O.D. Skelton and the North American mind

Abstract

NINETEEN THIRTY-FIVE WAS A GOOD YEAR for Canadian-American connection. Prime Minister R. B. Bennett began negotiation of a trade agreement with United States spring. Another leader, Mackenzie King, finished job time to celebrate his success on Armistice Day, 11th of November, from his perspective appropriate occasion to contrast cooperative peoples of America with those of a barbaric Europe.1 O. D. Skelton, King's chief foreign policy adviser as he had been Bennett's, was delighted by substance of freer trade, but even more by its potential for shaping of a North American mind.2 That would distance country from trap of British imperialism and European militarism.THE RISE OF NORTH AMERICANISMThe first four decades of 20th century, period of Skelton's academic and public service career, witnessed rise of a Americanism that went to core of his thought. Americanism was not an organized impulse, nor was it dominant force driving attitudes and policy Canada or United States. But it was on an upwards trajectory during Skelton's adult life.North Americanism came from many directions-from growth of United States' power and ambition, and dimming of British empire's light and authority; from resolution of Canadian-American disputes that had dogged late 19th and early 20th centuries; from sense that a superior American diplomatic structure was taking shape, with International Joint Commission (IJC) as both symbol and evidence of an ability to resolve knotty problems cooperatively; and from continental publicists such as J. T. Shotwell and J. W. Dafoe. It came, too, from intensifying links of economics and culture, and from merchants, doctors, engineers, lawyers, bankers, unionists, bureaucrats, academics, entertainers, and athletes who moved effortlessly and increasingly across border.When Americans and Canadians turned away from world years between two world wars, Americanism took a tighter hold. Sir Robert Falconer, president of University of Toronto, wrote 1925 that America was hope of world: Fear of force is unknown, vessels of war are not seen on lakes nor fortifications on frontier, and such rivalries which exist spring not from incompatible racial ambitions but from legitimate trade between two peoples of mutual affinity and respect. How sad, by comparison, was the plight of Europe: country set against country, race against race, frontiers watched by suspicious guardians, enclaves and fragments of peoples only tolerated by necessity.' Canadians regularly traveled to League of Nations to read what became known, and not a complimentary way, as speech, prescribing IJC's methodologies of investigation, reason, and discussion as a remedy for world's ills. Canadians, Mackenzie King told League 1928, lived in perfect harmony ... with their neighbour to south.4From 1935 into second World War, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, St. Lawrence University, and Queen's University convened large and buoyant Canadian-American relations conferences, alternating between Canadian and American sites and drawing on a wide range of expertise from both countries. In 1936, J. T. Shotwell launched Carnegie's series of scholarly examinations of relationship, which eventually reached 25 sober blue volumes. At first of Canada-US meetings, held upstate New York, J. W. Dafoe, celebrated editor of Winnipeg Free Press, argued that Canada and United States constituted a cultural, intellectual, and moral unity, North American character and range.5 That summarized a broad intellectual trend.6By later 1930s, according to US Chamber of Commerce, there were 11 non-governmental organizations United States pushing for close Canadian-American relations. …