1Every major national celebration can be understood as a symbolically charged cultural performance, “in which as a culture or society we reflect upon and define ourselves, dramatize our collective myths and history, present ourselves with alternatives, and eventually change in some ways while remaining the same in others” (MACALOON 1984: 1). This year, as Canada is celebrating its sesquicentennial, is a perfect time to look back fifty years to when the country just stepped into its second century of national life. The large-scale Centennial celebrations that lasted throughout 1967 were intended to strengthen the unity of Canada and to articulate its new identity, which had evolved during the decades of the 1950s and 1960s. Thus, the celebrations should be seen not only as a key nation-building instrument but also as a mirror reflecting how the nation came to imagine itself in the 1960s.
2This essay focuses on those structural determinants by which Canadian national identity had been formed and articulated in the public discourse through Centennial celebratory activities. Comparing bicentennial and centennial celebrations in Australian and American history, Lyn Spillman pointed out that talk of national identity in this context can involve “two discursive dimensions: place in the world and shared community experience” (SPILLMAN 1997: 133). If we follow the thread of her argument, we can find temporal logic behind these themes or axes which construct the discursive space (ANGUS 1997). As Peter Aykroyd, one of the Centennial Commission’s members, noted, “national birthdays symbolize not only birth and the passage of time but also achievement and growth – reminding people of the past that shapes their present” (AYKROYD 1992: 5). We can observe a striking temporal symbolism of Canadian Centennial celebratory activities, most of which were built around time in its past, present or future dimensions. This paper will analyze major Centennial events, projects and initiatives in order to reveal their dominant temporal orientation and answer the question – which of the three temporal dimensions was the main focus of large-scale Centennial projects, and why?
3The country began to prepare for this important event well in advance. If in the late 1950s and early 1960s there was still no serious public discussion about how to celebrate the anniversary, then by the mid-1960s they began to spread actively in the press (KUFFERT 2003: 217). From the very beginning, the national birthday was planned not as a one-day holiday, scheduled for July 1, Dominion Day, but as a large-scale, year-long celebration. In 1960 the Canadian Centennial Council was established in Ottawa. As a voluntary national organization, the Council was supposed to serve as a center for the planning of celebratory activities and exchange of information and ideas about the celebration. The Council included more than 100 non-governmental organizations that volunteered to support the development of private initiatives. Norman Mackenzie, a former president of the University of British Columbia, headed the Council from 1962 until its dissolution.
4A little later, in September 1961, the Parliament adopted the National Centennial Act, which defined the administrative framework for the federal celebration program. In 1963 the Act was amended, with the name changed to the Centennial of Confederation Act1, and the Centennial Commission was established. According to the act, the body was directed to plan and implement programs and projects relating to the Centenary at the federal level, as well as to coordinate provincial initiatives. One of the Commission’s main goals was to encourage mass participation in the Centennial celebrations at all levels. The Commission was a Crown corporation reporting to Parliament. The members of the Commission were appointed by the Governor-General of Canada on the recommendation of the Government. In January 1963 John Fisher, a Canadian journalist and broadcaster, unofficially known as “Mr. Canada” for his patriotic CBC radio series, became the head of the Commission. The Canadian Centennial Council and the Centennial Commission worked closely with each other. In addition, each province had its own Centennial organization.
5To inform the public about these plans for upcoming celebrations, in 1964 the Commission issued the Centennial Handbook. The publication clearly articulated the goal of celebrating the Centennial anniversary, which, according to the organizers, was to “strengthen Canada’s unity and build a better Canada” (quoted in MIEDEMA 2005: 70). National unity was supposed to be achieved by involving as many citizens as possible in celebration events, from which they could receive knowledge of the great past of their country, its rich and diverse present, and glorious future. The Centennial Commission sought to avoid regulating how exactly Canadians should celebrate the Centenary, insisting only that they should celebrate it. The organizers planned to reach their intended scale and scope of the Centennial celebrations mainly through supporting numerous provincial and local initiatives of a diverse nature.
