary politics. To act effectively in the world required the quality that Aristotle called phronesis, the Romans prudentia, what we normally designate in English political prudence. This was not a characteristic philosophers often possess, nor was it clear that they were better philosophers for having it. Thinking about the world and acting in it were quite distinct. George turned to this question when he gave the Nowlan lectures at Acadia University in Nova Scotia on 16 and 17 October 1969. At the beginning of his typed text George wrote himself a note, as he often did, reminding himself to read slowly and to ask for questions at the end. These practical suggestions were appropriate reminders for lectures on the relation between thought and practice in politics. Modern politics, he warned, were increasingly becoming Nietzschean politics, the politics of crisis and extreme. In these times it was good to recall the political career of George Nowlan, who was 'a conservative in the sense that he knew that public life was made better by good feeling among

284 George Grant men, and that questions of difference among people were better settled by common sense than by ideology. This moderate spirit is not something easily kept alive among politicians in an age of extremity such as ours.'51 Yet there was a danger even for moderate politicians because the technological world was becoming increasingly the world of bureaucratic administration; it ignored the real choices about the good that had to be made. That was why, even for 'a conservative such as myself the student revolt was welcome. Its deepest leaders were raising 'questions of politics - that is questions of ultimate human good - which the multiversities had by neglect thrown out from their midst.'52 In the spring he accepted an invitation to come to the scene of his own great crisis, and on 18 March 1970 he delivered the Gerstein lecture at York. He had complained at Acadia that he was 'sick of being called in the press a conservative or even reactionary thinker.'53 In Lament he had argued that conservatism in our epoch was impossible;54 now he unfolded the implications of this statement. Most of those who called themselves conservatives accepted the essential elements of modernity, the first exponents of whose politics were the great English thinkers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Later they were challenged by a second wave of modernity advanced in the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx. Those in North America who considered themselves conservatives accepted modernity in its first incarnation. They merely wanted to 'stop the movement of modernity' at points that touched their interests: 'Conservatism in this era only means then the desire of those who have mounted modernity to stop the triumphant steed when their particular interests are no longer served.'55 What was one to do if one doubted modernity in any form? Even if our society were governed by false and dangerous presuppositions, it was incumbent on us to act decently. Our world could be better or worse than it was. It was therefore as a 'follower of Plato and therefore as a person who believes in law and stability'56 that he was deeply committed to the defendants who were on trial for their attempted disruption of the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968. And it did matter what happened in the immediate future on such topics as war and pollution, Canadian independence, and the future of Canada's cities. Cut off from tradition we acted in darkness; to escape from the darkness, the first step was to understand the darkness for what it was.57 George genuinely admired the students' intuitive sense that their time at university should be more than a preparation for a future role in the continental corporate bureaucratic elite. If they ignored his practical recommendations of

Intimations of deprival 285 moderation and respect for what traditions remained, they seemed genuinely interested in his call to listen for the intimations of deprival. The struggle against the spirit of the age was wearing him down and he was increasingly unhappy with McMaster: 'McMaster is less pleasant than it was, as it becomes a multiversity - more & more policemen, more bureaucrats, etc. There is no alternative - but it doesn't make one part of the institution. Perhaps this is just an era when one should not expect that. The universities in Toronto are just that much worse.'58 But he had his family, his detective stories, and Mozart. Sheila and he talked reluctantly from time to time of retreating back into Nova Scotia.59 He was very tired and he suggested to Sheila they take a vacation. George wanted to go somewhere quiet, where they knew no one and where there was little to do except relax. They decided to go to Barbados for a fortnight. Towards the end of the two weeks another couple with whom they had made holiday friends suggested that they go into Bridgetown for a May Day dance. George was not particularly keen, but ever since he mastered the Big Apple at Queen's he had enjoyed a spin around the floor. In the taxi on the way home Sheila saw another car coming at them head on, and thought, 'Our driver will avoid it.' That was the last thing she remembered. Four were dead; George was badly injured, his leg and right hand broken, many of his teeth knocked out. Sheila had a concussion, a broken shoulder, and a lacerated chin. It took a few days before she was even allowed to move to his hospital room.

20

The botched and the bungled

During the ten days George spent in hospital in Bridgetown recovering his strength, he so much wanted to make a good impression that he virtually promised to help every nurse he met get at job at the McMaster medical school. The morning of their planned departure, George lay in bed fretting that Sheila and he would not get to their flight in time. However, they were not late and he was carried onto the plane on a stretcher; Sheila accompanied him in a wheelchair. During the flight George, who could be at his most charming under adversity, again rallied bravely. Instinctively he became Maude's son: the gracious, almost courtly manners were deployed to conceal his pain and to avoid embarrassment. The stewardesses were so impressed that when the plane landed they presented their 'favourite passenger' with a bottle of champagne. William, who took charge at home during the crisis, arranged for an ambulance to come right up to the plane. The next day George was admitted to hospital in Hamilton, where the doctors took off his cast, joined his thigh bone with metal and put his leg in traction. During the two months' stay he received a letter from the CBC trying to prod him to prepare the written text of the Massey lectures. George responded with icy fury: T am dictating this from hospital ... My writing hand has been very smashed and my hip leaves me immobile ... If [ Time as History] is late, I can put in the preface that I was in a crash-up in which four people were killed. It would be an excuse.'1 When he came home to recuperate, Sheila set up a hospital bed for him in the large sitting-room downstairs because there was no way to get him to the bedroom. Her own shoulder was still very sore, but as the less seriously injured she had to cope with the family. George found throughout the summer that he had difficulty concentrating: 'I rarely read more than a paragraph at a time

The botched and the bungled 287 and that very shallow. One has to be so concentrated on the physical feats of learning to use one's body again.'2 Although he was often caricatured as a enemy of technology, he always offered modern medicine as the most immediately compelling reason why the contemporary world could not save itself simply by turning away the technological experiment. He wrote to a friend: 'Talking about technology, I probably would not have walked again 20 years ago and even 5 years ago, I would have been in hospital for at least six months.'3 However, he never fully recovered. In the accident he had bitten through his tongue; it did not heal properly. His right hand never straightened out. The dentist came to the house and fitted him with dentures, which were not comfortable, and consequently were reserved for weddings, funerals, and honorary degrees. About this time, he began wearing a beard and moustache, and they helped disguise his toothlessness.4 One unintentional effect was to hide the anger that showed before in a kind of tightening of the lips; people now saw more of the 'jolly old gent' side of him. His own encounter with the 'startling presence' of death heightened his response to its seeming uselessness when a young McMaster graduate student was killed in an automobile accident in August. 'Love,' he wrote in a memorial for Jelte Kuipers 'is the way we glimpse the actual and potential beauty in other people.' In the deep revolt against the waste of his death, it was important to remember what it was that allowed his friends to apprehend him as beautiful. Kuipers had seen the bleakness of the world, but did not turn from it to shifting personal relations, drugs, or Marxism. He sought instead to repossess the roots of heaven through a deep understanding of nature and what is beyond nature. A beautiful young man had been taken away 'as if it were by chance.' Before his own accident George had planned to withdraw as much as he could from active involvement in administrative affairs within the university and political matters outside. His injuries reinforced this determination, since he never again reached the level of energy that drove him before. Honours, in any event, started coming his way with increased frequency. Two years earlier the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) had written to ask if he was interested in becoming head of their department of history and philosophy. In June 1970 Henry Hicks, the president of Dalhousie, phoned to see if he could persuade George to return.5 In the autumn Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Quebec, approached him. A couple of years later he was offered the chair in Canadian studies at Mount Allison. He turned these offers down, but he was delighted when Trent University in Peterborough awarded him his

288 George Grant first honorary degree in May 1971. The citation noted that he had over many years given 'depth and poignancy to the question of what is, or can be, Canadian in the middle of the twentieth century.' He was honoured, it said, as a 'thinker of great social concern, a teacher who has inspired affection as well as respect, a warm human being, a great Canadian.' George was touched by this praise and recognition, but as he sat beside Trent's Chancellor, former Ontario Premier Leslie Frost, he grew more and more fascinated. As each student came forward to be awarded a degree Frost said, 'I knew your uncle,' or, 'Your father and I were friends.' When the first overseas student came up, George figured Frost would be baffled. 'How good of you to choose Canada,' said the old politician. His determination to stay out of public affairs received an important setback in October 1970 when, in response to the kidnapping of British diplomat James Cross7 and Quebec cabinet minister Pierre Laporte, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act and put the country under martial law. Although George was adamantly opposed to terrorism, he thought Trudeau's true motive was to put Quebec in its place once and for all. In their brief acquaintance in the early 1960s George had liked Trudeau and after he became prime minister, George wrote to Hugh McLennan saying that he found Trudeau 'a gentlemanly kind of person.' However, he was worried about Trudeau's explicit distrust of traditional French Canada. French culture had to survive, George thought, 'if there is to be any hope for anything in Quebec surviving the American dream. I so dislike the dominant direction that English speaking society is taking all over the world that I hope the French in Quebec keep their determination not to be slowly smoothed out of existence.'8 From the languid days of raspberry picking and priestly oppression to the visits with his mother at McGill and at Uncle Raleigh's cottage George had observed carefully what Victor Morin called 'the characteristics of French people around us.' He was aware of his father's sympathies for French Canada, unusual at the time for an anglophone in Toronto. When he spoke of French Canadians in 1943 in his first important publication, Canada: An Introduction to a Nation, he treated them as partners in the struggle to maintain an independent Canada in North America. They had their own language, church, laws, educational system, in fact their own way of life: 'It is, indeed, a story of amazing courage and determination that in the midst of an alien continent and with change all around them, they have kept to their own separate existence and not allowed them-

The botched and the bungled 289 selves to be swallowed up by the rest of Anglo-Saxon North America.'9 Since they did not wish 'to become a hopelessly small minority in a unified Anglo-Saxon continent' they had allied themselves with the those English in British North America, the United Empire Loyalists, who did not want 'to be ruled by the people who had so recently harried them to final exile.'10 Canada was originally made up, he wrote in 1945, of people, both French and English, 'who did not wish to be part of the new American experiment but wished to build a different society.'11 The substance of this position changed little over the succeeding quarter-century. In a short article he wrote for Canadian Forum in the aftermath of the October Crisis, he reviled Trudeau for his 'evident distaste for what was by tradition his own.'12 The prime minister, he declared, was a formidable figure in our public life precisely because he was so clear that the best future for French Canadians was to be integrated into the Canadian structure as a whole, while the Canadian structure should be integrated, economically and socially, into the whole Western system. To destroy the culture of French Canada was bad for all of Canada because its survival was necessary for our continued national independence: 'It is obvious that any indigenous English-speaking Canadian society requires the help of Quebec. Yet how can this be advocated in a way that is not simply asking French-Canadians to be led along to their doom as a community? In other words are the French not best to be separatists in the face of the North American situation?'13 It was a theme to which he returned when Rene Levesque led his separatist Parti Quebecois to power in 1976. In 1971-2 George held a Killam Fellowship, which allowed him to take a year's leave with full pay. He was genuinely grateful to the Canada Council for this award, since for the first time he was able to do his research without going into debt. He cloistered himself in his house in Dundas, stayed out of the public eye as much as was possible for him, and, for the most part, simply thought. Few university professors (Harold Innis and Northrop Frye come to mind as well) fully achieve a life totally dedicated in a monk-like way to things of the mind and the spirit. It is probably no coincidence that those who do come from religious backgrounds or share a religious vision of life. For George philosophy mattered. It was not simply what people who call themselves philosophers did from nine to five; it was a calling transcended only by the charity of the saints. It was in short a sacred vocation. As he said in praise of Jelte Kuipers: 'He had learnt the lesson of the founder of philosophy (repeat-

290 George Grant ed by its practitioners from Socrates to Wittgenstein) that philosophy is not a value-free, analytical game, but a study which can only be grasped as its truths are lived out in the world.'14 With all the concentration he could command, he started to write a book that he hoped would be his magnum opus. He originally meant to call it What Is Technique? Then he settled on the title Technique(s) and Good. Why was he writing this book? He jotted down some thoughts in his notebook: a) For whatever reasons, both sane and insane, (who is to know how sane one is?) I cannot accept that we stand beyond good and evil. b) The coming to be of technical civilisation has brought the assumption that we stand beyond good and evil. c) I am at sea about how one thinks that that is not so - or whether it is not so. d) I want to see the assumptions of technical civilisation - look through the maze of them and see what is said about good and evil - as a prolegomena to (e) e) If one stands above good and evil then in the West one must look back to three things - Christianity, the Jewish Bible, and Platonism - which started from the assumption that man is not [the height]. More specifically, he wanted to come to terms with Nietzsche's attack on transcendence and the German philosopher's claim that it was both possible and noble to live beyond good and evil. And yet, his encounter with Nietzsche was a spiritual struggle as well, for Nietzsche had touched the depth of his soul: Oh the botched and the bungled. Am I entirely that? Because I am the botched and the bungled I nevertheless do not want to live as Nietzsche says - by sheer instinctive will - nor do I think morality and religion is for me simply the desire to put off my botched and bungled self into another world. It is rather that even if I am botched and bungled I still want to give myself - as I feel Mozart does - to the forces of the world, be they nature or be they God's - give myself, take part in them. What Nietzsche has made me really admit is that I am one of the botched and the bungled. He felt these personal failings were one of the elements that made it hard

The botched and the bungled 291 to think through these problems: 'One thing that is certainly holding me back from writing is the sense, what right have I to write about the good life when I wake up in the morning as I do. This seems to me pretentious.' It was not his morning grumpiness that prevented the book from being written. Just as in his earlier sabbatical he encountered philosophical problems he could not solve, here again the sheer enormity of the task he was undertaking slowed his progress. He had begun with the question, What is technique?, and that led him to consider the interdependence of technology with the conception of goodness in the Western world. His reformulation therefore was, What does technical civilization (his new term for the phenomenon he was trying to understand) portend for the future of good or evil? Once posed in that way, the question gave immediate rise to another: What is meant by good and evil in modern technical civilizations? To answer this he proposed, in his style, a philosophicalhistorical account of how the modern conception of technique arose out of the very different classical account, and how die modern conception of good arose from the original conceptions of Athens and Jerusalem. The solution could only be presented contrapuntally, he thought, developing the themes of good and technique together in the hope that they might prove mutually illuminating. It was impossible to tell when the book would be finished, because, after his leave, teaching and administration would slow him down. His immediate philosophical task was to 'put in the greatest clarity what it means to say that human beings are not "beyond good and evil" as against certain modern philosophers who say that they are. I am not now able to think that, but am much nearer to be able to do it than eighteen months ago. What I can say to the Council is that the book is rarely out of my mind and that if I survive and remain sane (a dubious matter) this book is what I will be working on till it is completed.'15 During the year of his fellowship there was little to disturb his attentiveness to philosophy, other than the odd request for an interview. He was the media's favourite Conservative intellectual and, when Larry Zolf for instance wanted someone to say interesting things about the Conservative party convention at the beginning of December 1971, George was happy to oblige for a little ready cash. A philosopher might be above such secular matters, but the father of a family of six knew that there were endless demands on his wallet, and there was always Sheila's decade-long desire that they might manage to repaint the kitchen before all the paint peeled off.

292 George Grant In the spring of 1972 George's friend, Howard Brotz,16 an American social theorist who taught at McMaster, told George that Leo Strauss was unwell, and suggested that this might be an apt time for George and Strauss to consummate their mutual desire for a meeting. George wanted to see Strauss, but he had made the vow not to set foot in the United States while the Vietnam war was in progress. However, by now President Nixon, whose victory he welcomed in 1968, was committed to ending American involvement; so that was one mitigating factor. More important, though, philosophy was higher than politics; he would go. Leo Strauss was raised as an Orthodox Jew, as his friend Allan Bloom explains, 'in that country where Jews cherished the greatest secular hopes and suffered the most terrible persecutions, and ... studied philosophy in that country the language of which had been almost identical with that of philosophy for 150 years and whose most profound philosophical figure of this century [Heidegger] was a Nazi.'17 George had a great personal fondness for Jews, and his colleague and former student Louis Greenspan once teased him at the annual Christmas night party at the Grants' house that George and Sheila were the only Christians present. However, he did not think that the two religions were identical, nor did he think that they had equal spiritual claims. Simone Weil had convinced him of 'the repugnance one must feel for certain emphases in the Old Testament - namely the exclusivity in Judaism.' But, he continued, this difference between Strauss and him, if dealt with at all, must be treated cautiously: 'Because of the events in Europe 1933-45, one just must not speak against Judaism, because it would encourage the secular gutter.'18 George understood Strauss's criticism of modernity as an argument that many of our current troubles could be traced directly to Christianity's preoccupation with spirituality and the priority it gave to charity over philosophy. The Straussians say that Christianity led to overextension of soul. But the Cross is the absolute symbol of the extraordinary depth that the question must go about the unity of justice and happiness. It seems to me that they fail with Plato, and one of the reasons's that they do not accept the Platonic position that the Good is beyond being. Strauss knew that one of his tasks was continually to attack Christianity. He was too noble a man to go into a crude antiChristianity, but he is aware all the time of the answer given in Christianity as to the nature of happiness and justice. That surely is the central problem concerning the way human life [should be lived].19

The botched and the bungled 293 He took up the same theme in a letter to his nephew, Ed Andrew: 'I have for quite a while believed that one of the deepest strains in Strauss' writing about Plato has been to criticize the long hold of Christian Platonism in the western and eastern interpretation of Plato. He has done this wisely & with no foolishly polemical spirit.'20 George never attacked Strauss publicly on this key question, and Strauss never published anything directly relating to it either. Neither thought that any good purpose was served 'in emphasizing these days the difference between Jews & Christians.'21 It was in this spirit that George and Howard Brotz made their pilgrimage to Annapolis where the great man was installed at St John's College. They booked into a hotel, and paid Strauss two visits, one on Saturday afternoon, the next on Sunday for dinner. George was charmed by Strauss's graciousness and elegant manners. The respect was reciprocal. 'He knows the score,' Strauss announced to his wife and Brotz about George. They spent most of their time in broad discussion of the philosophical causes of modernity. George was particularly impressed by Strauss's honest and courageous answer to a question he had once been posed, When would he most like to have lived? 'Now,' Strauss had replied, 'because only now would I have available to me the greatest philosophic statement of antiquity in Plato, and its most profound denial in Nietzsche.' George was glad that he went. The next year, on 18 October 1973, Leo Strauss died, aged seventy-four. If George and Strauss were never in agreement on theological questions, George was also moving further and further away from him in terms of the analysis of the nature of modern technology. It was Howard Brotz's view that Strauss saw the dangers in technology, but never considered that technology constituted a fundamental change in the nature of existence. For Strauss it was always possible for human beings to create a regime in which moral considerations governed the use to which technology was put. George, by contrast, now thought that technology had become pervasive and self-sustaining; politics could no longer control technology because the only form of politics that was acknowledged in modern life was cybernetics, or technological politics. 'Modern liberalism has always claimed that it dilutes and dissolves ideology in the snare of the progress of cybernetics as rationality. In fact it is itself a powerful ideology.'22 Strauss thought, as did Jacques Ellul, that there was the possibility of a moral stance beyond technique by which one could judge the desirabil-

294 George Grant ity of technology itself. George's reading of Martin Heidegger was slowly bringing him to the conclusion that this position was no longer tenable. He had studied both Heidegger and Nietzsche carefully for a decade now, but he began to see them both more clearly when he read Heidegger's Nietzsche lectures,23 first given at the University of Freiburg between 1936 and 1940. George had only high-school German, and the lectures were not yet available in English; so he worked his way through a French translation. It was worth the effort. He concluded after he had read it several times that the very process that brought technological civilization into being simultaneously eroded the validity of all perspectives other than its own. It could be judged only by its own criteria. 'At the very least the coming to be of technical civilisation has put in darkness the perspectives by which men traditionally lived, including what it is to think in truth. To think anything in that darkness requires that we think the novelty of our situation because it is what has been brought to be as novelty which has enclosed everything in that darkness.'24 In the language of the sixties, it was not clear whether most contemporary philosophy was part of the solution, or part of the problem. It is not surprising, given the transitional stage George's thought had reached at the time, that when Mount Allison University offered him an honorary degree in the autumn convocation of 1972, he declined the invitation to deliver the address to the graduates on the grounds that he had 'nothing to say to such a gathering at the moment.' He none the less accepted the honour. On the morning of the ceremony the dean, Cyril Poole, invited colleagues from the philosophy department like Ross Stanway and Paul Bogaard, political scientists Colin Campbell and William Christian, and a few others to his white frame house on Weldon Street to meet his old teacher, and we came in high spirits. Cyril assured us that we would not be disappointed: George was the most formidable combination of personality and intellect in the country. He was right. George sat at one end of the room, telling anecdotes, musing philosophically, challenging the rest of us to tell him, TELL HIM, what we thought about profoundly difficult questions. He was now playful, now deadly serious. Like so many before and since it was impossible for us not to concentrate on the lengthening ash of his cigarette, wonderIt seemed that once he lit a cigarette and put it in his mouth, it just stayed there until it was time to light another. If Cyril was at all worried about the possibility that George might set the shag carpet alight, he concealed his concern well while emptying what seemed like bottles of sherry into George's bottomless glass. It would be nice to report, like sherry into George's bottomless glass. It would be ncie to report, like

The botched and the bungled 295 Boswell, the great conversation that took place that morning, but as with so many who met George for the first time, powerful and transforming impressions remain, but the details of what was said are lost. Cyril announced that it was time for the distinguished guest to dine. George rose unsteadily to his feet, fortified by the sherry and eager to keep the conversation going, a feat he accomplished in an increasingly loud voice during lunch. As he came out of the door onto the porch, he was wearing a raincoat at least three sizes too small. Before we could marvel at this mark of apparent eccentricity, Paul Bogaard appeared in hot pursuit, figuring reasonably enough that a sartorial exchange with George was not something a rational man would contemplate. George seemed a trifle bemused that somebody wanted his coat, but he accepted the proffered substitution willingly enough. George's old mentor, Gerald Graham, had also come to an age where he merited honours, and George was asked to contribute to a Festschrift, a collection of essays dedicated to Graham. He was anxious to re-create friendship with Graham, who had always been so good to him. So he wrote a 'careful piece'25 called 'Ideology in Modern Empires.'26 The essay was written out of respect and love, but there was more than a little in it of the former Queen's undergraduate trying to impress his old teacher. In this he failed. The Grahams still thought of him as a historian, and concluded on the basis of this philosophic essay that he had completely lost the knack. If this were a momentary setback, it was more a personal failure than an intellectual one. George was soon given the opportunity to redeem himself. Mount Allison had a fund that provided for an occasional lecture series by a distinguished figure. George's favourite bete noir, Lester Pearson, had been invited to deliver the next lectures, but when he fell ill with the cancer that took his life, the committee met again under Alex Colville's chairmanship and decided in May 1973 to invite George instead. George was flattered, but he wrote back to say that he was not interested if the lectures were meant to be in 'a fairly popular style.' When his children were younger and his income less, he did a lot of popular writing; now he did not want to do any more. 'Writing comes to me harder and harder and as you will know from your own life, I now want to write in a particular way. This does not mean that I would not write as an amateur in a way that any serious person could understand (because the very name of philosophy means the amateur). I would not write in a silly technical way for a few professionals. But on the other hand, I want to write very closely.'27 He proposed to explore a recently published book, A Theory of Justice, by Harvard philosopher John Rawls. Through it he

296 George Grant could examine the reasons why liberal moral philosophy was a failure, and why it was necessary to try to understand morality as natural, that is, as something more than a calculated bargain between rational individuals. Colville agreed and George set about to prepare his talks, which were later published as English-Speaking Justice.

George's determination to avoid the limelight could always be dented a little. In January 1973 he appeared on CBC Radio's 'Cross Country Check-up' to discuss the lessons Canadians learned from the Vietnam war. In August he accepted Ramsay Cook's invitation to be interviewed for television. On 10 October he had a national audience for his ideas when he appeared on the CBC's celebrated radio show, 'This Country in the Morning.' The next March he was on 'Canada Tomorrow,' talking about the James Bay Project, and the need to understand Quebec. These took little time, and he could fairly write in his annual report to his department: 'I have gone around to various Canadian universities in the last year but have tried to limit the amount I go so that I am not away from McMaster.'28 By the time George arrived in Sackville in February 1974 to deliver the Wood lectures, his attention had been drawn to a public issue that consumed him as deeply as the Vietnam war, and for a longer time. A decision of the American Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade (1973), had effectively repealed all existing legislation prohibiting abortion and made the passing of any future legislation extremely difficult. There would be, in the United States, virtual abortion on demand. Sheila was appalled and, fearful of similar developments in Canada, got involved in the right-to-life movement. Her concern alerted George to the issue, and when he read the text of Mr Justice Blackmun's reasoning in the case, he noticed sharp similarities between it and the arguments developed by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice. He asked his two questions. How did affliction come to exist in the world? How is its presence intelligible in light of the perfection of God? For even technological civilization existed 'in relation to the eternal fire which flames forth in the Gospels and blazes even in the presence of that determining power.'29 Prior to 1973 the issue of abortion was not of great importance to George. His earliest comments seem to be those recorded in the notebook he kept in England in 1956-7, under the heading 'Remarks about abortion': The argument that it is murder seems to me irrefutable - unless the mother is to die.

The botched and the bungled 297 But that raises the question - if or if not murder is wrong. What do we mean by the sanctity of the human personality? On the one hand I can't see God has treated the human personality as sacred when left to himself. Youngsters have been born dead or starve through no fault of any human person; that is, nothing anybody could have done could have prevented it. That is as far as we can see. On the other hand if one does not believe human personality is sacred, what does one believe?30 He had learned the centrality of the sacredness of human personality from Oman, namely, that the concept of person meant little if it were separated from a belief in soul. In a note he wrote in 1972 while he was reading Rawls, he reminded himself 'that equality was asserted in your piece for the N.D.P. - but its theistic basis was not accepted.'31 The only fundamental basis on which equality could be securely grounded was the equality of all souls, including foetuses, before God. For that reason, even though he sympathized with the feminist cause, he could not accept their close identification with the pro-choice issue. 'I think the feminist cause was an excellent thing arising in North America, because women had been very badly treated, especially in certain periods of modern North American history. I think the feminist cause was largely right; but I cannot see it condoning the mass slaughter of foetuses. My communication with them has always been in disagreement, but in friendship.'32 It was a typically bitter Sackville winter evening when George climbed the stairs to deliver the first of his lectures to the large crowd packed into the auditorium of Mount Allison's music building. George was a little nervous, but only because he was afraid he might bore his Fisher cousins, relatives on his mother's side, who were in the audience. He was also a little out of sorts. He admired Mount Allison for its denominational roots, but only to a point, and that point was passed when he went to a dinner in his honour at the president's house. 'Three hours without a single drink!' he spluttered. 'Damned Methodists.' People seemed to like the first talk, since the hall was just as full for the second. The argument, as he delivered it from the stage, was difficult to follow because the text was so full of ideas. The initial response was mixed and revolved mainly around George's condemnation of abortion. It was clear that he was also saying something of philosophic importance, but many in the audience decided to reserve judgment on this until they could see the printed text. As it happened, they had to wait four years. I was personally very frustrated after I heard the lectures. After one I drove a friend home and complained: 'He has done it again. He has shown us

298 George Grant what's wrong, but he hasn't told us what to do about it.' 'Maybe that is just what he is trying to say,' my friend observed. 'Everyone has to come to God in his or her own way. Once you see the need for it, you have to work it out for yourself.' That was exactly right. George always said that salvation was an individual matter. Those like the CCF or the NDP who believed in the possibility of collective salvation through political action he held in disdain. Those who looked to George for political solutions were bound to be disappointed. George was back in the Maritimes in May 1975, this time to receive an honorary degree from Dalhousie. Then it was back to Dundas to prepare for a symposium of the Royal Society to be held in Toronto at the beginning of June. Although George sometimes affected not to care about honours, he did, and he usually approached an event like the Royal Society of Canada's meeting with genuine respect. To be a member of the Royal Society was a matter for special pride. To be asked to address the fellows was a great responsibility.33 George stood before the distinguished gathering to recant an error and announce an important discovery. He had previously renounced the word 'technology' in favour of 'technique' because he thought the latter more accurately reflected the Greek root techne, which meant a poiesis or leading forth, that is, a kind of making. Now he was clear that something new had arisen in the world: the arts had been penetrated by the sciences in a way that changed them in their very essence, and the word technology was necessary to point to the very horizons of making that were transformed by the discoveries of modern science.34 Because technology was new it called forth thought, and the most important question it raised was, 'What is it in modern mathematical physics which brought into the world a new relation between making and knowing?'35 In the last decades we have started to live in the full noon of this actualization, so that what was given in our modern origins can now be thought more clearly.36 The consideration of these matters was now urgent, George suggested, because Mr Justice Blackmun's decision inRoe v. Wadewas monstrous, especially when one considered the etymological roots of the word. Our word monster came from the Latin monere, to warn: 'A monster is a warning.' In that legal judgment we were warned that we no longer know in advance what justice requires should be done, but only whether something was technologically possible or not. We were driven, in the words of Robert Oppenheimer that George frequently cited: 'If something is sweet, you have to go ahead with it.' The presence of monsters demands thought from scientists about 'the frontier and limitations of making. The

The botched and the bungled 299 influence of such thought on the possible future of this civilization could not now be predicted.'37 The rest of the summer he was laid low with illness, though as he wrote to Uncle Raleigh, T am not sure how much was in my tummy and how much in my mind but I am much better.'38 His most onerous activity was fighting off friends who wanted to capture him for their university. Arthur Motyer, the vice-president at Mount Allison, wrote to see if he would consider the chair of Canadian studies. He replied kindly, saying that he had no wish to undertake further administration, but there was a more important reason for declining: T have come now to the point where I want to write one thing out as well as I can. It concerns what is Christianity now that Western Christianity has so much come to an end. I cannot do that and think about Canadian Studies at the same time.'39 A more serious attempt to ensnare him was launched by his friends at King's College, Dalhousie. Wilfred Smith and Patrick Atherton brought their heavy artillery to bear to get George to move back to Dalhousie to teach Canadian studies. On the practical level George thought the move impossible because his family responsibilities required his higher McMaster salary. But he was less and less interested in practical political questions. His interest in American civilization, he explained, was only 'in so far as it gives examples of the unfolding and of the meeting of that unfolding with Christianity.'40 None of the Canadian studies jobs interested him at all because his thoughts were on the basic crisis of Christianity in the light of technical reason, which is a 'world-wide crisis and essentially a theoretical one and therefore not limited to immediacies.'41 There was another powerful reason. George's sleep had been tormented by dreams of the grey Halifax streets he knew in the fifties, and he told Sheila that he could not bear to return. Since he was to remain, for now at least, at McMaster it was time to sort out his thoughts for a lecture he had been asked to give at Massey College in Toronto early in 1975 as part of a CBC radio series called 'Beyond Industrial Growth.' The book he planned to write, 'Technique(s) and Good,' had got as far as a paper called 'Thinking about technique,' which he circulated among his graduate students in 1973-4. He had also developed some of those ideas for the Royal Society lecture. Now he refined them further for the CBC audience. It was to be one of the most profound essays of his career, and it showed how much he had profited from his reading of Heidegger. 'The computer does not impose on us the ways it should be used.' This was the title of the talk and George used it as his text. He took the words

300 George Grant from an unnamed expert on computers, and his address was a sustained meditation on this sentence, an effort, as he liked to put it, to think the thought contained in that sentence. After reading Ellul, George still viewed technology as something external to human beings. Computers, then, seemed like cars, something that could be used for good or ill. For example, the internal-combustion engine might power either a tank or an ambulance. Machines in this view were neutral instruments; the goals for which they were used were determined outside of them.42 This understanding of technology he now rejected because it ignored the comprehensive co-penetration of knowing and making that had come to characterize modernity. A look at the computer could illustrate this fundamental point. The computer did not exist in isolation: it arose from a particular cultural, scientific, and philosophic context. Its existence presupposed not just chemists, metallurgists, and miners, but also a highly developed electronics industry and the history of science that lay behind that industry. Most particularly, the existence of the computer required modern algebra and the fact that man had put modern algebra to use in understanding nature.43 Even so, many might still say that these machines did not impose on us. To make such an affirmation was to ignore the fact that the existence of computers was made possible by understanding reason itself in a new way, namely as a instrument. That change was heralded in the thought of Kant, who made the world subject to human beings conceived as free and autonomous, that is, as the makers of their own laws. For such beings will is the source of the moral law. For them, there could be no transcendent standard to judge the goodness of their wills themselves. Even if there remained in the Kantian concept of reason a residue of the old tradition, a secularized Christianity, George now turned to a thinker whose importance was growing rapidly in his thought, JeanJacques Rousseau. George credited Rousseau with the new idea that reason itself arose out of the historical process: 'Suffice it to say here that the root of modern history lies in a particular experience of "reason," and the interpenetration of the human and non-human sciences that grew from that root. It is an occurrence which has not yet been understood.'44 There was one other important difficulty, and that related to the use of the word 'should.' In the older moral tradition, 'should' was related to the concept 'owing.' When we said 'should' we acknowledged a debt. In the modern world it is not clear what the nature of the debt is or to whom that debt is owed: 'To ourselves? to other human beings? to evo-

The botched and the bungled 301 lution? to nature? to "history"? to reasonableness? to God?'45 Indeed the sentence 'The computer does not impose on us the way it should be used' is, to the modern understanding, contradictory. The essence of the modern view is that human beings should freely determine what happens in the world. To do so, human beings must achieve two things. First, they must overcome chance, which means they need to subordinate human and non-human nature to their wills. Second, they must reject any claims other than those they have freely legislated for themselves: 'The remnential and unresonant constant appealed to in the sentence about the computer is the word "should." But the intellectual life which allowed the coming to be of computers has also made "should" almost unthinkable.'46 Technology has become the ontology of the age, our almost inescapable destiny. These 'almosts' do not reflect academic equivocation or the result of fuzzy thinking. It always matters what we do, George said, and what he did was to state the facts of the current situation. As a philosopher that was all he could do, but it also happened to be exactly what was needed because it helped to destroy 'inadequate sources of hope - the destruction of which is a necessary part of all our lives.'47 He therefore posed some questions, and in posing them suggested an answer: 'In all that has been practised and thought and made by western human beings in their dedication to the overcoming of chance, what has there been of good? What has perhaps been found? What has perhaps been lost? What have these possible losings and findings to do with what we can know of the trans-historical whole?'48 The fact that was central to modern existence was that the long project of overcoming chance in the name of freedom has thrown us into an enveloping darkness: 'The job of thought at our time is to bring into the light that darkness as darkness.'49 The Christian has been told that there is something beyond both thought and practice; that this life is not all. Thus, out of Christian dissatisfaction there lies 'the hope of taking a first step: to bring the darkness into light as darkness.'50 Although George accepted the fact that, as so often in the past, he would be accused of 'vagueness and uncertainty, impracticality and selfindulgence in times of crisis'51 he was sick to death of another complaint about his thought. Someone from the audience yet again asked him why he was being so pessimistic. George, in exasperation, replied: 'I'm not being pessimistic at all. I think God will eventually destroy this technological civilization. I'm very optimistic about that.'52

21 Museum culture

In the autumn of 1975 George and Sheila flew to Vancouver. Pauline Jewett, the president of Simon Fraser University, hoped to lure George there and, with that in mind, invited him to come and give a public lecture. It was a sparkling success and the organizers had to change the room three times before they finally got one big enough to hold all the students who wanted to hear him. When he returned from the west coast, he found himself right in the middle of the sort of bitter academic row within his department that he often misleadingly and provocatively described as between Americans and non-Americans. George's early plan for the department, which he had worked out in the mid-sixties, was that it was to be predominantly a place where sustained philosophic thought about the meaning of Christianity, Judaism, eastern religions, and ancient Greek religion could take place. It would be the university within the multiversity, acting as a critic of the main thrust of contemporary education. When he stepped down as department head others succeeded him who respected his vision, but did not always fully share it. The key appointment turned out to be one that was made while George was still chairman. Ed Sanders arrived at McMaster in 1966, about thirty years old, and an ordained Methodist minister who had won a brilliant reputation as a student at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He went on to become one of the most respected New Testament scholars in the world, holding chairs at Oxford and Duke. Sanders became a formidable adversary. Part of the problem was personal. They both had big egos, with Sanders's perhaps the larger of the two, but their incompatibility was deeper than that. Sanders held the view that Christianity was best understood as an outgrowth ofJudaism. George, as we have seen, thought that the imperative was to reconcile the Gospels with Plato.

Museum culture 303 In Straussian langauge, this was the conflict between Athens (Greek philosophy) and Jerusalem (biblical revelation). George was clear that he favoured Athens over Jerusalem; that put him at odds with Sanders. Sanders and George also stood at opposite ends of the heavens in how they understood the proper activities of the department. 'In the last decade, there has been a long disagreement in our department concerning the proper purposes of a department of religion in a modern university,' George wrote to a friend in Calgary: 'To oversimplify and overdivide that disagreement; it turns on whether the department would be primarily a place where students, both undergraduate and graduate, are asked to think carefully about the great religious traditions and the contemporary questions they raise, or whether it should be a place primarily devoted to historical and literary studies, in strictly divided disciplines, and so above all devoted to the production of specialist graduate students.'1 Sanders preferred the latter approach and he set to work to create a sub-department of New Testament studies that was largely indifferent to George's conception of the department as a place where great religious visions could meet and be mutually enlightening. Their disagreement came to a head in the mid-1970s. One manifestation was in fights over tenure for junior faculty members. Since the grant of tenure gave a faculty member relative independence as to what and how to research, a tenure decision was the last opportunity senior faculty had to shape, as far as that position was concerned, the department's orientation. The most bitter of these fights revolved around an Australian colleague, Ian Weeks. George threw himself into it with all his energy. Weeks, George thought, was being sacrificed on the altar of an alien philosophical tradition. 'Is it not true,' he asked in Weeks's defence, 'that in the modern world there is no international community in philosophy, as for instance there is in mathematics or chemistry? Rather there are very divided traditions and that these divisions often follow national lines, e.g. the English have no sympathy for German philosophy; the American account of philosophy is very different from the British.'2 Weeks's qualifications, he argued, had been assessed by Americans, and this procedure was inappropriate and unfair. With Louis Greenspan's help, George won this round, and on 10 March 1976 an appeal committee decided that Weeks would be granted tenure. Weeks gratefully acknowledged his debt: 'This is just a brief note to say what I cannot find words for - to thank you for your support, help and love over the last months, in the hearings and privately. Despair, cynicism and a deep sense of defeat have been such close realities in my personal existence.'3

304 George Grant One other fight was ultimately decisive in settling the character of the department. Sanders had applied to the Canada Council for what was by the standards of the day an extraordinarily large grant, about half a million dollars. He wanted to fund a series of conferences over five years involving Old and New Testament scholars to examine the self-definition of Judaism and Christianity, that is, to explore the kind of topics outlined in his first major book, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (1977).

George dismissed Sanders's approach as 'museum culture,' since George thought that the truth of Christian teaching was a matter of no interest to Sanders. However, Sanders's approach had increasing appeal to the upper echelons of the McMaster administration. It was a phenomenon that George recognized and feared: ' (a) The administration at McMaster believes firmly in the research oriented university and is therefore always likely to push for large programmes, which will bring "international recognition." (b) Those in our department who emphasize historical and linguistic research above all other considerations are concentrated in our Biblical studies area. Although they are a minority, they are very forceful people, convinced that their way is the only professional way, and they have therefore excluded from their area anybody who does not follow their Religionsgeschichte tradition of scholarship.'4 George feared that, given the size of the grant and the consequences for Sander's influence within the university, it was necessary to do all he could to counter it. Together with John Arapura and some professors from Brock University in St Catharines, he applied for an comparably large grant to compare the religious traditions of the West with the Vedanta, but their research project was so ambitious that it appeared unfocused and, in terms of management skills, Sanders's was overwhelmingly superior. Sensing defeat, George desperately sought to block Sanders's grant. When the Canada Council sent W.C. Smith to McMaster to make an onthe-spot assessment, George intercepted his old friend, had him over for one of Sheila's marvellous dinners and, over the wine, explained his view that it would be terrible for McMaster if the award were made. This lobbying was still within the bounds of propriety, but George crossed it when he tried to neutralize the Council's system of peer review by writing directly to Frank Milligan, associate director of the Canada Council. For a large majority of its members, he explained, the department was a 'place where students and faculty are asked to think about the great religious questions which face us in the modern age: we believe that this should be done within the context of all the great religions of the world

Museum culture 305 and within the context of the openness proper to a modern university.'5 For the others, it should devote itself to literary and historical studies and aim at the production of specialists. Were the grant awarded, the balance of the department would irrevocably shift and his efforts of the last fifteen years would be destroyed. When Sanders found out about George's attempt to sabotage his grant application, he was understandably furious. In spite of George he got the award and that meant that Sanders and his supporters had the financial resources and the prestige to follow their own course. The unity of the religion department, that which made it a little university within the great multiversity, had gone. George's dream of the religion department as a fifth column was evaporating and it no longer felt like home. He just wanted to get away, to go somewhere else. In the short term, though, he would have to stay, though not with much enthusiasm. He was even tempted at times to give up the academic life entirely and try to earn his living by his writing: 'If I didn't so much like the comfortable life, I would resign from the university and spend my time writing, but I find that the desire for comfort grows each year and that keeps me at the grindstone.'6 George therefore had a particular target in mind when he accepted an invitation to speak to a combined session of the Association of Universities and Colleges in Canada and the Royal Society in Ottawa on 4 May 1976. The subject of the symposium was 'The University of the Future.' In George's paper one can smell the odour of his own defeat, but he admired those who went down with guns blazing and flags flying, and he was determined to be one of them. As on so many occasions in the past, the intensity he brought to the occasion arose from the way he abstracted from personalities, or, to put it slightly differently, personalized abstractions. George strongly disliked Sanders and he transferred that emotion to the research paradigm he identified as the defining characteristic of American scholarship. What Sanders did he did very well. That, for George, did not settle the matter. The proper question is, Is it the right thing to do? Research in the humanities, he said, thinking of projects like Sanders's, has focused on the past as something dead rather than as something necessary to human existence.7 George called this approach to the past 'museum culture' because in museums the life of the past is presented as a collection of objects; that is what humanities research now does. Every society has a paradigm of knowledge and our archetype is modern physics. We have procedures, as in physics, that allow us to summons things before us as objects, and we call this research.8

306 George Grant When we apply this method to the humanities, we turn the past into a mausoleum, because in summonsing an object before us we stand above it as subject, the transcending summonsers. The past is dead to such researchers; they cannot find in it truths that might help them to think and live in the present. If you command the past you cannot learn how to live from it.9 Bright young teachers, he hoped, will flee this sterility in favour of the 'real culture which is all around them.'10 No sane person wants to be a junior executive in the past industry: 'For this reason all across North America those of the clearest mind and noblest imagination are leaving the humanities in droves.'11 As they leave, the technicians, 'who have narrow but intense ambitions to build careers in this industry,' take over. Yet the questions the technicians ignore will not go away. They will exist as long as there are human beings. If they are not thought in the universities, they will be contemplated elsewhere: 'Happily the eternal can take care of itself and therefore these questions, however difficult, are not easily avoided.'12 These controversies were inescapable but they were very distracting. He tried to stay out of them as best he could. It had been sad to see the philosophy department at Dalhousie taken over by analytical philosophers after he left, and it was now even harder to see the religion department at McMaster fall into the hands of historicists, however distinguished they might be by the world's standards. When Dalhousie pressed him again to consider returning, he replied: 'I just don't have the courage to start something new at this stage in my life.'13 And when he was approached to contribute an article to a book on abortion, right to Birth: Some Christian Views on Abortion, he was more than happy to turn the matter over to Sheila and she was chiefly responsible for its contents.14 He did not want to be burdened with these lesser matters since he was on sabbatical leave for the 1976-7 academic year. His aim, he explained when he applied for the leave, was to spend the rest of his working life 'trying to think out and write down what it is possible to say clearly about good at this time ... to attempt to write down what can still be maintained from the Platonic tradition concerning good, despite the objections that have been made against that teaching in our era.'15 To understand this matter fully he had to master Aristotle's criticism of Plato's Idea of the Good in book I, chapter 6 of the Ethics. He also had to understand why Heidegger's critique of Plato 'fails to come to grips with Plato's account of good.' Once he had clarified Plato, he thought he could better understand what good means in the modern world and how the

Museum culture 307 Platonic concept throws light on our own contemporary understanding of God. However, he still had one lingering duty to fulfil, as Mount Allison kept reminding him - to finish English-Speaking Justice for publication. In June he wrote to explain that family problems had got in his way and utterly distracted him, and he was also checked by the intellectual demands the lectures placed on him: 'They are now the thing I have given more thought to than anything I have ever written and I hope that appears in them ... They have been a large piece of business and they say something I very much want to say.'16 By December 1976 however, the text was complete. No one was more relieved than Mount Allison's Arthur Motyer, who was responsible for its publication. 'AT LAST I have received The Manuscript.'17 George dedicated his new work to Alex Colville and Dennis Lee, 'two artists who have taught me about justice.' At the simplest level the dedication was apt since Colville had issued the invitation, and it was Lee who had edited it at George's request. There was more to it, however. Colville and Lee were the two contemporary Canadian artists he most respected. George had read Lee's The Death of Harold Ladoo and Savage Fields, and particularly admired The Death of Harold Ladoo because it 'moves back and forth with the fluidity of music, from the "dynamic context" of a particular friend's death to the statements of self and otherness, love and hate, living and dying. Never does the particular dissolve into the merely general, nor does the universal flatten out into abstractions.'18 Colville's paintings probed the same relationship between the human and the transcendent that George was exploring. (He later returned the favour of the dedication by giving the Grants two of his own serigraphs.) The published version of English-Speaking Justice brought together a strange variety of elements. The first, as usual, came from his own personal experience. 'Having grown up in my family's household, I never thought that a society like Canada was based on contract; I just assumed it was natural, just like in the Maritimes. Nobody diinks that he's in Cape Breton because it's a contract."9 Once again he was testing a theory against what he knew to be true from his life. The second element was John Rawls's book, A Theory of Justice, which was published in 1971 and quickly established itself as a major work of contemporary political philosophy. George first read it as a possible text for his graduate students, but soon became fascinated with it as a modern statement of contractarianism. The more he read it the more the idea

