Conscience and History: A Memoir

D.M.L. Farr is professor emeritus of history at Carleton University,
where he taught Canadian political history and the history of Canada’s
external relations.

Kenneth McNaught (1918–1977) was a Canadian historian who stood in
direct succession to Frank Underhill. In politics, he was a socialist
and a pacifist, probably more comfortable with the fervent CCF party
than with its more temporizing successor, the NDP. He questioned
orthodox views about Canadian foreign policy, advocating a neutralist
stance in the cold war, and distrusted the United States’ leadership
in the Western alliance. Among a large output of essays, reviews, and
commentaries, his most significant scholarly achievement was a superb
1959 biography of K.S. Woodsworth, the founder of the CCF, subtitled
“A Prophet in Politics.” The phrase could well stand for
McNaught’s role in the Canadian intellectual community.

Born in Toronto, McNaught studied at its university in the late 1930s
and early 1940s, took on his first teaching position at United College,
Winnipeg, then returned happily to Toronto to spend the rest of his
career. In between occurred the celebrated Crowe affair of 1959–59,
when another history teacher at United, Harry Crowe, was dismissed for
having written a private letter critical of the college administration.
McNaught resigned in protest, along with a number of his colleagues, in
what has become a landmark case in the exposition of academic freedom in
Canada. It was McNaught’s finest hour, and his description of the
controversy, in which he was front and centre, is a valuable historical
document.

McNaught was writing Conscience and History when he died. The editors
of the volume, Michael Bliss and J.L. Granatstein, have reproduced the
manuscript in its original state. What we have, therefore, is a first
draft, but one so elegant and perceptive that it could be mistaken for a
finished product. There are incisive descriptions of the academics and
politicians who crossed McNaught’s path, evocative accounts of growing
up in Toronto before World War II, and recollections of the tight little
community of Garden Island, across the harbor from Kingston. It also
includes McNaught’s views on the craft of history—he believed that
the authentic historian had a duty to pass moral judgments. All in all,
Conscience and History is of rare quality and will be of absorbing
interest to anyone familiar with university life in Canada.

An unfortunate omission in the volume is the lack of a bibliography of
McNaught’s writing, although the memoir is crammed with references to
it. A properly annotated list would allow the reader who wishes to know
more of McNaught’s thinking to find the writings in which it was
expressed.