September 1954 — Vol. 35, No. 9 —
A Culture for
Canada
Download
PDF version
Some persons think culture is something
one has, rather than something one is. Others think of culture
as being divided, as culture of the cultured, culture of the
masses, culture of the educated, culture of the cloistered,
and so on. To still others culture is fragmented into music,
poetry, sculpture, painting, and many other arts and crafts.
A culture for Canada will include arts, crafts and customs,
reinforced by tradition and beliefs. It will take into account
our material resources, our scientific knowledge, our religious
practices, our family and social systems and our government:
the practical things of life as well as the graces. Culture
is a pattern of all these and the other ingredients of living
expressing the present day life force of our people.
We can't be "cultured" now and again, when we get specially
fixed up for it. Culture is a constant state of becoming.
We Canadians have not yet (and we are glad of it) reached
our fullest development in art, religion, education, and intellectual
growth. There is, for a nation which takes the beaver as its
emblem, more satisfaction in working toward something than
in merely possessing something.
If Canada is to endure as a nation of consequence our cultural
progress cannot be looked upon as something incidental, something
that takes second place in importance to any of its ingredients.
One of the fascinating things about culture is that it is
indefinable. It partakes too much of the spirit of a people
to be put in wordy chains.
Attempts to analyse the ultimates of life like faith, love,
patriotism, religion and beauty always fail, because these
components of culture cannot be reduced to terms lower than
themselves.
Culture is not fixed
Culture cannot be accepted as a fixed code by which to live.
It is not stagnant, but dynamic. It gives us wide realms to
explore. There would be nothing noble about Canadian culture
if we could say: "This is it; this is our absolute and accepted
scale of culture; by this we shall live." Culture is not,
as some conceive it, an eternal resting on a throne to which
we have been elevated by our forefathers, but is something
to be hourly achieved and realized at the very peril of losing
it.
Our culture is the outcome of our social experience. It
includes invention and discovery, the accumulated results
of human effort, our philosophical explanations of thought
and action, the institutions we have devised to make society
a working reality, our sentiments and attitudes. All the past
of humanity enters into culture, as well as the more recent
contributions of the people of all nations who discovered,
settled and developed Canada.
There must, however, be some fundamental features in culture
- features of which art, music, sculpture, literature, philosophy,
science, family life, and social custom are some of the symbols.
Basic to a lasting culture is the search for truth. Culture
is opposed to bigotry, and no one has a right to call himself
cultured who cannot listen to both sides of an argument, who
refuses to tolerate things merely because they are distasteful
to him personally.
Understanding life
Intelligence is a part of culture. When we start to understand
the meaning, purpose and conditions of life we are at the
beginning of intelligence. We develop in cultural intelligence
in the degree in which we use it and accept responsibility
for consequences.
Intelligence restrains our innate violent and unsocial impulses,
prompts us to seek higher than animal pleasures, and gives
us the ability to see things in their proper connections.
At the same time, while enabling us to learn all about the
sun and the atmosphere and the earth, it leaves us free to
enjoy the radiance of the sunset.
Intelligence of this sort does not depend upon formal education.
It is not at all rare to come upon comparatively unlettered
people who have struck profound depths of thought and have
reached the poetry of things. And there are highly educated
people, capable of performing clever antics with their minds,
who have no deep sense of the worthwhileness of living.
Much of culture is simply unbroken tradition. Each of us
is born into a society with a more or less fixed system of
relationships. From the immemorial past have come down to
us ways of getting a livelihood and approved patterns of family
and social conduct.
Without the starting point provided by these traditions,
development would be inconceivable. The culture of today in
Canada rests upon the preservation of the accomplishments
of all who have gone before us in contributing to the building
of this country, and the culture of tomorrow depends upon
what we of today add to that heritage, not so much in the
way of habits and customs, but in ways of thinking.
A shifting world
However, the compulsion of tradition has somewhat lost its
force in this shifting world. The rising generation is abandoning
in some measure the old established standards in many areas
of life, as well as the traditional manner of music and dancing
and painting and sculpture.
Arnold J. Toynbee says in A Study of History: "The
prevailing tendency to abandon our artistic traditions is
not the result of technical incompetence; it is the deliberate
abandonment of a style which is losing its appeal to a rising
generation because this generation is ceasing to cultivate
its aesthetic sensibilities on the traditional Western lines."
It may be that young people today rebel against respect for
tradition because they perceive in it a worship of conventions.
Unrest may not be altogether a bad thing. Every custom of
today began as a broken precedent in some past day. Without
occasional emotional shakeups we might run the risk of having
life become desolately empty. Progress would cease and culture
would wither.
We are not quick to accept changes. The existing pattern
is more comfortable than any novelty offered us. A new material
fact, such as a tool, a gadget for the kitchen, an electronic
calculator for the office, is readily incorporated into life.
Its efficiency is demonstrable. There is no sentiment involved,
hence no emotional resistance is stirred up. But in the realm
of thought and personal life the new makes its way slowly.
Some who protest the modern trend in the arts do so on the
ground that today's aesthetic taste is lower than that of
past ages. But standards of taste vary from age to age and
from continent to continent. What was in the best of taste
in the Athens of Pericles, in the Golden Age of France, in
the British Isles last year; is not necessarily to the taste
of Canadians today.
