Читать книгу George Grant - T.F. Rigelhof - Страница 14
ОглавлениеSir George Parkin says, “I want one of the children for a photograph on the beach. Who will it be?”
The children look at one another or at their feet. They are all a little shy around this grandfather they hardly know.
The littlest one steps out from behind his mother’s skirts. “George will stay!”
“I think he’ll do whatever you ask him to do, father,” a middle-aged mother says. And a look passes between her and her father as if something very important has just happened.
Little George goes down to the beach with his grandfather and sits where he is told to sit among the rocks. He does whatever he is told to do with the food he’s given by his grandfather while one of his uncles sets up the camera, poses the subjects, and takes a picture of Sir George and his grandson that is destined for publication.
Nearly a year later, Sir George sits at a writing desk in his London home. It’s April 17, 1922. He’s a tall, thin, elegant man in his seventies with a full head of sand and silver hair and a large silver and white moustache. His clothes and his manners are those of an English aristocrat, but he is a Canadian of humble beginnings who was knighted by King George V for services to the King and the British Empire. He’s only been “Sir George” for two years. Before that, he was simply George Parkin, the thirteenth child of an immigrant family from Yorkshire in England that had taken up farming in New Brunswick. As a young man, he became a teacher and rose to the rank of the headmaster in a school in Fredericton. A bit of a dreamer, his great dream was for worldwide peace and justice. He believed passionately that his dream could best be achieved through the Imperial Federation – a proposed worldwide political alliance that would unite Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa in a sort of United States of the World. Once established, this new empire would jointly administer Britain’s colonies in Africa, India, Asia, the West Indies, and Latin America and lead them step-by-step to the status Canada had already achieved with Britain’s help. Because he was an excellent public speaker, wealthy people who shared his dream supported him for six years as he toured the British Empire preaching the benefits of such a worldwide government. When his travels were over in 1895, he accepted the position of headmaster (or principal) of Upper Canada College (UCC), a private boys’ school in Toronto. Seven years later, he was chosen by the estate of Cecil Rhodes to implement and establish the Rhodes Scholarships.
Cecil Rhodes was the Englishman who extended British influence in South Africa through the British South Africa Company. Their territories – now Zimbabwe – were named Rhodesia after him. When Rhodes died, he bequeathed his considerable fortune to a trust fund that would administer scholarships. Rhodes Scholarships were to be awarded each year to the brightest university graduates with the strongest leadership skills in the United States, Germany, and the countries of the British Empire. These scholarships would enable the winners to study at Oxford University with all expenses paid for a law or other degree. At Oxford, Rhodes Scholars would participate in formal and informal events and create a new and better-educated ruling class. George Parkin was so successful in making Rhodes Scholarships the most prestigious and best-known academic awards in the world that he was knighted on his retirement. Sir George and Lady Parkin’s return to Canada in 1921 for a summer holiday made headline news.
As he sits at his desk, he writes a letter to one of the people he met in Canada – his grandson George Parkin Grant, who is only two-and-a-half years old. This is what he’s writing:
Dear George,
A few days ago I was walking along the street in London, and I saw the picture of King George, which I am sending you with this. It seemed to me that your own name was George, and both your grandfathers were Georges and, as I knew you had at the College a picture of St George, you might like to have one of King George in your room – so here it is. I have talked with him several times, and he is so cheerful and pleasant that I am sure you would not mind having a chat with him yourself, if you should happen to meet him. And when you grow up you will be expected to work for your king and your country. The name George really means a farmer or earth-worker. So, when you do some gardening like you did last spring, you are really doing what your name means.
I was delighted to get that nice picture of our jolly little picnic at the shore. How nice those oranges and bananas were, to say nothing of the bacon. I am quite sure the other girls and boys wished to be with us. I wish mother could bring you over to England with her, so that we could have another picnic here… You must learn to spell and write as soon as you can, so that you can write me letters. I shall be a proud grandfather when I get a note from George P. Grant.
Your very loving Grandfather
Two months later, Sir George is dead. There are no more picnics, no more letters.