6It is fair to say that the emphasis of many Centennial initiatives was placed on experiencing the Canadian present, which, due to a number of significant changes that occurred in those years, was assessed as the key to a happy and glorious future that “would witness the loosening of certain historical ties and the birth of a new Canadian nation with its own distinctive identity” (MITCHEL 2007: 147). And if we leave aside purely entertaining activities like the bathtub races, parades or numerous food fairs, all the “firecrackers and bands” (KUFFERT 2003: 226) of that year, the interpretation of the present within the framework of Centennial celebrations was of a rather practical nature. The projects that focused on today or the near future included the building of new or restoration of existing community centers, playgrounds, parks, sporting facilities, etc. Numerous communities and institutions across the country introduced a wide range of beautification initiatives aimed at making urban and rural areas of Canada “clean, pure and shiny” and thus welcoming tourists to “a better and brighter Canada”. One of the major initiatives of that kind was the Federated Women’s Institutes of Canada’s Centennial project called “Making Canada Lovelier” (BEATON 2017: 165-167).
7As for the futurist themes, most of the time they were considered in the context of a search for solutions to old problems. As John Fisher, the chairman of the Centennial Commission, noted:
- 2 “Centennial report”, The Shawinigan Standard, November 16, 1966, p. 13.
I believe the Centennial celebrations will be for Canada what a good spring cleaning does for a house that’s been too long closed up for the winter months. The year 1967 will be a time for a new, fresh outlook, a time when we open the doors and windows of our minds, let in the fresh air and clean out the cobwebs. A country with such a potential has no place for cobwebs2.
8Among the most acute of unsolved problems that could cast a shadow on Canada’s future were often named cultural poverty and disintegration tendencies, which implied strong regional loyalties and the confrontation between French and English Canadians that divided the nation. Interestingly, in discussions about the future of Canada the issue of cultural development was closely interwoven with the problem of national unity. Many politicians and intellectuals, such as Maurice Lamontagne, “blamed Canada’s cultural poverty as the root cause of separatism and the present French-English tension”, stating: “Without culture we can be a country, but never a nation” (quoted in EVANS 1991: 97). There was a strong belief in the ability of culture to ensure the maintenance of an independent nation-state (WHITELAW 2005: 10). Strong national culture in the period was considered not only as a basis capable of uniting all members of the multi-ethnic Canadian society but also as an indicator of the maturity of the nation and a guarantor of the preservation of its identity under an inexhaustible flow of American cultural products. That is why many Centennial initiatives and projects were aimed at improving the cultural and intellectual infrastructure of Canada, which would stimulate a permanent growth of distinct Canadian culture in the future. Dozens of new concert halls, art galleries, libraries, and theatres were built in every province of Canada as part of the celebration of Canada’s centennial.
9It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Centennial year inevitably changed public attitudes to Canadian visual and performing arts. Under the Festival Canada umbrella, national tours of famous Canadian music bands, symphony orchestras, theater troupes, singers and dancers were organized. The Canadian Folk Arts Council held more than 100 regional festivals of folk music across Canada3. Thanks to the grants of the Centennial Commission, generous funding was provided for numerous professional and amateur artists throughout the country. Art exhibitions were arranged for every gallery and museum throughout the country and painters and sculptors vied for Centennial prizes. The Centennial Commission, in cooperation with Canada Council and the Canada Foundation, announced a programme of grants for authors and associations to encourage the production of books about Canada.
10However, there were also a number of projects that were not directly connected to the field of culture and art, aimed particularly at binding the different parts of Canada together and fostering understanding between French- and English-speaking Canadians now and in the future. Youth travel and exchange programs under the aegis of the Centennial Commission gave an opportunity to Canadian high school students “to experience the variety and beauty of Canada” (AYKROYD 1992: 143) by visiting a province or territory other than their own. The program ran from 1964 to 1967. During that time, over 40,000 young Canadians, “aged fifteen to seventeen, journeyed across the country for week-long exchanges in communities to experience life in other provinces” (BEATON 2017: 36). Given the young age of the participants, these programs could be seen as an investment in the near future, where Canadian citizens could know and understand each other better.
