Art and Politics. Sarah Jennings

selection of capital projects.”¹⁴ Giving this grant-giving power to the department itself contributed to the tensions that would grow between the ministry and the regular grant-giving federal cultural agencies.

      Previously, the cultural agencies had not only set their own agendas but had also operated independently from one another. It was only with the establishment of the National Arts Centre that other agencies, including the Canada Council, the CBC, and the National Film Board, had been given ex-officio places on the board, so they could liaise with one another and try to work in consort where appropriate. Pelletier thought that there should be a common direction among the agencies, and that this objective should be established by the government. With the challenges of national unity mounting, the government wanted all the tools it could get at its disposal to fight separatism in Quebec. Pelletier firmly believed that all the cultural agencies should now be grouped within a national cultural policy under the government’s control. The fight for freedom of cultural expression, how it was to be supported and who would control it, would resonate through the years into the present day.

      To his credit, Pelletier wanted to engage the energies of governments at both the provincial and the municipal levels in his quest to spread the opportunities to produce art and cultural events. The ability to allow the provinces to undertake “educational” television was one of the early measures reflecting these principles—with André Fortier as one of Pelletier’s chief negotiators.

      So far as the National Arts Centre was concerned, Pelletier had shared his doubts about the institution and its director with Fortier. Their view of Southam was that “his attitude and way of doing things were those of an aristocrat,” an elitist, and his style of living grated on them.¹⁵ Most unfairly, they judged him as “doing something for himself and his friends at the Arts Centre, which looked more like an extended private club.”¹⁶ Southam, as we have seen, had a different view of elitism. He was not against democratizing the arts, but his vision was rooted in the concept of “centres of excellence,” and he firmly believed that these institutions could not be created by governments but occurred where “the arts were started by people and then encouraged.”¹⁷ It had been broad-based coalitions of the general populace, after all, that had created institutions like the CBC and the Canada Council—headed, it is true, by leading citizens who were often, though not exclusively, anglophone.

      There is no question that the two sides had decidedly different approaches, but the extent to which this conflict was affected by social rather than ideological factors— the francophones’ aggravation at Southam’s “airs and graces” versus Southam’s often patrician way of viewing the world—is hard to calibrate. Southam’s mannerisms indeed put Pelletier’s back up and, in his memoir published in the 1990s, he remarked on his distaste for the “long gowns and white gloves” approach that he thought the NAC represented.¹⁸ Southam, in turn, would later describe Pelletier as “well educated but not a man of the world” and as a “scatterer of the wealth.”¹⁹ No love was lost between the two men.

      While their differences were perhaps rooted in their individual starts in life, their views were also affected by their differing postwar experiences of providing art to the masses. Like Maynard Keynes in England, Southam had a view of what was “the best,” and he thought it his duty to present these performances to Canada and so raise cultural standards in the country. That “best” should be not only Canadian but from abroad, such as the Comédie Française or England’s National Theatre. He had been raised as an internationalist and believed that Canada had a larger role to play in the world, and not just within its national borders. In his mind, the NAC had been born into that international context. Pelletier, in contrast, subscribed more to the community-based French view, and he and Fortier privately thought the concept of the NAC “too old-school European.”²⁰ By strictly theoretical standards, their position was more democratic and their charge of elitism stung Southam, although there was really no difference between the goals of the two camps—they both wanted to increase access to the arts for individual artists and the public alike.

      Pelletier did not fully appreciate Southam’s quick-witted and shrewd diplomatic skill at adapting to and managing the evolving political situations. In this respect the director general was the consummate politician on behalf of the NAC. As Pelletier’s work began to build up steam, in March 1971, the NAC board, which held the power of appointment, renewed Southam’s contract as director general for another five years. Southam said later that, had it been in Pelletier’s power, he believed he would have been let go. Board chair François Mercier, with strong ties to the Liberal Party and the Trudeau government, liked Southam enormously, however, and he dealt with the reappointment expeditiously.

      Nothing illustrated Southam’s adroit management skills more than the financing for the early summer festivals. There, he picked up on the government’s urgent new interest in issues of “national unity” and began to re-tailor his requests to fit this new paradigm. There might be less money from Treasury Board for “B” budget items, but there was going to be new monies for “unity” projects. The NAC had already sent in an impressive “B” budget shopping list that included the first mention of a possible resident dance company, based on a proposal from choreographer Brian Macdonald, as well as plans to bring Opéra Québec to Ottawa and to develop a National Booking Office that would service the whole country. Southam had no difficulty recasting the NAC as a useful player in the national unity cause. He had always believed strongly in Canadian unity– and the role that the National Arts Centre could play in bringing Canadians together.

      In the fall of 1970, the NAC again proposed the Festival Canada idea to the government for the summer of the following year, this time fitting its own plans neatly into the national unity project. Southam took nothing for granted, and, in May 1971, he made a carefully prepared appearance before the Standing Committee of Parliament. There he stressed to the parliamentarians the NAC’s role in the entire country, firmly rejecting the notion that it was a project only for the citizens of Ottawa. Rather, he sketched out for the country’s representatives the good things that the Arts Centre could do, and was doing, for Canada, including “commissioning new works to perform at the NAC,” “making the capital a centre of creation and attraction,” and “developing itself as a ‘national service centre’ for the performing arts, as in the proposed National Booking Office being designed to serve the arts companies of the entire country.” At the same time, he smoothly reminded the politicians that the NAC would need new money to achieve these goals. His message resonated with the authorities and, while the NAC generally funded the first Festival from its own funds, it implanted itself firmly as a major component of “Canada Month,” a pet project initiated by the Secretary of State’s Department.