308 George Grant that justice could be explained as a contract between calculating individuals struck him as inadequate. Rawls was a famous academic philosopher, but as he had done with Diefenbaker, George used him as a symbol as well. Rawls was 'of Harvard,' and that was very significant. The centre of the English-speaking world, as George had predicted in the middle of the Second World War, had shifted to the United States: 'It is therefore appropriate to listen to contemporary liberalism in an American garb. Harvard has been an intellectual centre of that argument.'20 This kind of sweeping generalization drove analytic philosophers crazy, since for it to be logically valid they had to accept the totally unproven points that Rawls was typical in some important way of Harvard and that Harvard's liberalism and America's were in all important ways similar. However, at the symbolic level, it was effective. The third source of his inspiration was close to home. Sheila, he acknowledged, helped him 'to see that the abortion issue was very fundamental' and through that brought him into the right-to-life movement.21 The proper test of a good metaphysical theory, George believed, is that it allow us to respond morally when faced with practical questions. He concluded his analysis of Rawls's theory: Tt may be argued that I have made too much of one academic book. One swallow does not make a summer; one academic book does not make the autumn of our justice. However, theories are at work in the decisions of the world, and we had better understand them.'22 He then turned to the question of how these ideas had spread: How had liberalism become the dominant political morality of the Englishspeaking world when, as his analysis of Rawls had shown, it was 'sustained so little by any foundational affirmation?'23 He had hit upon one aspect of the explanation a quarter of a century before while he was writing his doctorate on Oman. Moderation and inconsistency usually make for good politics, but bad metaphysics. The English-speaking peoples triumphed in the world because their political skills were adequate to the task, not the least of which was Churchill's smooth transfer of the leadership of the English-speaking world to America after the Second World War. As the political successes of the English-speaking peoples spread their influence diroughout the world, they also carried with them Protestantism, especially in its Puritan, that is Calvinist, form. George isolated two key elements of this belief that had been so effectively, if somewhat incidentally, propagated. The first was that 'there was an intimate relation between the development of modern positive science and the positivist account of revelation in Calvinism.'24 He credited this insight to Michael

Museum culture 309 Foster and cited three articles the Oxford philosopher had published in the leading journal Mind, between 1933 and 1935. Science flourished in the wake of Puritanism's success. The second element that George thought important had strongly contributed to that success: 'Indeed the Puritan interpretation of the Bible produced more a driving will to righteousness than a hunger and thirst for it.'25 In Mr Justice Blackmun, the American Supreme Court justice who wrote the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, George found another symbol, this time for 'what is being spoken about justice in modern liberalism.' The young law student at Oxford at the beginning of the war had found law exasperating because it was so heavily technical and so little reflective. 'In some ways [the study of law] is disappointing because it is merely stating the law, never asking what it is (as the basis), never asking why it is as it is, never asking what it ought to be.'26 He now posed that question: 'What is it about any members of our species which makes the liberal rights of justice their due?'27 The answer, he knew, was simple. He had given it explicitly in his thesis on Oman, in 'The Paradox of Democratic Education,' in and 'An Ethic of Community.' It was implicit in everything he had written. Human beings are equal as souls before God, and the foetus too is a human being: 'Pregnant women do not give birth to cats.'28 Why did he not give that clear answer again? The reason was that he now understood fully that modern human beings could not hear the intimations of deprival until philosophy completed its work of destruction. What now stood most in need of exposure the particular concept of the will that arose from the Bible and became fixed at the centre of Western Christianity: 'Modern contractualism's determined political activism relates to its seedbed in western Christianity. Here again one comes upon that undefined primal affirmation which has been spoken of as concerned with "will", and which is prior both to technological science and to revolution.'29 Until this work of demolition is substantially completed, the alternative account can only be sketched. In the pretechnological era, the central western account of justice clarified the claim that justice is what we are fitted for. It clarified why justice is to render each human being their due, and why what was due to all human beings was 'beyond all bargains and without an alternative.' That account of justice was written down most carefully and most beautifully in The Republic of Plato. For those of us who are Christians, the substance of our belief is that the perfect living out of that justice is unfolded in the Gospels.30

310 George Grant Modern thought saw justice as contractual. In this view, justice meant only the set of arrangements about which rational individuals would agree when they considered how best to promote their own interests. This theory presupposed, and drew strength from, something that human beings once believed to be true, the understanding of the will in the biblical tradition of Western Christianity. However, a decisive change had taken place in the relationship between will and reason. Classical philosophy, like Plato's, was clear that reason should control the will. Modern contractual liberalism gave primacy to the will, and treated reason as a tool for the most effective achievement of the will's desires. In theRoe v. Wade decision, as he had said before the Royal Society in 'Knowing and Making,' the consequences of that shift in philosophic understanding are now clear. They are monstrous, that is, they warn that the response of contractarian liberalism to the rights of the unborn 'raises a cup of poison to the lips of liberalism.'31 It is now both possible and necessary to see the need to light 'the darkness which surrounds justice in our era.'32 English-Speaking Justiceoriginally received only limited circulation because it was not commercially published. Consequently, for many years it was known only to a small number of specialists. For a while, though, it looked as if it might reach a wider audience, because Dennis Lee and George had begun to explore the possibility of another book, along the lines of Technology and Empire. Although George was concerned that his recent work might seem too negative and austere, he defended his writings of the last decade as a kind of negative theology, 'clearing away the junk of the modern era.' The working title was Technology and Good.33 In late December 1976, he sent the proposed collection to Lee in late December 1976, who twice read the manuscript through carefully, and replied that he was 'stirred very deeply by the power and austere integrity' of what he found.34 It completed the terrible project of Technology and Empire with a stern fluidity, grace, and nobility. George's task, 'to articulate the oblivion of the good in modernity, and to think modernity critically in its light' was now complete. There were only details left to illuminate. The new book could take one of two shapes. It might incorporate Technology and Empire (less 'Religion and the State'), and thus provide an easier entry into George's thought for American and British readers. Or the new work could stand on its own.Technology and Good, Lee thought, should consist of the following:

Museum culture 311 1) 'The computer does not impose ...' This is a superlative piece, even stronger, I believe, than what you let me see several years ago. It is exemplary of your thought, both its content and its movement. (You might let the reader more fully into what 'historicism' and 'cybernetics' imply.) 2) 'English-Speaking Justice.' This is the most complex and richly-orchestrated piece I have seen by you. It would clearly be the centre-piece of the book, and I believe might push the implications of this phase of your thought to their full conclusion. 3) A third, new piece, which looks back at the project of the last decade, and attempts to come to terms with its terrible burden in an overall way, and (perhaps) is a beginning way with the vocation of thought you feel called to now.35 This last piece was crucial. In his previous writings George had revealed the barrenness of justice in the modern world, but his job was not yet finished. I don't believe, George, that you will have completed the trajectory of the thought you are on, nor laid the ghosts of the present that have driven you through these soul-chilling essays, until you write down the sentences that say those things explicitly ... As I sense the magnificent and daunting thought of 'English-Speaking Justice' proceeding to its close, and feel how it incorporates so many currents of your passionate thought in this last time, I do not see how it can do anything but tell the full, terrible truth of what it knows. And if you mean to speak from older truths or deeper hopes, it is only then, I am convinced (though I do not know how), that you will come able to do so.36 Lee did not know how to do it and, for now, neither did George. As George thought through the problems Lee raised, the new book was postponed for a decade. While George reflected on these questions, more honours continued to come his way. One that particularly touched him was an honorary degree from Queen's in October 1976. He was powerfully aware of the deep family traditions that bound him to that university but, as in his essay for Gerald Graham, he came up flat in his address to the graduating students. That at least was the view of his son Robert, the only one of the Grant children to attend Queen's. Robert was at the time engaged in mounting a left-wing campaign to elect a mayor of Kingston. The other children were scattered about the country. Rachel was a nurse in

312 George Grant Vancouver. William worked with the mentally retarded in Hamilton. Katie was living in Nova Scotia, while Isabel and David - the 'baby,' now 6'4" — were still at home. The month after George's Queen's degree Rene Levesque came to power in the Quebec provincial general election. George had mixed feelings. He wrote to his Uncle Raleigh, who was still living in Montreal, that he had liked Levesque and Claude Morin when he met them, and admired their desire to preserve their cultural identity through socialism. However, even though Ontario was by now little more than a 'poor dim American imitation', he found it difficult to contemplate the break-up of the country.37 Over the next years he tried in most of his public addresses to put across two points. The first was that French Canada found itself a technologically backward society that wanted to catch up. It was faced, however, with the fact that the universal language of the most powerful technology was English. For French Canadians to retain their hold over their own society while they caught up, they needed to give French a privileged position. Their language was the only advantage they had in trying to redress the balance of the English domination of technology. The second point he made was that, 'if you want this country, I can see no alternative to the procedures of clear moderation.' This plea for moderation was more radical than it appeared since George saw the rise of modern technology as something intimately connected with the liberation of the passions, and hence inherently hostile to moderation: 'I am not always optimistic that we will follow such a course for to put it plainly the 20th century has not been exactly a moderate century and there are many people around including important ones who may find that they have much to gain personally and immediately by being immoderate.'38 About the same time he was drawn to another cause. In March 1977 he attended a conference on deprograming at New College in the University of Toronto. Cults were very much in the news as odd religious sects made young converts. There were many accusations from the parents of the young men and women involved that their children had been brainwashed, and a sinister profession developed in response. These deprogramers kidnapped the alleged victim, whom they held under circumstances more appropriate to a captured spy than a confused youngster, while they used a variety of psychological techniques to break the cult's hold. George was appalled for two reasons. The first was that he saw these deprogramers as using the discoveries of psychology to forge a new tech-

Museum culture 313 nique of human control, totally stripped of any understanding of what was good for human beings. The second was that, although he had no delusions concerning the philosophic or theological adequacy of the cults, he recognized the search for spiritual meaning that moved so many young people as an authentic response to the sterility of their world. He had hoped to provide in the religion department at McMaster a legitimate forum in which young men and women could explore the mysteries of other religious traditions, but he was not prepared to condone physical and psychological violence, which he described as brutal,39 against those who found their solace elsewhere. In November he accepted an invitation to participate in a conference in San Francisco organized by one of the most prominent of the contemporary cults, the Unification Church of Reverend Moon. The church organized academic conferences to which it invited, and paid the expenses of, reputable academics. The benefit to the organizers was that they gained intellectual respectability by association. George was criticized for attending, but he replied that the activities of the deprogramers were so terrible that it was necessary to take a stand against them. As he wrote at this time in a book review: Torture is obviously the central crime against justice. Justice is rendering others their due. The shattering of the moral will by the systematic infliction of pain is the most complete denial that anything is due human beings. Indeed justice is affirmed in the fact that all of us, when we suffer injustice, cry from the centre of our souls that this is not our due. And this cry must never ring more terribly than from those who endured sustained torture.'40 Near the end of April 1977 George and Sheila took a much needed break. Derek Bedson had suggested they might all holiday together in Spain where he had friends. For George it was a delightful opportunity to spend time with someone he counted as a very dear and close friend. The planning for the trip did not go smoothly, but when it finally looked as if they were both able to go, George wrote to assure Bedson that 'neither Sheila or I would be ghosts at the feast in Spain.'41 It turned out to be just the lift to their spirits they needed after several years of 'sinking into a rut of defeat.'42 It also brought him into close contact with a Catholic civilization, in a way he had not experienced for many years: 'Apart from the common matrix of Christian truth - there are the very great imaginative differences which different people and races bring to that matrix. The Spanish one is very different from my essentially Puritan imagination.'43 When he returned, he read a biography of the great Span-

314 George Grant ish saint, St John of the Cross, and a history of the Spanish civil war. The latter led him to the conclusion that he had been wrong in his undergraduate enthusiasm for the republican cause: 'How much a person of my background was deluded in the 1930s.'44 In April 1977 York University's Glendon College held the first conference devoted to George Grant's thought. It showed the respect with which his ideas were now held in the Canadian academic community. Later the same year, in October, Larry Schmidt organized a symposium at the faculty club of Erindale College, University of Toronto, that combined academic papers on his thought with a question-and-answer session, with George as the star. That conference led to the publication of George Grant in Process, the first book devoted to a discussion of his philosophic achievements. A decade earlier George had been the darling of the New Left, although they deplored his Christianity. Now he was being lionized by different groups, theologically conservative Catholics and Protestants and people who might be described as the New right, academics who were followers of Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and Michael Oakeshott such as Clifford Orwin, Barry Cooper, William Mathie, and William Christian. Had there been a major shift in his position to account for this? His public identification with the right-to-life movement, which found philosophic expression in English-Speaking Justice, doubtless contributed to his popularity with his conservative Christian followers. Politically, prochoice activists tend to be on the left and right-to-lifers on the right. That was part of the reason, but the matter is still confused, because leftists like Mel Watkins and Abe Rotstein continued to admire him and consider him an ally. The truth is that George remained the lone wolf who defied classification. In Matt Cohen's words, he was 'impossible to summarize or contain because - like the brilliant strategist he was in intellectual debate - he was a general who occupied ground inaccessible to anyone but himself. In his idea of Canada, his re-interpretation of Plato, his Christianity, his educational theories and methods, Grant had arrived at a mosaic of positions whose interdependence existed for him alone.'45 One important problem refused to go away. George and Sheila were involved in a bitter dispute within the Anglican Church. It had commissioned a report on dying, which raised, implicitly and explicitly, a wide range of ethical questions. What disturbed the Grants was that it addressed difficult moral and theological problems such as the right to life of defective newborns and permanently comatose patients in a facile and liberal way that was offensive in itself, but also had powerful implications for the abortion issue. The report, he wrote to Derek Bedson, filled him 'with utter disgust and indeed contempt (I hope contempt without

Museum culture 315 pride).'46 They pushed hard to get a formal hearing for an alternative point of view and actively considered leaving the Anglican Church if the offensive report were accepted:47 'I couldn't become a Roman [Catholic] — but oh would that one could.'48 Over Christmas 1977 he thought very deeply about his continued membership in the Anglican church. He had joined in 1956 because he was convinced that it was better for his children to be raised in an inadequate religious tradition than in none at all. Now, of his six children, two were active in the church, two vague and sporadic, and the other two rejected it. But to leave the church meant to cut them all off completely from the local parish, 'the only connection that they make with ordinary Christianity when they are at home.'49 Like most young men and women their age, his children were surrounded by secularizing influences. The ritual of the eucharist was an important factor in holding them, however tenuously, to the mysteries of the faith. Could he not, Bedson suggested, tell them directly about the supernatural? That was not possible, George replied. Other than the saints, who could encounter the supernatural directly, most people glimpsed God through nature. Now nature had been so denatured by educational, economic, political, and scientific systems that seeing the supernatural through it was excluded as a practical possibility. It was difficult even to articulate it: 'The language of the supernatural has been so killed in the public realm.'50 For himself, he decided, his role as a philosopher permitted his continued membership. Although he acknowledged that 'practical people in the name of clear principles' might have to renounce the church if it sanctioned unjust acts towards the unborn, the retarded, or the elderly, he was clear that it was his task to understand the reasons for Christianity's decline if he were to contribute to its eventual revival. In the midst of what he called 'the evident fall of western Christianity,' he thought that his own task was to understand 'just a small amount of what was at fault' in that decline. The 'rediscovery of authentic Christianity' will take centuries: T have no doubt that that will, slowly and through very great suffering, occur, because Christianity tells the truth about the most important matter - namely the perfection of God and the affliction of human beings, and it has been given that truth in a way no other religion has.'51 In the midst of this turmoil there was always the still point of eternity whose presence and absence were both made manifest through Simone Weil. In 1975-6 he devoted his graduate seminar to her thought. For him, she was 'at the centre of Christianity; she speaks about it in a way which has illuminated it for me as no other modern writer.'52 Although she died

316 George Grant at thirty-three, her writings were 'the supreme statement concerning eternity made in the west in this century.'53 This made her indispensable. 'In an age when oblivion of eternity has become the fate of westerners (not least among its theologians and philosophers), it is difficult to read Simone Weil despite the clarity of her writing. Nevertheless, just because western Christianity has realized its destiny of becoming secularized, it is essential to tear oneself free of the causes of that destiny, without removing oneself from the necessities of our present or from the reality of Christ.'54 George hoped that his negative work, the clearing away, was effectively finished. He had shown, as deeply and as comprehensively as was in his power, the darkness of modernity. To show the darkness as darkness he turned to Simone Weil, and especially to her affirmation: 'La foi, c'est l'experience que l'intelligence est eclairee par l'amour.'55 ('Faith is the experience that the intelligence is enlightened by love.'56) He began to explore the meaning of this thought when he wrote a paper, 'Christianity and the Modern Multiversity,' to deliver at Trinity College, Toronto, in November 1977. It was an attempt to 'express more clearly than ever before how I try to partake in Christianity.'57 As usual when family members were involved, he was apprehensive. He was never close to his brother-in-law, George Ignatieff, who was chancellor at Trinity, though he respected him for his diplomatic career and perhaps even more for his deep Russian Orthodox faith. His relationship with Alison had never fully recovered from his breakdown during the war: 'I have been very wary about anything to do with Trinity because my sister is my sister and yet there is at almost every point in our lives a great gulf. Our lives have taken such different directions and led to such different ways of looking. I just hate family differences.'58 At the end of 'The computer does not impose on us the ways it should be used' George said that the first step towards enlightenment was to bring 'the darkness into light as darkness.' He had now done that to the best of his abilities. It was time for the next step, the announcement that only love could light our darkness. In 'The computer ...' George meditated on a text by an anonymous spokesman for the religion of progress. To refute modernity he turned to the sentence of Simone Weil: 'Faith is the experience that the intellect is enlightened by love.' He now tried to think the thought contained in that aphorism. It took him almost ten more years until he thought he understood adequately what she meant by those words. Each civilization, he reminded his listeners, was dominated by a unique paradigm of knowledge, which shaped every part of it, especially its

Museum culture 317 institutions of learning. The modern paradigm was science and it began with Bacon and Galileo; after 1945 it reached 'its apogee of determining power over our institutions of higher learning.'59 It is characterized by the ideal that the project of reason is to gain objective knowledge, to summons something before us and force it to give us its reasons for the way it is as an object. The summonsing and questioning require well-defined procedures and we call the process research. This is a method that yields brilliant results when applied to nature, and this success encouraged those in the humanities and social sciences to adopt it in the hope of comparable accomplishments: 'I live in a department of religion in which much work is done to summons the Bible before the researchers to given them its reasons.'60 The original motive for mastering nature was the desire to alleviate human suffering by overcoming chance and hence eliminate hunger, disease, and the necessity of labour.61 Slowly love, whether for other human beings or for the beauty of nature, was eliminated from the modern project, and the chief instrument of this undoing was the distinction between facts and values that Weber drew from Nietzsche's writings. Values were something tucked away in our own subjectivity; stones, plants, animals, human beings became facts, that is, merely objects. The affliction of man, the perfection of God, how was it possible to think the two together? The lives of the saints provided the answer. Their love of God is so complete that it suffuses their lives and they act in the world out of love. Simone Weil tells us that love is 'attention to otherness, receptivity of otherness, consent to otherness.'62 George was not a saint but he had deeply experienced love in his own life: in his love for Sheila and his children; for Mozart to whom he 'felt such love'; for Canada and his fellow lovers, Judith Robinson and Derek Bedson; even for Guelph where he watched with pain his mother's decline: 'Guelph is a town I love not only because of its beauty but because it was the place where my mother lived in the last years of her life and therefore I have spent much time in its charm and gentleness.'63 He knew then, since he had experienced it profoundly himself, that in loving other human beings 'we know those human beings because we have paid attention to them, have received something of what they are, and consented to what they are as good.' Knowing through love presupposes the existence of autonomous beauty in others, but knowledge gained through research requires the annihilation of the autonomy of others as they are made subject to our will, and denied the existence of their beauty. That denial is necessary if the

318 George Grant triumph of willing is to be complete. Simone Weil's life and thought exposed the barrenness, the absence of love, at the heart of the modern project: there was no justice there. 'In our daily attempts to be just the central fact of human love is made plain. Love is only love in so far as it has passed through the flesh by means of actions, movements, attitudes which correspond to it. If this has not happened, it is not love, but a phantasy of the imagination by which we coddle ourselves. As far as love is concerned, and particularly love of justice, matter is our infallible judge.'64 The affliction of man now made sense to him. It came not from any positive evil, but from the absence of the Good in the world. The more will replaces love as the determinant of man's actions, the greater the gap between man and God. If our lives are not oriented by the fixed point of God, we become disoriented. Blind to justice we act out of ignorance. George spoke here as a philosopher, that is, one whose task was to understand the simultaneous and real existence of perfection and affliction. In the first important article on the relationship between George's thought and Simone Weil's, Edwin and David Heaven made this point very strongly. They punctuated their argument with the refrain that George Grant was not a saint. When Sheila read it, she was amused. T certainly know George is no saint,' she observed, 'but they didn't need to shout it from the rooftops.' It was a truth of which George himself did not need to be reminded. 'I spend a lot of my life in meetings with my colleagues at McMaster, and to put it mildly, my intellect is not lit up by love.'65 He was slowly being worn down, but he was as yet uncertain how to respond. 'I find McMaster less and less attractive but I am too old to move. The strange thing about these institutions now is that one could be anywhere. They are just factories or filling stations which are just the same wherever one is.'66 The struggles within the department constantly drew him back into its internal politics. He felt that the university administration was more and more paying heed to hisrivals.Sanders had won the large Canada Council grant George had tried to block, and the consequences were exactly as he had feared and Sanders hoped. Sanders was in the process of establishing McMaster as a major centre for historical biblical scholarship, because the grant gave him the funds to promote his vision, and the prestige to secure ready cooperation within the university. To George this was intolerable: the Bible should not be summonsed forth before us and made to give answers to such questions as how, when, and by whom it was written. The proper stance towards the Bible was reverence and loving

Museum culture 319 recognition. 'How can anyone discuss the New Testament,' he thundered to students, 'without acknowledging that the crucifixion was central.' Why these deeds of Christ have been at the centre of Western history is because they are supreme drama - drama is just the Greek word for things done. That is why I think the most important reading for this part of the course is to read an account of those deeds in Matthew's Gospel, chapter 26-36 and following. Gethsemene and Golgotha. The greatest commentary on this is not in words - but in music. Bach's Passion according to St Matthew. I chose this relating of the events because of that commentary. Much better than words - the great art which embraces most profoundly the abstract and the erotic.67 In practical terms George decided that the best response was to prove his worth to the senior administrators at the university in ways they recognized. In February 1978 he went to Calgary to be inducted as an honorary professor of the humanities. In August he spoke at the Institute of Christian Studies in Toronto, and in September to a forum at McMaster on genetic engineering. In February 1979 he went to Montreal to talk about Nietzsche, and in March to Massey College to talk to Southam journalists. He accepted honorary degrees from Thurloe University and the University of Guelph. The high point came in 1979 when the University of Toronto honoured him. The Toronto degree, however, aggravated his relationship with Charity. In the spring of 1978 he wrote her lamenting the disintegration of their previously close relationship and expressing his hope that they could overcome the 'great legacy of bitterness.'68 Charity had not forgiven the University of Toronto for the way it had treated her, and she was hurt that her brother had so little regard for her that he publicly associated himself with her enemies. George tried to explain: T cannot tell you why the U of T is giving me a degree. I can tell you why I am accepting it. I am under mounting hostility from the powers that be at McMaster and to defend myself I accept an honour that impresses them and therefore lightens their pressure.'69 His sister was not mollified and their relationship continued its downward spiral. His friends at McMaster also did what they could to show their love and respect. Eugene Combs, an American colleague, began to arrange a Festschrift, a collection of essays in honour of his sixtieth birthday, though typical of academic publishing it did not appear until closer to his sixty-fifth. His friends organized a big party to celebrate the event and, knowing his great love of music, bought him a recording of Haydn's

320 George Grant piano trios as a present. George, who would have thought it either impious or insane to compare himself with Mozart, often praised Haydn for his noble response to Mozart's genius. 'One of the most beautiful stories I think is when Haydn was just Mr. Music for Europe and came across Mozart, really unknown, and said that this was genius which utterly transcended his own music. I always think of this incident in my teaching. In case I ever meet a genius of the first order, I want to recognize him.'70 If George evoked this sort of love from his friends, he repaid it just as willingly. When English-Speaking Justice was finally published by Mount Allison in January 1978, he made sure to send presentation copies to Alex Colville and Dennis Lee. When Anansi fell into financial difficulties in the spring of 1978, he immediately volunteered to forego his royalty payments from them until they were in better shape. He showed his consideration in little ways as well. In the spring of 1980 he came to Guelph to receive an honorary degree. He gave me an unusually flashy smile and, when I did not twig immediately, he explained: 'I've got my false teeth in. Sheila made me wear them.' This was indeed a rare honour, but its impact was somewhat diminished by the fact that the fly of his trousers was held together by a safety pin. What the chancellor, Lieutenant-Governor Pauline McGibbon, thought when she awarded the degree is not recorded. At the reception that followed the convocation George seemed anxious to score points on the lieutenant-governor, whom he scorned as an old Liberal hack. It is wrong to describe George as a snob, since he completely preferred intelligent and cultured companions to those with money or social standing. Maude's son, however, still prided himself on knowing Who was Who. He managed to be a name-dropper of epic proportions though he usually did it in an oblique and somewhat confusing way by omitting the proper name of the person involved altogether. At lunch following the honorary degree ceremony he went on at length about a certain gentleman who had 'done a great deal for horse racing in this province.' I had no idea about whom he was talking. It turned out to be E.P. Taylor. Taylor's son Charles was in the midst of research for an elegant book that Anansi was to publish, Radical Tories.71 At the end of January 1980 he came to Dundas to interview George, and arranged that he would later take the Grants to Woodbine Racetrack where they could observe the proceedings as guests of Windfields Farm, the Taylors' racing stable. On 1 June 1980 Taylor and his wife drove to Dundas to pick up the Grants. When they got to Hamilton they followed the route that George took

Museum culture 321 between his home and McMaster. On the right was the medical school, looking more like a space-age power plant than a university. From there the urban landscape rapidly degenerated into a series of strip plazas and fast-food restaurants, whose crassness and vulgarity were a constant reminder to George every day as he drove to work of the homogenizing intrusions of modernity. They turned onto South Street and then passed through the two limestone gate-pillars (which were regularly decked with Conservative party signs at election time), and down the long, curving dirt drive to the house, where they found George waiting for them, dressed in a rumpled blue blazer, slacks, and brown suede shoes. George insisted they come in for a drink and poured large glasses of calvados, a drink from Normandy whose existence he discovered while reading his then-favourite detective writer, Georges Simenon. Fortified, the two couples set off for a day at the races. On the way up George was in his top gossipy form, talking about the Toronto of his youth, rich in eccentrics and seething with scandals. He was bursting with enthusiasm, like a child going on a special picnic. 'This is something new for me,' he kept repeating. 'It's so far outside the range of my normal activities, it's like going to Tibet.' By the time he got to Woodbine his excitement was at a fever pitch. Talking constantly he tucked into the luncheon at the elite Turf Club with gusto, though he was puzzled by what turned out to be an avocado. When offered a second drink, he declined: 'I'm already too excited.' Taylor then took his guests on an impromptu tour of the racetrack, ending up at the grandstand. They were engulfed by the smell of stale smoke and beer. Around the betting windows people of all sorts milled as they waited to place their wagers. George was obviously carried away by the atmosphere: 'It's just what I needed! A moral philosopher must get out in the world.' He declined to bet, except out of loyalty when one of his host's horses was running. It lost, but George did not much mind. Taylor had taken them down on the tarmac to the outside rail to watch the horses rush by to the finish, and George was thrilled by the beauty of the horses in full stride. The other high-society guests were polite but showed no glimmer of recognition when George's name was mentioned. Taylor decided it might be interesting for George and his father to meet. After all, E.P. Taylor had taken on an emblematic significance in George's writing. In Lament, when he sought to explain why the dominant classes in Canada were lost to nationalism, he had written: 'The policies pursued by Howe produced a ruling class composed of such men as E.P. Taylor. In the winter of 1963, Mr Taylor was quoted as saying: '''Canadian nationalism!

322 George Grant How old-fashioned can you get?'''72 When the old capitalist stopped briefly at his son's table, Charles introduced 'Dr George Grant.' Politely E.P. inquired, wondering under the circumstances whether his son's friend might be a veterinarian: 'Tell me, Dr Grant, just what do you do?' The other distraction for George in those days originated in the vision of an old friend of the family, Vincent Tovell. Tovell persuaded the CBC to produce an hour-long documentary on George's life and thought. 'The Owl and the Dynamo,' broadcast early in 1980, was a strong and affectionate portrait, but it disrupted most of a summer as George was shunted about from one location to another to provide suitable backdrops for his words. His main reservation about the program was Sheila's virtual absence; without her he knew it presented an untrue picture of his life. Sheila herself was angered by a memorable scene in which George is shown listening with rapt attention to a Mozart piano concerto, while on the voice-over he says: 'The only time I have ever felt unfaithful to my wife was listening to Mozart - I felt such love.' Sheila disliked the implication that she was jealous of his love for Mozart or, even worse, that she was incapable of sharing it. Bach, she said, moved her just as deeply as Mozart did George; it was just that she did not make such a fuss about it. George needed these diversions just now. Developments at McMaster had, he felt, brought him close to a nervous breakdown. His normal response to such emotional despair was unconventional; he picked up the life of some nineteenth-century Anglican bishop and started reading. These prelates were such sane, decent, and reasonable people that their company soon restored his equilibrium. This time something different, and quite magical, happened. His friend, sculptor George Wallace, asked him if he knew the novels of Louis-Ferdinand Celine. George acknowledged that he had readDeath on the Instalment PlanandJourney to the End of the Nightwhen he was young, but that Celine's virulent anti-Semitism was morally repugnant. No, not those, Wallace said; the postwar trilogy, Castle to Castle, North, and rigadoon. Since they were hard to find, Wallace lent him his own copies of the translation. He never saw them again. At sixty George had found another Mozart.

22

Caught up in fates

George read and reread Celine's war trilogy, the epic tale of his flight with his wife Lili and their cat Bebert at the end of the Second World War through a collapsing Germany to safety in Denmark. He was filled with rapture at the prodigality of Celine's genius; only Shakespeare, Mozart, Raphael, and Tolstoy equalled this richness. The French writer's passion had been burnt out by prison, persecution, poverty, and age, but in the splendour of his art he laid out Europe's collapse. We drink from his late works, George said, 'the truth of the human condition.'1 But the Gotterdamerung that slowly engulfed him was more pedestrian. He was isolated within his own department, except for his Indian colleagues and a few others; he liked to acknowledge his debt by saying that he stood on the extreme Hindu wing of Christianity. Even the honorary degrees and job offers seemed to make little difference to his influence. At McMaster the author of Lament for a Nation felt like a respected relic of the past. Although his views were accorded respect, so were those of Sanders. It was clear to him that he could no longer block Sanders's efforts to embody his own approach within the department. George had complete freedom to teach whatever and however he liked, but he still needed to fight, at times hard, to get tenure for the right sort of junior faculty and to get sympathetic graduate students through their thesis defence.2 It was all slowly slipping away. In July 1979 he was presented with a way out. His friends at Dalhousie were active again and John Graham contacted him to ask once again if he might now be interested in a job there. Over the previous years, George and Sheila had talked about retiring to Nova Scotia. This opportunity advanced the possibility of his return by five years.3 He had come home to Ontario because of his mother, but the Ontario in which he

324 George Grant grew up no longer existed. Around him he saw the decay of middle-class decency proceeding so quickly that he had 'less and less sympathy for life in southwestern Ontario.'4 He felt that he too, like Diefenbaker, was outof-date. Dalhousie's president, Henry Hicks, spurred by his wife (who had admired George since they were neighbours on Kent Street years before), was willing to proceed. In early December George went down for a visit. It was not a success. The religion department hoped that George would take over as chairman; when he made it clear that he was not interested in taking on further administrative responsibilities, they quickly lost interest in him. He had been asked, at short notice, to give a public lecture and he decided to read a paper he had written a couple of years earlier; that confirmed the suspicions of those who had already decided that he was past his best work and was returning to Dalhousie only to retire. George also had a difficult reunion with James Doull, whom he had not seen for many years. Frightened of seeming a fool to a man whose intellect and training he so admired, he reacted by withdrawing into himself. Doull interpreted this aloofness as hostility and Nita Graham had to work hard to persuade him that George did not dislike him.5 In spite of these problems, George was offered a position in early February 1980. On 29 February he wrote to Dean Mclvor to announce his resignation from McMaster. The reason, he explained, was the increasing sterility of the arts faculty as it came to be dominated by an inappropriate paradigm of knowledge. 'Research', which he used with inverted commas, the summonsing of objects before us and making them give their reasons, that is, respond to our will, might be an effective technique for the natural sciences, but it was a disaster for the humanities. He meant to go instead to 'a university more open to a broader meaning of that term.'6 His dream had been to build a department where the truth of the Gospels and the Vedanta was central. Religion was a subject about which 'objective' research could tell one nothing of importance, yet this kind of research would soon be the main activity even within his own department. He failed, he later told CBC interviewer David Cayley, partly because the spirit of the age was so powerfully against him, but also from his own silly vices, from laziness, lack of attention.7 He did not compare this resignation to his earlier brush with York: 'I did resign from York on a big matter of principle; but I just couldn't be bothered to spend my last five years in this Department of Religion. It was an act of impatience with what the Arts Faculty had become at McMaster.'8

Caught up in fates 325 George might be leaving McMaster, but it was not for money. His pay at Dalhousie would be slightly less than he was earning at McMaster, his pension suffered, and his new house in Halifax cost more than he could get for his Dundas property. On 4 March President Hicks sent him the formal offer. He was to be Professor, Arts and Science, with teaching and research responsibilities in classics, political science, and religion. The convoluted description of his new job concealed a whirlwind of opposition that had developed at Dalhousie. When George spurned the chairmanship, the members of the religion department decided they had no place for him. The philosophy department was never a possibility because it consisted primarily of analytically oriented philosophers of the sort George scorned the most; the antipathy was mutual. Political science was possible, since to many George's work counted as the best political philosophy ever written in this country. The chairman, Dale Poel, was agreeable, but David Braybrooke, a prominent analytical philosopher with a cross-appointment in political science, raised and pressed objections. He criticized the paper on Rawls that George had given at Dalhousie as weak and suggested that the money needed to pay George's salary was better spent on hiring two younger professors who together might make a stronger contribution to teaching, administration, and research than George was likely to. In short, Braybrooke saw George as returning to serve out the time till retirement. The compromise was that George would teach a course in political science, but he would not form part of the graduate faculty and consequently would have no graduate courses or research students to supervise. On 13 March Dale Poel wrote him to indicate the department's view. There was a second problem. On 10 April 1980 the Dalhousie faculty association lodged a grievance 'over the methods and procedures used in the appointment of Professor Grant.' In principle they had a strong case, and George himself usually sided with the right of the faculty to control appointments. The university had not advertised the position, nor had it solicited the formal approval of the relevant departments. Hicks justified his action by arguing that the funding for the position came from discretionary moneys at his disposal. Therefore, since George's appointment was not a regular one in a department, but a university appointment with teaching and research responsibilities, etc., etc., the extraordinary procedures were justified. It was a fine line, but it held. The faculty association had no particular objection to George, just to the procedures used to recruit him. While the waves of opposition were crashing against the president's

326 George Grant office at Dalhousie, another sort of storm was brewing in Hamilton. Word of his resignation leaked to the press. His earlier resignation from York provoked no public controversy; this one drew national attention, and by the time it was finished, many of his friends were deeply and needlessly offended. It began innocently enough. A young journalist for theDundas Star Journal, Len Sawatsky, heard of George's resignation after it was routinely announced in the McMaster Senate9 and asked to interview him for the Dundas weekly. Sawatsky was a young Christian and George was therefore inclined to do him a favour; so he agreed to be interviewed and invited him over to his house for a chat. His article about George's resignation, which appeared on 9 April 1980,10 created an immediate sensation. The story made three important points. First, McMaster had fallen into the hands of people who thought research was primary, and now the technological spirit dominated it. Second, this idea that the proper activity of the university was research had even penetrated the humanities, where it was destroying the possibility of a humane education. Third, the only thing that could check the dominance of technological civilization was 'a clearly articulated and well-thought out Christianity that is lived out.' This was provocatively put. Sometimes George liked to stir the pot a little too vigorously. 'People are caught up in fates over which they have very little power,' George told the young journalist. Now he was to see his words applied more quickly than he might have imagined. The Hamilton Spectator, alert to local issues, picked up the story, and one of their staff reporters, Peter van Harten, phoned George and wrote up the interview under the headline 'Mac veteran unhappy.' It appeared on 11 April. In order of provocativeness, he attributed to George the following complaints about McMaster. (1) Canadian universities were dominated by Americans who were not interested in Canadian youngsters. (2) Instead of being interested in the great clashes about the big questions of human life, their concentration on research deadened the atmosphere of intellectual inquiry at McMaster. (3) The administration at McMaster favoured research over teaching, and had implemented a system of rewards geared to direct young faculty members into research. The actual article is not quite so clear, but there is little doubt that most neutral readers, and certainly all of George's enemies, interpreted it along those lines. 'American' was another of George's symbols, and he rarely used the word literally. Even when he was grumbling about American influence in Canadian universities he might turn to someone like his American friend

Caught up in fates 327 and colleague John Robertson, and say: 'It's all right, John. I would much rather have a metaphysician from Texas than a positivist from Toronto.' 'American,' however, was a powerful symbol of domination and it was useful, in this case, because it had particularly strong negative connotations for non-Americans at Canadian universities. Americans themselves, however, tended to take it descriptively, and this made the debate considerably more confused and more acrimonious than it needed to be. From the Spectator the controversy went national. It is likely that the Globe and Mail picked up the Spectator story, and on 15 April an editorial appeared, headed 'The bothersome students.' The editorial largely missed the actual point behind George's resignation and presented his arguments as if he were party to a different and less profound debate, one that erupts from time to time, namely, whether professors should spend more time in the classroom, holding office hours, and grading papers, that is, teaching; or whether they should more properly devote the bulk of their energy to such activities as conducting experiments or writing biographies, which is usually called research. However important that question might be, it was not what moved George. In any event, the consequences were that the article portrayed McMaster as a place that cared little about undergraduate teaching. In the words of the Globe editorial: Then there are those other professors who cling to the view that students have a perfect right to be on the premises; some, in fact, who take the extreme view that a university has no more important function than teaching. Professor George Grant is strongly enough inclined to this point of view (or McMaster University is leaning heavily enough away from it) that he is prepared to end his 19-year association with the university. Disillusioned with what he says is a disproportionately small devotion of time and attention to students, he is leaving to go to a post at Dalhousie University.11

Whatever George originally had said, the press coverage ignited all the old hatreds and, before George knew what was happening, he was in the midst of a full-blown war. How dare he, fumed his enemies, boast about his concern for undergraduate teaching? He was the only member of his department who did not have a nameplate on his door. Should students manage to locate his office, they could not be confident of meeting with him, since he did not keep regular office hours. Furthermore, George preferred not to teach undergraduate classes. The department at one point even passed a resolution, aimed at George, that each faculty mem-

328 George Grant ber should teach at least one undergraduate course each year. First off the mark was a group letter to the Spectator from five of George's colleagues, including his old adversary Ed Sanders, which made two points. First, the department had a good record in undergraduate teaching. Second, there was no connection between commitment to teaching and place of origin. The substance of the matter out of the way, they struck back at what they considered an unfair aspersion: 'It is true that the expectation exists everywhere that faculty members teach, do research and serve on committees. How well Dr. Grant himself has fulfilled this expectation is open to question.'12 If not generous, the rancorous response was intelligible in light of what George was alleged to have said. The following day, 22 April 1980, a letter appeared in theGlobefrom McMaster President A.N. Bourns and M.W. Kristofferson, president of the McMaster Faculty Association. Their concern was to neutralize the harm done by the Globe's, portrayal of McMaster as a place indifferent to good undergraduate teaching by emphasizing McMaster's strong commitment to small classes and a lively intellectual interaction between faculty and students. Professor Grant's own excellent work, they noted, was the product of many hours of research. This was followed by a letter from Eugene Combs to theDundas Star Journal, the original source of the controversy.13 As chairman of the religion department he was torn between his friendship with George and his duty to protect the interests and reputation of the school. He regretted that his reply might seem pointed; so he sent George a note: T am not trying to attack you but rather defend the department. I am sorry that this situation has come to be.'14 Tempers flared and the controversy raged. In an attempt to limit the damage one of George's colleagues, Wayne Whillier, phoned richard Doyle, editor-in-chief at the Globe, to ask if George might make a reply. Doyle, a long-time Grant admirer, readily agreed. George's short piece, 'The battle between teaching and research,' ran on 28 April. It distilled his more than forty years' intense engagement with Canadian universities, which had begun when he announced in 1938 in the Queen's University Journal that Maynard Hutchins's The Higher Learning in America posed 'a

challenge to the people of North America.'15 Now it was his turn to warn universities to think about their mission with the greatest care. The prevailing dream in North America, he explained, was to build 'a noble technological society of highly skilled specialists who are at the same time people of vision.' This understanding of what a university should be had come to prominence after the Soviet success with Sputnik wounded American pride, and successive Ontario governments in the

Caught up in fates 329 1960s also enthusiastically adopted it. In its wake there was a great expansion of the university system, in which George participated and through which, as he acknowledged elsewhere,16 he had prospered. Yet it brought to fruition a new paradigm of knowledge, research. He knew well that his Grandfather Grant had been a key figure in this change in its origins, which, according to William Grant and Frederick Hamilton, had aimed to replace the British style of education with a model inspired by Germany and the United States.17 In the 1960s and the early 1970s there was an influx into Canada of a large number of American scholars, and they reinforced the tendency towards the creation of universities organized around research. However, George was not, in any event, suggesting that the new educational model triumphed because of a conspiracy; it drew its strength from the success of natural science in keeping its promises: 'The amazing achievements of research are before us in every lived moment - in the achievements of modern medicine and communications, of modern food production and warfare. If one ever has doubts about the goodness of many of its achievements, it is well to remind oneself of penicillin. It is the method of scientific research that has made Western civilization a world civilization. It is at the heart and core of our lives, and as such at the heart and core of our education.' However great these achievements, something greater had been lost. There were questions research of this sort did not ask, and even if it did, it could not answer them: 'What is justice? How do we come to know what is truly beautiful? Where do we stand toward the divine? Are there things that can be done that should not be done?' The answers to these questions required a different form of education, both dialectical and erotic. Answers should arise out of a sustained conversation between teacher and students about matters such as God or beauty or justice. The essence of these entities can be known only when they are loved. The illumination of the intellect through love could not happen when we willed those objects to appear before us in our research: 'Scholarship is a means to thought, not a substitute for it.' As much as was possible in such a short space, George had compressed the arguments he had developed over the past five years since he delivered his 'Knowing and Making' paper to the Royal Society. In it there was little with which his colleagues at McMaster were unfamiliar, even if they were not in agreement. The text of the article made it clear that, although he was at odds with his colleagues over important matters relating to the nature of a university, most of the issues debated in the

330 George Grant press were not central to his concerns. Whether George's opponents were convinced is hard to say. The Globe editor apparently was not; he headed the article, 'The battle between teaching and research', and contributed an introductory sentence that read: 'Dr. Grant, an author and professor of religious studies at McMaster University, unhappy with the stress on research over teaching, is leaving for a post at Dalhousie University.' The wounds inflicted in the course of the controversy are probably permanent. One member still on the faculty described the circumstances of George's departure as distasteful; and former president H.G. Thode, even by then an elder statesman on the sidelines, said that George left under a cloud.18 Given that George's reasons for leaving were misunderstood, was there any substance in the counter-allegation that he himself was a poor colleague or an unsatisfactory teacher? He had many friends at McMaster and some of them were outside his department. Harry Thode was a research scientist, Herb Armstrong a geologist, George Wallace an artist, and Abe Black, perhaps his closest friend, a psychologist. Often they were engaged in the kind of academic work George criticized, but George was not a fanatic. He knew that the world operated according to its own rules and that these were human beings with fine personal qualities doing work the world and they both thought important. He could, and did, in this sense respect them for their accomplishments and cherish them as friends.19 Within his own department he was more fastidious. He was not prepared to be tolerant of his colleagues who did not share his vision of the department as a fifth column, and he could be very critical. As for those who shared his general approach, he took their work seriously and actively engaged them in discussion concerning it. Louis Greenspan was a friend who had also been a former student at Dalhousie. They talked endlessly about Marx and Freud. They were also able to discuss openly such sensitive matters as Greenspan's Jewish faith. Since George thought that the modern emphasis on will arose from the Hebraic tradition, in private he was prepared to be critical of certain aspects of Judaism: 'He told me quite bluntly,' Greenspan said, 'that he thought Christianity was a higher religion than Judaism, but he would not say it in public because such a comment might be misunderstood. Judaism, in his words, was a jewel of high value, but not the highest value. There was this direct frankness on his part about this.'20 But that did not mean that he did not respect its practitioners; when Greenspan complained that some Jews found the term New Testament offensive because it implied that their

Caught up in fates 331 belief was an old, in the sense of superseded, testament, George was careful in future what term he used. Another friend was John Robertson. Often, when he was working at home, George might call Robertson and say something like: 'John, I have been thinking about the meaning of Good Friday. There are some things I cannot work out. Could we talk about them?' They would meet at the local conservation area and walk through the woods to the falls, talking about whatever was on George's mind. If the matter George was ponder John Arapura, the great Vedanta scholar. As Arapura reminisced: 'We were not office people; we were home people. We were most comfortable in our homes. Often he would call me up; my home was quiet. He would come and visit me in my living room. Sometimes I would go to him. There was a kind of serenity in the atmosphere. George and I would sometimes be joined by my wife. The other party present was the Eternal Itself.'21 George's departure caused was a great sadness for Arapura: 'He was philosophically the best friend I ever had. It was a wonderful fifteen wasphilosophically the best friend I ever had. It was a wonderful fifteen years. Eugene Combs was close to George from the beginning. He was the third appointment to the department, and when he arrived, George took him to lunch. 'What do you really want to do?' George asked him. 'Be a poet,' Combs replied. 'That's wonderful, just wonderful,' George said with enthusiasm. 'Be a poet. That is far more important than being a professor of religion. You quit as soon as you can, and be a poet.' Soon Combs and George and Rabbi Stanley Weber were going to parties together, where they sat in a corner and talked about Leo Strauss. The circumstances of George's departure were particularly hard on Combs since he was not only an American, but also chairman of the department. It is even more to his credit that he went the second mile to defend George's reputation as a teacher. He wrote first to the Spectator to say that George was 'a good teacher who has a strong and loyal student following. Without knowing Dr. Grant in detail, one would say that he devotes himself to study and writing to the detriment of teaching. But this is not the case.'23 This comment was fair and gracious; but Combs went even further. In the 20 September 1980 issue of Today magazine, George was featured as one of the great teachers in Canada. Combs had suggested his name and wrote in support: George breaks most of the rules about teaching: he rarely completes a sen-

332 George Grant tence, often turning an answer to a question into another question; he talks with a cigarette, three-quarters burned, in his mouth, fallen ash resting on his stomach; he serves on as few committees as possible. Still, he is a good teacher. Perhaps he is a good teacher to the degree that he professes incompetence about the workings of committees. Or perhaps he is a good teacher because you sit in rapt attention or tension, wondering when the ash will fall or wondering why it hasn't already fallen. How can he talk and defy gravity at the same time? Or perhaps, above all, his propensity to ask questions to answer a question, a condition he was born with, makes him the teacher he is. George's questions become part of your thinking. They tend to direct you, what to read and which other teachers you listen or talk to. His questions focus your attention where you've not quite focused before. Grant's questions change you.24 What kind of a teacher was George? For undergraduates he retained the dramatic flair that was inherent in his character, but that he also carefully prepared and cultivated. He was demanding and, at times, he could be harsh. He told one student who asked where her essay was: 'In the wastepaper basket where it belongs.' Philosophy may not be the highest activity, but it was next to charity and that put it ahead of everything else. Most other professors make allowances; students were taking the course just to get a credit, or they could not finish their assignment because they got caught up in other things. George knew this may be true, but it did not matter. He genuinely thought it impious to treat philosophy casually or incidentally. Philosophy literally means love of wisdom, and those who lacked that love were quickly confronted with a teacher who told them bluntly that they might better spend their time studying something else. His critics who complained that he did not like teaching large undergraduate classes were right. He had done so for years at Dalhousie and, when he came to McMaster, matters at the beginning were, if anything, worse. There were still compulsory religious-studies classes, and in his first year he taught over 1800 students. He knew from experience that it was impossible to teach philosophy in this way. He preferred, then, the more intimate style that graduate teaching permitted. In the case of his thesis students he taught by example, embodying in all his dealings with them acute attentiveness to philosophical questions. He made friends with them and invited them to tea, but friendship was not an excuse for second-rate work. One student submitted a long thesis proposal five times and each time was sent away to think about the matter more carefully. It was only on the sixth attempt that he was greeted with the words: 'Now we know that you will write something very fine.'

