Graduation Address

"The Debt of Our Reason" (17 May 1962). (UA Case 67, Box 2)

Mr. President, Members of the Senate, Professors, Monsieur le Premier Ministre, distinguished guests, members of the graduating classes, ladies and gentlemen:

My first, and most agreeable, task is, of course, to return thanks, for myself and the other three new Doctors of Laws, for the great honour which this venerable university has just conferred on us. "Venerable" it is, in the strict, dictionary sense of the word: "entitled to veneration on account of character, age, associations." "Character" it certainly has, in abundant measure: reputation, individuality, and perhaps never more so than under its present Chancellor and President. "Age" it has, for, if it cannot boast the seven hundred years which my own college in Oxford will celebrate next year, it can certainly claim to be not only one of the oldest foundations in Canada but also one of the two oldest state universities in North America. "Associations" worthy of reverence it has in plenty, in the long list of distinguished men and women who have taught and studied here, and the notable figures whom U.N.B. has honoured in earlier years as it has honoured us today. All of us are proud that you have thought fit to add us to this illustrious company.

I must say a special word of thanks on my own behalf. My three colleagues all belong here. Two were already graduates of this university; all three are New Brunswickers, and New Brunswickers who have added new luster to the fame of this province. I am a rank outsider. Born in Newfoundland, brought up in Ontario largely by a Nova Scotian grandmother and a Quebec grandfather, I have only two claims even upon the indulgence of any New Brunswick institution: that my parents both went to a New Brunswick university, and that I had the good sense to marry a New Brunswicker. To the signal distinctions which I have received today, first in the degree itself, and then in being invited to give the Encaenial Address, I have no claim at all. I can only echo the words of a new Speaker of the House of Commons, presenting himself to the Crown, and say that the university has chosen me, "though all unworthy," and "though I am but little able to perform the important duties thus assigned to me," and certainly far less able than any of my three colleagues. However, through no merits of my own, but solely through kindness of those set in authority over us, here I am, and I must "tell forth my tale, and spare it not at all."

When I cast about in my mind for a suitable subject for this address, I decided almost at once that I could do no better than choose one which I believe is of the first importance to this country and this province, one on which I believe this province can give a lead to the whole country, and one on which I have myself the most passionate, though I hope also most rational, convictions. That subject is the French and British traditions, the Anglo-French partnership, in Canada.

There are those who, in the name of "pure" Canadianism, would have us renounce the French tradition, or the British, or both. But to do so would be to renounce Canada itself. For Canada without these two basic traditions would not be Canada at all. It would be a poor, smudged carbon copy of the United States. But this is precisely what the Fathers of Confederation deliberately refused to make us.

In the first place, they deliberately refused to make us a country of one language and one culture. That refusal is written into our Constitution in section 133 of the British North America Act, which stipulates that both French and English shall be official languages in the Dominion Parliament and Dominion Courts, and in the Legislature and Courts of Quebec, where there was then a very large English-speaking minority. The Constitution also guaranteed, in effect, the French Civil Law in Quebec, and French education in Quebec, by placing both under the exclusive authority of the provincial Legislature, subject only, in the case of education, to certain safeguards for the Protestant minority.

But if our Founding Father deliberately chose, as they did, to preserve our French tradition, they chose no less deliberately to preserve our British. That also is written into our Constitution, in its very name, the British North America Act, and in the decisive words of the preamble, that it is to be "a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom." The Fathers deliberately rejected American republicanism. They deliberately chose British monarchy: "The Executive Government of and over Canada is hereby declared to continue and be vested in the Queen," says section 9 of the Act; and Sir John A. MacDonald was at pains to emphasize that the Quebec Conference was unanimous on the point, that there was "not a single suggestion to the contrary." The Fathers also deliberately rejected American congressional government and deliberately chose British responsible government.

The Canadian tradition is, of course, much more than just French and British. We have modified what we have taken from France and Britain, even the languages, the law, the political institutions. We have borrowed liberally from other European countries and from the United States. We have developed some traditions that are distinctively our own. But the French and British traditions remain basic. The French and English languages, French Civil Law and English Common Law, enjoy a status granted to no others. Our parliamentary institutions, essentially English, though modified and adapted to our own needs and circumstances, are the indispensable framework for our whole national life. Canada is not something rootless, floating in space, and drawing nourishment out of airy nothing. Nor is she rooted only in the Laurentian Shield, and drawing nourishment only from the Aurora Borealis. She is rooted in her past, both French and British, and from that past she draws her nourishment.

