Donald Creighton And Eugene Forsey:Tory Historian Meets Radical Traditionalist

It was this disturbing shift in the meaning and understanding of Canadian conservatism in the early 1980s that created many a concern and worry amongst Canadian High Tory conservatives. It would just be a matter of time before some sort of response emerged. The first book that attempted, in a more popular way, to correct the image of conservatism that Mulroney was parading about was Charles Taylor?s, Radical Tories: The Conservative Tradition in Canada (1982). Taylor, in Radical Tories, pointed out in a clear headed and historical manner, that there was a Tory tradition in Canada that could not be equated with Mulroney's brand of blue tory conservatism. Taylor listed the family tree and lineage in his missive and tract for the times in a series of short essays on important Canadian Tories that could not be squared with the Mulroney clan. The book came as a solid rebuke and firm footed turning of the back on the blue tory way. Taylor, in his short profiles, showcased such worthies as Leacock, Sandwell, Deacon, Morton, Purdy, Grant, Stanfield, Crombie, Donald Creighton and Eugene Forsey. Taylor's chapter on Creighton (I) was called, "The Northern Empire", and his chapter on Forsey (V) was called, "Red Tories and Social Justice". What did Creighton, the finest and noblest Canadian High Tory historian, have in common with Eugene Forsey, a noble and fine leftist intellectual and activist?

Donald Creighton was, without much doubt, an eloquent and controversial Canadian historian. He argued, in book after book, that Canada was created and built, consciously so, in an East-West manner, and the most visionary of political leaders of Canada (which were Tories) waged many a battle to keep Canada from becoming a satellite and colony of the USA. Creighton's biography of Sir.John A. Macdonald is a spirited and animated defence of Macdonald, and the way he gave his life to preserve and keep Canada firm and intact. Creighton wrote many other books on Canadian history, and in each of these books, he probes and examines the struggles within the Canadian soul to preserve its own way or annex and integrate with the USA.

Creighton's book on Innis, Harold Adam Innis: Portrait of a Scholar (1957), highlighted and reinforced Creighton's deeper passion. Innis had argued that societies shape and form themselves around two important ideas and concepts (space or time). Much hinges on whether the spacial or chronological idea dominates. A spacial society tends to be concerned and preoccupied with movement, mobility, change, a lack of history and tradition and a weak notion of boundaries. The sky above is a fit symbol for the metaphor of space. A time bound and chronological society is more concerned about the past, the relationship between generations, the connections across time, what binds things together in and through time. A spacial culture tends to be more liberal, a time conscious society tends to be more conservative. Innis argued that, in an age of rapid change (as we are in now), we need to be more rooted and grounded in a more time bound and chronological way.

Creighton drew together many of the insights of Innis and gave them a solid historical and political grounding. It was Innis's argument that Canadians, to be Canadians, need to think more in an East-West manner rather than a North-South way. The more Canadians think North-South, the more they will become Americans. Innis also argued Canadians need to think more in a time bound and chronological way. When we think, mostly, in a spacial manner, we think more like the liberal Americans to the south of us.

Creighton had a great deal of fondness for the arguments of Innis, but he extolled the fine work of Eugene Forsey. Forsey was highlighted in Creighton's final book, The Passionate Observer: Selected Writings (1980). "Eugene Forsey: Political Traditionalist, Social Radical" holds high and offers many a kudo to the life and meticulous writings of Forsey. Forsey had been a student of Leacock at McGill in the 1920s, and he taught in the political economy department at McGill in the 1930s. Forsey was a founding member of the League for Social Reconstruction and the CCF. But, and this was a vital point for Creighton. Forsey, unlike many in the New Left, was grounded in the best of the English conservative way, and it was by mining the depths of this older conservatism that the gold of Forsey's social radicalism emerged. Creighton concluded his article on Forsey by saying, "The truth is that he is indecipherable by Canadian criticism. If only there were many Canadians like him". Even though Creighton had his questions about Forsey, he saw in Forsey that unique Canadian ability to blend both conservatism and radicalism. It was in the living of this tension that the best of the Canadian vision is expressed and embodied.

