Review Radical Tories: The Conservative Tradition in Canada -By Caleb Silveira

One of the more frustrating elements of journeying into the thoroughfare of Red (or High) Toryism is the fact that this ideology is hard to plot on the proverbial political map. Often having to mediate between policies contemporaneously considered to be either left or right, the individual Red Tory can range widely in his beliefs. Some may put more stress on welfare policies making Toryism seem affable to socialism, while others may emphasize social conservatism. However, most Red Tories are consciously aware of their own responsibility and accountability in maintaining a constant effort not to deify or demonize either leaning. An investigation into such a position can (and will) often be perplexing, to say the least.

Misinterpretation is common, but the gold to be mined is plenty and well-worth a wayfarer’s journey into the deep wells that this tradition has to offer. It is in this way that I wish to compare two texts: Radical Tories: The Conservative Tradition in Canada by Charles P. B. Taylor (not to be confused with the contemporary philosopher of the same name), and Searching for Canada, an anthology written and composed by a number of well-versed Red Tories. While Taylor, an ex-liberal intrigued by the philosophic, political and theological traditions of Red Toryism, must be given credit for his exploratory account of traditional Canadian conservatism, some misinterpretations are present in his work. Meanwhile, the authors of the latter book present the Red Tory tradition in its purest form, which is useful for filling the gaps in Taylor’s thought through a careful juxtaposition which shall be undertaken here.

I must first stress, however: I do not mean to be too hard on Taylor. It is clear that he is reacting to a type of economic liberalism; a type that too often de-stresses the importance of the individual at the expense of particularities found in local cultures. Taylor’s father, E. P. Taylor, was the owner of the Windfields Farm, one of the most successful racehorse breeding grounds in all of Canada. Hence, a reaction to the purely economically driven life of the father is to be expected from the son in many ways. Much of what is seen in Taylor’s work is a genuine piece of investigation into the Red Tory tradition and consequently serves as an excellent primer for the intellectually curious.

Taylor structures his work by dedicating each chapter to an important Red Tory thinker and, if he was able to visit any of these individuals in person, also provides an account of his encounters with them before outlining their respective philosophies. As for those he could not visit (on account of them having died before his time), Taylor instead includes a drawn-out connection to a place they frequented or lived. This structure provides excellent insight not only into the personal character and contexts of important Red Tory thinkers, but personalizes the influence many of them had on Taylor himself.

In contrast, Searching for Canada takes an entirely different approach. The text’s intention is to further flesh out a Red Tory perspective as it applies to Canada. Specifically, the text is largely an attempt to identify the subtle differences between American liberalism and Canadian Toryism. In sum, whereas manifest destiny is the literal conquest of borders, American liberalism (its companion), likewise conquers and subverts other forms of thought. American liberalism, although ironically critical of colonization and imperialism, itself colonizes other ways of thinking. Searching for Canada therefore explores the increasingly nuanced Canadian rapprochement of the dominant American liberal ethos. Each chapter, then, strives to look at Tory thinkers, ideas, and their relations to other groups (whether ideological, racial, indigenous, etc.) In this way, Searching for Canada is deeply concerned with the individual, his role in the community and the state of the nation—one that must be kept separate and independent of an increasingly dominant American liberal ethos exclusively fixed on a humanist conception of individual freedom. Like Taylor, the text serves as a probe. Unlike Taylor, however, Searching for Canada is less of a survey of thinkers, instead delving into more significant branches of Tory thought.

At this point it is necessary to reduce the scope of the contrast that will be made. In each of these texts, a chapter is dedicated to two Tory thinkers in particular: Stephen Leacock and W. L. Morton. I will contrast these two chapters to highlight their commonalities and some of Taylor’s misinterpretations. For the more we read of Taylor’s work, the more we realize that there sits in him a strong liberal disposition. However, there is also to be found in his work certain reactions to economic liberalism and alternate forms of the liberal framework that pull Taylor in different directions at different times. In this way, Taylor’s work feels more like a genuine account of one’s political evolution than a strict outlining of a particular philosophy.