Canadian history did not start with the Statute of Westminster, or the rebellions of 1837, or the American Revolution. Indeed, that is the most significant thing about it. The Americans deliberately broke with their past. We deliberately and repeatedly chose not to. We deliberately and repeatedly refused to be "liberated." The most important thing for Canadians about the American Revolution is that we refused to have anything to do with it. The most important thing about the rebellions of 1837 is that they failed, and for the same reason: that most of our people, French as well as British, refused to have anything to do with them. The most important thing about the Statute of Westminster is that it preserved a free Commonwealth with room for many cultures and many traditions.

We used sometimes to be told that we should get rid of the French tradition, anglicize the French-Canadians and the Acadians. Luckily, we hear less and less of this. More and more, the "French fact" in Canada, "the miracle of French survival," is accepted, not always with the gratitude and enthusiasm it deserves, but accepted, and with growing understanding and appreciation, as part of our national inheritance. But we still hear, with distressing frequency, exhortations to get rid of the British tradition. We are told that we have outgrown it, that it is "foreign," that it’s time we developed something "purely Canadian." "How long this trust in greatness not thine own?" exclaimed one arch-priest of this "pure" Canadianism a few years ago. But the British tradition in Canada is not "foreign": it is just as Canadian as the French. Both are part of our inheritance. Curiously enough, the "pure" Canadians never call the French tradition "foreign," never say we’ve outgrown it, never call on us to get rid of it, never tell us we can’t be truly Canadian until we do. On the contrary, they extol and exalt it as the very essence of "pure" Canadianism.

Listen to the same gentleman whom I quoted a moment ago: "The Anglo-Saxon can never forget his world affiliations, but what of the Finn, the Slovak or the Hungarian? The old world has virtually ceased to exist for such after one or two generations in this country, for no political tie, no tie of sentiment, takes them back to it. On the prairies, a Canadian type is growing up which knows only Canada, which some day must be as purely Canadian as is French Canada, untrammeled by the disturbing hindsight of the Ontarian or the New Brunswicker."

The Ontarian or the New Brunswicker is the villain of this "Nationalist" melodrama, but it is plain that mist of the people in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and British Columbia, and even the "Anglo-Saxons" of the Prairies, are no better. Only French-Canadians, and Acadians, with others of ancestry unimpeachably non-British can pass muster. All of British descent, it appears, are cursed with that dreadful "hindsight," that deplorable sense of history and of the outside world. The true Canadian must "forget world affiliations;" for him, "the old world" must "virtually cease to exist;" he must "know only Canada." So no one of British blood can qualify. "'Out, damned spot! Out I say!'" But all the perfumes of the Laurentian Shield will not sweeten the Anglo-Saxon hand.

French Canada, the "pure" Canadians tell us, is truly Canadian because it is "untrammeled by hindsight." Of course. Quebec’s motto is, "Je me souviens," "I remember." That rules out the past. The Quebec provincial flag has the fleur-de-lis all over it. The fleur-de-lis is purely Canadian. French-Canadians and Acadians talk about "le fait francais au Canada" and "le miracle de la survivance francais en Amerique." That "knows only Canada." Huge signs, on occasion, call on the people of Quebec to "preserve our French heritage;" and, if I am not mistaken, Acadians rally to the cry, "Notre Langue, nos institutions, nos lois."

And why not? Canadians of French descent have every right to remember; to have the fleur-de-lis in the Quebec flag, and in the national flag too; to be proud of the French fact in Canada and of French survival in America; every right to preserve their French heritage, their language, their institutions, their laws. All this is part, and an essential part, of the Canadian tradition. It is French and Canadian. It is Canadian partly because it is French.

But the "pure" Canadians have a double standard. The British-Canadian must forget, not remember; he must give up the crosses of St. George, St. Andrew and St. Patrick in our national flag; he must deny the British fact in Canada and the miracle of British survival in America; he must forswear his British heritage. Why?

The fact is that to talk of "developing something purely Canadian" which will be neither British nor French is literally nonsense: it makes "no sense." It is like the middle western American college which posted a notice: "The following are the traditions of this college. They will go into force at four o’clock tomorrow afternoon." Both the British and the French traditions are bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh.

It may not be very fashionable at present to quote a Father of Confederation. Voices are heard telling us that Confederation, and the Canadian nation which it created, are out of date; that the framers of our Constitution were fools and bumblers; that we ought either to break the nation up altogether or replace it by a "true confederation," a league of states like the thirteen ex-colonies just after their War of Independence, or by a sort of Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy (or dual republic?). With this "veiled treason," as Sir John A. Macdonald called a far less foolish and sinister attempt to
"lure our people from their allegiance," I have less than no sympathy; and I make no apology for quoting Macdonald’s greatest colleague and fellow nation-builder, Sir Georges Etienne Cartier, in the Confederation debates of 1865:

"If", said that wise and far-seeing statesman, "the French-Canadians…had their institutions, their language and their religion intact today, it was precisely because of their adherence to the British Crown. Had they yielded to the appeals of Washington and the Baron d’Estaing, it is probable that there would not have been now a vestige of British power on this continent. But, with the disappearance of British power they too would have disappeared as French-Canadians. These historical facts taught that there should be a mutual feeling of gratitude from the French-Canadians towards the British, and from the British towards the French-Canadians for our present position, that Canada is still a British colony."