When Charles Taylor was doing his interviews for Radical Tories, he asked Forsey if he would be interested in being interviewed with other Tories of an older tradition. Forsey's reply letter says much about the man.

I need hardly say I should be highly honoured to figure in such a distinguished company in your new book, though I fear George Grant looks upon me with a very jaundiced eye, and might jib at finding himself in such bad company. I am, however, very doubtful about whether you ought to bother with me, at any rate in anything more than perhaps a few footnotes. Leacock, Creighton and Grant are towering figures; I am simply not in the same class.

Eugene Forsey had his autobiography, A Life on the Fringe: The Memoirs of Eugene Forsey, published in 1990. His days were near an end, but he still had much to say. The tale told in A Life on the Fringe highlights just how Forsey managed to combine and integrate the deeper and fuller aspects of the Anglo-Canadian way with a searching and probing passion for justice and peace at a legal, economic and political level. The drama that Forsey recounts takes the curious Canadian into an intellectual world in which distinctions such as left, right and sensible centre make little or no sense. Forsey was too big a man to be captured by such a small ideological net. It is most interesting to note that in the last few years of his life Forsey gave a talk to the Anglican Prayer Book Society. The Prayer Book Society tends to be seen by many as the last bastion of a reactionary and out of touch English traditionalism. What was Forsey, the social radical, doing giving a presentation to the Prayer Book Society? For Forsey, grounded as he was in the best of the Anglo-Canadian religious and political tradition, such simple and brittle distinctions lacked depth and substance. Forsey saw in the Prayer Book the very religious and political resources for building a just society and the True North. The Prayer Book Magazine, The Machary Review ( Number 6: December 1997) published Forsey's lecture. It was called, "What Have These Reformers Wrought?" The article is vintage Forsey. Traditionalism and Radicalism are like the left and right hand. When either is lopped off, much hurt and harm comes to the body politic.

Donald Creighton was the finest High Tory historian Canada has produced. He often lamented the way liberals distorted and misinterpreted Canadian history to serve their agenda. He called the liberal read of Canadian history, playing on the old and new translations of the Bible, the authorized reading of Canadian history. Liberal Canadian historians tended to idealize the liberal interpretation of Canadian history and thereby offer gullible and naïve Canadians a distorted view of both Toryism and the Canadian intellectual and political journey. Creighton realized that genuine Canadian Toryism was not averse or opposed to a concern for the common good and the protection of the Canadian way over and against the American. Creighton knew his Tory tradition well enough to turn to Forsey as an ally and friend on the journey. Forsey, on the other hand, was so well rooted in the High Tory way that he knew that such rooting could hold up the trunk and branches of a radical social agenda. In short, for Forsey, the fruit of political radicalism could only be sustained and nourished by being rooted in the soil of the ancient conservative way. Sadly so, conservatism and radicalism have diverged and both have suffered for it.

We are in a desperate for historians and intellectuals like Creighton and Forsey to rebuild and rebind what has been broken and injured. Until this is done, we will never recover the genius and visionary quality of what it means to be a Canadian. We will, sadly so, if such giants are ignored, either genuflect before the American empire, or, in reaction to such a position, reduce politics to soft liberal left protest or advocacy politics. The former tends to see little unique or good in the Canadian way, whereas the latter is so cynical of formal party politics that they elevate the role of civil society and denigrate the important role of party politics. Interestingly enough, the liberal protest and advocacy left share some worrisome leanings with the libertarian right. Both the anarchist left and the libertarian right are suspicious of formal party politics and the state, and both clans elevate society as the antidote and answer to the ills of the state.

Donald Creighton and Eugene Forsey would never have thought in such a reactionary and short sighted manner. Both men held high the role of both society and the state, formal party politics and the civic sphere. Both men realized that both society and the state are at their healthiest when they dwell together in an organic way. Needless to say,there will be tensions in the state-society relationship, but better to live with the tensions than to idealize society while denigrating the state, or romanticizing the state while demeaning society. It is in the living of this tension that the High Toryism of Creighton and Forsey can still teach and tell us much.

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Ron Dart's latest book is The Canadian High Tory Tradition: Raids on the Unspeakable.