This
article was written for and first published in
Captive Canada:
Renditions of the Peaceable Kingdom at War,
from Narratives of WWI and the Red Scare to the Mass Internment of Civilians
Issue #68 of
Press for Conversion (Spring 2016),
pp.30-34
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Crushing Rebels,
Radicals and Reds:
The Bunker Mentality, All in the Woodsworth Family Tradition
By
Richard Sanders, Coordinator,
Coalition to
Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT)
James Shaver (J.S.) Woodsworth’s
racist nativism was typical of his class and heritage. By artfully expressing
and justifying the biases of Canadian culture, he captured the support of many
progressives. His was a compassionate elitism, deeply rooted in a religious and
political faith that preached love and loathing for those who were scorned as
inferiour.
Although J.S.Woodsworth was a patronising ethnocentric xenophobe, at least he
came by it honestly. His mother and father both came from prestigious lineages
that were deeply ensconced in the traditions of Anglo-Saxon superiority. The
particularly virulent form of cultural narcissism that was passed down to him,
promoted class loyalties to conserve the ancient powers of both church and
state.
The Shavers
J.S.Woodsworth’s middle name, Shaver, is the anglicised version of his mother’s
maiden name, Schaeffer, meaning “shepherd.” His mother, Josephine Shaver, was
descended from Wilhelm Schaeffer, who came from Germany to the US in the 1700s.
His son, John Shaver, was a loyal supporter of the British empire and fought with either the King’s Royal Regiment of
New York,1 or Butler’s Rangers, a loyalist
regiment. After the empire loyalists were defeated in the American revolution,
John Shaver fled to Upper Canada’s
Niagara region where he soon received a large grant of land from the colonial
government.
John’s
son William became an affluent farmer with “patriarchal habits and demeanor.”
Amassing 1,600 acres, he was “one step below the ‘squirearchy’ on the social
ladder.” As an “exemplary” Wesleyan,2
he welcomed local Methodists to meet in his home and he willed enough
land and money to build a new church.3
In
1830, William’s son Peter, at the tender age of 21, was able to buy a 100-acre
farm called Applewood, in what is now downtown Etobicoke, in Toronto’s west end.
The local historical society says “it is believed Peter was a magistrate for the
Home District in 1843.”4
On July 14, 1843, the Governor of Upper Canada appointed Peter Shaver as
magistrate for this district,5
which included all of what is now greater Toronto. Untrained in law,
these Justices of the Peace were a law unto themselves. They “set tax rates,
appointed county officials, paid salaries, enforced local regulations, held
court,” and “were, in effect, the local...government.”6
As
Tories, magistrates were loyal servants of the corrupt Family Compact which
dominated the social, political and economic life of Upper Canada. As such,
they were thoroughly despised by such rabble-rousers as William Lyon Mackenzie,
leader of the 1837-1838 uprising. In 1833, he wrote that Magistrates “are
frequently proved guilty of the most criminal outrages against the peace
of the community” and “are encouraged in their disgraceful career—advanced and
promoted to places of greater power and trust.”7
During
the Upper Canada Rebellion, over 400 radicals were arrested and charged with
insurrection and/or treason in the Home District alone.8
In sentencing, Magistrates mixed politics with absurd religious beliefs.
Charges against Home-District rebels said they did not have “the fear of God” in
their “heart but...[were] moved and seduced by the instigation of the Devil.”9
This old chestnut was thrown at Louis Riel almost five decades later.10
None
would dare impute such charges against devout Methodists like the Shavers.
Peter and his brother George were trustees of Etobicoke’s first Methodist
church.11 Peter also
allowed a young Methodist circuit rider to board at his farm. This is how
Peter’s daughter Josephine met a certain, young “saddle-bag” preacher named
James Woodsworth. They married in 1868 and their first child, J.S.Woodsworth,
was born at the Applewood estate in 1874.12 He
grew up there, a captive of the Loyalist myths and religious narratives spun by
both parents and their families.
James
Woodsworth Sr.
