Art and Politics. Sarah Jennings
and his group were determined to lay the groundwork carefully for the moment when the plan would come before the government: they not only worked directly with the politicians but also solicited letters from high-powered individuals in banking, industry, and the arts world. In addition, a small nucleus of brilliant senior civil servants who knew the ways of government assisted Southam in preparing for his government dealings. They included Jack Harrison at Forestry and David Golden at Defence, who, after moving on to be the first head of Telesat Canada, would later become a feisty NAC trustee. Their arguments were persuasive: “The building will complete the Capital in a spiritual as well as physical sense,” they said. “It will help recruitment to the public service in both languages.” And, they added naively, “the initial price tag seems nominal at a mere $9 million.”13
Peter Dwyer was the lone naysayer. Although he supported Southam, he continued to think, as someone associated with the Canada Council, that a massive subsidy of the arts should precede a costly building. He accurately pinpointed the fact that, in his opinion, “Ottawa has nothing of quality to offer” and that “the future would better lie in touring companies and attracting ballet, opera and orchestras from Toronto and Montreal where pre-paid expenses would assist costs.”14 Southam ignored the advice and continued to work with Golden and others towards the design of future operations, which would “include a small board … to protect the government from artistic matters.” He kept up a persistent and thorough correspondence with anyone who could affect the final decision, and he collected a dossier of courteous and optimistic replies, including letters from the opposition party leaders—John Diefenbaker of the Progressive Conservatives, Tommy Douglas of the NDP, and Robert Thompson of the Social Credit—as well as from prominent figures in Canada’s arts world.
The preparation was impeccable, and when the invitation came from the Prime Minister’s Office to meet with the Arts Alliance group in early November, Southam wrote an enthusiastic note to its secretary, Jack Harrison, that “a ground swell of public opinion should carry us irresistibly through the Prime Minister’s door.” That moment came on November 8, 1963, when Southam and a small delegation were asked to make their way up to Parliament Hill late in the afternoon to meet with Mr. Pearson in his office.
National Capital Arts Alliance members David Golden, Hamilton Southam, and Louis Audette after their November 1963 meeting with Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, which had the “happy result”of his full support for the arts centre project. Photo © Ottawa Citizen/UPI. Reprinted by permission.
Less than a week later, the members of the National Capital Arts Alliance were informed that the meeting had gone well. Pearson wrote back to Southam confirming his support and advising that the matter would go before Cabinet within days. In the Prime Minister’s Office, Gordon Robertson, clerk of the Privy Council and secretary to the cabinet, prepared the minute for Pearson to present to Cabinet, and, over at External Affairs, Deputy Minister Norman Robertson briefed his minister, Paul Martin, suggesting that he be supportive in Cabinet when the matter came up.15 From the Senate, the Conservative Gratton O’Leary sent Southam a handwritten note assuring him that he had taken care of the matter with Diefenbaker. A momentary flurry in the preparations occurred when the Canadian Legion confused the Ottawa plan with a similar project intended as a war memorial that was under construction in San Francisco. Once Southam replied to their letter, politely disabusing them of this notion, they too came firmly on side.
Word of the project ignited interest everywhere, and letters started to trickle in to Southam’s office from theatre and arts professionals who were interested in a future at the new complex. One of the first résumés received was from David Haber, who was then engaged, along with several other future NAC staffers, in planning the six-month artistic extravaganza that would run at Expo 67 in Centennial Year. Haber would join the NAC as soon as his Expo duties were over and become its brilliant one-man programming department during its first several years.
Southam was at a social reception at the National Gallery on December 11 when he picked up gossip that the proposal for the National Arts Centre had been approved by Cabinet a few days before. On December 23 the Ottawa project was formally announced. The plan had gone from enthusiastic suggestion to formal approval in just nine months, and Southam recorded this “most excellent” Christmas gift in his diary. Immediately, he was inundated with congratulatory messages, but there was no time to lose and, on December 30, the first meeting of a government-sponsored Interdepartmental Committee convened to start work on the future complex. Southam handed over a variety of letters he had received from architects and others interested in working on the project. With Gordon Robertson in the chair, the new arts centre was now officially designated a “work in progress.”
In an effusive letter written January 1, 1964, from his family’s home in Belgium where he was spending Christmas, Niki Goldschmidt, the man who would become known as “Mr. Festival” in Canada, was among the first to send Southam congratulations. He also, characteristically, offered himself as artistic director for the new enterprise and, if that didn’t work out, as director of the national festival that was being proposed. Closer to home, Southam had discreetly suggested to the prime minister that someone should be appointed to run the project. There was no question in Pearson’s mind who that man should be, and he offered Southam the job. Within a month, Southam had given notice to the Department of External Affairs, the Prime Minister’s Office had announced his appointment, and he had moved into new offices at the Victoria Building on Wellington Street, across the street from Parliament.
Southam’s new minister was the secretary of state, Maurice Lamontagne, a sophisticated Quebecer with a long interest in the arts and an earlier influential role in the creation of the Canada Council. Southam, assisted by his able secretary, Verna Dollimore, who accompanied him from External, plunged into the same whirlwind of activity that had launched the project in the first place. His imposing new letterhead and cards read “Office of the Co-ordinator—the National Centre for the Performing Arts.” In reality, he would become the mastermind for all that ensued.
The document setting out the duties of the coordinator might have been written, and perhaps was, by Southam himself.1 Silent but friendly advisers in the Prime Minister’s and the Secretary of State’s offices, such as Henry Hindley, Lamontagne’s assistant secretary, who would eventually draft the NAC legislation, lent an elegant hand to the writing of the specifications for the oncoming work. The government approval had been twofold: to create a physical centre for the performing arts in Ottawa and, in addition, an annual national arts festival to occupy it during the summer months. This idea had grown directly from Vincent Massey’s suggestion in his Canadian Club “festival” speech ten years before where he’d stressed that, without a building, there could be no festival. The plan now called for the first performance to be presented in Centennial Year, 1967. The position of the coordinator was to be the linchpin in planning. He would coordinate all the meetings through his office and receive and disseminate all the pertinent information. Southam was pleased to find himself as the benevolent ringmaster at the core of the proceedings.
The first decision Southam made was that he needed advice. He turned to his friend Peter Dwyer at the Canada Council and asked him to create a series of arts advisory panels comprised of leading figures from the Canadian arts world. They settled on four panels in all, one each for operations, theatre, the visual arts, and the combined interests of music, opera, and ballet. The visual arts panel resulted from a felicitous development in government policies at the time which called for any federal building project to spend at least 1 percent of its capital cost on art to embellish the structure. Southam was determined that the new performing arts centre would take full advantage of this initiative.
Advisory arts committee members were the leading artists working in Canada. From (left to right) theatre directors Tyrone Guthrie,