Art and Politics. Sarah Jennings
on a scale never before seen in the country. The arts were burgeoning and were clearly accepted as a sign of any maturing society.
In the postwar period, Canada had modelled its cultural agencies on their British counterparts. The Canada Council had been created by the Liberal government of Louis St. Laurent some eight years before, and its grants to artists and arts groups were already beginning to bear fruit. Above all, Ottawa’s leading citizens wanted to take advantage of this mood and were increasingly eager to put their city, the capital of the country, on the map.
From the moment Southam agreed to lead the campaign, it took off. Working from his home at 267 Buena Vista Road in Ottawa’s upper-crust Rockcliffe Park, he threw himself into the task with passion and advanced on a vast range of fronts. He used every social occasion, from lunches at the prestigious Rideau Club to small dinners and other social gatherings, to press the case. He also undertook a vast letter-writing campaign to every interested arts party in the city.
On February 14, 1963, scarcely two months after setting up his first committee, Southam announced the creation of a new organization: the National Capital Arts Alliance.6 It was made up of fifty-five local arts groups ranging from the fully professional and established Ottawa Philharmonic to the amateur but long-standing theatre company, the Ottawa Little Theatre. His diplomat’s approach—charming, interested, flattering, and positive—worked magic and, with a politician’s instincts, he made sure no group was neglected. Besides the Jewish faction in the city, he enlisted prominent local French Canadians, among them member of Parliament Oswald Parent, the Queen’s printer Roger Duhamel, the powerful developer Robert Campeau (who was already changing the face of Ottawa with his high-rise office buildings), and other more modest figures such as Jean-Paul Desjardins, the city’s leading pharmacist among the francophone community. By May there were few in the city with whom Southam and his team had not made contact, with one significant exception. That holdout was Ottawa’s mayor, the fractious Charlotte Whitton, who had not responded to any of his letters and made it clear she was “not yet ready to receive the Alliance.”7
Nevertheless, by the first week in May, the Arts Alliance was ready to put the feasibility study to tender, and donors were sought to pay for its estimated $12,000 to $20,000 cost. Supporters for what would become known as the Brown Book reflected Ottawa society of the day. Among Southam’s friends was his cousin-in-law, lawyer (later Senator) Duncan MacTavish, who was not only active in politics as president of the federal Liberal Party, but had strong connections with the city’s banks and trust companies. MacTavish had no hesitation in rustling money from them and also using them to network through the important local business community, including industrial interests such as the E.B. Eddy Company. Southam drew on his high-placed diplomatic contacts, asking the French ambassador to obtain details about similar complexes that were being built in Le Havre and in Caen. And he made sure that Sam Berger, who had his own Development Committee for a Performing Arts Centre, and Lawrence Freiman, another prominent Jewish businessman who was working towards a Centennial Festival, merged their interests with those of the Arts Alliance. He even wrote to Vincent Massey, who was summering at his country retreat, Batterwood, near Port Hope. Although the former governor general declined to make a donation, he sent moral support and advice: the committee should be sure to choose a good name for the new complex, he said, “something that will be hard to get rid of.”8 Naming would be a perplexing and much-discussed issue in the years to come.
Harking on the theme of the centre’s national importance in the capital, Southam sent requests to Dr. Albert Trueman, the director at the Canada Council, and to Dennis Coolican, the chair of the National Capital Commission, soliciting $5,000 from each of them to help pay for the study. Clearly he was confident of success: on May 24 the contract was let to Dominion Consultants for a projected cost of $20,000. Within a few short months this group would produce the Brown Book, the tool that went on to secure federal government approval and became the conceptual blueprint for the National Arts Centre itself—the basis for the architectural drawings and other planning on which the centre would be built.
All through that summer of 1963, the lobbying process and the discussions surrounding the project continued. Peter Dwyer, the assistant director of the Canada Council and a former British intelligence agent, played devil’s advocate at informal dinners and drinks with Southam. Erudite and deeply intelligent, Dwyer, although a keen supporter of the new centre, felt compelled in a personal letter to Southam to set out his concerns that Canada should perhaps focus on assisting artists to develop their work before constructing a massive emporium in which to house them.9 Despite this questioning, however, the growing momentum behind the project mounted. In late August, Southam had a “sympathetic” meeting with Maurice Lamontagne, the federal minister in charge of culture. Lamontagne, a suave and courtly French Canadian, had broad political influence as the Quebec lieutenant in Pearson’s cabinet. Also at the meeting was John Fisher, a former broadcaster known for his boosterism as “Mr. Canada” and the man assigned to run Canada’s Centennial Commission. By the end of the month, so much enthusiasm had been generated that Southam and Heeney were already contemplating possible appointments for the new centre’s board of directors.
Word of the proposed centre quickly spread through the small Canadian arts community. The enterprising Toronto-based conductor and musician Niki Goldschmidt heard the gossip and checked in by letter from Europe. Southam responded by asking him to collect some material at the Edinburgh Festival while he was there and to pay a call on its director, Lord Harewood, an old Southam friend who was also the Queen’s cousin. Meanwhile, the networking through the social salons of Ottawa continued. Yousuf Karsh, the international society photographer who would live with his second wife in a residential suite at the Château Laurier, was among those who entertained guests in order to support the idea.
In early September, Mayor Charlotte Whitton telephoned at last. She mischievously told Southam that she favoured the old Union Station as a site for the new centre because “it has an exact replica of ‘the Baths of Caracalla’ in it and would be perfect for staging Greek dramas.”10 More seriously, she warned Southam off the Nepean Point location that was being considered because “there are caves under part of the land which could collapse and the rest is solid rock which would be very expensive to excavate.” She related to him “the shocking cost” to the city of having to run a sewer pipe under similar conditions into the French Embassy just down the street. What Whitton really wanted was to choose the site—and she had one in mind. Eventually she offered him a parcel of land at the heart of the city on Confederation Square, just diagonally across from Southam’s own office in the Langevin Block. He was delighted.
The volunteer activities of these senior diplomats, Southam and Charpentier, had been noticed by their political boss, External Affairs Minister Paul Martin. When he nervously queried his deputy minister Norman Robertson about what these two were up to, Robertson replied in a wry memo that yes, they were busy outside office hours “in the cause of the arts,” but, he added, “I am sure they will not embarrass us.”11
The site selected for the centre was at the heart of the capital. Photo © NAC.
On October 24 the Brown Book, the feasibility study put together by Dominion Consultants, was delivered to the National Capital Arts Alliance. Southam made sure that copies were swiftly circulated to all the key figures who could influence the final decision. Pearson and George McIlraith, the minister of public works and so-called Ottawa minister in cabinet, received copies, as did civil servant Robert Bryce, the deputy-secretary to the Treasury Board, and John MacDonald, the deputy minister of public works. C.M. “Bud” Drury, now head of the National Capital Commission, was on the list, along with Governor General Georges Vanier. A copy was deposited at the Ottawa Public Library for the benefit of the local citizenry, but the frugal organizers insisted that anyone else wanting copies had to pay $4.50 each for them.12 Five days later, the Arts Alliance organized a lunch