The Government Generation: Canadian Intellectuals and the State 1900-1945War, depression, secularization, urbanization, and the rise of industry – between 1900 and 1945 Canada struggled with all these developments, and from them was born the modern welfare state. New services were created, along with new taxes to pay for them and expanded bureaucracies to administer them. Government activity grew enormously; so did government expenditures. The role of the state in a modern industrialized society became the focus of a lively and continuing debate for two generations of intellectual reformers. Doug Owram looks back at that debate and the academics, civil servants, and political activists who engaged in it. Adam Short, W.L. Grant, Frank Underhill, W.C. Clark, Harold Innis, and many others exchanged ideas – sometimes cautiously, sometimes passionately – about the wisdom of planning and reform, and on practical schemes for their realization. Owram explores the reforming impulse and its political dimension: the impact of warm and depression on attitudes to the state, the League of Social Reconstruction and its relations with the CCF, R.B. Bennett’s New Deal, and the various changes of heart experienced over forty years by Mackenzie King. The Canada that emerged from the Second World War was very different from the one that had existed at the turn of the century relations between the individual and the state had altered drastically and irrevocably. The people examined in this book and the social and political movements in which they believed helped shape Canada’s response to powerful forces that were changing its way of life forever. |
Contents
The social sciences and the search for authority 190616 | 50 |
4 | 80 |
5 | 107 |
Copyright | |
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academic active Adam Shortt argued Bennett Brooke Claxton Bryce Canadian Club Canadian Forum Canadian intellectual central century Charlotte Whitton civil service CJEPS Clark commission Committee concept concern Conservative Dafoe debate Department of Finance Depression developed Dominion economic economists efficiency expert F.R. Scott federal Frank Underhill Graham Spry Harold Innis Ibid idealism idealist important increasingly individual industrial intellectual community involved issues King Diary labour Laurier League Liberal party Macdonnell MacIver Mackenzie King Massey ment minister modern moral movement Norman Rogers O.D. Skelton Ontario organization Ottawa Papers philosophical planning political economy politicians post-war problems professional progressivism proposals provinces Queen's Quarterly R.B. Bennett reconstruction relation Report role Rowell-Sirois seemed social gospel social reform social sciences social scientists social security society Spry Stephen Leacock theory traditional unemployment University of Toronto urban W.A. Mackintosh W.C. Clark W.L. Grant Whitton Willison wrote