Art and Politics. Sarah Jennings
NAC’s first director general. Bruce Corder was also confirmed as Southam’s second-in-command and would soon become his “right hand” in running the place.1
Southam prepared well for these first meetings, and a series of motions that he and his team had developed clicked effortlessly through the proceedings. At the heart of his message was Jean Gascon’s idea that, “without resident companies, the building would be misbegotten.”2 He sketched out carefully the plans that had been developed with the help of the advisory groups for both theatre and music. While there were no plans yet for resident dance or opera, Southam already had his eye on the Summer Festival and recommended that the board ask the government for a separate $1 million per year to pay for it. He had hired the Canadian-born arts administrator Henry Wrong as his future director of programming. Wrong, the designated head of the future Festival as well, had been the special assistant to Sir Rudolf Bing at New York’s Metropolitan Opera and, not surprisingly, was a man with big ideas. His suggestions for the Festival already included visits by European companies such as the Salzburg Opera, which, he said, “could drop by Ottawa on its way to Japan in 1970.” The immediate task, however, was to persuade Cabinet to approve approximately $2.5 million for the Arts Centre’s general operations. Judy LaMarsh, primed by Lawrence Freiman, readily lent her political support.
A big item on the first meeting’s agenda was an upcoming visit by the Queen, a prospect almost as exciting to the trustees as the new centre itself. A $5,000 budget was allocated for this celebration, and an invitation sent to actor Christopher Plummer to host the ceremonies at the building site. On July 5, 1964, Queen Elizabeth II arrived in Ottawa on her way back to England after attending a conference in Quebec City. It was a first big public moment for the National Arts Centre: on this sunny summer morning, the Queen took an hour out of a crammed schedule on Parliament Hill to come over to the chaotic construction site to unveil a plaque. A crowd of spectators enjoyed the brief but lively outdoor artistic show that was presented on a temporary wooden stage erected the previous night on a patch of green sod hurriedly laid down in the middle of the muddy grounds. A special fanfare for the occasion had been composed by Louis Applebaum, and a proclamation written by author Robertson Davies. The lines were to be delivered by Plummer in English and by renowned Quebec actress Denise Pelletier in French, although there were many arguments over the translation of Davies’s words into the language of Molière. At the last moment Plummer cancelled, and another Canadian actor, Robert Whitehead, stepped in to replace him. Freiman was in his element showing the Queen around the half-built site to the cheers of the blue-helmeted construction workers. Dozens of dignitaries were also on hand to celebrate. As the excitement subsided and the July board meetings continued the trustees expressed relief that the visit was over and that thinking could turn once again to more practical matters.
First NAC chairman Lawrence Freiman with Lester Pearson and Queen Elizabeth II on July 5, 1964, at an unveiling ceremony of a plaque marking the Queen’s visit to the unfinished site. Photo © John Evans.
Considerable debate was devoted at the first meeting to the organizational model. Freiman opposed Southam’s preference for the decentralized “Brussels” concept, describing its associated independent companies as “too expensive and duplicating responsibility.”3 With LaMarsh supporting his position, the new trustees swiftly voted to adopt the “Stratford” approach, in which they, through the centre’s own staff, would have responsibility for all the artistic work presented there. Southam, who had promoted the Brussels model for nearly three years, acquiesced without a murmur. Decades later, when hard times hit the Arts Centre, this early choice would be revisited and thought given again to separating the orchestra into an independent if resident company. This fragmentation did not occur and, so far, the original decision has been maintained.
Henry Wrong initiated plans for the programming of the Opening Festival, now tentatively scheduled for June 1969. The first regular seasons would not commence until the fall. The inaugural event was to be “Canadian, bi-cultural and artistically interesting.” Southam nevertheless continued to travel widely in Europe, forming alliances and viewing performances that might be brought to Ottawa in due course. One trip took him to Prague, where he first saw the work of the great Czech designer Josef Svoboda. The regular annual Festival was targeted to begin in the summer of 1970 under the aegis of the Arts Centre. Wrong had been thinking big—hugely, in fact—about this event. Besides the visit from the Salzburg Opera, there were plans for four different opera productions in a two-week season, complete with soloists from the Vienna Staatsoper. Even a Parisian haute couture fashion show was mentioned. Unfortunately, a personal tiff between Wrong and Southam would mean that the programming director would not be around to see any of these plans to completion. Although Wrong had already moved to Ottawa and settled his family into a new house in anticipation of his position at the centre, he was shortly to be fired.
The trouble was triggered by malicious gossip instigated by one of the artists now making their way to the Arts Centre in anticipation of future work. Something unpleasant was reported to Southam about Wrong and, instead of checking his facts, Southam took it at face value. When he confronted Wrong, the latter made an angry comment about the breakdown of Southam’s marriage to his first wife, Jacqueline. In the midst of his busy work life, Southam’s personal affairs had taken a tempestuous turn, and his long-standing attraction to women had reasserted itself. Southam was furious and, in a rare pugilistic moment, threatened to strike Wrong if he did not take back his hurtful words. Wrong declined, and Southam responded by “boxing his ears,”4 resulting in the threat of a messy lawsuit. To avoid any further embarrassment to the NAC, Southam made a financial settlement with Wrong and the two arts administrators parted ways. Years later Southam mused that perhaps he had not been fair to Wrong, but the scandal had an immediate effect on planning at the centre as Wrong’s initial grand ideas for the 1970 Festival were dropped with his departure.5
Fortunately for Southam, David Haber, the phenomenally successful impresario for the cultural festival at Expo 67, was waiting in the wings. Although he could not join the Arts Centre until his work in Montreal was completed, he came to Ottawa, met with Southam, and agreed to join the staff in March 1968 for an annual salary of $20,000. His arrival brought the centre an invaluable asset. With a tiny staff of one assistant and a secretary, he functioned, with the exception of the Music Department, as a one-man programming department for the next five years.
As 1967 unfolded, newly appointed NAC staff members assisted the busy Centennial Commission with its artistic activities, helping it to tour shows across the country. They arranged some of the popular programming, including tours by the Quebec singers Louise Forrestier, Pierre Ferland, and Ginette Reno, who were seen only rarely outside Quebec, in other parts of the country. They also organized European tours for the Quebec dance company Les Feux Follets and for the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. Their success and expertise in moving artists around the country and overseas gave Haber an idea that he delivered to Southam shortly after he arrived in Ottawa: the Arts Centre could develop a National Booking Office, which would serve arts groups all over Canada. Southam immediately grasped that this initiative could contribute to the centre’s national role. Around the same time, the board realized that it must begin implanting the idea of the National Arts Centre in the general public’s mind. It authorized management to hire a public-relations director, Laurent Duval, and allotted him a $100,000 budget for a campaign to start putting the word out.
Most of the trustees’ thinking in those early days was wide-ranging and ambitious. Lawrence Freiman had by now resigned from the Stratford Festival Board, but he was still keen to devise a plan that would make the Stratford Festival company the resident English theatre company at the National Arts Centre. He dreamed of having it tour the country under the NAC’s aegis and initiated a voluminous correspondence with Floyd Chalmers, the chair of the Stratford board, who shared his thinking. Characterized by their intimate “Dear Larry/Dear Floyd” salutations, the two embarked on what would be a lengthy, sometimes tortuous, exploration to make Stratford part of the NAC. It was left to Southam to work out the prospects for French theatre—a