“Useful to His Country”

Vincent Massey's crusade for Canadian culture drew on Methodist roots.

The Force of Culture:
Vincent Massey and Canadian Sovereignty
Karen A. Finlay
University of Toronto Press
328 pages, hardcover
ISBN 0802036244

n 1946 , as Vincent Massey ended his term as Canada's High Commissioner in Britain, after a ten-year residence in London, he was told that George VI wished to invest him with a Companionship of Honour. Massey was elated, although he knew such an award would first need the assent of the Canadian government, not least the Prime Minister, Mackenzie King.

Massey and King had long been on familiar terms, thanks to Massey's brief political career in the Liberal Party. Still, it was difficult to imagine two more ill-matched men. King, the prickly eccentric and brilliant political strategist, was keenly aware of his descent from one of Canada's most famous radicals. Massey's high-minded idealism was infused with old-fashioned notions of noblesse oblige antithetical to King's outlook.

At first, King took pleasure in denying Massey the award. “It shows all of what is back of his public service,” King confided to his diary, “vainglory; desire for Royal recognition; preference for another country.” But on the very day that the award was to have been bestowed, King had a change of heart, attributable to “some direction from Beyond.” Because he was in London attending Commonwealth meetings, he was able to give Massey the news in person. The ensuing encounter, in the rooms at the Dorchester Hotel where Massey and his wife, Alice, had spent the bulk of the wartime years, was a memorable one.

“O Rex, this means so much,” Massey responded, on hearing of the Cabinet's promptly telegrammed approval. “There is nothing I would rather have than this. I cannot tell you how deeply I feel or how grateful I am to you.”

King was chivalrous in his reply: “You have nothing to thank me for, Vincent. You have had a great record here.”

Following the hastily rescheduled palace ceremony, King returned to the Dorchester, no doubt intent on witnessing more of Massey's childlike elation. He was not disappointed: “The order of the Companion of Honour was on the arm of a chair,” he later recalled in his diary, “and Vincent had been looking at it, if not worshipping it. This was, of course, the apex of Vincent's ambitions and career. It was amazing to see the change.”

Massey's biographer, Claude Bissell, relates these details in The Imperial Canadian . It is an anecdote that appears to confirm Massey's lingering image as an aspiring aristocrat weighed down by effete pretension and anglophilia, doing his best to ignore others' envious resentment. Today, Massey may be credited for his successful term as the country's first native-born Governor General and, more importantly, for his leading role in the post-war Massey Commission, but the priggish reputation endures.

The reputation does contain some truth. We are dealing, after all, with a man whom even the British upper classes could find a trifle forbidding. (“But damn it all, the fellow always makes one feel like a bloody savage,” one of these English worthies reportedly said to another, after Massey had been made Canadian High Commissioner.) Also, he was unafraid to assert, at least in private, his belief in English superiority. (One day, he and his aide, Russian-born George Ignatieff, were visiting a friend of Massey's from his days as a student at Balliol, Oxford, when Massey observed, “The English people are the only people in the world who could be entrusted to rule over others,” much to his English friend's derision, and Ignatieff's silent dismay.)

Massey's temperament was moulded by a distinctive upbringing. Raised in a Toronto that, according to an old piece of doggerel, had no social classes other than the Masseys and the masses, he gained a prominent public position at a relatively early age. Never an enthusiastic businessman, he soon found his niche as wide- ­ ranging patron. As Karen A. Finlay shows in The Force of Culture: Vincent Massey and Canadian Sovereignty , many of Canada's cultural institutions and artists owe a major debt to Massey's generosity. More significantly, she uncovers the half-hidden, and at times contradictory, precepts on which his thinking was based:

Massey's attitudes were deeply ambivalent, as well as being riddled with biases of gender and race. His view of culture illuminates much about Canada's cultural understatedness, about its propensity to ignore, even deny, its culture, and about the morass of often-conflicting assumptions that continue to conspire against culture's recognition. In the final analysis, Massey's contribution eludes strict categorization; his views were complex, nuanced, and invariably the product of consummate compromise.

