the moderate high churchmen, George Forneret of Hamilton, who had been in touch with Welch. Forneret pleaded for a comprehensive hymn book which would satisfy both the high church and evangelical elements. Forneret’s letter was significant in indicating the regard in which Cody was held, even by men who were not evangelicals. Even if one makes allowance for the amenities of polite discussion, Forneret’s remarks are still impressive: “There is no clergyman in Canada for whose character, work, head and heart I have a greater regard than I have for those of the good Rector of St. Paul’s and this makes me have all the more sympathy for the latter in his intellectual and moral difficulty about a few hymns in the proposed Hymnal.”14
The discussion went on into 1909, but Cody did not succeed in effecting the changes his friends desired. Florence wrote to encourage him in September: “I feel for you stranded among those reactionaries down there,” and later, “I am glad you did such grand work over the Hymn Book. W.J. Armitage was horrified by the new book and exclaimed, “Its acceptance means the death of the Evangelical Cause in Canada.” Blake too disliked the book. In 1910 he was busy organizing some sort of protest, but warned Cody against precipitate action. In the end, the evangelicals decided they could live with the book. N.W. Hoyles wrote to Cody: “My own opinion is strong as to the inexpedience of making any change as things are.” Cody appeared to accept this and there the matter rested.15
Cody played a more influential part in the movement toward the adoption of a Canadian prayer book, but he became formally associated with discussions only after they had been in progress for some twelve years. The movement had been initiated in the Huron synod in 1896 by the redoubtable Matthew Wilson. He introduced a motion calling on the General Synod to print “a Prayer Book containing all the prayers or other matter framed for the service of the Church of England in Canada.”16 The result was the General Synod’s proposal to produce not a prayer book but merely an appendix to the English prayer book. After the tortuous history, this idea was finally rejected by the General Synod of 1905. It had too many critics. Dyson Hague, for instance, objected to its English.17 But the friends of the prayer book would not let the matter die. In 1908 the General Synod set up a “Committee on Prayer Book enrichment and Adaptation.” This was the turning point. From 1908, the adoption of a Canadian prayer book became practical politics.
Cody enters the picture at this point with his appointment as a member of the committee. It was a large and variegated group, including evangelicals (Cody, Armitage, Hague, N.W. Hoyles, and Matthew Wilson) and high churchmen (E.A. Welch, Provost Macklem of Trinity College, and Canon F.G. Scott). The committee was to occupy much of Cody’s attention for the next ten years.
While Cody’s world for the most part continued to be the Anglican Church, there were signs of the political interests which later came to occupy a greater part of his life. He was on formally cordial terms with J.P. Whitney, the premier of Ontario, and with Charles Moss, the chief justice, and he maintained a friendly relationship with Howard Ferguson, now a Tory back-bencher in the Ontario Legislature.
Cody’s other contacts were less directly related to Ontario politics. In January 1907 he met George Parkin, the secretary (technically “the organizing representative”) of the Rhodes Trust. Parkin had been a leading member of the Imperial Federation group in Canada, a group whose views on the Empire Cody largely shared. At a dinner at George Wrong’s in March 1907, Cody met William Wood, the Quebec historian. Among the other guests were B.E. Walker, the Toronto financier, and Edward Kylie, then a rising young man in the history department at the University of Toronto. Cody heard Henri Bourassa, the Quebec nationalist, at the Canadian Club in 1907, and in 1908 in Convocation Hall he heard William Jennings Bryan, the great American free silver advocate.
Cody had many religious contacts beyond the confines of the Anglican Church of Canada. In March 1907 he heard General William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, at the Canadian Club. In April he dined at the Grange with a group of university academic and religious leaders, including Maurice Hutton, Nathaniel Burwash (president of Victoria), T.R. O’Meara of Wycliffe, and H.T. Duckworth, professor of Greek at Trinity. In September he heard the Bishop of London, Winnington-Ingram, at the Canadian Club. Sir Wilfrid Grenfell, the famous Labrador missionary, preached at St. Paul’s in 1909. Cody corresponded with John R. Mott, the leader and organizer of the Student Volunteer Movement, and later was a principal speaker at the Student Volunteer Convention organized by Mott in Cleveland.
For a time in 1906–1907 Cody had a fair chance of being appointed president of the University of Toronto, in succession to President James Loudon. Presidents at the university were nominated by the board of governors and appointed by the Ontario government. The search committee set up by the board in June 1906 included three of Cody’s associates on the royal commission of 1905–1906: B.E. Walker, Joseph Flavelle, and Goldwin Smith.18 Cody had strong support among the alumni and his name was put forward by John D. Swanson of Kamloops, who emphasized Cody’s fine scholastic record at the university and the role he had played in the abolition of hazing. He described Cody as “a young man of honest Canadian stock, who has made his own way unaided to the highest honours in the gift of the University.” Swanson further asserted that “his life and influence have been to many University men of his time a very wholesome memory.”
Howard Ferguson tried to persuade Premier Whitney that Cody should be appointed: “I attended college with Cody and have known him intimately for a number of years. He possesses the brains, culture and executive capacity to do the position great credit.”19 But Whitney demurred. He professed great respect for Cody but thought he would not be “ugly” enough for the post, which, Whitney thought, demanded something of an “intellectual tyrant.” The premier no doubt recalled the stormy course of university politics under Loudon and did not want it repeated.
The search committee was flooded with recommendations, eightyfive altogether. By January 1907 the committee had narrowed the list to four: Cody; Robert Falconer, the principal of Pine Hill College in Halifax; Michael Sadler, an English educator; and A. Ross Hill, the dean of Teachers’ College, University of Missouri. Falconer was strongly supported by J.A. Macdonald, the managing editor of the Globe. Macdonald, a member of the Search Committee, had visited Falconer at Pine Hill in 1905 and later had talked to him at a meeting of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. The presidency was offered to Michael Sadler, who declined it in March 1907.
Blake was indignant about a leak to the press in February about the negotiations in regard to the presidency. He was even more indignant about the proposal to make public the discussions at the board meeting of April 25. Unable to attend the meeting, he wrote to Walker complaining that private communications were to be made public “in an offensive manner.” He continued, “We lose the feature of a calm deliberative assembly and enter the region of advocates for a particular candidate or mode of dealing in advance.”20 But Blake’s complaints did not affect the course of the negotiations. Falconer, who had been unofficially ranked ahead of Cody on the short list of four, was offered the presidency after the board meeting on April 25. He accepted on June 14.
Cody lost out because of Falconer’s many qualifications, well described by his biographer, James G. Greenlee. There had been a division of opinion in the university community over whether to appoint a local man or someone outside the province. The outsider won out. According to Cody’s friend Bishop White, “recent adjustments in the University set-up made it advisable to seek a President from outside the Province.”21
Chapter 10
The Toronto Episcopal Election of 1909
Episcopal elections in the Anglican Church in Canada have often been tense and quietly competitive. They could well be examined by political scientists as well as by church historians. One of the most dramatic and significant was the Toronto election of 1909. Not only did it put two good men, H.J. Cody and Bishop George Thornloe, in apparent opposition to each other, but it crystallized the traditional rivalry between Wycliffe and Trinity and their respective adherents.
This rivalry dated back to the days of Strachan and Bethune and had precipitated a struggle in the Toronto Synod of 1879 and led to the election of Arthur Sweatman, a compromise candidate. Sweatman held