“Overtures of an Era Being Born”: F.R. Scott: Cultural Nationalism and Social Criticism 1925–1939

''Overtures ofan Era Being Born"* F.R. Scott: Cultural Nationalism and Social Criticism 1925-1939 MARLENE SHORE Many nationalist organizations and periodicals , such as the Canadian Forum, the Canadian Authors' Association, and the Native Sons of Canada, appeared in Canada during the 1920s. Although they were all devoted to the task of promoting Canadian culture, they upheld different concepts of Canadian nationalism. While some emphasized the British connection, others stressed Canada's North American heritage. This phenomenon reflected the different responses of English Canadians to economic and social change in the interwar years.' The nationalist upsurge of the 1920s was stimulated by Canada's contribution to World War I and the recognition of its political autonomy by the Imperial Conference of 1926. The pride many English Canadians derived from these events, however, was dampened by the country's internal problems. Economic woes, regional discontent, deteriorating Anglo-French relations, and "unassimilable '' immigrants were formidable obstacles to the creation of a common Canadian culture. The weakening of traditional values in the aftermath of the war created further divisions within Canadian society, particularly in intellectual circles. Viewing these social changes as factors which undermined their own status, a large group of English Canadians, centred in Montreal and Toronto, espoused a version of Canadian nationalism which stressed Victorian traditions and rural romanticism.2 They were not the only group who used nationalism to protect their own interests. Younger cultural nationalists complained about the economic conditions which had stimulated the exodus of many of their peers to the United States.3 The publishers of Maclean 's and the Canadian Magazine were among the Journal ofCanadian Studies Vol. 15, No. 4 (Hiver 1980-81 Winter) loudest 'voices calling upon the Canadian government to institute a protective tariff for Canadian magazines.4 When the Canadian Authors' Association was formed in 1921, it also reflected the self-interested concerns of this particular group of nationalists.5 Although its leading members claimed to be motivated by Canada's growing independence,6 they did not always display such altruism. They believed that a national culture would exist if only the public could be persuaded to buy Canadian literature. Accordingly, they organized Annual Book Weeks to promote the work of Canadian authors and these became the organization's most notable project.7 In expressing a boosterish patriotism, EnglishCanadian nationalists were swimming against a newer current developing in Western culture. The war experience had stimulated a vogue for internationalism among many European artists and intellectuals - at least among those who had not abandoned faith in mankind entirely after the war.s Influenced by individuals such as R.H. Tawney whose Acquisitive Society (1920) had denounced organic theories of the state and upheld the idea of a common human fellowship,9 they attacked the nationalist and imperialist doctrines which had fueled the war. Joining in this internationalist vogue, artists rejected patriotism as an artistic standard and strove for higher ideals. Their work became more aesthetic and their political involvement waned, but this did not dampen their social criticism. In art, literature, and poetry, they ridiculed the tastes and values of the middle class. Few of them expressed any thoroughgoing radicalism, however, until the Depression revealed the underlying problems of the business-dominated civilizations they so despised. This spirit of social criticism was not evident in mainstream English-Canadian culture in the early 1920s. For the most part, members of the C.A.A. adhered to traditional social values which they upheld in their official periodical, the Canadian Bookman. They argued that American popular culture was making Canada less British, 10 and was encouraging vice and immorality. They also condemned modernist literature ("Intellectual Bolshevism," as one critic called it) not only for 31 its open treatment of sexuality but because its cynicism and social criticism conflicted with their belief that art should be the handmaiden of society, not its censor.11 In order to uphold the Victorian values of repose and stability and to provide an alternative to these less savoury trends, they imitated the Sixties Poets whose verses were patterned after Wordsworth and Tennyson.12 In the early 1920s, a smaller number of artists and poets denounced the prevailing trends in Canadian culture...