2. Winthrop Pickard Bell and the Phenomenology of Nation

Winthrop Pickard Bell (1884–1965) earned a BA in mathematics in 1904 from what is now Mount Allison University, studied engineering at McGill University, and earned an MA in philosophy in 1909 from Harvard where he studied with Josiah Royce. He then spent a year at Emmanuel College in Cambridge University, followed by a year at the University of Leipzig. He began his doctoral work in 1911 under the supervision of Edmund Husserl at the University of Göttingen, where he wrote a dissertation on the work of Royce; he was Husserl’s first North American student. Before he could defend his dissertation, he was arrested by German authorities after the outbreak of war in 1914, for alleged espionage, and interned at a civilian prison camp in Ruhleben with many British prisoners.Footnote ¹ Bell had nearly finished the revisions to his dissertation when he was arrested and so, in the early days of his internment, Husserl and his dissertation committee went to the prison camp to conduct the dissertation defence (Angus & Bell, Reference Angus and Bell2012, pp. 35–36; Bell, Reference Bell2023, p. 20). Bell’s committee judged his defence (and dissertation) to be excellent but the university “declared both the examination and the [dissertation] invalid” (Angus & Bell, Reference Angus and Bell2012, p. 35; see also Bell, Reference Bell2023, p. 24). After he was released from the civilian prison camp in 1918, Bell stayed on in Europe for an information-gathering mission for the Canadian government, reporting directly to Prime Minister Robert Borden. We now know that by January 1919, he was indeed engaged in espionage, having been recruited by MI6. After training in England, he was provided with a cover as a journalist writing news reports for Reuters and returned to Germany.Footnote ² Bell travelled throughout Europe, although mostly within Germany, writing reports for MI6, and finally returned to Canada in 1920. The PhD he was denied in 1914 was conferred on him in 1921 and he taught philosophy at the University of Toronto until 1922; subsequently, he taught at Harvard from 1922–1927. He then returned to the family business in Nova Scotia, but he made another, final information-gathering trip to Germany in 1934 followed by a trip to London to report to Canadian and British Intelligence. In his retirement, he became interested in Maritime history and published The “foreign Protestants” and the settlement of Nova Scotia (Bell, Reference Bell1961). The topic of this book is noteworthy for his views on nationhood and immigration. He died in 1965.

Part of the reason Bell is little known to philosophers — and other scholars — is that he did not publish his philosophical work, although Husserl invited him to publish his dissertation. But it is also the case that because of his espionage work all of his diaries, personal letters, and other personal papers — housed at the Mount Allison University library archives — were sealed until 1 January 2012.Footnote ³ Not surprisingly, then, he is chiefly known as a historian and benefactor of Mount Allison University. But in 2012, Ian Angus published Bell’s lecture on “Canadian Problems and Possibilities,” along with his own analysis of this lecture entitled “The Idea of a Nation” in Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy. Bell’s dissertation was eventually published (Bell, Reference Bell, Bell and Vongehr2018), and in 2023, Jason Bell published Cracking the Nazi code: The untold story of Canada’s greatest spy. Of course, it is of interest that Bell was a spy since not many philosophers are, but of more interest, given his remarks in his Ruhleben lecture, is that he was so sensitive to dark side of nationalism and propaganda: he was the first personFootnote ⁴ to warn of the genocidal plan of a significant group of German militants who would become the National Socialist Party, and amazingly this warning was issued in 1919.Footnote ⁵ He warned British and Canadian Intelligence a second time about Nazi plans for a genocide in 1934, and he made his warnings public in 1939 when he published two articles in Saturday Night (Bell, Reference Bell1939a, Reference Bell1939b). Clearly, Bell was not only a man of extraordinary abilities, but also one who thought deeply and critically about nation, nation state, culture, and, as Angus says, about group belonging (Angus & Bell, Reference Angus and Bell2012, p. 34). But he was well aware of the dangers of nationalism and racism.Footnote ⁶

