The Evolving Physiology of Government: Canadian Public Administration in Transition

Preface: From There to Here

xiv Colleagues, associates, and friends: Let me begin by offering both commiserations and congratulations to the University of Guelph and to its Department of Political Science for their inability to resist the blandishments of that force of nature otherwise known as Professor O. P. Dwivedi. As usual, he has succeeded in organizing others to his command and, as the chief beneficiary of his initiatives, I must express my appreciation to him and to those he has rallied to his cause for arranging and hosting this splendid conference in my honour. I am much moved to see so many old friends, colleagues, and former students and do appreciate the effort all of you have made to be present and to participate in these proceedings. As a newly minted nonagenarian, you should not be surprised to find that my preference is to ruminate on selective certitudes of my past association with the subject of this conference rather than engage in a feisty projection into its uncertain future—a task that I am happy to see has already enlisted the intellectual attention of the participants in this seminar. Some of you know that in recent years I have been desultorily engaged in the pursuit of what Marshall McLuhan called “probes,” whereby following a process of free association, I have been exploring various facets of my life. Iain Gow, who is in the habit of sending tasty quotations to me, may perhaps have sensed my intentions for this evening: In a recent submission quoting Paul Theroux he warns that “fogeydom is the last bastion of the bore and reminiscence is its PREFACE FROM THERE TO HERE Preface xv anthem.” Despite this subtle hint, I intend to draw this evening on a probe entitled “How Did I Get from There to Here?” It begins with a confession: Noting that it has famously been said that the unexamined life is not worth living, I admit that I should long ago have committed suicide, in that self-examination has not been an exercise I have pursued with much vigor, preferring a more fatalistic stand. Indulge me, therefore, as I seek for a few minutes to rectify my sins of omission. I’m a small-town boy, brought up in the shadow of a charismatic older brother who influenced my choices in so many ways, including my decision to embark on the honours course in the political economy department at the University of Toronto rather than pursue what I thought was a natural bent for biological sciences. Seventy years ago the departmental organization and the offerings of its faculty were typical of what existed elsewhere in this particular field of academe. Specialization, with its infinite regressions, grinding exceeding small, had not yet arrived. The economist lay down with the political scientist, indeed one often doubled for the other. Schools of business had not routed commerce and finance and, in turn, its faculty consorted happily with those in political economy. History was so much a part of the curriculum that with the resurrection of the Political Science Association in 1935, it happily shared the annual joint session where the respective presidents gave their addresses. Nor was it deemed odd that economists dominated the affairs of a political science association. So slender were the resources that the department could not meet all the requirements for a degree without collaboration from history and philosophy, and the “pass subjects” of English, French, and “religious studies” provided by the colleges. Nor was there much choice from the main menu: Both in politics and economics the stress was on theory and the history of thought, institutions coming in a poor third and getting their prime exponent in 1937 with the arrival of MacGregor Dawson, when I was halfway through my undergraduate course. His seminal textbook on Canadian government did not arrive until ten years later, close on the heels of Alex Corry’s comparative study, Democratic Government and Politics, both timed to coincide with my first ventures in teaching. The pickings, in xvi The Evolving Physiology of Government short, were exceedingly slim: Stephen Leacock’s Elements of Political Science; Dawson’s doctoral dissertation for the London School of Economic’s Graham Wallis, The Principle of Official Independence, and his collection of readings; R. A. Mackay’s Unreformed Senate of Canada; a few constitutional documents; and no backlog of articles from journals to draw on...