The Coming Crisis in the North

The Coming Crisis in the North R. G. ROBERTSON The experience of Canada in recent years has demonstrated that among nations as among men, material prosperity does not ensure spiritual peace. Few countries have had such material wealth, such political development or such social stability - but surely few have devoted so much time and effort to an agitated search for their own identity. At different times we have clutched at various straws of hope for release from our frustrations. Sir John Macdonald's bold plan to link the oceans by rail and provide industrial strength for our adolescent country by a "national policy" provided a flicker of hope, but it became dim in the lean decade that closed the nineteenth century . The opening of the west revived it with the promise that the "Twentieth Century belonged to Canada" - a promise that seemed barren in the thirties and has yet to be fulfilled with quite the confidence we had hoped. Our affiuence at mid-century removed economic frustrations but only deepened our awareness of the lack of any clear personality we could regard as "Canadian". Britain, with a wisdom born of the earlier failure to accommodate the wants of the American colonies , had given us self-government as and when we wanted it. Independence came without a fight. History has, in a sense, been too kind to us. It deprived us of the fusing fires of revolution, of civil war or of resistance to outside aggression. The United States, after some early surliness toward us, became, like a great Saint Bernard, more threatening for amiable bulk than from any animosity. Deprived of all such perils and trials from which other peoples have derived a sense of unity, purpose and difference, the divisions within our borders have remained unsolved. Our search for a special identity has continued beyond adolescence and, in our frustrated, middleaged affiuence our most recent hope of finding ourselves has been the North. Journal of Canadian Studies The turning to the North for our real identity is not new. From earliest times, the one thing above all others that the world knew, or thought it knew, of Canada was that it was cold: a land of the North where a brutal climate made civilized life all but insupportable. Perhaps our first triumph as a people was in proving we could live here at all. More than that, we were able to make our heritage, so scorned by early European observers , provide us with a standard of life and comfort second only to one. We were "the true North, strong and free"-and proud of it. What was more natural than that, as we grew and developed, we should turn to the real North the North beyond the limits of the provinces, of which we had made so little - in the hope that there we could find at last the sense of national identity that is the internal bond of nations? Mr. Diefenbaker realized our yearning and gave expression to a new hope in terms that carried conviction . It is nearly ten years since "the vision", then presented so clearly, turned the attention of Canada to the North. Today, when our internal problems of identity and unity seem not less but more, it is worth enquiring what conclusions we can draw from our experience in the North so far and what we can expect for the future. As one who was involved for ten years in northern policy, I can hardly claim to be capable of complete objectivity. It would be easier to achieve such detachment if I could shelter behind the dictum so solemnly delivered from editorial pages and professorial podia that politicians , and not civil servants, make policy while civil servants, and not politicians, apply it. It is unfortunate that so clear and helpful a distinction should have so little truth about it. Both halves of the proposition are shaky, if not positively false. Politicians are, to their sorrow, as responsible for the application as for the selection of policies. On the other hand, civil servants, like myself, contribute as constantly to the development of policy as to its application. My objectivity is abridged by the knowledge that...