Bell begins his lecture by saying that he is going to focus, not on the material conditions of Canada nor on the possibilities for individuals in Canada, but on the “the problems and possibilities […] of Canada itself — as a land, a people, a potential nation” (Bell, Reference Bell2012, p. 47). In other words, his approach is typically philosophical — we need to know what it is to be a nation before we can see if Canada is one. For Bell, the possibility of Canada becoming a nation depends very much on the aspirations and instincts of Canadian people. As I said earlier, Bell was educated as a phenomenologist and, as such, he thinks that nations — in distinction to nation states — have a “spiritual essence”: that is, the values expressed by its people. As Angus put it, Bell thinks that the “essence of a nation is in its surmounting of differences to constitute a spiritual, organic unity formed through a tradition” (Angus & Bell, Reference Angus and Bell2012, p. 43). Today, we are more likely to use the term “culture” than “spiritual essence,” but for an early 20^th century phenomenologist, the terms are consonant.Footnote ⁷

We can infer, in part, how Bell understood a nation by looking at the main problems he thought were hampering the development of Canada as a nation. The problems are intertwined: a focus on materialism, a lack of education, a mostly rural population, and large and regular influxes of immigrants. As Bell says:

And he goes on to say:

who do not have the time or inclination to contribute to the building of a Canada culture, preoccupied, as they must be, with making a living (Bell, Reference Bell2012, p. 58). The fact that Bell saw a focus on materialism (i.e., achieving a decent standard of living) exacerbated by insufficient education to contribute to the development of a culture, the hindrance of great distances to developing a culture, and regular immigration — consisting of people also focused on the material conditions of life rather than the development of culture — as the chief problems that would prevent Canada from becoming a nation tells us he thought that the real essential ingredient of a nation is its culture.

In 1915, Canada did not have “the common sentiment and united communal instinct of the nation” for the reasons previously mentioned (Bell, Reference Bell2012, p. 53). Although Canada did not yet really have a culture, it did, according to Bell, have an existing population united under one government; in other words, it was a nation state. One of the problems facing Canada at that time was economic: “we need settlers” (Bell, Reference Bell2012, p. 53). But, as Bell argues, “the economic factors of a situation are never the final arguments in any great question. Even with nations there are motives, prejudices, instincts, sympathies and interests which lie much deeper, and which tell in determining attitudes on vital points” (Bell, Reference Bell2012, p. 53). For Bell, sharing the laws made by a state does not make a nation; it is the making of songs that makes a people (Bell, Reference Bell2012, p. 54). One can create a nation state in a variety of ways: by colonization, by political negotiation, by economic interdependence, but one cannot create a nation by any of these means. A nation develops by writing songs, by telling stories — in short by developing a culture.

If Canada is to be a nation, it must form a culture. It must develop a culture because as Bell argues:

So, according to Bell, a nation is not a matter of political will. Nor is it purely a matter of economic ties or material conditions. Moreover, becoming a nation does not require homogeneity. There can be national characteristics — and, one could infer, national songs, national stories — but it is not required that every citizen be the same. Rather, a nation comes into being when it can transcend differences, or, better put, when it can allow diversity to exist without threat to its existence.Footnote ⁸

Now we can begin to see why Bell thinks that if Canada continues to grow into a nation, it will do so through the development of communal aspirations and instincts. His view of nationhood is analogous to an organism:

This “mystery” is why Bell says that he cannot foretell the path of Canada’s development or even if it would develop into a nation. At this point in his lecture, Bell apologizes to his audience for being so abstract.Footnote ¹⁰ But he goes on to say:

In other words, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Oftentimes, people are unaware that they are living in the midst of a culture; it is invisible to them because it is simply the milieu of their everyday life. But culture is nonetheless real for all that.

