To have the Englishman comment on the insignificance of the things that make the Canadian different is small comfort to the Canadian nowadays. He isn't looking for a way to return to the British fold. Nor is he cheered by the American's assertion that the Canadian is his double. That sort of anonymity, in which individuality is related to a mountie or a bad joke about prohibition, is not enough. The Canadians are too rich now, and too much aware of an important future to accept such patronage. As Lester B. Pearson, leader of the Liberal Party, put it, we love the United States but we don't want to marry the brute. The problem was brought into focus shortly after World War II. It hadn't come to marriage yet, but the love affair was apparent even to the least perceptive. American magazines, American radio, American movies, and eventually American TV were flowing across the border. No one seemed to mind that they virtually eliminated competition from the smaller, less well-heeled Canadian ventures in these fields. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. attempted to combat this influence by controlling the ratio of American and Canadian content on its programs, as well as the ratio of live to canned broadcasts. Its efforts were under constant fire from the Government opposition and from a large percentage of newspapers, which regarded such control as an invasion of private rights. The tide began to turn 12 years ago, when the Prime Minister of the then Liberal government, Louis St. Laurent, called for the appointment of a royal commission "to study national development in the arts, letters, and sciences." In one direction lay total absorption by the United States-a long, slow swallow that hardly anyone would notice and that even the victim would not resent. Or if "victim" presents a misleading image (because no blame attaches to America) let us say that Canada would simply smother itself on Columbia's ample breast. In the other direction lay Canadianism. It would be a little synthetic for a while, perhaps; it would mean nurturing regional characteristics that might be considered outmoded in these less isolated times. But if it worked, the Canadians would be able to go back to loving Americans again. Out of the studies that followed, the 2 years spent in holding hearings across the country, reading documents solicited from organizations and individuals, emerged a 500-page document that came to be known as the Massey report (a tribute to the commission's head, the Right Honorable Vincent Massey, later to become Governor General of Canada). It was a bestseller among Government documents in 1951. The recommendation of the commission that attracted the widest attention read like this: "We therefore recommend that a body be created to be known as the Canada Council for the Encouragement of the Arts, Letters, Humanities, and Social Sciences, to stimulate and to help voluntary organizations within these fields, to foster Canada's cultural relations abroad, to perform the function of a national commission for UNESCO, and to devise and administer a system of scholarships." No one has thought of a satisfactory explanation for the 6-year delay between the appearance of the report and the implementation of its most important recommendations. Part of it was due to the objection of Maurice Duplessis, Premier of the predominantly French-speaking (and Roman Catholic) Province of Quebec, to the university capital grants fund. He claimed, with some justice, that it would represent Federal interference in education, a purely provincial field and one that in Quebec is dominated by the Catholic School Commission. To date, no grant has been made from the fund to a Quebec institution. (The Ottawa Government was reluctant to oppose Duplessis, who had been put in power by the Province that contains approximately a third of the voting population of Canada.) The council was discussed through each session of Parliament, and in 1956 the Liberals managed to delay action for another 7 months with the excuse that qualified members for the council, who had already been selected, were too busy at the time to give their services. When the act creating the council was finally passed on March 28, 1957, the news reports gave first importance to the method of financing the council. Its funds came from the succession duties on the estates of two millionaires from the Maritime Provinces: Sir James Dunn, who died in his summer home at St. Andrews, New Brunswick, on January 1, 1956, leaving an estate of $70 million; and Isaac Walton Killam, who had died 5 months before at his fishing camp at Cascapedia Quel, leaving an estate of $100 million. Duties on the two estates came to an even $100 million, which was immediately earmarked for the council. Ironically, the arts and letters had not been among the favorite charities of either tycoon in his lifetime. The amount of money in the council's hands places it seventh in order of importance among the trusts and foundations of the United States and Canada. But even this comparison exaggerates the council's wealth. Only half is a permanent fund. The other $50 million was earmarked as a university capital grants fund, to be given away-capital and interest-on a 10-year schedule to help Canadian universities in long-overdue building assistance. This means that by 1967 the Canada Council's total capital will be reduced to $50 million, unless it receives more in the meantime. The council is so constituted that gifts may be sent to it tax free, a privilege few Canadians have exercised. They seem to take the attitude that, once the council was created, the finger was in the dike, the crisis averted. If the council couldn't cure whatever was wrong with Canadian culture with its present funds, at least it had enough to produce a good definition of the trouble. Although the largest grants, at present, are being made from the university capital grants fund, the council activity that has attracted the most attention has been the assistance to artists, artistic organizations, and scholars, fields in which there are no fixed standards. The decision to support the work of a particular composer or painter must be made on much more subjective grounds than a grant of a million dollars to a university for a new library or auditorium. The test relates to the search for an identity previously remarked. To this end, the council has disbursed something in the neighborhood of $4 million in fellowships to composers, painters, and writers, in direct gifts to artistic organizations, and in financing the transportation of audiences from small towns and rural communities into nearby population centers to give them an idea of what Canadians are doing in the way of expressing themselves. Such priming of the artistic pump is only one of several functions of the council, and the one expending the smallest amount of their funds. Other responsibilities relate to allotment of scholarships in social sciences