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October 1946 — Vol. 27, No. 10 —
Canada and the
United States
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(This is the second of two articles dealing with the relationship
between Canada and the United States.)
Canadian—American history is not made up of wars, reigns
of kings and terms of presidents. It is composed of the play
of constructive forces in culture, economics and politics.
The flurry which grew out of objections to the stamp tax
and the duty on tea back in the 1770's changed into a dispute
on the principle of the right of Great Britain to legislate
for the colonies. This was fanned by the ineptitude of the
king, who did not learn until the battle of Yorktown that
the attempt must be abandoned. Then he found that he had also
lost his royal supremacy over parliament, so the uprising
in America contributed in no little measure to the victory
of the principle of parliamentary government in Great Britain,
and may be regarded as the primary element in colonial self—determination.
The American Revolution not only brought into being the United
States, but it founded English Canada, and through the years
events in the United States and Canada have had reciprocal
effects.
Canada has been twice invaded by Americans (1775 and 1812)
when the southern neighbours truly thought they were going
to conquer Canada for Canada's good. A "friendly invasion"
was launched upon Montreal and Quebec with the idea of carrying
the country into Union as a fourteenth state. Chateau de Ramezay,
which still stands as a museum a few city blocks from the
Head Office of The Royal Bank of Canada, was headquarters
for the American General Montgomery. To it there came Benjamin
Franklin, armed with arguments of permanent peace, in an effort
to coax the ministry into transferring Quebec to the United
States. A half century later, in the war of 1812, the Americans
burned York, now - Toronto, at a time when of the total 80,000
population of what is now Ontario only 35,000 were Loyalists
and 25,000 were American settlers. In true reciprocal fervor,
the British burned Washington a year later. These things seem
old and remote. Canadians have long ago wiped from the slate
of their memory the feelings of an old feud in which blood
ran high at the time, and both nations refuse to allow judgment
on present—day relationships to be warped by ancient
memories. In this they show the Old World a sterling example.
There lingered for many years a feeling on the American
side that Canada's "manifest destiny" was union with the United
States, though belligerency gave way to a complacent wait—fulness
which was quite irritating to the now nationality—conscious
Canadians. This attitude dated from the very beginning of
the United States. In one section of the Articles of Confederation
a special dispensation was given Canada, alone among the nations,
to join the Union: "Canada, acceding to this Confederation,
and joining in the measures of the United States, shall be
admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this
Union; but no other colony shall be admitted into the same,
unless such admission be agreed to by nine states." As MacCormac
writes in "America and World Mastery," Americans were "astonished
and even pained to find that Canadians preferred the shackles
of monarchy." In 1867 the New York Tribune commented on Canada's
confederation of its provinces in this way: "When the experiment
of the 'dominion' shall have failed, as fail it must, a process
of peaceful absorption will give Canada her proper place in
the great North American Republic."
Thus developed the relationship of these two countries,
from single sovereignty through revolution to separation;
from attempts by arms to return the Loyalists to the fold
of the republicans to negotiation for union as one of the
new states; from predictions that the Dominion would fail
to function in its new status to the present—day union
of friendship which needs no constitution. Only an occasional
lonely, and to Canadians rather silly, voice is raised in
these days in favour of the old annexationist ideas. Such
expansionist aspirations are at odds with the expressed desires
of the whole people of United States and Canada for a world
in which small nations shall be safe from molestation.
How the two nations work together in amity, even in deciding
difficult matters, is shown by their wholesale introduction
of the principles of consultation and arbitration into practically
all affairs. The long habit of peaceful settlement has consolidated
friendship on a base of realism, which passes the test of
practicality as well as the test of idealism. In addition
there is close liaison, if not outright identity, in non—government
organizations which range through all activities and interests
of life: economic, cultural, professional, political and aesthetic.
The trend was intensified during the late war, when Canada
and the United States had places on combined boards, where
they shared problems, pooled knowledge and united their skills
and resources.
As an example of how the goodwill method of settling differences
works, consider the International Joint Commission. This was
set up with three Canadian and three United States members
with the objective: "...to settle all questions between the
United States and Canada involving the rights, obligations
or interests of either in relation to the other along their
common frontier." This commission, which has been operating
smoothly since 1909, is an unmatched demonstration of a method
for just settlement of difficulties between unequal powers.
The commissioners work, not as two groups of three, but as
one group of six, determined to deal impartially with matters
brought before them. Part of the secret of continued amity
seems to be that these countries do not wait for irreconcilable
ideas to collide at the border. They tackle them early, and
use common sense, ingenuity, and a blind eye to get around,
over or under obstacles.
