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  • Eugene A. Forsey: An Intellectual Biography
  • Keith Fleming
Eugene A. Forsey: An Intellectual Biography. Frank Milligan. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2004. Pp. 317, illus. $34.95

Eugene Forsey made an uncharacteristically self-effacing observation in his 1990 memoir A Life on the Fringe,that after having exhibited much promise as a Rhodes scholar in the 1920s, he wondered why thereafter he had accomplished so little in life. Indeed, the title of Forsey's memoir was inspired by a comparison he made of his own life to that of his close friend Escott Reid, whose 'brilliant career in the diplomatic service is one of those that make me realize how very much on the fringe my life has been' (Fringe, 44). Frank Milligan, in his 'intellectual biography' of Forsey, challenges this self-appraisal. Although Forsey was right in thinking that his variegated career never afforded him the opportunity to exercise real power per se in Canadian public affairs – the closest he came was his appointment to Canada's Senate in 1970 – Forsey was not without influence. Milligan demonstrates convincingly that Forsey deserves to be considered one of Canada's 'great thinkers' (xii), whose prodigious intellectual output was instrumental in shaping the activities of many organizations advocating social, economic, and political reform in Canada from the 1920s through the 1980s.

Forsey could be prickly, egotistical, and vindictive. He was also highly intelligent, morally unyielding, and an indefatigable champion of many institutional and ideological reforms he believed were essential if Canadian [End Page 555] society was to be rescued from the moral and social damage wrought by secularization and industrialization. Milligan traces Forsey's philosophical evolution through his involvement in many of the most significant reform-minded organizations of the day, including the League for Social Reconstruction, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (incorrectly introduced as the 'Canadian' Commonwealth Federation on page 115), the Fellowship for a Christian Social Order, the Canadian Civil Liberties Union, and the Canadian Congress of Labour, for which Forsey served as director of research for twenty-four years. The common intellectual underpinnings of Forsey's participation in these and several similar bodies were his Christian socialism and an unwavering belief that faithful Christians were less concerned with deciphering doctrinal truths than with exercising moral leadership in a society rife with economic injustice. Forsey believed that in order for social reform to be successful, both the secular and the religious worlds must merge into a mutually supportive union.

Forsey integrated Christian activism with an uncompromising adherence to eighteenth-century Burkean philosophical principles, relentlessly extolling the merits of British Tory democracy. As both monarchist and nationalist, Forsey preached absolute devotion to British traditions of parliamentary responsible government as the central institutional characteristic differentiating Canada from the United States. Equally important to Forsey was the promotion of widespread political participation by an informed and class-conscious citizenry. Milligan demonstrates that even as Forsey's prescriptions for social reform grew increasingly radical during the Great Depression, he continued to follow the lead of his hero Burke by insisting that such reform must occur gradually, rather than by revolutionary strokes. Similarly, Forsey's extensive contributions to the ideological debate that took place in Canada following the Second World War over the shape that a reconstructed and planned state should take, emphasized not only 'sound economy, controlled capitalism, and social security,' but the retention of 'a strong moral Christianity related to social action' (168).

Milligan does not over-state Forsey's intellectual significance to Canadian history. But he does leave one wondering how this portrayal of Forsey might have been recast had he not overlooked so much of the literature on the life and times of his subject that has appeared since 1987, when Milligan completed the doctoral dissertation on which the book appears largely to be based. For example, no reference is made to Forsey's own memoirs. Also, scholars have engaged in a lively debate since the 1980s about the precise nature and timing of secularization in Canada. How might this literature alter Milligan's characterization of [End Page 556] Forsey as the arch anti-secularist? Milligan traces Forsey's intellectual odyssey by focusing, and rightly so, on his voluminous...

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