True Patriot Love
Page 13
This is a world where decisions about who gets work and who doesn’t, who prospers and who goes hungry, are made not by governments directly, but by the forces of a market that no single government or empire either controls or fully understands.
But government does still matter. Countries with good government can master globalization; countries with bad government will be its victims. George Grant’s mistake was to abandon faith in ordinary politics and the capacity of his fellow citizens to shape their lives through free institutions. No country may be fully sovereign over its identity, but well-governed countries are more sovereign than others, more capable of mastering change and preserving the vital core of traditions, beliefs and values that give a people their identity. Well-governed countries maintain peace, order and good government at home. They punish crime; they hold their citizens accountable for basic standards of conduct. These successful countries run immigration programs that attract entrepreneurial and able people from around the world to become citizens. Bipartisan political consensus guarantees steady national investment in education and training, in science and technology, in infrastructure, and in the public goods that draw citizens together and help to make them productive. These successful countries knock down the barriers—of red tape, regulation and monopoly—that divide citizens, confer unfair advantages or prevent people from working together.
None of these successful countries is foolish enough to believe that it is a finished creation. They all take their promises of equality, fairness and justice seriously, which means that their leaders know that there are still promises to keep. These countries don’t protect their markets against global competition; they invest in their own people’s vision and enterprise so they can gain footholds in other people’s markets. Above all, these successful countries keep their governments honest and accountable. Trust in government, faith in the people who are elected, belief that public policy can actually improve people’s lives—these are the emotions that sustain the citizenship of successful societies.
Such societies are successful not just because they are prosperous and free, but because their citizens share a sense that they know where they came from and know where they are headed in the future. They are hopeful. They believe in themselves. They believe in the capacity of their people to do great things. They are patriots.
Patriotism—enduring, impatient, non-ironic belief in the promise of the land you love—is the single greatest asset of successful societies. Successful societies struggle with their deficiencies and overcome them through collective efforts of will and sacrifice. Patriotism is the sentiment that makes a people demand reform, change and improvement in their country; patriotism is the source of the impatience and anger that makes abuses intolerable, injustice unacceptable and complacency a delusion.
It is this sentiment that makes us want to be one people. It is this shared feeling that allows us to rise above our differences—English and French, Aboriginal, Metis, Inuit, immigrants from every land—and makes a complex unity of us all.
This unity, never certain, never to be taken for granted, always a work in progress, has meaning for us, but it also offers an example to others. Canadians know as much as anyone about living together across the gulf of great differences; we know how to compromise with each other and yet maintain what is essential; we know how to live with the differences that cannot be overcome. We have some experience in respecting the rights of individuals and yet also protecting the collectivities of language and culture that give individuality meaning. We know something, too, about a national pride that is ironic, modest, self-deprecating yet also robust. We know the difference between true patriot love and false, between love that always respects the truth of who we are, however painful, and the love that devours the truth and replaces it with lies. Most of all, we know—as some other nations do not—that the question of who we are is never settled and that we rise to our best when we allow ourselves to imagine ourselves anew.
NOTES
Abbreviations
George Monro Grant: GMG
Jessie Lawson Grant: JLG
Maude Parkin Grant: MPG
William Lawson Grant: WLG
George Parkin Grant: GPG
Jessie Alison Grant Ignatieff: JAG
Mary Greey: MG
Elisabeth Greey: EG
Chapter 2
p. 40 “dirty, joyless looking and prematurely old” G.M. Grant, Ocean to Ocean (1873), p. 38
p. 48 “a dignity of manner that whites” Ocean to Ocean, p. 88
p. 48 “any positive improvement” Ocean to Ocean, p. 138
p. 49 “keep the Lord’s day after” Ocean to Ocean, p. 139
p. 53 “cleanly, orderly, patient, industrious” Ocean to Ocean, p. 301
p. 68 “we govern ourselves, yet are not independent” The Dominion of Canada, p. 242
p. 68 “patronizing language too often used” The Dominion of Canada, p. 558
p. 69 “there was nothing to do but fight it out” Queen’s Quarterly, vol. 8, p. 236
p. 69 “we aspire to be a nation” Queen’s Quarterly, vol. 7, p. 255
Chapter 3
p. 82 “I have come to love you very deeply” WLG to MPG, Kingston, 3 August 1910
pp. 83–84 “Will you always love me?” WLG to MPG, Kingston, 12–13 January 1911
p. 84 “we prate of our Canadian nationalism” WLG to MPG, Kingston, 9 February 1911
p. 85 “Christ” WLG to MPG, 2 April 1911
p. 87 “grips me, overwhelms me” WLG to MPG, London, 31 July 1914
p. 88 “Just then out came the King, Queen and Prince” WLG to MPG, July/August 1914
p. 88 “fierce, hellish spirit of this war” WLG to MPG, August 1914
p. 89 W.L. Grant, Our Just Cause (1914)
p. 91 “just for the variety” WLG to MPG, Gananoque, 3 February 1916
p. 91 “drunk and sober, rough necks and gentlemen” WLG to MPG, Gananoque, February 1916
p. 93 “I shall see Miss Allison Grant” WLG to MPG, Gananoque, 1916
p. 96 “Dearest, I yearn for you” WLG to MPG, somewhere in France, 7 August 1916
p. 96 “political, philosophical, military” WLG to MPG, France, August 1916
p. 97 “parapet” WLG to MPG, somewhere in France, 8 August 1916
p. 98 “My dear Maude” WLG to MPG, somewhere in France, 17 August 1916
p. 100 “poor country cousin” WLG to MPG, London, 12 December 1916
p. 101 “terrible and splendid” WLG to MPG, Kent, April 1917”
p. 112 “we both come of good blood my dear” WLG to MPG, Craigellachie, late 1918
Chapter 4
p. 124 “rather smug sense of admiration” JAG to GPG, 1940.
