advantage George gained from being a student at what some claimed was the best secondary school in Canada during his father’s term of office, it left him feeling trapped by his own adolescence all his life. Perhaps because of this, George Grant developed a remarkable empathy for young people. It was a most charming part of the complex personality that made him an extraordinary teacher in his own classrooms at Dalhousie and McMaster universities, on lecture platforms, in newspapers and books, and on CBC radio.
George never met his other grandfather. William’s father, George Monro Grant, died in 1902. Like George Parkin, George Monro Grant grew up on a farm in the Maritimes. His family was of Scots, not English, origin. His parents immigrated to Pictou county, Nova Scotia, in 1826. When George Monro was involved in a farming accident and could no longer do physical work because of a serious injury to his hand, his father sent him back to Scotland to study and train as a Presbyterian minister. Reverend George Monro Grant returned to Canada in 1863 as rector of Saint Matthews Presbyterian Church in Halifax. In addition to his church duties, Reverend Grant worked to revive and strengthen Dalhousie University, which had fallen on hard times. He had such success reorganizing its finances and upgrading its educational standards that he was then invited to rescue a small college in Kingston, Ontario from its troubles. As head of Queen’s for twenty-five years, Principal Grant transformed it from an unimportant college to a prominent educational institution modelled on the German ideal of the university as a research centre.
Reverend George Monro Grant has a second claim to fame. While still located in Halifax, he acted as secretary to Sandford Fleming, the chief engineer of the Canadian Pacific Railway (and a parishioner at Saint Matthews) when Fleming made an exploratory journey to the Pacific in search of the best route for the rails to follow. George Monro Grant’s written record of the 1872 expedition that travelled from Halifax to Victoria by train, steamer, canoe, wagon, and horseback was published as Ocean to Ocean, one of Canada’s most famous and influential travel books. George Monro Grant wrote vividly and humorously of the hardships the expedition faced. He also wrote with great enthusiasm of the many new things he encountered. His purpose in writing the book was not just to inform and entertain: Ocean to Ocean defended the creation of the transcontinental railway as a key instrument of Canadian unity. Without it, the Americans would come in and take everything. He also saw the West as a great garden to feed Ontario while that province busied itself with industrial manufacturing. Although he had considerable sympathy for the Metis and First Nations cultures, he believed that they had to be controlled for the sake of “progress.”
As an adult, George Grant found much to criticize in the ideas of both his grandfathers – especially George Monro’s belief in progress – but through his parents, his grandfathers both left positive imprints on him. The Parkin side of the family taught him to prize peace and justice above all else, and the Grant side taught him to keep all of Canada in mind when he spoke of any part of it. Both sides taught him the importance of education for everyone and the duty of teachers to form not only students in the classroom but also public opinion.
“Not now, Georgie. Not now. Can’t you see I’m quite busy?”
“George wants kisses.”
“Not now, Georgie. Not now.”
Even as a child growing up inside the walls and grounds of an all-boys school, George’s early life was still dominated by women. The first and most powerful female force in his life was his mother Maude. She was thirty-eight years old when she gave birth to George. Unlike the vast majority of women of her generation, Maude Parkin had gone to college. At the urging of Sandford Fleming, she’d been among the first to enrol in McGill’s Royal Victoria College, an institution he’d funded in 1903. After graduation, she had gone to England and had become the assistant dean of women at the University of Manchester’s Ashburne Hall. She had a successful career of her own before she married William Grant when she was thirty-one and he was thirty-nine.
After their wedding, they settled in Kingston, Ontario, where William taught history at Queen’s. Despite his age and family status, William was posted overseas as an officer in the Canadian Army when the Great War (First World War) erupted. Maude moved back to England with Margaret and Charity, their two young daughters, in order to be near him. Early in 1916 she gave birth to their third daughter, Jessie Alison. In the middle of August that year, William was badly injured on the battlefront in France when his horse threw him and then rolled on top of him, inflicting severe head and chest wounds. Once William was fit enough to travel back to Canada, he took up the job of headmaster of UCC he’d been offered while recuperating from his injuries. Maude took charge of the family and got them all resettled in Toronto.
“Not now, Georgie. Not now. Can’t you see I’m really very busy?”
“Why can’t I have a hug?”
“Not now, Georgie. Not now.”
As the wife of the headmaster, Maude worked to make the school a success. William was hired to get the place back on its feet financially and raise its prestige. Enrolment at UCC had fallen during the war; the budget was in a mess and the teaching staff was demoralized. Maude had wonderful social skills and a flair for bringing people together over the dinner table. With her powerful personality and strong will motivating and assisting him, William was able to persuade the board of governors to raise salaries so that he could recruit enthusiastic and inspiring teachers to implement the changes he envisioned for the school. Working alongside her husband to recruit students and improve conditions at UCC left her with little time to devote to her four children. Mrs. Don Leo, the family nursemaid, was responsible for their daily welfare. Leo, as they called her, tended to pamper the children – George especially – since her own two children had both died in early childhood.
“Whatever has happened to George’s beautiful golden curls?”
“His father insisted on taking him for a haircut. Leo really has been spoiling him.”
George’s sisters were very much like their mother and didn’t fuss over their little brother either. After Sir George died, Lady Parkin lived for part of each year with Maude’s family at UCC and the rest of the year at the grander home of Alice Massey, her far wealthier daughter. “The person I loved best was Grandmother Parkin,” George confessed to his uncle Raleigh Parkin forty years later. “I liked a lot of kissing. I loved being hugged; I loved the wetness and the softness.”
In England, there was another woman keeping her eye on George. Marian Buck, a wealthy widow and a devoted admirer of Sir George and his dream of a new world order, exerted considerable pressure on William and Maude to mould George to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps, a pressure that continued until her death in 1947.
UCC provided the Grant family with a high standard of living and many privileges. In addition to the nursemaid, the family had two servants – a parlourmaid and a cook. The school was almost in the countryside. It had large open fields behind it and the most affluent part of Toronto outside its front gate. Many of its neighbours in Forest Hill continued to raise and ride horses for pleasure. UCC was a place of many charms, and the family had a place of their own at Otter Lake in cottage country, where they could spend summers swimming and fishing and entertaining friends and relatives.
Always in the Family’s Schools
Cleopatra, the legendary Queen of ancient Egypt, was short, dark, and large-nosed. At fourteen, George Grant is tall, blond, and delicate-featured. As Cleopatra in Upper Canada College’s 1934 production of George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra, he’s the star.
“What are you going to write about Grant’s performance?” one boy asks another.
“He’s