Rev. James Woodsworth Sr. had a powerful
influence on the beliefs of his namesake. In fact, James Jr. was groomed from an
early age to follow in his father’s footsteps and to become a Methodist
minister. After leading flocks in various Ontario churches, James Sr. was
honoured to became the Superintendent of Methodist Missions for Canada’s four
western provinces. This made him a shepherd of shepherds, responsible for
guiding Methodist efforts to aid the expansion of Britain’s empire across the
west. Holding this influential position for thirty years (1885-1915) made him
“an enormously important figure in the history of the Canadian West.”13
James Sr’s autobiography proudly described the
Methodist church’s role in converting native peoples, who he vilified with
epithets like “heathens” and “savage people.” His crusade to shepherd
missionaries began in what he called the “troublous times” of the Northwest
Rebellion. He reported how “very gratifying” it was, “especially to the
Methodist Church, that the Indians under her care were united in their loyalty to Queen
and country.”14
In describing the insurrection of 1885, James
Sr. turned a blind eye to its real causes. Instead, his simple-minded, racist
narrative laid all blame on the supposed propensity of Aboriginals to rely on
senseless violence. “Many Indians and half-breeds,” said James Sr., “took to the
warpath and attacked the whites.” Then, invoking sympathy for Canadian troops
who faced such “great difficulty” and “much hardship” when crushing the Indian
rebellion, he noted that “[m]any lives were lost in this unfortunate
disturbance.” But, he said, on “the other hand, much good resulted.” To
J.S.Woodsworth’s father, the loss of lives was “good” because
"disaffected half-breeds and rebellious Indians were taught a salutary lesson;
they learned something of the strength of British rule, and likewise experienced
something of its clemency and righteousness.”15
Canada’s ruthless military suppression of the
uprising had other “salutary” results, he said. The “penetration of so many
soldiers from the East into the heart of this great country served to advertise
its resources.” When soldiers settled there, it meant “the North-West became
better known and more highly appreciated.”16
The 1885 insurrection against Canada’s genocidal
repression, land plunder and forced concentration of Indigenous peoples onto
reservations, pitted Métis and Cree-Assiniboine First Nations not only against
the imperial forces of Canadian troops and mounted police, but also against
powerful civil-society institutions. Chief among these was the Methodist Church.
James
Sr. also held extremely negative views of nonAnglos, especially Ukrainians.
These prejudices were based in part on his extremist religious beliefs. In his
1917 memoirs, James Sr. warned that their “evil effects” were spreading.
Ukrainians, he said, were “almost...destitute of any provision for their
religious and spiritual training. The evil effects of this state of things are
already being felt by other people in the vicinity.”17
J.S.Woodsworth was greatly influenced by his
father’s righteous bigotry, especially towards aboriginals, Blacks and
Ukrainians. This fact is noted in biographer Kenneth McNaught’s classic A
Prophet in Politics, which commented on
"the
extent to which the nativism of the father had successfully rubbed off on the
son. Although he would later moderate his views, J.S.Woodsworth never completely
shed his early awkwardness and insensitivity towards blacks and Indians, and
later, eastern Europeans. His stories...reveal a popular attitude at the time,
that Indians were sinister, alien, and violent.”18
Similarly, Allen Mills’ biography notes that “in
his early beliefs, James Shaver Woodsworth was very much the son of his father.”
