University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository University of Calgary Press University of Calgary Press Open Access Books 2011 In the National Interest: Canadian Foreign Policy and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 1909–2009 University of Calgary Press Donaghy, G., & Carroll, M. (Eds.). (2011). In the National Interest: Canadian Foreign Policy and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 1909-2009. Calgary, Alberta, Canada: University of Calgary Press. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/48549 book http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 Unported Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca University of Calgary Press www.uofcpress.com IN THE NATIONAL INTEREST Canadian Foreign Policy and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 1909–2009 Greg Donaghy and Michael K. Carroll, Editors ISBN 978-1-55238-561-6 THIS BOOK IS AN OPEN ACCESS E-BOOK. 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Acknowledgement: We acknowledge the wording around open access used by Australian publisher, re.press, and thank them for giving us permission to adapt their wording to our policy http://www.re-press.org/content/view/17/33/ 3 National Identity, Public Opinion and the Department of External Affairs, 1935–1939 Heather Metcalfe The anticipation simmered just below the surface of Quebec City on a fresh May morning in 1939. Crowds of Quebecers, leavened by a sprinkling of notables from elsewhere in Canada, focused their attention on the quay on the St. Lawrence. In the distance an ocean liner, the Empress of Australia, was heaving into sight. This was by itself nothing special: ocean liners were not strangers to the port; but today the Empress was carrying special guests. Royalty was coming to town, and not just any royalty – for Quebec had hosted princes and princesses before – but the reigning monarch of the British Empire, George VI, and his consort, Queen Elizabeth. This was a first, for no reigning British king or queen had ever visited Canada. The royal tour of 1939 had been the focus of in-depth planning on the part of the Canadian government, and of the Canadian people, since the idea of the tour had been advanced by Prime Minister W.L. Mackenzie King at the Imperial Conference of 1937. As the yacht ferrying the king and queen made its way – majestically, in the eyes of the crowd – from the Empress to the quay, Quebec’s citizens would be the first, as the Canadian media reported, to have the honour of receiving Canada’s king and queen – and the empire’s too, of course. The Canadian papers could think of noth- ing better than to reprint the words of the London Times, which concluded that it “comes to them in a sense by geographical accident, but no province of the dominion can show better title than the right of seniority which belongs to the French-Canadians of Quebec.”1 Certainly the crowds that swarmed the Quebec docks seemed to justify that faith. Support for the monarchy notwithstanding, controversies over inter- national policy erupted regularly in Canadian politics during the period leading up to the Second World War. Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and his French-Canadian “lieutenant” Ernest Lapointe responded carefully to these debates, conscious that Canadian involvement abroad would rouse strong currents of opinion at home that represented a danger to national unity, still fragile in the wake of the divisive clash over conscription during the First World War. They recognized that in any major war involving Britain, increasingly likely after the unfortunate Munich settlements of 1938, Canadian involvement was inevitable, given the strength of imperialist sentiment across the country. But participation, they feared, would likely generate an isolationist backlash from Quebec. As international relations became more dangerous in the late 1930s, the stakes for Canadians, particularly those concerned with Canadian public opinion, increased dramatically. As a result, King’s key concern in the immediate run-up to the conflict was to ensure that Canada’s entrance into the war do only minimal damage to the delicate state of Canadian unity. At best, it seemed that internal conflict could be managed, but not avoided. Canadian foreign policy during the 1930s was important therefore not only for its international implications but also for its internal consequences. The decade’s repeated European crises forced Canadians to ponder the question of what it meant to be “Canadian,” which differed along trad- itional religious, ethnic, and linguistic lines. As Canadian society split over these questions of identity, the result was an ongoing disagreement about the underlying nature of the country and its national interests. Aware that his government could not resolve these issues of policy and identity, King sought to paper over these disputes, postponing debate on international issues, and, by implication, discussions about the national identity. King 52 Heather Metcalfe instead focused on domestic issues, insisting that his government would respond to international developments on a case-by-case basis.2 King’s policy of political compromise for the sake of national unity was not universally popular and was questioned even within his own gov- ernment. This was especially true within the ranks of the Department of External Affairs. While Canada’s small band of young diplomats agreed with the emphasis that the prime minister placed on national unity and applauded his efforts to recognize the strength of isolationist sentiment in Quebec, many of their number, including the department’s under-secre- tary, O.D. Skelton, thought that the government should go further in this direction. They were convinced that courting isolationist and non-inter- ventionist sentiment would generate a more distinct national viewpoint, one that better reflected the national interest. These views were reflected, for instance, in a memorandum by Hugh Keenleyside, one of Skelton’s early protégés in External Affairs, on his pas- sage through the Prairies on his way home to British Columbia during the Munich crisis of 1938. Of course, Canadians of British origins, he wrote Skelton, were “prominent in Canadian business and social life, and it is natural that [they] should be over-represented in our organs of opinion. In spite of a good many shocks during the recent years – and particularly since Mr. Chamberlain took office in Great Britain – this element in the popula- tion still seems in general to approve of the idea that ‘When Britain is at war we all are at war.’”3 But Keenleyside held out hope for the future. Not only had imperialist sentiment been shaken by international developments over the last few years, but this older group had failed to fully transmit these views to the younger generation. The development of a more “progressive” view of Canadian foreign policy, Keenleyside argued, lay with the ethnic minorities in the Prairie provinces and with the younger elements of the population. These segments of Canadian society, he wrote, had increasingly come to the conclusion that the present “mess” in Europe was largely a result of British policy, and that it was not Canada’s responsibility to “sacrifice another generation of Can- adians to try to straighten it out.... So if Britain and the rest of Europe want to go to Hell let them go – but let us stay out of it and try to maintain some remnants of decency on this continent.”4 Cautiously optimistic, Keenley- side argued that, given the West’s “racial” and generational composition, a 3: National Identity, Public Opinion and the Department of External Affairs 53 Canadian political party with a policy of Canadian autonomy would gain widespread support.