The holiday in Canada included several weeks in Quebec at Cap à l’Aigle on the shore of the Saint Lawrence River north of Quebec City. Cap à l’Aigle along with its sister community of Murray Bay was a favourite resort area for wealthy and socially prominent English-speaking Canadians. Sir George’s visit there with Lady Parkin, their children and grandchildren was a family reunion that provided photo opportunities for a book being prepared about his life. A camera always accompanied the family on their various excursions, and pictures were taken. Thus, Sir George had a picnic on the beach with his grandson George. They sat among the rocks and ate bacon sandwiches, oranges and bananas. It made a lovely photograph but one that George Grant grew to hate. “That picture of me on the beach – you know that story was told me a thousand times – how he had asked for one child to stay with him on the beach and I was the one who volunteered and Mother would tell me this was my destiny, to carry on his work for king, country and empire.”
Sir George Parkin’s notion of a new world federation had been deflected but not destroyed by the First World War. That war taught British imperialists that the United States was too powerful an ally to be left entirely out of the postwar equation. It also taught them that it wasn’t enough to have a well-educated ruling class. Peace and justice demanded dedicated, responsible political parties and a well-informed electorate. Sir George and Lady Parkin’s three daughters all married men who carried parts of his dream forward in different directions. Vincent Massey, George’s uncle who was to become Canada’s first native-born Governor General, was active in the Liberal Party. Another uncle, James Macdonnell, was the Canadian secretary of the Rhodes Scholarship Committee and an organizer for the Conservative Party. William Grant, George’s father, was the incumbent headmaster of Upper Canada College. He was also president of the Canadian branch of the League of Nations society and active on behalf of increased educational opportunities for adult Canadian workers.
George Grant was born on Wednesday, November 13, 1918, two days after the armistice ended the First World War. His mother gave birth at their home in the principal’s residence in the southeast wing of the main building of Upper Canada College (UCC). George was the fourth child but first son of William Grant, a wounded veteran of the war who had returned to Canada to take up the position of headmaster of UCC a year earlier. Maude Parkin Grant, George’s mother, first met her husband twenty years earlier when William was a history teacher at UCC and her own father was the principal and William’s boss. They named their son George Parkin Grant in his honour.
Born inside the walls of UCC and educated there until William’s death in 1935, George was deeply marked by the school. When he was in his sixties and apologizing for a longstanding quarrel he’d had with her, he told his sister Charity, “One difference between myself and yourself is that you did not attend school where your father was headmaster. Whether for good or ill, my life has been greatly a convalescence from that fact.”
Whatever advantage George gained from being a student at what some claimed was the best secondary school in Canada during his father’s term of office, it left him feeling trapped by his own adolescence all his life. Perhaps because of this, George Grant developed a remarkable empathy for young people. It was a most charming part of the complex personality that made him an extraordinary teacher in his own classrooms at Dalhousie and McMaster universities, on lecture platforms, in newspapers and books, and on CBC radio.
George never met his other grandfather. William’s father, George Monro Grant, died in 1902. Like George Parkin, George Monro Grant grew up on a farm in the Maritimes. His family was of Scots, not English, origin. His parents immigrated to Pictou county, Nova Scotia, in 1826. When George Monro was involved in a farming accident and could no longer do physical work because of a serious injury to his hand, his father sent him back to Scotland to study and train as a Presbyterian minister. Reverend George Monro Grant returned to Canada in 1863 as rector of Saint Matthews Presbyterian Church in Halifax. In addition to his church duties, Reverend Grant worked to revive and strengthen Dalhousie University, which had fallen on hard times. He had such success reorganizing its finances and upgrading its educational standards that he was then invited to rescue a small college in Kingston, Ontario from its troubles. As head of Queen’s for twenty-five years, Principal Grant transformed it from an unimportant college to a prominent educational institution modelled on the German ideal of the university as a research centre.
Reverend George Monro Grant has a second claim to fame. While still located in Halifax, he acted as secretary to Sandford Fleming, the chief engineer of the Canadian Pacific Railway (and a parishioner at Saint Matthews) when Fleming made an exploratory journey to the Pacific in search of the best route for the rails to follow. George Monro Grant’s written record of the 1872 expedition that travelled from Halifax to Victoria by train, steamer, canoe, wagon, and horseback was published as Ocean to Ocean, one of Canada’s most famous and influential travel books. George Monro Grant wrote vividly and humorously of the hardships the expedition faced. He also wrote with great enthusiasm of the many new things he encountered. His purpose in writing the book was not just to inform and entertain: Ocean to Ocean defended the creation of the transcontinental railway as a key instrument of Canadian unity. Without it, the Americans would come in and take everything. He also saw the West as a great garden to feed Ontario while that province busied itself with industrial manufacturing. Although he had considerable sympathy for the Metis and First Nations cultures, he believed that they had to be controlled for the sake of “progress.”
