Hamilton Southam; diplomat & champion of culture in Canada (nice)
Hyfler/Rosner
Champion of culture in Canada 'epitomized the values of the
NAC'
Third-generation member of famous newspaper family grew up
in a lifestyle of privilege and chose the diplomatic corps
over journalism. Later, he helped launch the National Arts
Centre and the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa
SANDRA MARTIN
July 3, 2008
Passionate, romantic, a lover of culture, the high arts and
beautiful women, Hamilton Southam was in many ways an
18th-century gentleman, given to quoting poetry, rereading
the classic works of literature and history, attending
opera, ballet and theatrical performances, and collecting
paintings by modern masters. Until the end of his days, he
expressed his faith in the ultimate meaning of life by
quoting these lines from Milton's Samson Agonistes: "All is
best, though we oft doubt,/What th' unsearchable dispose/Of
highest wisdom brings about,/ and ever best found in the
close."/
Born into the third generation of the Southam newspaper
dynasty, he grew up in a gilded world of wealth and
privilege, in which winters were spent in Florida and
summers in Europe and the family enclave at Big Rideau Lake
near Ottawa. Fighting for his country for six years in the
Second World War stiffened the public-service component of
his complicated character. After working in journalism, he
turned his back on the family business and opted for
diplomacy in its Pearsonian heyday, serving as ambassador to
Poland, among other postings. But it was his lengthy tenure
in the trenches of the cultural, linguistic and
nationalistic battlefields that forged his legacy as the
builder and founding general director of the National Arts
Centre, a visionary fundraiser and force behind the Canadian
War Museum, the Canadian Battle of Normandy Foundation and
the Valiants Memorial and an active contributor to many
other cultural institutions.
How fitting that such a Canadian giant should die on Canada
Day, said Peter Herrndorf, president of the National Arts
Centre, describing Mr. Southam as a man of exquisite taste
with a single-minded devotion to the arts and an incredible
capacity for friendship. "He had been for many years, well
before I came here, one of my heroes and he stayed a hero
though my professional life. Never did I imagine that I
would not only build on Hamilton's legacy at the NAC, but
also become his friend," said Mr. Herrndorf. "He became like
a second dad to me, both in personal terms and very much in
professional terms - and in typical dad terms, he was both
wonderful in his support and tough when I wasn't living up
to what he expected. It's a big loss because he epitomized
the values of the NAC."
Gordon Hamilton Southam was born in December, 1916, and
named after an uncle who had been killed two months earlier
at the Battle of the Somme. His family called him Hamilton
because he had an older cousin, Gordon, who lived next door,
in what amounted to a family enclave in the elite Rockliffe
Park area of Ottawa. His parents' house, called Lindenelm,
later became the Spanish embassy.
Hamilton's father, Wilson Southam, the oldest of six sons of
William Southam (1843-1932), the proprietor of The Hamilton
Spectator and founder of the Southam newspaper empire, was
the publisher of the Ottawa Citizen. Hamilton's mother,
Henrietta Cargill, was the daughter of Conservative
politician Henry Cargill, who died after collapsing on the
floor of the House of Commons.
The youngest of his parents' six children, Hamilton went to
Elmwood School and then Ashbury College, the private boy's
school in Ottawa. In those days, French was taught as though
it were a dead language, so it was years before he became
bilingual. But the school did nurture his love for Latin,
the classics, and poetry, which he delighted in declaiming
until the end of his life. He also played Gratiano in The
Merchant of Venice, "lightly with exactly the right touch of
flippancy," according to drama critic Ted Devlin.
After doing summer-school classes at Glebe and Lisgar
Collegiates, he entered Trinity College at the University of
Toronto in 1934. He graduated with a degree in history in
1939, having taken a year out, halfway through, recovering
from a serious car crash that left him with a crooked
smile - a rugged distinction in a classically handsome face.
After U of T, he sailed to England intending to do a
master's degree in modern history at Christ Church College,
Oxford. Almost as soon as he arrived, Britain declared war
on Germany and he enlisted in the British Army as an officer
cadet in the Royal Artillery.
Simultaneously, he renewed his friendship with Jacqueline
Lambert-David, the daughter of a sculptor from a land-owning
French family. They had met in Canada that summer through
family friends. When the hostilities commenced, she managed
to make her way back to London by ship from New York because
the United States was still neutral. They married in London
on April 15, 1940, while he was in training. (They
eventually had four children and were divorced in the late
1960s; she died in 1998.) A month after the wedding, he
received his commission as a lieutenant.
Meanwhile, the 40th battery of the Canadian Field Artillery
(in which his uncle and namesake, Gordon Southam, had
served) had mobilized for active service under Frank Keen,
assistant editor of the Hamilton Spectator, as the 11th Army
Field Regiment, 40th Battalion of Hamilton. As soon as the
battalion arrived in England, Lt. Southam applied for a
transfer from the British Army so that he could serve with
the Canadian Forces. By the autumn of 1943, the 1st Canadian
Infantry Division, which was heavily engaged in Italy,
urgently needed replacements. He volunteered to join the
Royal Canadian Horse Artillery. He fought in the battle of
Ortona in December, 1943, and the final battle of Monte
Cassino from April to May, 1944, and was part of the advance
of the Canadian Army up through Italy and later from
Marseilles northward in France. He was mentioned in
dispatches for "gallant and distinguished services" and
demobilized with the rank of captain.
