The Writing of Canadian History: Aspects of English-Canadian Historical Writing: 1900 to 1970 by Carl Berger (review)

HUMANITIES 469 worked in the liberal tradition ofJohn Stuart Mill, believing that intellectual analysis of empirical observations could lead to reliable and useful results. He saw advancing industrialism as beneficial, accepted the corporate organization of production and distribution, and encouraged the development of trade unionism . Neither laissez-faire nor extensive state control of the economy was desirable; but government would have to keep a close eye on business to safeguard the public interest. (CARLYLE KING) Carl Berger. The Writing of Canadian History: Aspects of English-Canadian Historical Writing: 1900 to 1970. Oxford University Press. xi, 300. $12.50 This review is irrelevant. The Writing of Canadian History has already been awarded the Governor General's award; it has been stamped with the seal of approval by official culture. The reasons for this success are apparent on even a cursory reading. It is a handsome book, a book with the look of importance. It is written in a very literate, and rather heavily important prose style. Its arguments are non-controversial and flattering to traditional views of high culture and the role of the intellectual. Carl Berger has applied to historians the same 'intellectual history' approaches he applied to imperialists in The Sense ofPower (1970). Just as imperialism was exemplified through biographies, so is history. The development of historical thought is seen through the prism of major historians, such as Wrong, Creighton, Morton, and the biography of a publishing project, the Carnegie series on Canadian-American relations . It is a fair representation of the mainstream history it describes, for that history, like this book, has been preoccupied with biography and with great forces, and has exalted the ideas of politicians and businessmen into factors independent of economic and social realities. That is the book's importance. It is one ofthe finest and clearest examples of the conservative historiography which may now be passing away. There are several running themes. One is the relationship of the thought of historians to national development. Another is the professionalization of history, which apparently is a good thing. There is no place here for the non-academic historians, no place for the most widely read and therefore most influential of our historians: Pierre Berton, James H. Gray, Edwin C. Guillet, and the like. Yet, although professionalization is such a major theme, Berger dismisses with a single reference what he terms the so-called Toronto school of history. Viewed both from inside and outside (such is my own perspective), this 'school' has existed and, until recently, has shaped the development of Canadian historiography. It is a pity that it has not been discussed. The one historian under attack here is that renegade of the 1930s, Frank 470 LETTERS IN CANADA 1976 H. Underhill, who coexisted so uneasily with the Toronto 'school.' Not surprisingly, Berger is unhappy that Underhill adopted a materialist interpretation of Canada's history and thus reduced the autonomy of ideas. Following from this, Berger dismisses Underhill as being an 'exhorter: not a 'trained scientific intellectual.' Underhill's greatest failure was that he used the university as a base from which to reform society, rather than as a place to write learned books. Some, of course, might consider that Underhill's saving grace. However, Berger's account of Underhill becomes so caught up with a critique of his life style and career choices that an analysis of his often confused ideology takes second place. Berger also has difficulty with the economic historian Harold Innis. The account of Innis here is often excellent, offering substantial new insights into his ideas. Nevertheless, Berger never quite makes contact with his subject. He seems unable to understand Innis's passions, the early passion for a scholarship pristine and unpolluted by the real world, or, after 1945, his passion for a Canada which he saw in mortal danger from American imperialism. Although the book ends on an optimistic note about the corning of the new history, this is not a historiography which will help that new history understand its roots. For example, J.M.S. Careless, who more than any historian before 1970 helped propel Canadian scholars towards social history, is treated only in passing. But, as his subtitle suggests...