"Taste," said Ruskin in The True and the Beautiful,
"is the instinctive and instant preferring of one material
object to another without any obvious reason." And that comes
as the end result of all our past, expressing itself in a
new environment.
The two cultures
When we set up a Royal Commission in 1949 to examine Canada's
cultural life we did not call it a commission on culture,
but "The Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts,
Letters and Sciences." The outcome, a report of more than
500 pages, provides an interested reader with a record of
the present state of the cultural arts in Canada.
The first paragraph of the intention of the Commission mentions
the ingredients of a nation's culture: "It is desirable that
the Canadian people should know as much as possible about
their country, its history and traditions; and about their
national life and common achievements."
This objective leads naturally to consideration of the ideal
presented by Dr. A. R. M. Lower, Professor of Canadian History
at Queen's University, in his book Canada, Nation and
Neighbour. Dr. Lower writes: "The new nation Canada will
not be built on oblivion of the past, but on its incorporation
into two living traditions which may some day, without losing
their own, come to share one common culture."
Canada is, in the words of another writer, Bruce Hutchison,
"like a youth starting out on his path, glancing over his
shoulder at the ancient glories of his home in Britain or
France and, when he looks ahead, dazzled by the glitter of
the United States."
For the health of a national culture two things are needed:
that it should be unique, and not modelled slavishly after
that of one or other of its chief contributors, and that the
different cultures woven into one should recognize their relationship
to one another, both what they bestow and what they embrace.
Ours is not an uncommon situation. Many other nations have
travelled the same road toward integration of apparently conflicting
ideals and unity in a common design. There is not yet, but
there will come, a commonly accepted symbol of Canadian oneness,
and there will develop traditions that will bind our people
together in a permanent union.
The only impediment to this development would be our allowing
ourselves to harden into watertight compartments. We must
preserve our freedom to put out our hands and help ourselves
to what is best in the culture of all the nationalities that
make up our population.
As was said picturesquely by a writer about Utopia: "A genuine
culture will borrow steadily from other cultures; but it will
go to them as the bee goes to the flower for pollen, and not
as the beekeeper goes to the hive for honey."
If one section of Canada's people finds really insoluble
differences of thought, action or beliefs with another section,
then increased association and sincere desire will combine
to develop mutual respect and honourable compromise.
Expressions of goodwill are right and good, but a national
culture cannot be built on an exchange of compliments. There
are differences which cannot be disregarded, and these go
far beyond the bounds of language. George J. Lavere said in
his article in the Summer issue of Culture: "It is
in value judgments that the real difference lies."
People from other parts of Canada have come to respect the
standard of values of the people of Quebec, particularly their
ideal of the family as the essential unit in our society.
For their part, the French—Canadians admire the new ways
of thought and action, the inventiveness and diversity of
talent, shown by British—Canadians and newcomers of many
diverse cultures.
Too unsophisticated?
Canadian culture has not yet reached a point where it can
be called native, but it is developing out of inherited and
borrowed thought something that is distinctively new world.
We are unsophisticated, say some; we are still too close
to nature. These critics would have our artists and our poets
and our story tellers rush pell—mell from contemplation
of the forest and the mountains, the prairies and the tundra,
into more artful portrayal of what is loosely called "the
soul" of the country. But these forests and mountains and
prairies and the land of little bushes are at the foundation
of Canadian life. They are lauded by economists and by corporation
presidents as the backbone of our economy, the reason for
existence and the preservation of our way of life.
Nature put up a grim resistance to settlement of Canada
by the French and British adventurers, and that is so recent
in our history that it would be surprising if we had already
developed into a gay and careless people, unmindful of our
beginnings and heedless of the present foundation and support
of our prosperity. It may be that out of our unsophistication
there will develop a rare culture, quite different from the
cultures that are made up of myths and legends, the histories
of battles, pageantry and conquest.
Our forefathers were skilful, and their skills had to have
survival value in a rigorous land; we have progressed to relative
comfort in a society based materially upon invention and adaptation.
If we learn to mingle with our respect for the past and our
appreciation of the present something of the poetry of it
all, we may find ourselves well on the way toward the distinctive
culture we seek.
Haste is unnecessary and would be unwise. We did not demand
that the Articles of Confederation or the provisions of the
Statute of Westminster should automatically and swiftly promote
us from adolescence to maturity.
There is, says Mr. Lavere, a true intellectual and artistic
life in Canada on both the professional and amateur levels.
This cultural vitality is of very excellent quality and is
sufficiently self—critical to seek improvement promising
an even better future. Canadians are writing good books and
good music, and are beginning to create good theatre and good
ballet; we have distinguished painters; our film making has
won international recognition; our radio is uncovering talented
artists. "We need," says the introduction to Robert Weaver's
article in the 60th anniversary issue of Queen's Quarterly,
"no longer be apologetic about 'our lively arts'."