and the humanities, and the operation of the Canadian National Commission for UNESCO. Among these, after administrative costs have been deducted from the endowment fund, 55 percent of the remainder goes to the arts. Grants from these funds, in the last budget, include such things as $206,500 to symphony orchestras; $7,400 to commission orchestral works; $162,500 to festivals; $85,000 to permanent theater companies; $36,000 for touring theater companies; $145,000 for ballet; $72,000 for opera, and so on. In the minds of most people, benevolent foundations deal largely in fat, round sums, giving comfort to the student in Paris or sustenance to the archeologist in the Cyclades, sums with a ring to them-sums in six figures, or $10,000, certainly nothing less than $2,000. For this reason, it might surprise some to find listed in the Canada Council reports such entries as the following: $120 to Maria Pellegrini, of Ottawa, to enable her to go to Toronto for an audition; $50 to Dr. James Reaney, of Winnipeg, a travel grant to go to Toronto to assist in the production of his play "The Killdeer" (this would take Dr. Reaney only halfway, and he would have to pay the rest himself); $300 to Mrs. Dorothy MacPherson, a travel grant to participate at the fifth annual Robert Flaherty film seminar at the University of California. These small sums must not be taken as an indication that the council's eye is on the sparrow. It means, rather, that it is slicing carefully a very small budget for a very big job. When you consider the handful of Canadian people rattling around in the third largest country in the world (larger than the continental United States but with only about a tenth of the population) it is difficult to talk about culture. If the population of Canada were spread evenly over its territory (momentarily ignoring the fact that many of them would have to be amphibious), they would not be within sight of each other, let alone talking or spitting distance. The actual distribution is a little different, though almost as curious. Seventy percent of Canadians live within 100 miles of the U.S. border, almost as though this strip of towns and cities were snuggling up to an imaginary wall for warmth. The council's job might be described as trying to persuade the Canadians that south is not the only direction in which to face, or that they have been left "outside." An important aspect of the problem was well defined in a recent article by one of its officers: "While contemporary creative activity abroad is the product of centuries of interchange between artist and audience, here the council is being charged with the difficult task of helping to bring forth the chicken and the egg simultaneously. Finding and encouraging creative artists is not enough. To insure the final independence and even survival of these artists, an important part of the council's function must be to help enlarge the demand for their talents." In other words, creating an audience. After 4 years' experience, this aspect of the problem has earned more and more of the council's attention. Creation and re-creation is very well, but getting the audience and the performers together is of crucial importance. To this end, the Canadian Players (a company employing many of the Stratford actors during the winter months) were sponsored by the council on a tour of 60 towns from coast to coast last year. At the same time, 6,000 high school students were shipped from rural districts into the towns on the company's itinerary. Subsidies for a theater troup rarely amount to mare than a fraction of their touring costs. The council pares down its assistance to the crucial point where the company would decide to give up the tour, then adds a smidgin more. Two years ago the Canadian Opera Company, operating out of Toronto, gave a 2-week season with three works (including Prokofiev's "Love for Three Oranges"), then went on a cross-country tour of 40 performances. The resulting deficit of $137,000 was met by private donations of $77,000, and a $60,000 grant from the council. There have been critics of the council, but most of them have objected to the way in which assistance is meted out rather than to the principle of assistance itself. Some feel that the system of piecemeal grants is pernicious. Others have contended that if the arts were realy respected, they would be supported by a Ministry of Culture with a large budget. Probably the most common criticism of all is that a council is a long-haired outfit, somewhere up on cloud 9, and that it should take steps to get in touch with the common man, or consult the average taxpayer on how this money should be spent in the cultural fields. To paraphrase the council's attitude, the council has been charged with the job of making the common man less common, and they have no intention of consulting him on methods. The council has only six salaried officers, none of them identified with political parties: a director, Dr. A. W. Trueman; an associate director, Eugene Bussiere; a treasurer, Douglas Fullerton; a supervisor of the arts program, Peter M. Dwyer; a supervisor of the scholarship program, Henri Charbonneau; and a secretary, Lillian Breen. The chairman, Dr. Claude T. Bissell, replied recently to charges against the 19-member council (voluntary and noncompensated) by pointing out that at present it relies on informed groups and individuals for its decision, with applications for grants from the endowment fund sifted by, for the arts, 150 adjudicators. He admitted that information is often marked by "cults, petty jealousies, and prejudices. But the alternative is to shift our sources of advice to those people who, to coin a phrase, know nothing about art but know what they like. Ultimately this is to substitute the most terrible of all tyrannies: the tyranny of the uninformed." Russia, observes Dr.Bissell, had tried this pseudodemocratic method of promoting culture, and the result was "picture postcard painting and propaganda fiction. You will notice that the U.S.S.R. has not adopted the same method in the sciences. That is why its conquest of outer space is more significant than its conquest of inner space." No one has attempted to assess the result of the Canada Council's work. Four years is hardly time enough to allow such a "first growth" to bear ripe fruit. But the council itself is sure enough of its importance to the country and of the direction in which it is going to ask the Government for another $10 million to help it along. SUBSIDY MAKES SENSE A description of the present plight of music and the By Hope Stoddard Associate Editor International Musician The American Federation of Musicians, in its campaign for Federal subsidy of music, has published a series of articles in its journal, "International Musician," explaining the need for speedy action in this matter. These articles are herewith reprinted, together with a final chapter on industry's aid to music, in itself a form of subsidy. 255 |