FEBRUARY 22,1968 The Spirit of ’67AN ADDRESS BY Robert M. Thompson, M.P.CHAIRMAN, 1st Vice-President, E. B. Jolliffe, Q.c.
MR. JOLLIFFE:
Our distinguished guest is, as we all know, Member of Parliament for Red Deer, and the leading spokesman of the Social Credit movement, in which he was active from its earliest days.
Mr. Robert Norman Thompson taught school for three years before completing his higher education in Canada and the United States. Early in the Second World War he joined the 15th Alberta Light Horse, which seems only right and proper for one brought up in the foothills of the Rockies, but it was not quite the right war for horses, light or heavy, and he transferred to the RCAF and the Commonwealth Air Training Scheme.
Our speaker’s experience in life has a remarkably international flavour, and his career will be remembered for service in other countries as well as his own.
In 1941 Ethiopia was liberated by British troops and its own stubborn soldiers from the rule of the late Benito Mussolini, and Haile Selassie resumed his efforts to reform and modernize an ancient land rich in legend and tradition but sadly lacking in material wealth and skilled personnel.
Mr. Thompson led a nine-member team among several hundred Canadians who went to Ethiopia and tried to help. He served with the Imperial Ethiopian Air Force and after the war as a secondary school principal, Superintendent of Education and Deputy Minister of Education. He organized the Ethiopian Boy Scout movement. He was frequently called on as an adviser by the Emperor and his government and was sent many times on special missions to the Middle East, Europe and other parts of Africa.
For five years after 1953, Mr. Thompson supervised the educational programme of the Sudan Interior Mission as well as establishing a Leprosy Institution among the primitive tribes of Southern Ethiopia, a cause in which he is deeply interested.
Soon after returning to Canada, he re-entered politics and was first elected to Parliament in 1962, since which he has made many visits to the U.N., to Europe, Africa and Asia as an M.P., and on occasion at the request of the Canadian Government. He was in Viet Nam only a few months ago.
According to the poems of Homer, the Aethiopes were of all men the furthest away, only the gods could travel so far as to dine at their banquets; indeed the early Greeks thought the sun set and disappeared for the night in Ethiopia.
In these days when bells ring occasionally and every vote counts, I cannot help wondering whether there are those who wish that Mr. Thompson were far, far away, dining or wining with the gods in Addis Ababa and watching the setting sun rather than just having lunch with the Empire Club only an hour’s flight from Ottawa. However, he is first and foremost a Canadian, and on his all-toobrief visit here today he is going to speak about “Canada–the Spirit of ’67.”
Mr. Thompson.
MR. THOMPSON:
Coming from the “Chamber of Confusion” and crisis on Parliament Hill you would perhaps think I should be talking about the spirit of partisan politics. Essential as Parliament is to the effective functioning of the democratic system, I believe that it is a truism that it is high time that politicians put their Parliament in order and brought its rules and procedures in line with the needs of the day. The Government was defeated the other night because of several strategy errors, ill-timed judgment and a lack of responsible action by a few cabinet ministers.
No Prime Minister has been so plagued by so many blunders, so many crisis problems, some unavoidable, but most through a comedy of errors. It would have been a surprise if Lester B. Pearson could have slipped away quietly into retirement. While this was his wish, it was not to be his lot. He has fortunately become used to storms -and so have I. For fear I tread over into the realm of politics, let me get on quickly with the subject matter of my remarks.
We have crossed the threshold of our second Century. The Centennial year of Canada’s life has now passed into the memories of her citizens and the pages of history. We live in an ever continuing crisis although no one can deny that these are good days. The high rise of affluent living, the developing pattern of urban renewal, the speed of supersonic jets, the outreach into space, the instantaneous flash of Telstar communications are all evidence of this. Yet we cannot hide from the grim realities of brutal war, bringing death and destruction alike to those who fight and those who seek to escape from its path; of hunger and privation which destroy the hope not only of life but of the will to live; of degenerated human character setting its own standards of morality and integrity on the concensus of sensual practice. These are treacherous times with an unfulfilled yet tremendous potential.
