J.B. Brebner and The Writing of Canadian History

Review article J.B. Brebner and The Writing of Canadian History G.A; RAWLYK Almost eight years ago Carl Berger's suggestive and influential The Sense of Power was published. In this study, Berger re-examined aspects of evolving Canadian nationalism during the 1867 to 1914 period within the larger context of Anglo-Canadian Imperial· thought. Among other things, Berger helped to reshape the often blurred contours of Canadian intellectual history . And, in my view, no recently published book dealing with Canadian history has exerted such a significant impact on a generation of graduate students. It was the right kind of book - written at the right time - for a reading public searching for meaningful ideological constructs in an often confused and disoriented nation. And, as some shrewd observers predicted, Berger's paradigm was quickly appropriated by scores of young scholars and stretched to and beyond the breaking point. Now, in the prize-winning and widely acclaimed The Writing of Canadian History, Berger has pushed his considerable scholarly presence into the twentieth century and has, in the process, created yet another paradigm to shelter and to inspire some of the shrinking number of graduate students of the late 1970s and early 1980s. It is important, I think, to delineate carefully what Berger is attempting to do in The Writing of Canadian History. In his carefully conceived Preface, Berger makes a number of key points. First, he stresses that his study is "an examination of aspects of English-Canadian historical thought and literature since the turn of the 84 century." Second, he declares, as he cogently puts it, that the "main emphasis is on the creative edge of historical writing and on those authors who broke the traditional patterns of interpretation .'' To clinch this point, Berger emphasizes that he is "less concerned with the historical literature that ratifies accepted views and fills in the details than with original conceptions that bore on the larger and central themes in Cana-. dian history." Third, Berger argues that his ''primary purpose is to explain the attitudes historians brought to the study of the past and to relate historical literature more closely to its context , suggesting allusively the affinities between history and other contemporaneous expressions in Canadian intellectual life." And, finally, and this is an important qualification which a number of reviewers evidently have forgotten about, Berger maintains that all the historians "considered in any depth were born before the First World War.''1 Leading contemporary historians, born after 1914, will have either to wait for The Writing of Canadian History - Part II to see their ideas and names in print or else see them on the pages of unpublished dissertations. Even a superficial reading of The Writing of Canadian History will reveal that the Atlantic region and Atlantic historians have, even taking into account Professor Berger's four salient disclaimers , received remarkably little attention. There is, I think, a built-in bias to the book and that bias is a Western Canadian-TorontoQueen 's bias. And, taking everything into account , the slight Queen's twist, despite Adam Shortt and Arthur Lower, is of little real consequence . But that is another story. Checking an index is not, of course, the most sophisticated and revolutionary technique to use to determine the basic values and biases of an author. Yet checking an index may be considered to be a special historian's sin. There is no index reference to the "Maritimes"; there is a detailed one concerning the "West." There is no mention of "Nova Scotia," "New Brunswick" or "Prince Edward Island" - but A.G. Bailey is referred to once as is George Wilson, and Archibald MacMechan twice. The index reference to John Bartlet Brebner may be especially instructive: Revue d'etudes canadiennes Vol. 13, No. 3 (Automne 1978 Fall) Brebner, John Bartlet, 30,31,142,149, 153,168,209,219-20; on Underhill academic freedom case, 84; on Innis, 89, 107; on Lower's study of timber trade, 122; on continental interpretation of Canadian history, 144; historical interests of, 144-5; North Atlantic Triangle (1945), 157-8; on fate of Carnegie series, 158; on Canadian scholarship, 178; on lnnis's communication studies, 193.2 There is, it...