George Grant And The Dream Of An Independent Canada

Once upon a time there were great Canadians who loved this country and dreamed of its becoming a truly strong and independent nation. Those were people like the late philosopher George Grant and the gentle patriot Walter Gordon, whose efforts, intellectual and political, respectively, in defence of Canada have been briefly discussed in a previous article, “Protection of the Commons.”

George Grant’s Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism is a must reading for all who love Canada. We have included a link at the end whereby you can download the 40^th anniversary edition in PDF format free of charge.

Yet another Canadian patriot was John George Diefenbaker, who as Prime Minister battled for Canadian liberties and independence against the Liberal and corporate elite. The corporate media turned against him and called him a small-minded Protestant from a prairie small town.

He had won successive federal elections in 1957 and 1958 and remained as Prime Minister until April 1963 whereupon his refusal to accept American Bomarc missiles with nuclear warheads led to the downfall of his government by a motion of non-confidence in the House of Commons brought forward by Lester Pearson, who won the subsequent election and readily accepted the Bomarc nuclear missiles and accommodated other American demands.

 Diefenbaker’s government legislated the Canadian Bill of Rights and granted voting rights to First Nations and Inuit Peoples. His vision of the development of a self-governing North was prophetic. What is now known as the all-weather Dempster highway stretching all the way to Mackenzie River in Canada’s Arctic is to his credit. He also appointed Georges Vanier as the Country’s first French-Canadian governor general.

George Grant writes:

“Never has such a torrent of abuse been poured on any Canadian figure as that during the years from 1960 to 1965. Never have the wealthy and the clever been so united as they were in their joint attack on Mr. John Diefenbaker. It has made life pleasant for the literate classes to know that they were on the winning side. Emancipated journalists were encouraged to express their dislike of the small-town Protestant politician, and they knew they would be well paid by the powerful for their efforts. Suburban matrons and professors knew that there was an open season on Diefenbaker, and that jokes against him at cocktail parties would guarantee the medal of sophistication.” (SOURCE: Lament for a Nation, page 3)

Philosopher George Grant, Walter Gordon, and John Diefenbaker were prominent members of the Red Tories, Canadians who loved this nation and believed in protection of the community, family, and tradition.

While Red Toryism accepts social privilege and economic inequality as natural, it melds them with a view of an organic, co-operative, and harmonious community. From this perspective the privileged appreciate the overriding need for social order and authority and will also respond to the needs of the poor and less privileged.

“Red Tories, for instance, are dedicated to promoting the common good, and believe this is best achieved through a centralized political authority that seeks to conserve a way of life for a particular people grounded in a particular tradition and customary practices. In contrast to its blue counterparts, Red Toryism prefers nationalism over globalism, community stability over individual opportunity, protectionism over free trade, and socialism, or at least a closer affinity to it, over capitalism.” (SOURCE: Brent Waters, Professor of Christian Social Ethics at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary)

The change in the Canadian understanding of conservatism from Mulroney to Preston Manning to Stephen Harper was a shift from Red to Blue Toryism; from a distinctive nationalist Tory vision of Canada to more of an annexationist/integrationist position, in effect Neoliberalism.

A more recent book by Ron Dart, Keepers of the Flame: Canadian Red Toryism (2012) begins with a primer on the basic principles of Toryism, suggesting that the philosophical and political roots of historic Toryism remain latent in Western culture and can be restored if there is a will. He offers ten key principles:

1. Tories respected the “wisdom of tradition, seeing in the past long-standing truths about the human condition that must be respected;
2. Tories are concerned with the general good of society and the nation as a whole, believing that individuals achieve their highest fulfillment in finding their place in the whole;
3. Tories maintain a link between ethics and economics, resisting the notion that questions of profit and loss are the dominant criterion for judging the wealth and health of a society;
4. The Tory tradition maintains an abiding respect for the land and, thus, is “most ecologically minded”;
5. Tories seek to balance the claims of the state against the necessities of society, recognizing that both are necessary to good order;
6. Tories respect notions of private property and personal possession, but also acknowledge the need for commonly shared public space;
7. Tories even have an Arnoldian educational ethos, believing that citizens need to be educated to “the best that has been thought, said and done in the past” in order to be more than skillful slaves of technology;
8. Tories believe that politics involves the give and take of respectful dialogue over ideological rigidity;
9. Tories are convinced that the foundation of a good state rests on “bricks of ethical firmness and religious depth,” and, therefore, society cannot cut itself off from religious institutions;
10. And, finally, Tories believe in the just discrimination between good, better, and best – which is to say, “reality cannot be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. (SOURCE: Ron Dart Keepers of the Flame: Canadian Red Toryism)

Much later on came that Neoliberal admirer of “Free Trade”, the pro-American Brian Mulroney.

“The pro-American stance taken by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney signalled a different attitude towards the US than many Tories had taken in Canadian history. The change in the Canadian understanding of conservatism from Mulroney to Preston Manning to Stephen Harper was a shift from Red to Blue Toryism, from a distinctive nationalist Tory vision of Canada to more of an annexationist/integrationist position.” (SOURCE: Ron Dart, Keepers of the Flame)

The following is the link for downloading George Grant’s Lament for a Nation in PDF format free of charge: https://dokumen.pub/qdownload/lament-for-a-nation-the-defeat-of-canadian-nationalism-9780773582163.html