On the home scene, at present, is a momentary lull in the storm of crisis and dissent. It is as if Canadians are catching their breath during a period of intermission while the participants review and rehearse their parts in the drama of politics, labour relations, economic survival and whatever it is that the next stage will bring forth. Perhaps it is the pride awakened in the hearts of all Canadians by the courage, nerve and skill of our national Sweetheart, Nancy Green, in her olympic victory on the ski slopes of Grenoble, France, which has caused us to forget for the moment at least, the next act which is waiting to emerge on the stage.
The greatest event thus far in this Centennial-plus-one year was the Constitutional Conference which concluded just two weeks ago in Ottawa. Next to the event itself was the fact that the vast majority of Canadians actually participated by directly viewing and listening in on the conference via the media of television and radio.
The great debate on Confederation entered a new stage with this conference, the ground work of which was laid at the Confederation of Tomorrow conference held in Toronto last November. Inevitably there will be more conferences before sufficient unanimity and agreement is reached which will permit the provinces and the federal government to get on with what is fundamentally the most urgent need in Canada, that of actually building and developing this great country further along the road towards its potential–at the same time demonstrating in practical ways the very human rights which we all say we believe in but to which far too many only pay lip service.
It has been said that the greatest need of the hour is .that of unity. I believe this is true. However, true unity is not to be found automatically in federal union–neither it it to be found in uniformity. True unity will come only if we set our hearts and minds and our will in a spirit of unity, found only between partners who are working together towards a common goal and objective. This was the spirit of 1867–of our pioneers–of our forefathers. Canada, in defying the natural laws of economics, geography and politics is not a nation which will survive by herself. She must be a great nation or die. Canadians must deliberately work and struggle in the job of building Canada if our nation is to survive. True unity will never be attained while Canada’s politicians argue and bargain at a conference table nor will it ever come while the great bulk of Canadians sit idly by and wait for the other fellow to do it. It is high time that we join hands, striving and working together towards the goal which is, greater than any single problem or argument, province or individualgreater than any part of the desired whole. We reach unity by working for it in a true spirit of unity -not by rationalizing or whittling away our time. It is imperative that the we get on with the job.
As a Member of Parliament and as a concerned Canadian, my awareness of the situation began taking shape when I returned to Canada in 1959 following an overseas absence of some 16 years. I was challenged with the fact that I could not, if I were to live with my conscience, be passive or neutral to the developing scene in Canada. Let me share with you some of my observations as they unfolded from the pages of history as revealed by a study of the records of politicians 100 years ago, the legislature, the pre-Confederation conferences and the early sessions of Parliament, beginning in October, 1867.
On July 1, 1867 the British North America Act became law and the Dominion of Canada became a nation. One hundred years later, we celebrated our Centennial in the realization that the dream of the Fathers of Confederation was a living reality. Truly, as spoke Georges Cartier, Canada has taken her place amongst the nations. The courage, dedication, vision and work of the Confederating Fathers, as well as of the pioneers who joined hands with them, or who have followed in their wake, is our great heritage. Milton’s words appropriately apply to these men who with “Providence being their Guide they builded better than they knew.”
We have hands, brains, skills and ideas. We have, by applying them, occupied this enormous territory–blessed with most varieties of climate and almost every natural resource–joined now by railways, highways, airlines and waterways–and linked by radio, television and telephone networks. We are bound together too by the knowledge, gained from men and women of many races, that harmony need not mean assimilation. We are twenty million Canadians, half of us less than 25 years of age. Our roots run back to overseas motherlands, but our loyalties are inseparably linked with Canada.
As 1 read the records of the pre-Confederation years, I came to realize that Canada became a nation because the Confederating Fathers had come to a point of mutual agreement where they were willing to set aside those things which divided them in favour of standing together on the basic areas of mutual concern and conviction. For those who think that the failure of Parliament during recent years is due to the personal animosity between the Prime Minister and the leader of the Official Opposition, I would refer to the fact that for at least seven years before 1864, George Brown, leader of the Liberals and John A. Macdonald, leader of the Conservatives, were not even on speaking terms with one another. Yet in 1864 they came to an understanding which resulted in a working together to bring about Confederation. George Brown even intentionally resigned himself to a secondary position and ultimate political oblivion in order that John A. Macdonald, with a wide support, could lead through Confederation to the founding of the nation. I am convinced that Confederation would not have taken place if it had not been for this action on the part of George Brown.
