In Search of Canadian Political Culture by Nelson Wiseman

(or Albion’s Seed in British North America)

I wrote this review for two reasons. First, like all Canadians, when I come across something about America, my instinct is to ask “what about us? Why is no one talking about us?”. It was this response when I first read the SSC post on Albion’s Seed, which pushed me down a rabbit hole. Second, In this search for this Canadian ‘Albion’s Seed’, I came across a bitter and controversial debate among Canadian historians on what Canada is and isn’t. We are an arrogant people, after all.

Similar to how the tribes in David Hackett Fischer’s 1989 Albion’s Seed apparently foretell the cultural and political fractures of post-2016 modern America, Nelson Wiseman’s In Search of Canadian Political Culture aims to tell us about the current differences and fault lines of Canadian politics. As I revisited the book to write this, Canada found itself in a national crisis during the trucker blockades. As the Federal Conservatives once agains aim to nominate a leader, it appears that regional and political tensions are at a new high.

Now, there may be less interest in a book about the founding of Canada than say, the global superpower south of its border. Wiseman’s book is worthwhile if you too were intrigued by Albion’s Seed as it can illustrate how well a similar thesis fares in the country next door. Likewise, as we think about charter cities, taking stock of the last iteration of settler experiments and their current legacies is an useful exercise. Finally, as the ‘siege of Ottawa’ earlier this year suggested, rumblings in the peaceable kingdom can even spillover into other countries.

If that makes sense to you, then stick around and let's join Wiseman in exploring Albions’ seeds in British North America in search of Canadian political culture.

Preface - Albion’s Seeds in British North America

In Search of Canadian Political Culture is not necessarily unique and is part of a long tradition of Canadian writing on the ‘Tory-touch thesis’. The thesis was initiated by the American scholar Louis Hartz (and Kenneth McRae, his Canadian contributor) when he applied his Lockean American Founding thesis to other countries in the 1969 Founding of New Societies and later developed by Gad Horowitiz in his seminal 1966 article. Very quickly, it is the following in TL; DR:

1. Canada's (English) founding population brought British Tory ideas, especially informed by their experiences during the American Revolution.
2. While the Loyalists were still liberal, this tory touch meant less of a puritanical focus on individualism and freedom and a more of a ‘tory touched liberalism’, best exemplified by Canada’s unofficial motto of ‘peace, order, and good government’.
3. According to old fashioned dialectic theory, the interaction between the communitarian Tory and individualist Liberal elements resulted in the social democratic impulse.
4. This resulted in the quasi-social democratic policies that Canadians see as part and parcel of this country’s core, whether in celebration or lamentation.

Written at a time of heated discussions of Canadian nationalism, Horowitz’ thesis has set the terms of the debate of a country that loves to argue what it is. Even its most ardent critics must either refute the tory touch or see it as a malaise to be cured.

Now, coming back to Wiseman, the book focuses on testing the thesis within Canada. The original Tory Touch thesis tried to explain (and perhaps justify) how Canada differed from the United States, a key existential question. Instead, Wiseman focuses on how Canadian regions differ in their past and their present, suggesting that the story is more than just English and French, American and Canadian.

The book’s thesis is that both national and regional Canadian political culture is informed by the timing, attributes, and ideas of the main founding group, primarily British, in each region. Wiseman argues for a ‘cultural founder effect’ where founding populations (charter groups) and their socioeconomic, cultural, and class traits (‘ideological-cultural genes’) determine the subsequent political culture and institutions of societies over time. Wiseman outlines how various charter groups developed distinct political cultures within Canada. And at this point, it definitely seems that political conflict is not between English and French Canada but groups within English Canada. This is not dissimilar to how Albion’s Seed lends itself to the ‘new civil war’ thesis concerning white Americans.

While not as dense as Albion’s Seed and its investigation of folkways; the commonalities between Wiseman’s and Fischer’s books are clear. The book even has its own Canadian set of characters including United Empire Loyalists, Labourists, and Americans.

Wiseman outlines five distinct waves that shaped Canada. The first wave came from Feudal France and now make up the Quebecois and other Francophones across Canada. This wave came to an end in 1760 after the British Conquest. After this, came three distinct waves of British and European Immigrants. The next wave were the Loyalist Refugees fleeing the American Revolution and settling parts of the Atlantic and present day Ontario during the 1780s. As British North America developed, these initial Loyalists were followed in the 1850s by a significant wave of more middle-class Britons to Ontario. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, a large wave of working-class British, American and Eastern and Central Europeans settled the prairies westward. Lastly, the current wave of immigration from the rest of the world increasingly makes up a large part of the country’s population.

The book focuses on the first four waves as they were the waves that acted as charter groups for specific regions and were able to leave their mark on nascent institutions, politics, and societies. As each subsequent wave of immigration settled further west from the Atlantic, these groups brought with them not only their cultural traits but also elements of the contemporary political struggles, debates, and concerns of their homes, mainly Britain.  

