No Canada

 

"Canada does not have, did not have, will not have writers as specifically and identifiably Canadian as Whitman and Hemingway are specifically and indentifiably American. Our leap from colony to nation was accomplished without revolution, without a sharp cultural and ideological break from Europe, without the fission and fusion of Civil War." Malcolm Ross

 

 

I think Ross was onto something really important about Canada when he wrote those lines. I'll leave aside, for now, where and why he wrote those lines. The question that intrigues me, though, is what did it take for Canada become a nation? Assuming we ever did and I'm not sure we have quite pulled the trick off. Ross was only pretending to describe Canada. He was actually one of the more important creators of the idea of Canada. And he wrote the above in 1960!

 

I think any honest answer to grasp the Canadian question has to include the possibility of a negative. Traditionally, people ask what sort of nation are we and when did that happen? I think any honest approach has to ask whether we are a nation. The real question is: "Did Canada become a nation?" Contrary to popular Canadian mythology: it didn't happen in 1867; it didn't happen with the last spike; it didn't happen at Vimy Ridge. No amount of pretending otherwise will change that.

Canada declared war for the first time on September 10, 1939, a few days after Britain did. We did not declare war in 1914, the UK did it and we were automatically included. A geographic designation that has no say as to whether it is at war or who it is at war with, is not a nation. We were not yet a nation 1911. The move we took in September 1939 had been made possible by the Balfour Declaration of 1926 and the Statute of Westminster of 1931. But both of these were acts of the British Parliament. To really be a nation, Canada had to assert itself as independent. And it never really did.

The declaration of war was meant to be something like an assertion of independence but it was poorly chosen for the job. Why? Because we were going to declare war one way or another. If the only option is "Hell, yes!" then you aren't really acting independently.

That we ultimately separated from the UK was a consequence of the collapse of the British Empire following World War 2 and not of anything Canada had done for itself.

To get back to Malcolm Ross, he managed the trick of being too young to fight in the First World War and well, not actually too old to fight in the Second. Now forgotten Canadian novelist (although born in Scotland)  David Walker was the same age as Ross and he enlisted with the Black Watch in 1931 and served during WW2. Anthony Powell and Evelyn Waugh were both older than Ross and they enlisted and served. Orwell tried but was declared unfit because of his poor physical  health. Of course, they were British, not Canadian. On the other hand, Marshall McLuhan was born in Canada the same year as Ross and; like Ross, was too busy with his academic career to enlist in 1939. Pierre Berton, not particularly intellectual but definitely a Canadian nationalist, was conscripted rather than enlisted. George Grant, the intellectual whom most Canadians associate with the birth of Canadian nationalism, doesn't seem to have enlisted or served. Most notoriously, Pierre Trudeau opposed the war and went for midnight rides on his motorcycle wearing a German uniform. The big exception is Jack McClelland, the publisher who did more than any other to promote a Canadian national identity, who broke off his studies to enlist and served in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Ross was twenty-eight the year the war broke out in 1939. That's only two years older than the average age of Canadian soldiers. I don't mean any slight by this. If anything, I think we can see something important here. The Canadian intellectuals who created and promoted Canadian nationalism after WW2 weren't on board with the war. In their own way, they, unlike their country exercised their independence.

Do I think that was a good thing? I don't know. In retrospect, WW2 is clearly a war with a good side and bad side but I don't know what it looked like to Canadian men in 1939. After WW1, there was a widespread and understandable resistance to wars. Trudeau clearly came to the point where he felt it was necessary to at least say he regretted not having taken part but there is good reason to doubt that as the man never came clean about his past. There is pretty clear evidence that he had some deplorable views as a young man and it is not clear that he repudiated them entirely.

Canada punched above its weight in WW2 but the men who made that happen weren't Canadian nationalists. The intellectuals who drove the nationalism that springs up in the 1950s weren't driven by or for WW2. And I think that tells us that the story of Canada as a nation doesn't start until after that war. If the British empire hadn't collapsed, it might never have happened.