Finlay takes as the focus of her analysis Massey's Methodist roots. It is an apt time to shine a light on Methodism, for 2003 marks the tercentenary of its founder's birth. John Wesley is a figure who, for a variety of reasons, is not as well known by Canadians as he should be, especially given his indirect impact on the country's history. A reformer whose charisma fed on the social discontents of England's 18 th-century working classes, he spurred a religious reawakening that arguably forestalled a British political revolution. Methodism's emotional dynamism and egalitarian principles ensured a popular reception once it reached North America. Massey's paternal ancestors in New England were enthusiastic converts. In the early 19 th century, they followed a Methodist bishop northward to Canada, and it was in the small Ontario town of Newcastle that their business dynasty was launched, after Daniel Massey saw a mechanical thresher on a trip to New York, and returned home with the parts needed to assemble his own version. His son Hart—Vincent's grandfather—became superintendent in the Newcastle factory, before providing the entrepreneurial genius that spurred the company's rapid expansion.

Hart was an uncompromising autocrat, antagonistic to trade unions and intent on maintaining his company's virtual monopoly in the agricultural machinery industry. He also showed spectacular generosity, with many of his pet charities tied to the Methodist church. By the end of the 19 th century, Methodism was Canada's largest Protestant denomination, and was responsible for having spearheaded a truly public (that is, non-Anglican) school system in English Canada. This educational lobbying was an illustration of Methodist universalism. As Finlay notes, Methodists could claim with justification that they “never asked for anything for themselves or their own community except upon the principles of equal justice and rights to all religious denominations and classes.”

As a member of the country's richest Methodist family, Vincent Massey was marked out early for a church role. Like all Methodist offspring, he was well versed in the romance of Wesley's own life, as well as the theoretical basis of his teachings. This legacy was particularly visible in the Toronto of Massey's youth. A sense of the prevailing mentality can be gained from a high-flown description of the city on a Sunday, as told by one of its contemporary witnesses, quoted by Bissell in The Young Vincent Massey :

A sacred silence falls upon the land, the whirling wheels of machinery stand still, the countless chimneys of myriad factories cease to pour forth their volumes of smoke, the air becomes pure, and the blue sky is seen, unstained by a cloud, a symbol of the holy influence of the Lord's Day.

To Massey's growing regret, however, it was Methodism's puritanical philistinism, rather than its dyna­mism, that dominated. In a diary he kept while a student at the University of Toronto, he voiced his reservations. A sermon by a noted Methodist minister he describes as “a monotone of high pitched platitudes—a wordy effusion of attempted (and missed) oratory.” A meeting he attended at the church-sponsored summer resort of Chautauqua is viewed in even more scathing terms: “twenty percent of it … meek subdued males” and “the remainder … middle-aged women whose faces do not betray the presence of a single idea nor the desire to receive one.”

These were not just the views of an undergraduate. Throughout his life, Massey maintained an aversion to Methodism—usually couched as a dislike of Puritanism—especially after he married into an Anglo-Canadian family, the Parkins, whose genteel Ang­li­canism he found highly congenial. In 1926 , a year after Canadian Methodism disappeared with the formation of the United Church of Canada, he was formally received into the Anglican church.

Finlay argues against reading too much into this event. Massey's views, she contends, can be understood only if the influences of his spurned Methodism are carefully dissected. Interestingly, her view echoes a comment made by one of Massey's contemporaries who knew him well. The philosopher George Grant, Alice Massey's nephew, suggested Massey remained an “ambitious Methodist,” even if his Methodist-like fervour became directed toward secular ends.

Massey's goal, based on a close reading of the English critic Matthew Arnold, was to play some part in helping Canada match the cultural accomplishments of Europe. To present-day Canadians this may seem a grandiose aim, but for Massey its importance seemed obvious, given what he saw as Canada's “Puritanism,” the country's lack of support of both higher education and artistic achievement, and its paucity of cultural institutions. Supporting the arts, he hoped, would not just transform Canada's continuing cultural dependence on Britain, but would also form a bulwark against the malign influences of commercially based American culture. On the topic of education reform, Massey's views stayed constant throughout his life. His stress on the importance of the liberal arts dovetailed with existing Methodist notions on character education. This outlook helped inspire his patronage of such institutions as the University of Toronto's Hart House, Victoria College and, later, Massey College.