In this sense, you could visualise British political history in motion if you started from the Atlantic and moved to the West Coast. As shown in the table below, we can go from echoes of Pre-Labour Britain in Atlantic Canada to intense partisan battles between social democrats and anti-socialists in British Columbia. The two outliers are the two distinct societies of Quebec and Alberta, one formal and the other informal. These two, as will be discussed later, have their political culture pivot on another axis.

The most common response to kind of thesis is that “its the political economy, stupid”. Sure, the configurations above align with self-interest, such as when Atlantic Canada’s ‘dependency’ makes them hostile to privatisation or when Alberta’s economic growth and resource economy fuels its distrust of government. At the same time, Wiseman tells us to keep two things in mind.

First, political economy can only go so far in explaining differences. For example, if Atlantic Canada has always been a ‘has-not’ province, why hasn’t the New Democrats (NDP) with its class politics and penchant for spending dominated those areas provincially or federally? Likewise, British’s Columbia’s booming commodity-driven economy didn’t result in a quasi-one party system like its neighbour Alberta nor did it dampen its labour movement.

Secondly, and more importantly, Wiseman takes pains to emphasise these political cultures are often competing national visions that play out in the federal arena, either in federal elections or federalism. Unlike the Catalan parties in Spain, the Alberta-based Reform party was a federal party that wanted to remake the staid national order. This regional resentment was so successful at the national level that it won seats across the country and even usurped the traditional Conservatives, leaving a mark to this day. Unless you’re Quebec and its sovereignist parties, where your goals are quite different.

I - Touched by a Tory: 18th Century Loyalists in Atlantic Canada and Ontario

Those Loyalists who went to Britain discovered their American liberal heritage rather differently [...] Above all, many found England narrow, confining, and they longed for the lost freedom of America - Kenneth McRae, in Hartz’s Founding of New Societies (1969) 

The Loyalists are the key protagonist in the Canadian founding myth. As those loyal to the Crown fleeing the ‘American mobs’ after 1776, they fled to British North America and chartered the eastern part of Canada, specifically the Maritimes and Ontario. In some ways, the attention and mythology  is not surprising as the key difference between two otherwise similar North American English settlements was indeed our position regarding the Empire.

Yet, the two regions settled by these Loyalists differed and continue to do so. In Atlantic Canada, the Loyalists joined the existing seaboard settlements of English Newfoundland and the French colony in New Brunswick. In Upper Canada (then Ontario), they were numerically smaller but had a cleaner founding on the frontier. This distinction is important because Wiseman argues that it both attracted and cultivated two types of migrants. In Atlantic Canada, the Loyalists included the ‘clergy, gentlemen, and ivy leaguers’. In Ontario, the frontier and vast amounts of land attracted a rougher and ambitious Loyalist.

Atlantic Canada:

There is no question that the Loyalists in Atlantic Canada were conservative in disposition and outlook relative to their ex-countrymen. While numerically larger than their Ontario counterparts, they already came to existing and scattered English settlements in the country. Existing settlements, the seaboard’s selection effect, and the lack of successive immigration is what Wiseman attributes to this region being the most small-c conservative region in Canada. For example, Joseph Howe who brought responsible government to Nova Scotia was so Loyalist, his initial goal was representation in the British House of Commons, not in the colonies itself.

Wiseman calls the Maritimes the ‘New England’ of Canada and specifically Newfoundland as Canada’s West County England. Socially, Atlantic Canada has been a highly homogenous and close-knit place of Anglo-Celtic heritage. For example, Newfoundland only saw its first whiff of Central Europeans in the 1950s while Ontario had seen this since the 1800s. While Newfoundland is an extreme case of localism, Atlantic Canadians are more likely to be born, live and die in the same place than other provinces. They are also more likely to identify locally before identifying as Canadian. However, the homogeneity also results in high civic trust and significant levels of voter turnout. For example, Wiseman notes that in 2003, Prince Edward Island and Ontario both had elections. However, the former somehow had roughly 80% turnout in the middle of a hurricane that cut off power to many households, while the latter only had 57% turnout in a tense election where the would-be winner was called an “evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet”. The Maritimes are home to some of Canada’s murky and extremely wealthy family dynasties such as the Irvings, McCains, and Sobeys but this does not seem to have generated any significant resentment in an otherwise ‘have-not’ province. Farming - along with seafood and natural resources - is key to the region. However, unlike export-oriented Prairies farms or large mechanised Ontario farms, Atlantic Canadian farms tend to be diverse in commodity and small. Farms are a ‘way of life’ to be passed down to generations and may include multigenerational living arrangements to this day. This quasi-‘moral economy’ did not lend itself to the various agrarian political organisations found across Canadian history who played a significant role in political development.

Politically, the Maritimes resemble contemporary Britain at the time of this founding. Liberals and Conservatives were and remain the two main parties in these provinces. However, the ideological distance between the two parties have been small in a region culturally isolated from Europe’s grand ideological conflicts or Canada’s nascent evolving political culture. In addition, the Maritimes not only inherited New England’s quaint and friendly culture but also the ‘pork and barrel’ spending and patronage that one would find in such a system. As late as the 1990s, patronage was so woven into this political culture that Nova Scotia Premier John Savage fought an unpopular battle against patronage appointments in the public service and his own party. Around the same time, Prince Edward Island left student hiring to the discretion of cabinet ministers who unsurprisingly appointed party loyalists and acquaintances. Another example of ‘ideological’ absence can be seen in how parties have life-long memberships, which suggests that they function closer to civil society than perhaps ideological vehicles.

