University of Victoria - Tower Yearbook (Victoria, British Columbia Canada)

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ms' -if 0 O GODFREY L. O. HEARN ll-ll'll'll'l+l+ The importance of a native literature in na- tional life is not yet fully realized by Canadians. Canada has all the technical aspects of nation- hood: she has a proper pride of place: yet she has not the complete belief in herself that is found in older countries. One of the symptoms of this lack of self-assurance is the Canadians' accept- ance of an unnecessary dependence upon others in cultural matters. That Canada is able to de- pend upon other countries is one of the chief reasons for the lack of flourishing literature in Canada today. In the past, Canada has produced novelists like Louis I-lemon and poets like Archibald Lamp- man,and Sir Charles G. D. Roberts, but these have never reached the first rank of writers, nor are they known widely in the world. This is the case even now. Canada has plenty of writers and journalists, but she cannot keep their talent. Most of them go to the United States and forget that they are Canadians: those that stay remain unknown and comparatively unsuccessful. Why is this? It is because Canada is a blind alley for authors. There are many reasons for this unfortunate truth. One is the Canadian's belief that Cana- dian products are inferior. In a small reading population such as Canada's, a belief of this kind among even a few can so reduce the sale of a book that the author has no incentive to publish his work. Five thousand copies is con- sidered a good sale in Canada, whereas in Bri- tain and the United States books may run into more than one edition of two and three hundred thousand. Such a situation naturally discour- ages publishers, and Canadian publishers have grown chary of putting out anything by Cana- dian authors. They make more profit by reprints on a small scale of British and American books -why incur possible liabilities when easy money is at hand? Efforts to build up Canadian literature have usually degenerated into the stifling atmosphere of literary and authors' clubs. These well- meaning organizations suffer from an artiness that would make literature a matter of appre- ciation of the few, instead of the concern of the nation as a whole. The clubs claim writing abili- ty as their own, and are allowed almost com- plete iurisdiction .over letters in Canada. The obiection to authors' clubs is that their exist- ence leads the people to believe that there is a thriving literature in Canada where there is only a sapling plant. There must be no public complacency where so important a matter as national culture is involved. The Canadian public has the same attitude as has the great mass of the public in other Eng- lish-speaking countries. To it, literature is some- thing of interest only to students and writers. There is a large sale of shoddy work, and the public, as a whole, can no longer distinguish good writing from bad. In all this, Canada has much in common with Britain and the United States. The difference is that in the other coun- tries there is a strong enough established litera- ture to survive public apathy. In Canada, literature has never been strong, and it is stunt- ed and held back by popular indifference. Aldous Huxley has said there are few Mil- tons that are mute and inglorious. But there must be more in Canada today than in any other country with her possibilities for literary development: not because writers are down- trodden or unable to make themselves heard, but because if they are heard they are disre- garded. Canadians have not yet brought them- selves to recognize literature as a serious pro- fession, and there is no advantage for a man to live for his profession and not be taken serious- ly. lt is as impractical for a poet to starve in a garret today as it was 100 years ago, and more useless. With commercialism at its height, poten- tial authors are discouraged from entering what seems to be an unprofitable field: what Cana- dians forget is that they have made it unprofit- able, and that they can make it pay. If Canada wants a future for her literature, let her make one for her writers. Clearly, the reproach for the backwardness of Canadian literature lies not with the authors but with the public of Canada, and through the public, the publishers. Many expect there to be a miraculous blossoming of talent in Canada in the future, but they may be sure that talent will not blossom in an intellectual desert of neglect. At present, Canada is overshadowed by her neighbours, but her writers have made an ex- cellent beginning and, with popular support, there will be a strong national Canadian litera- ture yet.

