Officially, Canada has no philosopher laureate, no philosopher formally called upon to articulate the truth of philosophy for the nation at large. But unofficially, George Parkin Grant has been fulfilling that role for close to forty years. By birth and background he was perfectly placed to know his nation; by education and temperament he was drawn to philosophy; by grace or chance he felt called upon to relate the two. Canadian society has been much richer thanks to the coincidence of these circumstances. The recent publication of English Speaking Justice in the United States makes this an appropriate time to introduce Canada's foremost political philosopher to a wider audience.
Patrician Beginnings
George Grant was born in Toronto in 1918. Both of his grandfathers, after whom he was named, had achieved eminence before he was born: Sir George Robert Parkin (1846-1922) had been the principal of Upper Canada College and first secretary of the Rhodes Scholarship Trust in Canada; George Munro Grant, a Presbyterian minister had been the founder of Queen's University in Kingston. Both grandparents were very loyal to the British crown though for different reasons. The Grants were Presbyterian Scots from Nova Scotia and their religion cemented their loyalty. The Parkins were Loyalists. In the 1890s George Munro Grant and Sir George Parkin wrote books in favor of a strong economic and political union of Canada with Great Britain. It would be difficult for George Parkin Grant to ignore his Canadian background or his European heritage.
Grant's father, William Lawson Grant, a graduate of Oxford and headmaster at Upper Canada College, and his mother, Maude Parkin, head of McGill's Royal Victoria College, were both identified with the ruling class in Canada, and were strong supporters of the British Empire. George Grant himself was sent to Upper Canada College, one of the training grounds of the English-speaking establishment in Canada. He hated it, as he says, partly because his father was headmaster and partly because he was poor at sports. (In retaliation he joined a small group of like-minded socialist students, and he often sneaked off campus to the movies of Charlie Chaplin.) From Upper Canada College he went on to the Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, where he majored in history and won the university medal in that subject. He was clearly being prepared to join the ranks of Ontario's most prestigious lawyers, doctors and corporate executives. Though he came to "loathe the victory of the bourgeoisie" and to despise the arrogance of the capitalist rich, Grant was a young man still held by the liberal dream of his pioneering ancestors. And though he already sensed a grave dissatisfaction with the pragmatism and the flatness of that tradition which found no place for sexual, religious or aesthetic ecstacy, he envisioned for himself a public career dedicated to the furtherance of North American liberalism. He was, he says, totally programmed for ambition.
On graduation from Queen's in 1939, Grant accepted a Rhodes Scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford where he worked towards a bachelor's in jurisprudence. This sojourn in England was to change his life for good. When World War II broke out, he abandoned his academic career. He did not, however, enlist in any of the armed forces. His convinced pacifism held him back from active military service, but his loyalty to the ideal of the British Commonwealth demanded something. Joining the Air Raid Precaution Service, he worked, often day and night, during the Blitz
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