Stephen Leacock And The Left

Eugene Forsey, in the quote listed above, pointed out that Stephen Leacock was both a conservative and an ardent nationalist. How is the conservatism of Stephen Harper and Stephen Leacock different? It is interesting to note that in Horowitz’s incisive and insightful article he never mentioned Leacock. There is little doubt that Leacock, though, would have agreed about the "Tory touch" in Canada making us different from the USA.

It has almost become an axiom in political thought and practice these days to assume that conservatism is right of centre on the political spectrum. It almost seems an act of folly and dishonesty to suggest that Canadian conservatism might have some affinity with the political left. The age of Thatcher and Reagan, the ethos of Mulroney, Harris, Klein and Campbell and the mood and ideology of the Conservative party of Canada seems to give the lie to the notion that Canadian conservatism might have much in common with some important aspects of the political left. Stephen Leacock did much, in his time, to embody and live forth the tory touch. What then was this tory touch, and why would such an ideology differ with Harper and the Conservative party, and, equally so, have some affinity with the left of centre on the political spectrum. Why don’t we call forth Leacock to speak to us on this timely issue?

The publication of Leacock’s The Essence of Political Science (1906) and Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912) placed Leacock front and centre of both the literary and political life of Canada. Both books climbed to the top of the selling ladder and remained there for many a lingering day. The fact that Leacock was a loyal and committed member of the Conservative party spoke volumes about his political leanings. The academic and technical tone of The Essence of Political Science and the impish and puckish nature of Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, when read with some care and caution, did point in some challenging directions. The dam finally broke with the publication of Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich (1914). Leacock pulled no punches in this sustained parody of the tale of two cities. There were the rich who lived as dandies, fobs and cads, and there was the hard working underclass who laboured like mules to support the indulgent and narcissistic life of the rich and wealthy. The Bolshevik government after the revolution of 1917 was so taken by Arcadian Adventures, it was published as a best seller in the USSR.

Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich catapulted Leacock, in many ways, to a new level of economic, political and social analysis in Canada and beyond. The political science department at McGill, increasingly so, began to draw some of the best and brightest intellectuals and activists. WW I, of course, slowed much down in the academic ethos when it came to serious probes into injustice and inequality, but when the troops began returning home, the unresolved tensions, inevitably so, surfaced again. Leacock’s reputation was at high noon at this time, and he used his literary and political prowess to raise all the hard and troubling questions about labour and management, unions and corporations, the wealthy and the poor, underemployment and unemployment, and the role of the state in bringing balance and moderation to a fragmented and frayed society. Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich, in many ways, anticipated F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), and Fitzgerald often corresponded with Leacock and remained a fan and admirer of Leacock for many a year.

Montreal and McGill were about to play a pivotal role in shaping and redirecting the path Canada was to hike after WW I, and Leacock did much to point the ship of state in a fine and fair direction. The Winnipeg Strike of 1919 brought much into focus, and none could deny the needs and demands of the people, labour and unions any longer. Two prominent Anglican political activists from Montreal stepped onto the stage and took leadership in steering the ship between the rocks and the shoals. Canon Frederick George Scott (1861-1944) stood by the side of many of the outcaste soldiers who were out of work after WW I. F.G. Scott, unlike Canada’s other Confederation poets, remained grounded and rooted in his Anglican heritage, and it was from such a source and centre that his passion for justice and peacemaking emerged. In fact, the political activism of F.G. Scott makes the political insights of Bliss Carmen, Charles Roberts, Archibald Lampman, Duncan Campbell Scott family seem rather thin. Scott was at the Winnipeg Strike of 1919 and the Besco Strike in the Maritimes in 1923, ever by the side of those he had pastored and cared for in the trenches across the water. The other Anglican, of course, who spoke into the dire situation of the time was Leacock. The publication of Leacock’s The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice (1920) highlighted the disturbing fact that capitalism created immense and serious fissures and cracks in society, and he further argued that the state needed to intervene to limit the damage of the market economy. This did not endear Leacock to the wealthy and high mucky mucks in Montreal or at McGill, but Leacock stayed the course. Anglicans have often been called Tories at prayer, and, in many ways, the High Toryism of Scott and Leacock can tell us much about what such a comment might mean. There is yet a fine thesis to be written on the High Tory affinities and friendship of Scott and Leacock. It is this indigenous form of Canadian High Toryism that is in danger of being forgotten. It is, also, this older type of conservatism that dares to side and sit with the marginalized, and asks of the state that it interfere and intervene in society and the market for the good of one and all. This is not a form of conservatism that pits society against the state, that idealizes the market place and denigrates or demeans the state as an agent of justice.