Co—operation and achievements of the two countries
during the late war would fill many volumes, and can be mentioned
here only to the extent of saying how splendidly they worked
together. Canada did not benefit from United States lend—lease,
(which Churchill called "that most unsordid act in the history
of nations") but paid in goods and cash. At the same time,
Canadians surprised themselves by their ability to send a
billion dollars' worth of goods as an outright gift to Great
Britain. More than that, in 1943 Canada passed her Mutual
Aid Act, and under it the next two years saw $2,360 million
worth of further supplies allocated on grounds of strategic
need to Britain, the Soviet Union, China, France, Australia,
New Zealand and India, with $1,892 million in other kinds
of financial accommodation also provided. She gave 20,000
tons of wheat to Greece every month from 1942, an amount that
kept alive almost half the population of that country, and
contributed 100,000 tons of wheat to relieve the famine in
India in 1943. In his article in the January issue of Foreign
Affairs, the American Quarterly Review, Lionel Gelber says:
"To Britain alone Canada furnished per capita as much as the
American program gave everyone. Mutual Aid being her own variation
of lend—lease, Canada could have received but did not
ask for reciprocal assistance; she herself, dispensing rather
than consuming help of that sort, drew no lend—lease
at all from the United States. She paid for her own American
imports by the manufacture of war material and equipment."
As to Canada's manpower, out of a population of less than
12 million there were 1,031~000 enrolled in the three fighting
services. Canada was third among the United Nations in sea
power, and was the main protector of the North Atlantic convoy
route. She was fourth in air power, and in addition a host
of her airmen served in the Royal Air Force.
This brief glimpse of what was achieved in war and how the
lessons are being carried into peace is enough to indicate
the possibilities, and to emphasize the natural desire of
the two countries for co—operation, but it is not meant
to indicate that strong similarities exclude significant differences.
The disparity in population is important in itself, because
it makes Americans thoughtless and Canadians hypersensitive.
Canadians are characterized by introversion, as against the
American extroversion, and perhaps this, as in marriage, helps
toward a peaceful and successful partnership. In their temperament
Canadians have a redoubtable slowness to match their neighbours'
precipitancy, but one must admit that it has an air of majesty
and that in the long run it works with fewer upsets than are
suffered by their speeding co—continentals. Canadians
are adept at reaching working compromises which are nearer
realities of the times than would be ambitious theories. They
take their work calmly, and are more serious about their pleasures.
John MacCormac said in his book "Canada: America's Problem"
that a political convention in the United States bears the
same relation to its Canadian counterpart as bedlam does to
a cemetery. To this he adds: "Organized racketeering is unknown,
and no hooded figures have ever dominated the night scene.
The law tolerates fewer technicalities and is far swifter.
Relatively fewer Canadians murder each other and many more
are hanged when they do. Trial by newspaper is not tolerated.
The law of slander is more strictly enforced."
In a letter to the Royal Bank, Arthur W. Calhoun, of Sterling
College, Kansas, remarked: "I think the people of the United
States take Canada for granted, without understanding or interest.
I am sure, however, that it is very important that we should
recognize the equal nationhood of Canada, and that we should
prize and profit by the cultural achievements of our neighbours.
" People on both sides of the border know well the art, literature
and entertainment leaders in the United States, but it is
to be feared that not even Canadians themselves know as well
their own people who have excelled, and certainly it is not
widely appreciated in the United States that Canada has an
art, literature and entertainment life of its own. Sheer weight
of numbers and cash resources crowd the air with United States
radio programs, and the screens with United States movie shows.
Canada has achieved undisputed leadership in documentary
films, of which her National Film Board has become the world's
largest producer. Canada's actors and actresses, including
Walter Huston, Walter Pidgeon, Mary Pickford, Raymond Massey,
and Deanna Durbin became as beloved by American audiences
as by Canadian. The popular novels of Mazo de la Roche, the
poems of Robert Service, and the gentle ironies of the late
Stephen Leacock are familiar to Americans, and attention is
being widely paid recent works by Hugh MacLennan and Gwethalyn
Graham. A publication by the Canadian Federation of Music
Teachers' Associations lists 122 Canadian composers, including
Dr. Healey Willan who has to his credit nearly 200 original
published compositions as well as over 100 arrangements of
folk tunes and gregorian melodies.
In the realm of sports, the two nations play in much the
same repertoire, but there is a lack of exuberance in Canada
compared with the United States. A famous American professional
athlete returned home after a visit to Mexico and remarked
it was not much fun playing for the crowds down there because
"they yelled just as loud for the opposing team as they did
for their home team." He might well say the same thing about
Canadians, since they inherit the sporting instinct of the
British who are inclined to cheer the fox as well as the hounds.