What caused this to come to pass? The men of 100 years ago were not basically different than they are today. The problems that they faced then differed only in degree and intensity as a result of the tremendous speed-up in modern communications. What they did, something which has not yet happened on the political scene in our day, was simply to put aside their differences in order to join hands in the fundamental areas in which they found agreement. They discovered that they had common convictions and principles about things that mattered most:
I. The first area of mutual conviction was in the agreement that there should be in the northern half of the great American continent, a nation called Canada, independent and distinct from all other nations, to develop and progress by evolution rather than by revolution. Whatever their backgrounds, whatever their differences, they all agreed on this. The United Empire Loyalists who had left the security and wealth of the emerging United States of America to seek a different way of life in the northern wilderness wanted a nation. Then French Canadians of Quebec had no desire to go back to a France they no longer knew as a result of the revolution and the republic which had changed the face of the country from which they had left. They wanted a country, Canada, which was already their homeland. The British colonial people, whether they had established a home on Vancouver Island, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia or elsewhere, wanted Canada to become a nation on its own. Those who were the forerunners of the wave of immigrants from continental Europe, having left their homes for new freedoms, were also convinced that there was to be a new nation of which they too would be a part. They were agreed that Canada as a nation had a destiny for them, their descendants and the world.
II. The second area of agreement was to be found in the common conviction that this new nation, which was to be democratically governed under a system of majority parliamentary rule, could only remain strong if the rights and freedoms of the minorities were protected and guaranteed. The Confederating Fathers agreed that the most important minority of all was the individual who, as a human being created in the image of God, must have the basis of the Canadian way of life. They were convinced that government had no right to assume that it could grant or take away these freedoms, although they believed that freedom begins with the authority of God and that He alone is the author of liberty. They dedicated themselves to the premise that it was the responsibility of government to protect and perpetuate the freedoms which belonged by right to every individual and to every group of individuals, minorities or majorities. It was this conviction that gave assurance to the people of Quebec. It was the lack of this assurance that caused Prince Edward Island to delay its decision of joining Confederation for four years. This was the basic premise that has given Canadians the freedom which they have and the opportunity to develop as this nation has. I am convinced that the greatest threat which Canadians face today is the threat to these freedoms.
III. The third area of agreement did not easily at first define itself. Yet it was so important to these men, the Confederating Fathers that, without this third area, the first and second areas could not have been preserved as they have been. It was simply that Canada, in her destiny, must be a nation under God. It was at the Quebec Conference in the month of October, 1864, where the final decision was made to go ahead with the drafting of the constitution, that Sir Leonard Tilley, the Governor of the Province of New Brunswick, reading in his morning devotions prior to the opening of the day’s session, was impressed with what the Psalmist recorded in the 8th verse of the 72nd Psalm. So convinced was he that Canada should be a nation under God that, when he came down to the Conference session, he convinced his fellow politicians that the motto of this new nation should be: “He shall have dominion from sea to sea.” As one enters under the east arch of the Peace Tower there is inscribed in stone above that arch these words: “He shall have dominion from sea to sea.” Over the west arch are these words: “Where there is no vision the people perish.” These men had vision and conviction. The work that they accomplished has not perished. Having said this about the spirit of 1867, what is the spirit of 1967 as it projects into 1968? Do we really want Canada to survive as a nation? Do we believe that the system of enterprise and individual initiative has been a major factor in the progress that we have made? Do we accept the moral standards of integrity, church and home that have characterized this nation during its first hundred years, or are we yielding to the pressures of the new morality which would disregard the past as inadequate and irrelevant? Are we convinced that Canada has a role to play in the emerging world or do we think at all?