Mills, a political scientist at the University of Winnipeg, observed that “Clearly the germ of the social gospel as well as the
nativism of J.S. Woodsworth derived from his father.”19
This influence between generations seems to have
flowed both ways. J.S. Woodsworth was, for example, responsible for the “final
edit” of his father’s autobiography in 1917. Mills says that J.S. “claimed to
have altered” his father’s book “in ways that he believed improved it.”20
A core xenophobic belief shared by both father
and son, was that Canada’s role as a beacon of Christian civilisation was
threatened by the rapid influx of “undesirables.” These “strangers” could not,
or would not, be assimilated fast enough. In discussing the flood of aliens
entering Canada’s gates, James Sr. warned that:
"Christian people should watch this great movement, lest peoples of various
nationalities, with various and conflicting moral and religious beliefs, and
social sentiments, should come more rapidly than true assimilation can take
place.”21
J.S.Woodsworth’s father saw Canada’s
nation-building project as fundamentally religious. Canada, he said, is
"a
nation whose foundations are laid in righteousness, whose people are the Lord’s,
and whose pre-eminence because of righteous principles and conduct will ensure
its prosperity and long-continued existence.”22
In sounding the alarm about aliens, James the
elder told terrifying tales of “certain classes from Central Europe” who:
"have
brought with them the elements of a destructive, anti-Christian Socialism,
whose presence and operation are threatening the very foundations of the
State. This is recognised as so great a peril that the authorities at Washington
are taking steps to limit immigration, hoping to at least reduce the percentage
of these undesirables. The streams of immigration which during the last
century have been so freely flowing into the neighboring Republic have set
towards our fair land, and we shall soon be confronted with problems similar to
those which so far have baffled the wisdom and skill of our sister nation.
Already we hear more than whispers respecting the menace to good government,
pure morality, and Christian progress which exists in what is acknowledged
to be the unassimilated elements....”23 (Emphasis
added.)
James
Sr’s fear of a “destructive, anti-Christian Socialism” that was “threatening
the very foundations of the State,” was also of grave concern to his son,
J.S. But where did James Sr. acquire such a virulent animosity towards those
who dared present a “menace to good government”? To answer this, we need
to look back yet another generation to the powerful influence of James Sr’s
father.
Richard
Woodsworth
In
1830, J.S.Woodsworth’s paternal grandfather, Richard Wood, changed his name to
Woodsworth and emigrated from Yorkshire
England to York,24 the
colonial capital of Upper Canada. Although never ordained—like his sons James
and Richard W., and James’ son J.S.—Richard became well-known as a leader and
lay minister in the Wesleyan Methodist church. An 1899 history of Toronto
Methodism said of Richard Woodsworth that: “no man in the George Street church
was more highly respected or wielded a greater influence.”
And, Richard was listed first in this church’s “noble army of local
preachers, class and prayer leaders.”25
In the
late 1830s, when York’s Methodists split over the struggle between
Reformers and Upper Canada’s
elitist Family Compact, Richard remained a “staunch loyalist.” He supported the
colony’s Governor and backed the British Wesleyan church. Meanwhile, the
independent Methodist Episcopal Church joined forces with the Reformers. As
McNaught noted, “Richard received a sword to assist in the defence of [Governor]
Sir Francis Bond Head.”26
On this, Mills remarked that
"his
grandfather’s sword, raised in anger in 1837 against William Lyon Mackenzie’s
insurrection, was later prominently displayed on the wall of his [J.S.
Woodsworth’s] home in Winnipeg.”27
Richard’s sword was given to him so that he would help suppress the uprising
against Lt.Gov. Sir Francis Bond Head, a British Army veteran (1811-1825) who
began ruling Upper Canada in 1836. Soon after arriving from England, Head dissolved
Parliament and called an election.28
Backed by the colonial elite and wealthy empire loyalists”—like the Shavers, and
the Woodsworths of the Wesleyan Methodist church—Head faced reformers and rebels
who demanded “responsible government.” They opposed the Family Compact’s system
of patronage which allied bankers, businessmen, politicians and corrupt
officials, with the state’s repressive forces of “law and order.” To fight the
rebels, Bond’s troops handed out weapons to vigilants who remained fiercely
loyal to the Empire and its corrupt local elite.