This tabulation may well conclude with reference to Canada's
place in science and engineering. Mercury Digest recently
named a few of Canada's outstanding men: Lord Rutherford,
once an instructor at McGill University, who was the first
man to split the atom; Sir Frederick Banting and Dr. Charles
Best, who discovered insulin; Sir Charles Saunders, who bred
rust—resisting Marquis wheat; Gilbert Labine who discovered
the Eldorado mine by recognizing pitchblende territory from
the air; Ben Chaffey, well—known for his irrigation projects
in California and Australia, and Sir William Osler, whose
contribution to medicine was made "just as much at McGill
as at Johns Hopkins or Oxford."
These, then, are characteristics and personalities of the
two nations. Neither of these two nations is perfect, nor
have all their leaders in the past worn wings. Every country
is inclined to picture its native sons as being more sober,
industrious and inflexibly honest than those of any other
nation. But sensible persons know that it cannot be true that
one party or one nation alone produces celestial harmonies,
while the others make up that Mephistophelian Pandemonium
pictured by Milton, out of which came only self—seeking
imperialism.
Canada and the United States have many important features
in common. Their strongest tie is the community of their daily
life. They pursue their democratic convictions and aspirations
in the same way, in similar environment, but beyond all their
profitable and pleasant surface resemblance and exchange there
are sound principles. The most precious common possession
of Canada and the United States is democracy; their common
heritage is Magna Carta, the basic document on which democracy
is built. From the same roots sprang both the American and
the Canadian way of life, and though Canada has no inspiring
document to place alongside the Declaration of Independence,
the same principles are hers." Both Canada and the United
States are devoted to the idea of human progress; they believe
in the capacity of all men for betterment, no matter to what
level they have attained, and they affirm the freedom of the
lowliest individual to work his way up to the top of his capacity.
Nor are these rights and aspirations limited to people of
native birth. Canada and the United States challenge all the
concepts of those who used "race purity" as a rallying point
for a dreadful war. America has been called a "melting—pot"
which takes in all manner of foreign elements and turns them
out good citizens of a new country. For proof of the fact
that the system works, though not blueprinted, it is necessary
only to look at the names on the success roster of any enterprise
from a hockey team to a steel mill. There are 150 million
persons in this part of the earth, and they can all be different
from one another and still be good Americans or good Canadians,
so long as they have the grasp and practice of fundamental
principles of thought and conduct.
It is being realized by other nations that these North American
neighbours must play the great part in world affairs worthy
of their status and potentialities, if democracy everywhere
is not to decline. While some nations prefer to follow a vacillating
policy depending upon immediate self—interest, these
two must pursue policies based upon intelligent appraisal
of long—range world interests. Each has peculiar qualifications,
and together they make an important team. They need the outside
world as customers and suppliers, but more than that, they
need to participate in world political affairs and not merely
to sit back as umpires for consultation but not participation.
Americans should remember that, powerful as their country
is, they are, after all, a relatively small part of the world's
population. Dorothy Thompson once wrote: "We are just 132,000,000
people out of a world containing over two billions of other
people, all of whom can manufacture tanks and guns and make
coalitions, and who have a historic tendency to gang up together
when any one nation claims too much for itself."
Canada has her own problems. Just now she is on top of the
world, but being a small nation with enough wealth for a large
one she faces particular responsibilities and dangers. To
those who have learned to view the globe from the top, it
is clear that Canada is at the centre of world power, surrounded
by the United States, Great Britain and Russia. Her position
used to mean safety, but the strategy of air war has made
her land mass a crucial point in event of war. Her political
integrity is assured, her external relationships are clean
of all selfish imputations, and she has many friends throughout
the world. Her innate conservatism keeps the nation a political
sobersides; her racial dualism gives her a tolerance and an
understanding important in international dealings; her national
feeling, based upon pride in her industrial, agricultural
and military achievements, prevents her from becoming a drag
upon progress. She is playing her part on international committees
and in conferences and international work. Her plans for monetary
stabilization and for control of civil aviation contributed
much to agreement between Great Britain and the United States
on these prickly subjects. She has a place on nine peace bodies;
PICAO and ILO have their headquarters in Montreal; the first
United Nations conference on food and agriculture was held
in Canada with a Canadian chairman; she is the largest contributor
of supplies and third largest contributor of money to UNRRA;
and when the atom bomb fell on Hiroshima she was revealed
as a partner with the United States and Great Britain in that
world—resounding enterprise.
All this indicates that Canada has an importance in the
world of nations far beyond her meagre population, and through
it all she stands as an autonomous nation. Full stature was
reached in 1931, when Canada accomplished peacefully the same
result that the War of Independence achieved 155 years previously
for the United States: recognition as an independent nation.