Caught up in fates 333 Another student in an interview asked George a question that he could not immediately answer. At three o'clock the next morning his phone rang. 'This is George Grant. I couldn't go to bed until I had an answer to your question. Come to my office tomorrow and we will discuss it.' Although colleagues, visiting scholars and former students attended his graduate seminars, he insisted that the seats at the table were reserved for his students.25 If there was an unresolved problem from a previous seminar, George began the class by addressing it. Here, as usual when he spoke from notes, he was lucid and elegant. His famous unfinished sentences arose only in the discussions. The seminars began, conventionally enough, with a student paper, but he listened with careful attention, an obvious model for the other participants. George always treated the presentation as if it were something to which the student had devoted the greatest possible care. There was no confrontation: he and the presenter were partners in an attempt to understand something of the deepest significance. When a student finished reading aloud a long paper on, say, Plato, there would be silence for a while. Then George might say: 'Let me just say this. You have presented the facts of the matter very clearly. And accurately. That is a very great achievement. But I have one small question ...' Inevitably the student quickly came to something he did not understand, but this was not a failure. They could now go into the matter more deeply. He knew how to put students at their ease and he could be very amusing.26 One day he came into class and explained: 'Traditionally, because I'm a Scot, I prayed to St Andrew, because he was crucified on the Cross like that [diagonally]. And in the wider world of Christianity to St Anthony of Padua. My mother took this very seriously, though she was a non-believer. St Anthony is the saint who finds things. I always used to wear St Anthony's medal. He was a very great saint.' There was laughter. In a good-humoured explosion, he pointed around the room: 'I can see on your faces the Protestant sneering at the saints.'27 He could raise profound matters and then drive his point home with an apt illustration: When technological society reaches its ultimate calculative conclusion, honour is something destroyed in it. A friend of mine who went over to teach at the University of Toronto from this university said to the President of this university, 'I would like to continue at this university for a bit, because I have loyalty to McMaster.' And the President, who is an extreme case of the modern, calculative view of modern life, just said, 'Loyalty to institutions is an idea that has

334 George Grant no meaning.' That's why I had this affection for the crazy old creature from Prince Albert [Diefenbaker]. He certainly wasn't one of the philosophical rulers. He had great primal loyalties, a great sense of honour. He was a spirited man, par excellence.28 He knew, too, how to confide in his students in a way that made them feel that they were partaking in a dangerous adventure: I am not a political egalitarian. This is something I would never say in public. I am egalitarian in the sense of the openness of all spirits to God. There I am totally egalitarian; I don't think you can have Christianity without having this. That seems totally out of the question. This does not necessarily attack hierarchy in society. I think that the best regime you can have in the modern world - and it's a pretty low regime - is social democracy, an extreme egalitarian social democracy. National Socialism, or Communism or certain forms of capitalism would be much worse. The question of equality before God does not require that you be a political egalitarian.29 After class, he might entertain a visitor in his spacious office, decorated with a print of Raphael's great painting, The School of Athens. On one occasion, he apologized that, as Sheila was away, he had prepared the tea and it would not be up to its normal standard. Then he reached down and picked up a plastic bag that turned out to contain some of Sheila's good china. As he did so, underneath his trousers the bottoms of his pyjama pants began to unroll. Another time he went to the departmental office first, and when he came back there was a large piece of paper pinned to the lapel of his jacket. He looked for all the world like Paddington Bear with his note: 'Please look after this bear. Thank you. Aunt Lucy.' It turned out that in a recent storm the wind had blown down one of the trees along his drive and Sheila had phoned to remind him to use the other driveway. He knew he would forget; hence the note. He was sad to leave the house in Dundas, but he was not fussy about where he lived. He wrote to the real-estate agent in Halifax to explain his requirements: 'We don't mind if the house is old or new. We are quite uninterested in its aesthetic value. We are concerned that it should not be too dark inside. As I said before we are not interested in paying money for an expensive area.'30 Before they left Dundas for good, though, they were to entertain an intriguing trio of guests. The three visitors - a journalist, a poet, and a novelist - were mutual

Caught up in fates 335 friends, though they had come to know George in different ways. Charles Taylor was still working on Radical Tories. Dennis Lee had been George's editor. Scott Symons, whose brother Tom was the founding president of Trent University, was the author of a scatological novel, Place d'Armes, which he somewhat implausibly saw as a correlative of Lament for a Nation. Symons had the kind of intense reaction to life that could lead to an orgasm when he encountered a rare Parula warbler in the woods while bird-watching, and George was always fascinated by those who could experience the burning ecstasy of life that he felt was properly his own, but which had been repressed in him by his mother. George respected Symons's 'educated imagination,' but he was less keen on his flagrant homosexuality. When they first met, Symons told George that he had a lesbian marriage, by which he meant to suggest that George was an old queen like himself. In a memorable evening that culminated in dinner at the Provencal Restaurant on St Thomas Street in Toronto, George spoke to Scott forcefully about the need for celibacy. Later Symons wrote in reply: 'What I must find out is whether your Socratic dictum is final, [that love between two men] is specifically impossible of completion, [and therefore] one must rise beyond it (because of it) to a condition of eternal love. In other words, the necessity of, and the failure of, homoerotic love creates eternal love ... '31 For Symons the dinner had been a 'Roman scene - at once Metro Goldwyn-Mayer Technicolour, and Gargantuan - with this last redeeming the first.' George's own most vivid memory was the way Symons had humiliated the pastry waiter. To both, though, it had been memorable. As Symons wrote him: 'Six hours of me may be quite an experience. But six hours of you is an apocalypse ...' It was time for apocalypse revisited. Symons, Lee, and Taylor had been invited for tea on 8 July instead of a meal, because the Grants were in the midst of packing. 'Come at 1:30,' George declared, to leave no doubt as to their prandial fate; and for George that meant 1:30 precisely. On the way they stopped in at the rare wine store on Queen's Quay to bring appropriate libations, two fine German wines and a treat, a marc de Bourgogne. They clearly are treating the event as an occasion. When they arrive, George greets them immediately. He has been standing by the door since 1:25 just in case they are early. Since this is an informal occasion, he has selected an old blue-grey shirt, nondescript slacks, and scuffed sneakers with gaping holes. His dishevelled appearance as usual contrasts with Sheila's graceful, natural elegance. They come into the hall. There are large wooden packing cases in the

336 George Grant corridor and the house is beginning to look bare. The furniture, much of which came from Maude, her friend Rose Maclnnes or Sheila's mother, evokes a sense of Victorian bourgeois solidity. It is not interior decoration. There is an aura of heritage about it; it is here in their house today precisely because of who they are and where they came from. To discard it because it was out-of-date is no more possible than trading in a cousin because he was no longer fashionable. On the wall are prints and pictures that point to a world of the imagination to which George equally belongs - to Athens, to Rome, to Europe in its greatness. Although forbidden to cook, Sheila is putting the finishing touches to one of her celebrated teas, of which George was very proud, and about which he always spoke with a hushed sense of awe. One got the impression that in this area Sheila clearly excelled his mother and the very fact filled him with wonder and amazement. In the face of the wine George shudders in simulated terror and disapproval. 'At heart I'm a small-town shopkeeper. Wine in afternoon ...' But he is looking forward to the marc, since he has encountered that in Simenon. Then George strikes first, his opening gambit. ' You,' he says to Symons, 'have a great knowledge of the particular. What is this?' He thrusts a large china object at him. 'They say it's art nouveau.' 'Late art nouveau,' Symons declares of the bird, 'moving towards art deco. The sort of thing that might have been advertised in the National Geographic in 1923.' 'And what is art deco?' George demanded. Symons explains, returns the figurine, and seeks safety in the comfort of a rocking-chair. It turns out he was sitting on the next question. 'What's that chair you're sitting in?' The green chaise longue George himself is sitting on once belonged to Mackenzie King and before him to Sir John A. Macdonald. Sheila too is there in a comfortable armchair, part of the conversation, but also to restrain George gently if he shows signs of getting too carried away. Now that Symons has been temporarily silenced, George announces the first topic of conversation, Celine's war trilogy, 'the greatest writing about World War II.' 'Compared to him, James Joyce was worth two cents.' But Celine's statement about the Jews put him out of court, and he had said that Europe ended with the German defeat at Stalingrad. 'I want to pay him tremendous but limited homage, but how can he be a great writer if he advocates evil?' George inquires of his guests. For an hour Celine dominates the conversation; George's enthusiasms are infectious. It never occurs to anyone to say, 'I'm bored with this topic; let's talk about something else.' Sheila brings in the tea, plates heaped with sandwiches, her wonderful Belgian chocolate cake. There is a lull in the conversation as

Caught up in fates 337 George reminisces about his childhood, and living at home in Toronto in the 1940s when it mattered which of the ladies poured the tea. The tea over, Symons uncorks the first bottle of wine; George does not touch his glass. Now Symons grabs the initiative: 'What does the Eucharist mean to you, to your life, your thinking? Passions are how we learn about life, and all passions eventually lead to Calvary. That's what's wrong with Canada. The Canadian identity is an artefact of will; everything is willed.' Then silence, but not an empty silence. George is thinking; he begins to say something, starts to raise his right hand, then subsides again into thought. 'Let me say ...' Long pause. 'Let me say just this. It's the whole western world, not just Canada. The story of the West is the story of will. Will governing the passions, and often ruling life against life itself. I just agree with you that this is the case.' More silence and thought, but now he becomes animated. 'But you would be wrong to think that this society ... that Canadians have no passion. They have a huge passion ... to make money. MONEY! They stop at nothing to make money. Families break up; children are neglected. All for the sake of money. It's a huge ... cold ... intense passion.' Seemingly spent by the effort, he subsides. Then he returns to Symons: 'When you say "the passions" you mean ...?' It was how George taught. Symons had introduced the term; he could be held accountable for explaining what he meant. If he had not thought of it before, he had to now. He tries and, when the strain of his failure becomes evident, George breaks off the subject with a joke. Symons has learned that he does not know something he thought he knew; it is the first step on the way to knowledge. The conversation surges and ebbs - the filioque clause, mystery, and transcendence, St. Augustine, Simone Weil who had shown him how sanctity and philosophy can be at one. When he senses his guests have reached the limit of their capacities to attend to serious matters, he deftly and gently lowers the intensity, moves into anecdote, allows them to rest and recover. He tells the story of Vincent Massey and the fur coat. Symons, Taylor, and Lee have finished the wine and open the Carton Granecy marc in George's honour. George sips it and talks about calvados and Chief Inspector Maigret's earthiness. 'You have to be a peasant to drink that - like Maigret.' Then he thinks about his debauchery, drinking in the afternoon. 'I'm a natural Dionysian. I can't finish my sentences; sometimes I can't even start them ... I could have given way so easily to minor forms of Dionysianism. But I'm a very basic Protestant. For me, thought is redemptive. You see, I've fought all my life to be Apollonian ... just fought all my life!

338 George Grant The outburst spews ash from his cigarette down his front again. 'But I'm enormously Dionysian, ENORMOUSLY.' He finds this idea so absurd that his eyes light up and his whole body shakes with laughter. Just as suddenly he stops and becomes serious again. 'And yet,' he says with great firmness, 'Apollo is primary.' After almost five hours of conversation, George suddenly says: 'Do you know, the whole Occidental experience may be a failure? Has it never struck you? Once, some while ago, I got up one morning and was having my coffee. And it occurred to me that the whole Western experiment was a mistake. I asked Sheila what she thought.' Lee chortles: 'Imagine having that thrown to you over breakfast!' George nods his head as he explodes again with laughter. 'Oh, Sheila was very good. She thought about it carefully ...' Now everyone is laughing. The whole idea was implicit in everything they talked about all afternoon, but it has been dropped on them like an afterthought. 'Don't you see,' says George, not wanting to let them go, 'don't you see, the Western world might well be a failure now.' By now it's after six. When there is a lull in the conversation Lee turns to Sheila to thank her for the hospitality. Symons, Lee and Taylor are about to get into their car. 'Sheila,' George booms, 'where's our camera? We must have a picture.' Sheila takes two pictures; then Lee, remembers he's brought his camera and takes one too. Only later does he discover there is no film in it. They kiss Sheila goodbye, shake hands with George. 'Do be sure to come down to Nova Scotia to visit us, Mr Taylor,' George suggests in his warm but formal way. Symons notices that George and Lee are wearing identical old grey suede shoes. 'Just look at that,' he says as he points to their feet. Sheila and Taylor hurry over. George contemplates and then declares: 'Mine have the bigger holes in them.'

23 Christ's care is for all

The Grants' new house at 1622 Walnut Street in Halifax lacked the decaying elegance of 80 South Street in Dundas, but it boasted a thriving rhododendron bush and it stood on a gentle, leafy street near King's College and Dalhousie. In Great Britain before the twentieth-century philosophers, poets and other cultural heroes were important elements in the local landscape. An educated visitor to eighteenth-century Edinburgh was sure to take in both Holyrood Castle and David Hume. In Halifax the major attractions became the Citadel and George Grant. Although temporarily out of sight, he was not out of mind. Letters flooded in. Some wanted references for jobs, others for tenure. Will George write an article for this journal, would he support the founding of that group? The honours, too, continued unabated. Since he had no further use for honorary degrees, he no longer accepted them, but he was pleased when the Royal Society offered him the Chauveau Medal, a biennial award 'for a distinguished contribution to knowledge in the humanities other than Canadian literature and Canadian history.' The citation praised his work as 'that of a profound, sensitive, penetrating analyst and interpreter of our country's modern life, and of the changes through which we are fatefully going; and one who in addition to being a critic proffers a vision by which a higher alternative comes into view and indeed becomes intellectually cogent.' Another honour was more controversial. While George was still at McMaster I had discussed with Perrin Beatty, the Conservative cabinet minister, the possibility of nominating him for the Order of Canada, and Beatty in turn approached Eugene Forsey to solicit his advice and cooperation. Senator Forsey drafted the recommendation, though he feared that in spite of his long association with the Grant family his involvement

340 George Grant might not be welcomed. Once, while attending a conference at McMaster in the mid-1970s, George and Forsey had bumped into each other. Although George later apologized, he denounced him at the time as 'the most complaisant Liberal' in the Senate, a charge Forsey thought scarcely fair.1 When in April 1981 George received the letter offering him the honour, he was immediately sent into a tizzy, and rushed off to Jim Aitchison to inquire whether accepting the award would be taken to signify approval of Trudeau's government. It is fair to say that by this point George despised Trudeau. This judgment may have been harsh given the generally nationalist bent of Trudeau's administration, but George thought that at heart Trudeau was a cosmopolitan whose principles evinced no reason why little political units such as Canada should not be absorbed into larger ones with the ultimate aim of creating a universal and homogenous state. A small part of the reason for his dislike of Trudeau, as was normal with George, was personal. He thought that Trudeau had treated his brother-in-law, George Ignatieff, very shabbily. When Trudeau was looking to name a new governor-general in 1979, Ignatieff, whose distinguished diplomatic career made him a natural candidate,2 was contacted by several people close to the prime minster who asked if he was interested in the position and if he would accept it were it offered to him. Ignatieff said that he would. He had reason to believe that he was the leading candidate for the position and, in the absence of any official word to die contrary, waited for the formal announcement of his appointment from Buckingham Palace. On the day of the scheduled announcement, reporters gathered around the Ignatieffs' Toronto home, only to hear that the Queen had named Ed Schreyer. Trudeau never apologized or explained. George shared Ignatieffs feeling of betrayal. At Dalhousie James Doull, always as interested in politics as philosophy, helped reinforce George's hostility to Trudeau. Doull was absolutely enraged by Trudeau's proposals to patriate the constitution and adopt a charter of rights in the face of provincial opposition. George agreed with him: 'Trudeau is such a slick demagogue & for the willingness of Ontario to trust him often and so much, Canada must now pay the price.'3 In the 1960s George had favoured a strong central government in Ottawa as a means of preserving Canadian sovereignty. Now that he believed the country irrevocably lost to American domination, he favoured greater decentralization as a way to retard the process of homogenization. Thus, he saw Trudeau's initiatives as part of a centralizing ideology, an outright attack on federalism, that threatened the integrity of the regions outside

Christ's care is for all 341 Ontario who had not yet fully embraced Americanization.4 'As for Trudeau, he incites me to rage. It is very good that now all the provinces except Ontario know that he is trying to destroy their autonomy as societies.'5 When Levesque's government was re-elected in Quebec, George wrote to his old friend Gaston Laurion: 'Your election filled me with such joy - not only for Quebec - but for other places as well. Trudeau's centralist policies just fill me with anger. Why Newfoundland, Alberta, P.E.I. etc. should be run from Ottawa, I do not know. But Ontario has continually voted for him and he has become increasingly a simply egocentric demagogue.'6 Although he liked living again in Halifax, George's return to Dalhousie was not happy. At McMaster his secretary, Grace Gordon, quite spoiled him, and she had continued to give him head-of-department treatment long after he left the post. At Dalhousie he was reduced to the general departmental secretaries, who doubtless baulked at his handwriting. The low point of his first year came when a letter addressed to him care of the philosophy department was forwarded to political science marked: 'not in philosophy - not in the slightest.' The teaching arrangements were not much better. He taught one undergraduate class in political science, 'The Question of Good in the Technological Age,' which drew about fifty students. Since he could not teach in the graduate politicalscience program, James Doull invited him to join his graduate seminar in classics. George accepted the invitation with enthusiasm and gratitude; there could be no doubt of his continued respect for his old friend's great learning. The experience was a disappointment for both. Doull wanted to move systematically through a philosophical text, in this case Aristotle's DeAnima (On the Soul); George found this procedure constraining: 'The class is difficult because if I speak anything outside Aristotle I am hushed up.'7 To Doull George's desire to seize a point and explore its consequences wherever they led seemed undisciplined. In public there was courtesy and mutual deference. Behind closed doors Doull abused George as an 'existentialist,' one of the worst terms in his lexicon. Although George hinted broadly to friends that he thought Doull was taking advantage of his position, and treating him badly, he comported himself with dignity and generally concealed the deep hurt he felt. At the height of his fame George found that he had less control over what he taught than at any other time in his career. What he really wanted to talk about just now was not Aristotle at all but Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose Discourse on the Origin of Inequality now

342 George Grant illuminated for him the character of the West as nothing he had ever read before. It was under Leo Strauss's influence that he first took an interest in Rousseau's thought. In Natural right and History Strauss distinguishes two waves of modernity, the first unleashed by Machiavelli and Hobbes, the second by Rousseau and his follower Marx, a distinction whose implications George pursued in his writings from Lament onward. When he started to study Rawls's A Theory of Justice carefully he was drawn further into Rousseau. As he wrote in his notebook in 1972: 'Rawls talks of "our" tradition, presumably the English-speaking tradition. Yet he turns to two Europeans, Rousseau & Kant. Speak of this in your writing [English-Speaking Justice] .'8

By 1975 he had come to the conclusion that Rousseau rather than Nietzsche originated the conception that dominated modern consciousness. Rousseau's understanding of history had changed how human beings saw themselves. He explained this in a letter to Mile Petrement, Simone Weil's friend and biographer. Kant was the thinker who first explicitly made the autonomy of the will central to western moral philosophy. Such a doctrine is clearly denied in Plato and is not even present in Aristotle. Kant says directly that Greek philosophy fails because it does not understand the autonomy of the human will. Also I can see great contradictions between Simone Weil's account of society and Kant's ... Also if one takes into account Kant's continual references to his debt to Rousseau, it becomes clear that he is entangled in all that has harmed the modern world in the conception of 'history' and which Simone Weil has so wonderfully criticised. I take it as a fact that the origin of the concept of 'history' is first clearly expounded in its modern sense in the 2nd Discourse of Rousseau.9 In the summer of 1981 the annual meeting of the Learned Societies took place at Dalhousie, and visitor after visitor came to Walnut Street for a chat, tea, dinner, or to stay, depending on the nature of their claim. It was tiring for George, and even more exhausting for Sheila, who accepted without complaint that these visitors were to be appropriately entertained. George was also busy. The Canadian Political Science Association had asked him to read a paper at a session organized to honour his friend Jim Aitchison, and it was a responsibility he was anxious to perform well. Since he was at work, as he thought, on a book about Rousseau, that would be the topic.

Christ's care is for all 343 The short paper was titled 'Why Read Rousseau?; the answer was that we in the English-speaking world believed that human beings acquired their nature through time, in other words, that being human was the result of a natural process we call evolution. It was Charles Darwin who gave the concept its currency,10 but it was Rousseau who originated it. With the idea of history - call it if you will modification - we are inescapably led back to Rousseau. For it was Rousseau whofirststated that what we are is not given us (by what in the ancient language was called nature) but is the result of what human beings were forced to do to overcome chance or to change nature (in the modern sense of that term). Human beings have become what they are and are becoming what they will be. We are the free, that is to say the undetermined animals, who can be understood by a science which is not teleological.11 By contrast, John Locke's political science, which dominated the English-speaking tradition, was ahistorical; the inability of Locke's successors to come to terms with Rousseau's discovery of history pushed it remorselessly towards the sheer formalism, and hence irrelevance, of the analytical tradition exemplified in John Rawls.12 In our age, then, we are fated to be historicists; Rousseau's breakthrough is our destiny. 'To say whether Rousseau's idea of modification was true or false is not a question I am qualified to answer. But to bolster my amour propre: who is? We must wait and perhaps see.'13 The deepest reason to explore and expose Rousseau was one he thought inappropriate to declare to a gathering of political scientists. He told Joan O'Donovan that he was writing a long piece called 'History and Justice,' an attempt to understand the atheism of the left; that is, their argument that the human acquisition of reason could be entirely explained as a natural historical process, and that there was no need to posit divine creation or divine purpose. Rousseau was the great genius who advanced this theory more persuasively than anyone else. Therefore, to 'try to demolish Rousseau (and therefore Marxism) seems essential these days to free people from that which can hold them from ever thinking that Christianity might be true.'14 George's paper on Rousseau also contained oblique references to the abortion controversy, a topic that continued to engage him. He mentioned the dispute in the United States between the creationists and the evolutionists. Instead of dismissing the creationists as scientifically ignorant (as most educated people did), he suggested that they intuitively

344 George Grant understood the ontological issues involved in the debate: 'I think the dominant academic community on this continent has been unwise to patronize these people known as the moral majority. My involvement with such people in common Christian tasks has taught me to the contrary.'15 Charity, we must recall, stood higher than philosophy, and was therefore also greater than science. Charity drove George and Sheila to write on practical matters, because, as he affirmed, at all times and at all places it always mattered what one did: 'Practicality was necessary because, when North America is living in the blood of its infants, one cannot be indifferent.'16 George had already signalled his sympathy for the Christian fundamentalist groups who were in the lead in the anti-abortion movement, particularly in the United States. Their consistent, principled stand persuaded him that, although American civilization was in inexorable decline, it might not be decaying as quickly as he had earlier feared.17 Although Sheila continued to be the one who was actively involved in the right-to-life movement, George deeply shared her concerns and relied on her to keep him abreast of developments. Although most of the 'practical' writings that appeared as jointly authored were primarily her work, with George serving as critic and editor, from time to time he entered the fray directly. Not long before he left McMaster, he had accepted an invitation from Bloor Street United Church in Toronto to preach the sermon. Under the circumstances, he thought a little negative theology was not amiss, 'negative in the sense that it involved the destruction of certain beliefs which may be considered to do harm to the core of Christianity.'18 The idea he thought necessary to attack was 'quality of life,' a superficially appealing notion, but in the hands of the modern medical profession an excuse for murder. Although it was certainly good for people to have a high rather than low quality of life, life itself was a right that took priority over its quality, and it was just that right that was being denied to foetuses. Far from being attractive the concept of quality of life was profoundly unchristian: 'For Christ does not single out the clever, the creative for his special care - to have special rights. His care is for all.' He returned to the theme in 'The Case Against Abortion' in the 3 October 1981 issue of Today magazine. The number of abortions in Canada, he argued, was growing rapidly in the wake of the argument that women had a right to control the accident of pregnancy owing to the freedom they enjoyed over their own bodies. This view was mistaken on two levels. At the level of fact, the foetus had a genetic coding different from the mother, and was therefore not a part of the mother's body.

Christ's care is for all

345

More profoundly, the proponents of abortion mistakenly understood justice as something contractual. Unwanted foetuses were summarily despatched. 'The freedom of some requires the death of others.'19 The heart of the matter lay in the fact that most abortions were sought by women, not because their lives were in jeopardy, but rather because it was inconvenient to carry the pregnancy to term. The convenience of the mother too often overrode the duty of justice owed to the foetus, but justice was something we should do whether it is convenient or not. When this fact about justice is not understood the consequences are grave: justice understood only as convenience leads us eventually into a dreadful tyranny. If tyranny is to come in North America, it will come cosily and on cat's feet. It will come with the denial of the rights of the unborn and of the aged, the denial of the rights of the mentally retarded, the insane and the economically less privileged. In fact, it will come with the denial of rights to all those who cannot defend themselves. It will come in the name of the cost-benefit analysis of human life.20 Over the next few years George followed from the side-lines, but when the Supreme Court of Canada brought down its judgment in the Morgentaler case in 1988, he was moved to anger and denounced the decision on the CBC: The Supreme Court Decision on abortion fills me with terrible sadness at what lies ahead for our country - an increase in the mass killing of the weakest members of our species. Obviously, modern technological society has been particularly hard on human beings of the female gender. Everything is telling women to get out into the market place. What is central to the market place is control - control over one's self and over other people. At the same time we have emancipated our sexual desires. But the very beauty of sexual life is not being in control. In such a situation where ambition and control point in one direction, and sexuality points the other way, it is not surprising that many women press for abortion on demand - so that they can have it both ways. But control here is control of the tightest kind - killing our own unborn youngsters.21 In the 'The Triumph of the Will,' written about the same time, he pushed the arguments he had been developing since English-Speaking Justice to their limits. The secularized liberalism that had sustained his

346 George Grant Grandfather Grant and his mother had deteriorated so far that the poisoned cup that Mr Justice Blackmun's decision raised to the lips of liberalism was now revealed as fascism, 'a growing possibility in advanced industrial countries.'22 The force of this essay is weakened by George's attempt to use the Nazis as a symbol for an idea that was of central importance to him, namely, the notion of the triumph of the will. 'Nazi' already existed as a symbol and it defied George's efforts to make it serve his own purposes. However, apart from that, the central thread of the argument develops the recognizable themes of his thought. The modern concept of will, which arose out of the biblical tradition of the Western church, he explained, now means 'the resolute mastery of ourselves and the world.'23 It was Nietzsche who had understood it in such a way that it was congruent with the aims of modern science. As the residual sacred restraints are progressively eliminated, women who feel trapped by their gender want to assert their absolute right to make whatever they deem best of their lives, without being limited by the natural results of their sexual desire, that is, pregnancy. Their freedom cannot be total if they are restricted in what they might do by the claims of another human being, the foetus. They experience this restraint as 'a terrible pain,' an 'entrapment,' and the language of the triumph of the will allows them to escape from the trap 'because it frees one from the traditional restraints against killing.' 24 Modern science sustains their determination when it teaches that all creation is intelligible in terms of necessity and chance, and that all animals can be understood as matter in motion. Seen in these terms, 'why should we care about the life of a fetus when it conflicts with the will of a fully developed woman?'25 The right-to-life movement brought George into contact with unlikely allies, Roman Catholics and fundamentalists, both in this country and the United States. 'I have no stomach for debate with Roman Catholics these days,' he wrote, 'because of the overwhelming debt of gratitude one feels towards their Church for maintaining the honour of Christianity on the issue of abortion, while so many Christians (our fundamentalist brethren happily excluded) have happily been simply flatterers of this murderous age.'26 He also replied enthusiastically when one of his admirers wrote to say that an anti-abortion movement had been established within the NDP: 'I so dislike the exaltation of greed (in the name of liberty) which is so widespread in the English-speaking world that I would be glad to vote for a non-capitalist party & so feel grateful for the efforts of you and your colleagues.'27 Other than nuclear disarmament, abortion remained for him the touchstone issue.

Christ's care is for all 347 He enjoyed his own large family, but now his children were grown up. Christmas 1981 was to be the first since Rachel was born at which he and Sheila were alone, and after all the years of grand Parkin-style Christmases he was looking forward to the quiet. He wanted to read Dickens's Bleak House, and oblige Artie by taking him for long walks in the woods. He wrote 'a rather bitchy piece about Frye's book about the Bible for the Globe,128 and then, just after New Year's, hurt his back. He was in pain and depressed and, when Sheila went into hospital for an operation, he became very anxious. He cancelled a series of interviews for the CBC radio series Ideas: 'I went to see the doctor & he tells me that I must take it easy very carefully, if I am to recover from this.'29 In July 1982 he learned that his eldest sister Margaret had died at the age of seventy. Because she had lived on the West Coast for most of her life, the physical distance precluded emotional intimacy, but she had been a powerful figure in his childhood. As he wrote to her son, Ed Andrew: 'Even when you have the knowledge, it is so terrible - the world without Margaret in it. The wonderful way she was there sustaining other people makes it so inconceivable that she is not here directly ... To speak of other days, she was the woman (the girl) to whom I owe the fact that I did not hate women. All during my youth, she sustained my father and myself with a kind of girlhood which was tender in a wonderful way.'30 The sense of family was dear to him, and when the Queen's Quarterly wrote to ask him to contribute an article for its ninetieth anniversary issue, he agreed and dedicated the piece to his father's memory. The subject on which he chose to write was Celine. He continued to read and reread George Wallace's copies of the war trilogy, trying to come to terms with his love for this strange genius, as he called him.31 From childhood he had felt the power art, whether music or painting, poetry or fiction; sometimes, as with Henry James, it had simply overwhelmed him. In fragmentary drafts of a book he hoped to write about Celine, the focus always returned to a contemplation of the mystery he experienced at the centre of art. 'What I want to know from professors of literature,' he wrote in a review, 'is why Celine is enrapturing.'32 For him, the greatest art always remained a mystery. Mozart can achieve the seemingly utterly separated worlds of Figaro and the G minor quintet. It is this prodigality which above all raises Celine's art to a different level from that of Proust or Joyce, James or Lawrence. The chronicle is spread out before us - ruined soldiers, refugees, collaborationists, S.S. leaders, dying women, the animals, etc., etc., talking and running, cheat-

348 George Grant ing and dying, loving and fearing, defecating everywhere from Petain on down. About the magic of art in which the dance of this prodigality is achieved - well, it is magic, and I cannot speak of it here and perhaps not at all.33 If he could not unravel the skein of the mystery that was art, he could at least speak about the relationship between philosophy and culture. If he was not a philosopher as far as Dalhousie's philosophy department was concerned, he was still much admired in French Canada. When the seventeenth world congress of philosophy was held in Montreal in August 1983, he was invited to deliver what he described as the big Canadian paper.34 He did not enjoy himself. He found the congress foolish: 'The real place of philosophy has been so lost in the Babel of the modern world.'35 And, as always when he was separated from Sheila, he felt her absence both emotionally and physically. As he walked the streets of Montreal he saw the beautiful, well-dressed women, and he was upset by the strength of the sexual desire that was aroused in him: 'Christianity obviously forbids me pursuit. But what disturbs me more is that I cannot lift sexual eros into philosophical eros. The result was a lot of sleeping pills. It makes me feel such a fool at my age. What a queer business sexuality 1s.'36 Having learned, apparently, little from his previous encounters with the press, George again got himself into difficulty. He gave an interview to Judy Steed and, when it ran in theGlobe & Mailon 9 July 1983, it caused a minor stir. Charity wrote to rebuke him about his seeming disloyalty to their mother. The comments about Charles Taylor's book, Radical Tories, were inaccurately reported and likely to cause Taylor unintended offence. And George also felt his political position was misrepresented. 'I regret that article in the Globe because I certainly will always vote P.C. The NDP are absolutely out for me because of abortion, apart from my long time dislike of their Utopian politics.'37 'A charming and articulate woman got the better of me,' he concluded, and made a short-lived vow never to give interviews.38 He continued to follow federal Conservative politics closely, and welcomed Mulroney's victory over Clark in the 1983 Conservative leadership convention because he was 'tough enough for those tricky bastards [the Liberals] & I would love to see them badly beaten.'39 However, his urgent concern was with proposals to test cruise missiles in Canada. This issue re-awakened his pacifism, and his sense of urgency that Canada not be a party to the spread of technologized destruction. The new weapons repre-

Christ's care is for all 349 sen ted 'an extension of technological accuracy.' World peace required not just a limitation of existing warheads, 'but above all limitation of these new technological developments.'40 When a march was organized to protest, George took part in the peaceful demonstration just as eagerly as he had in the sixties. George turned sixty-five on 13 November 1983, and retired at the end of the academic year; this was his last year of teaching. The move to Dalhousie had not been a success and, although as ever sensitive to the effect of retirement on his income, he was looking forward to it. In the meantime, there was important unfinished business to clear away, another book. After the flurry of activity early in 1977, matters had subsided for a long while; however, in August 1982 Lee took the initiative and wrote to urge him on. 'I do want to say that I recall often the book that's been coming to birth with you ... If you ever get to a point where it would feel helpful to fling whatever you have into an envelope and mail it up, I would take it as a privilege to read it over your shoulder.'41 George replied that he was stymied. He had been working on a book called Technology and Justice. English-Speaking Justice was to form one part of it; an

article on Nietzsche would address the national-socialist part. However, when he was working on the Marxist part, he came to discover Rousseau's greatness as the most important intellectual founder of modernity. While he thought about the implications of this discovery, he set to work on Celine, 'largely because I was sick of negativity and criticism and was so enraptured by Celine.'42 At McMaster, he felt constant pressure to publish things 'to keep the bastards in charge off my back as they examined each person's curriculum vitae minutely to see if they were fulfilling their job as a production machine.' To make money for his family, he had, throughout his career, written academic journalism, such as 'cosy little reviews for the Globe.'43 He had also written polemical pieces 'because the Anglican Church was officially backing all kinds of the sweetest liberal killing.' Now he decided to write only what he thought was of the greatest importance. However, Dennis Lee knew that George often needed prodding before he set his thoughts down on paper, and in January 1984 he returned to the attack: 'It set my mind wondering, George, whether it mightn't be time to speak again about things we canvassed about seven (gulp! seven) years ago. That is: would it not be appropriate to pull together the strongest of the writing you've done in the last decade?'44 Why not, he suggested, bundle together a collection of offprints and xeroxes of pieces he thought might go together and send them along. Although George

350 George Grant was again in poor health, he summoned enough energy to do as Lee asked. Lee responded to the papers with energy, insight, and, perhaps most important, tact. He sent voluminous comments, both major and minor, under the heading: 'The Editorial Comments of DL upon the utterly scrumptious essays of GG.' Pushed and prodded, coaxed and caressed, George set to work on preparing a new collection of essays. The Learned Societies' meetings for 1984 were in Guelph and, with George's imminent retirement, it seemed an appropriate time to organize a tribute for him. The university invited him to come for two weeks as a short-term visiting professor, and the political science, history, and philosophy associations combined to hold a joint session in his honour. Before the papers there was a dinner at which George, as he often did, drank too much. This doubtless exaggerated his reaction to one of the papers. He thought he was being accused of snobbery, and the charge upset him so much that he had to hold Howard Brotz's hand until it was finished. Another evening he came for supper with Perrin Beatty, and his wife Julie. Knowing his love for Mozart, during dinner I put on the twenty-first piano concerto. As soon as he heard the opening chords, he held up his hand to Beatty who was in the middle of a sentence. 'Stop,' he said. 'We must listen to this.' Where Mozart was concerned, George was He Who Must Be Obeyed. We all trooped to the sofa, and listened to the concerto. 'Good,' he pronounced about the performance, 'but not the greatest.'45 To make sure we understood the lesson, he observed: 'After all, you wouldn't carry on a conversation if a performance of King Lear were taking place in the room.' His visit to Guelph was a considerable strain. Too many people wanted to talk to him, and since he was away from home, there was nowhere to hide when he needed a rest. More worrying, his right eyelid started to droop. He saw a doctor, who found nothing seriously wrong, but the separation from Sheila added to his longing to be home, and he left early. His local GP referred him to the specialists at Dalhousie's medical school, an experience George found rather unsettling. One of his doctors was off to a conference in Moscow one day, another headed to Buenos Aires the next: 'I would like to tell them where they can stick it&just go on, but Sheila tells me I must not & I must continually learn from them what is possible, as I still enjoy living, greatly.'46 When Alice Boissonneau, his old friend, came for a visit soon after his retirement, she found him in a very fragile emotional state. Although he had been looking forward to retirement, the actual separation from universities after thirty-seven years added another worry to his concerns

Christ's care is for all 351 about his health. George spent much of the day talking in self-pitying terms. He was quick to lose his temper. He shouted at Sheila, scaring Artie in the process. He also shouted at Alice, which led to a quarrel. In a mood like that, George expected the people around him to put his needs first.

24 Out of Christian certainties

Over the next few years George saw plenty of doctors, at least when they could fit him in between conferences. After several years of poking and prodding around George's great body to treat a variety of ailments, the doctors concluded in 1986 that he had diabetes. It was not a diagnosis to improve his frame of mine, especially when he found out that it entailed renouncing many of his worldly pleasures. Never had sainthood seemed so remote: 'Diabetes is kept back in me by pills not injections which is good - but for somebody who thinks he cares about eternity, it is strange how much I resent doing without alcohol, dieting and restraining smoking.'1 It also posed a constant temptation to a vice to which he knew he had been prone from childhood, self-pity.2 Simone Weil loved God and His creation not in spite of, but through, the most staggering affliction. George could not manage that, but he still had it in him to think, and think he would. Now that he was retired there was more time for it. He still rose between five and six, read the Globe at breakfast, listened to a Mozart piano concerto while he dressed, then worked all morning. After lunch, Sheila and he watched 'Coronation Street,' an English soap opera set among the kind of working-class people George had so loved during the war. Then it was off to the park for a walk with Artie and home for tea and a game of cards with Sheila. He read or wrote till dinner and, after watching the news in the TV room with Sheila, he studied the TV guide carefully to find an old movie to watch. He want to bed early, always with a detective novel, most often one of Elizabeth Daly's, whose work by now he knew almost by heart. He would drift off to sleep, but it was usually not the sort that Socrates praises, the 'sleep in which the sleeper does not even dream.' This would have been a sweet relief to George, for his

Out of Christian certainties 353 nights were often torn, as they had been from childhood, by terrible nightmares. The year before he retired, early in 1983, he had paid a rare visit to the United States to read a paper at a conference. It marked an attempt to think more clearly the link between God and Man, in theological language, the Holy Spirit. In 1978, while he was contemplating his continued membership in the Anglican church, he wrote to Derek Bedson to explain that contemporary Christianity in its triumphalism had established and maintained an intimate relation with progressive materialism in both its liberal and socialist forms. For this desire to identify with secular success, the Catholic and Protestant churches, that is, Western Christianity, had paid and continued to pay 'terrible prices, both extrinsic and intrinsic' But, he maintained, it was Western Christianity, not Christianity itself, that had gone wrong. 'This kind of historical remark has no relation at all to the truth of Christianity, which is just given for me in the perfection of Christ, which to me can only be thought in terms of Trinitarianism (though through my own unclarity I never understood what is meant by the third hypostasis.)'3 It was to an attempt to understand the Holy Spirit that he now turned his attention. His effort had begun tentatively in his 1977 paper 'Christianity and the Modern Multiversity.' There he began to consider the possibility that Simone Weil's words, 'Faith is the experience that the intellect is illuminated by love,' when fully understood, might clarify the relationship between the perfection of God and the particular forms affliction took in the modern world. To the extent that it did so, it might enable George to see the truth about justice in this world. In his 1983 paper, published as 'Justice and Technology,' he began with two statements about justice. 'Christ said: Fortunate are those who are hungry and thirsty for justice (Matthew 5:6). Socrates said that it is better to suffer injustice than to inflict it (Crito 49b-e; Gorgias 474off.)'4 George does not discuss the relationship between these two statements, a discussion that inevitably leads to the relationship between charity and philosophy. Instead he asks the question, 'If the intellect is enlightened by love, and therefore access to the most important knowledge is dependent on love, how is it possible to assent to the truth of a proposition which is made from way beyond one's own capacities of love?'5 George now understood that what he had previously regarded as an personal intellectual failing, namely, his inability to grasp the relation between perfection and affliction, only partly resulted from his own inadequacies. Technology stood in the way because its achievements in

354 George Grant the arts and sciences arose out of a particular affirmation concerning justice. From its successes the hungry were fed and the sick made whole. Yet it was accompanied by failures too; its imperative had equally led to 'behaviour modification, the organization of the mass destruction of the unborn, the corporate bureaucracies in which human beings are engulfed or, at a less immediate level, the destruction of such intermediate institutions as the family or the country.'6 Glimpses of these limitations of the technological understanding ofjustice had only recently begun to appear. Although it mattered a great deal in practice whether human beings lived under liberal-capitalist, Marxist, or nationalist-socialist versions of technological historicism, at heart each ideology affirmed that justice was something that belonged exclusively to this world. Their vision of justice seemed very attractive; the destruction of the otherworldly claims of Christianity appeared to let men and women take control of their lives and live justly and nobly to the extent of their powers for the first time. And yet, something of the highest importance had been lost. The lives of the saints affirm a truth that is unknown to the rest of us, that if we could see justice as it truly is, we would be engulfed by its loveliness.7 If we do not always experience its beauty, that is because in the world we do not always encounter it as beautiful. Justice often makes hard, inconvenient demands on us. Those who acknowledge an unchanging justice that they meet as something other than their will often feel it as a cutting edge that seems to be turned on themselves. They should not be dismayed. To experience its claim as harsh demand is the reciprocal of loving it as something necessary to our happiness: 'To put the matter in a popular way: justice is an unchanging measure of all our times and places, and our love of it defines us.'8 Technology hides this conception of justice, not simply by making fewer uncomfortable demands on us, but also by making it difficult either to think about, or talk about, the older conception. First, the old language - idea, soul, oblivion of eternity - has lost its resonance for us moderns. Second, the language that replaced it is saturated in its content with modern presuppositions. Finally, and most important, justice used to press in on us daily in our everyday life; we could recognize its existence in the claims it made upon us. Now, as we see in the writings of the greatest of modern philosophers, we understand what it is to be human beings in a way that 'excludes what is essential about justice.'9 In George's view Heidegger, the greatest modern philosopher, fails because his philosophy does not understand the happiness that arises from the hunger and thirst for justice. His failure is in part intelligible if we recognize that in

Out of Christian certainties 355 the world today we experience justice mostly as absence. We are often most aware of the claims of justice when we ourselves, or someone we love, is treated unjustly. Yet justice, George affirms, is always there, and we need to remain open to it, even if we sense its presence only dimly and indirectly. For now, and for most people, the darkness of modern technology conceals the radiance of justice. Nietzsche thought that a hero-creator would herald the new order, but Simone Weil had written: 'Human nature is so arranged that any desire of the soul which has not passed through the flesh by way of actions, movements and attitudes which correspond to it naturally, has no reality in the soul. It is only there as a phantom.'10 George agreed; the redeemer would be more than a philosopher, something higher, a saint: 'I must finally say that the thought which is the task of most of us and is indeed important, always waits upon something of a different order - that thought which has been transfigured by hungering and thirsting for justice."1 Though the philosopher was winning through to deeper insights, George was continually reminded that he was also a father, a man, and a citizen. Isabel was enrolled in law school at Dalhousie and was living in a small apartment near the law school. George's health began to plague him again and, in April 1985, he was admitted to hospital suffering from pneumonia. By July he was sufficiently recovered to appear before a parliamentary committee on Canada's international relations at the Halifax Sheraton where he warned the visiting parliamentarians that the threat to Canadian sovereignty could not be met by putting our unreserved trust into the hands of the 'big bureaucrats of the civil service and the corporations.' In general, though, he was pleased with the new Mulroney government: 'The P.C. government in Ottawa seems to be acting sensibly & very cautiously. I do not think it can do much or intends to do much about our relations with the Americans, but I like very much the lack of paranoia in relation to Quebec."2 Politics, which started out as a preoccupation, was now for him a pastime: 'In my thoughts I turn away more & more from political philosophy in the attempt to participate intellectually in the mystery of Christianity."3 In retirement he thought he was free to make clear just how central Christianity had been to his life and thought. He had a sense that he had paid the price in the past for his beliefs. He lost the job at Hart House because of his pacifism. His essay 'Philosophy' for the royal commission offended powerful academic forces in Central Canada. He had faced a year of great uncertainty when he resigned from York because he

356 George Grant refused to use a book that mocked his faith. He masked his Christianity for another reason as well; he felt he had important things to say to his contemporaries, but knew he could not communicate with them in a language eviscerated by technology. So when Joan O'Donovan published her study of him, The Twilight of Justice, he wrote to thank her: 'So much inaccuracy has been written in the last years about my attempts (particularly inaccuracy arising from people who did not want to think that one could try and be philosophical from out of Christian certainties) that I am very grateful to you.'14 He commended to her Richard Crashaw's seventeenth-century poem 'A Hymn to the Name and Honour of the Admirable Saint Teresa.' It expresses, he said, his own beliefs: 'You and I are surely in agreement that evangelical Christianity is the heart of the matter particularly because it makes clear that the central act of the believer as a response to God is not dependent on intellectual prowess.'15 He had a chance to put his views to a larger audience when David Cayley came down to interview him for a three-part series for the radio program 'Ideas,' broadcast at the end of January and the beginning of February 1986 under the title 'The Moving Image of Eternity.' After his other recent experiences with the media, this encounter was pleasant. His only concern was that the program, at one point, too closely identified him with Simone Weil: 'To admire the saints is not to be like them; hoping to think clearly is quite a different matter.'16 Throughout 1985 he was preoccupied with another venture, a series of philosophical writings, 'the most philosophical book I have written - but also the most austere.'17 The book, which he intended as his last negative book about modernity, he tentatively titled 'Technology and Good.' It was the work towards which Dennis Lee had been pushing him for close to a decade and to which he had already devoted such great editorial care. In the spring of 1986 the business was turned over to Jim Polk at Anansi. If Lee were the father of the idea, Polk served as midwife. Polk was a Harvard-educated American, a provenance that undoubtedly contributed little that was positive to their relationship. He was less familiar with George's work than Lee, but he was just as enthusiastic about working with him. Although he too flattered when he made editorial suggestions, perhaps he neglected to lay it on double-thick. None the less, they got on well. Polk suggested that they group the essays as follows: first philosophy, second a critical analysis of certain writers, third practical writings. George was keen to include in the second section his homage to Celine and a piece he had written about Dennis Lee's poetry. Polk pressed George hard to exclude these pieces on the double grounds that

Out of Christian certainties 357 they did not represent his best work and that they skewed the structure of the book. By June he had won; George was prepared to save these pieces for another time.18 In the practical section, there were to be two articles, one on abortion and the other on euthanasia. Both Lee and Polk devoted a great deal of editorial attention to these essays. Although both suspected that Sheila had had a greater hand in these writings than in George's other essays, neither came to the correct conclusion, which was that they were more her work than George's. They had first appeared as 'by Sheila and George Grant,' but they now stood under his name, with the misleading attribution 'with Sheila Grant' added in smaller type. In an attempt to give Sheila the credit she deserved, George explained in the 'preface': 'All that I write proceeds from sustained discussion with my wife. In that sense, she is the co-author of my writing and explicitly named as such in the articles about euthanasia and abortion.'19 Given George's penchant for exaggeration, even this acknowledgment did not settle matters, because those who knew him were used to dividing his praise by a factor of seven. The truth of the matter was all that George said and, for once, more: not only had Sheila written the first draft of these pieces, she regularly talked to him about all his work, suggested apposite quotations to insert in what he was writing, carefully copy-edited and proofread each piece, and more than once was summoned out of a deep sleep at three in the morning when George encountered a proposition in Heidegger that needed immediate discussion. .The heart of the new book consisted of 'Thinking about Technology' and 'Faith and the Multiversity.'20 They had grown out of earlier work, but their current incarnation represented a major advance in thought. As they stand they form a pair, the first posing the problem, the second proposing a response.21 'In each lived moment of our waking and sleeping, we are technological civilisation,' rings out the opening sentence of 'Thinking about Technology.'22 What does this startling novelty mean to us who live it, for its meaning has not yet become clear and it has not been understood?23 It is commonly believed, as George himself thought in the sixties under the influence of Jacques Ellul, that the world we inhabit is simply a projection, a development, a progress from an earlier age that also aspired to mastery over the earth, but for whom the time was not ripe; one that had not discovered the 'sure path of science.'24 Many still think that it is possible to control technology, to use it for good or bad purposes. This belief fails for three reasons. First, modern technology can exist only in societies dominated by large public and

358 George Grant private corporations. The existence of this technology precludes other, and possibly nobler, forms of community.25 Second, technology issues from what George called the same 'civilisational destiny' as its political philosophy. Descartes, Locke, Rousseau, and Nietzsche facilitated the achievement of technology as they struggled to develop a political philosophy that placed the will at the core of human existence. Third, a great change had taken place in how people understood goodness: 'The modern conception of goodness is of our free creating of richness and greatness of life and all that is advantageous thereto.'26 We call this quality of life. To suggest, then, that technology is a set of neutral instruments, invented by human beings and under human control, is to minimize, and hence misunderstand, the 'novelness of our novelties.'27 What it is to be human has fundamentally changed. The science that issues in the conquest of nature now embraces human nature as well. Medical and social sciences abound whose aim is to adjust human beings to the demands of the new science. We thought we could pick and choose, as in a supermarket; nature would be subject to human will, ourselves not. Instead we have 'bought a package deal of far more fundamental novelness than simply a set of instruments under our control. It is a destiny which enfolds us in its own conception of instrumentality, neutrality and purposive ness.'28 As it has grown beyond our control, it also surpasses our attempts to understand: 'We apprehend our destiny by forms of thought which are themselves the very core of that destiny.'29 Understanding is still possible, but barely; above all, it is necessary to grasp the implications of the thought that there is a justice which can judge every possible action in advance of any possible future.30 The pressing need is to 'understand our technological destiny from principles more comprehensive than its own.'31 Principles more comprehensive than its own! Do these exist, and even if they did, how could we know them, enfolded as we are in the determining power of technological civilization? That was the great question to which he turned in 'Faith and the Multiversity.' There was one person there may have been more than one, but one was enough - who fully experienced the affliction of technological civilization, and rejected its understanding of justice. For Simone Weil, matter was the infallible judge; that is, justice became transparent through her life and thought. She had, in George's eyes, lived in the fullest sense the saintly life.

