Walter Gordon and the Rise of Canadian Nationalism

Paul Kopas teaches political science at the University of Saskatchewan.

Walter Gordon, concludes Stephen Azzi, “was the father of the new
[Canadian] nationalism.” What a sad conclusion that is. Two aspects of
Gordon’s ideas stand out from Azzi’s book, both of which strike the
modern reader as being an inadequate basis for a robust, confident sense
of this country. First, Gordon’s was a narrow and negative nationalism
based on economic interests and anti-Americanism. Though he clearly
loved Canada, he also seemed to have little confidence in its abilities
and sought to build walls around it in order to protect it. His positive
expressions of pride in past achievements, of self-assurance in
establishing a new post-imperial identity, and of optimism in a growing
international role are few.

Second, Gordon’s arguments and reasoning for his particular
nationalism lacked substance. Azzi carefully describes the haste with
which some of Gordon’s work was done and how his nationalist concerns
were virtually without supporting argument. For example, the report of
the 1946 Royal Commission on Administrative Classifications, which
Gordon chaired, was “superficial” and ultimately vanished without
significant results. More important in terms of its effect on an
expanding public nationalism was the 1955–57 Royal Commission on
Canada’s Economic Prospects, which followed a parallel pattern when
Gordon prepared and released a preliminary report against the wishes of
his fellow commissioners. The Committee for an Independent Canada,
formed in 1970, folded only a decade later because it did not establish
a strong membership base; Gordon, one of the committee’s chief
organizers, said he never expected it to last more than two to four
years.

Azzi provides a detailed and cogent discussion of Gordon’s role in
Canada’s growing nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s. But so unlikely a
hero is Gordon that it remains a puzzle why this new nationalism so
captured the public’s imagination. One wishes that the book had been
less about Gordon and more about the broader context of the new
nationalism—its depth, its other protagonists, its other themes.
Though most of Gordon’s ideas have disappeared from serious public
debate, Canadian nationalism, often quietly expressed, continues. Its
heroes, in contradistinction to Gordon, could help us to better
understand both nationalism and Gordon’s own contribution.