The fact that Leacock and Scott were major actors on the political stage in the ethos of Montreal and McGill meant that many young and thoughtful idealists were drawn to them. Here was authenticity, courage and a passion for justice being thought through and lived out in a compelling and attractive manner by conservatives with a burning conscience and a mind on fire. Leacock had grown weary of the university magazine at McGill in the 1920s, and he strongly urged and suggested to staff and faculty that something of more worth, note and substance should be produced. There were many to take up the challenge, and from 1925-1927, The McGill Fortnightly Review was published. Many of the contributors of The McGill Fortnightly Review went on to play prominent roles in Canadian literary and political life. A.J.M. Smith, Allan Latham, Frank Scott and Leon Edel took the magazine in a direction that nudged and forced the Canadian intellectual and literary elite to face the challenges of the modern world they were living in. Sandra Djwa, in her biography of Frank Scott, The Politics of the Imagination: A Life of F.R.Scott (1987), said "The first issue of The McGill Fortnightly Review appeared in mid-November, with faculty members Eugene Forsey and Stephen Leacock contributing articles" (p.83). The magazine was accused of being radical, leftist, Bolshevik and many other names. It is interesting to note that it was Stephen Leacock, a member of the Conservative party, a High Tory Anglican and the chair of the political science department at McGill who suggested the magazine be started and who contributed to the magazine in a financial and literary way. This is certainly not the type of conservative we think of when we hear "conservative" today.

It did not take long for the 1920s to walk both Canada and the broader world into the depression of the 1930s. Many was interpretation of why there was a depression, and many was the explanation of how to get out of the tragic aspects of the depression. Again, we see Leacock in the eye of the storm, defending the New Left and protecting them when McGill tried to silence or dismiss staff for having views that were too radical or not part of the mainstream.

Leacock enraged the business elite and annexationist liberals in Montreal in 1929 with his article in the Montreal Standard, "Leacock Advises Canada to Throw off U.S. Dominance". The themes raised and pressing concerns that held Leacock are as much with us today as then. Leacock’s High Tory nationalism is something that our modern conservatives seem to know little or nothing about.

Leacock was coming to the end of his academic career in the 1930s (he was forced to retire much to his irritation, at 65, in 1936), but he still had some work to do. The mood in the 1930s in Canada (as elsewhere) was divided. What caused the depression and how could it be brought to an end? The consequences were there for one and all to see. The answers were not as easy. Montreal and McGill was very much a divided place at the time. Many leaned towards a more right wing approach to resolve the dilemma, others were more centrist and others leaned towards the left. The left and the right charged and butted horns with neither side giving place nor space to the other.

The board at McGill tended to side with the political right, and many was the attempt by the board to remove professors in a variety of departments that did not march as they were taught to step. This tale is well told Michiel Horn’s Academic Freedom in Canada: A History (1999). Leacock, as might be expected, had to sail his ship through the thick of the storm. The principal of McGill at the time (and a friend of Leacock’s) said, to appease those who paid to keep him in place, "I do not think anybody need be alarmed about socialism in this University". Or, "I am gathering quite a file of things said by Professors Scott and Forsey."

Those like Forsey and Scott had been former students of Leacock, and when the University tried to remove Forsey from his position, Leacock came to his aid and assistance. So did, as a matter of interest, George Grant’s father, William Grant. After King Gordon and Eugene Forsey had returned from a trip to the USSR, many were those in power that wanted to see Forsey dismissed. It was Leacock that played a key role in making sure that Forsey (and his ideas and friends) were protected from the political right. Leonard Marsh came to McGill in 1930, and he took a leading role in the Social Science Research Group. It was this group that strongly urged the state to get more involved in a variety of social programmes rather than leaving the fate of many to the vagaries of the market place. It was Leacock again who turned up on the scene to recommend that Marsh be given a raise in salary for his fine work. It was those like Marsh, Forsey, Scott, Gordon who went on to form the League for Social Reconstruction (LSR). The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and the LSR became foerunners of the NDP, and many of the members of the LSR were former students of Leacock’s. David Lewis (federal chair of the NDP for many years) was also active in Montreal in these years.

Leacock retired, as I mentioned above in 1936, but by 1937, he was coming to the aid of unions and workers in the Oshawa Strike. Leacock’s articles in the Standard (Montreal) on "Labor and Law in Canada: An Interpretation of the Oshawa Strike" and in the Telegram (Toronto), "Labor Should Organize But Do It The Right Way" is not the usual position of a conservative. It was also at this time that Leacock had toured western Canada and returned with his trenchant criticisms of the Social Credit party. Leacock saw the experiment in Alberta and BC as a "fairy story" that was doomed to be tragic. It is significant to note that our new Conservative party is a gathering of Social Credit types and former Blue Tories within the PC party. Stephen Harper and Stephen Leacock would certainly have a different understanding of the meaning of conservatism and the Canadian "Tory touch."

Stephen and Leacock (1869-1944) and Frederick Scott (1861-1944) were contemporaries. Both men died the same year (and both played a serious role to shaping and defining the Canadian High Tory way. Frederick’s son, Frank Scott (1899-1985), a leading Canadian poet and constitutional lawyer in Canada once said, "I don’t quite know why I took to satire so frequently: perhaps because when I was a boy my father used to read Stephen Leacock aloud to us". (Djwa: p.291). There is a Tory tradition in Canada we forget to our peril, and, in an ennobling way, it is this "Tory touch" that we find in those like Leacock and Scott that have made the True North a country worth living in. The more we turn our backs on such a time tried tradition, the more our fate and future will be drawn to the very place and principles this nation was founded on opposing.

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Ron Dart teaches in the department of political science/philosophy/religious studies at University College of the Fraser Valley, Abbotsford, BC. Ron is the political science advisor to the Stephen Leacock Home/Museum in Orillia, Ontario.