When Taylor writes about Stephen Leacock, he is correct about three things but also has a substantial missight that undergirds the entire chapter. Firstly, Taylor’s chapter correctly assumes that Leacock’s political activism and inherent nationalism is more significant than the mere humorist read that is applied to him today. In fact, Taylor does not stress the writings of Leacock as a humorist whatsoever and instead focuses exclusively on his tour in defense of Canadian nationalism and his political battles against influential liberals such as Wilfrid Laurier and Mackenzie King. Secondly, Taylor is also correct about Leacock’s view of an equal imperialistic agenda in which neither an entirely Anglophilic loyalism nor union with the United States will fulfill Canada’s ultimate destiny, seeing them both as detrimental to Canadian nationalism. Taylor states: “[Leacock] rejects both independence and union with the United States. Instead, Canada can best fulfill its destiny as an equal partner in Europe” [1]. Thirdly, Leacock’s imperialism was innately more profound than just a mere equal presence with other European nations. Leacock’s imperialism was utterly humanist:

“[Leacock] is advocating a higher imperialism: ‘…the imperialism of the plain man at the plough and the clerk in the counting house, the imperialism of any decent citizen that demand this country its proper place in the councils of the Empire and in the destiny of the world. In this sense, imperialism means but the realization of a Greater Canada, the recognition of a wider citizenship.” [2]

Taylor’s mistake, however, comes in the form of a misrepresentation of the liberal establishment in the early twentieth century. Leacock was fully aware of the rising waves of economic liberalism that were ebbing into the working class and wealthy elite. He also understood what a purely economic view—a globalist view—of monetary gain would mean for Canadian independence and culture, as he witnessed the dispossession of those at the bottom of the liberal economic chain. His dissertation “The Doctrine of Laissez-Faire” was an intellectual critique of the origins of the free market and viewed this new arising tendency as the selling-out of the nation for profit. Leacock compared this type of doctrine to religious dogma. [3] It is consequently unfortunate that Taylor spends no time reflecting on this deeper revelation. In fact, Taylor often misrepresents liberal rulership as being “obsessive in asserting Canada’s independence from Britain. [But] generally oblivious to the threat of American domination.” [4] One might argue the inverse reality is true: Laurier and King were fully aware of such threats, being continentalists open to the American ownership of Canadian businesses and capital-producing enterprises. Taylor’s standing on this is muddied, for when talking of Laurier, he comes closer to the true liberal position: “Laurier advocated reciprocity with the United States.” [5] In this regard, in Taylor there lies a confusion on what the projected end of an economic liberal is. The reader should remember, too, that Mackenzie King was a darling of the United States; that is to say, he was sympathetic to the American liberal ethos.

The chapter on Leacock in Searching for Canada, “Stephen Leacock: Pioneer of the Red Tory Tradition” is a much deeper dive into his life. The chapter, written by Ron Dart, tracks Leacock throughout many stages of his life. In particular, there are five sections.

The first is an introduction which outlines Leacock’s youth and early economic struggles. The second is dedicated to the modern appeal of Leacock as a humorist. A critique is provided to fully work out why so many marginalize Leacock’s nationalism to exclusively focus on his humor. In a deeper way, this section demonstrates how Leacock was an activist and nationalist of the highest caliber. In this regard, the section is close to what Taylor is attempting to emphasize about Leacock; however, whereas Taylor merely talks of Leacock’s activism, Dart draws the distinction and suggests a connection between Leacock the humorist and Leacock the humanist. As he writes: “Laughter did, indeed, hold both its sides when Leacock was read and heard, but the laughter was laced with much social commentary and political bite at its centre and source.” [6] The third section outlines Leacock’s activism in his earlier days and the factors that drove Leacock to produce his doctoral thesis as one of the leading critiques of “the conventional liberal economic wisdom of the time…that the marketplace, laissez-faire and the unseen hand would bring about the good and just society.” [7] Indeed, such religious dogma, as Leacock saw it, was equitable with the dissolution of the Canadian nation. The fourth section focuses more on Leacock’s middle years, with Dart seeking to flesh out and remove the veil of Leacock the humorist to expose the humanist within. This is not to suggest that Leacock was not wary of the potential for state abuse, but rather that he saw a stronger federal government as the primary defense against the homogenization of Canada and the United States. Whereas the encroachment of American industrial expansion might subvert more “Canadian” ways of thinking, Leacock felt that without a stronger federal presence, provincial disunity would allow American industry and liberal influence to take root. The fifth section follows the final years of Leacock’s activism. As American industrial influence grew to the detriment of Britain, battered by the calamities of the First World War, it was clear that the latter was no longer the world’s only hegemonic power. Leacock saw the rising individualism present in an American liberal ethos and continued to strive against it in the upper echelons and ivory towers of academia. It should also be mentioned that through his dissertation, Leacock was evidently aware of a growing and impending American liberal threat as early as 1903. His work The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice (1920) serves as an excellent addendum since Leacock is trying to demonstrate the issues of far-right and far-left politics. It is also a public reflection, much like his dissertation, and is quick to part a better path between capitalism and communism. Dart finishes the final section with this apt summary:

“It is in this blend of community life and the organic connection between community life and national unity that the Red Tory stands; in standing in such a place, the classical [Red] Tory resists two evils: corporate and competitive capitalism as embodied in multinational corporations that undermine the ability of the State to provide for its citizens and anarchist individualism that so deconstructs both the self and community that nothing but fragmentation dominates the day. Needless to say, the individualism of personalist anarchism feeds straight and centre into corporate planning. The more citizens are both fragmented, disconnected, uprooted and depoliticized, the more easily the power of the corporation can take over. Leacock, as a classical Tory, resisted such a move in his day. Tories, true to the lineage of Leacock, cannot help but do the same thing in our day.” [8]

In many ways, it is disappointing that Taylor did not fully grasp the full measure of the Red Tory tradition present in Leacock. Yet, the attempt was admirable and there is much to be gleaned from his surface-level investigation. The other chapter that these two books have in common is their respective sections on W. L. Morton, a Canadian Red Tory historian who was particularly interested in defining exactly what Canadian conservatism was trying to conserve. Like Leacock, Morton also viewed American industrialism as the greatest threat to Canadian sovereignty.

There is little doubt that Morton, for Taylor, served as a bridge from liberal individualism—often prone to anarchism—to an older ethos of conservatism which valued heritage, community and the commonweal. This being said, however, some misinterpretations of the Red Tory tradition can be found in Taylor’s chapter on Morton. For one, Taylor conflates a Western Canadian conservatism as something that is alien to the Laurentian Red Tory tradition. As he states at the beginning of the chapter: “I had been told there was a Western conservatism which had deep roots and a different flavour from that of Creighton’s Anglo-Toryism,” of which he cites Morton as a notable advocate of this claim. [9] One should ask—how can this be? Does the Red Tory view not insist on the fact that Canada’s reaction against the United States, and concomitant securities installed—such as socialized medicine, welfare programs, and public subsidies—ensure protection from American financial takeover and, by extension, protect against a dominating American liberal ethos? Does this not make a Tory Canada innately conservative as a whole? As in, its reaction to its American liberalism forces an older notion of Canadian national identity to remain vigilant; therefore, it can be said in holding these concomitant securities a tory Canada holds to a tory way of being.

Yet, later in the chapter, Taylor contradicts himself and turns back to a Red Tory way of thinking. Commenting that “Morton espoused the welfare state, he was not only demolishing all those scarifying stereotypes of the Canadian conservative as arch reactionary… He was also, I realized, approaching the domain of that particular Canadian species, the Red Tory.” [10] One of the problems in discussing Morton is that I see in Morton a turn away from a prior and internal dominating liberal way of living life to a conservative way of life arrived at via hard and conscious thought. In such a way, Morton is a liberal who genuflected to the necessary preservation of the community and the maintenance that such an act would require. As such, Morton believes that liberalism has a place in the conservative tradition, but it cannot be the dominating voice in the establishment. In this mindset, Morton echoes George Grant who once commented: “Liberalism was, in origin, criticism of the old established order. Today, it is the voice of the establishment.” This may beg the question: does a liberal critique himself as he does with other traditions? My answer, clearly not. Highly influenced by the English tradition and his agrarian childhood, it is likely that Morton would have been all too aware of the homogenizing effects of urbanized and industrial society. In doing so, the Red Tory position should be an affable tradition to even liberals, though conservative it is, to house those who reject a dominating liberal frame of mind and adopt the broader concern for the environment, the people and the good that best serves both. Taylor, too, seemed to realize that the best way to achieve a Red Tory way of life is the dethronement of the dominant rising liberal ethos to a penultimate position and the adoption of an ultimate concern for neighbour, community and the sovereignty of nationhood.