Canada is no longer a "British colony." But the essential truth of Cartier’s words remains. If the French-Canadians had revolted in 1776, or 1812, or backed the English-Canadian Annexation Movement in 1849, there would probably be no British Canada. But without the British tradition, and the British alliance, there would certainly be no French Canada. Where did French Canada get its democratic institutions? From France? From the rocks, the woods, the streams, the soil, or some other such "purely" Canadian source? No. From Britain, as that greatest of French-Canadians, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, never tired of proclaiming. Without those British institutions, could French Canada have preserved its language, its schools, the special position of its church in Quebec? Could it have preserved them as a state or states of the American Union? If Canada had not been British, there would have been no French-Canadians or Acadians; just some millions of American citizens of French origin. If Canada ceases to be British, there will soon cease to be any French-Canadians or Acadians. Two American republics north of the Rio Grande, one wholly English-speaking, the other predominantly so, or three, two English-speaking and one French-speaking, would be political and economic idiocy.

Each of our two great parent traditions is an essential part of the Canadian tradition. They have sustained each other. They have preserved each other. Together, they have preserved our national existence. Alone, neither can survive. They must sustain and preserve each other still; together they must still preserve our national existence. That was the vision of Macdonald and Cartier. It is not obsolete. It shines with the same light now as it did nearly a century ago, indeed brighter and stronger. In the contemporary world of developing internationalism, it is even more necessary than in the nineteenth century world of triumphant nationalism. For ours can be not a dividing but a uniting nationalism.

I say, "can be." For, though the Fathers of Confederation wrought well, and laid our foundation deep and strong, the building is still unfinished. It does not need a bombing squad or a wrecking crew. But it does need alterations, additions, expansion of certain rooms. Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis; and if we do not change, the changing facts will maim or kill us.

The Canadian nation is necessary, and the Anglo-French partnership is still the only possible basis for it. But the terms if the partnership cannot be the same as they were a hundred years ago. The English-speaking minority in Quebec has dwindled to a mere shadow of what it was, in numbers and in influence. French Canada, on the other hand, which then meant Quebec and little more, has now spread far beyond the bounds of that ancient province, is still spreading, and will go on spreading. The limited bilingualism of 1867 was a sensible and practical expression of the partnership then. It is not so now. It was reasonably satisfactory then. It is not so now.

I am not suggesting that every English-speaking Canadian, or every French-speaking Canadian, must become bilingual. Both groups, especially the English-speaking, would gain if they were. But it is not possible. Most people simply will not learn another language unless they have to. English-speaking Canadians in many parts of Canada have little need or even occasion to speak French; French-speaking Canadians in large parts of Canada have little need or even occasion to speak English. But more bilingualism, more biculturalism (for the thing goes far beyond mere speech), in national institutions and national affairs is an imperative necessity if this country is to hold together, and if it is to maintain, let alone enrich and strengthen, its own character against the encroachments of the great, the overwhelming, the friendly, but still in many essential respects the alien, civilization of the United States. More bilingualism, more biculturalism, is also essential in the institutions and affairs of those provinces where there is a large French-speaking, or English-speaking, minority.

It may surprise you that I add that last. I do so deliberately. For this province, a decade ago, already had a very large French-speaking minority. It may soon have, if indeed it has not already, a French-speaking majority and a very large English-speaking minority. Either way, the people of New Brunswick, and still more the University of New Brunswick and its graduates, face a very special challenge, a very special opportunity and a very special responsibility. You can give all the rest of us an example of English-speaking and French-speaking Canadians living side by side, in mutual respect, in mutual understanding, working out the new terms of the Canadian Anglo-French partnership with wisdom, justice and generosity. It may not be easy. It will certainly call for patience and skill, tact and forbearance, sympathy and imagination, from French-speaking and English-speaking alike. But no one else in this country is so strategically place to do this work as you are; and if you cannot do it, the outlook for the rest of us is dark indeed. Three centuries ago, Sir Thomas Brown said that those who were intellectually exploring the wonders of the world were paying "the Debt of our Reason we owe unto God, the homage we pay for not being Beasts." You in this province, and especially in this university, can, by pioneering this new bicultural nation-building, pay a part of the debt of your reason, and make the rest of us your debtors for all time to come.