In
their biographies of J.S.Woodsworth, neither Mills nor McNaught shed much light
on Richard’s loyalist sword. For details we must turn to the earliest records of
a Loyalist force called the British American Fire Co. (BAFC). Its records show
that in April 1837, Richard Woodsworth became the BAFC’s “First Lieutenant.”29 This
fire brigade was backed by about fifty of York’s most prominent men, including
Family Compact leaders Archdeacon John Strachan, John Elmsley, Jr. and William
Allan. The latter, who governed the BAFC, was a banker, businessman and Tory
official who has been called “the financial genius of the ruling Family
Compact,...one of the two or three richest men in the province,”30 and
“the unquestioned doyen of Upper Canadian business.”31
It is
no wonder then that Richard Woodsworth, and others in the Loyalist BAFC, vowed
to help crush the uprising. On December 5, 1837, “the city was alarmed by the
ringing of the fire bell” which warned that the rebels were approaching. The
brigade’s records report its unanimous resolve “to take up arms as an
independent volunteer company to resist the attempt of traitors and rebels to
invade our rights and disturb our peace.”32
Like
other Empire Loyalists eager to take up arms to protect the Family Compact, the
BAFC gathered at City Hall. It was there, at the start of the Rebellion, that
James Ashfield, a gunsmith like his father, had “the duty of putting in order
and serving out to the volunteers the muskets and small arms.”33 “Fighting
Tory” Richard Woodsworth may have received his sword from Ashfield, who became
the Fire Brigade chief, a City Councillor and leader of the Orange Lodge (a
Masonic-style order of AngloProtestant supremacists).
BAFC
minutes show that Richard Woodsworth was active throughout the rebellion, moving
and seconding motions and, no doubt, taking part in company duties which
included “patrolling the streets... [to] arrest suspicious persons.” When
700-800 rebels approached, the BAFC was “ordered...to give them a warm
reception” and “with great spirit” they did, “most of them with muskets in their
hands.”34
Woodsworth’s closest comrades in arms within the BAFC brigade were Alexander
Hamilton and Thomas Storm. All three were prominent in York’s building trade. In
1840, these three Loyalists were rewarded with “a contract for the erection of
the new garrison,”35 New
Fort York. The old fort was the base used to quell the rebels. (Later, during
WWI, the fort’s Barracks—built by Woodsworth et al—were used to intern
the Germans and Ukrainians being sent to forced labour camps.36)
Woodsworth, Storm and Hamilton were also all prominent members in the same
church. When the Methodists were irreconcilably split over the rebellion,
Richard designed and built the new Richmond St. church in York (Toronto) for the
Loyalist Wesleyan faction.37 Erected
in 1844, in the financial district, it was perhaps “the largest and most
influential Wesleyan Methodist church in Canada.”38
J.S.: The Anti-Marxist Socialist
Like
his mother’s and father’s loyalist forebears, J.S.Woodsworth helped to quel the
rise of rebellious radicals. In the years leading up to WWI, Woodsworth used
his status as a rising star of the Social Gospel to shepherd public opinion
about the supposed danger that certain immigrants posed to Canada’s Christian
civilisation. His fear-filled musings about unassimilable aliens targeted east
Europeans, who were the bogeyman of choice among Canada’s political, corporate
and religious elites.
During Russia’s 1917 revolution, Woodsworth finished his government report on
Ukrainian Rural Communities. Its conclusion, “The Ukrainian as seen by
Canadian Protestant Missionaries,” quoted Methodist missionaries who were trying
to convert Ukrainians in northern Alberta. The first of these epistles, by
Rev.C.H. Lawford, warned of a looming menace. “The great danger,” he said, “is
that these people, in their efforts for ‘freedom’ will drift into Socialism, for
socialistic literature is coming into every settlement.”39 Lawford
used this threat to request more Methodist tracts for distribution to Ukrainians
falling prey to dreaded “Socialism.”