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slowly, is far from remedied. It is in the distinc- tive histories and varying economies of these five Canadas that the seed of the popular and derisive practise of classifying the Canadian population into three such categories as mari- timer, Frenchman and white man is to be found. Yet were this diversity treated with realism and imagination it need not necessarily be a handicap in the Canadian striving for national consciousness, as it has always heretofore been considered: rather it should be realized that this very diversity makes Canada unique among na- tions, a small world within the boundaries of a single country, which offers challenges and ad- vantages as well as disabilities. With a realiza- tion of both their limitations and possibilities there is little reason for Canadians failing to achieve a full sense of nationhood. No one in Canada will ever be heard making a call for exaggerated and aggressive nationalism: Cana- dians are temperamentally unsuited to the role. They are, however, fully equipped to assume a position among the world leaders, a claim which the rational evaluation of their contributions to world affairs will substantiate. No one in Can- ada, for example, will attempt to duplicate such claims as have issued from America and Russia regarding the winning of the war: Canada will make no such expansive claims, but is entitled to expect recognition of the fact that her contri- bution was considerable. lt is necessary for Canadians to make an objective analysis of their own worth and position in order to derive and manifest a proper sense of pride in their own achievements. In this survey of achievement, Canada's rec- ord during and immediately preceding the world war speaks for itself. Assuming the responsi- bility voluntarily, Canada entered the struggle shoulder to shoulder with Britain in 1939, never hesitating or faltering in her obligations until the war had been fought to a successful conclusion. The military record 'of the Canadians was unsur- passed among the combatant nations. Fielding a complete Canadian Army Corps for the first time under Canadian command, her troops fought from Sicily through the Hitler Line, from Normandy through the Scheld to Germany: the Canadian Navy bore the brunt of the Atlantic convoy duty through the most threatening period of the Nazi submarine warp the Canadian gov- ernment accepted responsibility for' carrying through the Commonwealth Air Training Plan, while the Air Force, besides operating its own bomber group and fighter wings, contributed one-third of the aircrew operating out of Britain with the B.A.F. Canadian scientists combined with those of the United States and Britain to form the team which produced the atomic bomb. In supplying her own needs and those of her allies, Canada's industry expanded by fifty per cent between 1942 and 1945 until today, with the war past, Canada is a creditor nation stand- ing to the fore as one of the three greatest trading nations of the world. Canadian agriculture, charged with the task of feeding a beleaguered Britain, fulfilled the obligation without hesitation and, in the months following the war, was pub- licly acclaimed for the manner in which Canada as a nation fulfilled its obligations to UNBBA. Throughout this period, with its ever-present danger of runaway inflation, the Canadian gov- ernment, operating without fanfare, functioned so effectively in its fight to hold the price line as to become the envy of the post-war world. Be- cause of the nation's gradual development, com- pletely devoid of the spectacular, charges are commonly heard of Canadian immaturityy but it is a charge which wilfully disregards both the record and the latent possibilities. The facts of Canadian national life, when woven together to form an integrated tapestry, present an unmis- takable picture of a Canada grown to nation- hood. 'k'k-ki!-K-K . fwx fl x f'- f' tw X 'f L xx XX, X X N 'ff f X tt mx , -34 ff 1 EL .. T .A-xxx . T M . - Congratulations on Your Fine Publication - HOCKING '55 FORBES

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+1-xx-xxx ' 4141+141-x By RAY BAINES . I - BY BOB DUNN What really is an educated person? One famous educator said that it is a person who walks away from a university with a diploma in his hand, his mind humbled by the realiza- tion that he knows nothing. lf he can see the unending limits of knowledge which stretch be- fore him: if he can conceive of the untapped re- sources of learning unknown to him: if he can employ the pitifully inadequate bits of factual material which he possesses to carry him still farther into the understanding of the enigma of human lifefthen, perhaps, he can be called educated. To be eauipped merely with a neatly catalogued series of facts in one particular line with the hope that these facts will fit into the pat- tern of some profession is not necessarily to be educated, in the real sense. There seems to be a trend in the modern edu- cational pattern to disregard this emphasis on concepts with which to work, and too much on facts to apply. ls Canadian education succumb- ing to this modern trend of industrialization of methods so that graduates are being turned out like finished products when actually their educa- tion is only beginning? Under this system one enters college as raw material and is put upon one end of a moving belt. He moves through four years of training with experts adding facts like parts until he arrives at the end of this educational assembly line, a shiny, polished product, beautiful to look at but with no solidity under the superficial exterior of factual knowl- edge. From that point he begins to lose his sheen and becomes older and more useless until he eventually arrives like an old car on the scrapheap of human endeavour. An educated person should not be a manufactured article: he should be a growing thing which has come from a few seeds of knowledge, so that he be- comes larger and more complex as he gets older. ' The ever-increasing ,demand on Canadian education has caused a decline in this emphasis on scholarship and the ability .to learn. While the facts are necessary, to the understanding of a particular field of learning, the sowing of ideas and concepts is what really gives it its value. No invention, no creative work of art, no scien- tific discovery was ever brought about by the acceptance of known facts alone: it was done by employing these facts as stepping stones to further research and by refuting them, often, in the process. Even in the sciences where nothing is accepted until it has been proved again and again by experimental double-check, the im- aginative concepts are essential to research and the discovery of new theories. The whole emphasis in modern thought is placed on the amount of one's income rather than on his ability to benefit society by his knowledge. This philosophy, coupled with the recent preference for industrialized education, combine to produce a university graduate whose outlook is stifled and abilities limited. This is not entirely his faulty it is a condition that exists and he must accept it. But if more regard were given to scolarship so that he could direct his activity into a useful, as well as remunerative activity, the real purpose of education would be accomplished. In coping with the modern problems of in- creased numbers in university and the demands placed on teachers, the authorities must try never to lose sight of the necessity for scholar- ship. While there is an increased need for em- phasis on the physical-accommodation, space, health conditions for crowded schools, etc. - they must retain the standards of ideational learning which produce the really educated man and woman. They must be prepared to work with enough patience so that the original pur- pose of education does not lose its place and the results of that education manifest themselves in everyday living.