Out of Christian certainties 359 Now he knew the revolutionary significance of the thought that 'Faith is the experience that the intelligence is enlightened by love.' George's first encounter with the eternal took place in the early light of the Buckinghamshire countryside, when he alighted from his bicycle to open the gate. Then he believed, but he did not know why; it took him much effort to learn that it was so that he might understand fully the meaning of the sentence of Simone Weil's. It revealed nothing less than the fundamental inadequacy of technological civilization; it provided the Archimedean point, the cogito, ergo sum, the principle more comprehensive than its own, by which that civilization could be judged and held to account. The modern paradigm of knowledge celebrated objectivity. All things - that is, the world - were summonsed before it and made to give their reasons. In the process, Being was transformed, but the transformation was not total. There was at least one thing that eluded the pervasive and determining power of technology and that was love understood as 'consent to the fact that there is authentic otherness.'32 Authentic otherness could not be dragged before us, an object obeying our will. George had once been chastised by the explorer and scientist Stefansson for describing Terrence Bay as beautiful. The modern paradigm did not permit an object to be loved as beautiful.33 But George knew that he was constantly drawn to otherness, as he was to beauty, by love. In Herbert's words in 'Love,' the poem that was so important to Simone Weil: 'Love took my hand, and smiling did reply, / "Who made the eyes but I?"'34 But George had encountered the mystery of beauty in many forms. Sitting in a bomb shelter in 1941 he gazed at the woodcut of a mother and child on a Christmas card Professor Trotter had sent him. The 'mystery connected with that particular woman and child' made him feel 'that children are something in which there is hope.'35 In 1952, when one of his own children was born, he rejoiced in the 'strange mystery of a new soul in the world.'36 In 1958 he knew the 'mystery and holiness of Terrence Bay.'37 It was in the great artists, he reflected in 1966, that one found a 'surd of mystery that remains untouchable because the models which they imitate do not belong to space and time so that no biography can prepare us for what we will hear when we listen to Mozart's music.'38 His rapture in these mysteries, which he experienced as authentic, could not be accounted for by modern science. Modern science failed in the face of mystery. This fact he had learned from Michael Foster, the Oxford philosopher, who had written: 'Modern science is knowledge which

360 George Grant eliminates mystery. In contrast to Greek science, it does not end in wonder but in the expulsion of wonder.'39 Christ had come down and, out of love, taken possession of Simone Weil. In Mozart, the lute of God, flame touched flame, and he made his beautiful music in an act of love. And as Crashaw told of Saint Teresa, Love, 'the absolute sole lord of life and death,' could make 'His mansion in the mild / And milky soul of a soft child.' It was through such encounters that we touched beauty: 'Of course the beauty of the world manifests itself most intensely for us in the beauty of other people.'40 In its exclusion of the mysteries of love and beauty, the modern paradigm is revealed as inadequate: 'Modern scientists, by placing before us their seamless web of necessity and chance, which excludes the lovable, may help us to reteach the truth about the distance which separates the orders of good and necessity.'41 When Nietzsche told us that the Christian God was dead, he spoke truly but partially. Western Christianity was indeed defunct, enfolded in its own creation, modern technology, entrapped by its pride in its worldly accomplishments. Nietzsche erred, though, when he claimed that Christianity had produced its own gravedigger. Modern technology was a destiny, one that reminded us 'how powerful is the necessity which love must cross.' In learning this lesson Christianity understood the means to its own purification.42 When David Cayley interviewed him in 1985, George explained that he now understood St Augustine's role in the process of the debasement of Christianity. It was precisely his vision of Christianity that had led to this extreme secularized modern form that we meet in the doctrine of progress. It was not Christianity that was inadequate, he reiterated, just our current form of it: 'Western Christianity is through in this form, and it has to be reformulated, getting rid of the Western interpretation of it which led to these strange modern phenomena. I can't look at Christ and say He is not the truth. I think this kind of procrustean, triumphalist Christianity which Western Christianity turned to and which led Western civilization to go out into the world thinking it could do anything to other civilizations and which was even more terrible when it had become secularized Christianity - I think it may be a wonderful thing for Christianity to purge itself of this triumphalist Christianity.'43 By September 1986 the completed manuscript of Technology and Justice was in Anansi's hands, although owing to the kind of publishing difficulties that drive authors to despair, it was not actually available until after Christmas. Because of an arrangement with University of Notre Dame Press, it was the first of his books to be widely available in the

Out of Christian certainties

361

United States; English-Speaking Justice soon followed. For some of his admirers the new book was a disappointment (perhaps even for George himself), because it was still not the big book they had hoped for. Jim Polk was more perceptive: I am always puzzled at how some critics expect a 'big' definitive tome from you ... It would be nice of course, but it seems very Germanic to ask for a Summa Theologica or a Critique of Pure Reason or any huge system building stru from a philosopher in the late 20th century. Don't most original philosophers choose idiosyncratic forms? I'm thinking of Platonic dialogues and Also Sprac Zarathustra and Pascalian apercus and all the significant philosophy that is bodied forth in essays, prayers, laments, notebooks, journals, epigrams, etc ...44 He urged George on to produce in the forms in which he was most comfortable: Just get going and write, perhaps thinking in terms of epistles, sermons, movements, tone-clusters, your own expression rather than the formal essay, or the entire book. One thing that I note in reading your earlier essays is how earnestly you sometimes try to be conventional and do the correct thing. You don't have to do that any more. Isn't that a relief? The recent writing I have had from you - the corrections and rewrites of Technology and Justice - certainly suggest that you are at the peak of your writing powers: profound, compassionate, crystal clear. So will you please stop falling down and hurting yourself and having health problems.45 George's most recent trip to hospital had been because of osteoarthritis, which meant, as he explained to Charity, 'that your back hurts a lot.'46 The doctors told him that he might never be able to sit and write again; it was a terrible worry, and it felt good that he could confide again in his sister. Earlier in the year she had written a generous letter to George, saying that they were both getting old, and that it was silly to keep up a feud over something that happened fifteen years before. In the nature of things it was impossible to restore their intense, intimate relationship, but the reconciliation was wonderfully soothing for George. There were also two more pleasant events to anticipate. His youngest daughter Isabel was to marry a young Japanese graduate student in July 1987, and George was particularly happy that the clergyman would be the incumbent of his grandfather's old church, St Matthew's: 'I pass every day on the way to the park the manse where darling daddy was born.' 47

362 George Grant The wedding brought most of the family together. George liked to remark that, although he was a philosopher, he seemed to have raised a family of social workers. However, he was proud of his children. Although most of them did not share his Christian faith, they lived in some ways more Christian lives than he did. Rachel was a nurse in Vancouver, as was her brother Robert in Halifax. William, who also lived in Halifax, devoted his life to the care of the mentally retarded. Katie was a primary-school teacher. Only the two younger children, Isabel and David, showed academic inclinations. Isabel taught law at the University of British Columbia, and David was engaged in studies that culminated in a Ph.D. in English. George was a grandfather now, too, and he looked forward eagerly to the visits of his grandchildren. The second happy occasion that year was the publication in Quebec of a French-language translation of Lament for a Nation by Hurtubise HMH. The translator was an old friend, Gaston Laurion, and George was pleased with every aspect of the translation except the title Est-ce la fin du Canada ?He hoped that it might serve as a warning to French Canadians to anticipate the homogenizing consequences of modernity, and he took issue with the argument developed by former Pequiste cabinet minister Jacques-Yvan Morin in the preface, that Quebec could maintain its cultural distinctiveness based on an assertion of its linguistic identity. Culture apart from a religious base was a weak reed. The separatists in Quebec did not, he thought, understand the power of American secularism, nor did they understand how much French Canada was under attack: 'Language is a marvellous protection for a world, but it cannot last beyond a point. What they should do is to look every day at the business section of the Globe and see all the French-Canadian names that are being given powerful jobs in a world where not only French culture is rather redundant, but where the whole Canadian culture in general is rather redundant.'48 In April 1988 he went to Montreal for the launch of the French translation, which Lise Bissonnette, one of the most important journalists in the province, praised as a 'brilliant analysis of his countrymen's absent-minded or enthusiastic surrender to the neighbouring empire.'49 A few days before his death, he received a copy of a review from a Paris magazine, Le Monde diplomatique. He was especially pleased that his work had been favourably noticed in France, 'the cradle of my political beliefs' as he once described it to his mother. When Brian Mulroney's Conservative government announced that it would pursue a free-trade deal with the United States, Adrienne Clarkson came down to try to induce him to write an introduction to an anti-free-

Out of Christian certainties 363 trade book she was publishing. He had been sweet-talked by charming women once too often; he declined, later saying that he had hoped for such a long time for a Conservative government, he was damned if he was going to knife them in the back once they got in. But he soon roused himself to action. In a review, he praised a book against free trade with the words: 'Fata volentem ducunt, nolentem trahunt [Fate leads the willing

and drags the unwilling]. What is great about this book is that its writers are splendidly stating their unwillingness to be dragged. It is surely a nobler stance to go down with all flags flying (even our present Canadian one) and all guns blazing than to be acquiescently led, whether sadly or gladly, into the even greater homogenizing of our country into the American mass.'50 He told the Halifax Mail-Star that the deal hurt 'innocent, ordinary Canadians in this country.' To a meeting sponsored by the Nova Scotia Coalition on Arts and Culture he denounced Canadian society in general and Prime Minister Mulroney in particular because they were both 'driven by profit and corporate capitalism, which is forcing Canadians to accept the free trade agreement but at the same time sacrificing Canadians' identity.' It was not that he thought anything much could be done to prevent the eventual annihilation of Canadian, or Quebec, uniqueness. Capitalism was a hard form of society to resist, and 'when one becomes the same in ways of life, one very closely politically becomes the same.'51 But rootedness was good and it was noble to bear witness to it, even in a doomed cause. The ultimate revival of the world was a matter of centuries, not years or even decades, but at all times and in all places it matters what we do. Other than abortion for convenience, the only other subject that could provoke him to fury was a condescending treatment of Simone Weil. When the Idler magazine, asked him to review a book about Simone Weil by a Harvard psychiatrist, he tore into it with a vengeance: 'It is hard to avoid anger when one's chief modern teacher is patronized in the sweetie-pie accents of Cambridge, Mass., and Hampstead, U.K.'52 Then he turned to something he rather enjoyed, writing a recantation of an earlier philosophical position. Wayne Whillier, a colleague from McMaster days, gave him the opportunity when he edited a collection of essays about George's thought and chose to reprint an short, early article, 'Two Theological Languages': 'Rereading something I wrote thirty-five years ago produces saddened laughter. This is so even when the rereading is done at the request of a trusted friend. How could I have made so many mistakes; how fragile is the attempt to have knowl-

364 George Grant edge of the whole.'53 What he had learned over the past thirty years, he said, through his experience of Christianity and his study of Plato, was that grace, given its literal meaning, is at the centre: 'Grace simply means that the great things of our existing are given us, not made by us and finally not to be understood as arbitrary accidents.'54 What really drew his attention, amidst these distractions, was his preparation to write what he hoped was his crowning philosophic achievement. He set to work to write a decisive refutation of Heidegger's attack on Plato. This, in spite of Jim Polk's advice, was finally to be the big book everyone expected from him. He admired the German philosopher because he seemed not to be writing about things, but was able 'to summon up directly the things themselves, as if he was not thinking about what others had thought about things but about the things themselves.'55 He was initially drawn to Heidegger through Strauss in the late 1950s.5 About 1967 he began to study Heidegger's The Question Concerning Technology, and in the 1970s he carefully read his four volume study of Nietzsche in French. When David Krell's English translation was completed in 1987, it gave George a fresh impetus to study the work more carefully: 'The English helps me further than the French, because French is such a rational language that it is particularly inadequate for an account of the great philosophies such as existentialism.'57 Heidegger's Nietzsche was important to him for two reasons. The first was that it allowed him 'to understand more deeply than ever before what is so frightening in the roots of modernity. It really has shown me new things about Nietzsche that I had never seen in my own studies of that thinker.'58 The second thing he found in Heidegger was a comprehensive and total rejection of Christianity and Platonism. If he could refute Heidegger's assault on Platonism he thought he would be well on his way to establishing with authority the superiority of the ancient tradition over the modern.59 Although he had great doubts about his ability to do so, since he recognized Heidegger as a philosopher of genius, his task, as he understood it, was to attempt to 'justify Plato in the face of what Heidegger says.'60 When he was asked to contribute an essay to a volume in honour of James Doull, he thought this subject worthy of his old friend: 'The heart of my debt to Professor Doull lies in the fact that he taught me how to read the central books of the Republic' He now repaid the favour in part by showing that what Doull had led him to see was true. 'To put it barely: the very clarity of Heidegger's incomparable thinking of historicism, from out of his assertion that human beings are only authentically free when

Out of Christian certainties 365 they recognise that they are thrown into a particular historical existence, meets here the clarity of Plato's insistence that thought, at its purest, can rise above the particularities of any historical context, that indeed philosophy stands or falls by its ability to transcend the historical.'61 This was to be the subject to which he meant to devote his whole attention for the rest of his philosophical life.

25

No great disaster

Early in June 1988, while George was deeply immersed in his thought about Heidegger, Artie, his 'dear companion for 17 years' took a queer turn, and George rushed him to the vet. He died the same day. Since George could not bear to consign him to the incinerator, he took him to Terrence Bay and buried him behind the cottage beside Sheila's cat, Melinda. Artie's death so distracted him that he did not give his former student, Katharine Temple, the attention she deserved when she came to visit. He wrote to her at the Catholic Worker in New York, where she worked, to apologize: 'I used to hope that I would at least be wiser when I was old, but it seems one's madness just hangs about.'1 Temple was only part of the horde of visitors that descended on him. Philip Foulds, his childhood friend from Upper Canada, Derek Bedson, and Wayne Whillier and Howard Brotz, who both dearly missed him at McMaster, dropped by. In May John Siebert, a graduate student who was writing a master's thesis on the influence of Heidegger on George's thought, came to interview him. In July I arrived to talk to him for a magazine article. For six or seven hours over two days we sat across the round oak table in the comfortable Victorian armchairs. He looked strong and healthy, and he was in good spirits and content: 'I am much healthier now than I have been for four years,' he told me.2 Even more, he was delighted to have escaped from the clutches of the doctors: 'I've been in hospital so much in the last four years; it's an extraordinary experience. It is, for one thing, just like what Erving Goffman wrote about total institutions in Asylums. Are those hospitals total institutions! Just total! They have you absolutely.'3 At dinner he produced a bottle of wine: 'The doctor says I can have just a little,' he explained.

No great disaster 367 When I returned the next day, he was in top dramatic form: 'What I don't think I emphasized sufficiently yesterday is what a dark era this appears to me, what a dark era!' he began. 'That the age of progress has ended up in this, do you see what I mean? And that it's deeply tied to what I call the science that issues from the conquest of human and nonhuman nature.' On the conversation wound, through Augustine and Simone Weil. To punctuate a point he quoted Marlowe: 'You know what Marlowe says in Faust, when Faust says to the Devil: 'Why aren't you in Hell? Why are you here?' And the Devil says: "Why this is hell, nor am I out of it: / Thinkst thou that I who saw the face of God / and tasted the eternal joys of heaven, / Am not tormented with ten thousand hells / In being deprived of everlasting bliss!''' I raised the question of the deaths of Socrates and Christ, with the agony of the crucifixion. Didn't Christ die in the way in which we will die, in doubt and pain, I asked? 'Yes,' he replied, 'terrible pain.' And one hopes with you, because you're older than Christ - it doesn't matter to me because I've reached the age where it's perfectly reasonable to go - but I mean, it is unreasonable to go in one's early forties. One hopes it won't happen to you; I mean, one hopes for everybody. That's why, I think, one finds the death of children and young people so much worse; people like me have had a fair rounded picture, and therefore it isn't such a great disaster.'4 It was time to go for lunch. George had invited my wife and me for a picnic at Terrence Bay. 'Sheila always does these things well,' he beamed with pride. I confess to slight trepidation being driven by a fierce critic of technology even in as solid a car as the Grants' maroon Volvo, but, except when George almost ran over a worker on a road crew when in thought about a point he was making, the journey was agreeable. Terrence Bay proved as bleakly beautiful as he had described it; he reminisced fondly about the early days when it was a haven for fishermen, smugglers, and bootleggers, before the all-weather road had been built, when it was inaccessible in the winter. The village was divided into Protestant and Catholic halves, and earned a place in history when the S.S. Atlantic sank off Prospect Point on 1 April 1873 with a loss of 57° souls. Two hundred and seventy-seven unidentified bodies were brought to Terrence Bay for burial. Some were interred in the Protestant, others in the Catholic, cemetery; it puzzled me how they knew they had got it right and given each one his due. George always described his cottage as a shack, and until I saw it, I thought he was speaking out of modesty or restraint. However, what it lacked in amenities, like indoor plumbing and

368 George Grant finished walls, it more than made up for in location. Set high up the slope, it commanded a sublime view of the bay, the bleak rocks, and, in the distance, the farther shore. For now, since the weather was fine, we decided to picnic outdoors, and trekked across the rocks to Lighthouse Cove, regretting we had left our native bearers behind, since Sheila's lunch of salmon, potato salad, and all the other amenities and trappings was as abundant as George had predicted. He sat on a rock, talked philosophy, and entertained with stories; anyone could see that he was happy and at ease. The next day when I picked him up to go for lunch with Shelley Wild (the daughter of George's lifelong friend Susanna) and her husband, he noticed we were about to leave the house at five minutes to eleven. It took him about a minute to explained the foolishness of the superstition that it was unlucky to leave the house when the hands of the clock were aligned; and, at four minutes before the hour, we realized we had to rush to be there promptly on time. A few weeks later, Derek Bedson came by. 'It was so good to see you both,' he wrote later to George, 'and to find you in better health than I dared hope.' 5 Early in September Alice Boissonneau was just about to set out with her husband on a trip to the Maritimes; they were to stay with the Grants in Halifax. The phone rang. It was Sheila. George was ill and was going into the hospital. Late in August he began to look a sickly yellow, but he put off going to the doctor, who had just returned from holiday, because he thought it unfair to bother him. Finally in early September he went. The doctor sent him for tests, which were inconclusive. A few days later, he went back to the hospital for more tests. George was sitting in his hospital room on 6 September when a surgeon he had never seen before came in and said bluntly and without warning: 'I can't cure your cancer, but I can make you a bit more comfortable. It's only a matter of months.' There was, however, a minor operation to relieve the discomfort the pancreatic cancer was causing. He returned home to await the operation, growing weaker by the day. He expected to have several months to see his children, Charity, his friends, to settle his affairs and say good-bye. There was no pain, but he had a severe skin irritation and found it difficult to sleep. He became more and more tired. When he had the strength he and Sheila played cards. Otherwise Sheila read to him, or they listened to music together, not Mozart but something pleasant like Grieg or Sibelius. He kept Boswell's Life of Johnson beside his bed. The last few days he lost his appetite and took only orange juice and milk. He

No great disaster 369 was calm and he did not want to talk about death. 'I'm just too tired to talk about the big D,' he told Sheila. As he grew thinner, he began to resemble the famous picture of his grandfather Grant. Three days before the operation was scheduled he went into hospital. Wayne Hankey, an Anglican priest associated with King's College Chapel, came to give him communion. After the sacrament, George drifted very far away. Then he said: 'The greatest height of western music is the words "And he took the cup" in Bach's St Matthew Passion.' About three in the morning the phone rang; Sheila answered. 'There's been a real crisis, and doctors and nurses have been rushing round me, but I'm quite O.K.' When Sheila arrived at eight the next morning, he had relapsed into dimness. Sheila phoned the children to tell them about the surgery scheduled for Thursday, but said that it was not necessary to come at this time. Katie in Toronto decided to go to Halifax anyway; when she got on the plane, she found that her two sisters, Rachel and Isabel, had made the same decision and were on the flight from Vancouver. William and Robert were living in Halifax and they sat with their mother in the big empty waiting-room. John and Nita Graham brought them coffee and fruit and kept them company. When George came out of surgery he was still unconscious. At six o'clock the next morning the hospital called Sheila to say that the doctors were very worried. They could not stop the bleeding and concluded that they needed to operate again; unless they did so he would die. Sheila gave her consent, but when they asked if she wanted 'resuscitation' if his heart stopped, she said no. Since she could not face another early morning call at home, she slept overnight in the waiting-room. It was not until Monday, when she went to his room, that she saw any sign of consciousness: for the first time since the operation he opened his eyes and looked at her. When she returned to the waiting-room the surgeon's assistant was there. 'All your husband's organs, except his heart,' he told her, 'have broken down. Death is inevitable within two or three days.' Philosophy teaches us that there is a justice that can judge every possible action in advance of any possible future. This had been the core of everything George had taught. What was due to George now? What should Sheila do? In 'The Language of Euthanasia', which Sheila wrote with George more than a decade earlier for a book called Care of the Dying and Bereaved, she had thought through this question. Euthanasia, she argued, has to be carefully distinguished from certain perfectly valid

370 George Grant medical practices such as the use of large doses of pain-killers that may have the side-effect of hastening death, but are given with the intention of alleviating pain. Because its aim was not to procure death, this is not euthanasia. Nor is the refusal to continue life-supporting treatments such as respirators on those already in the process of dying. 'To prolong dying is not a doctor's duty, and has never been considered good medical practice,' she had written. 'The current temptation to do this arises because they now have such good machines.'6 What was due to a dying man was death. Sheila asked that the machines be disconnected. The doctors and the hospital, concerned about legal liability, resisted. In the face of Sheila's determined persistence and with the support of William and Robert, they gave her papers to sign absolving them of responsibility. Without the respirator, they said, he would die within the hour. In fact, he lived for eleven. The nurses were supportive; it was good, they thought, that someone was allowed to die without having teams of resuscitators banging him on the chest. Father Hankey came to administer the sacrament of extreme unction. At about 4 AM, his heartbeat became rapid; a few moments later his heart and breathing stopped. On Tuesday the 27th of September 1988, surrounded by his family, George Grant peacefully passed away. Those who write laments may have heard the propositions of the saints, but they do not know that they are true. A lament arises from a condition that is common to the majority of men, for we are situated between despair and absolute certainty. - George Grant7

Epilogue

Andrew Ignatieff went to the nursing home where Alzheimer's disease confined his mother. When he broke the news of his uncle's death, she looked inward and back in time. 'He was a wonderful younger brother,' Alison said, 'and so handsome when he was young with all that blond hair.' George's death was announced on the national news and papers across the country ran obituaries. The funeral was held in the crowded chapel of King's College on the Feast of St Michael and All Angels, 29 September. George had asked that there be no eulogy. Instead, Father Hankey delivered a homily praising George because he had, as a Platonist, 'practised the philosophical dying well.'1 This, as the family knew, was neither what George was nor what he claimed to be. A year or so before his death he had written to his old friend Peter Self: "Theoretically" I find Christianity best expressed for myself in a kind of gnostic Platonic way but in my life I remain a very sensual bourgeois. I have had to give up some of the pleasures because of health and I regret every [missed] drink of wine and every cigarette.'2 Love had enormously enlightened his life: his mother, Leo, Sarah, Otter Lake as it sparkled in the morning light and glimmered in the evening shade. The Cathedral at Chartres and the afternoon opera broadcasts from the Metropolitan when Flagstad sang the Liebestod so beautifully that it tore him apart and he did not want to listen to other music for days. Peter Clarke, the people in Bermondsey and the small seventeenth-century Spanish crystal cross he saw in a shop and bought for Charity to wear. Benny Goodman playing the solo clarinet in Rhapsody in Blue. What genius of Toscanini to ask him! War and Peace,the greatest symphony in the world; of course it was the Master's favourite book. After

372 George Grant the war, Henry James, the moment when a friend slipped a piece of music under his door on his birthday, and of course Sheila, who deciphered his proposal and married him. John Oman, Sartre's marvellous face, Simone Weil and Mozart. The holiness of Terrence Bay. Leo Strauss and crazy old John Diefenbaker. The faded print of the School of Athens that hung in his office. Jacques Ellul and the young protesters who said no to genocide in Vietnam. The spy tales of John Le Carre and Simenon's accounts of Chief Inspector Maigret's criminal investigations in Paris. His children as babies and as they grew to adulthood. His grandchildren. Going for walks with Artie. That darling bastard Celine. He loved the beauty of the wave-swept rocks of Terrence Bay where he had watched the tumult of the cormorants among their young on a rocky island and seen the sea silver with mackerel. Among the graves of the Slaunwhites and Jollimores and those who had succumbed to the perils of the sea, on the high land overlooking the bay, beside the white clapboard Protestant church stands a simple granite marker.

GEORGE PARKIN GRANT 1918 - 1988 OUT OF THE SHADOWS AND IMAGININGS INTO THE TRUTH

Notes

In these notes George Grant is referred to as GPG, his mother, Maude Grant, as MEG, his wife Sheila as SVG, and William Christian as WEC. PREFACE 1 'Like the great African Doctor [St Augustine], [St Anselm] devoted his chief intellectual effort to the understanding of the doctrine of the Christian faith and the statement of his attitude which is contained in the Proslogium bears the unmistakable stamp of the Augustinian spirit. "I do not attempt, O Lord, to penetrate Thy profundity, for I desire to understand in some degree Thy truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand,in order that I may believe; but I believe, that I may understand. For I believe this too, that unless I believed, I should not understand."' (Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy; Volume 2: Mediaeva Philosophy; Part I Augustine to Bonaventure (Garden City, NY: Image Books 1962), 177) CHAPTER 1

1 W.L. Grant to Maude Parkin, 3 Aug. 1910 (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, file: 1904-13). The following account draws on William Grant's letter. 2 Clipping from the local Goring-on-Thames newspaper (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5,file:1904-13) 3 '... in June 1915 we were married in St. George's Cathedral at Kingston where Alice's sister, Maude, ... lived.' Vincent Massey, What's Past Is Prologue, 46 4 GPG, interview with David Cayley, 1985

374 Notes to pages 6-9 5 William J. Baxter, chaplain, No. 10 Casualty Clearing Station, BEF, 13 August 1916 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 30, file: Mrs W.L. Grant, Correspondence General A) 6 Ibid., 21 Aug. 1916 7 Alice Massey to MEG, 19 July 1917 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 43, file: Mrs W.L. Grant, 1889-1918) 8 H.E. Wimperis Diaries (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 12) 9 'Raleigh [Maude's brother, Raleigh Parkin], why did - you see, Alice transferred the ambition that came from her father - she got hold of an ambitious Methodist like Vincent and transferred this ambition. But my mother, all her ambitions - my father was a person who - in a way Marjorie could transfer her ambition to a very dominating small-town Presbyterian lawyer a very fine man -Jim; but my mother's ambition was - my father was subtler than Vincent or Jim and the result was that this terrific ambition of Mother's, which came from Sir George, which was realized in Alice with this Methodist she married - this tough, hard, business Methodist who was part of the new Canada - he was making the new Canada - he was MasseyHarris - you know, making machines; but my mother's ambition - I think she had to hold my father more; she [Maude] took him out of Queen's, out of academia, for these reasons.' GPG, interview with Raleigh Parkin, 13 Sept. 1972 (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, 1941-72) 10 Claude Bissell, The Young Vincent Massey, 163 11 Wilfred Owen, 'The Parable of the Old Man and the Young,' in Wilfred Owen: Selected Poetry and Prose, ed. Jennifer Breen (London: Routledge 1988), 78 12 'At a deeper level, Sheila is always surprised that I cannot let go of my adolescence. One difference between myself & yourself is that you did not attend school where your father was headmaster. Whether for good or ill, my life has been greatly a convalescence from that fact.' (GPG to Charity Grant, 31 July 1983) CHAPTER 2

1 Quoted in Carl Berger, The Sense of Power: 36 2 Ibid., 37 3 This episode, retold and embellished, was the source of George's belief that his mother grew up in financial hardship. 4 John Willison, Sir George Parkin: A Biography (London: Macmillan 1929), 252 5 Sir George Parkin to GPG, 17 Apr. 1922 (NAC, MG 31 D, vol. 45, George P. Grant, 1922-54)

Notes to pages 9-16

375

6 It now is part of the National Gallery's collection. 7 GPG, interview with Raleigh Parkin, 13 Sept. 1972 (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, 1941-72) 8 Ibid. 9 Parkin to GPG, 17 Apr. 1922 10 He had been at Balliol with poet and constitutional lawyer Frank Scott and had a cottage in the Eastern Townships near Hugh McLennan. He was charming, cultured, and well liked. He married the daughter of a British radical writer, Claude Cockburn, and together he and Louise were welcomed into anglophone intellectual, political, and cultural circles in Montreal. 11 R.K. Crook, 'Modernization and Nostalgia, a Note on the Sociology of Pessimism.' Review of Lament for a Nation, Queen's Quarterly 73 (1966): 26984 12 George Grant, Plato seminar, McMaster, 10 Mar. 1980 13 GPG, interview with Charles Taylor, 30 Jan. 1980. Charles Taylor, then a Toronto writer and journalist, lent me the interview notes he made while researching Radical Tories. 14 Eugene Forsey, A Life on the Fringe (Toronto 1990), 32 15 Philip Foulds to GPG, 13 Sept. 1988 16 GPG, 'Manuscript Fragments on Celine,' early 1980s (private papers, Halifax) 17 Mrs Bettina Broomfield to WEC, 18 Mar. 1991. When Sarah went out to work at eleven she was the sole support of her father and epileptic brother. One day, when her father brought a new woman into the house, her brother fell down in a fit. She stuffed a spoon into his mouth to stop him from swallowing his tongue, and then pushed the woman out the door. 'Oot!' she said. T canna feed another mouth.' 18 Mrs Drury died in 1987, aged 98. 19 Berger, The Sense of Power, 20 Interview notes, Charles Taylor, 30 Jan. 1980 21 Anecdote recounted by Ian Angus to WEC, 27 Mar. 1991 22 Martin Flewwelling, 'Profile: George Grant,' Atlantic Advocate, December 1987,p-5 23 Alison Grant Ignatieff, 'Impressions of Growing Up at U.C.C.,' manuscript, Ignatieff Papers, Trinity College Archives 24 'Manuscript Fragments on Celine,' typescript, 1987-8 25 Alison Grant to Uncle Harry [Wimperis], 1927-8? (NAC, MG 30, D 77, vol. 8) 26 Interview with Charity Grant, 25 Nov. 1990. One of the light verses that

376

Notes to pages 17-18

William enjoyed writing has survived, the one he presented to George on his ninth birthday. Once Wolfe's artillery Were dragged up-hill at Sillery, And Scotsmen in their pride Took their pipes up beside; And once upon the Plain, They decided to remain So here's a mountain-gun, With which to have your fun; And here are pipers proud, Skirling long and loud So when you play your game, Think on their ancient fame 27 Bissell, The Young Vincent Massey, 168 28 'Mrs. Buck's new home in Bosbury became the scene of our visits. Bosbury is a small village in lovely unspoilt hilly country, with old timbered and white houses, an old church with the bell-tower separated from the consecrated edifice so that in the days of fighting near the Welsh border it could be shelter and vantage point for the village defenders without desecration ... Well kept farming country with fruit orchards of apples and pears; fields with hops with their high poles; pleasant homes, black and white, or of mellowed brick or stone, all with their gardens and set off by especially fine old trees; hedges dividing the fields; the white-faced red Herefordshire cattle and flocks of sheep all given an atmosphere of peace and well-being. 'Noverings, Aunt Marian's house, a half-mile or more from the village is reached by a lane turning off from the highway, quite removed from appreciable traffic. It sets off well up on a hillside where one can look off in three directions and in back up to the woodland crowning the hilltop. It is a long house of red brick with many casement windows ... It is a most cheerful welcoming house from the moment the big front door swings wide and one enters the hallway with its ancient oak mantel and bright brass jars ... Bordering the outer side of the terrace, the gardens, including a Dutch one for spring bulbs, sloped down to the grassed tennis court.' The description of Mrs Buck and Novering are taken from an unsigned memorandum in the Grant-Parkin papers, 'Aunt Marian of England,' mimeo, NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 47, file: Mrs W.L. Grant

Notes to pages 18-21 377 29 It was probably on his first visit that George dictated his first extant communication to Aunt Grace Wimperis, Maude's younger sister who had married an Englishman and settled in London. Dear Aunt Grace, I have picked out this card for you specially. We have a lovely rabbit, and four goldfish, and Mac. And they are all my pets. We went to the zoo and saw two India sacred cows and some little wallabys, and the little bear which was brought in an aeroplane and Jumbo and Baby Stella and a pelican and other animals. GEORGE 30 GPG to Mum, Cochrane Camp, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, Grant Pre-1935, 1922-54). From the time he was a child until he was about forty George wrote regularly to his mother whenever they were separated, sometimes as often as once a week. Maude kept these frank and intimate letters, as she did most of her family correspondence, and, thanks to Raleigh Parkin, they are now housed in the Grant-Parkin papers in the National Archives of Canada in Ottawa. All subsequent letters to his mother referred to here are from this collection. 31 Lady Parkin to Darling Child (Maude), 13 July 1931 (NAC, MG 30, D77, vol. 7) 32 Lady Parkin to Tooty, 31 July, from Batterwood House (NAC, MG 30, D77, vol. 7) 33 She was cremated and her ashes were taken to be buried in Goring-onThames. 34 GPG to Mummy, 24 Aug. 1931, Pickerel River (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, Grant, pre-1935) 35 Interview with Raleigh Parkin, 13 Sept. 1972 (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, 1941-72) 36 GPG to Mum, Go Home Bay, 18 August, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, Grant, pre-1935) 37 GPG, 'A Lake,' In Between Times, ed. G.H. Robertson, 1933 CHAPTER 3 1 GPG, 'Manuscript Fragments on Celine,' typescript, 1987-88 2 GPG to Charity Grant, 1969? 3 'An Interview with George Grant,' with Larry Schmidt, Grail 1, no. 1 (March 1985): 35. Almost everyone in New Brunswick has some Loyalist

378 Notes to pages 22-4

4 5

6 7 8

connection, but George's grandmother's Fisher ties to the UELs were weaker than most. W.L. Grant and Frederick Hamilton, George Monro Gran George had a fine woodcut, which he liked, by Andre Bieler showing G.M. Grant calling at a local house to ask for financial support and receiving a basket of eggs to help the college. His wife passed away a year and a half earlier, on New Year's Day, 1901. Grant and Hamilton, 271 This account is based on William Kilbourn, 'Upper Canada and Its Old Boys,' in William Kilbourn,Toronto Remembered: A Celebration of the City (Tor-

onto: Stoddart 1984), 163-93. Kilbourn not only gave me permission to use the material, but presented me with an autographed copy of his fine book. I am doubly grateful. 9 The origin of the nickname is obscure. One Old Boy speculated that it came from the style of his stroke when caning boys; another thought that it referred to his English style and manners. 10 He was also a bit of a rebel. Although he could not drink alcohol because of his medical condition, he insisted, during Prohibition, on having a carafe of wine on the table. 11 GPG to Mom and Dad, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 40, George Grant, 1922-54) 12 Unsigned review in College Times, 1933, 28 13 'My most vivid memory was playing Caesar to his Cleopatra (Shaw's version). He was a really beautiful child and his performance was well received. Mine was a complete disaster as I repeatedly forgot my lines ... 'As I mentioned George was a beautiful child, blond, fine, delicate features. I was quite in love with him and I say that without hinting anything about homosexuality. We were too young for that, which is not to say that there was not homosexuality at UCC. There was.' (C.N.R. Stewart to WEC, 24 Feb. 1991) 14 It was less enthusiastic about his attempts in reading: 'Grant read a selection from Shakespeare's Henry TV. It was a poor choice as his voice did not fit the character.' 15 Although there has been some controversy over Massey's treatment of the painter David Milne, it cannot be denied that he did much to encourage and support Canadian art when it was not fashionable to do so. According to a story George related, Vincent's father Chester had not been as generous. 'When Varley went to Chester Massey's house, Varley was very poor and they never gave him anything to eat and Varley was starving and Varley finally said, on the last day, when he was finishing - Chester Massey came

Notes to pages 24-30

379

to the door and said, "Mrs. Massey wants you to join us," and Varley said, "At last, some food" - Varley thought "At last, I'm going to get something food or something." Massey hesitated and said, "For prayers." And Varley said, he just wanted to say, "Up yours!" ' (Interview with Rateigh Parkin, 13 Sept. 1972 [NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, 1941-72]) 16 GPG interview with Raleigh Parkin, Sept. 13, 1972, (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, 1941-72) 17 G. Grant, 'Picasso,' in In Between Times, Supplement to The College Times, ed. R.D. Huchison, 1935, p. 44 18 He was in fact much more sympathetic to modern art, including Picasso, throughout his life than one might have suspected 19 College Times,Christmas 1935, pp. 50-65 20 GPG, Extracts from 'Dream' Notebook (private papers, Halifax) 21 GPG, 'From Roosevelt to LBJ,' in The New Romans, ed. Al Purdy (Edmonton 1968), 39 22 GPG to Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, George Grant, 192254) 23 Ibid. 24 J.E.S., College Times, Christmas 1935, pp. 32-3 25 W.L. Grant, Prize Day Address, Christmas 1934, College Times, 25 26 J.G.L. Pearson, Review of Cry Havoc, in In Between Times (1934): 31-2 27 Beverley Nichols, Cry Havoc (London: Jonathan Cape, 1933) 28 Ibid., 95 29 Interview with Kenneth McNaught, November 1991 30 G. Grant (handwritten and undated [NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, file: 190413D 31 Interview with Raleigh Parkin, 13 Sept. 1972 (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, 1941-72) 32 Ibid. 33 William Grant to Raleigh Parkin, 18 Nov. 1932 (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, file: 1910-75) 34 William Kilbourn, 'A Place Apart,' Old Times, January 1987, p. 23 35 Telephone interview with Michael Gelber, November 1991 36 Fifty years later, when Michael Gelber sent him a copy on an old picture of the group, George replied: 'How good and generous John Davidson was to us. How one takes this for granted when one is young.' GPG to Michael Gelber, 6 Feb. 1982 37 Leacock was a friend of the family who had also taught both Maude and later George's sister Margaret at McGill. Leacock was in and out of the house a lot when George was young. George recalled that his father used to

380 Notes to pages 30-2

38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46

try to provoke Leacock into swearing to annoy Maude. Later, when Maude was working at McGill after William's death, Leacock helped to sort out difficulties concerning her pension. George recalled him as 'a sweet man' and very loyal to his friends. (Interview with Charles Taylor, 30 Jan. 1980) Interview with Raleigh Parkin, 13 Sept. 1972 (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, 1941-72) GPG to Mum, 1 November, 231 Sussex Gardens, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant - 42 Tanner Street, London SEi) George might not have realized it at the time, but Mrs Buck had a sinister plan in mind when she got him the pony. She had picked out the daughter of one of the local gentry as George's future wife, and the purpose of the pony was so they could go riding together and get to know one another. GPG to Aunt LaI, 20 July, Allerthorpe, York (University of Toronto Archives, B87-oo82/164[o3]). GPG to Mother, 10 July, no year, Noverings, Bosbury, Ledbury (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) GPG to Mother, 24 August, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) GPG to Mother, 21 July, Waplington Lane, Allerthorpe, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, Grant, pre-1935) E.E. Campbell to WEC, 21 Apr. 1991 William did not live to see his children grow to maturity, but he anticipated their immediate futures well. Once there were babies, one, two, three, Then came George and we stopped at four; Now Margaret works in a Bank all day, And Charity learning doth explore; And Alison follows in Art's sweet way, And George has opinions frequent and free, And still they're as dear to you and me As when they scrambled upon the floor. Marg. will be married soon, I fear, And Charity search for Castles in Spain; George to Oxford his course will steer, And Art lead Ally across the Main.

(NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, file: 1904-13) 47 He felt cut off from his school mates because they thought he was a spy who would report any criticism to his father. It is more likely that they did not take him into their confidence because they considered him a misfit.

