Georges and Pauline Vanier: Portrait of a Couple (review)

Hybridity is under-appreciated by Canadian historians. Now that multiculturalism has fallen from fashion, the mongrel nature of Canadians and their institutions provides a variety of fascinating byways and combinations to assist historians in interpreting Canada’s past. Mongel was once a pejorative word of derision, but hybrid vigour has gained new élan through globalization and by expert breeding. The office of governor general, for example, is clearly hybrid. Inherited from the French regime and transmuted by British imperialists, the position sits today at the summit of the state in Canada, though under the monarch. Being above the political fray, the governor general represents the entire nation and thus avoids the inconveniences that help to mark American political structures as so frequently lamentable.

Historical biography is itself a hybrid, drawing on literary traditions to explore the lives of individuals and reflecting the historian’s penchant for primary source research and non-fiction realism. The development in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of what was thought to be the science of history drove a wedge between literary art and historical veracity. These ideas were perpetrated by male practitioners ensconced largely in academic institutions. The supposed divorce between biography and history that was often proclaimed enhanced the status of male scholars, who were often poorly paid, and set them apart from women, amateurs, and popularisers. In an era of greater hybridity, such distinctions need no longer be entertained. What is important is how well a book is researched and written, or how poorly, and what it contributes to historical understanding.

Joint biographies constitute a hybrid of a hybrid, often as difficult to reconcile as Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. They are rare, partially because the productive lives of women and men have differed so radically in history that narratives of domestic interaction are seldom able to integrate divergent career paths pursued outside the home. For a pair such as Georges Vanier and Pauline Archer, the country’s second Canadian vice-regal couple after Alice and Vincent Massey, this disparity becomes a liability in the first book devoted to them jointly. The future Pauline Vanier is not introduced until page 53, after a full account of her future husband’s family background and the exciting events of his military career during the First World War. Pauline’s married and then widowed life is interwoven throughout the book, but she never really catches up with George. Pauline Vanier was born into a Quebec family of wealth and standing with an anglophone father and ancestors who included Charles-Michel De Salaberry. She chose a conventional route of mother, with ample child support, and served as consort and courtesan to her husband’s diplomatic and political career. She served as an active volunteer but lived her life without the independent mind displayed by Norah Mitchener or Gabrielle Léger. This lifestyle led Pauline to question her self-worth and to adopt during her latter years a near monastic existence in France near her son Jean, who founded L’Arche – a global movement to assist the mentally challenged.

Georges Vanier was similarly hybrid in family background, a mixing of anglophone and francophone stock once despised by Quebec nationalists but that nevertheless equipped him to handle the new exigencies of twentieth-century Canada. His service as an officer during the First World War was so exemplary that he received the Distinguished Service Order, the Military Cross, and the designation Chevalier de Légion d’Honneur. Georges Vanier was shell-shocked during the war and had a leg amputated, but as adjutant he still took charge of an execution for desertion from Montreal’s Royal 22nd Regiment. Bodily dismemberment momentarily shook his masculine psyche until Pauline, ten years his junior, agreed to marry him. His career in Canada’s fledging foreign service from the 1920s appeared without major consequence other than in his ability to bridge the chasm that often divided Canada’s two major language groups.

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