Unheard Of: Memoirs of a Canadian Composer

9. Politics

9 Politics T he pie graph of normal adult life patterns includes large slices for sleeping, eating, working, and running errands. In my case there is another large slice for attending meetings. I became accustomed to the (often lengthy and verbose) decision-making processes of academia. The Faculty Council and its various committees necessarily imposed a burden of time. To these were added new obligations starting in the 1960s—tenure and promotion committees, grievance committees, appointment panels—whose meetings sometimes turned into oratorical marathons. I once heard the comment that where the carpenters’ union covered a short agenda in a lunch hour (because everyone had to get back to work), an academic committee could drone on endlessly—semantic quibbles, legalese, classical quotations—and then adjourn having decided nothing except the date of the next meeting. During my term as dean of the Faculty , I had moreover to attend regular interdepartmental gatherings and found myself roped in for committee duties in the central administration and in other faculties and colleges. I believed strongly in participatory democracy and as head of an academic body became known for striking committees as a solution to problems (the “royal commission” ploy). Once I was even accused of being “too democratic.” The price was a huge amount of time sitting and listening in meetings. Thinking of the constant round of activities of both my parents, I think I must have inherited a “joiner gene.” For several years starting in 1952–53, I took on executive responsibilities with the newly founded Canadian League of Composers, and in the 1960s I served on the rather ad hoc management board of Ten Centuries Concerts.1 Shortly after becoming dean in 1970, I was approached to join several volunteer boards 165 166 • career and committees, among them the boards of directors of the Canadian Music Centre, the Canadian Opera Company, and BMI Canada. Was I invited for my musical experience or as a representative of the university? I kept the question to myself and felt obliged to participate. The meetings were often tedious but the discussions were important. Now and then I would be asked to join one of the arts council juries, and I looked on this too as vital service, although it was often intense and wearing, especially as allocations of money became skimpier. It was also in the early 1970s that work commenced on the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, and my involvement in that project, as a member of the editorial board, meant yet more meetings. I was familiar with basic parliamentary procedure and Robert’s Rules of Order but gradually acquired a keener sense of their fine points, sometimes through having to serve as chair (for example on the Faculty Council ). James Reaney told me with glee of his experience in a term as chair of the scholarly body ACUTE (Association of Canadian University Teachers of English).“When someone moves an amendment to the amendment,” The 1955 annual meeting of the Canadian League of Composers took place at my home in Toronto. Standing, left to right: Louis Applebaum, Samuel Dolin, Harry Somers, Leslie Mann, Barbara Pentland, Andrew Twa, Harry Freedman, Udo Kasemets; front, left to right: Jean Papineau-Couture, John Weinzweig, John Beckwith (photo by Helmut Kallmann, CLC archivist). he said,“all hell breaks loose.” I learned to vacate the chair if I wanted the floor (i.e., wanted to enter the debate), after seeing a university colleague heavily criticized for not doing this. On one occasion, with my heart in my mouth, I ruled a loquacious orator “out of order” and was relieved that no one“challenged the chair,”as (again) I had seen happen in another context. A scenario demanding utmost patience was when you had to discuss amending the constitution and bylaws. I once sat next to Ben McPeek2 at what I think was his first meeting as a member of the CMC board when we had to concentrate on a long list of such amendments, and at one point he whispered to me,“Is it always this much fun?”You thought: democracy in action, you have to have rules, someone has to do it; but you couldn’t help wishing you were doing something else—like practising Bach. The Canadian League of Composers was in its formative stages when I was corresponding secretary. The Ten Centuries series was a distinctive short-lived concert venture. In both organizations I worked...