Morton and Weinfeld. Who Speaks for Canada. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Inc., 1998

GEORGE GRANT (1918-88)

"LAMENT FOR A NATION"

Perhaps we should rejoice in the disappearance of Canada. We leave the narrow provincialism and our backwoods culture; we enter the excitement of the United States where all the great things are being done. Who would compare the science, the art, the politics, the entertainment of our petty world to the overflowing achievements of New York, Washington, Chicago, and San Francisco? Think of William Faulkner and then think of Morlev Callaghan. Think of the Kennedys and the Rockefellers and then think of Pearson and E. P. Taylor. This is the profoundest argument for the Liberals. They governed so as to break down our parochialism and lead us into the future.

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Many levels of argument have been used to say that it is good that Canada should disappear. In its simplest form, continentalism is the view of those who do not see what all the fuss is about. The purpose of life is consumption, and therefore the border is an anachronism. The forty-ninth parallel results in a lower standard of living for the majority to the north of it. Such continentalism has been an important force throughout Canadian history.

Until recently it was limited by two factors. Emigration to the United States was not too difficult for Canadians, so that millions were able to seek their fuller future to the south. Moreover, those who believed in the primacy of private prosperity have generally been too concerned with individual pursuits to bother with political advocacy. Nevertheless, this spirit is bound to grow. One has only to live in the Niagara peninsula to understand it. In the mass era, most human beings are defined in terms of their capacity to consume. All other differences between them, like political traditions, begin to appear unreal and unprogressive. As consumption becomes primary, the border appears an anachronism, and a frustrating one at that.

The disadvantages in being a branch-plant satellite rather than in having full membership in the Republic will become obvious. As the facts of our society substantiate continentalism, more people will explicitly espouse it. A way of life shaped by continental institutions will produce political continentalism. Young and ambitious politicians will arise to give tongue to it. The election of 1963 was the first time in our history that a strongly nationalist campaign did not succeed, and that a government was brought down for standing up to the Americans. The ambitious young will not be slow to learn the lesson that Pearson so ably taught them about what pays politically. Some of the extreme actions of French Canadians in their efforts to preserve their society will drive other Canadians to identify themselves more closely with their southern neighbours than with the strange and alien people of Quebec.

Of course continentalism was more than a consumption-ideology. In the nineteenth century, the United States appeared to be the haven of opportunity for those who had found no proper place in the older societies. Men could throw off the shackles of inequality and poverty in the new land of opportunity. To many Canadians, the Republic seemed a freer and more open world than the costive colonial society with its restraints of tradition and privilege. The United States appeared to be the best society the world had ever produced for the ordinary citizen. Whatever the mass society of prosperity has become, the idea that the United States is the society of freedom, equality, and opportunity will continue to stir many hearts. The affection and identification that a vast majority of Canadians have given to the publicly expressed ideals of such leaders as Roosevelt and Kennedy is evidence of this.

Continentalism as a philosophy is based on the liberal interpretation of history. Because much of our intellectual life has been oriented to Great Britain, it is not surprising that our chief continentalists have been particularly influenced by British liberalism. The writings of Goldwin Smith and F H. Underhill carry more the note of Mill and Macaulay than of Jefferson and Jackson. This continentalism has made two main appeals. First, Canadians need the greater democracy of the Republic. To the continentalists, both the French and British traditions in Canada were less democratic than the social assumptions of the United States. In such arguments, democracy has not been interpreted solely in a political sense, but has been identified with social equality, contractual human relations, and the society open to all men, regardless of race or creed or class. American history is seen to be the development of the first mass democracy on earth. The second appeal of continentalism is that humanity requires that nationalisms be overcome. In moving to larger units of government, we are moving in the direction of world order. If Canadians refuse this, they are standing back from the vital job of building a peaceful world. After the horrors that nationalistic wars have inflicted on this century, how can one have any sympathy for nationalism? Thank God the world is moving beyond such divisive loyalties.

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Ancient philosophy gives alternative answers to modern man concerning the questions of human nature and destiny. It touches all the central questions that man has asked about himself and the world. The classical philosophers asserted that a universal and homogeneous state would be a tyranny. To elucidate their argument would require an account of their total teaching concerning human beings. It would take one beyond political philosophy into the metaphysical assertion that changes in the world take place within an eternal order that is not affected by them. This implies a definition of human freedom quite different from the modern view that freedom is man's essence. It implies a science different from that which aims at the conquest of nature.

The discussion of issues such as these is impossible in a short writing about Canada. Also, the discussion would be inconclusive, because I do not know the truth about these ultimate matters. Therefore, the question as to whether it is good that Canada should disappear must be left unsettled. If the best social order is the universal and homogeneous state, then the disappearance of Canada can be understood as a step toward that order. If the universal and homogeneous state would be a tyranny, then the disappearance of even this indigenous culture can be seen as the removal of a minor barrier on the road to that tyranny. As the central issue is left undecided, the propriety of lamenting must also be left unsettled.

My lament is not based on philosophy but on tradition. If one cannot be sure about the answer to the most important questions, then tradition is the best basis for the practical life. Those who loved the older traditions of Canada may be allowed to lament what has been lost, even though they do not know whether or not that loss will lead to some greater political good. But lamentation falls easily into the vice of self-pity. To live with courage is a virtue, whatever one way think of the dominant assumptions of one's age. Multitudes of human beings through the course of history have had to live when their only political allegiance was irretrievably lost. What was lost was often something far nobler than what Canadians lost. Beyond courage, it is also possible to live in the ancient faith, which asserts that changes in the world, even if they be recognized more as a loss than a gain, take place within an eternal order that is not affected by their taking place. Whatever the difficulty of philosophy, the religious man has been told that process is not all. "Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore."'

Source: George Grant, Lament for a Nation (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1970), 88-97.

*Virgil, Aeneid (Book VI): "They were holding their arms outstretched in love toward the further shore."