As I travel back and forth across the country speaking to and meeting Canadians, I often wonder if there is a will to keep Canada, Canada. The spirit seems yet willing but the body seems too weak to do much about it.
The positive Canadian world thrust of the spirit of ’67 was exhibited at Expo where all the world came to see and be seen–at its best. It should have proven to us that we no longer can live in isolation from the rest of mankind.
Canada as a nation can lead the world in recovering a sense of unity. However, such unity will only be recovered by the rediscovery of conscience and an awareness of our responsibility to each other. Canadians as a people must come to realize the changing character of the world and must help their country to play a leading role in resolving some of the great questions facing the future of man. Only if the individual citizen is concerned and involved with the problems of the world will his nation do anything of significance.
It is up to us to demonstrate, with actions not just words, that our freedom, our way of life, our dedication to service, which have been the means of providing us with so much, will do likewise for them. Whenever we accept less than the highest standards of integrity, morality and service from our politicians–or from ourselves–we are betraying the trust that is in our hands. Whenever we are content to accept that which is second best, we move another step farther away from our goal of a responsible democracy, and one step closer to totalitarian intolerance–and hunger and privation.
I believe we will find the unity problem far less acute if we fulfil our true destiny in the world family of nations. We are such a nation, as every ex-colony would wish to be. We have inherited stable and respected institutions of government even though we have faltered at times. Our people have the education and skills which make the difference between poverty and wealth in the industrialized world of today. Where one-third of the world’s people faces starvation and famine, another third is undernourished. We in Canada have abundance–wealth in such plenuty that our problem is not how to produce it; it is how to bring it to those in our land and elsewhere who are in need of it. Our nation is living proof that we do not have to accept a police state in order to have enough to eat; it is a living proof that personal freedom and private initiative can deliver the goods, when the best laid five-year plans of the other nations end in failure. Across the world people of the underdeveloped nations–the former colonies–can see in our nation how development can come in freedom. We in Canada have a responsibility to these people, to make known on the practical level the secrets of our success. To fail is to reject our Christian heritage.
In pursuing this ideal with energy and enthusiasm, we must not withdraw from the political and economic realities of today. A vociferous minority is trying to create an isolationist Canada in the face of growing communist military power. Let me ask one simple question. If by some phenomenon the United States should disappear into the sea tomorrow, or destroy itself by internal strife, where would we stand? Without America, we are lost, and yet those leftwing minorities, those uninformed or irresponsible politicians would have us withdraw from NATO and NORAD and play no role in collective security. Tragically, a groundswell of indifference is being generated in Canada, in which Canadians now do not even want to defend their own country. Wake up, Canada! Stop throwing rocks at those who are risking and giving their lives in our very defence.
No nation can be free which is unwilling to risk the lives of its sons in defence. We cannot run from this truth of life.
Strong collective security has given us relative peace since World War II except for the fringe wars. Let us clearly remember that the hope of all of us for armament inspections and controls to guarantee peace in the world was destroyed solely by the communist world’s unwillingness to co-operate and open its door to inspection as the western world was willing to do. The current TV programme “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” shows all too clearly how tyrants rise when nations fail to deal with the bully and the aggressor. We must work for peace -but at the same time keep our powder dry and help in resisting aggressive nations before they become, as Hitler did, hungry tyrants who come to believe that the rest of the world has gone soft and is unwilling to defend itself appropriately. Appeasement has always encouraged the tyrant-and devastation has followed.
To keep the spirit of ’67 in the years ahead, Canada will have to face some of the cancer sores which grow and endanger us. The CBC has been a prime example. A vast array of evidence was presented to Parliament in recent months showing that CBC public affairs and certain news programming had fallen into the hands of a dangerous minority who insist on promoting separatism, anti-Americanism, anti-NATO and -NORAD, anti-Semitism and the popularization of drugs, immorality and depravity.
