Making Culture: English-Canadian Institutions and the Arts before the Massey Commission 9781487577537

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MAKING CULTURE English-Canadian Institutions and the Arts before the Massey Commission

Canadian culture began, according to popular belief, in the late 1950s with the establishment of the Canada Council, and blossomed in the nationalist celebrations of the 1960s. The truth, as Maria Tippett shows ·in this study, is very different. From the late nineteenth century forward, Canada has enjoyed a complex, wide-ranging, and diverse cultural life. Its musicians, visual artists, dramatists, and writers, professional and amateur, have been active in rural areas and urban centres, supported by philanthropists, consumers, and governments. Tippett reveals the breadth, depth, and character of cultural activity in English Canada. She also explores the infrastructure that sustained it in the nineteenth century and into the middle of the twentieth: educational institutions, public and private patrons, cultural organizations, and foreign influences. By focusing on these factors rather than on cultural artefacts, she provides all those involved in cultural studies with a new way of coming to grips with the cultural and the historical process. Her study also paves the way for an understanding of the Massey Commission, the Canada Council, and the Aourishing of Canadian culture in the years since the council's establishment. Making Culture is a richly detailed picture of a vigorous cultural environment and the foundations that enabled it to grow. MAR I A T t PP ETT is a historian living in Vancouver. Her earlier books indude Emily Carr: A Biography; From Desolation to Splendour: Changing Perceptions of the British Columbia Landscape, with Douglas Cole; Art at the Service of War: Canada, Art, and the Great War; and Breaking the Cycle and Other Stories from a Gulf Island.

MARIA TIPPETT

MAKING CULTURE English-Canadian Institutions and the Arts before the Massey Commission

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

Tororuo Buffalo London

© llnivnsity of'foronto Press 1990

Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada Reprinted in 2018 ISBN

0-8020-2743-1 (doth)

ISBN 978-0-8020-6784-5 (paper)

s· Prin1ed 011 acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Tippell, Maria, 1944Making culture: English-Canadian ins1itutions and the arts before the Massey Commission Includes hihliographical rdcrenn·s. ISBN 0-8020-27.13-1 (hound) ISBN 978-0-8020-6784-5 (paper) 1. Canada - Civilization - 20th n·ntury. 2. Canada lntdlcctual lik - History. 3. Canada - Social life and customs - 20th century.* ·I· Arts - Canada History - 20th +T5 Fl021.2 .T[>

1990 1990

971.o