- 4 “Canada’s Centenary: grand or grotesque?” Financial Post, February 17, 1962, p. 25.
11In the minds of many Canadians, the Centennial year was supposed to contribute to the strengthening of bilingualism in Canada and the implementation of many recommendations made during the work of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. It is this idea that inspired such initiatives as the establishing of the exchange of English-speaking and French-speaking teachers in Canada by the Canadian Education Association, or the intensification of translating works of literature from French to English and vice versa4..
- 5 CARTER, Sarah (2017), Canada’s Third Largest (and most forgotten) Centennial Event: “Second Century (...)
- 6 Ibidem.
12One of the largest and – as Sarah Carter rightly put it – “most forgotten”5 Centennial events that addressed the theme of future was “Second Century Week”, a national academic, cultural and athletic program planned as a gathering of more than 1,000 students of universities, colleges and technical schools from all across Canada. The event had as its objectives the establishing of a dialogue among French and English speaking students, showcasing the potential of Canadian youth and giving them the opportunity to discuss the future of the country with leading Canadian artists and intellectuals. The 6-day event took place on the two campuses of the University of Alberta in Edmonton and Calgary in March, 1967. The program included literary seminar, film festival, art and photography exhibitions, as well as sporting event with more than 700 student athletes competing. There is no consensus whether the event was successful and achieved its set goals, but one cannot help but agree that it “never became a bilingual exploration into the future of the country”6.
13It was the present and the future that became the main theme of Expo ’67, the first world’s fair held in Canada from April to October 1967. The infrastructure of the exhibition, created with the latest technology, was to demonstrate to Canadians and guests from abroad the achievements of Canadian science, industry, and architecture. The exhibition was designed so as to introduce a new Canada to the world and to symbolically outline its place among other nations.
14According to the memories of the journalist Robert Fulford, the fact that Canada was able to organize and hold such an outstanding event, was the evidence of its maturity as a nation and of the disappearance of “Little Canada, a country afraid of its own future, frightened of great plans” (quoted in MITCHEL 2007: 147).
15Thanks to Expo ’67 and numerous other anniversary exhibitions and events, the whole generation of “baby boomers” got an opportunity to learn about Canada’s identity as a nation. Eva McKay recalls this pedagogical role of major centennial celebrations:
I was 10 years old in 1967 and on top of the daily school ritual of singing the new national anthem in front of the new Canadian flag, I remember spending months designing and painting centennial emblems for school competitions. We were carefully instructed to include each province, and to include both French and English languages. Thousands, if not millions, of schoolchildren like myself went on school-sponsored visits to Expo ’67, buses packed with children from all areas of Canada converging on Montreal (MACKEY 2002: 59).
16Approximately 50 million people visited the pavilions of Expo ’67, “the crown jewel of the celebrations marking Canada’s hundredth birthday” (LOWNSBROUGH 2012: 8). The world fair in Montreal became one of the highlights of Centennial year, an event during which Canada appeared to itself and the world in a new image – progressive and pluralistic.
17We have observed that many Centennial initiatives were concerned with transforming Canada’s present and future. However, when it comes to other large-scale celebratory events, the statement that “most centennial projects surprisingly did not engage the future” (PAYNE, WETHERELL & CAVANAUGH 2006: 618) seems particularly true. It was the past that drew most attention for those who saw the Centenary of Confederation as an opportunity to advance the goals of national unity and a sense of shared identity. The upcoming national birthday provoked an unprecedented rise of interest in Canadian history from both the general public and professional historians. “Papers were collected and preserved, old buildings renovated and repurposed, antique carriages and cars restored. Artifacts were rousted out of attics, documented, and displayed” (LITT 2016: 108). Canadian history was preserved and promoted through federal and provincial support of such projects as museums, historic sites, and archives that were aimed at nourishing historical consciousness long after the anniversary year was over.
