“Those amiable but spineless Canadians”

Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d'etudes canadiennes Editor Associate Editor Editorial Board DENIS SMITH Redacteur RALPH HEINTZMAN Redacteur adjoint JEAN-PIERRE LAPOINTE Comite de redaction MARGARET LAURENCE HARVEY McCUE JACQUES MONET, S. J. W. L. MORTON W. F. W. NEVILLE GORDON ROPER DONALD V. SMILEY PHILIP STRATFORD T. H. B. SYMONS W. E. TAYLOR CLARA THOMAS JOHN WADLAND MELVILLE H. WATKINS ALAN WILSON "Those amiable but spineless Canadians" With the exception of one interval in the late 1950s (which now seems brief, distant and itself unsatisfactory), Canadians in the postwar era have habitually taken the Liberal explanation of public events at face value, while thanking God and glowing with decent pride at the thought of the country's good fortune in its benevolent governors. This blessing seemed especially felicitous in our foreign policy-making, under Louis St. Laurent, Mike Pearson, and Paul Martin. Twenty years of international good works in the causes of Mankind, the Free World, and Collective Security gave us a warm feeling that only rarely seemed too good to be true. Our contributions were marginal when viewed from an international perspective ; but we took for granted that they were made on behalf of virtue and humanity. In our major policies, we were not yet ready· to seek a fully independent role in the world, and remained self-satisfied in our dependence on the moral and material leadership of the United States. We were so complacent that we scarcely questioned the assurances of our leaders that Washington knew best and kept our broadest interests constantly at heart. (Our leaders, after all, talked personally with Harry Truman, Dean Acheson, John Foster Dulles, J. F. K., L. B. J., Dean Rusk, and George Ball, and knew their good intentions at first hand. What Gerald Ford has now told us publicly, Canadian foreign ministers have known privately for decades: Journal of Canadian Studies 1 when the United States interferes in the domestic affairs of other nations, it only does so in the interests of the people of those nations.) And so we followed the American lead with eagerness and self-confidence - qualities of character which we claimed as our own in 1945 (the products of our impressive wartime experience), but which increasingly became surrogate qualities sustained in us because we imitated our more eager and more self-confident neighbours. It was the imitation of admiring adolescence: slightly fawning, mostly performed on cue, and usually powerless; and it became a habit. Adolescence can be unnaturally prolonged into a condition of spiritually crippling dependency . The trials of eventual separation may then be unbearably painful and confusing . Some of the most difficult shocks to self-esteem involve the discovery of what others actually think of us behind their diplomatic masks; and acceptance of those candid judgments is one step on the way to mature self-assessment. As a nation, the ability to make that assessment with sufficient objectivity and balance, to see the many faces of our acts (naive, ignorant, devious, weak, foolish, evil, as well as shrewd, generous, far-sighted, wise) without undue illusion, will be one of the preconditions of genuinely independent action. We have not risen to that possibility yet. The shattering American loss of moral purpose and direction in the last decade has for the moment left Canada as an uncertain psychological orphan. It has also made the emergence to maturity easier, or the refusal to do so more unconditional. In attempting to gain the measure of America's fall, we have the chance to measure our own less dramatic sins and errors committed in support of the parent. For us, the exercise can be no indulgence in comforting judgments of moral superiority: we have to focus on our own complicity rather than on American guilt. The measurement requires a kind of honesty and a precision of judgment that 2 have been unfamiliar in our practice of selfcongratulation since 1945. Honesty and intellectual precision are hard taskmasters - and surprising ones, too, for Canadians, because we came to believe that our men of state distinguished themselves by their candour and their intelligence. {They told us so.) But one of the lessons of maturity in affairs of state must be that...