As an adult, George Grant found much to criticize in the ideas of both his grandfathers – especially George Monro’s belief in progress – but through his parents, his grandfathers both left positive imprints on him. The Parkin side of the family taught him to prize peace and justice above all else, and the Grant side taught him to keep all of Canada in mind when he spoke of any part of it. Both sides taught him the importance of education for everyone and the duty of teachers to form not only students in the classroom but also public opinion.
“Not now, Georgie. Not now. Can’t you see I’m quite busy?”
“George wants kisses.”
“Not now, Georgie. Not now.”
Even as a child growing up inside the walls and grounds of an all-boys school, George’s early life was still dominated by women. The first and most powerful female force in his life was his mother Maude. She was thirty-eight years old when she gave birth to George. Unlike the vast majority of women of her generation, Maude Parkin had gone to college. At the urging of Sandford Fleming, she’d been among the first to enrol in McGill’s Royal Victoria College, an institution he’d funded in 1903. After graduation, she had gone to England and had become the assistant dean of women at the University of Manchester’s Ashburne Hall. She had a successful career of her own before she married William Grant when she was thirty-one and he was thirty-nine.
After their wedding, they settled in Kingston, Ontario, where William taught history at Queen’s. Despite his age and family status, William was posted overseas as an officer in the Canadian Army when the Great War (First World War) erupted. Maude moved back to England with Margaret and Charity, their two young daughters, in order to be near him. Early in 1916 she gave birth to their third daughter, Jessie Alison. In the middle of August that year, William was badly injured on the battlefront in France when his horse threw him and then rolled on top of him, inflicting severe head and chest wounds. Once William was fit enough to travel back to Canada, he took up the job of headmaster of UCC he’d been offered while recuperating from his injuries. Maude took charge of the family and got them all resettled in Toronto.
“Not now, Georgie. Not now. Can’t you see I’m really very busy?”
“Why can’t I have a hug?”
“Not now, Georgie. Not now.”
As the wife of the headmaster, Maude worked to make the school a success. William was hired to get the place back on its feet financially and raise its prestige. Enrolment at UCC had fallen during the war; the budget was in a mess and the teaching staff was demoralized. Maude had wonderful social skills and a flair for bringing people together over the dinner table. With her powerful personality and strong will motivating and assisting him, William was able to persuade the board of governors to raise salaries so that he could recruit enthusiastic and inspiring teachers to implement the changes he envisioned for the school. Working alongside her husband to recruit students and improve conditions at UCC left her with little time to devote to her four children. Mrs. Don Leo, the family nursemaid, was responsible for their daily welfare. Leo, as they called her, tended to pamper the children – George especially – since her own two children had both died in early childhood.
“Whatever has happened to George’s beautiful golden curls?”
“His father insisted on taking him for a haircut. Leo really has been spoiling him.”
George’s sisters were very much like their mother and didn’t fuss over their little brother either. After Sir George died, Lady Parkin lived for part of each year with Maude’s family at UCC and the rest of the year at the grander home of Alice Massey, her far wealthier daughter. “The person I loved best was Grandmother Parkin,” George confessed to his uncle Raleigh Parkin forty years later. “I liked a lot of kissing. I loved being hugged; I loved the wetness and the softness.”
In England, there was another woman keeping her eye on George. Marian Buck, a wealthy widow and a devoted admirer of Sir George and his dream of a new world order, exerted considerable pressure on William and Maude to mould George to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps, a pressure that continued until her death in 1947.
UCC provided the Grant family with a high standard of living and many privileges. In addition to the nursemaid, the family had two servants – a parlourmaid and a cook. The school was almost in the countryside. It had large open fields behind it and the most affluent part of Toronto outside its front gate. Many of its neighbours in Forest Hill continued to raise and ride horses for pleasure. UCC was a place of many charms, and the family had a place of their own at Otter Lake in cottage country, where they could spend summers swimming and fishing and entertaining friends and relatives.