- 7 “Canada’s Centenary: grand or grotesque?” Financial Post, February 17, 1962, p. 25.
18The forthcoming Centenary was closely linked with the boom in historical publications that took place in the 1960s. “We should be proud of past achievements and tell the world what we have done” (LEBEL 1967: 235) believed Professor Maurice Lebel. The Financial Post observed in February 1962 that “practically every historian in the country has signed a publisher’s contract for a book or at least a chapter for a book”7. A number of Centennial publishing projects aimed at providing a more in-depth knowledge of Canada’s past were launched. Among them were the Canadian Centenary Series: a series of books, each written by a different author, on the history of the peoples and lands which form Canada. The series was launched in 1963 by two prominent Canadian historians, D. Creighton and W.L. Morton. All nineteen volumes of it were united by the common aspiration to create a single narrative of Canadian history by interweaving all the regional stories into the fabric of Canadian history. The Centenary provided an excellent opportunity to highlight a common Canadian identity, veiling competing regional identities and contradictions between the federal center and the provinces.
19The Dictionary of Canadian Biography project, the first volume of which was published in 1966, developed in the same vein. “Gathering” isolated facts and scattered stories into a single, coherent narrative became a visible trend in many other areas of Canadian culture during that period. The pre-Centennial years saw a wave of publications representing the histories of almost every sphere of Canadian life (One Hundred Years of Medicine in Canada, Painting in Canada: A History and many others). The National Gallery of Canada held an exhibition entitled Three Hundred Years of Canadian Art. The Canadian Centennial Library, a multi-volume anthology series dealing with Canadian history, achievements, photography, biography, writing, painting, food, and sports, was published by the Canadian Centennial Publishing Co. The CBC, in association with RCA Victor, released “Music and Musicians of Canada”, a set of seventeen records of music by Canadian composers, performed by Canadian musicians, and “Canadian Folk Songs: A Centennial Collection”, a set of nine records of Canadian folk music.
20Many of the federal events organized during the 1967 celebrations focused directly on “reviving” in public discourse the key moments of the past that led to the birth of united Canada. They were aimed at forming a common vision of a single historical “path” that the country traveled in its pursuit of greatness and unity. And if this ambitious goal of “meaningful mass participation was to be achieved, the nation’s history and mythologies required distillation into more accessible forms” (KUFFERT 2003: 218).
21One of the major projects entrusted with the task of achieving these goals was the Confederation Train. The fact that the organizers chose this particular way of bringing Canadian history closer to the general public was no accident. The growth and development of young Confederation and even its very existence as an independent nation was largely associated in the national imagination with the construction of railways that linked the provinces and united the country from east to west. In this light, it is interesting to note that the CBC started its first broadcast of the anniversary year on January 1 with Gordon Lightfoot’s song “Canadian Railway Trilogy”, which describes the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. For the same reason, it seemed natural to organizers to commemorate the Centennial by crossing the country with a train, consisting of six display coaches loaded with conventional versions of the country’s shared past. The Confederation Train thus was meant to serve not merely as a showcase for the demonstration of the historical exhibition but also as a reminder of communications as the most important factor in the history of the country’s development.
- 8 “Confederation train: something to see”, Granby Leader Mail, September 27, 1967, p. 17.
- 9 “Centennial train”, The News and Eastern Townships Advocate, December 7, 1967, p. 3.