Ontario:

As the Loyalist Maritimes slowly coalesced into what it is today, their Ontario counterparts were busy on the frontier making what Wiseman calls the Counter-Revolution. Unlike the Maritimes, however, Ontario was and remains the key destination for immigration resulting in a far more turbulent history.  Furthermore, the same wounded Loyalist spirit and its more entrepreneurial elements arrived at the frontier and started to nurse an obsession with nation-building (a bizarro America if you will). This stance and distrust towards Americans was further hardened by the War of 1812 and its Fenian Raids.

One infamous legacy of Ontario’s Loyalists was, of course, the Family Compact - a small group of close-knit petty oligarchs who virtually ruled the settlement like their Chateau Clique counterparts in present-day Quebec. As the villains in Canada’s fight for responsible government (more on that later), they were indeed conservative and oligarchic compared to the Americans. However, the Compact was also interested in accumulating power and wealth in contrast to the idle hereditary counterparts in England, the Squattocracy in Australia, or even the patricians of Atlantic Canada. Given their merchant membership and the influence of the Glorious Revolution back home, they had a strong interest in expansion and development in almost Hamiltonian or Whiggish fashion. It is this outlook that can be best described as ‘tory-streaked liberalism’ or ‘red-toryism’ and their view toward government didn’t hurt the later Canadian proclivity for intervention or protectionism found in the National Policy onwards.

While they were ultimately reduced in power and size, the main political descendants of the Loyalist tradition have been the Conservatives in Central and Western Canada and at the federal level, Progressive Conservatives until the 2000s. This conservatism is often seen as less doctrinaire relative to other traditions and more conducive to government regulation and shifting public opinion.

Perhaps the most interesting consequence of Loyalist heritage is in Ontario’s total rejection of the fact that it is a separate identity in itself. It certainly helps that Ontario has often served as the ‘imperial capital’. For example, turnout in federal elections is higher than for provincial elections despite the fact that the latter matters more materially to voters. Ontarians are least likely to think they are mistreated by the federal government. They are also more likely to think the electoral system is fair despite the fact that their density, like all populated areas, gets penalised. They also appear, regardless of party in power, lukewarm to appeals of regional resentment. Likewise, Ontarian leaders have always seen and played an important role in national unity discussions. The conserative premier Davis worked closely with the Federal Liberals on these great constitutional debates despite the ideological misalignment and encroachment on provincial matters.

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Like any academic, Wiseman likes to focus on the debate that I suppose few Canadians would care much about. However, a key puzzle that captivated even American scholars such as Hartz and Lipset, is the absence of ‘socialism’ in the United States and its presence in Canada. Of the two Loyalist settlements above, the Social Democratic NDP only rose in influence in the province that had other inflows. Despite Horowitz’s belief that ‘social democracy in canada is proportional to its loyalist heritage’; it appears that Atlantic Canada did not result in social democracy. It just sort of congealed into place as one would expect with cultural ‘genetic drift’. In other words, Atlantic Canada appears to falsify Horowitz despite its heavy load of loyalists. The one exception that proves the rule is Cape Breton and its history of labour action in coal mines. There were bitter strikes in the 1920s and even a brief Labour Party that came from good ol’ 'factionalism. Wiseman notes that much of Cape Breton’s miners were recent (particularly Scottish) immigrants from Britain who came in the early 1900s and brought a ‘class consciousness’ commonplace in British coal mines.

II - Reform(ers) comes to Ontario in the 19th Century

“The distinguishing feature marking Canada as the odd-man out among all the British colonies that moved towards responsible government in the course of the nineteenth century was

that responsible government came only after a prolonged, bitter, and violent

struggle. [....] Such persistent political violence had no parallel anywhere else in the

post-1783 British Empire”. - Gordon T Stewart, ‘The Origins of Canadian Politics’

This is where most stories of Canada’s founding conclude. Americans kept the liberals, Canadians kept the loyalists, War of 1812, after which both had tons of immigration and everyone lived happily ever after. However, given that Canada at the time did not cut ties with Britain at the time, Canada had successive waves of British immigration. Indeed, this is basically the matter of disagreement between Loyalists and Revolutionaries in 1776! In this sense, Canada went through a cultural founder effect but unlike the United States - Canada differed in that it still continued to receive British inflows that continued to diversify the sources. Likewise, Canada was not a sovereign nation for a very long time and as the quote above suggested, responsible government did not come until after this British wave came crashing.

At this point, we come to the Reformer wave in the 19th Century, which Wiseman names in reference to the political period they left at the time.Class and disposition influenced those willing to escape Britain and sail across the Atlantic to a foreign and cold frontier. So, they were of more middle-class persuasion and came to Ontario due to the promise of vast land and status, keeping in mind that the Loyalists were themselves more liberal than a lot of the home country. At this point, the population of Ontario (then Upper Canada) swelled from 77,000 in 1811 to 952,000 (11x!) in just forty years. This wave was roughly 3-5ths Irish, 1-fifth English, and another of Scots. This Scottish element included quite a few influential names such as John A Macdonald, William Lyon Mackenzie, George Brown, and Robert Baldwin.

