His former colleagues in External Affairs kept him abreast of cultural affairs internationally. Ambassador Arnold Smith, wiring from Paris, reported lengthy conversations with the French culture minister, André Malraux, whom Southam would meet on his European tour.17 The French already had a plan to retain their Expo pavilion after the world’s fair so they could pursue their cultural interests in Canada. They wanted to turn it into a maison de culture for Quebec, which the federal government resisted as being “too local.” There was also intelligence on Charles de Gaulle’s forthcoming visit to Montreal for the Centennial celebrations. Federal concern over the growing nationalism in Quebec and the potential role of the French government is evident in these official telegrams.
But for Southam and his colleagues, the Arts Centre they were designing was to showcase a cooperative Canada, an ideal reflected in the work of the recently appointed Bilingual and Bicultural Commission. There was never any doubt that the new centre, like its new director general, would be completely bilingual and bicultural. Two issues were central to Southam’s planning. The first was his decision that the organization would be “national” in character and scope. The local consortium, the National Capital Arts Alliance, had helped to secure the government’s approval and, although the local organizations did not yet know it, Southam had bigger plans for his Arts Centre that would leave little room for them. He proposed that the new centre be “more than a complex of theatres in Ottawa” and also “address its activities to be truly national and even international in scope.” Local developer William Teron, the president of the NCAA after Southam left the post to become full-time coordinator of the new project, later expressed bitterness and shock at the manner in which local arts groups had been frozen out.18 When the music groups complained about their lack of real local representation on the arts advisory groups, Southam told them firmly that “this is national.”
Second, Southam, along with a team of public servants in his minister’s office, had to devise a management model for the new Arts Centre. Their negotiations were initially cooperative rather than adversarial. At the time, a small coterie of individuals, many of them with similar backgrounds (if not always socially, then in terms of their education), was at the core of government policy-making in Ottawa. Together they refined the design of the managerial structure of the organization and began work on funding models. These memoranda, usually intimate and informal in tone, formed the basis of the legislation that would officially create the new organization. Not surprisingly, Southam favoured from the outset a managerial model that placed an administrator in full control at the top, assisted by an advisory board of trustees appointed from across the country. In later years, as delays developed and costs soared, Southam was increasingly required to defend the organizational structure to his political masters and their officials.
By mid-1964 Southam and his team favoured the “Brussels” managerial model, based on the Palais des Beaux Arts that had been built in the Belgian capital in the early 1920s.19 It called for tenant organizations in the building, including an independent orchestra and theatre companies in both languages, which would be subject to an overall artistic policy set by the centre’s trustees and management. These arts organizations would have their own charters and boards of directors, raise their own funds, and pay fees to the centre for their use of the facilities. The attraction of this approach to Southam was that the new Arts Centre’s board would not be required to “find the large amounts of money nor take the considerable risks involved in artistic productions or the presentation of artistic groups.” Those risks would, rather, be “courted by companies resident or visiting the centre.” The centre’s activities would be confined to “the efficient management and financial maintenance of the Centre” in accordance with a defined set of artistic principles: “encouraging performances of the highest standard in music, opera in any language, dance, drama and poetry readings in English and French … whether they were authored by Canadians or not.” The centre would also arrange appearances of the best professional performing groups in Canada and encourage the development of a resident orchestra and resident English-and French-language repertory theatre companies.
A “national festival organization” would run the annual festival—the second part of the government’s original commitment. Because the festival was to “grow out of the centre’s activities,” Southam wanted to run it as well.
Southam envisaged the future Arts Centre as the hub of artistic activity on the national scene. It would encourage the development of performing arts schools in the national capital area and also provide offices and administrative arrangements for the headquarters of a national performing arts organization, establishing a library and museum and providing other services that might prove useful for the performing arts in Canada. In addition, the early working papers contain several references to the place of film and the role of radio and television in the new centre’s activities.
By October 1964 the artistic working groups were hurrying to complete their tasks, but the debate continued in government circles over the operational model the new organization should adopt. Southam’s preference for the Brussels concept was resisted by officials both at the Secretary of State’s Department and in the Privy Council Office who favoured some sort of hybrid arrangement that combined Southam’s model with the arts-producing example of the Stratford Festival. Just how “national” the place should be was also under discussion, as was the question of where the money for the centre would come from. In January 1965 a seminal meeting organized by the Canadian Conference of the Arts at St-Adèle, Quebec, brought Maurice Lamontagne together with representatives from all the key cultural organizations in the country.20 The objective was to discuss the broad picture of arts financing in Canada, but the organizers also used the occasion to obtain comments on the new arts centre before the government finalized the legislation that would create the NAC.
While the organizers hoped to have this new act mentioned in the government’s next Speech from the Throne, it was not likely to be introduced into the House until the following September. In the meantime, the Interdepartmental Steering Committee would continue to deal with problems on behalf of the future Board of Trustees. Among these issues was resistance from the still feisty but now outgoing Ottawa mayor, Charlotte Whitton, who was refusing to let the city hand over the deed to the site so construction could start. The committee recommended expropriation, but, after Don Reid, a new and friendlier mayor, took office, it was able to negotiate a ninety-nine-year land lease with the city. Just to be sure, Prime Minister Pearson wrote personally to the mayor, reminding him that a deed to the property was still required so that work on the excavation could at last get under way. With Centennial Year only two years off, time was pressing.
Secretary of State Maurice Lamontagne (centre), flanked by Fred Lebensold and Hamilton Southam, presented the NAC project to his parliamentary colleagues. Lamontagne, Lester Pearson’s “Quebec lieutenant,” was an elegant and erudite supporter and left Southam to his own devices. Photo © NAC.
With the excavation contract in place and the shovel finally in the ground, the Department of Public Works pushed vigorously ahead with tendering the next two phases. Southam and his colleagues were already discussing an opening festival at the new centre for 1967, but, early into the work, Jim Langford warned that this date would be all but impossible.
By the fall of 1964, as the artistic advisory committees were finishing most of their work, the Operations Advisory Committee was coming into its own. Under Bertram Loeb, a new name was added to the list of experienced theatre managers already in the group: François Mercier, a well-known Montreal litigation lawyer with