In addition, Taylor seems to hover in and around the influences on Morton, rather than Morton’s thoughts, views, and conceptualizations of what constitutes a good life. In some ways, this has a positive effect on the thoughts present in the book. For instance, Taylor realizes that Morton had been greatly influenced by his childhood as a farm hand, and intimate proximity with hard working men, toiling with plow and soil. “There was something measured and deliberate about Morton—the way he spoke and the way he moved—something that seemed more rural than academic.” [11] Further, “pride in his roots and pride in his province—both were still evident.” [12] Concern for his ancestors and antecedents are staple to Taylor’s interpretation of Morton. The geography, harsh climate, and the prairie tendency of maintained tradition, all of which profoundly influenced Morton, stressed an organic conservatism. In Morton, Taylor sees “the mutual obligation of all citizens within an organic society [as] rejecting the liberal individualism of the American revolutionaries.” Taylor continues: “Instead of severing their roots, Canadians had elected to build on those traditions, including allegiance to the monarchy, in order to fulfill a particular destiny.” [13]

When Taylor does address Morton’s political thought, he typically addresses the question from an angle that compares Canada to the United States. For instance, he highlights Morton’s belief that Canada rejects the American creed of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and instead relies on peace, order and good government. It is assumed that under the latter framework the aforementioned American tenets may be achieved, but it is only under the latter and a loyalty to the Crown that Canada is able to exceed the limitations of an American social compact. Instead, the broader allegiance to the Crown provides a wide variety of diversity because it is not a ‘social compact,’ but rather a society of allegiance. [14] As Morton states: “One of the blessings of the Canadian way of life is that there is no Canadian way of life, much less two, but a unity under the Crown admitting a thousand diversities.” [15] A society of allegiance, then, was not only a social and political necessity for Canadian national existence, but a prevailing and dominating national ethos that existed over attractive republican institutions, and American notions of liberty.

In contrast to Taylor’s largely humanist and exploratory account, the chapter “History and the Conservative Tradition in Canada” by Professor Norman Knowles in Searching for Canada looks closely at Morton’s conservatism. Instead of contextualizing Leacock’s life, struggles, activism, and achievements, Knowles looks at Morton as a historian and how history, his blue-collar origins, and Canadian heritage influenced his particular brand of Red Toryism.

Morton’s conservatism was multifaceted. In one sense, as Taylor pointed out, his attachment to the land gave Morton an important sense of place and loyalty to the community. Furthermore, after the Second World War, Morton became suspicious of the implications of post-war prosperity on the Canadian ethical framework and identity. In other words, “Morton…began to question the assumptions of progress, materialism and individualism that dominated Canadian political discourse and to present an alternative ethic; an ethic that valued continuity and tradition, community and civility, freedom and diversity.” [16] In this way, Knowles suggests that Morton possessed a unique awareness of the civility that undergirded the everyday Canadian citizen and that one of Morton’s main concerns was the effect that consumerism would have on the continuity of a more Canadian Tory way of life. To add a brief contrast between Taylor and Knowles, I will start with their different interpretations of Morton. Taylor claims that Morton’s conservatism lies in his rejection of a primarily liberal world view in exchange for a more inclusive conceptualization of local and broader Canadian communities, their particularities, an undergirding Anglo-Canadian tradition, and continuity of between different generations of Canadians. Contrariwise, Knowles asserts more stringently that “underlying Morton’s conservatism was an appreciation of the limitations of human nature.” [17]