Notes to pages 32-4 381 48 GPG, 'Sermon for Student Service,' 6 Oct. 1961 (private papers, Halifax) 49 GPG to Mother at Noverings, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, Grant, pre-1935) 50 GPG to Mother, 10 Jan. 1938? (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 51 GPG to Mum, Sourvanis, Minnicoganashene, Wednesday, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, Grant, pre-1935) 52 GPG to Mother at Noverings, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, Grant, pre-1935) 53 GPG to Mum, 13 November (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, George Grant, 1922-54) 54 GPG, 'Manuscript Fragments on Celine,' 1987-8 55 English Composition, English Literature, Modern History, Geometry, Trigonometry, Latin Authors, Latin Composition, French Authors, French Composition 56 Margaret had attended Maude's old school, McGill. Charity went to the University of Toronto. Alison, who was not scholarly but had a talent for painting, especially watercolours, went to London in 1936 thanks to a $1500 grant she received from the Massey Foundation. 57 R:B. Howard, Upper Canada College, 199 58 Ibid., 224 59 Victor Morin to the Rhodes Selection Committee, Autumn 1938 60 George never lost his love for tennis. His favourite player in later life was Martina Navratilova. It was safe to contradict him about many things, but not that she was the greatest player in the world. 61 This is one memory that, even passed through the refracting filter of memory, retained its freshness for him. As he wrote to the translator of the French edition of Lament for a Nation just before his death: 'When I was 15 [sic] I passed a summer at Mt. Bruno with the family of a wonderful patriarch, Victor Morin. He turns out to have been the grandfather of J-Y Morin. That summer was very happy for me and particularly because a Morin daughter - Marie-Huguette arranged how I spent the day - picking raspberries, etc - She was 15 years older than myself. I knew she had married an Italian army officer and had passed her life since 1937 in Italy. J-Y Morin told me that she had returned to Montreal for her old age. She had been too old to come out to meet me [when I visited Montreal], Since returning to Halifax she sent me a very sweet letter & a photo of myself & herself in the 1930's. I am not sure why it has filled me with such joy - but I think I have broken or the world has broken me with my past & suddenly to receive a note which said she looked back with pleasure to that time when it was one of the easiest and happiest summers of my life - just filled me with joy. (GPG to Gaston Laurion, 27 July 1988)

382 Notes to pages 34-40 62 GPG to Mother, 3585 St Urbain Street, Montreal, 16 July, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 63 GPG, 7 July, no year, St Basile le Grand (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 64 GPG to Chippy [Charity], undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 65 GPG to Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 66 GPG to Mother, 7 August, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 67 GPG to Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 68 GPG to Mother, 7 August, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 69 Extract from 'Dreams' notebook (private papers, Halifax) 70 Ibid. CHAPTER 4 1 Her dyslexia had made normal studies difficult, and her father had moved her from Bishop Strachan to Central Tech because it emphasized more applied studies. She had sailed on 24 June 1936 and had headed for Hamburg and Vienna first before going to England. 2 Quick thinking by the Fitzgibbonses was to save George from disgrace on at least one occasion. Once Maude rang unexpectedly from the station to say she was dropping round for a visit. George at the time was very drunk, and the two ladies bundled him up in a rug and hid him in a closet until the danger passed. 3 GPG to Mother, 23 September, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 4 Telephone interview with Ann Carver, March 1991 5 Interview with Raleigh Parkin, 13 Sept. 1972 (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, 1941-72) 6 Interview with David Cayley, 1985 7 GPG to MEG, 8 June 1924 (PAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 45, file: Mrs W.L. Grant, Misc family). Another letter, written probably at the same time, reads: Dear, Darling Mummy, I love you so much! I hope you are having a nice time. Lot of love. Your own, George. (GPG to Mummy, undated) (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, George Grant, 1922-54) 8 Interview with Raleigh Parkin, 13 Sept. 1972 (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, 1941-72) 9 GPG to Mother, 16 Nov. 1936 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 10 Ibid. He soon was to have something more serious to apologize to his mother for. The phone rang in Maude's apartment at the Royal Victoria

Notes to pages 40-4 383 College. 'Mother.' 'Yes, dear. Where are you?' 'Well, uh, you see ... I'm in jail. I made a right turn on a red light, and I didn't realise that you weren't allowed to in Montreal. Can you come down and get me out?' 11 GPG to Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 12 GPG to Mother, 10 December, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 13 GPG to Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 14 Gerald Graham to MEG, 11 Feb. 1937 (PAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 46, file: Mrs W.L. Grant, 1937-39) 15 GPG to Mother, 7 March, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 16 GPG to Mum, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 17 GPG to Dear Mother, undated, c/o Professor McDougall, Pine Grove, Juddhaven, Lake Rosseau (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 40, file: Grant - Pine Grove Lake). One of the other guests was Charles Cochrane, the great classical historian whose Christianity and Classical Culture George would hold in such high regard. Cochrane was also a close friend of George's parents, and was a frequent visitor to their house. 18 GPG to Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 40, file: Grant - Pine Grove Lake) 19 GPG to Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 20 'There is something I hope you will do. There is a person here, Donald MacDonald, who has been appointed to be the lecturer in a scheme to promote Anglo-American friendship ... He is one of my very greatest friends down here. If I had to choose who would get farthest of all my friends here I would choose Don. He is a rough diamond but has made himself and has a fine liberal brain. Put himself from a small Quebec farm to where he is ... He is like in a way your father because he has made himself, is exactly the rightkind of imperialist & will do a great deal in the world ... Poor person, leaving a girl he adores. He is mentally strong & hard yet liberal, very straightforward. He has been a grand friend for me.' (GPG to Mother, 18 April, no year [NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38]) 21 GPG, 'Canadian Universities and the Protestant Churches,' undated 22 Queen's Journal, 15 Oct. 1937, p. 1 23 GPG to Mother, Monday 18 October, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 24 GPG to Mother, 8 November, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 25 George Grant, 'Review of The Duchess of Atholl, Searchlight on Spai (Penguin Special, 15C),' in 'The Bookshelf,' Queen's University Journal, 11 Nov. 1938, 8 26 'I refuse to accept [Grant's] claims too readily. I have heard stories of peace and plenty behind Nationalist lines, of Nationalist armies still relying on voluntary support, of conquered country receiving them with open arms, of "Red" atrocities in the other Spain when thousands of religious

384

Notes to pages 44-51

have been tortured and killed, where churches have been burned, and many civilians faced the firing squad. 'Which side are we to believe? Doubtless there is some truth and much exaggeration in the stories from either camp.' J.B. Conacher, Letter to the Editor, Queen's University Journal, 15 Nov. 1938 27 'The Conachers are charming - the best type of Catholic. They are wonderful.' (GPG to Mother, 7 March, no year [NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38]) 28 GPG to Mother, 8 November, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 29 Ibid. 30 GPG to Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 31 Literary Supplement to the Queen's Journal, March 1938, pp. 6-7 32 GPG to Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 33 GPG to Mother, 10 January, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 34 'Review of The Higher Learning in America by Robert Maynard Hutchins,' Queen's University Journal, 18 Jan. 1938 35 GPG to Mother, 8 February, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 36 GPG to Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 37 GPG to Mother, 11 November, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 38 GPG to Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 39 'I got a cablegram from Maude last Saturday to say that she felt that, in view of possible misunderstanding (meaning allegations of nepotism) that Charity ought to leave Canada House.' (Vincent Massey to Jim MacDonnell, 31 Jan. 1938; University of Toronto Archives, B87-0082/366[24]) 40 Mary Greey Graham, 'Some Recollections of George Grant,' 9 Mar. 1991 (private communication) 41 Alice Massey to MEG, 25 May 1938 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 42, file: Mrs W.L. Grant, 1937-8) 42 GPG to Aunt Lai, 13 June, Noverings, Bosbury, Ledbury (University of Toronto Archives, B87-oo82/366[24]) 43 GPG to Mother, Sunday/Monday Morning, Holyrood Castle, Edinburgh, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 40, file: Mrs Grant - European Trip) 44 GPG to Mother, Craigdarroch Arms Hotel, Moniaive, Dumphries, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 40, file: Mrs Grant - European Trip) 45 GPG to Mother, Monday evening, Venice, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 40, file: Mrs Grant - European Trip) 46 GPG to Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 47 GPG to Mother, 13 March, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 48 Queen's Journal, ll Mar. 1938 49 GPG to Rhodes Selection Committee, 9 Nov. 1938 50 GPG, 'Canada's Present Position in the British Commonwealth of Nations,'

Notes to pages 52-5 385 handwritten, [1938], pp. v-vi (George Grant file, Rhodes House, Oxford) 51 GPG to Mother, 12 December, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 52 GPG to Mother, 21 February, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 53 MEG to Rev. M.R. Ridley, Tutor for Admissions, Balliol College, 16 Dec. 1938 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 30, file: Mrs W.L. Grant, Correspondence General QR,S) 54 GPG to Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 55 GPG to Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 56 Interview with Donald C. MacDonald, 30 Nov. 1990 57 GPG to Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 58 Greene was Jewish, as were most of the others in the Drama Guild. Relationships between Jews and Christian were generally very good at Queen's, especially by the standards of the day. George was generally sympathetic to Jews and Judaism throughout his life. Michael (Sholome) Gelber was one of his best friends at Upper Canada, and he later asked him to stand as godfather to his son William (see chapter 10). George did, however, come into conflict at times with his other guild members, and his comments at the time reveal that he had not yet completely broken with his mother's views. 'Anne and I are about the only Gentiles connected with the Guild. They have been incredibly rude to the two Annes in connection with the Guild. They are the Jews. The Jews around Queen's are a menace - not at all the Sholome type' (GPG to Mother, 1 December, no year [NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38]). 'It was very amusing. I had stuck up for the Jews for a week in theoretical arguments and this week I had to come home and tell the people at 30 Sydenham that my arguments were in vain. I had been treated very dishonestly by a bunch of Jews. I suppose they are what they are because we tortured them. But I can understand anti-Semitism and I can see why a whole nation would rise up against them. But I am being beastly as I have Sholome to think of.' (GPG to Mother, 26 January, no year [NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38]) 59 He was president of the International Relations Club during his last year, though prominence in a club such as this, which was seen as rather tony by the ordinary Queen's student, did little to enhance George's popularity with his fellow students. 60 GPG to Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 61 'Review of Grey ofFallodon by George Macaulay Trevelyan,' Queen's University Journal, 17 Nov. 1937, p. 3 62 GPG to Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 63 GPG to Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 64 Because he needed this course to satisfy his degree requirements, George did not formally graduate until May 1940.

386 Notes to pages 56-9 CHAPTER 5

1 GPG to Mother, 15 June 1941, 42 Tanner Street, SEi (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: 42 Tanner Street, London SEi) 2 Feindel sailed first with another Rhodes Scholar, Henry Hicks, who was returning for his third year of law. 3 GPG to D.R. Michener, 27 Sept. 1939 4 GPG to Mums, 13 October, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 5 The Rev. Robert Alexander Stewart Barbour had been educated at Rugby school, and like George would return after the war for a D.Phil. He married in 1950, and was ordained in the Church of Scotland in 1954, and from 1955 taught New Testament theology at the University of Edinburgh. 6 Alexander Dunlop Lindsay, later First Baron Lindsay of Birker (18791952), was a Scot who, like George's father, earned a first class degree in Classics at Oxford. From 1906 until his retirement in 1949, except for two years as Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, he taught and wrote in Balliol College, Oxford, of which he was Master for a quarter of a century. 7 GPG to Dear Mum, Ash Wednesday, 1940 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) 8 Sir Theodore Henry Tylor, 1900-68. B.C.L. 1923, Lecturer 1924, Tutor 1926, Fellow 1929. 'To him the lawyer's main task was to try to ensure that justice was done between parties to a case, not to rationalise the laws of England. He was pre-eminent as a case lawyer, with - as his contributions to legal literature show - a special interest in liability, in tort and contract.' (Obituary in Oxford Magazine, 7 Feb. 1969, p. 167. Signed D.K.L.) 9 GPG to Gerald Graham, 30 November, no year (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 42, file: 1940-76) 10 GPG to Mum, 9 April, no year [1940] (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 11 GPG to Mum, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 12 Eliud Wambu Mathu was born in 1908 and was therefore about ten years older than George. He returned to Kenya after Balliol, and became the first African nominated to the Kenyan Legislative Council. In 1964 he became private secretary to the president of Kenya. 13 GPG to Mum, 23 October, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 14 Kannukuzhiyil Poonen Lukose, b. 25 Nov. 1920, Balliol 1938-43, became a senior diplomat for India. 15 GPG to Professor R.G. Trotter, 25 Oct. 1939, Balliol 16 GPG to Mother, 6 Nov. 1939 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 17 MEG to Alice Massey, 12 Nov. 1939 (NAC, MG 32A, vol. 55, file: Maude Grant 1939,40,46-48,50) 18 GPG to Mum, undated, after August [1941] (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 19 GPG to Mum, 13 December, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38)

Notes to pages 59-67

387

20 Drusilla Scott, A.D. Lindsay: A Biography, 258 21 Ibid., 259 22 Lindsay, Pacifism, 17 23 Geoffrey Bush, Unsentimental Education, 128 24 GPG to Dear Mum, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 25 E.R. Peacock to MEG, 5 Jan. 1940 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 30, file: Mrs W.L. Grant, Correspondence General N,O,P) 26 GPG to Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 27 GPG to Professor R.G. Trotter, 18 Jan. 1940, Balliol 28 Probably William Vaughn Moody (1869-1910) 29 GPG to Mum, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 30 GPG to Mother, 22 Nov. 1939 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 31 GPG to Dear Mum, 25 January, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) 32 GPG to Mum, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 33 William Christian, 'George Grant and Religion,' 52 34 It very much amused George later when he learned that Cline had become a deputy director for intelligence in the CIA. 35 GPG to Mum, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 36 Alison Grant to Mum, 12 Hyde Park Gardens, no date (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 37 GPG to Mother, 19 May, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 38 GPG, fragment, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 39 GPG to Mother, 1 November, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 40 GPG to Mother, fragment, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 41 GPG to Dear Mum, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) 42 GPG to Dear Mumps, 17 June, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 43 Ibid. 44 Noel Currer-Briggs, 'The Universities Ambulance Unit 1939-1940,' typescript, 11 45 GPG to N. Currer-Briggs, quoted in Currer-Briggs, 'The Universities Ambulance Unit,' 14-15 46 Noel Currer-Briggs, 'The Universities Ambulance Unit,' 12 47 GPG to Mother, 28 July, Hawkspur Camp, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 48 GPG to N. Currer-Briggs, quoted in Currer-Briggs, 'The Universities Ambulance Unit,' 14-15 49 F.R.H. Du Boulay to N. Currer-Briggs, 19 Aug. 1983 50 GPG to Mother, 2 August, Hawkspur Camp, Great Bardfield, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 51 GPG to Mother, Hawkspur Camp, Great Bardfield, near Braintree, Essex, 7 July, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38)

388

Notes to pages 67-71

52 GPG to Mum, no date (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 53 GPG to Mum, 231 Sussex Gardens, Wi, fragment, 31 August, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 54 C.K. Allen to MEG, 20 Aug. 1940 (NAC, MG 30 D 59, vol. 30, file: Mrs W.L. Grant, Correspondence General A) CHAPTER 6 1 In his study Life and Labour of the People in London, Charles Booth had written: 'I know of no set of people in London who look quite so poor as those who do their marketing in Bermondsey New Road on Sunday morning. I know no district of equal extent so depressing to the spirit as that which lies between long Lane and Great Dover Street.' (As quoted in Oxford 9, no. 2, Winter 1946-7) 2 Possibly Oliver Wrightson, who worked in the Bermondsey hostels for homeless people in 1940 and 1941. 3 Letter fragment, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38). 'But the worst conditions were to be found in the mass shelters in the East End where there was appalling overcrowding. The largest and most notorious - the Tilbury shelter - was a massive underground goods yard beneath the Tilbury railway arches in Stepney. It housed as many as 14,000 to 16,000 people each night, all of them jam packed, head to toe, lying on the concrete floor.' (Joanna Mack and Steve Humphries, London At War[London, 1985], 59) 4 Mack and Humphries, London At War, 40 5 Alison Grant to MEG, 12 September, no year (PAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 45, file: Mrs W.L. Grant, Misc. family) 6 Mack and Humphries, London Al War, 56 7 GPG to Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file 42: Tanner Street, London SEi) 8 Alison Grant to MEG, 25 Oct. [1940] (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 42, file: Mrs W.L. Grant, 1939-40) 9 GPG to Mrs Foulds, 14 November, no year (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, 194172) 10 GPG to Mum, 4 December, no year, Oxford & Bermondsey Club (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant - 42 Tanner Street, London SEi) 11 E.R. Peacock to MEG, 4 Dec. 1940 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 30, file: Mrs W.L. Grant, Correspondence General N,O,P) 12 GPG to Mrs Foulds, 14 November, no year (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, 1941-72)

Notes to pages 72-7

389

13 GPG to Mother, fragment, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 14 GPG to Dear Mumps, Oxford & Bermondsey Club, 42 Tanner Street, Christmas 1940 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant - 42 Tanner Street, London SEi) 15 William Christian, 'George Grant and Religion,' 60 16 GPG to Mum, 4 December, no year, Oxford & Bermondsey Club (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant - 42 Tanner Street, London SEi) 17 GPG to Dear Mumps, Oxford & Bermondsey Club, 42 Tanner Street, Christmas 1940 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant - 42 Tanner Street, London SEi) 18 GPG to Mother, 12 February, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: 42 Tanner Street, London SEi) 19 GPG to My dearest Mum, Oxford & Bermondsey Club, Tanner St., SEi, 5 January, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: 42 Tanner Street, London SEi) 20 GPG to Mum, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: 42 Tanner Street, London SEi) 21 The pub survived the war and still exists, though its name has been changed to The Raven in the Tower 22 GPG to Dear Mumps, Oxford & Bermondsey Club, 42 Tanner Street, Christmas 1940 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant - 42 Tanner Street, London SEi) 23 Burgon Bickersteth to My dear Comptroller, H.Q., Canadian Corps, Home Forces, begun 17 Feb. 1941, finished and mailed 24 Feb. 1941 (NAC, MG 30 D 77, vol. 5, 1941-72) 24 Winston Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2, Alone: The Blitz (Boston: Corporation Publishing and Houghton Mifflin 1948-53), 351 25 'Journal,' 2 Nov. 1942 (NAC, MG 31 D, vol. 75, George Grant, 1922-54) 26 'Journal,' 21 Oct. 1942 (NAC, MG 31 D, vol. 75, George Grant, 1922-54) 27 GPG to Mother, 22 February, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file 42 Tanner Street, London SEi) 28 Alice Massey to MEG, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 42, file: Mrs W.L. Grant, 1940-42) 29 Alice Massey to MEG, 15 May 1941 (PAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 42, file: Mrs W.L. Grant, 1940-42) 30 Charity Grant to MEG, 21 May 1941 (PAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 45, file: Mrs W.L. Grant, Misc. family) 31 GPG to Mum, 20 Apr. 1941, 42 Tanner Street (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: 42 Tanner Street, London SEi) 32 Ibid.

390 Notes to pages 78-82 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 GPG to Margaret Grant, 25 March, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: 42 Tanner Street, London SEi) 36 Ibid. 37 Mary Greey Graham, 'Some Recollections of George Grant,' 9 Mar. 1991 (private communication) 38 GPG to Mother, 9 June 1941, 42 Tanner Street (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: 42 Tanner Street, London SEi) 39 Burgon Bickersteth, Letter no. 23, 29 May 1941, Bickersteth Papers, Massey College 40 GPG to Charity, 25 May, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: 42 Tanner Street, London SEi) 41 GPG to Mum, Norwich, 12 August, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 42 Burgon Bickersteth to My dear Comptroller, H.Q., Canadian Corps, Home Forces, begun 17 Feb. 1941, finished and mailed 24 Feb. 1941 (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, 1941-72) 43 GPG to Mother [June], no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: 42 Tanner Street, London SEi) 44 GPG to Mother, 28 May, no year, 42 Tanner Street (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: 42 Tanner Street, London SEi) 45 GPG to Mum, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: 42 Tanner Street, London SEi) 46 GPG to Mother, 25 July 1941 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 47 Alison Grant to Elizabeth and Mary [Greey], 10 Aug. 1941 (PAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 42, file: Mrs W.L. Grant, 1940-42) 48 GPG to Mother, undated [September 1941], c/o Mrs Massey, Canada House (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 49 GPG to Mother [June], no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: 42 Tanner Street, London SEi) 50 GPG to Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: 42 Tanner Street, London SEi). 'P.S.,' he added, 'do send a little chocolate.' 51 GPG to Mother, 25 July 1941 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 52 GPG to Mum, 21 August, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: 42 Tanner Street, London SEi) 53 GPG to Mother, [September 1941] (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: 42 Tanner Street, London SEi) 54 GPG to Mum, 21 August, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: 42 Tanner Street, London SEi)

Notes to pages 83-6

391

55 Alice Massey to MEG, 9 Nov. 1941 (PAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 42, file: Mrs W.L. Grant, 1940-42 56 Nothing is known of this book. Both Alice and Vincent Massey refer to it separately in letters to Maude, and Alice says that George left it with Alison when he headed off to join his ship. 57 GPG to Mother, undated [September 1941], c/o Mrs Massey, Canada House (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 58 GPG to Mum, undated, (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: 42 Tanner Street, London SEi) 59 GPG to Mum, undated, after August (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 60 GPG to Mother, 3/12 Jan. 1942 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 61 GPG to Mother, Christmas 1941 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 62 George gave several slightly differing accounts of this event. Since this event was so central to his life, it is justifiable to cite them all: 'But I have never finally doubted the truth of that experience since that moment thirty-six years ago. If I try to put it into words, I would say that it was the recognition that I am not my own. In more academic terms, if modern liberalism is the affirmation that our essence is our freedom, then this experience was the denial of that definition, before the fact that we are not our own.' (George Grant, 'Intellectual Background' in Larry Schmidt, ed., George Grant in Process, 6

'You used to have to set out about five in the morning to ride to the farm. You know in England there are these gates across the road - and all I can say is I got off the bike, opened the gate, went through it, shut the gate, and it just came to me that I thought "God is." It never left me. I wasn't thinking much at that time. It came to me later that I was not my own. In other words, beyond space and time there was order. All I can say is that it happened at that moment and it has always sustained me.' ('SPECTRUM: The Owl and the Dynamo.' Produced by Vincent Tovell. 13 Feb. 1980) 'I think it was a kind of affirmation that beyond time and space there is order. For me it was an affirmation about what is, that ultimately there is, and that is what one means by God. Ultimately the world is not a maniacal chaos.' (Interview with David Cayley, 1985) 'I do remember some tale of going through an English cowgate, or over a stile or something (it was a special sort of gate) and having a great light dawn - I guess it was that he believed in God.' (Miriam Anglin Magden to WEC, dated December 1990, but sent in February 1991)

392 Notes to page 86 'The greatest event in my life was my conversion to Christianity. It was a prodigious moment as I passed through a farm gate in England and realized that all was finally well. I believed in God.' (Quoted in Martin Flewwelling, 'Profile: George Grant,' Atlantic Advocate, December 1987, p. 5.) 63 How are we to understand an experience like this, especially if we have encountered nothing similar in our own lives? To a psychiatrist who was not a believer, it might appear that George moved to a manic state from the severe depression into which he fell after Pearl Harbor. To others it might seem like an attempt to find a safe haven in another world in reaction to his disgust with this one. We might, however, for a moment consider it in light of someone who, at the time, was one of George's 'favourite philosophers,' William James. In The Varieties ofReligious Experience, James explored the process of con-

version. He argues that what happens is that ideas that were once peripheral to someone's consciousness take a central place. Conversion is often preceded by a sense of anger, worry, fear, or despair. It often takes place during a state of temporary exhaustion. 'So long as the egoistic worry of the sick soul guards the door, the expansive confidence of the soul of faith gains no presence. But let the former fade away, even but for a moment, and the latter can profit by the opportunity, and, having once acquired possession, may retain it' (William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience [London: Longmans Green 1904], 212). As for the effects of the conversion, James relates that the central one is 'the loss of all the worry, the sense that all is ultimately well with one, the peace, the harmony, the willingness to be, even though the outer conditions should remain the same.' This is usually accompanied by 'the sense of perceiving truths not known before' (p. 248). The effect is usually permanent; there is a changed attitude to life, though the intensity of the religious enthusiasm may vary (258). This is, in a sense, what happened to George. Christianity had always been important to him, though it was subordinate to his political interests. He had been reduced to a dangerous emotional state by the attack on Pearl Harbor, and he was physically exhausted by his farm work. Nothing was in his mind as he passed through the gate and he experienced his conversion as refreshing and restorative. Would George have agreed that James explained what happened to him? No, for James saw conversion as primarily a subconscious event. George knew he had been touched by something outside himself; in his own words, 'it happened.' 64 GPG to Mum, 13 December no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 65 GPG to Mother, Christmas 1941 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38)

Notes to pages 87-93 393 CHAPTER 7

1 The daily's slogan, 'A Sign of Purity,' was the source of ribaldry for the ladies' gentlemen admirers. 2 This account is based on an interview with Kay Gimpel Moore, September 1991. 3 E.R. Peacock to MEG, 11 Feb. 1941 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 40) 4 Alice Massey to Miss A. Bushnell, 27 Jan. 1942, quoted in Bissell, The Imperial Canadian, 117 5 Telegram to MEG, 20 Feb. 1942 6 GPG to Mum, undated, after August (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 7 Alice Massey (?) to Peter Macdonnell, 3 Mar. 1943 (University of Toronto Archives, B87-oo82/279[o5] 8 Mike Pearson to GPG, 14 March, no year 9 Ross McLean to GPG, Ottawa, 6 Apr. 1942 (NAC, MG 31 D, vol. 75, George Grant, 1922-54) 10 'Journal,' 2 Nov. 1942 (NAC, MG 31 D, vol. 75, George Grant, 1922-54) 11 Phone interview with Humphrey Carver, March 1991 12 Journal, 21 Oct. 1942 13 He later regretted this particular enthusiasm. 'To some cultures and to some people their attention is more agreeably occupied by Rhapsody in Blue than by [Mozart's] K.482 [Piano Concerto in E flat]. This fact raises inevitably the question: are there some works that are more worth paying attention to than others?' 'Faith and the Multiversity,' in Technology and Justice (Toronto, 1986), 46 14 'Journal,' 1 Nov. 1942 15 'Journal,' 22 Oct. 1942 16 'Journal,' 31 Oct. 1942 17 'Journal,' 29 Oct. 1942 18 GPG to Gerald Graham, 10 December, no year (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 42, file: 1940-76) 19 'Journal,' 27 Nov. 1942 20 Ibid., 5 Nov. 1942 21 In the preface to his last collection of essays, he returned to this phrase. 'In the first and second essays, I have tried to show why we should think of this account of knowledge as fate and not something which we in our freedom can control. Because I continue to find it so difficult to understand this destiny, I have tried to think in terms of the Spanish proverb: "Take what you want, said God - take it and pay for it." This obviously applies not only

394

Notes to pages 94-9

to individuals but to civilisations.' Technology and Justice, 9. I am grateful to Art Davis for drawing this connection to my attention. 22 'Journal,' 13 Dec. 1942 23 GPG to Dear Ould and Gentle Heart, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 40, George Grant, 1922-54) 24 D.R. Michener to GPG, 25 Mar. 1943 25 GPG to D.R. Michener, 24 Mar. 1943 26 Edward Annand Corbett (1887-64). Educated at McGill and a soldier fought in the First World War, he joined the staff of the University of Alberta in 1917, and in 1921 moved into extension work. In 1949 he headed the Canadian delegation to the first meeting of UNESCO. 27 GPG to Professor R.G. Trotter, 18 June 1943 28 GPG to Dear Ould, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 29 Ibid. 30 J.-E.-A. Lavirendeau (1912-68) was selected provincial leader of the Bloc Populaire in February 1944 and in the same year was elected to the Quebec assembly. In 1963 Lester Pearson appointed him along with Davidson Dunton to chair the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. 31 Ibid. 32 GPG to Dear Ould, undated [August 1943] (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 33 Michael Welton, 'On the Eve of a Great Mass Movement: Reflections on the Origins of the CAAE,' in Cassidy and Farris, eds, Choosing Our Future, 24 34 Isabel Wilson, Citizen's Forum, 31 35 Faris, The Passionate Educators, 109 36 Ernest Stabler to WEC, 4 Apr. 1991 37 Ibid. 38 GPG to Dr E.A. Corbett, 26 Jan. 1944 (Archives of Ontario, CAAE, Citizens' Forum Adm., 1943-66, BI, box 3) 39 George MacKinnon Wrong (18601948) was an ordained Anglican clergyman, but was most noted as a historian teaching at the University of Toronto from 1892-27. 40 Charity thinks that her mother would not in the slightest have minded Miriam's Catholicism. After all, she told me, the Anglins were a very good family. 41 Curiously, her husband gave her the same gift. She has kept them both to this day, though tactfully not together. 42 Interview with Miriam Anglin Magner, November 1990, and letter from Mrs Magner, February 1991

Notes to pages 100-3 395 CHAPTER 8 1 Michael Welton, 'On the Eve of a Great Mass Movement,' in Cassidy and Farris, eds, Choosing Our Future, 28 2 Ibid., 29 3 GPG, 'Citizens' Forum,' Food for Thought 4, no. 7 (April 1944): 16 4 Faris, The Passionate Educators, 34-5 5 GPG to Harry Avison, 5 May 1944 (Archives of Ontario, CAAE, Citizens' Forum Adm., 1943-66, BI box 3) 6 'The Citizens' Housing and Planning Association ... grows out of the increasing concern of the citizens of Toronto for the conditions under which the families of service men and low-income groups have to live. It believes these conditions to be degrading and unnecessary, a serious danger to the health, morale, and efficiency of the families and of the community, and a shameful commentary on the community's neglect of the larger welfare of its citizens.' Quoted in Albert Rose, Regent Park, 46. I have relied in thi discussion of the housing movement on Rose's treatment here and in Canadian Housing Policies, 1935-1980. 7 Jane Austen was 'very good but not quite as good as everybody says. What she knows she knows superlatively well - but there are lots of things she doesn't know & everyday life isn't everything.' 8 Minutes (Archives of Ontario, CAAE, Citizens' Forum Adm., 1943-66, BI, box 3) 9 Minutes of the National Liaison Committee, Friday December 15, 1944 (Archives of Ontario, CAAE, Citizens' Forum Adm., 1943-66, BI, box 3) 10 GPG, 'Calling All Citizens,' Food for Thought 5, no. 1 (October 1944), 2 11 Alice Boissonneau, 'Afternoon and Evening.' Alice (Eedy) Boissonneau throughout her life has written many fine short stories. This one, and those referred to hereafter, have not been published, and I am very grateful to her for permission to quote from them. I hope that some day she will see fit to publish them, because they have considerable artistic as well as historical merit. 12 Boissonneau, 'Cool' 13 Boissonneau, 'Afternoon and Evening' 14 Christian, 'George Grant and Religion,' 52 15 Notebook E: 72 16 GPG to Mother, [June,] no year [1940] (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: 42 Tanner Street, London SEl)

396

Notes to pages 103-10

17 GPG to Mother, undated [September 1941], c/o Mrs Massey, Canada House (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 18 GPG, 'Calling All Citizens,' Food for Thought 5, no. 5 (February 1945 19 Christian, 'George Grant and Religion,' 52 20 Alice Boissoneau, 'Parts of Longer Things' 21 GPG, 'Cheers and Jeers!' Food for Thought 5, no. 7 (April 1945), inside bac cover 22 GPG, 'Calling All Citizens,' Food for Thought 5, no. 5 (February 1945) 23 GPG, 'Calling All Citizens,' Food for Thought5, no. 6 (March 1945) 24 Boissonneau, 'Where'er the Curse Is Form[ed?]' 25 'SPECTRUM: The Owl and the Dynamo.' Produced by Vincent Tovell. 13 Feb. 1980 26 It went through five editions between 1943 and 1946 and was translated into French. 27 GPG, Canada: An Introduction to a Nation, 1 28 Ibid., 19 29 Ibid., 20 30 Ibid., 14 31 Ibid., 10 32 Ibid., 9 33 Ibid., 9 34 Ibid., 15 35 'COMPASS: The British Fact,' CBC television, 14 Aug. 1966 36 GPG, 'Have We a Canadian Nation?' Public Affairs (Institute of Public Affairs, Dalhousie University) 8, no. 3 (Spring 1945): 162 37 Ibid., 162 38 Ibid., 163 39 Ibid., 163 40 Ibid., 165 41 Ibid., 166 42 Ibid., 165 43 Berger, The Sense of Power, 36 44 GPG, 'Canada's present position in the British Commonwealth of Nations,' handwritten essay, [1938] (George Grant file, Rhodes House, Oxford) 45 Ibid., iii 46 Ibid., iv 47 Ibid. 48 GPG, The Empire, Yes or No? (Toronto 1945), 21 49 Ibid., 23 50 Ibid., 29

Notes to pages 110-14 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

397

Ibid., 22 Ibid., 30 Ibid., 31 Ibid., 31 Ibid., 34 Quoted in Berger, The Sense of Power, 2 Interview with Charles Taylor, 30 Jan. 1980 GPG to Corry, 17 Feb. 1972 Vincent Massey to MEG, 17 May 1944 (PAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 42, file: Mrs W.L. Grant, 1943-44) Vincent Massey to MEG, 17 Nov. 1944 (PAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 42, file: Mrs W.L. Grant, 1943-44) GPG to Dr C.K. Allen, 26 May 1945 (George Grant file, Rhodes House, Oxford) William Christian, 'George Grant and Religion' (1991), 47 Extracts from Minutes of trustees' meeting of 28 July 1945 (George Grant file, Rhodes House, Oxford) Lionel Gelber to GPG (Archives of Ontario, Ref: F1205, CAAEfiles,Directors files, BII, box 2) Citizens' Forum, National Liaison Committee meeting, Friday, 9 Mar. 1945 Alice Boissonneau, 'The Tea' CHAPTER 9

1 GPG to Dear Ould, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 2 Micklem (1888-1976) began his career as an evangelical liberal, but by the 1930s he was urging a return to more traditional theology. In a series of books written during the period (What Is Faith [1936]; A Book of Personal Religion [1938]; and Creed of a Christian [1940]), he emphasized the importance of a return to traditional Christian doctrines and the value of liturgy in Congregational worshi In his later works, particularly The Abyss of Truth and The Labyrinth (1945) he used poetic imagery to explore the mystery of divine truth. He also maintained links with German Christians throughout the whole of the Third Reich. He was president of the Liberal party in 1957-58. William Grant considered him 'a fine combination of scholar and mystic' (William Grant to Raleigh Parkin, 18 Nov. 1932 (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, file: 1910-75) 3 Nathaniel Micklem to C.K. Allen, 29 Oct. 1945 (George Grant file, Rhodes House, Oxford)

398 Notes to page 114 4 GPG to Dear Ould, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 5 C.K. Allen to Vincent Massey, 19 Nov. 1945 (George Grant file, Rhodes House, Oxford) 6 C.K. Allen to Vincent Massey, 19 Nov. 1945 (George Grant file, Rhodes House, Oxford) 7 Canon Laurence William Grensted (1884-1964) read maths and classics at Oxford before transferring to Egerton Hall, Manchester, in 1908 to read divinity. Ordained in 1910, he was vice-principal from 1910 until he became an army chaplain in 1915. After the war he was appointed principal of Egerton Hall until 1924 when he returned to Oxford, where he taught until 1950. His interests included theology, psychology, and pastoral work. His published works include A Short History of the Doctrine of Atonement (1920) and The Psychology of Religion (1952). 8 John Oman (1860-1939) was perhaps not quite as obscure as George imagined. The son of a farmer, he was born and raised in the Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland. After philosophical studies at Edinburgh, his interest in theology took him to United Presbyterian Theological College in Edinburgh and then to Erlanger and Heidelberg in Germany and Neuchatel in Switzerland. In 1907, after seven years as a minister in Alnwick in Northumberland, he became professor of systematic theology and apologetics at Westminster College, Cambridge. He was elected moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly in 1931 and became a member of the British Academy in 1938. He was regarded by his contemporaries as one of the most powerful and original religious thinkers of his day. The Natural and th Supernatural (1931), which was the focus of George's thesis, was his most admired work. Oman's theology stressed the freedom, worth, and dignity of the human personality, qualities that were endowed by God. He was regarded by his contemporaries as a man of high moral purpose and personal integrity, a man of commanding physical presence. 9 Scott, A.D. Lindsay, 288 10 GPG to Dearest Ould, 30 Dec. 1945 [from Mrs Lovett's, 126 Jamaica Road, SE16] (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) 11 GPG to Ma chere Ould, 1, 2, 3 Nov. 1945 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) 12 GPG, 'Confronting Heidegger's Nietzsche,' 3 (private papers, Halifax) 13 Grant, 'Intellectual Background,' in Schmidt, ed., George Grant in Process, 62 14 Austin Marsden Farrer (1904-68) studied classics and theology at Balliol and was ordained an Anglican priest in 1929. He described his own work as an attempt 'to understand how the first cause works through the secondary cause and not overriding the activity proper to their created nature' and 'to discern what kind of natural philosophy is most congenial to Christian

Notes to pages 115-18

399

belief.' He won renown not just as a scholar but also as a preacher; his deep piety made him an influential figure within both the academic world and the Church of England. 15 Interview with David Cayley, 1985 16 Grant, 'Intellectual Background,' 62 17 Interview with David Cayley, 1985 18 A.N. Wilson, C.S. Lewis, 182; Green and Hooper, C.S. Lewis (New York 1976), 215-16 19 GPG to David Llwellyn Dodds, 11 Nov. 1986. Some other meetings of the Socratic Club were: 12 November, 'Has Man a Soul?' H.H. Price and Austin Farrer; 28 Jan. 1946, 'Religion in the Post-War World,' Shaw Desmond and C.S. Lewis; 11 February, 'Can Science Produce a Basis for Ethics?' C.H. Waddington and Austin Farrer; 18 February, 'Superstition and Faith,' L.W. Grenstead; 16 October, 'Belief and Reason in Philosophy,' Michael Foster and AJ. Ayer; 2 December, 'Kierkegaard,' Lord Lindsay of Birker; 20 Jan. 1947, 'The Objectivity of the Christian Revelation,' T.M. Parker and H.R. Trevor-Roper; 27 January, 'Is Dogma the Shackling of Thought?' Austin Farrer and R.N. Cross; 19 May, 'Belief and Conduct,' H.D. Lewis and C.S. Lewis; 9 June, 'Christianity and Other Faiths,'J.N. Micklem. (Walter Hooper, 'Oxford's Bonny Fighter,' in J.T. Como, C.S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table & Other Reminiscences [London: Collins 1980], 137-85) 20 Interview with David Cayley, 1985 21 Interview with SVG, May 1990 22 Tony was seven years older, and hence the product of slightly less tired loins. 23 SVG to Maude Grant, fragment, 7 June, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 24 Mack and Humphries, London At War (London, 1985), 57 25 GPG to Aunt Lai, 12 November (University of Toronto Archives, B87-0082/ 298[02]) 26 Bush, An Unsentimental Education, 131-2 27 Geoffrey Bush to WEC, 21 June 1991 28 GPG to Ma chere Ould, 1, 2, 3 Nov. 1945 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) 29 GPG to Alice Boissonneau, 1945, Balliol 30 GPG to Dear Ould, 13 Nov. 1945 31 GPG to Alice Boissonneau, 13 Nov. 1945 32 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. / 51 Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed / 52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 33 GPG to Ma chere Ould, 1, 2, 3 Nov. 1945 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39)

400 Notes to pages 118-22 34 35 36 37

GPG to Dearest Ould, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) Ibid. GPG to Alice Boissonneau, 23 Dec. 1945 Alice Massey to MEG, 31 Dec. 1945 (PAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 42, file: Mrs W.L. Grant, 1945-50) 38 GPG to Dearest Ould, 30 Dec. 1945 [from Mrs Lovett's, 126 Jamaica Road, SE16] (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) 39 GPG to Dear Ould, 22 January, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 40 Alice Massey to MEG, 2 May 1946 (PAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 42, file: Mrs W.L. Grant, 1945-50) 41 GPG to Dear Ould, Easter Saturday, no year, 46A Porchester Terrace, W2 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol 38) 42 GPG to Dear Ould (Mother), 16 June, no year [1946], en route from London to Oxford (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 43 Ibid. 44 GPG to Dearest Ould, 27 Feb. 1946 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) 45 GPG to Dearest Ould, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 46 Lindsay had been ennobled by the postwar Labour government. 47 Lindsay had published a study of Bergson as early as 1911. 48 Dorothy Emmet, 'Lindsay as Philosopher,' in Scott, A.D. Lindsay, 393 49 GPG to Dearest Ould, 30 May 1946 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) 50 GPG to Dearest Ould, 25 Jan. 1946 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) 51 The immediately preceding lines are: 'To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; / To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; / To defy Power, which seems omnipotent.' 52 GPG to Dear Ould, 22 January, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 53 GPG to Dearest Ould, 27 Feb. 1946 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) 54 Detective stories were George's lifelong passion, and not the least of his pleasures were the meetings of the Carr Society, created towards the end of the war. George was co-opted as a member and later chosen honorary president. Named in honour of the famed detective writer John Dickson Carr, its members included Peter Self and his brother Michael, George, Bush, Bruce Montgomery who published detective stories under the name Edmund Crispin, Roy Mathew, and David Munir. One of the members would prepare a mystery story, which he would narrate at a rural and welllubricated retreat. The others would then try to find flaws in the clues and plot. Geoffrey Bush remembered one meeting 'at which I laughed until I was completely helpless.' The club's eponymous hero even came on one occasion. 55 George later went to a party where Gielgud asked him to dance, an offer George declined.

Notes to pages 122-9

401

56 GPG to Dearest Ould, 1 Aug. 1946 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 57 Burgon Bickersteth to Sidney Smith, 4 Aug. 1946 (University of Toronto Archives, A68-ooo7/o24[o8]) 58 GPG to Dearest Ould, 7 Aug. 1946 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 59 GPG to Sidney Smith, 7 Aug. 1946 (University of Toronto Archives, A680007/024[08]) 60 GPG to Sidney Smith, 19 Aug. 1946 (University of Toronto Archives, A680007/024[08]) 61 GPG to Dear Ould, 7 September, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 62 Ffoulkes eventually became chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority and was knighted in 1980. 63 Burgon Bickersteth to his mother, Bickersteth Papers, Massey College, 5 Sept. 1946 64 Sidney Smith to GPG, 23 Sept. 1946 (University of Toronto Archives, A680007/024[08]) 65 GPG to My dear, 24 Sept. 1946 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 66 Burgon Bickersteth to his mother, Bickersteth Papers, Massey College, 14 Oct. 1946 67 Burgon Bickersteth to his mother, Bickersteth Papers, Massey College, 20 Oct. 1946 68 Burgon Bickersteth to his mother, Bickersteth Papers, Massey College, 27 Oct. 1946 69 GPG to Dearest Ould, 28 Oct 1946 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 70 University of Toronto Archives, A68-ooo7/024(o8) 71 Ibid. 72 Burgon Bickersteth to his mother, Bickersteth Papers, Massey College, 10 Nov. 1946 73 Ibid. 74 Sidney Smith to GPG, 11 Nov. 1946 (University of Toronto Archives, A680007/024[08]) 75 Empire, 10 76 GPG to Dr Smith, 7 Dec. 1946 (University of Toronto Archives, A68-0007/ 024[o8]) 77 GPG to Dearest Ould, 19 Nov. 1946 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 78 GPG to Dearest Ould, [24 Dec] 1946, (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 79 GPG to SVG, February 1947 80 GPG to Dean Wilson, undated (Dalhousie University Archives, George Grant Philosophy, MS-l-3-168) 81 Anonymous letter of reference (Dalhousie University Archives, George Grant Philosophy, MS-l-3-168) 82 Ibid.

