Charles Clarke: Pen and Ink Warrior

Terry A. Crowley is a professor of history at the University of Guelph,
and the former editor of the journal, Ontario History. He is the author
of Agnes Macphail and the Politics of Equality and Canadian History to
1967, and the co-author of The College o

Environmentalists in the 20th century were, in some respects, akin to
liberals in the 19th century: both were relatively new phenomena that
were passionately wedded to causes, self-righteous in their beliefs, and
utterly convinced of the rightness of their positions. Environmentalists
and liberals alike saw their ideas influence the course of human affairs
in their own day.

Charles Clarke was a mid-19th-century liberal who functioned as an
Ontario businessman, a journalist, a radical reformer, and a Liberal
member of the Legislative Assembly and later its Clerk. An immigrant
from England, Clarke brought an abhorrence of aristocratic rule and
government-directed church establishment to Elora, in southwestern
Ontario. A merchant of modest means, he possessed a talent with the pen
that manifested itself in more than one form of expression. Universal
adult suffrage and religious voluntaryism in regard to Christian
denominations constituted the two great causes to which he devoted the
first part of his life in Ontario. Through associations that began in
ink and then transferred to activity with the radical Upper Canadian
Clear Grits, Clarke managed to see some of his ideas realized through
his participation in the political arena.

Mount Saint Vincent University historian Kenneth Dewar presents an
engaging biography of Clarke that reveals the man’s complexity. What
distinguishes this historical study is Dewar’s interest in textuality,
as shown in Clarke’s journalism, diary, and published autobiography.
Concentration on the written materials of discourse separates
21st-century academics from those predecessors who pursued grand ideas
and great causes in the manner of 19th-century liberals and contemporary
environmentalists. History becomes less grand, but more honest in its
interpretation of the past.