The leading arts professionals that Dwyer selected were a roll call of who was who in Canada’s arts world at the time. At the invitation of the Canada Council, they were asked “to advise the organizers how their art form should be accommodated in this new building,”2 in both the physical design of the centre and the way in which it would be put to use. Many were already acting as advisers to Expo, where cultural activities were to have a leading role, and they all believed they were contributing to something unique and special in the growing cultural life of Canada. Their collegiality and pride in what they were about to do is recorded in the careful notes kept of their meetings. Renowned theatre director Jean Gascon set the tone for all the discussions when he declared at the outset, “The Centre must have a heart that beats.” In short, the new building must not be just a roadhouse for travelling shows but a place where real artistic activity was created. This goal became the guiding creed for the work that followed.
Gascon took charge of the Theatre Advisory Committee, which included Michael Langham and Douglas Campbell, his colleagues from Stratford, Leon Major from Halifax’s Neptune Theatre, and the talented and strong-willed genius John Hirsch from Winnipeg’s Manitoba Theatre Centre. Quebec theatre was represented by Gascon himself and Yvette Brind’amour, the director of Théâtre Rideau Vert. Old hands including Toronto’s Mavor Moore were also on the committee. For the Music, Opera, and Ballet Committee, the multitalented Louis Applebaum took the chair, with the distinguished and austere Dr. Arnold Walter of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music to assist him. Also tapped were Jean-Marie Beaudet from the CBC, Dr. Frederick Karam from Ottawa University, Zubin Mehta as conductor of the Montreal Symphony, and Gilles Lefebvre as head of Les Jeunesses Musicales. Herman Geiger-Torel, the ebullient general director of Canada’s only professional opera troupe, the Canadian Opera Company, saw future potential for his company in the centre and became a keen and active supporter. From the ballet world, Celia Franca of the National Ballet and Ludmilla Chiriaeff of Montreal’s Grands Ballets Canadiens were selected, and they met for the first time on this committee. Southam ensured that a technical adviser was also present to record the discussions. He hired Wallace Russell, the expert from Dominion Consultants who had written the Brown Book, as the secretary to each of the committees, with responsibility for reporting back the technical implications of any ideas that emerged.
A flurry of meetings was held through early 1964 as the work of these advisory committees got under way. From the beginning, there was a noticeably different character and mood in the groups for music and for theatre.
In the Music Committee, Applebaum insisted from the outset that “they needed to create a program for the community” and that it would be useless “to have a large structure without roots in the community.”3 This philosophy guided the thinking of the music advisers in the kind of orchestra they would recommend and the outreach that the NAC would have, especially into regional schools and Ottawa’s two universities. When the new orchestra was finally created, the solid connections it already had with interested people and organizations in Ottawa served as a foundation for its work and was critical in providing its audience. The question of building up a loyal audience was certainly worrying, but Southam had reassured the group that at least two independent private impresarios (Tremblay Concerts and Treble Clef) had made their living in Ottawa bringing in classical music. These private companies were about to be put out of business by the new NAC, but they had proved that there was an appetite for good music and performance in Ottawa.
In the Theatre Committee, in contrast, members found common ground only when they were discussing the physical needs for their particular art form. Without question, they agreed, the new theatre in the complex should be a “voice room” designed specifically to serve the spoken word. But right from the beginning they worried about the subsidies that would be needed to produce theatre in Ottawa and fretted that this cost would draw money away from the regional theatre groups across the country. John Hirsch, although he would soon join the new centre and be its theatre adviser for a time, was particularly vociferous on this point. On other matters, too, committee members were often divided: they debated whether the company should have a base in Toronto, from which it would extend to Ottawa, or even have its home in Montreal. Some thought that the Stratford Festival could form the core of the English-speaking company, but there was no agreement over what it could do with this mandate or where it should locate. Meanwhile, Stratford’s director, Michael Langham, opposed any move to Ottawa, believing that his company’s winter home should be in Montreal, where it would have ready access to the National Theatre School. Altogether, this committee mirrored the splits in Canada’s theatre world in general: the simmering rivalries among the various groups that were trying to establish theatres in all areas of the country. As a consequence, while the creation of an orchestra forged ahead, little progress was made in planning a resident theatre at the Arts Centre.
The three theatre men (left to right), John Hirsch, Leon Major, and Jean Gascon, examine the model for the “voice room”—the NAC’s proposed 900-seat Theatre. Photo © Capital Press Photographers/NAC.
The Operations Advisory Committee included managers of the best performing houses and established organizations in Canada: Hugh Walker from the O’Keefe Centre and Walter Homberger from the Toronto Symphony.4 It was chaired by Ottawa businessman Bertram Loeb, the senior brother and “brain” in the Loeb family (which included the founding organizer Mrs. Faye Loeb), one of the richest Jewish clans in Ottawa. Southam diplomatically placed a local citizen on each of the committees: Gilles Provost, a rising young francophone director, for theatre, and Lyla Rasminsky, the wife of Louis Rasminsky, the governor of the Bank of Canada, for music. Whether they were there to offer solid advice or merely to be used as “window-dressing” was a moot point.
Southam recognized the limits of his own knowledge, and he had no hesitation in hiring the best people he could find to fill the gaps. Soon into the planning process, he persuaded Bruce Corder, an experienced theatre manager who had worked for years at Covent Garden in London before coming to Toronto to run the O’Keefe Centre, to join the small team in the Coordinator’s Office. Corder was suave and well-spoken, yet tough minded and determined. He would be the ideal colleague for Southam—the skilful manager of operations and enforcer of difficult decisions who enabled his boss to stay above the fray. Their partnership in the years to come would ensure that, through Southam’s good connections, the Arts Centre was supported at the highest levels, while, thanks to Corder’s wide knowledge and experience, the systems and operations practices laid down for the day-to-day running of the building were of an equally high quality. The excellence with which these two men built their “artistic ship” enabled it to continue sailing in later years, even though its masts, sails, and rigging, and much of its key personnel, would be blown away by government budget cuts and poor leadership throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. Similarly, the strength of the original systems made its recovery possible when the NAC again changed direction in the mid-1990s.
Southam gave considerable thought to the fundamental management principles he should follow: whether the future festival should be run by the centre, how various levels of government should be involved, and how the new centre should relate to the Canada Council for the long-term benefit of the performing arts. He had clear ideas about what he should do, and he made every effort to ensure that the structure of the planning system and the future organization would come firmly under his control during the development process. And there he met very little opposition.
Southam thought they should not delay construction of the Arts Centre by having an architectural competition, so he went again to see the prime minister. Pearson concurred that there was no time to lose and told him to “go out and find an architect.”5 At the time, few Canadian architectural firms had any experience in building theatres. The only one that had two to its credit was the Montreal-based firm ARCOP, whose clever design partners were doing some of the best public projects in Canada.