402 Notes to pages 129-38 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

GPG to Dearest Ould, 21 Apr. 1947 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) GPG to SVG, Allerthorpe, York, 15 Apr. 1946 Ibid. GPG, postcard, 19 May 1947 Interview with SVG, May 1990 GPG to Dr Wilson, 21 May 1947 (Dalhousie University Archives, George Grant Philosophy, MS-1-3-168) Margaret Andrew to SVG, 13 May 1947 Alison Ignatieff to SVG, 10 June 1947 Charity Grant to SVG, 13 May 1947 GPG to Dear Ould, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) CHAPTER 10

1 Dr Kerr to GPG, 1 May 1947 (Dalhousie University Archives, George Grant Philosophy, MS-1-3-168) 2 GPG to Dearest Ould, 2 October, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) 3 GPG to Dearest Ould, 26 October, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, Dalhousie University) 4 SVG to Dearest Mother, 6/9 October, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, 438 Quinpool Road, Halifax) 5 SVG to Dearest Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, 438 Quinpool Road, Halifax) 6 GPG to Aunt Lai, 31 December, 3 January, no year (NAC, MG 32A-1, vol. 55, file: George Grant Corr.) 7 GPG to Dearest Ould, 26 October, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, Dalhousie University) 8 GPG to Dearest Ould, 16 January, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, 438 Quinpool Road, Halifax) 9 GPG to Dearest Ould, 26 December, no year (NAC, MG 30 D54, vol. 30, file: George Grant, Dalhousie University) 10 GPG to Dearest Ould, 26 October, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, Dalhousie University) 11 NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, Dalhousie University) 12 GPG to Dearest Ould, 27 January, no year (NAC, MG 30 D54, vol. 39) 13 GPG to Dearest Ould, 23 January, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, Dalhousie University) 14 GPG to Dearest Ould, 24 November, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) 15 SVG to Mother, 12 December, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, 438 Quinpool Road, Halifax) 16 Halifax Chronicle, 11 Dec. 1947

Notes to pages 138-43

403

17 GPG to Dearest Ould, 12 February, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59 vol. 39, file: Grant, Dalhousie University) 18 GPG to Dearest Ould, 27 January, no year (NAC, MG 30 D54, vol. 39) 19 GPG to Dearest Ould, 12 February, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, Dalhousie University) 20 Alice Boissoneau, 'Parts of Longer Things' 21 GPG to Dr. Wilson, 21 May 1947 (Dalhousie University Archives, George Grant Philosophy, MS-1-3-168) 22 Grant, 'Intellectual Background,' in Larry Schmidt, ed., George Grant i Process (Toronto, 1978), 64 23 Interview with Nancy O'Brian, June 1993 24 George Wilson, All for Nothing? privately printed 1972, pp. 4, 5 25 Ibid., 27-8 26 Ibid., 51 27 Ibid., 59 28 GPG to Dearest Ould, 2 October, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) 29 GPG to Dearest Ould, 24 November, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) 30 GPG to Dearest Mummy, 1950 (NAC, MG 30 D54, vol. 30, file: George Grant, Dalhousie University) 31 GPG to Dearest Ould, 7 October, no year [1951] (NAC, MG 30 D54, vol. 39) 32 GPG to Dearest Ould, 22 October/2 November, no year [1951] (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) 33 GPG to Dearest Ould, 12 February, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, Dalhousie University) 34 GPG to Dearest Ould, 5/21 March, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, 438 Quinpool Road, Halifax) 35 Ibid. 36 GPG to Dearest Ould, 21 July, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 40, file: Mrs Grant correspondence, 6 Oxford Street, Road, Halifax) 37 GPG to Dearest Ould, 11 October, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 40, file: Mrs Grant correspondence, 6 Oxford Street Road, Halifax) 38 GPG to Dearest Ould, 1/7 November, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 40 file: Mrs Grant correspondence, 6 Oxford Street Road, Halifax) 39 GPG to Dearest Ould, 24 November, no year (NAC, MG 30 D54, vol. 39) 40 GPG to Dearest Ould, 7 November, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 40, file: Mrs Grant correspondence, 6 Oxford Street Road, Halifax) 41 GPG to Dr Kerr, 29 Nov. 1948 (Dalhousie University Archives, Philosophy Department 1915-55, MS-1-3/A-542) 42 Memorandum from Dr Kerr, 3 Dec. 1948 (Dalhousie University Archives, Philosophy Department 1915-55, MS-1-3/A-542) 43 GPG to Dearest Ould, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 40, file: Mrs Grant

404

44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

Notes to pages 144-8

correspondence, 6 Oxford Street Road, Halifax). The phrase 'God sees the truth but waits' comes from the title of a short story by Tolstoy (see chapter 7). George first noted it in his diary in the entry for 5 November 1942. He returned to it at the end of his life in a letter to an American correspondent, that, in quick-fire, refers to three of the major influences on George's thought - Henry James, Tolstoy, and Simone Weil. 'Thank you for your letter & its awful enclosure [a copy of an editorial in the New York Times titled "Life, Industrialized"]. I agree that the New York Times comments are ghastly about such an appalling activity. It makes one "turn one's face to the wall" - but I think the early Christians were correct in saying that despair was a very great sin. I am able to say this because I have been so prone to it and know how evil it is. One of Tolstoi's stories has the title "God sees the truth, but waits." I also think of Simone Weil's beautiful statement (which I can only paraphrase), "If there were not authentic good, what would evil deprive us of." But I am scared for the world my grandchildren move into.' GPG to David Bovenizer, 6 March 1988 GPG to Dearest Ould, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 40 file: Mrs Grant correspondence, 6 Oxford Street Road, Halifax) Review of The Function of the University by R.S.K. Seeley (Toronto: Oxfo University Press 1948) in Food for Thought, December 1948, pp. 43-4 GPG to Gerald Graham, 3 June 1949, from Upper Hill Farm, Quainton, Bucks GPG to Dearest Ould, 1 June 1949 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, file: Grant 1929-57) SVG to Dearest Mother, 3 June 1949 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, file: Grant 1929-57) GPG to Dearest Ould, 25 Oct. 1949, 63 Blackheath Park, SW3 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, file: Grant 1929-57) GPG to Dearest Ould, 13 March (?) 1950 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, file: Grant 1929-57) GPG to Dearest Dearest Ould, September 1949 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, file: Grant 1929-57) GPG to Dearest Ould, 6 Nov. 1949 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, file: Grant 1929-57) Charity Grant to GPG, April 1950 'The Concept of Nature and Supernature in the Theology of John Oman,' D.Phil, thesis (Oxford, Balliol), 1950, p. 90 Ibid., 86 Ibid., 122 Ibid., 22 Ibid., 128

Notes to pages 148-53 405 59 Ibid., 195 60 Ibid., 253 61 Ibid., Abstract, p. 5 62 Ibid., 253 63 Ibid., 190 64 Ibid., 263 65 'He explained how he had written his dissertation - not a very good one either, he said - on an obscure theologian ... The dissertation, he said, was not of the slightest interest to anyone, least of all himself, but it served the practical purpose of getting him a degree with the minimum of fuss. It was only much later in life that he confronted the big issues, and even then, only cautiously, tentatively.' James R. Field, 'Reminiscences of a Graduate Student: A Chat with Doctor Grant,' printout, [1992], p. 15 (used with permission) 66 GPG to Dearest Ould, 2(?) July 1950 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, file: Grant 1929-57) 67 L.W. Grensted to C.K. Allen, 30 Oct. 1950 (George Grant file, Rhodes House, Oxford) 68 C.K- Allen to L.W. Grensted, 30 Oct. 1950 (George Grant file, Rhodes House, Oxford) 69 W.L. Grensted to C.K. Allen, 30 Oct. 1945 (George Grant file, Rhodes House, Oxford) 70 GPG to Dearest Ould, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, file: Grant 192957) 71 GPG to Dearest Ould, 2(?) July 1950 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, file: Grant 1929-57) CHAPTER 11

1 GPG to Dr Kerr, undated, c/o Mrs Grant, RR 2, Parry Sound (Dalhousie University Archives, George Grant Philosophy, MS-1-3-168) 2 Ibid. 3 SVG to Dearest Mother, 17 October, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: George Grant, Dalhousie University) 4 GPG to Dearest Ould, 22 October, no year (NAC, MG 30 D54, vol. 30, file: George Grant, Dalhousie University) 5 William Christian, 'George Grant and Religion,' 43 6 Claude Bissell, The Imperial Canadian, 338n. 7 Review of The Philosophy of Francis Bacon by F.H. Anderson. Chicago and Toronto: University of Chicago Press and WJ. Gage, Dalhousie Review 28 (1948): 312-13. The same issue also had a review of Frank Pickersgill's

406

Notes to pages 153-6 letters: 'Moral courage such as Pickersgill's is a virtue before which one

can only bow. There is only one greater - charity. That he had as well. It is the final condemnation of our epoch that he was forced to employ those virtues in the viciousness of war. It is his glory that he was forced to employ those virtues in the viciousness of war. It is his glory that he did so employ them'(314). This beautiful review is rendered more poignant by the fact that Pickersgill and George's sister Alison were romantically involved in the early stages of the war. 8 'Philosophy,' inRoyal Commission Studies: A Selection of Essays Prepared for the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences (Ottawa 1951), 119 9 Ibid., 121 10 Ibid., 121 n Ibid., 124 12 Ibid., 126 13 His respect for Cochrane would never diminish. He would eventually conclude that Frye was 'such a good friend of modern society' that his thought amounted to little more than 'what a well-educated secularized Protestant gets from a careful reading' of the Bible (book review ofThe Great Code: The Bible and Literature by Northrop Frye, Globe and Mail, 27 Feb. 1982: E17). As for Innis, George decided that he could not be called 'a philosopher. He was a scientist in the sense that what he asked about anything, past or present, was how it worked. He did not ask those questions which belong traditionally to philosophy ... To put it mildly, the eternal was not his dish' (book review of The Idea File of Harold Adams Innis, ed. by William Christian, Globe and Mail, 31 May 1980: E12). 14 GPG, 'Philosophy,' 127 15 Ibid., 132 16 Philosophy in Canada: A Symposium, ed. J.A. Irving, intro. Fulton Anderson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1952), 4 17 Ibid., 2 18 B.K. Sandwell, 'Experts Disagree: A Canadian Philosophy?' Saturday Night, 12 July 1952, p. 5 19 SVG to Dearest Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, 200 University Avenue, Halifax) 20 GPG to Dearest Ould, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) 21 GPG to Dearest Ould, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) 22 GPG to Dearest Ould, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) 23 Christian, 'George Grant and Religion,' 43 24 'Pursuit of an Illusion: A Commentary on Bertrand Russell,' Dalhousie Review 32, no. 22 (Summer 1952): 105

Notes to pages 156-62 25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

407

Ibid., 108 Ibid., 109 GPG to Dearest Ould, 13 September, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) GPG to Peter Self, 1986? GPG to Dearest Ould, 15 July, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, Dalhousie University) The review was broadcast on 16 December 1951. The archivists at CBC radio archives agreed that this material was important and searched for it assiduously, to no avail. They speculated that George had recorded it on a small phono disk, which was then sent to Toronto for broadcast with the program. Such disks were often re-used. GPG to Dearest Ould, undated (NAC, MG 30 D54, vol. 39) GPG to Dear Mum, undated (NAC, MG 30 D54, vol. 30, file: George Grant, Dalhousie University) GPG to Dearest Ould, undated (NAC, MG 30 D54, vol. 39) GPG to Dearest Ould, 24 Apr. 1953 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, Dalhousie University) GPG to Dearest Ould, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, 200 University Avenue, Halifax Interview with Raleigh Parkin, 13 Sept. 1972 (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, 1941-72) GPG to Dearest dearest Mummy, July 1950 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, file: Grant, 63 Blackheath Park, London SE3) GPG to Dearest Ould, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, 200 University Avenue, Halifax) GPG to Dearest Ould, 28 Aug. 1952 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, file: Grant 1929-57) GPG to Dearest Ould, Sunday 6 Apr. [1952] (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, 200 University Avenue, Halifax) GPG to Dr. Kerr, 29 Feb. 1952 (Dalhousie University Archives, Philosophy Department 1915-55, MS-1-3/A-542) GPG to Dearest Ould, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, 200 University Avenue, Halifax) GPG to Dearest Ould, Sunday 6 Apr. [1952] (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, 200 University Avenue, Halifax) GPG to Dear Mother, 9 May, no year (NAC, MG 30 D54, vol. 39) Ibid. GPG to Dear Mother, 9 May, undated (NAC, MG 30 D54, vol. 39) GPG to Dearest Mum, 4 Dec. 1951 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, Dalhousie University) 'Speech on eduction at Teachers' Institute, Bridgetown, 1952,' 8 (private

408

50 51 52 53

Notes to pages 163-7

papers, GPG to GPG to GPG to GPG to

Halifax) Dearest Ould, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) Dearest Ould, undated (NAC, MG 30 D54, vol. 39) Dearest Ould, 1 September, no year (NAC, MG 30 D54, vol. 39) Dearest Mum, 20 June 1953 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, file: Grant

1929-57) 54 GPG to Dearest Ould, 8 Jan. 1952 (NAC, MG 30 D54, vol. 39) 55 'Philosophy and Adult Education,' Food for Thought14, no. 1 (SeptemberOctober 1953): 8 56 GPG to Dearest Ould, 8 Mar. 1952 (NAC, MG 30 D54, vol. 39) 57 'SPECTRUM: The Owl and the Dynamo.' Produced by Vincent Tovell (13 Feb. 1980). It was not a love of which Sheila was jealous, although she preferred Bach herself. Indeed she could well hold her own in music arguments, which were common and sometimes intense, since her musical background was stronger than his. He once came to class at McMaster, confessing that he now knew what it was to be taught by ridicule. Sheila had the previous night spent two hours at the piano proving to him, chapter and verse, that he did not understand the difference between harmony and counterpoint. His admiration and love for her was clear in his voice. They also had a memorable fight on the way back from the Glyndebourne Festival in England whether George's favourite singer, Sena Jurinac, could sing the role of Pamina in Mozart's Magic Flute. 58 GPG to Dearest Ould, 13 September, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) 59 GPG, 'Address to the Community Chest,' typescript, ca. 1953, p. 2 (private papers, Halifax) 60 Ibid., 4 61 GPG to Dearest Mum, 20 June 1953 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, file: Grant 1929-57) 62 GPG to Dearest Ould, undated (NAC, MG 30 D54, vol. 38) CHAPTER 12 1 GPG to Dearest Mum, 28 Jan. 1954 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, Dalhousie University) 2 GPG to Dear Mum, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) 3 'Charles Cochrane,' 'Anthology,' CBC, 26 Oct. 1954, 11 PM 4 'Plato and Popper,' Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science20, no. 2 (May 1954): 193 5 'Adult Education in the Expanding Economy,' Food for Thought 15 (Septem ber-October 1954): 4

Notes to pages 170-5

409

6 Ibid., 5 7 Ibid., 10 8 Others attribute them to Cardinal Newman. Newman has the words, in Latin, on his tombstone and Ian Ker, Newman's biographer, believes they are Newman's own. (Private communication) 9 GPG, 'Adult Education,' 10 10 GPG to SVG, 31 May 1954 11 Ibid. 12 Much later he would take the American explorer and scientist Stefansson to show him the beautiful curves and lights of rock and sea at Terrence Bay. 'A hard country, but beautiful,' George observed. Stefansson responded with a lecture on the inappropriateness of using such subjective language about terrain; the modern scientist saw nature as objective. It was an illuminating moment for George. 13 GPG to Dearest Mum, 6 March, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39) 14 Ibid. 15 GPG to Dearest Mum, 24 June 1955 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, file: Grant 1929-57) 16 GPG to Mary and Gerald Graham, postmarked 30 June 1955 17 The City of Toronto acquired the land after Maude's death to connect the Spadina expressway to University Avenue. When the plan to build the expressway was dropped, the City sold the property to the Park Plaza at a very considerable profit. 18 GPG to Dearest Mum, 14 July 1955 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, file: Grant 1929-57) 19 GPG to Dearest Mum, 9 Aug. 1955 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, file: Grant 1929-57) 20 Ibid. 21 GPG to Mary and Gerald Graham, postmarked 30 June 1955 22 'From the Couchiching Conference: The Minds of Men in the Atomic Age,' Canadian Home and School, 16 23 Ibid., 16 24 Ibid., 17 25 Ibid., 17 26 Ibid., 18 27 Ibid., 20 28 Ibid., 21 29 Paul Roddick to WEC, 24 Feb. 1991 30 Ibid. I draw the following account from this letter. 31 Ibid.

410 Notes to pages 175-81 32 GPG fragment (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: George P. Grant, Dalhousie University) 33 'The Paradox of Democratic Education,' the annualJ.W. Ansley Memorial Lecture, pp. 3-13. Given at St Denis Hall, Assumption College, 28 Oct. 1955, to the Ontario Secondary School Federation, at 8:15 PM 34 Ibid., 4 35 Ibid., 5 36 Ibid., 9 37 Ibid., 11 38 Ibid., 13 39 'Jean-Paul Sartre,' in Architects of Modern Thought (Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 1955), 65-6 40 Ibid., 67 41 Ibid., 68 42 Ibid., 73 43 Ibid., 73 44 Interview with David Cayley, 1985 45 Untitled typescript, 1985? 46 Interview with David Cayley, 1985 47 Untitled typescript, 1985? 48 Joan O'Donovan wrote in George Grant and the Twilight of Justice: 'While Grant's discussion of Sartre's thought has some illuminating theological points, it is his exposition of Dostoevsky that deserves our attention owing to its reflections on the problem of necessity' (p. 26). 49 GPG to Dearest Ould, Christmas 1950 (NAC, MG 30 D54, vol. 30, file: George Grant, Dalhousie University) 50 GPG to Dearest Mum, 11 November, no year (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, 200 University Avenue, Halifax) 51 GPG, fragment, 11 Apr. 1955 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, file: Grant 192957) 52 For Sheila the most surprising aspect of the ceremony was the requirement that she renounce publicly the Roman Catholic church. 53 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Province of Manitoba Archives), received 29 Mar. 1959 54 Massey, What's Past Is Prologue, 493-4 55 GPG fragment (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: George P. Grant, Dalhousie University) 56 GPG to Dearest Mum, 28 Jan. 1956 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 39, file: Grant, Dalhousie University) 57 GPG to Dr Kerr, 26 Apr. 1955 (Dalhousie University Archives, George Grant Philosophy, MS-1-3-168)

Notes to pages 182-9 411 58 GPG, 'The Uses of Freedom - A Word and Our World,' Queen's Quarterl 62, no. 4 (Winter 1955): 516

59 Ibid., 518 60 Ibid., 519 61 Ibid., 520 62 Ibid., 520 63 Ibid., 527 64 GPG to Dearest Mum, 1 Dec. 1956 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, file: Grant 1929-57) 65 GPG to Dearest Mum, 2 Nov. 1956 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, file: Grant 1929-57) 66 Foster, Mystery & Philosophy, 1 67 Ibid., 41 68 Notebook I: 45. From about this period until the end of his life, George kept notebooks, usually using the kind of lined, spiral-bound books that students use for taking notes in lectures. Although many of these are reading notes, the books also contain reflections and observations of an important philosophic nature. They are not dated, so that many of them cannot be placed with certainty. Where there is a designation, such as 'I' in this case, it has been assigned by Sheila Grant. For their tentative dating, I take full responsibility. 69 Ibid., 99 70 Ibid., 86 71 Ibid., 34 72 Ibid., 53-5 73 Ibid., 139 74 GPG to Dearest Mum, 2 Nov. 1956 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, file: Grant 1929-57) 75 'Fighting Words,' 27 Aug. 1956, from London, England. Other guests were Ted Allen and Elaine Grand. 76 Notebook I: 102 77 GPG to Dearest Mum, 3 Jan. 1957 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, file: Grant 1929-57) 78 GPG to Dearest Mumbles, 25 Apr. 1957 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38, file: Grant 1929-57) CHAPTER 13 1 GPG to Mum, Norwich, 12 August, no year [1941] (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 2 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Province of Manitoba

412

Notes to pages 189-94

Archives). Marked received 29 Apr. 1958 3 GPG, Philosophy in the Mass Age (Toronto, New York 1960), 2 (hereafter PMA) 4 Ibid., PMA, 32 5 Ibid., PMA, 34. Moral conduct, he argued, could never be a matter of our convenience and, in a foreshadowing of something that loomed very large in his later thought, the question of abortion served as an illustration. Natural law said that it was wrong to extinguish a potential human soul, whether or not it suits our present convenience to do so. 6 Ibid., 40 7 Ibid., 48 8 Ibid., 51 9 Ibid., 64 10 Ibid., 70 11 Ibid., 77 12 Ibid., 99-100 13 Ibid., 100 14 Ibid., 100 15 Ibid., 101 16 Ibid., 109 17 Ibid., 112 18 Ibid., 13 19 Robert Fulford, 'The Enemy of Uplift,' Toronto Star,11 Nov. 1959 20 Sydney Harris, 'Our Moral Life' (review of PMA found in Grant's papers) 21 PMA (1966), vii 22 George Grant and the Tivilighi of Justice, 10 23 Ibid., 7 24 GPG to Corry, 17 Feb. 1972 25 GPG to SVG, en route to Montreal, August 1957 26 'What I say now is not for this course or for your understanding at this stage of your lives or perhaps never - but I say it because someday it might interest you. It is this: that I have found in Martin Heidegger, the most famous of German existentialists - indeed the founder of existentialism as a philosophical movement - an interpretation of Greek philosophy which is very similar to some of the remarks I have been making this year. Not in his early works - but in his later works which are only now becoming available.' GPG, Philosophy 7, on Plato, 1958-59, Dalhousie 27 There was even a grave danger in undertaking the task: one might lose heart and succumb to the modern. There were great and powerful, though incomplete, truths in modernity.

Notes to pages 195-205

413

28 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Province of Manitoba Archives), received 1 Jan. 1959 29 'The University of Toronto Quarterly,' typescript of an unpublished address, ca. 1958, p. 2 30 Ibid., 4 31 'Christ, What a Planet,' CBC radio, 27 Dec. 1959, typescript, p. 4 32 Letter to SVG, undated but envelope postmarked 3 June 1958 33 Allan Wargon to WEC, 27 Feb. 1991 34 GPG, 'Memorandum on Phase II,' typescript dated 19 May 1960, p. 10 35 Ibid., 17 36 Raleigh Parkin to Professor George Homans, 26 May 1959 (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, 1941-72) 37 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Province of Manitoba Archives), received 14 Nov. 1959 38 Ibid. 39 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Province of Manitoba Archives), 17 Dec. 1959 40 Interview with Paul Axelrod, 16 Feb. 1977 41 Denis Smith, Registrar, York University, to GPG, 10 Feb. 1960 42 Interview with Jim Aitchison, May 1990 43 Fulton Anderson to GPG, 19 Feb. 1960 44 Marcus Long, secretary to the Department of Philosophy to GPG, 18 Feb. 1960 45 GPG to Murray Ross, 27 Feb. 1960 46 Murray Ross, Memo to Teaching Staff, 22 Mar. 1960 47 GPG to President Ross, 14 Apr. 1960 48 Murray Ross to GPG, 20 Apr. 1960 49 George Tatham to GPG, undated, April 1960? 50 GPG to George Tatham, 1 May 1960 51 Murray Ross to GPG, 10 May 1960 52 Murray Ross to GPG, 12 May 1960 53 Interview with Paul Axelrod, 16 Feb. 1977 54 Murray Ross to GPG, 1 June 1960 CHAPTER 14

1 George Grant, 'Intellectual Background,' in Schmidt, ed., George Grant in Process, 67. George gave a similar account in the TV program Vincent Tovell made about his life, 'SPECTRUM: The Owl and the Dynamo.' 13 Feb. 1980

414

Notes to pages 205-9

2 They had bought the house with money borrowed from York. When the job fell through, they had to make other arrangements. 3 Interview with Susanna Wild, October 1990 4 GPG, 'Philosophy and Religion,' in The Great Ideas Today 1961 (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica), 336-76 5 Ibid., 337 6 Ibid., 356 7 Ibid., 356 8 Interview with Susanna Wild, October 1990 9 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Province of Manitoba Archives), 15 Nov. 1960 10 GPG, 'St John's College Convocation Address,' 1 Nov. 1960, p. 1 11 Ibid., 2 12 Ibid., 5 13 Ibid., 9 14 Ibid., 10 15 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Manitoba Archives), 5 June 1960 16 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Manitoba Archives), undated [late 1960] 17 GPG to Derek Bedson, (Bedson Private Papers, Manitoba Archives), 5 June 1960. George had been indirectly involved with another Winnipeg educational institution, United College, two years before. A major crisis of academic freedom erupted, and George had written to his old UCC friend Ken McNaught, who was teaching there, to express his 'high admiration' for his courage, and to reassure him that there were 'many people in academic life ready to take what action they can to stand behind you.' In a phrase that anticipated his own problems with York, he observed that it did 'the soul good to think of people acting on principle and with such fine courage.' GPG to Kenneth McNaught, 1 Dec. 1958 18 W.M. Sibley to WEC, 18 Apr. 1991 19 W.M. Sibley, chairman, Dept. of Philosophy, U. of Manitoba to GPG, 9 Jan. 1961 20 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Province of Manitoba Archives), 7 Nov. 1960 21 See C.M.Johnston, 'McMaster University,' in The Canadian Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., pp. 1278-9 22 Interview with Herb Armstrong, 7 Feb. 1991 23 Paul Clifford to Rev. Cannon Michael Creal, 28 Nov. 1960 24 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Manitoba Archives), undated [late 1960]

Notes to pages 210-14

415

25 GPG to Paul Clifford, 10 Dec. 1960 26 GPG to Paul Clifford, 18 Jan. 1961 27 GPG to Derek Bedson, (Bedson Private Papers, Province of Manitoba Archives), 19 Jan. 1961. He was also relieved he could establish a more friendly relationship with Clifford. For his whole life George was very much of the Old School; first names were not used until the more senior person invited it. 'It was good of you to address me as "George" and I will in future call you Paul. I did not want to seem to encroach on your friendship, because I wanted the job so much.' Many former colleagues at McMaster, as well as virtually all former students, still refer to him as Dr Grant. I had known him for a decade before I ventured a rather unselfconfident 'George.' Once the barrier of the first name had been broken down, it was still possible to achieve even greater intimacy of address. A mutual friend did everything in her power over several years to provoke him, until she was finally rewarded with an affectionate 'You little shit!' 28 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Province of Manitoba Archives), 21 June 1961 29 GPG to Raleigh, 11 July 1961, 132 Farnham Ave. (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, 1941-72) 30 GPG, 'An Ethic of Community,' inSocial Purpose for Canada, ed. Michael Oliver (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1961), 6 31 Ibid., 8 32 Ibid., 16 33 Ibid., 17 34 Ibid., 19 35 Ibid., 20-21 36 Ibid., 21 37 Ibid., 21 38 Ibid., 22 39 Ibid., 26 40 Ibid., 26 41 GPG to Raleigh, June 1961 (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, 1941-72) 42 Robert Fulford, 'The Angry Loser,' Hamilton Spectator, 22 Jan. 1966, p. 8 43 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Province of Manitoba Archives), 5 Apr. 1962 44 GPG to Derek Bedson, (Bedson Private Papers, Province of Manitoba Archives), received 3 Dec. 1962 45 GPG to SVG, Toronto, September 1957 46 To get a down payment for the house, George turned to Rose Maclnnes, an old friend of his mother. Mrs Maclnnes was a considerable eccentric

416 Notes to pages 214-18 who had lived with her husband only briefly after their wedding; she then expelled him from the house and he had to stay at his club, Toronto's exclusive York Club, whenever he was in town. She regularly took her main meal of the day at noon there, but since it was a men's club, when her husband died she lost her dining privileges. She retaliated by not giving the club two fine horse paintings by the celebrated English painter Stubbs. George coveted these himself, though he was not to get them. He thought she lost interest in him when he married, but later she considered him so eccentric for having six children that she opened her heart to him again. She gave him sufficient money for the down payment on the Dundas house, plus several pieces of fine furniture and a large carpet. When she died, she bequeathed to George anything left from her kitchen. She was a strong and imposing woman. George loved her and was grateful. 47 GPG, 'Review of Fountain Come Forth: The Anglican Church and the Valley

Town of Dundas, by R.B. Gilman.' ca. 1961 (private papers, Halifax). This review may never have been published. CHAPTER 15 I The second time I met George was in 1974 when he delivered the Wood Lectures at Mount Allison. I had stayed over the previous night in Stellarton near New Glasgow with friends; the day of the first lecture, there was a big snow storm and my hosts urged me to stay. I explained that I had to get back because of George Grant's lecture. His name met with a blank stare; so I added that he was the grandson of George Monro Grant. 'Oh yes,' they replied, 'the preacher.' 2 Book review of The Predicament of Democratic Man by Edmond Cahn, University of Toronto Law fournal 15, no. 4: 461 3 GPG, 'Conceptions of Health,' in Psychiatry and Responsibility, ed. Helmut Schoeck and James W. Wiggins (Princeton: Van Nostrand 1962), 118 4 Ibid., 119 5 Ibid., 120 6 Ibid., 121 7 Ibid., 118 8 Ibid., 133 9 'Carl Gustavjung,' in 'Architects of Modern Thought,' 5th and 6th Series, twelve talks for CBC radio (Toronto 1962), 70 10 Ibid., 71 II Ibid., 71 12 Ibid., 72 13 Alice Boissonneau, 'In My Room'

Notes to pages 218-25

417

14 'Value and Technology,' in Conference Proceedings: "Welfare Services in a Changing Technology' (Ottawa: Canadian Conference on Social Welfare 1964), 2 15 Ibid., 29 16 'Paper to N.R.C. Symposium,' typescript, p. 15 17 D.K.C. MacDonald to GPG, 10 Nov. 1961 18 D.K.C. MacDonald to GPG, 8 Dec. 1961; summarizes Grant's earlier letter. 19 GPG to D.K.C. MacDonald, 14 Dec. 1961 20 GPG to D.K.C. MacDonald, 24 Jan. 1962 21 When Black died of cancer at the age of fifty, George lost one of his best friends at McMaster. The funeral was conducted by a distinguished Hamilton rabbi, and George was asked by Black's widow to choose the coffin. 22 GPG to Paul Clifford, 9 July 1962 23 GPG, 'Sermon for Student Service,' 6 Oct. 1961 24 GPG to Rhoda and Douglas Hall, 5 Sept. 1961 25 'Dr. G. Grant,' interviewed by S. Gadsden and M. Penny, in R. in R. (ed. J. Field, S. Gadsden, and I. Kocmarek) 5, no. 1 (December 1975): 6 [mimeographed magazine prepared by graduate students in McMaster department of religion] 26 GPG to Paul Clifford, 9 July 1962 27 'Philosophy and Religion,' 362 28 Ibid., 363 29 GPG to Rhoda and Douglas Hall, 5 Sept. 1961 30 'G. Grant,' in R. in K, 7 31 Katharine Temple, talk at the Catholic Worker, New York, May 1989 32 'The History of the Department of Religion at McMaster: Interview with George Grant,' [ca. 1975], mimeographed, 3 33 For more on Strauss's life and thought, see 'Leo Strauss,' in Allan Bloom, Giants and Dwarfs: Essays ig6o-iggo (New York: Simon and Schuster 1990) 235-55. 34 GPG, PMA, ix 35 For a short account of Kojeve's life and thought, see Allan Bloom, 'Alexandre Kojeve,' in Giants and Dwarfs, 268-73. 36 Bloom, Giants and Dwarfs, 270 37 And presumably closer than James Doull 38 GPG, 'Tyranny and Wisdom,' in Technology and Empire: Perspectives on North America (Toronto 1969), 86 39 Ibid., 92 40 Ibid., 93 41 Ibid., 94 42 Ibid., 97

418 Notes to pages 225-9 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

Ibid., 98 Ibid., 107 Ibid., 108 Ibid., 108 Ibid., 109 Leo Strauss to GPG, 20 June 1962 GPG to Leo Strauss, 21 Jan. 1965 Leo Strauss to GPG, 4 Feb. 1965 PMA (1966), ix GPG to Leo Strauss, 25 Apr. 1966 GPG to Joseph Cropsey, 16 Sept. 1966 GPG to Jacob Klein, 16 Sept. 1966. In this letter he also acknowledges his debt to Klein, and he was thinking of Klein's Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra,trans, by Eva Brann (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press 1968). Although Klein's book was important, GPG was more influenced by Simone Weil's writings on Greek mathematics. 55 GPG, Book review of The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul, Canadian Dimension3, nos. 3, 4 (March-April, May-June 1966): 54 (Hereafter 'Ellul') 56 PMA (1966), ix 57 Interview with David Cayley, 1985 58 PMA (1966), iii 59 'Ellul,' 60 60 Yet Ellul represented an advance over Hegel because the 'answer to historical questions is not practically important compared to certainty of analysis about the immediacies of the present.' GPG, 'Ellul,' 60 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 Hugh McLennan to GPG, 23 Mar. 1969 CHAPTER 16

1 PMA (1966), ix 2 Quoted in Edwin and David Heaven, 'Some Influences of Simone Weil on George Grant's Silence,' in Larry Schmidt, ed., George Grant in Process, 75 3 GPG, 'Introduction to the reading of Simone Weil,' unpaginated. This phrase, of course, excludes writers before the twentieth century, particularly Plato and Kant. It is, however, more comprehensive than the praise given to Leo Strauss, which is limited to 'contemporary writings.' That phrase would not include Weil, because she died in 1943. Among Grant's papers are three typescripts concerning Simone Weil.

Notes to pages 229-31

419

The most finished, which appears to be something he delivered orally, dates from about 1963. It is paginated and originally bore the title 'Simone Weil.' In 1970 GPG made handwritten revisions to it, and retitled it 'Introduction to Simone Weil.' I cite the revised version, and use its revised title. The second document is partly typed and partly in manuscript. It is titled 'Introduction to the reading of Simone Weil,' and is an unpaginated, fragmentary, first draft of the book on Weil GPG intended to write. It therefore probably dates from 1965 or 1966. The third typescript is titled 'Some comments on Simone Weil and the neurotic and the alienated.' It is five pages long. 4 GPG, 'Introduction to the reading of Simone Weil,' unpaginated typescript, [1965?] 5 See Leslie Fielder, 'Biographical Note,' in Simone Weil, Waiting on God (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1951) The American edition is titled Waiting for Go 6 GPG to SVG, en route to Edmonton, undated but June 1958 7 GPG to SVG, en route from Edmonton to Toronto, undated but June/July 1958 8 GPG to SVG, 9 rue de Chaillot, Paris 16e, 13 June 1963 9 GPG to SVG, Delegation du Canada, 9 rue de Chaillot, Paris 16e, 16 June 1963 10 Mme Weil inscribed one of her daughter's Agatha Christie murder mysteries and gave it to George. n 'In Defence of Simone Weil,' review essay of Simone Weil: A Modern Pilgrimage by Robert Coles, The Idler no. 15 (January-February 1988): 39 12 Interview with Andrew Ignatieff, 30 Nov. 1990 13 GPG, 'Introduction to the reading of Simone Weil' 14 'To proceed from what seems an indubitable fact: by whatever language one may choose to define Christianity, it is impossible to escape the statement that charity is at its centre. Without raising the vexed question of whether there is a distinction between natural or supernatural virtue or indeed the previous question whether the word virtue has any place in an consistent Christian vocabulary, it is unequivocally true that in asserting the truth of Christianity, one is asserting that the highest human life is to give oneself away. The assertion that this is not true implies the assertion that Christianity is nonsense. It is also a fact in my opinion that Simone Weil lived such a life of charity.' (GPG, 'Introduction to the reading of Simone Weil') 15 Ibid. Weil's friend and biographer Simone Petrement does not share George's early view that her philosophy was without contradictions: 'Her

420 Notes to pages 231-6 contradictions, at least the apparent ones, come from the fact that at times she comes to a halt and doesn't follow the development of an idea through to the end so as not to go beyond the certainties of her own experience. In her eyes, being faithful to her experience was more important than eliminating all contradictions or following a logical development to its end' (Simone Petrement, Simone Weil, trans. Raymond Rosenthal [New York: Random House 1977], 500) George himself came later to accept this position: 'S.W.'s work is swarming with contradictions, paradoxes, gaps - and part of the interest in studying her is to come to terms with those gaps, paradoxes, etc ... System is for armies and bureaucracies, openness to the whole is philosophy. Difficulty between practical and theoretical men practice is closing down -justice limits. Theory opens.' GPG, 'Notes for class on Simone Weil, 1975-6,' 83. Typescript selection of extracts by SVG, P. 15 16 GPG, 'Introduction to Simone Weil,' 11 17 Ibid., 13 18 Ibid., 20 19 Philosophy in the Mass Age (1966), v 20 Ibid. 21 Literally, jilioque means 'and from the son.' 22 See 'Filioque Controversy,' in The New Shaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (Berlin 1985), 4, 312-13. See also Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 2, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1974), 183198. 23 Sherrard, The Greek East and the Latin West (London: Oxford University Press 1959), 61 24 Ibid., 67 25 Ibid., 67 26 Ibid., 68 27 Ibid., 70 28 Mimeographed interview, ca. 1975 29 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Province of Manitoba Archives), received 21 Sept. 1965 30 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. David Magarshack (London: Penguin 1958), 302 31 William Christian, 'George Grant and Religion,' 46 32 GPG, 'Introduction to Simone Weil,' 24 33 Ibid., 25 34 Ibid., 26 35 To affirm God's existence is only to say that the divine cannot be counted

Notes to pages 237-42

421

among the things that do not exist. Even to call God good meant only that the divine is the goal or limit to which all being aspires. 36 Simone Weil, 'Letter IV: Spiritual Autobiography,' in Wailing on God (New York: Harper & Row 1951, 1973) 37 GPG, 'Notes for a Sermon,' probably 1979 38 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Province of Manitoba Archives), received 11 Apr. 1963 39 GPG, English-Speaking Justice, 60. British writer A.N. Wilson came independently to the same conclusion: 'It is a characteristic of people who say that they believe in predestination that actually they appear to live by the will. Half the engineers, missionaries, businessmen, doctors and civil servants in the British Empire were Calvinists, but that did not stop them thinking that their own presence was essential to the smooth running of things from Saskatchewan to New South Wales.' (A.N. Wilson, Tolstoy [London: Penguin 1988], 252) 40 GPG, English-Speaking Justice, 64 41 To the end of his life, one of his favourite quotations was Luther's: 'The theologian of glory says that good is evil and evil good. The theologian of the Cross says the thing is as it is.' 42 GPG, 'Introduction to Simone Weil,' 29-30 43 George Grant, 'Qui Tollis,' typescript, probably 1962 or 1963 44 GPG, 'Introduction to Simone Weil,' 31 45 GPG to Principal Salmon, 20 Sept. 1966 CHAPTER 17 1 John Diefenbaker's first wife, Edna, had also been a patient there. 2 Her gracious manners never failed her; they were bred in the bone. Sheila Grant recalls visiting her in Homewood shortly before her death. Although she had no idea who Sheila was, she shook her hand and greeted her warmly, just as she would have welcomed any stranger to her drawing-room on Prince Arthur. 3 I have followed George Perlin's excellent account in The Tory Syndrome (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press 1980), chap. 4. 4 Interview with David Cayley, 1985 5 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Province of Manitoba Archives), received 2 Feb. 1964 6 'Viewpoint,' CBC Radio, 26 July 1963 7 GPG to Rhoda and Doug Hall, 24 Jan. 1964 8 GPG to Charity Grant, 9 Mar. 1964 9 Catherine Grant to SVG, undated

422 Notes to pages 242-7 10 GPG to Gaston Laurion, early 1988? George always sympathized with the losers at Culloden. Once, though, at a party at McMaster in honour of a visiting Scottish theologian, he was expounding Leo Strauss's view that Culloden marked a turning-point in European history. After listening for a while, the Scottish divine became impatient and interrupted: 'The Grants fought at Culloden all right, but they were spies for the English, and they fled the minute the battle started.' It was George's turn to be crushed. 11 The full passage is: 'Since I have been sinning daily and repenting not, the fear of death distresses me. Since in hell there is no redemption, have pity on me, God, and save me.' 12 Albert Fell, editor, Queen's Quarterly, to GPG, 21 Feb. 1964 13 GPG to Frances Halpenny, U of T Press, 25 Feb. 1964 14 GPG to Ramsay Cook, 25 Feb. 1964 15 GPG toJ.S. Campsie, 3 Mar. 1964 16 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Province of Manitoba Archives), received 2 July 1964 17 John Campsie, editor, Dent & Sons, 29 July 1964 18 James M. Minnifie to GPG, 7 Sept. 1965 19 GPG to Mr. Totten, 29 Oct. 1964 20 'This Country in the Morning,' 10 Oct. 1973 21 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Province of Manitoba Archives), undated 22 GPG, Lament for a Nation (Toronto 1965), 2 23 Ibid., 31 24 Ibid., 31 25 Ibid., 2 26 Interview with George Wallace, April 1991 27 William Lawson Grant and Frederick Hamilton, George Monro Grant (Toronto: Morang & Co. 1905), 402-3 28 Lament, 5—6 29 Interview with Raleigh Parkin, 13 Sept. 1972 (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, 1941-72) 30 'This Country in the Morning,' 10 Oct. 1973 31 When Diefenbaker came to Hamilton to make at speech, he asked McMaster President Henry Thode to introduce him to George. Thode arranged a small dinner party at the Hamilton Club, but he was surprised that they did not get on better. There was clearly some tension between them. However, Diefenbaker subsequently sought George's advice, wrote him the odd note, phoned from time to time; and indeed after he lost the leadership in 1967, he paid George the very high honour of asking him to write his biography. George declined, saying that for Canada's sake it was

Notes to pages 247-54 423 absolutely essential that Diefenbaker 'continue in the public realm and this will be so for many years. While this is so, the biography cannot be written.' (GPG to J Diefenbaker, 10 Dec. 1968) 32 Lament, 5 33 Ibid., 11 34 Ibid., 13 35 Ibid., 14-15 36 Ibid., 18 37 Ibid., 19 38 Ibid., 21 39 'This Country in the Morning,' 10 Oct. 1973 40 GPG, Lament, 25 41 Ibid., 25 42 Ibid., 3 43 Ibid., 47 44 Ibid., 66 45 Ibid., 37 46 Ibid., 73 47 Quoted in Berger, The Sense of Power, 169 48 Ibid., 92 49 Ibid., 94 50 Ibid., 95 51 GPG to Mother, undated (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 52 'The Future of Canadian Nationhood,' CBC 'Venture,' 27 June 1965 53 'An Interview with George Grant,' with Larry Schmidt, Grail 1, Issue 1 (March 1985): 36 54 Interview with David Cayley, 1985 55 GPG to Paul Clifford, 18 Jan. 1961 56 James Doull to GPG, 26 Apr. 1965 57 Aitchison to GPG 30 June 1965 58 Farley Mowat to GPG, 30 June 1965 59 Hugh McLennan to GPG, 1 July 1965 60 Eugene Forsey to GPG, 8 Aug. 1965 61 GPG to R.D. Matthews, Edmonton, Alta., 14 July 1965 62 GPG to F.H. Underhill, 18 Oct. 1965 63 J.M. Macdonnell to GPG, 18 May 1965 CHAPTER 18 1 Interview with Art Davis, 9 Jan. 1991 2 W.L. Morton, 'A spate of wild words,' [Grant papers]

424 Notes to pages 255-63 3 T.E.N., 'Canada being swept into U.S. orbit?' [Grant papers] 4 David Gauthier, 'The philosopher and vanishing Canada,' Toronto Telegram, 8 May 1965 5 'Conundrum of a Conservative,' Time, 7 May 1965, p. 16 6 'An odd mix of religious declarations and pretentious literary allusions.' Peter Newman, 'Notes critiques sur une apologie de Diefenbaker,' La Presse, 14 Apr. 1965 7 Robert Fulford, 'The Angry Loser,' The Canadian, 22 Jan. 1966 8 Interview with David Cayley, 1985 9 Quoted in GPG, 'Ellul,' 59 10 'First Person,' TV series, '4th of a series of programs on beliefs in the space age,' 2 June 1966 11 GPG, 'A Critique of the New Left,' in Canada and Radical Social Change, ed. by Dimitrios I. Roussopoulos (Montreal: Black Rose Books 1973), 58 12 Ibid., 59 13 Ibid., 60 14 Ibid., 60 15 Ibid., 61 16 Ibid., 61 17 Clayton Ruby, federal staff, SUPA, to GPG, 12 Oct. 1965 18 GPG to Clayton Ruby, 14 Oct. 1965 19 Matt Cohen, interview with David Cayley, 1985 20 Matt Cohen, 'Godfather of nationalism,' Toronto Star Saturday Magazine, 22 Oct. 1988 21 GPG to Kenneth McNaught, 11 Feb. 1966 22 Hugh McLennan to GPG, 13 Feb. 1966 23 GPG to Peter Calamai, editor, Silhouette, 22 Feb. 1966 24 GPG to P.E. Trudeau, Assistant to the Prime Minister, 23 Feb. 1966 25 GPG to Douglas Ward, 1 Mar. 1966 26 GPG, 'The Vietnam War: The Value of Protest' (1966). 'Address delivered May 14, at Toronto demonstration for Peace in Vietnam' (private papers) 27 I know of only three occasions in the next twenty years when he went to the States: to visit Leo Strauss, to attend a Moonie conference in a protest against deprogramming, and to deliver an academic paper. 28 GPG to WEC, 8 Jan. 1985 29 GPG to Principal Salmon, 20 Sept. 1966 30 Alex Colville to GPG, 22 Feb. 1967 31 GPG, 'Canadian Fate,' 21 32 Ibid., 22 33 Ibid., 23 34 Ibid., 23

Notes to pages 263-7

425

35 36 37 38

Ibid., 24 Ibid., 25 Ibid., 25 Comments on the Great Society from the 35th Annual Couchiching Conference, Great Societies and Quiet Revolutions, ed. John Irwin (Toronto: CB 1967), 73 39 Ibid., 75 40 Ibid., 76 41 Ibid., 75 42 Ibid., 75 43 For example, he had met with senior Liberal cabinet minister Walter Gordon in early May to discuss his speech on Vietnam. 44 Ossenberg seminars, 1-3 Aug. 1967, Calgary, mimeo, p. 5 45 'Diefenbaker: a democrat in theory and in soul,' Globe and Mail, 23 August, P-7 46 GPG to Hugh McLennan, 27 Mar. 1969 47 'The Conservatives must put Canada first,' Hamilton Spectator, 30 August, P-4 48 Donald Creighton, for example, wrote in reply: 'I don't quite know what to think about a public letter supporting Roblin for the leadership of the Conservative party ... Despite what most people think of my Tory allegiance I have always tried to remain fairly detached politically from both parties and personalities. And on the whole this is a position that I should like to retain.' (D.S. Creighton to GPG, 21 Aug. 1967) 49 GPG to Duff Roblin, 25 July 1967 50 GPG to W.L. Morton, 21 Aug. 1967 51 GPG to Stephen Bornstein, 20 Feb. 1967 52 GPG to George Hogan, 26 Apr. 1965 53 GPG to John Graham, 12 Dec. 1967 54 GPG to Raleigh and Louise Parkin, 13 Feb. 1970 (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, 1941-72) 55 GPG to Nita and John Graham, 30 July 1967 56 Ossenburgh seminar, p. 18 57 GPG to John Graham, 12 Dec. 1967 58 GPG to Cy Gonick, 23 Jan. 1968 59 James Doull to GPG, 11 Oct. 1968 60 GPG, Notebook, Politics Bk 2 61 Ibid. 62 GPG to Charity Grant, 1969? 63 GPG to Charity Grant, 4 Apr. 1969 64 GPG to Charity Grant, 27 Dec. 1970

426 Notes to pages 271-8 CHAPTER 19 1 I can testify personally to this phenomenon because that was how I reacted. 2 Quoted in Charles Taylor, Radical Tories(Toronto 1982), 148 3 F.W. Park, 'Christian in the Slough of Despond,' Marxist Quarterly 16 (Winter: 1966): 11 4 Matt Cohen, 'Godfather of Nationalism,' Toronto Star Saturday Magazine, 22 Oct. 1988 5 Dennis Lee, 'Cadence, Country, Silence: Writing in Colonial Space,' typescript, current draft version, 26 Aug. 1990, pp. 15-16 6 Ibid. 7 GPG, 'Dennis Lee - Poetry and Philosophy' (1982), 230 8 GPG, 'The Academic Study of Religion in Canada,' inScholarship in Canada 1967: Achievement and Outlook, Symposium presented to Section II of the Royal Society of Canada in 1967, ed. R.H. Hubbard (Toronto 1968), 60 9 Ibid., 61 10 Ibid., 62 11 GPG, 'Wisdom in the Universities: Part One,' This Magazine Is About Schools 1, issue 4 (Autumn 1967): 71. (Hereafter 'Wisdom T) 12 Interview with Paul Axelrod, 16 Feb. 1977 13 GPG, 'Wisdom I,' 71 14 Ibid., 72 15 Ibid., 73 16 Ibid., 76 17 Ibid., 85 18 GPG, 'Wisdom in the Universities: Part Two,' This Magazine Is About Schools 2, issue 5 (Winter 1968): 59 19 Ibid., 56 20 Ibid., 57 21 Dennis Lee to GPG, 21 Mar. 1968 22 Dennis Lee to GPG, 28 Mar. 1968 23 Dennis Lee to GPG, undated [1968] 24 Dennis Lee to GPG, 7 Apr. 1968 25 GPG to Mum, Norwich, 12 August, no year [1941] (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 26 GPG, 'In Defence of North America,' in Technology and Empire (Toronto 1969), 34 27 Ibid., 36 28 Ibid., 36 29 Ibid., 40

Notes to pages 287-86

427

30 Lament, 3 31 GPG, 'A Platitude,' in T & E, 141 32 Ibid., 141 33 Ibid., 143 34 James Harding, 'George Grant: The Neglected Intellectual,' The Chevron, 11 Jan. 1972 35 'Also, objecting to the present only by making appeals to outmoded religous values ends up as a mere intellectual game.' Nairn Kattan, 'Empire de la technologie,' 31 May 1969 [Grant papers] 36 Bob Rae, 'George Grant's Noble Despair: Technology and Empire,' Varsity Review, 14 Mar. 1969 37 'Address to History Society, U of Toronto,' [1970?], typescript 38 GPG to Mother, 22 Nov. 1939 (NAC, MG 30 D59, vol. 38) 39 GPG, Time as History,Massey Lectures, 9th Series (Toronto 1969), 23 40 Interview with David Cayley, 1985 41 GPG, Time as History,25 42 Ibid., 25 43 Ibid., 27 44 Ibid., 29 45 Ibid., 44 46 Ibid., 45 47 Ibid., 46 48 Ibid., 47 49 Ibid., 50 50 Ibid., 52 51 GPG, 'The Practice of Politics and Thought about Politics,' typescript, 1969, p. 1 52 Ibid., 16 53 Ibid., 2: 10 54 Lament,67 55 GPG, 'Revolution and Tradition,' in Tradition and Revolution,ed. Lionel Rubinoff (Toronto 1971), 88-9 56 Ibid., 89 57 Ibid., 94 58 GPG to John Graham, 2 Apr. 1970 59 GPG to Raleigh and Louise Parkin, 13 Feb. 1970 (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 5, 1941-72) CHAPTER 20 1 GPG toJ.A. Gonsalves, Supervisor of Publications, CBC, 3June 1970

428

Notes to pages 287-95

2 GPG to Dennis Lee, 19 June 1970 3 Ibid. 4 From time to time, he would shave his beard and moustache off, then decide to let it grow again. 5 GPG to John Graham, 29 June 1970 6 [William Dray?], 'George Parkin Grant,' typescript, 28 May 1971 7 The Grants had known Cross when he worked in Halifax. 8 GPG to Hugh McLennan, 27 Mar. 1969 9 Canada, 6 10 Ibid., 9 11 'Canadian Nation?' 162 12 GPG, 'Nationalism and Rationality,' Canadian Forum50, no. 600 (January 1971): 336 13 Ibid., 337 14 GPG, 'Jelte Kuipers - an Appreciation,' Silhouette,2 Oct. 1970 15 GPG to Frank Milligan, Canada Council, 1972 16 When Strauss heard that Brotz was going to McMaster, he took him aside and said, 'You must look up George Grant.' 17 Allan Bloom, 'Leo Strauss,' in Giants and Dwarfs, 236 18 GPG to Joan O'Donovan, 4Jan. 1981 19 George Grant, Plato seminar, McMaster, 17 Mar. 1980 20 GPG to Ed Andrew, 27 Dec. 1983 21 George repeated this view a few years later. 'Do you know Strauss' last "official" book Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy} In that he has a masterly chapter 'Jerusalem 8c Athens". He wrote clearly elsewhere of the difference between Judaism & Xianity in their relation to philosophy - I accept the difference as he described it. But remember that Strauss thought no political good was served by stressing the differences between Xianity & Judaism in modern North America. I thoroughly agree with him & therefore have not written explicitly about that difference & would consider it a sad day if it were ever necessary.' (GPG to Ed Andrew, 19 Jan. 1987) 22 'Foreword' to James Laxer and Robert Laxer, The Liberal Idea of Canada: Pierre Trudeau and the Question of Canada's Survival (Toronto: James Lorimer 1977), 11 23 The intellectual importance of Heidegger to George can be inferred from the fact that, at George's death, he had copies of nineteen works by the German philosopher in his library. 24 GPG, 'Technique(s) and good,' typescript, fragment 25 GPG to Raleigh Parkin, 2 Feb. 1973 (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 42, file: 194076)

Notes to pages 295-301

429

26 'Ideology in Modern Empires,' in Perspectives of Empire: Essays Presented to Gerald S. Graham, ed. John E. Flint and Glyndwr Williams (London: Longman; New York: Barnes and Noble), 189-97 27 GPG to Alex Colville, 24 May 1973 28 GPG to Younger, 31 Jan. 1973 (personnel file, McMaster) 29 GPG, English-Speaking Justice(Notre Dame 1985), 1-2. The original edition of ESJ,which was published in 1978 in paperback by Mount Allison under the terms of the Wood Bequest, had limited circulation. It was not until it was republished in 1985 by Notre Dame that it was widely available. For that reason I refer to the later edition, in which there were no substantial changes. 30 Notebook I 31 Notebook D [1972] 32 GPG, interview with David Cayley, 1985 33 At other times he could be more irreverent. After one session he boasted he held the door to the men's room open, postponing his own needs, as a horde of elderly fellows rushed past. 34 GPG, 'Knowing and Making,' Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, ser. rv, vol.XII,63 35 Ibid., 64 36 Ibid., 64-5 37 Ibid., 67 38 GPG to Raleigh Parkin, 25 Sept. 1974 (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 42, file: 1940-76) 39 GPG to WEC, 4 Oct. 1974 40 GPG to Patrick Atherton, 28 Nov. 1974 41 Ibid. 42 GPG, 'Can We Think Outside Technology?' Tract no. 24 [The Gryphon Press 1977], 8 43 Following Jacob Klein, George accepted the view that the ancient Greeks rejected algebra because it drew the mind to change, becoming, and hence to this world. They affirmed the centrality of geometry, which led the mind instead towards the eternal, that is, God. Simone Weil also wrote about the religious significance of geometry for the Greeks.