p. 126 “I helped wounded people” GPG to MPG, Bermondsey, January 1941
p. 127 “Granny Peck” GPG to MPG, Bermondsey, 27 December 1940
p. 127 “God I have learned more about loving” GPG to MPG, Bermondsey, late 1940/early 1941
p. 127 “black in the face with smut and dirt” Claude Bissell, The Imperial Canadian (1986), p. 13
p. 128 “marvellous job” William Christian, George Grant: A Biography (1993), p. 77
p. 129 “My railway arch was hit” GPG to MPG, Bermondsey, 22 January 1941
pp. 129–130 “tiger-like violence” and “brave new world” GPG to MPG, London, June 1941
p. 130 All other quotations, GPG to MPG, London, 15 June 1941
p. 130 “decided to enlist in the merchant marine” GPG to MPG, London, 21 August 1941
p. 133 “in 1940 we saw” George Grant, Empire, Yes or No (1945), p. 10
p. 136 “my need for God” GPG to MPG, Balliol College, 3 November 1945
p. 137 “I love England” GPG to MPG, Balliol College, 13 November 1945
p. 137 “you cannot have the plums after being a pacifist” GPG to MPG, Balliol College, 19 November 1946
p. 142 “a celebration of” George Grant, Lament for a Nation (2000), p. 7
pp. 142–143 “the character of Canada as British North America” Lament for a Nation, p. 33
p. 145 “Those who loved the older traditions” Lament for a Nation, p. 94–95
p. 146 “Hope in the future has been” Sheila Grant, William Christian (eds.), The George Grant Reader (1998), p. 88
PRIMARY SOURCES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Grant Parkin Papers (MG 30 D77) in the National Archives of Canada were the major primary source for this book. I am grateful to the archivists at the National Archives for assisting me.
The Papers, which run to forty volumes, cover the lives and careers of George Monro Grant, William Lawson Grant, George Parkin and George Parkin Grant, as well as their wives and children. I am grateful, as all members of our family must be, to Raleigh Parkin, youngest brother of Maude Parkin Grant, for doing such valuable work, during his retirement, collecting letters and materials from members of the family and donating them to the National Archives.
Since this book was not intended as either a scholarly work or a full-scale family history, but rather as an intellectual history of their ideas of Canada, I made selective use of these voluminous archives: the letters of George Monro Grant home to his wife, Jessie Lawson Grant, in 1872 and again in 1883; his letters home to her and to his sons during his world tour in 1888, and his correspondence with Sir Wilfrid Laurier during the Boer War crisis; the letters between William Lawson Grant and Maude Parkin Grant between 1910 and 1918; and finally, the letters between George Parkin Grant and Maude Parkin Grant between 1939 and 1941.
In addition, I consulted the Sandford Fleming Papers in the National Archives of Canada, in particular the Fleming diaries relating to his trip with George Monro Grant to the Rogers Pass in 1883.
I wish to thank the archivists at Upper Canada College for their help in locating College photographs of William Lawson Grant and for retrieving from the archives the complete set of his addresses to the school between 1918 and 1934.
The papers of George and Alison Ignatieff are located in the archives of Trinity College, University of Toronto. I wish to thank the archivist for locating a number of letters by my mother to my father in 1945.
I also benefited from the kindness of Laura Brandon of Ottawa, who made available to me the correspondence between her mother, Mary Greey, her aunt Elizabeth Greey and Alison and George Grant between 1939 and 1941.
Every member of the Grant-Parkin-Andrew-Ignatieff families owes a particular debt of gratitude to William Christian, formerly of the University of Guelph, now retired, whose biographies of George Parkin Grant and Sir George Parkin have helped us all to understand these complex figures in our own past. Christian’s superb chapter on George Grant’s wartime experiences was particularly helpful to me.
I wish to thank Alana Fischer, formerly of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, for her valuable research in 2005 and Trevor Harrison for his help in securing papers from the National Archives and for his valuable work in compiling the notes.
My brother, Andrew Ignatieff, read the manuscript and shared with me his memories of characters we both knew. I am grateful for his astonishing loyalty and unstinting friendship.
University College at the University of Toronto honoured me with an invitation to give the Priestly Lectures in 2008 and I thank the Principal and the College for allowing me to give an earlier version of these chapters as lectures.
Kay Gimpel (née Moore) shared 54A Walton Street with my mother and was kind enough to share her memories of London in wartime. I thank Kay for her devoted friendship both to my mother and to me.
Michael Levine, friend, agent, lawyer and counselor over thirty years, kept faith in this project while it lay dormant in my mind and helped me bring it to fruition.
The editorial team at Penguin, led by Diane Turbide, and the team at Boreal, led by Pascal Assathiany, showed understanding and forbearance toward the author throughout the production process.
My greatest debt of gratitude is to my wife, Zsuzsanna, to whom this book, like all my books, is dedicated.
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