Historian George Emery noted that “Methodist hostility to socialism... confirmed
labour and socialist spokesmen in the opinion that the church was the adjunct of
the monied classes.” Some churchmen saw “socialism as part of the un-Canadian
cultural baggage which the foreign immigrant imported from his European
background” and which should “be eliminated in the course of...assimilation.”40
By
using Lawford’s letter, Woodsworth betrayed his own biases. Both men had
graduated in 1896 from the Methodist Church’s Wesley College, Canada’s centre
for training in the Social Gospel. (See pp.26-28.) Emery said Lawford “seemed
unable to surmount a personal dislike for the Ukrainians.” Lawford said he
feared they might have “a most baneful influence on our nation throughout.”41 Emery
outlined Lawford’s efforts to use Methodism to convert, and free, Ukrainians
from their Catholic and Orthodox faiths. Lawford disliked Ukrainian priests
saying they exerted a bondage over their flocks that was “worse than any African
slavery.”42
Woodsworth’s report on Ukrainians, included a 1911 letter from Rev.W.H. Pike
who, like Woodsworth, had graduated from the Methodist’s Victoria College in
Toronto.43 Pike’s letter
said he entered an Edmonton dance hall to gather intelligence on Ukrainian youth
culture. In describing a man there, Pike says he “led him on to tell me of
their ideas and ideals.” Pike described the youth’s “desire for a life of
freedom from priest-craft, from shallowness and hypocrisy, from fear of
purgatory and divine wrath.” Methodists like Pike and Woodsworth shared this
young man’s critique of Ukrainian churches. However, they were even more irked
when young Ukrainians—like this dance-hall youth—embraced atheist socialism by
saying that:
"we
have come to Canada and we are going to be free; it’s a free country and we are
not going to be slaves of priests or pope or church.... The best thing for us is
socialism.”44
In
Five Missionary Minutes (1912), Pike voiced his fear of Ukrainian
socialists. “How are we going to deal with the type of Socialism we find among
these people?” he asked. “It is a mixture of socialism, infidelity, and
Christianity. They have a false idea of freedom and throw off all religious
restraint.”45 (J.S. said
he was “indebted” to Pike “for assisting in the intensive study of farms in
selected districts.”46)
Woodsworth’s virulent contempt for Marxism, and for the atheist strain of
socialism, was an ideology he shared with Canada’s political, corporate and
religious elites. He was, “of course... [an] anti-Marxist and anti-Communist,”47 who
defined his politics “in contradistinction to Marxism,” said Mills. “At the
bottom of his quarrel with Marxism was a disagreement over the nature of
economic class.”48
Woodsworth was hostile to the Marxist narrative that social change is won
through “class struggle.” To Woodsworth, success came by finding common ground
with one’s adversaries. Although he always pushed for cooperation between rival
classes, like workers and bosses, he refused to allow any cooperation with
Marxist socialists. He even opposed forming a “common front” with them against
Fascism.
Just
as Woodsworth derided Marx-ist narratives, communists spent decades criticising
his compromising brand of bourgeois socialism. In 1919, an activist with BC’s
radical Socialist Party called his theories “consummate twaddle.”49 A
decade later, the Communist Party (CP) labelled him a “Pacifist Flunkey of the
Ruling Class.”50 In 1932,
renowned Canadian poet Dorothy Livesay echoed the CP narrative that his
watered-down, “pink” socialism made bedfellows of “Capital and Labor.”51
In
1934, Woodsworth dissolved the Ontario CCF for cooperating with the Canadian
Labour Defence League (CLDL).52 With
350 branches and 17,000 members by 1933, the CLDL defended militant unionists in
court. It also collected 459,000 signatures to repeal Section 98, a repressive
law used to intern radicals, including leaders of the CP.53
(See pp.42, 45.)
While
some Woodsworth fans are inspired by Marxist ideals, Mills said this shows how
“myth can embroider reality, for Woodsworth was, of course, a militant
anti-Marxist.”54
“Discovering the ‘real’ Woodsworth requires putting aside myth,” said Mills, to
get “beyond the hagiography which masquerades as biography.”55
Mills’ own book on Woodsworth is a case in
point. He used much sophistry to argue that Woodsworth was not a racist.56
In 1999, another biographer, McNaught, said that
in his 1959 biography of Woodsworth: “I did err in glossing over some frailties
in Woodsworth. He was..., by today’s judgement, a racist....”57
Confined by
Hero Myths
In his
2013 MA thesis on the “Myth and the Reality” of J.S.Woodsworth, Eric MacDonald
described how biographers selected “different historical events to gloss over
and misrepresent in order to cast Woodsworth as an even greater hero.” Because
each writer crafted “a more compelling character for the period, and a more
captivating story,” the
Woodsworth “mythology has placed the narrative above... historical accuracy.”