44 GPG, 'Can We Think,' 15 45 Ibid., 17 46 Ibid., 19 47 Ibid., 20 48 Ibid., 22 49 Ibid., 23

430

Notes to pages 301-9

50 Ibid., 23 51 Ibid., 22 52 Interview with Louis Greenspan, 20 Dec. 1990 CHAPTER 21 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

GPG to Professor T. Penelhum, U. of Calgary, 31 Oct. 1975 Notebook A Ian Weeks to GPG, 30 Apr. 1976 GPG to Professor T. Penelum, U. of Calgary, 31 Oct. 1975 GPG to Frank Milligan, Associate Director, Canada Council, 22 Dec. 1975 GPG to Gerald Graham, 17 Jan. 1976 GPG, 'Role conflict in the "humanities,"' typescript, 1 Ibid., 3 Ibid., 4 Ibid., 5 Ibid., 5 Ibid., 6 GPG to W.C. Smith, 29 Jan. 1976 Sheila's name appeared as the first author to indicate that the work was primarily hers. 'Sheila has come for the first time into the public world through "the right to life" movement and has become an effective public appearer. I am now extremely engrossed in philosophy. I wish I were better at it and my thoughts came less slowly.' (GPG to Raleigh and Louise Parkin, 14 Dec. 1975 [NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 42, file: 1940-76]) 15 Canada Council leave fellowship application, dated 25 Sept. 1975 16 GPG to Arthur Motyer, 11 June 1976 17 Arthur Motyer to WEC, Sackville, 30 Dec. 1976 18 GPG, 'Dennis Lee - Poetry and Philosophy,' in Tasks of Passion: Dennis Lee at Mid-Career, ed. K. Mullhallen et al. (Toronto 1982), 234 19 Interview with David Cayley, 1985 20 GPG, English-Speaking Technology and Justice (Toronto 1985; Notre Dame 1986), 13 (hereafter ES/) 21 Interview with David Cayley, 1985 22 ESJ, 47 23 Ibid., 48 24 Ibid., 59 25 Ibid., 60 26 GPG to Gerald Graham, 30 November, no year (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 42, file: 1940-76) 27 ESJ, 71

Notes to pages 309-16 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

431

Ibid., 71 Ibid., 77 Ibid., 87 Ibid., 71 Ibid., 89 GPG to Dennis Lee, 22 Dec. 1976 Dennis Lee to GPG, 2 Jan. 1977 Ibid. Ibid. GPG to Raleigh Parkin, 11 Nov. 1976 (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 42, file: 194076) 38 Dinner speech presented on 28 June 1977 in Toronto, published in Grant and Lamontagne on National Unity (Toronto: Cemasco Management Ltd, for Constellation Life Assurance Company of Canada), 8 39 GPG, 'Christianity and the Multiversity,' typescript, [1977], 16 40 Book review of The First Torturer's Trial 1975 by Amnesty International, Globe and Mail, 11 June, p. 41 41 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Manitoba Archives), undated [1977] 42 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Manitoba Archives), 16 May 1977 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 Matt Cohen, 'Godfather of Nationalism,'Toronto Star Saturday Magazine, 22 Oct. 1988: M9 46 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Manitoba Archives), undated 47 Joan O'Donovan, George Grant and the Twilight of Justice (Toronto 1984), 133n.1 48 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Manitoba Archives), undated 49 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Manitoba Archives), 2 Feb. 1978 50 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Manitoba Archives), 26 Feb. 1978 51 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Manitoba Archives), 2 Feb. 1978 52 GPG to Larry Schmidt, 30 June 1976 53 GPG, Book review of Simone Weilhy Simone Petrement, Globe and Mail, 12 Feb. 1977, p. 43 54 Ibid.

432 Notes to pages 316-23 55 Simone Weil, La Pesanteur et la Grace (Paris: Plon 1948), 148 56 George said that Simenon's detective storyMaigret's Mistake,threw light on this sentence. He must have had in mind the following passage: 'Everything the Professor had said from the start, Maigret believed deep within him. Their ideas about men and their motives were not very far apart. The difference lay in the attitudes with which they faced the problem. Gouin only made use of what Maigret would have called pure reason. Whereas the inspector was trying. He would have been hard put to it to define what he was trying to do. Perhaps from understanding people he derived not merely a feeling of pity, but also a kind of affection. Gouin observed them from on high. Maigret placed himself on the same level as they.' Georges Simenon, Maigret's Mistake (Orlando, Fla., 1980), 180 57 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Manitoba Archives), 8 Oct. 1977 58 GPG to Dennis Duffy, 26 July 1978 59 GPG, 'Christianity and the Modern Multiversity,' typescript, 1977, p. 6 60 Ibid., 7 61 Ibid., 9 62 Ibid., 2 63 GPG, 'Address to the Graduating Class,' University of Guelph, 4 June 1980 64 'Christianity and the Modern Multiversity,' 3 65 Ibid., 5 66 GPG to WEC, 3 Feb. 1978 67 From a lecture for 1B6 at McMaster, probably 1978 or 1979 68 GPG to Charity Grant, 16 Mar. 1978 69 GPG to Charity Grant, 7 May 1979 70 GPG to Raleigh Parkin, 19 Feb. 1975 (NAC, MG 30 D77, vol. 42, file: 194076) 71 Charles Taylor generously lent me his notes, and those of his friend Scott Symons, dealing with his visits to George. I am very grateful for this kindness. He also gave me his permission to pillage shamelessly his account in Radical Tories. I have taken him at his wor 72 Lament, 41-2 CHAPTER 22

1 'Celine: Art and Politics,' Queen's Quarterly 90, no. 3 (Autumn 1983): 812

Notes to pages 323-30 433 2 Another manifestation of the divisions within the department was in controversies over MA and Ph.D. thesis defences. On one occasion George heard that a student who had written a thesis on Strauss was likely to run into difficulty in his examination. He arrived at the room and asked courteously if he might be allowed to sit in. He took a seat at the back. Then just before the exam was about to start, he said aloud to the chairman: 'Thank you again for letting me stay. You see, it's such a good thesis, such an important topic, that I am just grateful to be allowed to be here. Sorry, I won't bother you again.' The student passed. 3 GPG to John Graham, 28 July 1979 4 GPG to John Graham, 8 Aug. 1979 5 GPG to Nita and John Graham, 8 Dec. 1979 6 GPG to Dean Mclvor, 29 Feb. 1980 7 Interview with David Cayley, 1985 8 Ibid. 9 GPG to Dean Gray, 23 Apr. 1980 10 Len Sawatsky, 'Direction of McMaster University questioned by resignation of Grant,' Dundas Star Journal, 9 Apr. 1980 11 'The bothersome students,' Globe and Mail, 15 Apr. 1980, p. 6 12 A.I. Baumgarten, Phyllis Granoff, Gerard Vallee, Ben. F. Meyer, E.Sanders to Editor, Hamilton Spectator, 21 Apr. 1980 (personnel file, McMaster) 13 Allen Eugene Combs, Letter to the Editor, Dundas Star Journal, Wednesday, 23 Apr. 1980 (personnel file, McMaster) 14 A.E. Combs to GPG, 23 Apr. 1980 15 GPG, Review of The Higher Learning in America by Robert Maynard Hutchins, Queen's University Journal, 18 Jan. 1938, p. 3 16 Interview with David Cayley, 1985 17 'The advance of science, the increasing regard for the German type of training, and the rapid development of the larger American universities produced the now familiar demand for intensity of study and variety of subjects.' William Grant and Frederick Hamilton, George Monro Grant, 271 18 Interview with H.G. Thode, July 1991 19 'Let me give you an example from my life at the moment. One thing I know with almost utter clarity is what Canadian universities are like, through my life. I know them in all their relations. I know the people who are making them worse and worse. I know that the making on their part is not a question of blame to those people - they are utterly of the order of necessity. They could not be otherwise, considering what has been going on in western civilization for many centuries, and what has been going on in the U.S. and Canada in the immediate. I know the situation almost with the

434 Notes to pages 330-43 certainty of A=B, B=C, therefore A=€ - and in all the details.' GPG, 'Notebook for class on Simone Weil, 1975-6/ 44. Transcribed by SVG in her typewritten extracts, p. 9 20 Interview with Louis Greenspan, 20 Dec. 1990 21 Interview with John Arapura, 20 Dec. 1990 22 Ibid. 23 A.E. Combs to Editor, Hamilton Spectator, 3 May 1980 (personnel file, McMaster) 24 A.E. Combs, Today,20 Sept. 1980, pp. 9-10 25 The year that I sat in on his seminar, 1979-80, was his last year at McMaster. Thanks to his advice and encouragement I had ended up at Guelph, some thirty miles north, and drove down weekly for the Monday afternoon class. It was a wonderful experience. 26 These examples come from his Plato seminar of 1979-80, which I attended. By chance I happened to tape two of the seminars. 27 Plato seminar, McMaster, 17 Mar. 1980 28 Ibid. 29 Plato seminar, McMaster, 10 Mar. 1980 30 GPG to real-estate representative, 19 Apr. 1980 31 Scott Symons to GPG, dated 30 Sept. 1970 but sent with another letter dated 27 Apr. 1971 CHAPTER 23

1 Senator Forsey devotes a paragraph to refuting the charge in his memoirs. See Eugene Forsey, A Life on the Fringe: The Memoirs of Eugene Forse

(Toronto: Oxford University Press 1990), 163. 2 Trudeau also hoped, for political reasons, to appoint someone who came from neither a French or English ethnic background and Ignatieffs ancestry was Russian. 3 GPG to WEC, 17 Mar. 1981 4 Ibid. 5 GPG to Gaston Laurion, 19 Mar. 1981 6 GPG to Gaston Laurion, 8 May 1981 7 GPG to WEC, [1982] 8 GPG, Notebook D [1972] 9 GPG to S. Petrement, 3 Apr. 1975 10 GPG, 'Why Read Rousseau?,' mimeographed, 1981, p. 3 11 Ibid., 5 12 Ibid., 4

Notes to pages 343-52 435 13 Ibid., 6 14 GPG to Joan O'Donovan, undated [1981?] 15 'Why Read Rousseau?' 5 16 GPG to WEC, 24 Sept. 1981 17 Ibid. 18 GPG, 'Notes for a Sermon,' probably 1979 19 GPG, 'The Case Against Abortion,' Today, 3 Oct. 1981, p. 13 20 Ibid. 21 GPG, 'Commentary Script,' Halifax, 9 Mar. 1988 22 GPG, 'The Triumph of the Will,' in The Issue Is Life: A Christian Response to Abortion in Canada, ed. Denyse O'Leary (Burlington, Ont. 1988), 157 23 Ibid., 157 24 Ibid., 162 25 Ibid., 163 26 GPG, Letter, The Idler no. 17 (May-June 1988), 60 27 GPG to Terry Barker, 24 June 1988 28 GPG to Alice and Arthur Boissonneau, 6 Dec. 1981 29 GPG to Ian Angus, 14 Mar. 1982 30 GPG to Ed Andrew, 31 July 1982 31 GPG to WEC, July 1983 32 GPG, 'Book review ofThe World, the Text and the Critic by Edward W. Said,' Globe and Mail, 7 May 1983, E18 33 GPG, 'Celine: Art and Politics,' Queen's Quarterly 90, no. 3 (Autumn): 804 34 GPG to WEC, 31 Aug. 1983 35 GPG to Gaston Laurion, 30 Aug. 1983 36 GPG to WEC, 31 Aug. 1983 37 Ibid. 38 GPG to WEC, July 1983 39 GPG to WEC, 31 Aug. 1983 40 Ibid. 41 Dennis Lee to GPG, 17 Aug. 1982 42 GPG to Dennis Lee, November 1983 43 Ibid 44 Dennis Lee to GPG, 12 Jan. 1984 45 That was reserved for Walter Gieseking's 1955 performance. 46 GPG to WEC, 12 July 1984 CHAPTER 24 1 GPG to Peter Self, 1986?

436

Notes to pages 353-7

2 GPG to WEC 18 Mar. 1984 3 GPG to Derek Bedson (Bedson Private Papers, Manitoba Archives), 2 Feb. 1978 4 GPG, 'Justice and Technology,' in Theology and Technology: Essays in Christi Analysis and Exegesis, ed. Carl Mitcham and Jim Grote (Lanham, Md., 1984 237. [This is the version that GPG delivered. However, I make use of the corrected version found among his papers, which accounts for any changes in the passages quoted. WEC] 5 Ibid., 237 6 Ibid., 238 7 Ibid., 241 8 Ibid., 241 9 Ibid., 242 10 Ibid., 243 11 Ibid., 245 12 GPG to WEC, 8 Jan. 1985 13 GPG to Joan O'Donovan, 8 Nov. 1985 14 GPG to Joan O'Donovan, 4 Feb. 1985 15 Ibid. 16 GPG to WEC, 15 Feb. 1986 17 GPG to Jonathan Mills, 16July 1985 18 Jim Polk to GPG, 20 June 1986 19 GPG, 'Preface,' Technology and Justice (Toronto: House of Anansi 1986), 10 20 'Justice and Technology' was intended for inclusion at an early stage. It is a pity that it was subsequently dropped, for it would have further strengthened the general argument, and the published version was not readily available. 21 The use of the word 'solution' would be, in George's view, inappropriate. 'There is such a thing as a problem, to which there is a solution. Mysteries are things one lives in the presence of. One must remember when one talks of problems and solutions that some people once talked of the Final Solution of a particular problem, which meant the concentration camps. What I mean by mysteries are things that are always and everywhere for human beings something to which there are not solutions, but it is a great question. I think that I have above all been interested in thinking about those things which human beings need to think about for which there are no solutions. One of the great purposes of life is to enter more and more deeply into mysteries. That's what philosophy is. Philosophy gets you into these great mysteries which are endless.' (Interview with David Cayley, 1985) 22 GPG, 'Thinking About Technology,' in Technology and Justice, 11

Notes to pages 357-61 23 Ibid., 1 24 Ibid., 1 25 Ibid., 26 26 Ibid., 30 27Ibid.,32 28 Ibid., 32 29 Ibid., 32 30 Ibid., 34 31 Ibid., 34 32 GPG, 'Faith and the Multiversity,' in Technology and Justice, 38 33 Ibid., 40 34 Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning If I lacked anything. 'A guest,' I answered, 'worthy to be here': Love said, 'You shall be he.' 'I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear, I cannot look on thee.' Love took my hand and smiling did reply, 'Who made the eyes but I?' 'Truth, Lord; but I have marred them; let my shame Go where it doth deserve.' 'And know you not,' says Love, 'who bore the blame?' 'My dear, then I will serve.' 'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.' So I did sit and eat. 35 GPG to Professor R.G. Trotter, 23 Jan. 1941, 42 Tanner Street, Tower Bridge Road, London SEi 36 GPG to Dearest Ould, 8 Mar. 1952 (NAC, MG 30 D54, vol. 39) 37 GPG to Sheila Grant, undated [June 1958] 38 GPG, 'Introduction to the reading of Simone Weil,' undated 39 Michael Foster, Mystery and Philosophy, 53 40 'Faith and the Multiversity,' 51 41 Ibid., 76 42 Ibid., 77 43 Interview with David Cayley, 1985 44 Jim Polk to GPG, 9 Mar. 1987

437

438

Notes to pages 361-71

45 Jim Polk to GPG, 10 Apr. 1987 46 GPG to Charity Grant, 8 Nov. 1987 47 GPG to Ed Andrew, 1987 48 William Christian, 'George Grant and Religion,' 49 49 Use Bissonnette, 'A lament for a nation has echoes in the '80s,' Globe and Mail, 4 June 1988, D2 50 Book review of If You Love This Country: Facts and Feelings on Free Trade, ed. Laurier LaPierre, Books in Canada 17, no. 1 (January-February 1988): 19 51 Judith Myrden, 'Pact will hurt "ordinary people,"' Mail Star, 18 Mar. 1988 52 'In Defence of Simone Weil,' Review essay of Simone Weil: A Modern Pilgrimage by Robert Coles, The Idler no. 15 (January-February 1988): 36 53 GPG, 'Addendum to "Two Theological Languages," ' in Wayne Whillier, ed., Two Theological Languages and Other Essays (Queenston: Edwin Mellen Press 1990) 54 Ibid., 31-2 55 GPG to WEC, undated [1982] 56 GPG to John Siebert, 29 June 1988 57 GPG to David Bovenizer, 6 Mar. 1988 58 Ibid. 59 GPG to John Siebert, 29 June 1988 60 GPG, notes, typed by SVG 61 GPG, 'Confronting Heidegger's Nietzsche,' typescript, 10 CHAPTER 25 No great disaster 1 GPG to K. Temple, transcribed from tape [1988] 2 GPG to WEC, 30 Apr. 1988 3 William Christian, 'George Grant and Religion,' 59 4 Christopher Marlowe, Faustus,I: 312 5 Derek Bedson to GPG, 5 Aug. 1988 6 Sheila Grant, 'The Language of Euthanasia,' in Technology and Justice, 104 7 GPG, Lament, 3 EPILOGUE 1 W.J. Hankey, 'Homily,' typescript, St Michael and All Angels, 1988, p. 4 2 GPG to Peter Self, undated [1986/87]

SOURCES

This page intentionally left blank

Archival and interview sources

The single most important source of archival material is the Grant-Parkin papers (MG 30 D77) in the National Archives of Canada. It runs to forty volumes and covers the family from George Monro Grant and George Parkin through to George Parkin Grant's (GPG) generation. Specifically important for George Grant are a journal he kept in 1942 when he was confined to bed and the hundreds of letters he sent to his mother (MEG) from roughly the time he entered Queen's until he was about forty. They are variously addressed: e.g., Dearest Ould (= Old Girl?), Dearest Mumps, Dearest, Dearest Mummy. I have kept the original salutations in the notes. Grant rarely dated his letters and, if they were dated, it was normally with either the day, say Tuesday, or, at best, the month and date. After the Second World War, when Grant was in England, he often used air letters, and they are postmarked. Otherwise the dating of his letters has been like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, using whatever clues were available from the internal evidence. In spite of these difficulties, there was such a large number of letters that I am reasonably confident that the letters are used in the text in the appropriate place in the narrative, and that whatever inaccuracies remain affect the narrative in only minor ways. Vincent and Alice Massey's papers are split between the National Archives and the University of Toronto Archives. Many of Burgon Bickersteth's papers, including a complete set of his mimeographed circular letters, are in the Archives of Massey College. Derek Bedson's (unsorted) private papers are in the Manitoba Archives. There is a small amount of relevant material in the Dalhousie Archives. The warden of Rhodes House made GPG's file for his periods as a student at Oxford freely available. A great deal of the material on which I drew is not yet in the public domain. Sheila Grant (SVG) gave me (WEC) full access (except for parts of a few letters

442

Sources

from GPG to her) to George Grant's correspondence, notebooks, and unpublished writings. In response to my requests, people from around the world sent me copies of letters from George Grant. Again, this material is not generally accessible. Letters without further references, other than those to his mother, are in my private collection or in Grant's private papers in Halifax. I hope some day to publish a large selection of these marvellous documents. References to Grant's published material relate to Mark Haslett's definitive bibliography. George Grant was on the radio and the television a lot, and he was very good at it. I listened to and saw many programs involving Grant at the CBC radio and CBC television archives in Toronto and at the Sound and Film Division of the National Archives of Canada. Some of the material listed on on the synography, unfortunately, could not be located. I have been extremely fortunate that I could show George from time to time as others saw him. The most important sources are Alice Boissonneau and Charles Taylor / Scott Symons. In 1945 Alice Boissonneau wrote a number of short stories and sketches about George. These are wonderfully evocative and they reveal George when he was twenty-six, not through the filter of memory, but directly. Charles Taylor gave me the notes of his visits to interview George for Radical Tories, and lent me Scott Symons's diary of their joint visit to Dundas in 1980 with Dennis Lee. I am grateful for permission to use this material. I would also like to thank the following people who gave generously of their time and in many case of their hospitality. Without the information, insights, and advice they gave me in interviews, I could not have written this book: Jim Aitchison, A.A. Allen, Ed Andrew, John Arapura, Herb Armstrong, Patrick Atherton, Margaret Avison, C.T. Bissell, Alice Boissoneau, David Braybrooke, Andrew Brink, Howard Brotz, Geoffrey Bush, Anne Carver, Humphrey Carver, Peter Clarke, Alex Colville, Eugene Combs, Jim Coutts, L.H. Cragg, Angela Croome, Art Davis, James Doull, Dennis Duffy, Elizabeth Edwards, Beverley Everest, Mrs K.E. Ferrie, Christopher Fisher, Douglas Fisher, Marion Frye, Robert Fulford, Michael Gelber, Sylva Gelber, Kay Gimpel, Mary Graham, Nita Graham, Catherine Grant, Charity Grant, Isabel Grant, Rachel Grant, Robert Grant, William Grant, Louis Greenspan, David Heaven, D.H.W. Henry, Andrew Ignatieff, Michael Ignatieff, William Kilbourn, Dennis Lee, Mrs.Djenane Lemmon, Donald MacDonald, Kenneth McNaught, Miriam Magner, John Matheson, Lewis Miller, David Murray, Graham Nicholson, Nancy O'Brian, Joan O'Donovan, Michael Oliver, Frank Peers, Canon H.L. Puxley, Karen Richter, John Robertson, Phoebe Roper, Henry Roper, Murray Ross, Dennis Stairs, Charles Taylor, H.G. Thode, Murray Tolmie, Vincent Tovell, George Wallace, Geoffrey Wasteneys, Wayne Whiller, Susanna Wild, Annette Wilson, Sheila Wallace Woodsworth. David Cayley also lent me copies of his 1985 in-

Archival and interview sources

443

terviews with Gad Horowitz, Matt Cohen, and Louis Greenspan, as well as many hours of tapes with George Grant himself. They proved invaluable. E.P. Sanders politely declined to be interviewed.

Works mentioned in text or notes

Berger, Carl.The Sense of Power: Studies in the Idea of Canadian Imperialism 18671914. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1970 Bissell, Claude. The Imperial Canadian. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1986 - The Young Vincent Massey. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1981 Bloom, Allan. Giants and Dwarfs: Essays 1960-1990. New York: Simon and Schuster 1990 Bush, Geoffrey. An Unsentimental Education. London: Thames Publishing 1990 Calvin, D.D. Queen's University at Kingston. Kingston, Ont.: The Trustees of the University 1941 Cassidy, Frank, and Ron Faris, eds. Choosing Our Future: Adult Education and Public Policy in Canada. Toronto: OISE 1987 Christian, William. 'George Grant and Religion: A Conversation Prepared and Edited by William Christian' (with French Summary). Journal of Canadian Studies 26, no. 1 (1991): 42-6 Combs, Eugene, ed.Modernity and Responsibility: Essays for George Grant. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1983 Cook, Terry Gordon. 'Apostle of Empire: Sir George Parkin and Imperial Federation.' Ph.D. thesis, Queen's University, 1977 Corbett, E.A. We Have With Us Tonight. Toronto: Ryerson Press 1957 Deighton, Len. Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain. London: Jonathan Cape 1977 Djwa, Sandra. The Politics of Imagination: A Life ofF.R. Scott.Toronto: McClelland and Stewart 1987 Emberley, Peter, ed. By Loving Our Own: George Grant and the Legacy of Lament for a Nation. Ottawa: Carleton University Press 1990

Works in text or notes 445 English, Robert. Shadow of Heaven: The Life of Lester Pearson Vol. I: 1897-1948. Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys 1989 Faris, Ron. The Passionate Educators. Toronto: Peter Martin Associates 1975 Forsey, Eugene. A Life on the Fringe: The Memoirs of Eugene Forsey. Toronto: Oxford University Press 1990 Foster, Michael. Mystery & Philosophy. London: SCM Press 1957 Grant, I.F. The Clan Grant. Edinburgh: Johnstone & Bacon 1955, 1972 Grant, William Lawson, and Frederick Hamilton. George Monro Grant. Toronto: Morang & Co. 1905 Green, R.L., and Walter Hooper. C.S. Lewis: A Biography. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1976 Hooper, Walter. 'Oxford's Bonny Fighter,' in J.T. Como, C.S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table & Other Reminiscences, 137-85. London: Collins 198 Howard, R.B. Upper Canada College: 1829-1979. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada 1979 Irving, John. A. Philosophy in Canada: A Symposium. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1952 Jones, John. Balliol College: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press 198 Kilbourn, William. Toronto Remembered: A Celebration of the City. Toronto: Stoddart 1984 Klein, Jacob. Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra. Trans. Eva Brann. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press 1968 Lindsay, A.D. Pacifism as a Principle & Pacifism as a Dogma. London: SCM Press 1939 - The Two Moralities: Our Duty to God and Society. London: Eyre & Spottiswode 1940 MacDonald, Donald C. The Happy Warrior: Political Memoirs. Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside 1988 Mack, Joanna, and Steve Humphries. The Making of Modern London, 1939-1945. London at War. London: Sidgwick & Jackson 1985 Massey, Vincent. What's Past is Prologue: The Memoirs of Vincent Massey. Toronto: Macmillan 1958 Nichols, Beverley. Cry Havoc! London: Jonathan Cape 1933 O'Donovan, Joan. George Grant and the Twilight ofJustice. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1984 Peers, Frank. The Politics of Canadian Broadcasting: 1920-1951. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1969 Perlin, George. The Tory Syndrome. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press 1980

446

Sources

Petrement, Simone. Simone Weil.Trans. Raymond Rosenthal. New York: Random House 1977 Rose, Albert. Regent Park: A Study in Slum Clearance.Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1958 Schmidt, Larry, ed. George Grant in Process: Essays and Conversations. Toronto: Anansi 1978 Scott, Drusilla. A.D. Lindsay: A Biography. Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1971 Sherrard, Philip.The Greek East and the Latin West: A Study in the Christian Tradition. London: Oxford University Press 1959 Storr, Anthony. Churchill's Black Dog, Kajka's Mice and Other Phenomena of the Human Mind. New York: Ballantine Books 1990 Strathspey, Lord. A History of the Clan Grant. Chichester, Sussex: Phillimore & Co. 1983 Strauss, Leo. Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1963 - Persecution and the Art of Writing. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press of Clencoe 1952 - Thoughts on Machiavelli. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press of Glencoe 1958 - On Tyranny. Includes 'Tyranny and Wisdom' by Alexandre Kojeve. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press of Glencoe 1963 - What Is Political Philosophy and Other Studies. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press of Glencoe 1959 Taylor, Charles. Radical Tories. Toronto: House of Anansi 1982 Vipond, Mary Jean. 'National Consciousness in English-Speaking Canada in the 1920's: Seven Studies.' Ph.D. thesis, University of Toronto, 1974 Weil, Simone. Waiting on God. Trans. Emma Craufurd. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1951 Whillier, Wayne, ed. Two Theological Languages by George Grant and Other Essays in Honour of His Work. Queenston, Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press 1990 Willison, John. Sir George Parkin: A Biography. London: Macmillan and Co. 1929 Wilson, A.N. C.S. Lewis: A Biography. London: Collins 1990 Wilson, George. All for Nothing? Privately printed, 1972 Wilson, Isabel. Citizen's Forum: 'Canada's National Platform.'Toronto: Department of Adult Education, OISE, 1980

Selected secondary sources

Ajzenstat, Samuel. 'Comment: George Grant on Liberal Self-Destruction and the Impossibility of Conservatism.' Journal of Canadian Studies 26, no. 2 (1991): 69-71 Angus, Ian.George Grant's Platonic Rejoinder to Heidegger: Contemporary Political Philosophy and the Question of Technology. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press 1987 Atwood, Margaret. '"Polarities" and George Grant's Polemics.' American Review of Canadian Studies 18, no. 4 (Winter 1988): 443-54 Box, Ian. 'George Grant and the Embrace of Technology' (with French Summary). Canadian Journal of Political Science 15 (1982): 503-15 - 'Reply: Thinking Through Technology.' Canadian Journal of Political Science 6 (June 1983): 355-9 Cayley, David. The Moving Image of Eternity. Toronto: CBC 1986 Christian, William. 'George Grant and the Twilight of Our Justice.' Review of English-Speaking Justice. Queen's Quarterly 85 (1978): 485-91 - Rejoinder to Ian Box, 'George Grant and the Embrace of Technology.' Canadian Journal of Political Science 16 (June 1983): 349-59 Cook, R. 'Loyalism, Technology and Canada's Fate.' Journal of Canadian Studies 5 (1970): 50-60 Cooper, Barry. 'George Grant, Political Philosopher.' Political Science Reviewer18 (1988): 2ff. Crook, R.K. 'Modernization and Nostalgia, a Note on the Sociology of Pessimism.' Review of Lament for a Nation. Queen's Quarterly 73 (1966): 269-84 Duffy, Dennis. 'Ancestral Journey: Travels with George Grant' (with French Summary). Journal of Canadian Studies 22, no. 3 (1987): 90-103 - 'Concrete Hypothesis: A Meditation.' Journal of Canadian Studies 4 (1969): 3-6

448 Sources Emberley, Peter C. 'Values and Technology: George Grant and Our Present Possibilities.' Canadian Journal of Political Science 21, no. 3 (1988): 465-94 - ed. By Loving Our Own: George Grant and the Legacy of Lament for a Nation. Ottawa: Carleton University Press 1990 Forbes, H.D. 'The Political Thought of George Grant' (with French Summary). Journal of Canadian Studies26, no. 2 (1991): 46-68 Fulford, Robert. 'The Enemy of Uplift.' Toronto Daily Star, 11 Nov. 1959: 34 Gauthier, David. 'George Grant's Justice.' Dialogue 27 (Spring 1988): 121-31 Hall, Douglas John. Lighten Our Darkness: Towards an Indigenous Theology of the Cross. Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1976 Hanson, Philip J. 'George Grant: A Negative Theologian on Technology.' Research on Technology and Philosophy 1 (1987): 308-12 Kroker, Arthur. Technology and the Canadian Mind: Innis/McLuhan/Grant. Montreal: New World Perspectives 1984 Lampert, L. 'Uses of Philosophy in George Grant.'Queen's Quarterly81 (1974): 15-17 - 'Zarathustra and George Grant: Two Teachers.' Dalhousie Review 58 (1978): 443-57 Lee, Dennis. 'Cadence, Country, Silence.' Boundary 2 (Fall 1974) Mandel, E. 'George Grant: Language, Nation, the Silence of God.' Canadian Literature 83 (1979): 163-75 Mathie, William. 'Reason, Revelation and Liberal Justice: Reflections on George Grant's Analysis of Roe v Wade' (with French Summary). Canadian Journal of Political Science 19 (1986): 443-66 McDonald, R.D. 'Lee's "Civil Elegies" in Relation to Grant's Lament for a Nation.' Canadian Literature 98 (Fall 1983): 10-30 Morton, W.L. 'The Possibility of a Philosophy of Conservatism.' Journal of Canadian Studies 5 (1970): 3-14 Murray, Heather. 'From Canon to Curriculum.' University of Toronto Quarterly 60, no. 2 (1990/91): 229-43 O'Donovan, Joan, ed. George Grant Special Issue, Chesterton Review 11, no. 2 (May 1985) Park, F.W. 'Christian in the Slough of Despond.' Marxist Quarterly, Winter 1966: 11-19 Schmidt, Larry. 'In Defence of George Grant: Clarifying His Views of Abortion Criticized in M.A. Hewitt's Review, December 1990.' Grail7](1991): 10-17 Schofield, Thomas. 'Book Review. Justice and the Insights of Resistance: the Red Tory Jurisprudence of George Grant.' Buffalo Law Review 36, no. (1988)

Selected secondary sources

449

Self, Peter. 'George Grant, Unique Canadian Philosopher.' Queen's Quarterly 98 no. 1 (1991): 25-39 Taylor, Charles. Radical Tories. Toronto: Anansi 198 Umar, Usuf K., ed. George Grant and the Future of Canada. Calgary: University of Calgary Press 1992 Underhill, F.H. 'Conservatism = Socialism = Anti-Americanism.' Journal of Liberal Thought 1 (1965): 101-5 Whillier, Wayne, ed. Two Theological Languages by George Grant and Other Essays

in Honour of His Work. Queenston: Edwin Mellen Press 199 Woodcock, George. 'A Barometer of Public Anxieties.' Globe and Mai (Toronto), 16 Feb. 1985: E15

Bibliography of George Grant's Publications PREPARED BYK. MARK HASLETT

1933 'A Lake' (poem). In Between Times (Supplement to The College Times, Upper Canada College): 35 1935 a 'Picasso' (poem). In Between Times (Supplement to The College Times, Upper Canada College): 44 b 'The American Breakfast Table' (story). In Between Times (Supplemen to The College Times,Upper Canada College): 54 1937 Book review of Grey ofFallodon by George Macaulay Trevelyan. Queen's University Journal, 16 November: 3 1938 a 'Art and Propaganda.' Queen's University Journal, Literary Supplement, March: 6-7 b Book review of The Higher Learning in America by Robert Maynard Hutchins. Queen's University Journal, 18 June: 3 c Book review of Searchlight on Spain by The Duchess of Atholl. Queen's University Journal, 11 November: 8 1940 Letter to the editor, signed by G.P. Grant and fourteen others, under the caption 'Impressed.' The New Statesman and Nation, 10 August: 138 1943 a Canada - An Introduction to a Nation. Toronto: Canadian Institute of International Affairs. 1st edition, 1943; 2nd, 1943; 3rd, 1944; 4th, 1945; 5th, 1946. (See 1944.) b 'Citizens' Forum.' From 1943 to 1945, Grant in his capacity as secretary of the Canadian Association for Adult Education wrote a signed column in Food for Thought summarizing and commenting on activity of the Citizens' Forum. The first column was titled 'Citizens' Forum - So Far' (4, no. 3 [November 1943]: 20); the second and third, 'Citizens' Forum' (4, no. 7 [April 1944]: 16 and 4, no. 8 [May 1944]: 15); the fourth, 'Citizens' Forum Last Year' (5, no. 1 [October 1944]: 28-9, 46, 48); and the remainder, 'Calling All Citizens' (5, no. 1 [October 1944]:

Bibliography of Grant's publications 451 26-7; 5, no. 2 [November 1944]: 26-7; 5, no. 3 [December 1944]: 26-8; 5, no. 4 [January 1945]: 28-9; 5, no. 5 [February 1945]: 25-6; 5, no. 6 [March 1945]: 26-7; 5, no. 7 [April 1945]: 30-1; 5, no. 9 [June-July 19456}: 23-7; and 6, no. 1 [September 1945]: 30-1.) (See 1943c.) c 'Of Things To Come': A Citizens' Forum on Canada in the Post-war World. A series of 20 individually titled study guides written by Grant and Jean Hunter Morrison, published by Canadian Association for Adult Education. Each guide was numbered ('Bulletin No. 1' through to 'Bulletin No. 20') and printed with the date of the CBC Radio broadcast that it was 'to accompany' ('Tuesday, December 7th [1943]' to 'Tuesday, May 2nd [1944]-') (See 1943b.) d Book review, under the caption 'Integration Through Education,' of The Universities Look for Unity by John Ulric Nef. Food for Thought 4, no. 1 (September): 19-20 e Book review of The Macchiavellians by James Burnham. Food for Thought 4, no. 3 (November): 23 1944 Le Canada est devenu une nation. Quebec: Editions des Bois-Francs. (Translation of 1943a) 1945 a The Empire, Yes or No? Toronto: Ryerson Press b 'Have We a Canadian Nation?' Public Affairs (Institute of Public Affairs, Dalhousie University) 8, no. 3 (Spring): 161-6 c Book review of Canada and the World Tomorrow, edited by Viol Anderson. Food for Thought 5, no. 6 (March): 40 d Letter to the editor, Food for Thought 5, no. 7 (April): unpaginated inside of back cover 1948 a Book review of The Philosophy of Francis Bacon by F.H. Anderson. Dalhousie Review 28, no. 3 (October): 312-13 b Book review ofThe Pickersgill Letters: 1934-43,edited by George Ford. Dalhousie Review28, no. 3 (October): 313-14 c Book review of The Function of the University by R.S.K. Seeley. Food for Thought 9, no. 3 (December): 43-4 1950 a 'The Concept of Nature and Supernature in the Theology of John Oman.' D.Phil, thesis (Oxford, Balliol) b 'Canada - History,' 'King, W.L.M.,' 'Nova Scotia,' and numerous other brief entries in various volumes, in Chambers's Encyclopedia. London: International Learning Systems Corporation. (In 1950 and later editions) 1951 a 'Philosophy.' In Royal Commission Studies: A Selection of Essays Prepared for the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences, 119-33. Ottawa: Edmond Cloutier, Printer to the King

452

Sources b Letter to the editor, under the caption 'Training for the Ministry.'

United Church Observer 13, no. 6 (15 May): 1952 a 'Good Friday' (poem). United Church Observer 14, no. 3 (1 April) b 'Pursuit of an Illusion: A Commentary on Bertrand Russell.' Dalhousie Review 32, no. 2 (Summer): 97-109 1953 a 'Philosophy and Adult Education.' Food for Thought14, no. 1 (September-October): 3-8 b 'Two Theological Languages.' (Reprinted with an 'Addendum' in 1990a) 1954 a 'Plato and Popper.' Canadian Journal ojEconomics and Political Science20, no. 2 (May): 185-94 b 'Adult Education in the Expanding Economy.' Food for Thought 15 no. 1 (September-October): 4-10. (Reprinted without footnote in 1955a) c Book review of Henry Marshall Tory by E.A. Corbett. Canadian Forum 34, No. 403 (August): 112-13 1955 a 'Adult Education in an Expanding Economy.' The Anglican Outlook (Montreal) 10, no. 7 (May): 8-11. (Reprint of 1954b without footnote) b 'Jean-Paul Sartre,' In Architects of Modern Thought, 65-74. Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation c 'The Minds of Men in the Atomic Age.' In Texts of Addresses Delivered at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Couchiching Conference, 39-45 Toronto: Canadian Institute on Public Affairs and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. (Reprinted in 1985c) d 'The Paradox of Democratic Education.' The Bulletin (published by Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation) 35, no. 6 (November) : 275-80. (Second Ansley Memorial Lecture, delivered on 1 October 1955 at Assumption University, Windsor) 1956 'The Uses of Freedom - a Word and Our World.' Queen's Quarterly 62, no. 4 (Winter): 515-27. (Reprinted in 1993) 1958 'Philosophy.' In Encyclopedia Canadiana, 8: 183-4. Ottawa: Grolier Society of Canada. (In 1958 and later editions) 1959 a Philosophy in the Mass Age. Toronto: Copp Clark; New York: Hill and Wang 1960. (Reprinted without original Preface and 'with a new Introduction' in 1966 by Copp Clark) b 'Fyodor Dostoevsky.' In Architects of Modern Thought, 71-83. 3rd and 4th Series, 12 talks for CBC Radio. Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 1961 a 'An Ethic of Community.' In Social Purpose for Canada, edited by Michael Oliver, 3-26. Toronto: University of Toronto Press

Bibliography of Grant's publications 453 b 'Philosophy and Religion.' In The Great Ideas Today 1961, 336-76. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica c Book review of Church and State in Canada West: Three Studies in the Relation of Denominationalism and Nationalism, 1841-1867 by John S. Moir. Journal of Ecclesiastical History 12: 131 1962 a 'Conceptions of Health.' in Psychiatry and Responsibility, edited by Helmut Schoeck and James W. Wiggins, 117-34. Princeton: D. Van Nostrand b 'Carl JustavJung.' In Architects of Modern Thought, 63-74. 5th and 6th series, 12 talks for CBC radio. Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation c Book review of Thought - From the Learned Societies of Canada 1960. Dia logue 1, no. 1: 100-1 d Letter to the editor, under the caption 'L'economie canadienne.' Le Devoir, 29 mai: 4 1963 a 'Religion and the State.' Queen's Quarterly70, no. 2 (Summer): 183-97 (Reprinted in 1969a) b 'Crime and Corruption.' Christian Outlook 19, no. 3 (December): 11-12

1964 a 'Tyranny and Wisdom: A Comment on the Controversy Between Leo Strauss and Alexandre Kojeve.' Social Research 31, no. 1 (Spring): 45-72 (Reprinted in 1969a) b 'Value and Technology.' In Conference Proceedings: 'Welfare Services in a Changing Technology,'21-9. Ottawa: Canadian Conference on Social Welfare. (See 1964c.) c 'Progres Technique et Valeurs Humaines.' In Les Deliberations de la Conference: 'Services de Bien-Etre Social et Technologie en Evolution,' 30 Ottawa: Conference Canadienne du Bien-Etre Social. (Translation of 1964b) d Book review, under the caption 'Turning New Leaves (1)', of Christianity and Revolution, the Lesson of Cuba by Leslie Dewart. Canadian Forum 43, no. 518 (March): 282-3 e Book review of The Four Faces of Peace: Lester B. Pearson, Statemen selected and edited by Sherleigh G. Pierson. Canadian Forum 44, no. 524 (September): 140 f Book review of The Predicament of Democratic Man by Edmond Cahn. University of Toronto Law Journal15, no. 4: 461-3 1965 a Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. (Reprinted with an introduction by the author in 1970 and 1971 by McClelland and Stewart, by Gage in 1978 and 1980, and by Carleton University Press in 1989.) (See ig86d.)