Like all migrants, this group brought with them the political battles of their home country at the time, including over the 1832 Reform Act. This influence was represented in the papers they founded with the names of “British Whig”, “Galt Reformer”, “St.Thomas Liberal” or “Chatham Freeman”. With active links to the British movement, the wave agitated for reform in Upper Canada and against the Family Compact. This resulted in, as the excerpt above by Stewart suggests, the violent Upper and Lower Canada (present-day Quebec) rebellions in 1837. While these movements were crushed and many members exiled, the final result was responsible government arising from the recommendations of the Durham Commission.

By the time responsible government came with the fusion of Upper and Lower Canada into the Province of Canada, the most radical and republican activists were exiled or diminished. The more conservative-minded connected with more Whiggish Loyalists, as with John A Macdonald’s Liberal-Conservative Party. Over time, the more reform-minded component developed into a clear ‘Grit’ identity coalesced in this group and was the predecessor to the current Liberals. This movement initially had a strong agrarian bias and was influenced by English physiocratic ideas regarding free trade, property rights, and farming. Their influence was first seen in the agrarian organisations in Ontario. While this clashed with the Loyalist ideas more susceptible to mercantilism, they aligned on the need for economic and national expansion out west, which was of prime importance to Macdonald’s aptly named Liberal-Conservative government after the rebellions.

Unlike in Atlantic Canada, this Reformer wave brought a Liberal Party to Ontario that had ideological distance from the Conservatives. This group left Britain at the time of an increasingly vibrant political competition. Initially playing the role of country and agrarian voice against Tory elites, urbanisation in the post-war period resulted in a Liberal re-alignment with urban bourgeois voters. Often in tension against an imperial and ethnic notion of Canada until that question was settled, the Liberal movement began to fill the role of championing a broader ‘Canadian nationalism’.

III - Prelude to British North America: 17th and 18th Century Nouvelle France

Notre maître le passé - Lionel Groulx

Of course, these British waves in Canada were not just on their own, so it's useful to take it back a few steps for an interlude or perhaps prelude. New France and its legacy is a big part of the Canadian story and acts as the key faultline for much of history. Quebec’s experience has gone through two major ‘quakes’. The obvious one is the British conquest of New France, memorialised in the province’s motto ‘Je me souviens’ that are on its licence plates. The second quake is the Quiet Revolution, when Quebec went under drastic and large cultural, economic and political change.

Quebec is the oldest part of European Canada, with New France being settled in 1608 at the height of French Absolutism. Under French control, only Catholic immigrants were admitted and the quasi-feudal system of seigneurialism was implemented. After the Seven Years War, New France was ceded to or ‘conquered’ by the British. At this point, most of the non-religious elite evacuated back to France, leaving primarily the roughly 65,000 clergy and habitants to be joined by the small Anglophone commercial class that held significant power. However, the 1774 Quebec Act protected French culture, language and religion - providing significant reins for the clerical elite to mold this society under formal British rule. Quebec was cut off from France during the Age of Enlightenment and the French Revolution. As such, New France developed on its own path, further hardened by and resentful of English domination. In this juncture, the Catholic Church embodied the French Language and culture, as seen with the significance of the Catholic Priest and intellectual Lionel Grioulx, the ‘father of Quebec identity’, who took his cues from De Maistre rather than Rousseau.

Quebec historiography has been controversial on the specifics on Grioulx’s nationalism, particularly on anti-semitism. However, while liberalism existed, Wiseman is adamant that there was a clear feudal-cum-‘corporatist’ vein. As late as 1935, the issue of habitants and seigneurialism was debated in the provincial parliament. Likewise, the habitants, while nationalistic, were nonplussed  by representative reform and its tax implications during the Lower Canada Rebellion. Likewise, Quebec was the last province to make schooling compulsory and French Canadians rarely did secular schooling until the 1950s. For Wiseman, these all suggest ambivalence towards English liberalism. It did not help that the English elite embodied a commercial and liberal ethos. Perhaps a more obvious tell is the lack of elite disapproval towards the nationalist Vichy Regime, Portugal’s Salazar, or Spain’s Franco. Quebec also clearly took policy cues from the corporatist model, with its syndicats and caisses populaires. Quebec’s clergy, unlike the Social Gospel Preachers out west, preoccupied itself with circling the wagons from outsiders to maintain internal solidarity.

However, after the Quiet Revolution in the 1950s, Quebec underwent a drastic cultural shift and an awakening of nationalism. After rapid secularisation, the focus shifted from the Church to the state. Those aforementioned syndicats shifted from being some of the most conservative in North America to becoming some of the most radical. Likewise, the previous wariness of state intrusion flipped to a ‘nation-building project’, resulting in one of the most powerful subnational states in the OECD. In this sense, Wiseman argues that the state is now the ‘organic core’ of Quebec identity, being seen both as an important cultural entity, and as a vehicle to further strengthen it. Quebecers, back in 2008 at least, were the most proud of their government. Which is a bit interesting given what is said about their healthcare system.