I spoke in the House of Commons on the CBC prodrug programme, “The Drug Culture,” televised a few weeks ago, and of its effect on youths by showing the so-called “joys” of taking drugs, without properly indicating the abject tragedies of this practice–and the nationdestroying dangers of widespread use, as we saw in the tragic episode of the old China after the opium wars. Tuesday’s Montreal Gazette had this to say: “Dr. Cecil B. Jacobson of George Washington University’s medical school, told Congress that the hallucinogenic drug, LSD, can cause deformed babies, mutations of future generations, and premature aging of cells . . . will shorten cell life in the user and ‘significantly increase the chance of cancer’.” These CBC advocates of confusion never brought such facts to light. Another example is to be found in our deteriorating economic situation.
The Watkins study under the tutelage of Walter Gordon proposed a policy of economic nationalism, which would, if implemented, destroy the very basis of private enterprise in Canada. Joining with the popular cry of left inclined theorists it would throttle foreign investment capital and instead promote Canadian enterprise, resource development and trade control, through vast state investment enterprises set up.
Mr. Gordon called it a very good report! He apparently is quite willing to blame the United States for our own error -for what we refuse to do for ourselves.
Last year the Chicago stock exchange reported a great growth in its operations, and attributed it to the tremendous amount of Canadian dollar investment. As the Toronto Star said last Tuesday, “Can’t we encourage some of that southbound cash to stay in Canada and help pull ourselves up to a standard of living by our own bootstraps?” The Watkins Report would prefer to kill the goose that lays the eggs and the eggs as well. Last year, 1967, Canadians bought U.S. stocks in America to a value of more than $1.75 billion. For every per capita dollar Americans have in Canada, Canadians have more than $3 in the U.S.A.
I wonder if it is not time that some of our politicans stop harping on buying back foreign ownership (Quebec Hydro is a good example) and begin encouraging Canadians to invest in Canada. It is likewise about time for Canadian investment dealers to start encouraging Canadian investment instead of promoting U.S. stocks many of which have a proven pattern of poor returns.
There has been a great deal of talk about the need of a new human rights charter. When Mr. Trudeau talks about a new charter for human rights, do you know what he means? Do you take time to even investigate? Do we really need a new charter for human rights? Is this idea merely a camouflage covering the real issues? I am afraid of this sudden concern for human rights in Canada. We are the most free nation on the face of the earth. Our way of life has permitted more to be accomplished in 100 years, greater progress and development, than in any country of the world. Could it not be that the present Bill of Rights would be adequate if it were strengthened in a few places?
I am afraid of what Mr. Trudeau says. In the very first chapter of his book, “A Canadian Charter of Human Rights,” I read: “Interest in human rights is as old as civilization itself. Once his primary requirements of security, shelter and nourishment have been satisfied, man has distinguished himself from other animals by directing his attention to those matters which affect his individual dignity.” I always thought that human rights did not come from governments or men- let alone from animals!
John F. Kennedy once said: “. . . The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God . . .”
If this new concept of constitutional rights is based on the concept that man is just another animal, albeit the most advanced and capable, I am afraid of the new ap proach. I do not think it will get us very far! If this is the basis of the new morality, it will not do this nation or its people much good. It is fortunate that the provincial premiers refused to go along with the Minister of Justice. Do you agree or aren’t you concerned?
Are you concerned at the loss of freedom, at the diminishing evidence of self-reliance and individual initiative, at the growing presence of big government? Do you believe that a philosophy of freedom has no more in common with the extreme right than it does with the extreme left? Do you understand that autocratic government is just as evil whether it is run by a Hitler or a Stalin?
Canada will not remain Canada if Canadians continue to create divisions and indifferences to the point of building bitter and determined minorities. We need to face our problems in the spirit of ’67, moving ahead to a mighty role in building a workable world. Surely this is the mind of God; that we live our faith as free men with all the wisdom, care, conviction and energy He has given to us.
Just what does the Canadian way of life mean to us? Not only should we know what it is–we must also know why it is as it is. The Confederation Fathers 100 years ago were determined that Canada should be a nation under God. The apostle Paul told us that the true government is to be instituted by God to represent His authority. Governments do have a divine calling to protect life, life as expressed in freedom and peace, the intimate sphere of marriage and home, the necessity of work and daily bread, justice and order, freedom of conscience.