Massey's artistic interests were slower to develop. Finlay highlights two influences. First, she stresses the extent to which Massey was positively affected by the Methodist Chautauqua model of artistic education, despite his scathing comment about its audience. Second, she argues that Massey's previously overlooked friendship with Group of Seven member Lawren Harris played a role. Coincidentally, both men's financial independence drew on the same source—the Massey-Harris Company. Slightly older than Massey, and infinitely more cultivated during the early years of their friendship, Harris arguably helped develop Massey's appreciation of art as an essential element of national identity. According to Finlay, “[Harris's] writings were often quite esoteric, a quality that Massey's middlebrow tastes would have shunned … Nevertheless, Massey found many features of Harris's thought persuasive. Indeed, the writings and speeches of the two men exhibit close parallels during the later 1920 s and early 1930 s.”

In Harris's optimistic vision, Canada's cultural development would be built on its diversity and what he hoped would be a future freedom from colonial subservience. “Europe is enclosure, Canada expansion,” he once noted. And progress toward this goal, Harris believed, would depend on artistic independence even from Britain.

Whether or not Massey's own growing stress on Canada's cultural identity and its diversity was influenced by Harris's thinking, in Massey's hands the concepts were centred firmly in the political sphere. The result was a forward-looking conception of emerging Canadian ethnic and regional difference, as outlined in a speech given in 1919:

Canada is a diversified country possessing different races, religions, social cultures. One hears this diversity often spoken of as a regrettable fact. Could anything be more fundamentally wrong? … The greatest peril in North America today is the menace of deadly uniformity and standardized common-placedness. I rejoice to think that there is one part of the continent which is proof against these dangers.

Of course, this conception was hardly an original one. The wish to uphold diversity as an ideal to counter political divisions had long been an element in Canadian thinking. But Massey helped extend and popularize the notion. It should therefore not be surprising that, as Finlay argues, he was later seen to have “helped to legitimize ­ ethnic and regional diversity as state policy and as a cornerstone belief among Canadians.”

Massey's outlook had some archaic features, which meant that his notion of diversity was by no means as wide as it is usually conceived in contemporary Canada. He probably privately shared the racist preconceptions that marked Canada's early immigration policy, and his lack of concern as High Commissioner in London for the plight of European Jewish refugees before and during the World War II is justly infamous. On the gender front, he showed little interest in the education of women, and opposed co­edu­cation, especially at younger ages. “While in maturer years the companionship of young women is desirable and necessary,” it was noted in one report on education that he sponsored, “yet in boys of the adolescent age association with girls is liable to produce effeminacy. In other words, the system we are discussing hinders boys in the development of distinctively ‘manly' traits of character.”

Paradoxically, for a man whose aesthetic affinities were often seen as effeminate, the preservation of the supposedly masculine virtues of Canadian society was of prime importance. According to Finlay, for Massey “effeminacy had various negative associations … with anything southern (often American), with European influences (understood as outmoded), and with technology.” In his view, the survival of the hardy northern character was essential if the country was to withstand American homogenization. Again, this notion was not original—one finds similar talk about “northern virility” in the speeches of the culturally minded (and, by ironic coincidence, homosexual) 19 th-century Gov­ernor General, the Marquis of Lorne. From a present-day perspective, when Canada is often seen in political terms as playing a feminine-like Venus to America's testosterone-pumped Mars, this idea seems especially preposterous.

But, for his times, Massey was relatively progressive. And by 1935 , when he left for his decade-long stint in London, he was a knowledgeable connoisseur of contemporary Canadian painting, and had by far the largest private collection in the country. During the years in Britain, he purchased a wide range of contemporary English art to donate to the National Gallery of Canada. Gradually, he was becoming more adventurous in his tastes, although never to the point of outright daring. (When he met Henry Moore, for example, he remarked that Moore “does not look like the sort of man who produces what he produces—in other words he looks quite sane.”)

Along with a growing artistic maturity, the period in London also saw Massey's close involvement with tax-funded organizations such as the Arts Council of Great Britain—an experience that would prove useful in the next stage of his career. The return to Canada marked a seminal point, as Finlay explains, for Massey was now moving from his former position of patron and cultural commentator to that of nationalist activist:

Massey returned from England in 1946, his diplomatic posting having served to harden his convictions about the cultural perils that Canada faced and the sources from which it drew strength. He was utterly convinced that Canada must assume responsibility for its culture or remain prey to mounting American imperialism. His early concern for overcoming Canada's sectionalism and locating a sense of community and unity within its ethnic and geographic diversity was now overshadowed by what he perceived to be the external forces that threatened national sovereignty.