There are, indeed, areas in which we seem to tolerate bad
influences. We suffer literature, plastic art and music to
be freely displayed which are a humiliation to any man or
woman of taste. All that can be hoped for or desired in matters
of taste is that toleration will allow the bad to work itself
out of our system and that patient effort wisely directed
will bring about an infusion of the desirable.
There is no essential stability in a civilized way of life.
Whenever civilization stagnates, something like nomadism steps
in and stirs it to new efforts. A living culture is constantly
changing and increasing in volume and complexity through the
addition of new items. This is a natural phenomenon that must
be accepted, though we may determine, perhaps rightly, that
certain basic articles in our culture must be kept intact
despite the hundred magnets that pull us away from them.
Determination of this sort was displayed by the Athenians
of 404 B.C. Athens was in the throes of a life and death war.
But, strict to their culture, the Athenians presented, at
public expense, what had been judged to be the best comedy
of the year. It did not matter that the play was violently
antimilitarist, ridiculing the army and flaying leaders of
the democracy. Says Clive Bell in Civilization: "I
can recall nothing in history that manifests more brilliantly
a public sense of values."
The family
By far the most important channel of transmission of culture
is the family. The meagre furniture of a native hut becomes
immensely significant because it is grouped around the hearth,
symbol of the intimate personal relationship of family life.
The general stock of ideas, prejudices and sentiments picked
up by the hearthside impinge on thought and actions throughout
life. Statesmen and financiers, educators and artisans, men
and women in all activities of life, are influenced in their
decisions and actions by the intangibles absorbed in home
life.
Culture develops from the intimacy of the home through the
community, the province and the nation. The nation is described
by St. Augustine as an association of reasonable beings bound
together by a common agreement as to the objects they love.
Opposed to culture is barbarism, and barbarians are people
who insist on doing what they please, without submitting to
any rule.
Cultured people are distinguished by the superiority of
their thoughts, their enjoyment of beauty, their effort to
improve themselves and their environment, and their willingness
to look at something new.
Of all these qualities none is more vital to culture than
the last. A person, however well—informed, is not cultured
unless he can look at a thought or an event or a belief from
at least two sides. To enjoy life perfectly a man must be
free from taboos, prudery, superstition and prejudice. He
will recognize all degrees of shadings between those who agree
with him and the people who don't.
Broadmindedness is one pillar of culture. Another is a sense
of values. Clive Bell says (in Civilization) that
the cultured person has intellectual curiosity that is not
only boundless but fearless and disinterested. He is tolerant,
liberal and unshockable. If he is not always affable and urbane,
at least he is not truculent, suspicious or overbearing. He
distinguishes between ends and means, brushes aside all cant
about "rights", and pricks the frothy bubbles of moral indignation
with the sharp point of his sense of values.
On being what we are
Perhaps the best recipe for a culture for Canada is just
to have the courage to be what we are. We must be free intellectually
to deal with whatever comes our way. A book of Canadian essays,
published this year by The Ryerson Press, Toronto, edited
by Malcolm Ross, Professor of English Literature at Queen's
University, is happily entitled Our Sense of Identity.
We need not fret about the results of our efforts nor about
the importance of our individual contributions so long as
we act sincerely according to our sense of values. Our lives,
individually, are links in the chain, and what we do has national
and universal significance.
A culture for Canada is not a culture for today only. People
with a sound sense of values are capable of sacrificing obvious
and immediate goods to the more subtle and remote. They give
up comfort for beauty; they prefer a liberal education, one
that teaches how to live maturely, rather than one that teaches
how to gain. They desire the richest and fullest life obtainable,
a life which contains the maximum of vivid and exquisite experience
and contributes something to the future.
If Canadians individually make the most of their sense of
values, that will prevent the country's culture from evolving
into a sophisticated mé1ange of gaudy trappings gathered
near and far.
We cannot plan culture as we do political change and resource
development. Culture can never be wholly conscious. But if
we wish to give meaning to life - perhaps even a special meaning
to Canadian life - then we must take steps to put ourselves
in the way of experiences and projects which contribute to
and develop our culture.
No one need live meanly
No one need live meanly in Canada except by choice. Those
who overvalue physical comforts, the material things of the
world, and ease of work, are living a sparse cultural existence,
and cannot be rated high in an appraisement of civilization.
There is no need to live the rigorous life of our forefathers,
but if we banish it from memory we are depriving ourselves
of the best, most logical and most thrilling base for our
culture.
One of the first terrestrial plants known to man was found
in the Gaspé Peninsula. It is a poor little plant,
a foot high, without leaves. Sir John William Dawson discovered
it about the time of Confederation. It preceded the luxuriant
and elegant trees and flowers of the carboniferous period
by some seventy—five million years.
There seems to be a lesson in this discovery for those who
are impatient for displays of cultural progress in Canada.
It will not take so long for our culture to develop as it
did for Sir John's spindly little plant to grow into our vast
forests, but it will take time. Culture is not any more magically
manufactured than are trees and flowers.
We are seeking a harmony of culture that will bind together
four qualities, truth, beauty, adventure and art, and this
harmony, exclusive as it is of egotism, self—seeking
and immediacy, can be attained only as a process of growth
extended in time.
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.
[ Return to RBC Letter
home page ]
|