Narratives about Woodsworth, said MacDonald, “created the impression of a
messianic character, who represented all the hopes and ideals of the nascent
Canadian political left.”
This “admiration” for Woodsworth, he said, “morphed into exultation and
exaggeration.”58
Biographers have been among the most important information gatekeepers of the
Woodsworth hero cult. This cult uses the Woodsworth brand to create a group
identity for progressives in the CCF-NDP tradition. The success of this
mythmaking has required that adherents ignore Woodsworth’s flaws, and also
overlook any positive features of his radical socialist rivals.
In
discussing the core of Woodsworth’s longstanding opposition to Marxism, Mills
made this observation:
"He
did not hold that human beings were captives of their class status or
historical conditions.... (Woodsworth probably believed that, since he had
extricated himself from the professional middle class, his own life was
an illustration of this principle.)”59 (Emphasis
added.)
While some people are able to free
themselves from the shackles of their religious, political and class biases,
Woodsworth’s success in this personal struggle is debatable. And, it is
certainly far from clear that Woodsworth ever “extricated himself from the
professional middle class,” as claimed. Neither is it clear that he was able
to fully escape the outdated delusions of AngloProtestant superiourity that had
secured his forebears’ loyalty to successive Canadian elites. One certainty
however is that Woodsworth did remain a loyal, lifelong captive of the
fervent, antiRed phobia that has long informed a diverse array of Canadian
political and religious narratives, from those employed by the radical right to
the those of the progressive left.
59. Mills, Op. cit.,
p.77.
The Next Generation:
Charles Woodsworth, Our Man in Saigon
By Richard Sanders
In exploring the Woodsworth
family tradition of cooperating with empire, it is worth examining the career
J.S.Woodsworth’s oldest son. Born in 1909, Charles grew up to be editor-in-chief
of the Ottawa Citizen (1948-1955). But besides being the paper’s key
gatekeeper, he also made it into the news.
In 1949, after the ethnic cleansing of 957,000
Palestinians from their homeland,1 Woodsworth
went to Israel. He praised it as a “democratic” and “progressive socialist
state” leading “a social revolution...long overdue in the Middle East,” which he
called “one of the most backward areas in the world.”
Israel, he said, “could not afford” to “absorb the 250,000 Arab
refugees...inside her borders.”2
He praised heavily-fortified kibbutzim that, “like stockade[s]
against Red Indians,... guard colonizers and defend Jewish homeland against
enemies.”3
Woodsworth was a Cold Warrior. In 1952, he told
the Canadian Citizenship Council (CCC): “Let us not try to minimize the dangers
of Communism.... Let us see it for the reactionary and brutal thing it is.”4
During the 1950s and 1960s, the CCC was an agency of assimilation funded
by the government’s right-wing, Citizenship Branch. (The Branch sought “the
integration of new immigrants, ethnic minorities, and Indians.”5
See p.47.)
Charles soon became a diplomat. After a posting
to the US (1956-1960), he became Canada’s point man on the International
Commission for Supervision and Control (ICSC) in Saigon (1960-1961).6
In Quiet Complicity: Canadian Involvement in the Vietnam War, Victor
Levant said Canada’s role on the ICSC was “characterised by partisan voting,
wilful distortion of fact, and complicity in US violations of both the Geneva
and Paris agreements.”7 Woodsworth’s
duplicity in this charade was revealed by the US Ambassador to Saigon in a secret cable describing Woodsworth’s detailed suggestions on how US
troops and war materials should be smuggled into
Vietnam without alerting the international
commission overseeing the ceasefire.8
Charles Woodsworth later served Canada as
ambassador to South Africa, Ethiopia, Somalia and Madagascar.
8. Frederick Nolting Cable,
June 21, 1961. Cited by Levant, Ibid., pp.156-157.