In Search of Canadian Liberalism by Frank H. Underhill (review)

Frank H. Underhill was one of Canada’s greatest essayists – one might say the greatest. He gathered together some of the best of his essays in a collection entitled In Search of Canadian Liberalism (1960). The book received glowing reviews and won him the Governor-General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction. Oxford has republished the book as part of its Wynford Project, dedicated to books “representing milestones in Canadian literature, thought and scholarship.” Historian Kenneth Dewar has written an introduction to the new edition.

Frank Underhill was a Canadian historian, polemical political commentator, and in his later years a statesman among intellectuals. In Search of Canadian Liberalism includes essays that reflect all three roles. The essays are divided into three parts. Essays in part 1, “The Liberal Past,” reveal Underhill the historian. The first, “Some Reflections on the Liberal Tradition in Canada,” is Underhill’s presidential address to the Canadian Historical Association in 1946, which was more a lament for the lack of a liberal tradition than a celebration of it. He gave various explanations for this weak tradition, including the failure of Canadian historians to search for this liberal past. He urged them to explore “the ideas in the heads of Canadians that caused them to act as they did, their philosophy” (20). In so doing, he both foresaw the new trend in historical writing in the 1950s and reflected his own interest, for Underhill was already writing Canadian intellectual history. The remaining essays in part 1 deal with the ideas of the Clear Grits and Liberal Reformers in Upper Canada in the mid-nineteenth century, the ideas underlying Canadian political parties, and the views of Goldwin Smith, a fellow Canadian essayist in the late nineteenth century.

Part 2, “Political Controversy in the 1930s and 1940s,” contains a series of essays on political figures or political commentators, including five he had done on William Lyon Mackenzie King. If read consecutively, they reveal an evolution in his thinking from a position of grudging respect in 1944 to enthusiastic support by 1950, admiring King for his ability to hold the country together. The essays also reveal Underhill’s willingness to change his ideas to reflect changing times and perspectives. There is an insightful essay on J.S. Woodsworth, the founder of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (ccf), and one on J.W. Dafoe, editor of the Winnipeg Free Press, along with Dafoe’s reply. Other essays offer insights into Underhill’s changing views of Canadian political parties. He included an essay on his isolationist views of the 1930s, even though he had abandoned this viewpoint shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War. As well, he provided an essay on his changing opinion of the ccf and its socialist position in the post-Second World War era, revealing his gradual move away from the party and its ideology back to the Liberal fold and to a more traditional form of liberalism.

Essays in part 3, “The Calm of the 1950s,” reflect the more urbane Underhill. They deal with issues that were ongoing concerns for him: Canada’s relations with Britain and the United States; the nature of political parties; and the need for an educated elite to instil intellectual vigour into Canadian politics and Canadian life in general. What unites the essays is Underhill’s search for a meaningful Canadian liberalism. But the essays also reveal how much he contributed to an understanding of that liberalism through his own writings on the subject.

Kenneth Dewar provides a helpful introduction. He gives a brief biographical sketch of Underhill’s life and ideas, noting in particular books and individuals who helped shape his views as they changed over time. Dewar also provides a rationale for the reprinting of the book by drawing parallels between the politics of Underhill’s era and today. What Dewar fails to do is to convey the importance of...