So, according to Bell:

But he goes on to say that, whatever Canada turns out to be, it will not be as a British outpost in North America, nor a vassal of the United States, since Canada — even in 1915 — has a history of “Canadians facing their problems alone” (Bell, Reference Bell2012, p. 59). As an example of both the diversity and unity characteristic of a nation, Bell says of the relationship between anglophones and francophones that “[t]here is a diversity here of just that tradition which could really act as binding force” (Bell, Reference Bell2012, p. 54), that is, a diversity that develops into the unity of a nation. And if Canada continues on this path, it will become a nation and not merely a state.

3. Roméo Dallaire and Canadian Culture

Roméo Dallaire was born to a Canadian soldier and a Dutch nurse in 1948 in the Netherlands. He and his mother reunited with his father, landing as so many others did at Pier 21 in 1949. He grew up in the east side of Montreal as a francophone, but completely bilingual. He attended le Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean and subsequently, as was then common, the Royal Military College in Kingston. He was the United Nations commander in Rwanda and since then has received numerous awards and honours as well as serving in the Senate. Currently, he devotes his time to the Dallaire Centre of Excellence for Peace and Security.

So, has Canada become a nation, as Bell thought it might? This is, of course, an empirical question. But let me return to the quotation from Dallaire to which I referred at the beginning of the article, this time using the whole quotation:

Does this mean that Canada has become a nation and not simply a state? As I said, this is an empirical question, but in order to undertake such an investigation, we need to look at what Canadian public figures say and do. In this instance, Dallaire specifically refers to his instinctive response that was developed through his communities and system of education. His communities and education include the Catholic school system in Montreal, the Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean in Quebec and the Royal Military College in Kingston. He recounts that his childhood in the east end of Montreal straddled the border between a francophone Catholic parish and an anglophone Protestant parish. His mother was an allophone from whom he learned to be fluent in English but his family spoke French at home. He talks about the difficulty he encountered being part of both the anglophone/allophone community and the francophone community in his neighbourhood: “the fact that I had friends on both sides marked me as suspect, possibly a traitor. This did not make life easy for me” (Dallaire, Reference Dallaire2003, p. 13). Later on, he says that he found community in the Army Cadets and eventually with his colleagues in the Canadian Armed Forces (Dallaire, Reference Dallaire2003, p. 70). Once in the Canadian Forces, Dallaire was stationed all across the country with personnel from all over Canada; in other words, this is not a person who is familiar with only one particular region of Canada or subgroup of Canadians, but rather one with a wide experience of Canada and Canadians. My point here is that by his own admission, Dallaire’s “instincts” are shaped by being a Canadian.

Moreover, Dallaire writes eloquently of his childhood, not only in Montreal but also of summers spent in a cabin he helped his father build on a lake in the Laurentians. He writes that he always wanted to be a soldier. The military that inspired Dallaire was focused on peacekeeping: Lester B. Pearson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in resolving the Suez Crisis through the United Nations, thus “creating” peacekeeping in 1957 when Dallaire was 10 years old. This is the military that he joined. He found that the world of the army cadet, and then an actual soldier, “linked seamlessly — astonishingly — with the imaginary world of my childhood” where he played solider: “[k]eeping peace, upholding freedom, defending human rights, protecting the moderates and the innocents caught in the crossfire of conflict, creating the buffer zones of fairness and security” (Dallaire, Reference Dallaire2010, pp. 26, 29). His father was a member of those Canadian Forces who liberated his mother’s country from Nazi oppression; he was raised on these stories of liberating the oppressed (CNN News, 2014). Since the genocide in Rwanda, Dallaire has worked tirelessly to help prevent the recruitment and use of child soldiers, to advocate for doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect, to promote the Will to Intervene project at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies — at which he was a Senior Fellow — and to campaign for better care for Canadian veterans’ mental health. In speech after speech, he appeals to Canadian values, which he says are “human values.” He acknowledges the wrongs done to the First Nations of Canada and how we must do better. For example, when he retired from the Senate, in his final speech he said:

His acknowledgement of the atrocities committed against First Nations and Indigenous peoples by Canada is not an offhand remark; he often talks about our need to recognize our offences and to make reparations. When he talks about the United Nations’ failure to stop the genocide in Rwanda, he always includes the reminder that we must address how “we continue to fail the Aboriginal communities of our country” (Dallaire, Reference Dallaire2013, p. 17).