Culturally, Quebecois society is known to have a European sensibility in social and cultural matters. After the Quiet Revolution, Quebec went from having some of the highest birth rates to some of the lowest. Cohabitation rates rose rapidly with formal marriage falling. Wiseman notes their cultural disposition as ‘extroverted traditionalists’ who combine family legacy and tradition, with permissiveness and hedonism. They are also more socially liberal than both English Canadians and Americans. In this sense, the formerly feudal fragment is more liberal than the iberal ones - at least in a ‘bon vivant’ sense.

For these reasons, Quebec political culture has been centred on nationalism since the Quiet Revolution. Over time, the political factions consolidated into a federalist party and nationalist wing. The Quebec Liberals have become the federalist choice. On the other end, there have been various third parties with varying types of nationalism, such as the socialist but sovereignist QC Solidaire, the centre-left but sovereignist PQ, the defunct neoliberal but autonomist ADQ, and the now centre-right but just nationalist CAQ.

At the federal level, its premier is often the representative of a people, society, and to some, a nation. At times, Quebec has no qualms about constitutional or legal hardball, and often public opinion hardens in the face of criticism by the rest of the country. In contrast to western resentment, this is driven less by concerns of the terms, and more a mix of fear and confidence of a distinct society in foreign land.

IV - 20th Century Labourists and Europeans bring History to the West

"I think a stalwart peasant in a sheepskin coat, born on the soil, whose forefathers have been farmers for ten generations, with a stout wife and a half-dozen children, is good quality " Sir Clifford Sifton, 1922

“THERE is talk, also, about getting a large number of people from the manufacturing towns of England and Scotland. We do not want mechanics from the Clyde—riotous, turbulent, and with an insatiable appetite for whiskey” Clifford Sifton, 1922

If we left it with Reformers and Loyalists, Canada would have been two French and English societies in North America isolated from Europe’s grand ideological struggles and history with a capital H. Unfortunately, History did indeed arrive. It arrived both as a drunk Scotch mechanic and as a waddling peasant family. Worse for Gad Horowitz’s thesis, it was not the Loyalist heritage that brought social democracy, it was the immigration from the Old World already under the spectre of socialism.

Prairies

As the dominion expanded into the frontier, British and European immigrants flooded the west in the late 19th and early 20th century. The former settled across the prairies, British Columbia and parts of Ontario. The latter settled more squarely in the prairies as they came primarily for agriculture. From the turn of the 20th century, the two prairie provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan exploded from 100,000 to 2 million in roughly forty years and its settled land rose from 10 million to 70 million acres in roughly the same time. The country overall was going through a massive wave of immigration, with a migrant for every 18 Canadians.

Stuck between East and West, Manitoba was founded by Ontario transplants, and often has elements of both Ontario and the Prairies. Historically, the legacy of these Ontario transplants were found in the party’s Conservatives. This initial population was soon swamped by immigration. From just 1901 to 1915, Winnipeg quadrupled in size. Many of these were British socialists who brought labour politics from Britain. Ironically, at the time, Canada’s own ‘red scare’ focused on the ‘swarthier’ European immigrants but much of the agitation came from these Britons. Wiseman notes that almost every labour leader associated with the 1919 General Strike was a British-born immigrant. While the papers glossed over that fact, the federal government did not, amending legislation to allow for the deportation without trial of any British citizens not born in Canada who were charged. Of course, there was some truth to this stereotyping of the Central Europeans as European, particularly Jewish and Ukrainian immigrants well acquainted with these movements back home were enough of a latent base for the actual Communist Party in Winnipeg

In Saskatchewan, a lot of Socialist Britons landed up in actual rural communities (which was basically all of the province) as opposed to cities elsewhere. and so these groups had much more of an influence. Despite its lack of industry and being the most agricultural province after Prince Edward Island, social democracy of a populist and agrarian bent took hold in Saskatchewan. As noted before, agrarian organisations were important political players and it seems that many of these socialist Britons ended up working or leading them in Saskatchewan. Furthermore, Saskatchewan’s prairies were further populated by Continental europeans. Wiseman notes that in the 1920s, half of the province's ridings were majority Continental European descent.

These groups started off deferring to status-quo parties. However, as the immigrants settled and its descendants became more restless, they became less politically deferential. As seen in two important post-war Canadian traditions, multiculturalism and western populism, these immigrants wanted more recognition and influence in both the national narrative and political developments. At the time, the CCF-NDP capitalised on this, driven by their ethnic outreach. For example, the party’s manifesto was translated into German, Ukrainian, French, and Hungarian. Likewise, its majority of delegates were non-Anglo-Saxon, in stark contrast to the overly Anglo-Saxon Liberal and Conservative delegates. At this point, the Europeans switched from the old Ontario-driven parties to the British-born socialists. Part of this was due to the fact that many of these people were well aware and acquainted with socialism back home and indeed sympathetic to it. While actual communism was still taboo, social democracy became more acceptable to many Catholics. This realignment ended up leading to the CCF-cum-NDP’s victory and first social democratic government in 1944.