454 Sources b 'Stand on guard for independence.' Globe and Mail,12 October: 7. (Excerpts from an address given at International Teach-in held in Toronto in October 1965. For full text see 1965c. See also 1966a, 1966b, and 1973b.) c 'Realism in Political Protest.' Christian Outlook21, no. 2 (November): 3-6. (Full text of address given at Toronto International Teach-in. See 1965b, 1966a, 1966b, and 1973b.) 1966 a 'Protest and Technology.' InRevolutions and Response, Selections from Toronto International Teach-in, edited by Charles Hanly, 122-8. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. (Revised version of 1965c. See also 1965b, 1966b, and 1973b.) b 'Critique of the New Left.' Our Generation 3, no. 4 to 4, no. 1 (May): 46-51. (Revised version of 1965c. Reprinted in 1973b. See also 1965b and 1966a.) c 'What kind of life is the best life?' Hamilton Spectator, 19 March: 16. (Interview conducted by Charles Wilkinson, Spectator church editor Continued in ig66d.) d 'The clever young are just filled with questions.' Hamilton Spectator, 26 March: 16. (Interview. Continuation of 1966c.) e Book review of The Technological Societyby Jacques Ellul. Canadian Dimension3, nos. 3, 4 (March-April, May-June): 59-60 f Book review of The Secular City by Harvey Cox. The United Church Observer 28, no. 9 (1 July): 16-17, 26 g Letter to the editor, under the caption 'Readers' Outlook.' Christian Outlook 21, no. 5 (February): 17 h Letter to the editor, under the caption 'Freedom Fighters.' Globe and Mail, 7 April: 6 1967 a Comments on the Great Society from the 35th annual Couchiching Conference, in Great Societies and Quiet Revolutions, edited by John Irwin. 71-6. Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation b 'Canadian Fate and Imperialism.' Canadian Dimension 4, no. 3 (March April): 21-5. (Revised versions in 1969a and 1973c) c 'Wisdom in the Universities: Part One.' This Magazine Is About Schools 1, issue 4 (Autumn): 70-85. (See 1968a, 1968b, and 1969a.) d 'The Conservatives must put Canada first.' Hamilton Spectator, 30 Aug ust: 4 1968 a 'Wisdom in the Universities: Part Two' This Magazine Is About Schools 2, issue 5 (Winter): 52-7. (See 1967c, 1968b, and 1969a.) b 'The University Curriculum.' In The University Game,edited by Dennis

Bibliography of Grant's publications 455 Lee and Howard Adelman, 47-68. Toronto: Anansi. (Version of 1967c and 1968a. Revised version in 1969a) c 'The Academic Study of Religion in Canada.' InScholarship in Canada, 1967: Achievement and Outlook, Symposium presented to Section II of the Royal Society of Canada in 1967, edited by R.H. Hubbard, 59-68. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, for the Society d 'From Roosevelt to LBJ.' In The New Romans: Candid Canadian Opinions of the U.S., edited by A.W. Purdy, 39-41. Edmonton: M.G. Hurtig; New York: St Martin's Press 1969 a Technology and Empire: Perspectives on North America. Toronto: House of Anansi b Time as History. Massey Lectures, 9th Series. Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. (See 1985c.) c 'Is Freedom Man's Only Meaning?' Saturday Night 84, no. 3 (March): 31-3. (Same as 'A Platitude' in 1969a) d 'A Conversation on Technology and Man,' with Gad Horowitz. Journal of Canadian Studies 4, no. 3 (August): 3-6. (Same as 1969c e 'Horowitz and Grant Talk.' Canadian Dimension 6, no. 6 (December 1969-January 1970): 18-20. (Same as ig6gd) 1970 a 'Tradition and Revolution.' Canadian Forum 50, nos. 591-2 (April May): 88-93. ('Uncorrected text of the Gerstein lecture delivered at York University on March 18, 1970.') (See 1971b.) b 'Jelte Kuipers - an Appreciation.' The Silhouette (McMaster University), 2 October: 6 1971 a 'Preface' to Heritage: A Romantic Look at Early Canadian Furniture by Scott Symons and John de Visser. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart; Greenwich: New York Graphic Society. 2 unnumbered pages b 'Revolution and Tradition.' In Tradition and Revolution, edited by Lionel Rubinoff, 79-95. Toronto: Macmillan, in association with York University. (Revised version of 1970a) c 'Nationalism and Rationality.' Canadian Forum 50, no. 600 (January): 336-7. (Reprinted in 1971c See 1971d.) d 'Trudeau et L'Eclatement du Canada.' Maintenant numero 106 (Mai): 137-9. (Translation of 1971c. See also 1971c) e 'Nationalism and Rationality,' In Power Corrupted: The October Crisis and the Repression of Quebec, edited by Abraham Rotstein for the Canadian Forum, 51-6. Toronto: New Press. (Same as 1971c. See also 1971d.) 1972 'Technology and Empire' In Philosophy and Technology: Readings in the Philosophical Problems of Technology, edited by Carl Mitcham and Robert

456 Sources Mackey, 187-200, 371-2. New York: Free Press. (Same as 'In Defense of North America' in 1969a) 1973 a 'Ideology in Modern Empires.' In Perspectives of Empire: Essays Presented to Gerald S. Graham, edited by John E. Flint and Glyndwr Williams, 189-97. London: Longman; New York: Barnes and Noble b 'A Critique of the New Left.' In Canada and Radical Social Change, edited by Dimitrios I. Roussopoulos, 55, 57-61. Montreal: Black Rose Books. (Reprint of 1966b) c 'Canadian Fate and Imperialism.' In The Evolution of Canadian Literature in English 1945-1970, edited by Paul Denham, 100-9. Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. (Reprint of 'Canadian Fate and Imperialism' in 1969a with two new footnotes.) (See 1967b.) 1974 English-Speaking Justice. The Josiah Wood Lectures, 1974. Sackvill Mount Allison University. (Reprinted in 1985 by Anansi and University of Notre Dame Press with an 'Introduction' that states: 'The text is essentially the same as the Mount Allison edition, except for the expansion of certain citations in the footnotes.') (See also 1986c) 1975 a 'The University Curriculum and the Technological Threat.' In The Sciences, The Humanities and the Technological Threat, edited by W. Roy Niblett, 21-35. London: University of London, New York: Wiley. ('Draws heavily' on 'The University Curriculum' in 1969a.) b 'Knowing and Making.' Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, series rv, vol. XII: 59-67 c Book review of The Collected Papers of Walter Bagehot, Volumes V-VIH, The Political Writings,edited by Norman St John-Stevas. Globe and Mail, 1 March: 31 d Book review of The Gladstone Diaries, Volumes III & TV, edited by M.R.D. Foot and H.C.G. Matthew. Globe and Mail, 20 September: 35 1976 a ' "The computer does not impose on us the ways it should be used."' In Beyond Industrial Growth, edited by Abraham Rotstein, 117-3 Toronto: University of Toronto Press. (One of six Massey College Lectures presented at Massey College in 1974-5, and broadcast by CBC Radio.) (See 1977c.) b 'Abortion and Rights: The Value of Political Freedom,' with Sheila Grant. InThe Right to Birth: Some Christian Views on Abortion, edited by Eugene Fairweather and Ian Gentles, 1-12. Toronto: Anglican Book Centre. (Reprinted in 1983d and 1988b. Revised version in 1986a) c Brief comment in Time (Canada) 107 (5 January): 10 1977 a 'Foreword,' to The Liberal Idea of Canada: Pierre Trudeau and the Question

Bibliography of Grant's publications 457 of Canada's Survival by James Laxer and Robert Laxer, 9-12. Toronto: James Lorimer & Company b Dinner speech presented on 28 June 1977 in Toronto, published in Grant and Lamontagne on National Unity, 4-9. Toronto: Cemasco Management Ltd, for Constellation Life Assurance Company of Canada. (See i977i-) c 'Can We Think Outside Technology?' Tract (Gryphon Press, Lewes, Sussex) no. 24: 5-23. (Version of 1976a) d Book review of Simone Weil hy Simone Petrement. Globe and Mail, 12 February: 43 e Book review of Essays on Politics and Society, Volumes 18-19 of The Collected Works offohn Stuart Mill, edited by J.M. Robson. Globe and Mail, 6 August: 31 f Book review ofNietzsche's View of Socratesby Werner J. Dannhauser. American Political Science Review71, no. 3 (September): 11 g Book review of The First Torturer's Trial 1975 by Amnesty International. Globe and Mail, 11 June: 41 h 'Faith and the Multiversity.' In Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, The Search for Absolute Values in a Changing World, 1: 183-94. San Francisco: International Cultural Foundation. (Same as 1978a and 1982c) i 'Moderation is the only way to save Canada: Professor.' Toronto Star, 7 July: B6. (Excerpt from 1977b) 1978 a 'Faith and the Multiversity.' The Compass: A Provincial Review (Edmonton) no. 4 (Autumn): 3-14. (Same as 1977h and 1982c) b 'Conversation[s].' In George Grant in Process: Essays and Conversations, edited by Larry Schmidt, 13-21, 61-7, 101-9, and 141-7. Toronto: Anansi c Letter to the editor, under the caption 'Did Mackenzie King block woman's novel?' Globe and Mail, 20 April: 7 1979 a 'Research in the Humanities.' In Humanities in the Present Day, edited by John Woods and Harold G. Coward, 45-50. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. (Reprinted in 1986a.) b 'Nietzsche and the Ancients: Philosophy and Scholarship.' Dionysius 3 (December): 5-16. (Reprinted in 1986a. See 1985c.) c 'Diefenbaker: a democrat in theory and in soul.' Globe and Mail, 23 August: 7. (Reprinted in 1984c.) d 'Inconsistency ruled in Canada's 70's.' Globe and Mail, 31 December: 7 1980 a 'The batde between teaching and research.' Globe and Mail, 28 April: 7

458

Sources

b Book review of The Idea File of Harold Adams Innis, edited by William Christian. Globe and Mail, 31 May: E12 1981 'The Case against abortion.' Today Magazine, 3 October: 12-13 1982 a 'Euthanasia,' with Sheila Grant. In Care for the Dying and the Bereaved, edited by Ian Gentles, 133-43. Toronto: Anglican Book Centre. (Revised version in 1986a) b 'Dennis Lee - Poetry and Philosophy.' In Tasks of Passion: Dennis Lee at Mid-Career, edited by Karen Mulhallen, et al., 229-35. Toronto: Des cant. (Also Published in Descant, Dennis Lee special issue, no. 39 [Winter]: 229-35) c 'Faith and the Multiversity.' In Modernization: The Humanist Response to Its Promise and Problems, Selected Readings from the Proceedings of th International Conferences on the Unity of the Sciences, edited by Richard L. Rubenstein, 107-19. Washington: Paragon House. (Same as 1977h and 1978a.) d Book review of The Great Code: The Bible and Literatureby Northrop Frye. Globe and Mail,27 February: El7 e Book review of Outsiders: A Study in Life and letters by Hans Mayer. Globe and Mail, 16 October: E16 f Book review of Benjamin Disraeli: The Early Letters, Volumes I and I edited by J.A.W. Gunn et al. Globe and Mail, 8 May: E15 1983 a 'Celine: Art and Politics.' Queen's Quarterly go,no. 3 (Autumn): 801-13 b Book review of The World, the Text and the Criticby Edward W. Said. Globe and Mail,7 May: E18 c 'Foreword' to Neo-Vedania and Modernity by Bithika Mukerji, iii-vi. Varanasi: Ashutosh Prakashan Sansthan d 'Abortion and Rights.' In Contemporary Moral Issues, 38-45. Toronto McGraw-Hill Ryerson. (2nd ed., 1987: 51-7.) (Same as 1976b and 1988b) e Letter to the editor, under the caption 'St. John's "visions."' Globe and Mail, 3 December: 7 1984 a 'Justice and Technology.' In Theology and Technology: Essays in Christian Analysis and Exegesis,edited by Carl Mitcham and Jim Grote, 237-46. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America b Book review of Science, God and Nature in Victorian Canada by Carl Berger. Saturday Night 99, no. 3 (March): 65-6 c '"Loyalty Is the Great Virtue for Political Leaders." ' In Diefenbaker: Re membering the Chief, 153-5. Edited by That Mcllroy. Toronto: Doubleday. (Reprint of 1979c) 1985 a 'An Interview with George Grant,' with Larry Schmidt. Grail 1, issue 1 (March): 34-47

Bibliography of Grant's publications 459 b Letter to the editor, The Idler no. 4 (April-May): 48 c 'The Minds of Men in the Atomic Age' and 'Teaching What Nietzsche Taught.' In Canadian Political Thought, edited by H.D. Forbes, 284-9 and 433-44. Toronto: Oxford University Press. (Reprint of 1955c and excerpts from 1969b and 1979b) 1986 a Technology and Justice.Toronto: Anansi; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press b 'The Morals of Modern Technology: An Essay.' Canadian Forum 66, no. 762 (October): 11-17. (Excerpt from 1986a) c 'Philosophy and Culture: Perspectives for the Future.' In Philosophy and Culture,Proceedings of the 17th World Congress of Philosophy, Montreal, 21-27 August 1983, pp. 173-82. Montreal: Editions du Beffroi, Editions Montmorency d Est-ce la fin du Canada? Lamentation sur Vechec du nationalisme canadie

Traduit de l'anglais par Gaston Laurion. Preface de Jacques-Yvan Morin. Ville de LaSalle: Editions Hurtubise HMH Limitee. (Translation of 1965a) e 'English-Speaking Justice.' The Human Life Review 12, no. 2 (Spring 90-103. ('Part IV of 1974) f 'In Defence of North America.' In A Passion for Identity: Introduction to

Canadian Studies, edited by Eli Mandel and David Taras, 181-9 Toronto: Methuen. (An abridged version of the essay with the same title in 1969a) 1988 a 'The Triumph of the Will.' In The Issue Is Life: A Christian Response to

Abortion in Canada,edited by Denyse O'Leary, 156-66. Burlington Welch Publishing Co. (Reprinted in 1988e and 1990b) b 'Abortion and Rights: The Value of Political Freedom.' In Holy Living Christian Morality Today, edited by G. Richmond Bridge, 28-35. Charlottetown: St Peter Publications. (Same as 1976b and 1983d) c 'In Defence of Simone Weil.' Review essay of Simone Weil: A Modern PilgrimagebyRobert Coles. The Idler no. 15 (January-February): 36-4 (Reprinted in 1989b. See also 1988f.) d Book review of If You Love This Country: Facts and Feelings on Free

Trade, edited by Laurier LaPierre. Books in Canada 17, no. 1 (JanuaryFebruary): 18-19 e 'The Triumph of the Will.' Jeremiad 1, nos. 3-4 (Fall-Winter 1988-89) 3-6. (Reprint of 1988a) f Reply to letters to the editor re 1988c. The Idler no. 17 (May-June): 60 g 'Lament for a Nation Revisited: An Interview with George Grant' (with Monica V. Halil). International insights: a Dalhousie journal on international affairs 4, no. 1: 5-9

460 Sources 1989 a 'Sacrifice and the Sanctity of Life,' with Sheila Grant. In New Life: Addressing Change in the Church, edited by K. Mark Haslett et al., 78a-99. Toronto: Anglican Book Centre. (Written in 1988) b 'In Defence of Simone Weil.' In Best Canadian Essays 1989, edited by Douglas Fetherling, 165-73. Saskatoon: Fifth House Publishers. (Reprint of 1988c) 1990 a 'Two Theological Languages' (reprint of 1953b) with 'Addendum' (written June 1988). In Two Theological Languages by George Grant and Other Essays in Honour of His Work, edited by Wayne Whillier, 6-19. Queenston: Edwin Mellen Press b 'The Triumph of the Will.' In A Time to Choose Life: Women, Abortion and Human Rights, edited by Ian Gentles, 9-18. Stoddart: Toronto. (Reprint of 1988a) c 'Obedience.' The Idler no. 29 (August): 23-8. (Introductory paragraphs indicate that this piece has been edited by Gerald Owen with 'some retouching,' omissions, and 're-arrangement,' from 'fragments of a projected book, which [Grant] seems to have been working on in 1976.') 1991 'George Grant and Religion. A Conversation Prepared and Edited by William Christian.' Journal of Canadian Studies 26, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 42-63. (Conversation taped on 16 and 17 July 1988 in Halifax) 1993 'The Uses of Freedom - a Word and Our World.' Queen's Quarterly 100, no. 1: 185-97. (Reprint of 1956)

Index

abortion for convenience. See also right-to-life movement 180, 296-7, 306-7, 314, 343-8, 363 Adler, Mortimer 206, 208, 222 adult education 96, 104, 164, 170, 188; Canadian Association for Adult Education (CAAE) 94, 96-7, 100-1, 104, 112, 122, 144, 164 Air Raid Precautions (ARP) 68, 70-1 Aitchison, Jim 165, 171, 200, 204, 252, 340, 342 Allen, C.K. 68, 111, 113, 149 Allen, Hugh 116, 128-9, 131 Allen, Phyllis (nee Watkins) 116, 129, 131-2, 145, 147 Anderson, Fulton xxii, 152-5, 156-7, 162-3, 172, 198, 200-3 Anderson, Marion 80 Andrew, Ed 205, 347 Andrew, Geoffrey 40, 67, 131, 151 Andrew, Margaret Monro (nee Grant) 5, 7, 40, 99, 123, 131, 347 Andrew, St 333 Anglican church 115, 179-80, 238, 240, 314-15, 349, 353 Anglin, Miriam 98-9, 130, 153, 258

Anselm, St 222, 373n Anthony, St 49, 333 Apollonian 337-8 Aquinas, St Thomas 114, 129, 236, 361 Arapura, John 304, 331 Aristotle 42, 114, 161, 208, 234-5, 239, 250, 264, 268, 283, 306, 341-2 Armstrong, Herbert 210, 220, 330 Arnoldi, Joan xxi, 90 art 24-5, 45, 164-5 Arthur ('Artie') xxiii, 262, 315, 372 Atherton, Patrick 299 Augustine, St xix, xxi, 122, 124, 125, 148, 156, 170-1, 177, 189, 194, 206, 211, 232-3, 236, 276, 337, 36o, 367, 373n Avison, Margaret 14 Ayer, AJ. 114 Bach, J.S. 91, 165, 168, 322, 369 Bacon, Francis 152, 200, 236, 317 Balliol College, Oxford 48, 52, 57, 64-5, 91-2, 111-12, 113-14, 117, 121, 207, 280 Barbour,R.A.S.57,386nBarbour, R.A fS. 57, 386n

462 Index Barclay, Sarah 13, 89-90, 371, 37511 Batterwood 17, 19, 24, 26, 98, 158, 261, 267 Baudelaire, Charles 63-4 Beatty, Sir Edward 43, 136, 246, 273 Beatty, Perrin 339, 350 Bedson, Derek xiii, 121, 124, 132, 188, 198, 207, 237, 243, 266, 31315, 3i7> 353. 366, 368 Beethoven, Ludwig van 121, 137, 165 Belloc, Hillaire 32 Bergson, Henri 120, 122, 125, 129 Bermondsey xx, 68-71, 74-82, 92, 94, 120, 169, 188, 371, 388n biblical tradition 189, 210-11, 225, 227, 236-7, 310 Bickersteth, Burgon 74-9, 82, 122-6 big business xxii, 43, 136-7, 143-4, 159, 191, 246, 253, 273 Biggar,J.H. 32, 33 Bishop's University 287 Bissonnette, Lise 362 Black, Abe 220, 330 Blackmun, Justice 309, 346 Bloom, Allan 224, 292 Bogaard, Paul 294-5 Boissonneau, Alice (nee Eedy) xii, 102, 104-5, 112, 118, 120, 130, 139, 218, 350-1, 368, 395n Borden, Robert 110 Bourassa, Henri 95 Brahms, Johannes 67 Brandon College 207-8 Braun, Werner von 190, 194 Braybrooke, David 324 British Commonwealth 51, 106, 10910, 114, 127, 248 Brotz, Howard 292-3, 350, 366 Brown, Malcolm 58, 85

Brown School 23, 205 Brunton, Alan 121 Bryce, R.A. 126, 136 Bush, Geoffrey xii, 60, 117-18, 121-2, 371 Buck, Marian 17, 31-2, 48, 50, 52, 61-2, 65, 77, 376n, 38on cadet corps 27-8 Callaghan, Morley 96-7, 102 Calvin, John. See also Calvinism 114 125, 236 Calvinism 114, 148-9, 232, 238, 274, 280, 308. See also Calvin Campbell, Eddie 31, 37, 42 Canada: An Introduction to a Nation

106, 288 Canadian sovereignty xxii, 32, 83, 106-10, 138, 243, 246-50, 256 capitalism 212, 229, 247, 249, 279, 354 Carpenter, Sergeant-Major 27 Carr society 4OOn Carver, Humphrey 90, 101 Cathars 230, 231, 235 Cayley, David 324, 356, 360 CBC 96-7, 107, 158, 169, 178, 187-8, 195-6, 209, 211, 217, 241, 247-8, 280, 286, 296, 299 CCF (Co-operative Commonwealth Federation) 91, 96, 101, 138, 142, 157, 211, 298 Celine, Louis Ferdinand xix, 277, 322-3, 336, 347-8, 349, 357, 372 charity 166, 228, 231, 268-9, 289, 292, 332, 344, 353. 406n, 4i9n Christian, William 294, 314 Christianity 65, 91-3, 111, 136, 143, 149, 152, 156, 184, 193, 202, 210,

Index 463 217, 222, 232-4, 239, 268, 292, 299301, 302, 304, 314-16, 343. 356, 364; Christianity, Eastern 233-9; Christianity, evangelical 346, 356; Christianity, Western xxi-xxii, 54, 85-6, 198, 222, 232, 235-6, 238, 252, 282, 293. 299, 309, 315, 353, 360. See also Jesus; Gospels Churchill, Winston 76 Citizens' Forum 96, 100-2, 105, 112, 138, 198, 213 Citizens' Housing and Planning Association (CHPA) 101, 395n Civil Liberties Association of Toronto (CLAT) 101, 107, 243 civilization, American 143, 246, 256, 299 civilization, British 33, 109-11, 138, 246, 263 civilization, industrial. See society, industrial civilization, Western 141, 221, 256, 263, 328, 338 Claremont College 197-8 Clark, Joe 259, 348 Clarke, Peter xii, 59-60, 64-5, 85, 92, 113, 117-18, 122, 186, 245, 371 Claxton, Brooke 97 Clifford, Paul 209-10, 222, 243, 252 Cline, Ray 62 Cochrane, C.N. 153, 169, 177, 383n, 4o6n Cohen, Matthew 258, 271, 314 Coldwell, MJ. 50 College Times 24, 28, 30

Colombo, John Robert 244 Colville, Alex 262-3, 295-6, 307, 320 Combs, Eugene 26, 319, 328, 331-2 Communism 245

conservatism 108, 191, 249, 283-4 Conservative party 5, 10, 157-8, 173, 212, 241, 247, 253, 256, 260, 265, 291, 348, 355 Cook, Ramsay 243-4, 296 Cooper, Barry 314 Corbett, Ed 29, 94, 100-1, 111, 39411 Corry,J.A. 44, 51,94, m , 193 Cotter, Graham 240 Couchiching Conference 173, 264 Crashaw, Richard 356, 360 Creal, Michael 209 Credo, ut intelligam xxii, 86, 93, 222,

373n Creighton, Donald 102, 425n Critique of Pure Reason xxi, 171, 211,

361. See also Kant, Immanuel cruise missiles, testing 349 cults 312-13 culture, museum 302-22 Dalhousie University 22, 128-9, 130, 133. 137, 139-40, 142-5, 151, 162, 199, 204, 210, 273, 298-9, 306, 324-6, 349 Daly, Elizabeth 352 Darwin, Charles 343 Davidson, John 29, 379n Davis, Arthur 258 Davis, Bette 59, 73 Davis, Robert 272 de Gaulle, Charles 248 de Marbois, Jock 22 Depression, the 49 Descartes, Rene 114-15, 171, 236, 358-9 Dewey,John 84, 104, 164, 176, 194, 210. See also education, progressive Dickens, Charles 80, 262, 347

464 Index Diefenbaker, John xix, 211, 240-1, 243-8, 253, 255, 265, 271, 308, 324, 372, 422-311 Dionysian 337 Dostoevsky, Fyodor 83-4, 122, 130, 177-8, 235 Douglas, T.C. 241 Doull, James 130, 139-40, 143, 157, 158, 161, 192-3, 252, 268, 324, 340-1, 364 Doyle, Richard 328 Drury, Dorothy 13, 29 Dumas, Alexandre 35 Dunbar, William 242, 251 Duplessis, Maurice 34 economy, expanding 188 Eden, Anthony 119, 184 education, mass 142, 144, 207-9 education, progressive 138, 161, 170, 176, 199, 216, 249. See also Dewe

John Edward VIII 40 Eisenhower, Dwight 185, 267 El Greco 25 Ellul, Jacques xxiii, 194, 226-7, 228, 232, 256, 293, 3O0, 357, 372 empire, American 91, 106, 109, 138, 150, 248, 250, 256-7, 263, 277, 289 Empire, British 91, 106, 109-11, 138, 188, 289 empire, Russian 109, 138 Empire, Yes or No?, The109, 127, 138 English-Speaking Justice 295-8, 307-10,

315, 345-6, 349, 361 euthanasia 369-70 existentialism 129, 178, 191 Fackenheim, Emil 223 Farrer, Austin 114-15, 121, 149, 398-gn

federation, imperial 8, 246 fiUoquecontroversy 233-5, 337, 42On Fisher, Christopher 121 Fisher, John 263 Fitzgibbons, the Misses 37, 41, 46, 122, 382n Fleming, Donald 247 Forsey, Eugene 12, 50, 252, 339-40 Forster, E.M. 67 Foster, Michael 183, 308-9, 359 Foulds, Philip 82, 366 freedom 26, 43-4, 45-6, 94, 166, 170, 173, 177-8, 181-2, 185, 188-91, 192-3, 195, 206, 207, 212-13, 218, 224-5, 237, 249-50, 256, 278, 282, 301, 344, 39m, 393"4n, 4i4n free trade 362-3 French Canada 3, 9, 11, 29, 33-5, 37, 43, 51, 95-6, 155, 211, 243, 247-9, 288, 296, 312. See also October Crisis Freud, Sigmund 110, 114, 183, 189, 216-18, 281, 330 Frost, Leslie 288 Frost, Robert 84 Frye, Northrop 153, 289, 347, 4o6n Fulford, Robert 192, 255 Gaullism 229, 248. See also de Gaull Gauthier, David 255 Gelber, Lionel 112 Gelber, Michael xii, 27, 29, 31, 36-7, 55, 90, 117, 146 Gelber, Sylva 198 Gershwin, George 91, 165, 393n Ghandi, Mahatma 138, 185, 245, 257 Gielgud, John 122, 400n Gilmour, George 209-10 Goldwater, Barry 266-7 Gonick, Cy 263, 268

Index 465 Gordon, Grace 340 Gospels, the xxii, 232, 235 Goulding, William 30-1 Graham, Billy 175-6, 264 Graham, Gerald 41, 44, 51, 117, 120, 124, 125, 132, 144, 146, 172, 295, 311 Graham, John 267, 323, 369 Graham, Nita 267, 324, 369 Grant, Alison. See Ignatieff, Jesse Alison Grant, Catherine (daughter) 173, 182, 187, 242, 262, 312, 362, 369 Grant, Charity Lawson 'Chippy' (sister) xi, xiii, 5, 7, 37, 48, 55, 77, 78, 89, 98, 121-2, 123, 131, 137-8, 146, 159, 170, 175, 187, 198, 203, 205, 240, 242, 256, 269, 319, 348, 361, 368, 371 Grant, David (son) 196, 312, 362 Grant, George Monro (grandfather) 21-2, 38, 41, 110, 133, 216, 246, 249, 328, 346, 369, 378n Grant, George Parkin 101, 109, 115, 116, 122, 351; Air Raid Precautions warden xix, 68, 70-2, 76, 80; Dalhousie University 22, 133, 137-40, 142-5, 151-2, 171, 181, 196-9, 204, 207, 210; D.Phil, thesis 113-14, 139-40, 144, 147-50, 156, 4O5n; duty to his country 63-4, 74, 77, 82, 126; Hart House xxii, 74-6, 122-6, 129, 161-2, 203; law, student of 51, 57, 129; literary influences on xi, 16, 92, 147, 400n; McMaster University resignation 209-10, 220-3; pacifism xx, xxii, 23, 27-9, 54, 63-4, 72, 74, 82, 86, 116, 126-7, 185, 245, 255, 355; philosophic influences on xix, xxii-xxiii, 11, 23,

35, 42, 44-5, 65, 68, 83-4, 92, 148, 157, 177, 190, 205-6, 222, 232, 253; relationship with mother xxiii, 7, 11-12, 14-15, 32, 35-6, 39-40, 43, 55, 58, 61-3, 80, 83, 86, 89-90, 112, 128, 129, 132, 140, 142, 145-6, 152, 156-60, 172, 175, 198, 240, 246, 261, 270, 286, 371; relationship with Vincent Massey xxi, 24-7, 48, 58, 82-3, 87-8, 119, 136, 151-2, 159-60, 240, 267; as a teacher 129, 133-5, 150, 260-2, 332-4; undergraduate education at Queen's xxii, 33, 37-8, 4O-53, 64, 128-9, 133, 197, 206, 223, 246, 251; York University resignation 198-204; works, major: for books see under title; 'The computer does not impose on us the way it should be used' 300-1; 'Canadian Fate and Imperialism' 263, 272, 276; 'An Ethic of Community' 212-14, 309; 'Faith and the Multiversity' 315-18, 357-60; 'Have We a Canadian Nation?' 108; 'Jean-Paul Sartre' 177—8; 'Justice and Technology' 178; 'The Minds of Men in the Atomic Age' 173; 'The Paradox of Democratic Education' 309; 'Philosophy' xxii, 152-7, 199-200, 222; 'The Triumph of the Will' 345-6; 'Tyranny and Wisdom' 224, 276; 'The Use of Freedom' 181; 'Wisdom in the Universities' 273-5 Grant, Isabel (daughter) 185, 312, 315, 355, 361-2, 369 Grant, Margaret. See Andrew, Margaret Grant, Maude Parkin (mother) 103, 105, i l l , 113, 122, 124, 126-7,

466 Index 131-2, 324, 333, 336; attitude to her father 11, 14, 36, 240, 37411; death xi, 240-1; early life 3, 8, 37; senility 39, 187, 198, 216, 240; social ambitions of 3, 7, 12, 14-15, 39, 48, 55, 74, 98, 158 Grant, Rachel (daughter) 137, 141, 142, 147, 149, 172, 182-3, 269, 272, 311, 347, 362, 369 Grant, Robert (son) 158, 173, 182, 269, 311, 362, 369-70 Grant, Sheila Veronica (nee Allen) (wife) xi, xxiii, 99, 115, 116, 121, 123-4, 128-32, 133, 135-6, 137, 138, 139, 141-2, 145, 147, 149, 155, 160, 165-6, 168, 171, 177, 178-9, 180, 182, 183, 185, 193, 202, 206, 214, 2l6, 231, 244, 250, 256, 26l-2, 264, 267, 285, 286, 291, 296, 299, 302, 304, 306, 317, 318, 322, 323, 334-8, 342, 344, 348, 350-1, 352, 356, 367-70, 372, 374n, 4o8n, 430n Grant, William Allen (son) 146, 149, 151, 172, 182-3, 246, 268-9, 286, 312, 362, 369-70 Grant, William Lawson (father) 113; death 31, 159, 240; early life 3, 140; influence on son 21, 30, 33, 51, 60, 84, 160, 172, 216, 248, 261, 329; League of Nations 10, 30, 105, 216; religious views 29, 247, 281; Upper

Canada College 3, 6-7, 22-3, 40, 378n; verse 375", 38on; war service 5-6 Green, Howard 241, 245 Greene, Lome 53 Greenspan, Louis xii, 258, 292, 303, 330 Greey, Elizabeth 48, 57, 68, 80, 90, 130

Greey, Mary 48, 56, 68, 71, 78, 80-1, 89, 115, 119-20, 121, 124, 130, 132, 253 Grensted, L.W. 114, 149, 398n Hamilton, Frederick 21 Hankey, Wayne 369-71 Hart House xxii, 74, 76, 122-8, 1612, 203 Harvard University 128, 307 Haydn, Franz Joseph 319-20 Heaven, David 318 Heaven, Edwin 318 Hegel, G.F.W. 193-5, 206, 224-5, 227, 232, 250 Hegelianism 53, 183, 192-3, 223 Heidegger, Martin xxiii, 114, 177-8, 194, 268-9, 277, 292, 294, 299, 306, 354, 356, 364-5, 366, 412n Hemmingway, Ernest 80 Hepburn, Mitch 26 Herbert, George 230, 236-7, 359; text of 'Love' 437n Hicks, Henry 173, 287, 324-6 history 282, 300 Hobbes, Thomas 284, 342 Horowitz, Gad 259, 266 Howe, C D . xxii, 108, 110 Howe, Joseph 32 Hutchins, Maynard 46, 196-7, 206, 208, 328 Ignatieff, Andrew 230, 371 Ignatieff, George 117, 151, 180, 185, 229, 340 Ignatieff, Jessie Alison (nee Grant) 5, 7, 16, 37, 48, 57, 59, 62, 64, 68, 71-2, 80, 82, 85, 87-8, 117, 123, 131, 151, 180, 186, 229, 316, 371, 382n

Index 467 Ignatieff, Michael 256 Ignatieff, Nicholas 22, 30, 51, 117, 128, 161 Innis, Harold 153, 289, 40611 internationalism 105, 245 James, Heniy xix, 120, 123, 165, 240, 278, 348, 362, 371, 4O4n James, William 62, 84, 104, 140, 392n Jaspers, Karl 178 Jesus 85-6, 185, 221, 235-8, 245, 353 Jewett, Miss 23, 302 Johnson, Lyndon 260, 264 Johnson, Samuel 175 Joyce, James 336, 348 Judaism 330-1, 385n Jung, CJ. 217-18, 267 justice 257, 298, 309-10, 313, 345, 354-5, 358-9, 369 Kant, Immanuel xix, xxii, 120-2, 129, 139, 148-9, 156, 176, 193, 205-6, 211, 213, 232, 237, 274, 3O0, 342. See also Critique of Pure Reason Keats, John 120 Kerr, Alexander E. 129, 133, 136, 142-4, 151, 153, 160-2, 171, 273 Kierkegaard, S0ren 177 Kilbourn, William 209 King, Mackenzie 26-7, 37, 50, 91, 95, 108, 150, 336 Klein, Jacob 4i8n, 429n Koch, Eric 210 Kojeve, Alexandre 223-7, 232, 24950, 276 Kuipers, Jelte 287-9 Lady Chatterly5 Lover 33 Lament for a Nation 11, 108, 216, 240-53, 254-5, 259, 271, 278-80,

284, 342, 362 Laswell, Harold 274 Laurendeau, J.-E.-A. 394n Laurie, Kenrick C. 136, 141, 144, 162, 175 Laurier, Wilfrid 110 Laurion, Gaston 242, 341, 362 Laxer, James 254, 271 Leacock, Stephen 14, 379n Leacock, Stevie 30 Lee, Dennis xii, 272, 275-9, 307, 310-11, 319, 335-8, 349-50, 356-7 Leo, Mrs Don (nee Lizzy Stairs) xxiii, 12-13, 16, 29, 31, 36, 39, 73, 80, 94, 123, 129, 132, 149, 261, 371 Lesage,Jean 211 Levesque, Henri 151 Levesque, Rene 289, 312 Lewis, C.S. 115, 170 Liberal party 10, 26-7, 91, 96, 107, 110, 138-9, 157-8, 211-12, 241, 243, 249, 255 liberalism 103-4, 109, 148, 162-3, 217, 253, 259, 263, 269, 293, 308, 3io, 346 Lindsay, A.D. (later Lord Lindsay) 57, 59-6O, 63, 91-2, 113-H, 117, 120-1, 148, 245, 371, 386n Locke, John 284, 343, 358 Long, Marcus 200-2 Lorre, Peter 35 love 218, 230, 236, 287 Lovett, Mrs 69, 76-7, 94, 119, 183 Lower, Arthur 155 Lukose, K.P. 386n Luther, Martin 29, 114, 118, 236, 251, 42in Lynd, Staughton 256, 258 Macdonald, Angus L. 158

468 Index MacDonald, Donald C. 42, 44, 52-3, 383n Macdonald, Sir John A. 3-4, 32, 110, 246, 336 MacDonald, K.C. 196, 219-20 Macdonnell, Anne 38, 40, 52, 113, 186 Macdonnell, Jim 5, 10, 17, 26, 41, 43, 52, 101, 113, 117, 119, 123, 136, 157-8, 160, 180, 240, 246, 253, 273 Macdonnell, Marjorie (nee Parkin) 5, 8, 14, 17, 113, 160, 253 Macdonnell, Peter 38, 113 McDougall, Professor 41, 51 McGibbon, Pauline 320 McGill University 29, 33, 37, 43, 136, 196, 248, 273, 288 Machiavelli, Niccolo 223, 225, 342 Maclnnes, Rose 336, 415n MacKenzie, Norman 151 MacLennan, Hugh 95, 227, 252, 259, 288, 375n McLuhan, Marshall 277 McMaster University 209-10, 220-3, 231, 259, 265, 273- 285, 296, 299, 302, 304-6, 318, 322, 323, 326-30, 333 MacMillan, Sir Ernest 22-3 McNaught, Kenneth 27, 28, 36, 55, 212, 258, 4i4n Mandel, Eli 279 Mann, Thomas 80 Mannis, Harry 211 Marcel, Gabriel 177-8 Marcuse, Herbert 183, 254, 267 Marlowe, Christopher 124, 367 Marx, Karl 114, 183, 190, 212, 232, 284, 330, 342 Marxism 110, 184, 190, 195, 212, 254, 264, 287, 343, 349, 354 Massey, Alice (nee Parkin) 5, 8, 14,

17, 48, 58, 72, 77, 82-3, 84, 88-9, 118-19, 137, 158, 160, 267, 374n Massey, Chester 24 Massey Commission 152-7, 162, 177, 199-2OO, 222

Massey, Hart 30, 48, 82, 267 Massey, Lionel 48, 63, 82, 117, 118, 159 Massey, Vincent (Canadian High Commissioner, London; governor-general of Canada): xxi, 5, 6, 10, 17, 24, 26-7, 32, 37, 48, 72, 74, 82-3, 87-8, 97, 111, 113, 119, 122, 124-5, 136, 137, 151, 158-60, 173, 180, 187, 240, 246, 267, 337, 378n Mathu, E.W. 386n Menzies, Duncan 59 Menzies, Robert 48 merchant marine 82-4, 87-9, 127, 245 Michener, Roland 56, 94 Micklem, Nathaniel 113, 123, 129, 397n Miller, Lewis 187, 210-11 Milligan, Frank 304 Milne, David 378-9n Milner, Lord 8, 10 modernity 147-8, 195, 198, 212, 220, 225-7, 250-1, 255, 263, 284, 292, 300-1 Moore, Kay 87-8, 184 More, Thomas 35, 77 Morgentaler case 345 Morin, Jacques-Yvan 362 Morin, Victor 34, 51, 288 Morrison, Jean 96, 100 Morton, W.L. 208, 254, 266 Mott, John R. 29 Mount Allison University 163, 287, 294-5, 297, 299, 307

Index 469 Mowat, Farley 252 Mozart, W.A. xix, 135, 165, 185, 230, 238, 278, 285, 290, 317, 320, 322-3, 347, 350, 352, 360, 368, 372, 39311 Mulroney, Brian 348, 355, 362 multiversity, the xxiii, 272-4, 284-5, 302, 304 National Film Board of Canada 89, 107 national socialism 346, 355 nationalism 245, 248, 251-2, 256, 258, 260, 264-5 NATO 245 New Democratic Party (NDP) 214, 241, 297-8, 346, 348 New Left 214, 254-7, 264, 269, 271-2, 279 Newman, Peter 255 Nichols, Beverley 28 Nicholson, J.W.A. 142 Nietzsche, Friedrich 61, 194, 268, 274, 280-3, 290, 293-4, 317, 319, 342, 346, 349, 355, 358, 360 Nixon, Richard 292 North America xxii, 106, 128, 131, 137, 143, 166, 173, 182, 186, 194-5, 197, 207, 212, 220, 229, 251, 256-7, 274, 276-7, 289 Nova Scotia 137, 151, 168, 197, 283, 285 Noverings 17, 31, 48, 82 Nowlan, George 282 October crisis 288-9 O'Donovan, Joan 192, 343, 355, 4ion Oliver, Michael 212 Oman, John 114, 147-50, 156-7, 176, 191, 213, 232, 297, 309, 372, 398n opera 45 Oppenheimer, Robert 298

Order of Canada 338-40 Otter Lake 12, 18, 35, 101, 151, 172, 371 Owen, Wilfred xix-xx, 72, 91 'Owl and the Dynamo,' 'The' 322 Oxford 3, 50, 55, 68, 85, 111, 113-15, 119, 124, 126, 130, 139, 145, 149, 168-9, 208, 212, 246 Oxford and Bermondsey Club 69, 74-6, 78, 92 pacifism 23, 27-8, 30, 54, 59, 63-5, 72, 114, 116-17, 123, 184-5, 245 Parkin, Sir George (grandfather) 3, 6, 8, 10-11, 36, 38, 41, 52, 109, 216, 240, 246-7. See alsofederation, imperial Parkin, Lady (nee Annie Connell Fisher) 8, 13-14, 17, 19, 29 Parkin, Raleigh xi-xii, 8, 11, 29, 57, 95, 198, 212, 252, 267, 288, 299, 312, 375n Parlee, Medlay 27, 32-3 Parsons, Talcott 274 Parti Quebecois 289 Pascal, Blaise 114-15, 273, 361 Peacock, E.R. 4, 82, 132 Pearl Harbor xx, 85 Pearson, Lester B. ('Mike') xix, 63, 71, 77, 78, 80-1, 89, 120, 132, 138, 185, 241, 253, 255, 259, 295 Pearson, Marion 63 Peers, Frank 138, 170 Penfield, Wilder 219 person, concept of 147-8, 238, 297 Petrement, Simone xx, 229, 342, 42On Phillips, Colonel Eric 124 philosophy, contemporary 129, 140, 143, 152-5, 157, 189, 194, 200-1, 218, 222-7, 236-7, 292, 296

470 Index Philosophy in the Mass Age 189, 192,

209, 212, 224-6, 228 Picasso, Pablo 25, 246, 379n Pickersgill, Frank 405-611 Plato xix, 42, 67, 114, 148-9, 155-7, 160, 163-4, 169, 176, 193-5, 201, 203, 211, 231, 233-6, 238-9, 250, 263, 277, 282, 284, 293, 302, 306-7, 309-10, 314, 332, 342, 364- See also Republic

Polk, Jim 356-7, 360-1, 364 Poole, Cyril 294-5 Popper, Karl 169 pragmatism 62, 84, 104, 154, 165 Pratt, EJ. 83 progress, age of 243 Progressive Conservative party. See Conservative party Protestant tradition 34, 155, 173, 181, 218, 232, 237 Proust, Marcel 123, 348 Quainton, Buckinghamshire 85, 118 Quebec. SeeFrench Canada Queen's Drama Guild 40 Queen's Quarterlyxiii, 11, 181, 2 347 Queen's University xxii, 4, 22, 33, 38, 43, 45, H3> 121, 136-40, 143, 153, 168, 202, 223, 253, 273, 285 Quiet Revolution (Quebec) 211 Rae, Bob 256, 279-80 Raphael 323, 334, 372 Rawls, John 296-7, 307-8, 324, 342-3 religion 123, 178; of mastery 265, 275; as social force 30, 264 religion, department of 209, 221-2, 226, 231, 262, 303, 305-6, 312, 318-19 Republic(Plato) 118, 139, 171, 201

211, 223, 234, 236, 364 Rhodes Scholarship 3, 8, 46, 50-2, 56,58,86,94, i n right-to-life movement 296, 314, 344, 346 Rimbaud, Arthur 61, 63 Robertson, John 327, 331 Robinson, Judith 107, 243, 317 Roblin, Duff 266 Roddick, Paul 174-5 Rodriguez, Percy 211 Roe v. Wade296, 298, 309 Roman Catholicism 34, 41, 95, 98, 116, 136, 142, 154-5, 163, 179, 232, 234-5, 249, 346 Roosevelt, Franklin 26, 58, 72, 106-7, 109 Roper, Henry xii Ross, Murray 198-204 Rotstein, Abe 314 Round Table Movement, the 10 Rousseau, J.-J. 35, 284, 300, 342-3, 349, 358 Rowell-Sirois Commission 50 Rowse, A.L. 118 royal commission. SeeMassey Commission Royal Society of Canada 272, 298-9, 305, 339 Russell, Bertrand 156-7, 189, 203 Ryan, Claude 255 Ryle, Gilbert 114 St John's College, Winnipeg 206-8 St Andrew's College 3 St Laurent, Louis 119, 173 Sanders, Ed 302-5, 318-19, 323, 328 Sandwell, B.K. 154-5 Sarah (maid). See Barclay, Sarah Sartre, J.-P. xxii, 170, 177-8, 189-90, 194-5, 232, 250, 372

Index 471 Sawatsky, Len 326 Schmidt, Larry 314 science of mastery 232, 250; modern !03> H7-9> 217, 250; origins xxii, 1 b1>!53; relation to Protestantism 143. 149» 164, 182, 217; as technology 173, 298 scientists, behavioural 219-20 scientists, natural 152 Scott, Frank 57, 211-12, 375n secularism i l l , 114, 143, 153, 155, 207-9, 223, 249, 273, 282, 292, 300, 362 Sedgewick, Anne 38, 40 Self, Peter 59-60, 121-2, 145, 186, 371 Shakespeare, William xix, 124, 185, 323, 350 Shaw, George Bernard 31 Shelley, P.B. 121, 400n Sherrard, Philip 232-3, 235 Sibley, William 208 Siebert, John 366 Siegfried, Andre 32 Simenon, Georges 321, 336-7, 372, 432n Skelton, Sheila 42, 52 Smith, Sidney 122-8 Smith, Steven 78, 115 Smith, Wilfred C. 299, 304 socialism 211-14, 241, 249, 312, 334, 353 society, industrial 103, 166, 225, 263 society, mass 166, 173, 197, 212, 217 society, technological 192, 227, 232, 256, 274, 284, 291, 296, 301, 328, 333, 345, 357-9 Socrates 164, 290, 352-3 Socratic club 115 Spanish civil war 41, 44, 313-14 Sputnik 195

Stabler, Ernest 49, 97 Stanfield, Robert 158, 266 state, universal and homogenous 223-4, 232, 249, 255, 263-4 Steed, Judy 348 Stewart, H.L. 133, 163 Strauss, Leo xxiii, 203, 223-6, 228-9, 232, 249-50, 269, 276, 281, 292-3, 303, 342, 372, 428n Student Christian Movement (SCM) 30, 187, 210, 254 SUPA 257-60 Symons, Scott 335-8 Tatham, George 203 Taylor, Charles xii, 320-2, 334-8, 348 Taylor, E.P. 320, 321-2 teach-in 256-60 technology 165, 175-7, 195, 207, 213, 219, 226-7, 251, 256-7, 264-5, 277-9, 287, 293, 298-301, 309, 312, 326, 353-4, 355, 357-8. See als society, technological 'Technology and Good' 310 Technology and Empire 279-80, 310 Technology and Justice 349, 360

Temple, Katherine 366 Tennyson, Hallam 66 Terrence Bay 166-7, 171-2, 196, 359, 366, 367-8, 372 Tertullian 207 theology, negative 237 Thode, H.G. 209, 220, 273-4, 330-1 Time as History 268, 280, 286

Tolmie, Murray xii Tolstoy, Leo 84, 91-2, 239, 267, 323, 371, 4O4n torture 312 Toscanini, Arturo 91 Toynbee, Arnold 169 Trent University 287-8

472 Index Trotter, R.G. 44-5, 51, 73, 94, 359 Trudeau, Pierre 212, 259, 288-9, 340-1, 43411 Tylor, T.H. 57-8, 63, 38611

Watkins, Mel 314 Watson, Alan 47-8 weapons, nuclear xix, 241, 245, 250-

Underhill, Frank 250, 252 Unification Church 313 United Church 17, i l l , 123, 134, 136, 179-80, 200 Universities Ambulance Unit (UAU) 65-6 University of Guelph 320, 350 University of Manchester 3 University of Toronto 74, 139, 152-3, 199-204, 243, 319 Upper Canada College 15, 18-19, 23, 36, 121

317 Weeks, Ian 303 Weil, Andre 228 Weil, Simone xx, 157, 170, 177, 185, 190, 193-4, 228-39, 241, 263-4, 276, 292, 315-18, 337, 342, 352-3, 355, 356, 358-9, 363, 367, 372, 4O4n Wells, H.G. 32 Whillier, Wayne 328, 363, 366 Whitehead, A.N. 129 Whitman, Walt 67 Wild, Shelley 205, 368 Wild, Susanna 90, 205-6, 368 will, concept of 181, 237-9, 309-10, 345-7, 358, 42in Williams, Vaughan 65 Wilson, George 128-9, 140, 160-3 Wilson, Isabel 102, 105-6, 170 Wimperis, Grace (nee Parkin) 8, 16, 118, 132, 376-7n Wimperis, Harry 16 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 169, 290 Wittke, Carl 32 Wolfe, Thomas 56 Wood, Elizabeth Wyn 25 Woolf, Virginia 77-8 Workers' Educational Association 10, 216 Wrong, G.M. 97-8, 394n

value-free 275, 317 Varley, F.H. 9, 24 Velasquez 25 Virgil 251 Vlastos, Gregory 50 Voegelin, Eric 210 Voltaire 35, 189 Wade, Mason 95 Wallace, George 246, 322, 330 Wallace, Robert Charles 43, 46, 223, 347 Wallace, Sheila 42, 46 War, Korean 150, 162 War, Suez 184-6 War, Vietnam 44, 255-60, 263-4, 272, 279, 296 War, First World 6, 64, 149, 263 War, Second World xx, 41, 56, 63-4, 67-8, 70-1, 76, 79, 82, 92, 228 Wargon, Alan 196 Wasteneys, Geoffrey 30

1, 255. 347 Weber, Max 218, 232, 273-4, 280-1,

York University 198-204, 205-7, 209, 284, 324, 326

Photo credits

Like every other creative artist, the photographer deserves full credit. Unfortunately, the names of many of the photographers who took the photographs that accompany this book have not been preserved. Photos 1, 4, 6, and 10 come from the National Photography Collection of the National Archives of Canada. Photo 5 is by J. Kennedy. Photo 12 is, I believe, from the Ashley & Crippen studio. Photo 15 was taken by the Vandyk Studio, Buckingham Palace Road, London, England. William Goulding took photo 21. Tom Boschler produced photo 22. Sheila Grant took the engaging photograph of Scott Symons, Dennis Lee, Charles Taylor, and GPG, photo 24. William Christian is responsible for the cover photo and for photos 25-9. Most of the remaining photographs were lent to the author by Sheila Grant or Charity Grant from their personal collections.