bout de papier, Vol. 22, No. 4 (2007) — Winter/Spring 2007 // Hiver/Printemps 2007, p. 20
MARGINAL MAN: THE DARK VISION
OF HAROLD INNIS by Alexander John
Watson, University of Toronto Press,
480 pp., 2006, $65.00
There is virtually no foreign affairs content in the latest, and by far the best, book about professor Harold Innis. Nevertheless Innis life profoundly affected Canada’s political and economic development. His influence will be as permanent on our lives as anything can be. I was one of his many students at the University of Toronto after the Second World War.
Innis had a prophetic vision of what he wanted to achieve. However, he himself might have been the first to understand that he failed in most of his objectives. But what good causes they were and are, and how hard he tried to reach them. Perhaps this is his first and central legacy. In spite of the immensity of the problems there is no alternative but to keep on trying to contribute to a better world. A recent deputy minister of foreign affairs, in an hour long speech on current UN issues, all of it negative and discouraging, concluded only that we have no option but to work with the United States. In a masterly review of the disarmament scene, which depicts many failures and frustrations, Paul Heinbecker concludes that we have no option but to “hang together.”
I have no more right than anyone else to imagine what Innis would have to say now. I had three consecutive years of his courses, in 1946, 1947 and 1948 and became totally committed to his purposes. His messages today would be that, although all the evidence is damaging and the future is dark, we have to continue to try as had as we can to understand “the situation” and do something about it.
John Holmes was a sunny optimist compared to Innis. (I see no evidence that they intersected in any way.) Innis’ path was a lonely one.
It is also remarkable that although Innis started out with a strong religious faith he became and remained an agnostic. What kept him going? He worked harder than anyone can imagine.
Others have recorded the fact that there was no chatter in Innis’ classes and you did not miss them for frivolous reasons. You saw before you a great mind grappling with the lessons of the past. Innis constantly surprised by his connections to the work and thought of others. If you did not listen carefully you might lose the thread of his argument. But if you did pay attention you came away invigorated
In foreign policy terms he corresponds most closely to a combination of Norman Robertson and Marcel Cadieux. Like Innis, Cadieux was prepared to resign over questions of principle; like Robertson, Innis was often opaque. Cadieux hoped to establish a priesthood of career foreign service officers and, for a time, he did. He and Innis would have been appalled at the deliberate murder of the career Canadian profession. Innis, like Robertson, had little time to spend on those who could not understand. Innis just moved on to even more unknown territory. He believed personally that Canadians should study Canadian issues. He did this himself with the fur trade, the cod and our railways. He wanted Canadian universities to secure their independence. He thought that academia should be free of governmental interference (but ended his life working on a Royal Commission). He feared the dominance of any “great power,” but now there is no alternative but to embrace our neighbours. He worried about the influence of changing communication technologies and feared the changes that are upon us.
He stood for independence of thought and would have reviled the thinking of today’s bureaucrats who must above all know what the minister is “thinking” and provide the material believed wanted. Within recent memory Cabinet documents have ceased to consider the possible adverse effects of new policy because such comments would be considered disloyal. The politicization of the policy process both foreign and others would have offended Innis. He stood for rugged objectivity at all times. Perhaps it was Innis’ courage that we admired. At each lecture he would take on some long established truth fearlessly.
Innis would have regretted the Americanization of Canadian foreign affairs. He would have worked his head off, as the disciples did, in pursuit of the Canadian national interest even with failure staring them in the face. It was and remains, a dark vision. a
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 22, No. 4 (2007) — Winter/Spring 2007 // Hiver/Printemps 2007, p. 20. Read the rest of this issue →