British Columbia

British labourists were also the most formative group in British Columbia but unlike their prairie counterparts who came to farming, The hinterlands and coal, hardrock, and forestry-based economy of British Columbia gave it a militant feel. Many industry towns were full of young men without families, often of recent British extraction, who faced isolated conditions and work accidents. Between 1871 and 1921, less than 1 of 7 of these Britons in the province were even middle class. Wiseman notes that while often American political influences crept into Canada’s farm and liberal movements, British Columbian labour movements provided cues to their American counterparts in the West Coast. Britishness was so correlated with this left-wing outlook in Canada that it was no surprise that Tommy Douglas’ foray to federal politics was in this province, where British-born residents were the majority as of 1920. The agricultural make-up and geography of the province also inhibited the formative influence of farm groups, with political expression being left primarily  to industrial labour unions or business interests.

Wiseman views British Columbia as Canada’s Australia. Both were settled in the nineteenth century with an upstart character, both were Pacific expressions of Edwardian Britain culture, both had gold rushes and resource-based economies scattered across the hinterlands foundational to its political and cultural ethos. More importantly, both are offshoots of Labourist and Industrial Britain. Indeed, both also were magnets for vast amounts of initially low-skilled Asian immigration.

The resulting political culture was one of factional and class-tinged conflict between left-wing labour and right-wing entrepreneurial classes. As late as in a 1980s survey, two-thirds of the province said that provincial elections are contests between free enterprise and socialism”, which Wiseman suggests is one of the sharpest left-right bipolarities in English North America. As in the prairies, much of this was driven by British emigres and migrants. In 1941, nine of the fourteen provincial CCF-NDP representatives were British immigrants. As in the prairies, much of the non-socialist forces were often either Ontario extraction or sometimes American. These left-right battles meant that the anti-socialist forces consolidated very quickly. Prior to the current BC Liberal Party (which is definitely not ‘anti-socialist’ in other regions), Social Credit - a right-wing populist party that had both Albertan and federal purchase - was the CCF’s main sparring partner, and before them, Liberal-Conservative Coalition governments. This created some odd bedfellows, as Wiseman points out that one Social Credit Caucus included a former Federal Liberal minister, a future Conservative Prime Minister, and a future Social Credit premier-turned conspiracy theorist. Now, the BC Liberals itself include former Conservatives, Liberals, Reform, and Social Credit members.

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The modern legacy of this Labourist Wave is clearly the NDP and the social democratic movement. This wave in the context of electoral and institutional federalism, along with the sequencing of settlement, resulted in Sasketwachan having the first ‘social democratic’ government in North America. After his success as the CCF premier of Saskatchewan, the federal growth of its viable third party was driven by Tommy Douglas. However, to take an aside from this book, it appears that the ‘arrival’ of social democracy has led to elections west of Ontario to have an ideological and partisan tenor characterised by social democrats and anti-socialist factions fighting it out for government as seen in places like Britain or Australia. In Manitoba, the main anti-sociaist faction is the Conservatives, in Saskatchewan it is the Conservatives-turned Saskatchewan Party, and in British Columbia the Liberals. This ‘return to history’ and alignment with the other world’s electoral conflict has been in motion since those Clyde mechanics came to Canada.

NDP is the only party in Canada that has formal linkages between its provincial and its federal counterparts. It is a party of cadres, fitting for a movement started by a bunch of British social gospel preachers and socialist intellectuals. The Liberals and Conservatives certainly have their own linkages, and politicians and staffers often switch between jurisdictions. However, it is more informal. For example, the recent Nova Scotia premier made it clear that he wasn’t a card-carrying member of the Federal Conservatives, given the province’s ‘red tory’ disposition. Jean Charest, once the leader of the Federal Conservatives, was also a Quebec Liberal Premier for almost a decade after. In contrast, as various NDP governments came into power across provinces, party members would often take jobs either in cabinet or behind the scenes to help build ‘socialism in one province’ once they won power.

The modern legacy of the European labourist wave was also the legacy of CCF-NDP above. But more importantly, the Europeans forced the traditional parties to adapt. As noted, the CCF ended up conducting explicit ethnic outreach to these communities, predating the sort of outreach now commonplace to Canadian politics. In addition to strengthening prairie populism, as Ukrainian and other European Canadians became more prominent, they were adamant on having their role in settling the West and founding the country. This resulted in the multiculturalism plank of Canadian policy and identity today. Secondly, parties like the Conservatives learnt to evolve and went from a once Race-proud WASP party to one that nominated Diefenbaker, who himself weakened Englishness and Frenchness as core Canadian planks with his unhyphenated-Canadian and folksy spiel. Diefenbaker was able to take the Prairies (to this day) for the Conservatives with his European heritage, focus on progressive-leaning policies, and unabashed Canadian nationalism.