The extent of this independence was illustrated by the fact
that Canada declared war on Germany seven days later than
Great Britain; she declared war on Japan before either Great
Britain or the United States, and she need not have declared
war on anybody if she had wished to stand aside. So independent
is Canada that she refuses to consider allowing even British
authorities to set up military establishments in her territory
for the training of troops: she is willing to have the armed
forces of friendly nations use her facilities, provided the
establishments are owned, maintained and controlled by the
Canadian government. This was demonstrated in the air training
plan during the late war, when Americans, Britishers, Australians,
New Zealanders, Norwegians, and men of all the fighting United
Nations were trained in Canada for service with their own
national military forces. As Lionel Chevrier, Minister of
Transport, told Kiwanis International at Atlantic City this
summer: "Canada is a nation with the same independence, rights
and obligations as the United States"
At the same time, Canada is a partner in the British Commonwealth
of Nations, which stands by itself in history as a remarkable
political institution. It is a world wonder that the British
mother country, a mere dot on the map, can inspire such tenacious
loyalty as to bind far—off nations such as Canada, New
Zealand, Australia and South Africa to herself in spite of
powerful attractions of environment and difference an living.
Commonwealth members enjoy all the elements of freedom, and
yet are bound together by loyalty to the Crown, a great inheritance
of political and social and moral precepts, and by traditions
time has been unable to weaken. Field Marshal Jan Christiaan
Smuts, who fought with distinction against the British in
the Boer War, and is now a leading Empire statesman, describes
the British Empire as "the widest system of organized freedom
which has ever existed."
The part that the United States and Canada can play on the
stage of world affairs is enhanced by this connection of Canada
with the Empire, but there are people who demand why Canada
is the only American State which is not a member of the Pan
American Union. Fortunately, it is widely recognized that
Canada's associations with the old world are not only ineradicable
facts, but facts which have certain advantages to the Americas.
When Canada speaks in the family councils of the Commonwealth,
her voice is the voice of America. She does not accept the
role of mere interpreter. She fulfils that office by being
true to herself, not as an intermediary but as a principal.
Her position in the British Commonwealth does not make her
less an American nation, and she pursues a friendly and mutually
helpful cultural and business relationship with all the nations
in the Americas.
One thing is much needed: information. Canadian publicity
has not been noticeably brilliant. Politicians and public
servants often fail to understand that resentment to change,
and opposition to new ideas, do not spring from cussedness
but failure to understand the reasons. Advance education and
information of the general public, not on partisan or emotional
lines but on facts and logic told interestingly, would avert
many headaches. Continental thinking is a necessary prelude
to international thinking, something to be fostered in both
countries. It can be done if the immediate and temporary pleasure
of recounting the more sensational and lunatic aspects of
life is supplanted by features vital to the future and the
permanent.
In addition to publicity, there is an opportunity to be
found in education. There are upwards of 30 million school
children in the two countries, growing up into the next adult
generation. These figures drive home the irresistible fact
that the partial instruction now given with regard to the
neighbouring country is evidence of neglect of a grand opportunity.
In the spring of 1944 the American Council on Education, with
support of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
took the initiative in bringing together a group of educators
from Canada and the United States. As a result, a continuing
Canada—United States Committee on Education came into
being. This bilateral committee, for whose work high hopes
are held, has the support of many teachers' and education
associations.
There are obstacles in the way of the most complete correlation
of effort by these two countries for their own advancement
and the good of the world, but there exist in the hearts and
minds of their people powerful generative impulses which need
only to be set free by interest to bring about wonders. The
need for striking off any restraining shackles is more important
now than ever. The international collaboration in which United
States and Canada are engaged with other nations extends to
all human activities, and involves every citizen, and is not
any longer the prerogative of ministers plenipotentiary. The
domestic welfare of these North American nations, because
of the impact of their economy on world business, makes their
internal activities of interest "to all the world. There are
few sceptics in these countries among patriotic and thinking
people, because it would be very un—American (in the
broad sense of "American" which includes Canada) to entertain
any doubt that this continent will come out all right. But
realization is needed of the truth that a happy future does
not lie in the path of do—nothing—ism. Having agreed
on ideals which are the growth of centuries, and having planned
how the ideals are to be sought in a world passionately realistic,
then the people of Canada and the United States must face
actualities, think intelligently and pronounce intelligibly,
build durably, and work without ceasing.
Readers desiring further information on various facets of
Canadian cultural and economic life may obtain any of the
following articles from a branch of The Royal Bank of Canada,
or from Head Office, Montreal:
Canada and the British Empire
Canada's Northland
What is This Canada?
Social Welfare
Canada's Government
Banking in Canada
Education
Airway Transport
International Trade
Canadian Women
Published by RBC Financial Group. All editions from the RBC
Letter collection are available on our web site at www.rbc.com/responsibility/letter.
Our e-mail address is: rbcletter@rbc.com.
Publié aussi en francais.
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