The Evolving Physiology of Government: Canadian Public Administration in Transition

Foreword

ix Professor J. E. Hodgetts is the unwitting motivator and fairy godmother of the conference that brought together the papers in this volume. The latter is not exactly a Festschrift, for such a collection in his honour appeared in 1982 (Dwivedi, 1982). And how many such encomia can a modest man endure? So no one breathed the “F-word” when the authors of the papers gathered in these pages met in Guelph, Ontario, in September 2007 to honour Canada’s doyen of the study of public administration. He was, nevertheless, the raison d’être of our being there and the inspiration and model of much of the work that nourished the minds of the attendees not only for the two days of the conference but for years and decades before. Whatever name one wishes to bestow on what, by common consent, turned out to have been a quite unusually successful intellectual exercise, it was an elaborate embroidery drawing on diverse strands of Ted Hodgetts’s lifelong oeuvre. The banquet on September 21, 2007, was not only the principal social event of the gathering, but it also provided a rare and precious opportunity to hear the guest of honour reflect on the history and nature of the academic discipline he so greatly nourished and embellished. The preface for this volume contains the notes that underlay his talk. It was my honour and pleasure to introduce Ted, and my notes for this occasion constitute, with some emendations and additions, the backbone of this foreword. A graduate of the University of Toronto and Chicago, and a onetime denizen of Oxford, Ted taught inspiringly at Queen’s, Toronto, FOREWORD John Meisel x The Evolving Physiology of Government Memorial, and Dalhousie, and was the principal of Victoria College and then president of Victoria University in Toronto. Deeply involved with the Lambert and Glasgow Commissions and with a hand in Gomery II, he likewise contributed to numerous other inquiries in Canada and abroad on a wide range of subjects. The Institute of Public Administration of Canada (IPAC) awarded him its covetedVanier medal and named a literary prize after him. Several universities have bestowed honorary degrees on him. It says something about the enduring value of his academic and educational contributions that the most recent LL.D. from the University of Toronto was awarded while Ted was enjoying his nineties. He has made immense and critical contributions to the literature on public administration as an author and editor. Moreover, he has inspired and overseen outstanding work by generations of students, both graduate and undergraduate. Several of them, now stellar performers themselves, have written some of the papers that follow. But his contribution has been prodigious elsewhere as well, ranging from being the co-author of the legendary Democratic Government and Politics, to editing the Letters to the Editor of Eugene Forsey and in between clarifying such diverse trifles as education or man’s toying with the atom. Countless government studies and reports have benefitted from his expertise and blue pencil. He received a Rhodes Scholarship and was inducted into the Order of Canada and the Royal Society of Canada. I could go on, and on, and on like this listing Ted’s achievements, Brownie points, and honours, but I prefer to identify some aspects of his life and oeuvre I find particularly significant and endearing. First, he has a most amazing way with words. Who else would have the wit to entitle a study of the early Ontario public service, From Arm’s Length to Hands On? His prose is always crystal clear, colourful, luminous, and mercifully devoid of even a whiff of jargon. Yet, it is laced with allusions to unexpected intellectual and commonplace reference points, thereby imbuing his subject with uncommon vitality and vividness. Being a generous cuss, he shares his mastery of Her Majesty’s tongue with others. As an editor he has acted as “midhusband” at the birth of innumerable Foreword xi manuscripts, improving not only their content and style but also their shape. He has been remarkably adroit in subduing immense masses of material into manageable dimensions, both in relation to his own explorations and to those of his students. By coincidence, the last time he and I returned to Kingston by VIA rail from one of O. P. Dwivedi’s Guelph comparative public policy and administration conferences, he gave me a pointer respecting the writing...