V - the Other Distinct Society: 20th Century Americans in Alberta

“The spirit of Christ has gripped me. I am only seeking to feed, clothe and shelter starving people. If that is what you call a dictator, then I am one” - William Abehart to a reporter

“No power known to man,” he wrote, “can force on seven hundred and fifty thousand people . . . laws which they have made up their minds they will not endure—and that is the position I have to deal with here.” 1953 Macleans’ quoting Abehart’s letter to Prime Minister Mackenzie King

Conservatives often have concerns about migrants from foreign cultures coming into a country and bringing their ways, disrupting the existing order and causing political and social strife. Ironically, that is how Wiseman believes we got the most conservative and raucous part of the country.

Well, after the initial Ontarians founding of the province, Alberta, as well as parts of British Columbia and Saskatchewan, was settled by a large number of American immigrants starting in the 1890s. As the American frontier itself was spent, Alberta was the last agricultural frontier left in North America. The Canadian government once again opened up for immigration for people to settle and cultivate the land. In particular, Americans from the Great Plains were particularly sought given their background and knowledge. They settled in primarily Alberta but also parts of Saskatchewan and the interior of British Columbia.

 In 1911, American-born Albertans were the plurality of the province (22%) and Wiseman argues they were most likely the largest concentration of Americans outside the US. Some of the  Britons in the previous section did come to Alberta but they settled in cities such as Edmonton (or ‘Redmonton’ for Albertans) and Calgary. Americans were the main political constituents in rural ridings. Just as in the prairies and Ontario, farm organisations were important political vehicles. While Grits and Brits led the Ontario and Prairies farm organisations respectively, Americans familiar with the Homestead Movement were influential in Alberta’s farm organisations and left their populist imprint. In contrast to Saskatchewan farmers’ support for Canadian Wheat Board a province over, Wiseman notes that the American liberalism meant that Albertan farmers wanted voluntary pools as early as the 1920s, seeing it as a ‘denial of freedom’. After this initial farming imprint, Americans continued to have influence, this time as post-war oil and gas executives as the province turned to post-war resource-driven growth. From 1955 to 1970, 9 of the 15 presidents of Calgary’s exclusive Petroleum Club were Americans, a reception that would be harder to find in other provinces.

Wiseman notes that this American liberalism had little familiarity with the tory institutions of Canada. They were disdainful of the strong parliamentary executive and saw parliamentary government akin to state dictatorship. Even the Progressives, the previous left-leaning populist force that ran its course across Canada, was injected with this American zeal in Alberta - primarily by the Missourian Henry Wise Wood. This formative leader of Alberta was so populist that he refused the premiership and a knighthood. This influence further extended within institutions as the provincial government once refused to appear before a Royal Commission and instead addressed its brief to ‘The Sovereign People of Canada’. The quote at the outset by Abehart, as well as a caucus fracas about the coronation, suggested a distinct cultural difference from both Loyalist and Labourist-derived regions in Canada regarding democracy.  

If Ontario resembles the Anglican Church with its ordered liberty and the Prairies/British Columbia characterised by social gospel movement and its United Churches, then it is safe to say that Alberta has the zeal of Evangelical and fundamentalist Christian movements, something that is more common here than in other provinces. While Wood was a Progressive who focused on social gospel, the influential Premier Abehart was decidedly and explicitly theological. As seen in the quote from Aberhart above, this meant rhetoric and policies tinged with spiritual zeal and populism, defying the left-right spectrum. For this reason, the Albertan form of Social Credit did well in Alberta’s evangelical and rural districts. Apparently, the Scottish founder of Social Credit publicly disowned Alberta's experiment, where it seemed to be most popular.

In contrast to British Columbia’s partisan turbulence, Albertan political history has been driven by various populist-third party dynasties led by conservative charismatic leaders in power for long periods of time.After the initial Liberal reign common to all provinces until 1921, Alberta had the left-populist United Farmers for 14 years, followed by 36 years of the conservative populist Social Credit, then the Progressive Conservatives for 44 years who fought with Ottawa,a brief interlude with the NDP for 4 years, and now the United Conservatives. In comparison, Ontario had a Liberal, Conservative, and NDP government right after each other, from 1985 to 1995.

***

The obvious legacy of this wave is the right-wing populist streak of Canadian politics found primarily out west. In an era of megaconsitutional debates and regional resentment, the Reform-Alliance party had significant influence in national debates. Wiseman notes that like Ontarians, Albertans are much more seized with federal elections in terms of turnout but it seems to be for the opposite reason, in that they identify so little with the federal government. Provincially, Wiseman also believes that only Quebec and Alberta tend to see their premiers not as just stewards but as their societal representatives on the national and sometimes international stage. Albertan premiers often fought with the federal government over issues such as powers of disallowance, the National Energy Policy, the megaconsitutional debates, and environmental policy more recently. It is the belief that Confederation is unfair that leads to threats of secession, a sort of “you left us no choice” response.

When this western populism merged with the Progressive Conservatives and prevented vote-splitting, the main legacy is the obvious tension in outlook and political base of two traditions of the Party. For example, it's interesting to compare how the federal Liberals and Conservatives have dealt with their times in the wilderness in the last two decades. The Liberals, after the Chretien era, kept looking to find their perfect mix of technocrat and mass appeal, until they just doubled down on picking another actual Trudeau. The Conservatives, in contrast, have had tough political debates about the ‘soul of the party’ and what Canadian conservatism is and should be. In what should be quite familiar for Americans, these party contests are often about how best to balance loyalty to the base and ‘electability’.