22The exposition’s planning and preparation of exhibition equipment took three years; another year was spent on the implementation of the project8. Leading Canadian historians, artists, sculptors and designers were invited to take part in creating the exposition, which represented the history of Canada from “ice age to space age”9. The exhibition presented such original historical artifacts as a 10th-century sword from the Vikings who were the first Europeans to set foot on North American soil; the pistol of Louis Riel, the famous Métis politician, leader, and rebel; as well as more mundane copies of historical documents, paintings and photographs. All the narration of the exhibition was built around several main motives. One of them was the motive of the journey – Canadian history was shown as a series of arrivals of new groups of people to this land. To fit this immigrant nation narrative, Canada’s aboriginal peoples were reconstructed as the “first immigrants” on Canadian soil, overlooking the fact that they predated Vikings and other Europeans by thousands of years. This approach to the narrative made it possible to pay tribute to each group that contributed to the building of a united Canadian nation, without placing any of them in a privileged position. The narrative of peaceful evolutionary development of the country and its gradual acquisition of freedom and prosperity also run through the exhibition and, like the immigrant nation narrative, papered over more complicated realities regarding indigenous peoples: the military conquest of the Métis and Plains Indians in the 1870s and 1880s, the execution of Louis Riel as a traitor, and indigenous cultural and political activism throughout the 20th century (CARDINAL 1969). This is just another obvious example of how “the social need for unity”, as Maurice Halbwachs suggests, is used to justify acts of erasure: “to erase from its memory all that might separate individuals, or that might distance groups from each other” (HALBWACHS 1992: 183).
23The train’s journey began on January 9 in Victoria, British Columbia, and ended in Sydney, Nova Scotia, in December. An arrival of the train at each of its destinations was a huge event attracting many visitors. School authorities made special arrangements to ensure all school children would be able to see the exhibition. The train made 83 stops from coast to coast during the Centennial year and received more than 2.5 million visitors. CBC called the Centennial Train project a “resounding success”10.
24To the areas not on the main rail lines, the Confederation Caravans were sent. Eight tractor-trailer units with exhibitions similar to the train’s did 656 stops on their way across Canada during Centennial year. These exhibitions also enjoyed unprecedented popularity among Canadians: thus, in just one day in St. John’s, Newfoundland, 17,800 people visited the caravan.
- 11 “Centennial train”, The News and Eastern Townships Advocate, December 7, 1967, p. 3.
25The scope of this exhibition project was impressive: in total, more than 10 million Canadians visited the train or caravans11. Visiting such movable places of memory allowed a significant number of Canadians from various social groups and ethnic backgrounds to join the unified “memory” of the Canadian past and the positive images of its future. On the one hand, this experience allowed the visitors to feel the continuity of the collective identity of Canadians as a nation while, on the other hand, it contributed to strengthening communication between all members of society here and now.
- 12 All the provinces except for Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland.
26Another extensive Centennial project, implemented with the support of the state and aimed at “reviving” the experience of previous generations, was a 104-day canoe race officially named the Centennial Voyageur Canoe Pageant. Ten competing teams representing eight provinces12 and two territories traveled more than 3,300 miles following the old routes of fur-trading voyageurs and explorers. The “epic journey”, as the National Centennial Commission called it, started in the Rocky Mountains in Alberta in May and ended at Expo ‘67 place in Montreal in September. Each canoe was named after a famous Canadian explorer: the canoe of the British Columbia team bore the name of Simon Fraser, that of New Brunswick the name of Samuel de Champlain, etc. In a way the participants of the event traveled not only in space but also made a symbolic journey in time, as their efforts were presented as a tribute to the memory of the fur-traders who crossed many miles along the Canadian waterways on their canoes, becoming the first (European) explorers of these lands. Like trains, the canoe in the national imagination of Canadians was and still is something much more than just a vehicle. As Daniel Francis notes, for many Canadians the canoe symbolizes a return to the roots, a reunion with nature, a kind of national “cradle”:
The canoe carries us out of our European past deep into the wilderness where we are reborn as citizens of the New World. The canoe emerges as the mother image of our national dreamlife, the symbol of our oneness with a rugged northern landscape, the vessel in which we are recreated as Canadians reborn as citizens of the New World. As much as the beaver or the Canada goose or the maple leaf, the canoe is presented as our link to the land, to the past, to our Aboriginal forebears, and to our spiritual roots (FRANCIS 2003: 129).