However, governmental authority can degenerate. From only a secular motivation it can demand idolatrous allegiance. It can absorb power where God has not given power. This happened in Hitler-Germany with its tyrannical Nazi regime. Actually the Second World War did not start in 1939. It started in the previous century when Friedrich Nietzsche spewed his anti-Christian philosophy of the super-race. Hitler’s strength was not the blitzstrategy, nor a superior air force, nor his ruthless panzer divisions-no, it stemmed from his fanatical faith in the humanistic doctrines of national socialism and the supremacy of the Germanic race. His pagan regime sacrificed to that obsession as many loyal Germans as Jews and Slavs. This can happen anywhere when citizens fail to make the will of God speak in public life and society. Democracy will only be safe when the Christ of God is accorded His place of supremacy.
The real tragedy of our time is that men become more and more entangled in materialism and disbelief. Men living estranged from God easily cast aside God’s morals and principles, exchanging them for a blind belief in rationalistic expediency. Even amongst our Christians secularism makes deep and dangerous inroads. It threatens to disintegrate life and eventually it will if there is not a genuine return to the unifying purposes of God.
Walter Lippmann, the well-known liberal American journalist, a few weeks ago summed up the conditions facing his nation, which also applies to Canada, in a most startling way:
“For us all the world is disorderly and dangerous, ungoverned and apparently ungovernable. Everywhere there is great anxiety and bewilderment. This general concern about the threat of atomic war, of revolution and counterrevolution is suffused by almost everybody’s preoccupation with the difficult business of living in the modern age.”
Mr. Lippmann believes “that we are living through the closing chapters of the established and traditional way of life.” He prophesies that “we are in the early begin nings of a struggle, which will probably last for generations, to remake our civilization.” Walter Lippmann contends that “it is not a good time for politicians,” but that “it is a time for prophets and leaders. . . . The governments of the more advanced countries are all of them unpopular governments. For they are failing to cope with disorders abroad and with trouble at home. In the more developed countries, communist as well as non-communist, there are no great sustaining, unifying and inspiring beliefs, no schemes of salvation and no ardent promises of better things to come.”
In his book, The Industrial Struggle and Protestant Ethics in Canada, Stewart Crysdale makes this remarkable observation regarding our modern conception of communism:
“Despite the fact that communism has shown its iron fist to the world, with its millions of political slaves, its perverting propaganda, its bloody inner struggles for power, its totalitarian grip on men’s minds and its cynical use of greed, ambition, fear and hunger to further the purpose of the state” (as Crysdale aptly describes this revolutionary religion) “western man still persists in labouring under the fiction that somehow it is possible for Christianity and communism to co-exist. We often fail to grasp the irreconcilable conflict between these world-andlife views because we lack the biblical vision. And as the Bible says, Where there is no vision the people perish.”
No Canadian in our modern day has spoken more clearly on this matter than the late Vincent Massey, former Governor General of Canada. He said in his book, Speak ing of Canada, “The social order of the western world … is faced with a frightening paradox.
“Our social order today is suffering from a sense of futility and insecurity born of the intellectual confusion of a fragmented and largely secular society. We represent the paradox of the wealthy who may be empty; of the learned whose knowledge may bring no enlightenment; of the masters of society who may be timid and afraid.
“Looking back through the past few centuries we observe the increasing secularization of large areas of life; political, economic, intellectual, moral. The first three have been increasingly regarded as in themselves neutral; and the moral life, as we all know, seems to many to have become little but a matter of intelligent social adjustment. Religion is thus left to be a purely personal and private affair.
“. . . the growing cleavage between various aspects of life has constituted an implicit denial of what I take to be the essential character of Christianity; embracing as it does the principle of love and the practice of the oneness of all of life.
“In our modern world, I have already suggested, we have suffered an un-Christian division of life into two spheres, one of which is secular and public, and another which, being religious, is looked upon as private. Is it rash then to say that it is this division which has brought on our purely secular activities its own nemesis, taking the shape of the paralysis that comes from our lack of any coherent philosophy as a directing and guiding force for the whole of life? We are very conscious today of insecurity. Is this b