Knowles makes the distinction that Morton was also convinced people themselves were of ‘absolute value’ and that such value was lost in the pursuit of a purely materialist view of human nature. Morton stringently suggested that human freedom “was very different from the laissez-faire freedom of the capitalist.” [18] He also believed that freedom was an absolute necessity for the human condition, otherwise “without freedom, in any kind of servitude or oppression, the humanity of man is diminished.” [19] We can clearly draw lines between Leacock and Morton here. Both share their Anglican faith, political and economic views, and an utterly humanist vision of life in a political world. In an effort to preserve the best of a hereditary English tradition, Canadian civility, diversity, and freedom; whilst not becoming too Anglophilic, Morton became an advocate of the constitutional principles deeply rooted in Canadian history. “Morton maintained that constitutional monarchy saved Canada from the excesses of popular sovereignty evident in the United States…In a pluralistic country such as Canada ‘only the objective reality of a monarchy and the permanent force of monarchial institutions could form the centre and pivot of unity.” [20] In this vein of thought Taylor makes the same discovery, however, he never goes further.

Knowles closes his coverage on Morton by looking at his concerns for mass society and the rising pressures of technological imposition. Like George Grant, one of his contemporaries, Morton possessed a shared concern that technology itself would provide a ‘false freedom.’ Unlike Grant, however, who had pessimistic tendencies, Morton was convinced that:

“Humans could never be simply isolated and atomistic individuals because they were fundamentally social and moral beings and the products of tradition and inheritance. ‘Men and societies,’ Morton insisted, ‘are moral beings, not mechanical things, are not to be invented, made in laboratories, or repaired, but are to be cultivated as the organic entities they are.” [21]

In this sense, Knowles is fundamentally more aware of the humanist tendencies in Morton as a historian, political thinker, and philosopher.

In summary, both Taylor’s Radical Tories and the anthology Searching for Canada deserve thorough and contemplative reads but for different reasons. Much of the humanity and character of the political thinkers discussed are met living and first-hand in Taylor. He provides a window to the person, the soul, and heart of the Red Tory way of life. Taylor’s work is fundamentally a good primer for those who desire to have the names of thinkers, who seek to open doors into the Red Tory realm of political thought and to experience the intimacy of the tradition through the revelations found in Taylor’s journey. It is, however, merely a primer, suffering from misinterpretations and occasional shallow insights. Searching for Canada, however, has the inverse problem. When first picking up this book, the question of “who are these people?” and “why should I care?” are likely to cross the reader’s mind. The level of thought in the latter, however, is more in-depth and intimate. At the end of the day, neither book is worth abandoning. One should read Radical Tories first to develop a sense of the big players in Red Toryism before fleshing their characters out with a steady and contemplative read of Searching for Canada.

Sources used

[1] Taylor, Charles. (1982). Radical Tories: The Conservative Tradition in Canada. Toronto, Anansi Press. Pg 12.

[2] Pg. 12.

[3] Dart, Ron. (2000). “Stephen Leacock: Pioneer of the Red Tory Tradition.” In Archbishop Lazar Puhalo (Eds.), Searching for Canada. (80-97). Dewdney, B.C: Synaxis Press.

[4] Radical Tories. Pg. 19

[5] Radical Tories. Pg. 13

[6] “Stephen Leacock…” Pg. 81

[7] “Stephen Leacock…” Pg. 85

[8] “Stephen Leacock…” Pg. 96

[9] Radical Tories Pg. 50

[10] Radical Tories Pg. 74.

[11] Radical Tories Pg. 50

[12] Radical Tories Pg. 51

[13] Radical Tories Pg. 57

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Knowles, Norman (2000). “W.L.Morton: History and the Conservative Tradition in Canada.” In Archbishop Lazar Puhalo (Eds.), Searching for Canada. (19-27). Dewdney, B.C: Synaxis Press.

[17] “W.L. Morton…” Pg. 20

[18] “W.L. Morton…” Pg. 21

[19] Ibid.

[20] W.L. Morton…” Pg. 25

[21] Ibid.