Dallaire, like Bell, was the first to warn of a coming genocide, this time in Rwanda.Footnote ¹¹ What strikes me is that Bell was arguing that the Canada of 1916 has “aspirations and instincts,” and it is those aspirations and instincts that if actualized, would lead to it becoming a nation. Dallaire too says that as the United Nations Commander in Rwanda, he acted on instinct, an instinct based on the “values and ethical framework” that he absorbed from his various communities and educational system. In other words, he explains his actions with reference to the values and framework inculcated by Canadian communities and the educational system. My point here is not one of philosophical history. I am not suggesting that Dallaire has read Bell — which is highly doubtful — but rather, I am pointing out that if indeed Dallaire’s actions, his values, and ethical framework come from his community and education, then this is evidence that Canada indeed has developed into a nation as Bell thought it would, although as Bell said, he could not foretell its path. Our communities, our institutions, such as systems of education, reflect our particular culture; this is true for any culture.

Some of what Dallaire says and writes is aspirational, of course. I mean that although he is appealing to facts — for example, Canada’s role in the development of peacekeeping and the history of the Canadian Armed Forces or the values instilled in him through his childhood in blue collar, mixed neighbourhood in Montreal and his summers spent in the Laurentians and then in the Army Cadets — he is also telling a story about what he thinks Canada is and who he thinks Canadians are. It is an attempt to contribute to the development of a culture, to appeal to our imagination. It is, to refer back to Bell, writing songs to make a nation, not making laws to govern a state. Ironically, the defining experience of Dallaire’s life, one that left him with PTSD, was his peacekeeping mission in a state that was riven by at least two different ethnicities and serial colonization by foreign powers. Rwanda is also evidence that Bell was right that a nation cannot be brought into existence by the imposition of a political will. Since returning to Canada, his work can be seen as an attempt to foster a culture that is “capable of surmounting differences of race and of languages” while allowing “diversity” with the nation. Indeed, in recent years, Dallaire has increasingly talked about what he calls “false isolationism”: the belief that what happens outside of Canada does not affect Canada and that we have no responsibility to be involved with the rest of humanity. His view of Canada would see it become ever more global in outlook, to surmount the differences of race and language without destroying diversity. In his Here’s My Canada clip, he says “Canada means to me an opportunity to influence humanity, and in so doing advance the ability of justice, human rights, and ultimately for all human beings to be treated equally. Canada is the leader in that campaign” (Dallaire, Reference Dallaire2016).

4. Harold R. Johnson and the Stories We Tell

I am, of course, making a circumstantial argument here, namely, that the so-called “Canadian values” that a public figure like Dallaire invokes and appeals to grow out of the milieu, the habitus, of a nation, and as such, Canada has become a nation as Bell thought might happen.Footnote ¹² But the question is: are these widely shared Canadian values? I expect that many readers are not completely comfortable with Dallaire’s invocation of “Canadian values.” I myself have reservations. However, recall that Bell did point out that “one can give national characteristics, but these pertain to smaller groups of people of that nation” (Bell, Reference Bell2012, p. 55). In other words, just because not every Canadian has a particular characteristic does not mean that it is not a Canadian characteristic and likewise with values. Canada as a nation may fail to live up to some values, but that by itself does not mean those values are not Canadian. Nor am I sanguine about the invocation of Vimy Ridge, which is a part of Canadian mythology and was a terrible loss of life for questionable gain. But I wish to consider both Bell’s argument that a nation’s songs are more important than its laws and Dallaire’s childhood reminiscences that he claims shaped him, in light of what another Canadian public figure has to say: Harold R. Johnson (Reference Johnson1954–2022), retired crown prosecutor, member of the Montreal Lake Cree Lake in northern Saskatchewan, Canadian Navy veteran, and novelist.Footnote ¹³ He wrote:

As I pointed out at the beginning of this article, Johnson says that a culture — any culture — is a story (Johnson, Reference Johnson2022, p. 20). We may like some stories and reject other stories. As Bell says, a nation needs to write its own songs, but beyond that we “cannot foretell the path of Canada’s growth to a nation” (Bell, Reference Bell2012, p. 57).Footnote ¹⁴ In other words, a nation becomes a nation by telling its own story — by singing its own songs — but what stories it tells is a choice.