The restlessness he felt immediately on his return spurred a country-wide lecture tour, as well as the publication of a book in 1948 . On Being Canadian highlighted the need for government support of culture in order to ensure sovereignty. The next year, when Massey was chosen by Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent to chair the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences (known ever since as the Massey Commission), he was the natural choice. Despite the major role of fellow commissioner Hilda Neatby in writing the commission's report, it was undoubtedly Massey's own vision that chiefly informed its proposals.

Finlay contends that the report is still “widely recognized as the single most important document in the history of Canadian cultural policy,” even if its proposal to create the Canada Council—as important as that became—has tended to overshadow its other recommendations, such as the formation of a national library and archives, and an intended reversal of “the plight of the humanities” through federal aid to universities and students.

The Massey report has been criticized—most notably by Paul Litt in The Muses, the Masses and the Massey Commission —for being unrepresentative in its elitist conception of culture. The commissioners downplayed the need for state-supported film making, for example , because of their aversion to anything that smacked of popular culture. Finlay disagrees with this interpretation, citing the highly positive attitude the commissioners took toward the CBC and the fulfillment of its mandate. As for film making, “the commissioners had to be realistic. They must have found daunting the sheer expense of feature-film production in a country as regionalized as Canada, particularly at a time when public broadcasting was making the leap from the relatively cheap medium of radio to one ten times more expensive, television.”

More generally, accusations of elitism are by their very nature suspect, Finlay argues. Elitism, when viewed as the outgrowth of the pursuit of excellence, is very much a part of our outlook, whether we are willing to admit it or not:

We need to distinguish between the hereditary elite and an elite of merit, between the exclusive elite and the consensual elite … Today, while we continue to empower elites, the elites of which we approve consist generally of experts (so-called or otherwise). The merito­cracy is a pervasive structure, even though it jostles constantly with a still-rampant accumulation of privilege through cronyism.

What makes Finlay's reappraisal of Massey so welcome is her richly textured account of how Massey managed to combine traditional notions of elitism with more modern forms. It is an account that adds immeasurably to the existing commentaries on Massey's legacy. Not only does it attempt to answer Litt's critique, but it also rounds out Bissell's stylish biographical volumes. Bissell was closely associated with Massey's world, having served as chairman of the Canada Council, president of the University of Toronto and a long-time Massey College Senior Fellow. So familiar was he with this world that he took both Massey's virtues and foibles in easy stride.

From a more distant remove, when the environment Massey lived in has changed so immeasurably, the distinguishing features of his legacy seem cast in starker terms than those Bissell portrayed. On a personal level, Massey sought to combine traditional views of aristocratic cultivation with New World vitality, and did so with remarkable success, while also serving as an intermediate figure embodying traits of both the old and the new Canada.

Sketching out the links underlying what at times may seem to be Massey's contradictory views is Finlay's main contribution. Her sympathetic analysis comes at a time when Canadians are beginning to appreciate what, at first glance, seems to be another contradiction: while economic amalgamation with our southern neighbour continues apace, our social and political values are becoming ever more distinct from those in the United States. Despite our open borders and America's expanding geopolitical dominance, Canadians are showing the rest of the world that close economic dealings with the world's sole superpower need not spell national suicide. And the likely reason is one that Massey helped establish: it is in the realm of the imagination, rather than in the prosaic details of political deals or economic trends, that one finds the strongest protection of national sovereignty.

Massey died in 1967 , at the start of a new Canadian century. Instead of occupying the family mausoleum in Toronto's Mount Pleasant cemetery, his remains are buried in a small churchyard in Port Hope, Ontario, near his country home of Batterwood. The simple gravestone is engraved with a characteristic piece of patrician understatement— Patriae profuit, “he was useful to his country.” An equally fitting epitaph is the graduate college he founded in the last decade of his life. At the end of his memoirs, What's Past is Prologue , he described his close interest in the establishment and construction of Massey College: “It was always an excitement to me to see rising the walls of a structure with which I was connected. Indeed, I think in another incarnation I would like to be an architect myself.”

As Finlay shows, Massey was indeed an architect, and the cultural edifice he helped to fashion still bears the mark of his soaring ambitions.

Mark Lovewell