27Due to this perspective, the sports component of the Canoe Pageant was pushed to the sideline, giving way to its cultural, symbolic and historical significance. As Misao Dean states, the Centennial Voyageur Canoe Pageant “provided a model for the interpellation of thousands of Canadians as nation-builders, through their participation in subsequent holiday trips that retrace the routes of the explorers by canoe” (DEAN 2006: 49).
- 13 “Paddlers, dog reach Expo”, The Montreal Gazette, September 1, 1967, p. 14.
28There were also individual Centennial projects involving long-distance canoe trips. To celebrate Canada’s birthday as a nation, ten men decided to take a 5,200 mile journey from British Columbia to Quebec, following one of the routes covered by explorer Alexander Mackenzie during his search for a passage to the Pacific Ocean and his explorations of the continent between 1789 and 179313. Each of the men was dressed to represent one of the famous explorer’s crew, wearing buckskin shirts, beaver hats and so on. Their canoe was named “Explorer Mackenzie”. In his recent book Jon Van Tamelen, a member of the team, recalls this symbolic meaning that the journey came to represent, saying that he and his friend became “paddlers through time” (VAN TAMELEN 2017: 2).
29Thus, the Centennial year was a time of popularization of Canadian history, when images of the past stepped from the imagination of organizers and historians into the daily life of society through popular historical publications and large-scale initiatives such as the Confederation train and caravans, etc. These images were meant to become the basis of a generalized collective memory of the past, which was seen as crucial to fostering pan-Canadian national identity. As Maurice Halbwachs has argued in his work “On Collective Memory”, “we preserve memories of each epoch in our lives, and these are continually reproduced; through them, as by a continual relationship, a sense of our identity is perpetuated” (HALBWACHS 1992: 47). Appealing to the universal human desire to be part of something bigger, something meaningful, Centennial celebratory activities used the images of the Canadian past to give the participants a continual sense of shared experience through time – the experience that may never have been part of their personal story or that of their ancestors.
- 14 “A fond look back at our wacky Centennial”, Macleans, 80:12, 1967, p. 90.
- 15 See e.g.: “Shall we ever be the same again?” Chatelaine, July, 1967, p. 4; “What Expo really is: a (...)
30Like any large-scale national event, Canada’s Centennial celebration was aimed at embodying and promoting the experience of unity for all citizens of the nation, as well as fostering the spirit of optimism and confidence in the future among them. Some of the contemporaries even had a feeling that for a moment the nation, so long wandering in search of itself, was finally able to see its reflection in the stream of time and events of this fantastic year. “I even think that eternal search for the Canadian identity is over. I don’t know what it is, but I think we found it this year,”14 concluded John Fisher in his interview for Maclean’s. Susan M. Crean later recalled: “We watched the Centennial year unfold, and what we saw was ourselves. For a little while, Canada was visible. We were all changed by that vision” (CREAN 1976: 7). And it is no coincidence that such metaphors as “milestone” or “coming of age”15 used in relation to the Centennial year, were so widely spread in contemporary speeches and in the press.
31The sesquicentennial year has just approached its peak and it is of course too early now to analyze the symbolic meaning and the impact of its large-scale projects. Nevertheless, it is already obvious that, compared to Centennial celebratory activities, Canada’s 150th anniversary celebrations do not lay such a heavy emphasis on the past as a source of strengthening national unity. The organizers use different frames along which they build the new narrative of Canadian identity. It manifests itself even in the vocabulary that is used in the description of key sesquicentennial projects. Such themes as Canada’s future, development of youth leadership or personal views of what Canada is came to occupy dominant position in sesquicentennial signature projects. And it’s definitely striking that there are still more questions than answers.
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