Dallaire tells the story of Canada as peacekeepers. He also tells the story of the failure of Canada and the United Nations to intervene in the Rwandan genocide, the failure of actually peacekeeping. Significantly, Johnson also tells a similar story.

He goes on to say:

Like Dallaire, Johnson “liked” the story about peacekeepers; like Dallaire, he wanted to be part of that story; and like Dallaire, he thinks we have not lived up to that story.

But do the failures — that Canada is a nation of peacekeepers and that Canada has also failed (First Nations, Rwandans, Afghanis) — mean that these stories should be abandoned? Canada has often failed to live up to its stories but those failures do not mean that the project of telling stories is not worthwhile. One way to understand Dallaire’s work after his return from Rwanda is that part of the story that he is telling is that we need to live up to our stories about Canada being fair, being peacekeepers, being a democracy, which includes owning up to our failures and the harms we have caused as well as making amends. It is clear that this is exactly what Dallaire is doing. Likewise, Bell’s intelligence work warning about antisemitism and genocide evinces a similar commitment.Footnote ¹⁵ One story does not cancel out the other. Johnson’s point is rather different, but complementary. He says: “Canada is an idea, a story that we tell ourselves. […] We tell ourselves a story about what it means to be Canadian. We create identities for ourselves” (Johnson, Reference Johnson2022, p. 51). The point here is that our nations, our cultures, our individual identities are stories.Footnote ¹⁶ The question is not whether we should reject stories; the point is that it is all story.Footnote ¹⁷ As Johnson says, we get to choose which stories we tell; we do not get to choose not to tell stories.

Johnson also differs from Bell in that he argues that stories not only form the identity of a people but also the identity of individuals.Footnote ¹⁸ As Johnson says:

The relationship between the individual and the culture is reciprocal: it has to do with group belonging, to use Angus’s phrase. “Culture is made up of all the stories we tell ourselves” (Johnson, Reference Johnson2022, p. 79), and individuals are made up of the stories they tell themselves and the stories told about them.

So, despite the possible objection that Canada does not actually have a culture or that it has an imperialist, racist culture, Johnson says that this is not the only story that we can tell about Canada. Moreover, we choose which stories to tell. For example, he says: “Many Aboriginal people don’t feel they are part of the Canada story” (Johnson, Reference Johnson2022, p. 63). He continues:

The point here is not to deny the negative aspects of Canadian culture and history; it is certainly not Johnson’s point to blame Indigenous people for colonization or to render settler Canadians innocent. Rather, his point is akin to Bell’s point that we — the nation of Canada and the various communities in that nation — make our own culture. And because we collectively make our culture, we have a choice and responsibility for that culture that we develop, just as, according to Johnson, we get to choose what our lifestory will be.Footnote ²⁰

This responsibility brings me to a point that I believe Dallaire is making when he tells the story of the failure to prevent genocide in Rwanda, the story of how we have failed First Nations people, but also the story of our involvement in peacekeeping, the story of developing a stable democracy: we are responsible for both the good and the bad. We cannot tell only good stories or only bad stories; to do so is not only inaccurate but it is also not taking real responsibility. Admitting a failure also requires taking action to do better. Johnson says:

This is why, I think, Dallaire’s stories are aspirational; it is not that Canada has not failed, and failed miserably on occasion; nor is it that the stories of being an anti-racist nation of “peace, order, and good government” are completely true. Rather, it is that “[w]e become the stories we are told and the stories we tell ourselves” (Johnson, Reference Johnson2022, p. 18). We need both stories that acknowledge our shortcomings and stories that are aspirational, that talk about who we want to be. The only way the “larger stories” can change is through the individuals changing their lifestory. As Bell says, cultures are not created or changed by an act of political will.

