The Boy Scout Movement in Canada, 1908-1970
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BUILDING BOYS, BUILDING CANADA: THE BOY SCOUT MOVEMENT IN CANADA, 1908-1970 JAMES TREPANIER A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN HISTORY YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO APRIL 2015 © James Trepanier, 2015 Abstract This dissertation examines Canada’s largest organization for boys of the twentieth century - the Boy Scouts. In Scouting for Boys [1908], Robert Baden Powell argued that Scouting provided a universal model for countries of the British Empire to develop the physical, mental and spiritual development of boys. The process of transplanting Baden-Powell’s movement to Canada led to the establishment of two separate organizations, divided along linguistic and religious lines. The movement also extended its reach to the Canadian North as missionaries and government officials adopted the movement in residential and day schools across the country. The Canadian Scout movement provides a compelling lens to understand how language, religion, race and class shaped the construction of Canadian boyhoods. This dissertation taps into the archival records of the Boy Scout movement, Canadian churches, state records, and private collections from the 1910s through to the 1960s to examine the motivations, objectives and tensions within the Scout movement’s network of institutional and cultural support. It argues that, as part of the frequent renewal of masculinities, Scouting and its supporters embraced the modern and the antimodern in order to shore up, revive, or reinvigorate masculinities that were deemed to be threatened. Perceptions of what boys needed were not always complementary and reflected broader religious, linguistic and racial assumptions and expectations about masculinity. The relationship between Scouting and Canadian churches, for instance, was fluid - reflecting a more complicated picture of religiosity in the postwar period than existing scholarship has considered. The relationship between French-Canadian and English-Canadian Scouting was also complex and symptomatic of larger shifting relationships between the French-Canadian diaspora, Quebec and ii English-speaking Canada. Northern nationalists, meanwhile, latched onto the Scout movement as a means of promoting particular “ideas of north” for southern boys and northern Aboriginal and Inuit boys. These different supporters were, however, tied together by a shared desire to mitigate the perceived “feminizing” effects of modern life through a “modernizing antimodernism.” Masculinity’s ties to political and social citizenship remained strong well into the 1960s as Scouting’s coalition of supporters sustained the belief that building better boys was the key to building a better Canada. iii Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the generous financial support of the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship (SSHRC) program, York University’s Faculty of Graduate Studies, and York’s Graduate Program in History. Lisa Hoffmann and Karen Dancy and the other staff in York’s History Department were instrumental in helping navigate university administrative structures, particularly during the years I spent outside Toronto. My graduate supervisor, Marcel Martel, provided encouragement, empathy and constructive criticism throughout the process and always took great joy in seeing this research evolve. William Westfall and Roberto Perin offered valuable insights and also provided stimulating conversation and fellowship on numerous occasions during my years at York. I would also like to thank Dominique Marshall, Peter Cumming and Molly Ladd-Taylor for their thoughtful questions during my defence; they made it the stimulating experience every graduate student hopes for. Other teachers and mentors have been equally important in my development, including Colin Coates, Peter Bischoff, Anne Gagnon and Andrew Yarmie. A number of scholars and colleagues have shaped my work more informally through conversation, conference discussion, reading, and stimulating e-mail exchanges. In particular, I would like to thank Kristine Alexander, Angela Rooke, Ian Milligan, Jason Ellis, Ben Bryce, Hugh Morrison, Mona Gleason, Susan Miller, Heather McGregor, and Crystal Fraser. This dissertation is also the product of innumerable archival visits. I would like to thank the staff at the General Synod Archives of the Anglican Church of Canada, the Archives de la Société Historique de Saint-Boniface, Bibliothèque et archives nationales du Québec (Montréal), the Centre d'études acadiennes Anselme-Chiasson, the Glenbow Museum and Archives, Library iv and Archives Canada, the United Church of Canada Archives, and the Yukon Territorial Archives. I would like to acknowledge the exceptional assistance of Laurel Parson, Julie Reid, Doug Cass as well as the research and reference staff at Library and Archives Canada. I also benefited from the collections and personal knowledge of volunteers at the Belleville Scout and Guide Museum, the Niagara Scouting Museum, the Kingston Scout Museum, the Scouts Canada National Museum, and the Scouts Canada Chinook Regional Museum & Archives, Calgary. I would especially like to thank Paul Deriyaw, David Bentley, Tony Roberts and Bob Leggett. The final pages of this dissertation were written while working at the Canadian Museum of History. I would like to thank Tim Foran, Krista Cooke, Forrest Pass, Judith Klassen, and Jean-François Lozier for indulging me in the occasional lunch-time discussion about the writing process and for being such great friends and colleagues. Robert Englebert and Yves Pelletier were empathetic ears when I needed to work through an impasse or simply step out of the “dissertation bubble.” Our long-distance friendships have been strengthened by having travelled the research road together and for that I am grateful. Graeme Truelove and Eric Lemay provided support while reminding me about the need to get outside. Gérald Pelletier and Kathleen Keenan provided a second home for me during my numerous Ottawa research trips and for nearly two years when I started work at the Museum - I cherish the evenings spent at their dinner table. My sister Meghan continues to show me that there is always room to pursue multiple passions simultaneously. My parents helped ignite my interest in history and writing and have encouraged me throughout my education in innumerable ways. v Katrina Keenan-Pelletier and I both returned to school in 2008. We also decided it would be a good idea to spend the rest of our lives together. I continue to aspire to be as supportive of her professional and personal journey as she has been of mine. I look forward to getting lost together again and again as we write our next chapters. vi Table of Contents Abstract............................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements.........................................................................................................iv Table of Contents............................................................................................................vii List of Figures..................................................................................................................viii Introduction.....................................................................................................................1 Chapter One - The Religion of the Backwoods: Religion, Antimodernism and Scouting in French and English Canada...........................................................................39 Chapter Two - Compelled to Cooperate: Scouting and the Protestant Churches, 1939- 1969.................................................................................................................................. 82 Chapter Three - “Un geste de solidarité catholique et canadienne-française”: French- Canadian Scouting Beyond Quebec, 1935-1969.............................................................123 Chapter Four - Scouting in the “Land of Twilight,” 1926-1957......................................164 Chapter Five - To Live Like White Men and Like “Eskimos”?: Northern Scouting in the 1960s................................................................................................................................203 Chapter Six - “A Mosaic of Canadian Youth”: Northern Nationalism and Scouting’s Canadian Arctic Jamborees, 1968-1970..........................................................................242 Conclusion.......................................................................................................................274 Bibliography................................................................................................................... 286 Appendices Appendix A: Promise and Law of the Éclaireurs canadiens-français................ 312 Appendix B: Scout Promise and Scout Law...................................................... 313 vii List of Figures Figure 1: National C.S.E.T. and Boy Scout Membership, 1919-1939...................................67 Figure 2: Hay River Scout Troop, 1926.................................................................................170 Figure 3: Scouts at St Peter’s Indian Residential School (Hay River, NWT), [193?]............172 Figure 4: Canon Harry Sherman Shepherd, Scout Master, leading boy scouts, girl guides and brownies, Aklavik, NWT, 1941..............................................................................................175