VI - Thoughts

Instead of Fischer’s anthropological lens that looks at different tribes of Borderers and Puritans, Wiseman takes his cue from Louis Hartz and sees Canada being populated by  different phases of English ‘History’ embodied in the socioeconomic and political makeup of waves of  immigration. Instead of looking at folkways, Wiseman focuses on elites, media, academia, and institutions. Wiseman is explicit and indeed intentional on how distinct groups have led to political dynamics in Canada.

Politically, it seems there are some elements of path dependence even in the way the parties act at the federal level, based on Wiseman’s different waves. Like their distant UK Labour cousins, The now-urban federal NDP is relegated to a ‘progressive’ urban party and doesn’t know what to do now after its working-class base fled. Is this due to the same lineage or is that the fate of all labour parties? The Conservatives post-merger seem to place a premium on the base and the ideological content for their nominations. I do wonder how much of this is driven by that American imprint, as much as its conservatism. The Liberals occupy an odd niche as the historical centrist party that has brought together various coalitions in English and French Canada. Is this something that is driven by historical lineage of the Reformers who battled Loyalists? Hard to say, but as early as Wilfred Laurier, the party has historically been more willing to distance itself from Britishness.

The book was written in 2008 and at times, it reads like a ‘survey textbook for senior undergraduate or first-year PhD students’. The fact that it is an entry into a bitter academic debate makes this tone odder. Aside from relying on census statistics to show the impact of immigration, Wiseman focuses on historical case studies. It also precedes the ‘deep roots’ or ‘historical persistence’ research fads, which means this might be easy pickings for some graduate students to take up and exploit some cool instrumental variables.

In terms of the argument itself, one key issue with Wiseman’s thesis is that Saskatchewan, and to some extent Manitoba for the last decade has been run by conservative parties not so dissimilar in tone and platform of Alberta, namely the Saskatchewan Party. One would forgive Wiseman in 2008 as the Saskatchewan Party came into power in 2007. It would be curious to see why the former socialist stronghold known for its cooperatives and land schemes is now home to this conservative populism. One answer is probably the natural resource boom that these provinces have had. Another may be some sort of ‘Albertanization’ of western and rural populism, driven by the same forces causing a ‘Southernification’ of Rural Americans.  Or perhaps, the same working-class and populist realignments that flipped once-Labour heartlands in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe are happening in Saskatchewan.

The other obvious gap was the lack of focus on the non-European inhabitants, whether it was the Indigenous or the various immigrants from non-European immigration. A significant share of the Canadian population is foreign born and/or what was once called Visible Minorities. One could shrug it off and say that path dependence and founder effects do what they do. Once institutions are founded by charter groups, they are often set in motion. A founder culture can be doubly useful in a ‘second-best’ scenario when you have competing cultures, as what happened with the polyglot Prairies.

Another interesting idea would be to integrate this post-1960 wave into this story, which Wiseman hints at when he does address this wave. If you let me torture this History-in-pieces metaphor, this multi-ethnic wave seems to be an End-of-History wave. Wiseman notes that the promised land for these new immigrants was not abundant farmland or classlessness, but human rights, prosperity, and tolerance. In other words, these immigrants aren’t coming here to move history forward, they see that it has ended in Canada and they are coming here to join it. They aren’t escaping Europe going through transformational changes, they are escaping places that fail to live up to the Fukuyamian promise of peace, order, and good government. 

This wave is best seen in the 905 suburbs or the Greater Toronto Area, home to a melange of people from Asia, Southern, Balkan and Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. In terms of revealed preference, they appear materialist, eschewing the post-material amenities of urban life for quiet suburbs full of detached homes. Politically, these diverse suburbs are often seen as prized swing voters, driven less by ideology and more so by bread-and-butter issues. For example, only one federal NDP MP has been sent from that area. There is some inclination towards the Federal Liberals among visible minorities, but this does not seem to strongly hold at the provincial level. Importantly, this wave is characterised by a strong attachment to Canada, rather than with the province or region in contrast to the main four founding waves. This wave has had less impact on rules of the game given their late arrival, but they did present electoral incentives that all three parties continue to respond to.

As noted, I started writing this review around the time of the renewed political tensions from the trucker blockades, with more than enough fuel from the Carbon Tax debate of the last five years. For the third time in a row in the last four years, Conservatives are once again nominating a leader, with their western base increasingly frustrated that their ‘overtures’ to Eastern Canada are falling on deaf ears. As I finish writing this, the Liberals and NDP just announced a ‘supply and confidence’ agreement to keep the Liberals in power until 2025. Regardless of one’s view on the agreement or parties involved, this development may accelerate polarisation trends already underway. I am not too sure about what this all means for Canadian political culture going forward but I have a hunch that it won’t be quaint, if the provincial areas where the NDP have real clout is any indication. Depending on where you stand, and perhaps who once stood where you do now, this could be a good thing or bad thing.