There is a tension here, of course, between the extent to which we can tell our own stories and the extent to which stories are told about us. Johnson acknowledges that our lifestory is not independent of the dominant stories of society. But we acquiesce too quickly in thinking that we have no responsibility here. Bell talks about how too much attention to material things is detrimental to creating a culture. Part of the reason it is detrimental is that we take material things to be “more real” than culture. Johnson too says:

In other words, stories are as “real” as material reality. In fact, stories make the reality of society. To make his point, Johnson tells a number of stories about the trickster Wisahkicahk to show how there is never just one side to a story. Bell too points out that often the “picture” Europeans have of Canada, while not completely false, is at best incomplete (Bell, Reference Bell2012, pp. 48–49).

I said earlier that some might feel uncomfortable hearing Dallaire’s aspirational stories. Here is a glimpse of a story Johnson tells, which he says is “uncomfortable”:

Johnson then retells the story of Europeans coming to North America and points out, for example, how helpless they were, how their technologies and knowledge did not fit here, how much help they needed to survive in this land. He goes on to say:

At the end of the story, Johnson asks: “So, who colonized whom? It seems to me that we did more to change the European than the European did to change us. What I have just told you is just another version of the colonization story” (Johnson, Reference Johnson2022, p. 35). In other words, our discomfort or our comfort, our like for a story or our dislike for a story, our agreement or disagreement with what is included or what is left out of a story do not make the story true or false. Johnson is pointing out that his version of the colonization story, appealing to historical facts, is just as true as other versions of the colonization story.

Then Johnson makes a contentious claim:

It is likely that Dallaire, who witnessed the “stories” told about the Tutsis by militant Hutus as an important cause of the resulting genocide, would agree with Johnson here.Footnote ²¹ Johnson also echoes Bell’s contention that the point is not whether Canada has too many immigrants but rather whether the immigrants can “mix” — come together — to make a new culture (Bell, Reference Bell2012, p, 52). He says:

Of course, there are facts — they limit and shape the stories we can tell. But just as Bell says that the economics of a case can never have the final word on any important question, Johnson is pointing out that belonging matters more, community matters more.

As Dallaire witnessed first-hand in the Rwandan genocide, and Bell saw happen in the Holocaust of World War II, stories have real effect.Footnote ²² Johnson warns us that: “Every story we tell can heal or kill. You have to be very careful of the stories that you tell” (Johnson, Reference Johnson2022, p. 58), so

So, as much as there are dark parts of Canada’s history, culture, and story that we need to both acknowledge and to make amends for, we cannot tell only stories about the dark parts. Doing so is also destructive of a culture, whether we are telling negative stories about the culture of others or negative stories about our own culture. We also need to tell stories that give us something to emulate, stories of the kind of culture we wish to have. As Johnson says: “We need stories of hope and possibility to nurture us. We need new heroes — environmental heroes, humanity heroes, and social development heroes” (Johnson, Reference Johnson2022, p. 66).

Bell argues that a nation needs to make its own culture, needs to write its own songs in order to be a nation. He did not know in advance what that culture would be like but it appears that he was right that Canada would develop a culture. Dallaire tells us that it is the culture of Canada that shaped his instincts, that motivated his actions in Rwanda and in his ongoing work to prevent genocide. Johnson reminds us that we are responsible for the stories we tell, for the culture we develop; we cannot abdicate our responsibility by only telling stories of our failures. As Johnson says, “we have Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people sitting around here. We need to find a story that we can share, like we share the heat from this fire. We need to learn to live like family” (Johnson, Reference Johnson2022, p. 109). Like a living organism, Canada needs to continue to develop its culture and live up to its best stories.