After the war, he worked briefly for The Times of London
before returning to Canada and an uneasy job as an editorial
writer for the Citizen in 1946. "I couldn't write quickly
enough," he said in an interview at his home in Rockliffe in
2004. "My editor would give me a subject - 500 words on such
and such a subject by 3 o'clock. My instinct was to go to
the parliamentary library for a week and then come back with
the 500 words," he said. "I was wretched." He went to his
uncle Harry Southam, then publisher of the Citizen, and
said, "I can't manage to do this, so I am going to External
Affairs."
He wrote the examinations and joined the department in 1948
under Lester Pearson at a time when Canada "had a role to
play" and when being part of the foreign service was "riding
the crest of a wave, as far as I was concerned." It was "a
wonderful time," Mr. Southam said, his eyes flashing under
his expressive beetle brows. "Bliss was it in that dawn to
be alive, But to be young was very heaven!" he said, quoting
Wordsworth.
In 1949, Mr. Southam (and his family, which now included a
second son, Christopher, who is now called Abdul) was posted
to Stockholm as third secretary under ambassador Tommy
Stone. After nearly four years, they returned to Ottawa
before being posted to Warsaw as chargé d'affaires in March,
1959. By then, the Southams had two more children, Jennifer
and Michael. This posting was one of the highlights of Mr.
Southam's diplomatic career because he solved the "Polish
Treasures" problem.
After Germany invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, the curator
of Krakow removed a number of treasures from Wawel Castle,
including tapestries and the sword of state. Following a
circuitous route, they ended up in museum warehouses in
Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City. After the war, Poland,
then behind the Iron Curtain, requested the return of its
state treasures. That was fine with the Canadian federal
government, but not with Maurice Duplessis, then premier of
Quebec. He refused to hand anything over to a Communist
government. Amid the diplomatic fracas, "we never sent an
ambassador there and they never sent an ambassador here,"
Mr. Southam explained.
Mr. Duplessis died in office in September, 1959, and was
succeeded by Paul Sauvé, "a more rational man" who agreed to
ship the treasures back, causing Poland and Canada "to
unfreeze their governments and to exchange ambassadors." And
so, Mr. Southam's grateful government promoted him "sur
place" to the rank of ambassador in April, 1960.
In 1962, the Southams returned to Ottawa, where he was
appointed head of the information division at External
Affairs. He was at work one day when he received a visit
from Faye Loeb of the IGA grocery chain. She wanted him to
help spearhead a citizens' move to build a performing arts
centre in Ottawa. Rashly, he promised to find an appropriate
candidate and, if necessary, to take charge himself.
"Time ran out and Faye came back," is the way he described
his assumption of the leadership of the National Capital
Arts Alliance in 1963. At its height, the alliance included
about 60 arts organizations in Ottawa. They raised enough
money (about $7,000) to commission a feasibility study,
which recommended both the building of a performing arts
centre and the holding of an annual national festival in
Ottawa. In 1964, Mr. Southam took the completed study (with
its projected costs of $9-million) to his old boss Mr.
Pearson, by this point prime minister, and persuaded him
that the proposed building would be an ideal centennial
project for the federal government.
"He thought about it for a month and then came back and
said, 'We'll do it,' " Mr. Southam said. "After that, it was
his project and he never gave up on it." The prime minister
arranged for Mr. Southam to be lent from External Affairs to
Secretary of State, which appointed him co-ordinator of the
National Arts Centre in February, 1964.
The decision about the architect for the new facility was
left up to Mr. Southam. He recommended Fred Lebensold, who
had already built the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver,
had won the competition for Confederation Centre in
Charlottetown, and would later build Place des Arts in
Montreal. Mr. Lebensold did a quick estimate of $16-million
and signed on as architect. Mr. Southam was appointed
inaugural director of the NAC in 1967 and oversaw the
construction of Mr. Lebensold's hexagonal buildings on 2.6
hectares on the banks of the Rideau River, defending
vociferous criticism along the way as the costs spiralled to
a final tally of more than $46-million. (By this time, Mr.
Southam's first marriage had disintegrated. He married Gro
Mortenson of Oslo in 1968, with whom he had two children,
Henrietta and Gordon. He and his second wife were divorced
in the late 1970s, but as with all of Mr. Southam's wives,
she remained on affectionate terms with him.)
The multifaceted performance centre, with three halls
including the country's first professional opera house, two
restaurants, two theatre companies and its own touring
symphony orchestra, opened in June of 1969 with the National
Ballet of Canada performing two commissioned ballets - The
Queen by Grant Strate to music by Louis Applebaum, and
Kraanerg by Roland Petit to music by Iannis Xenakis. The
following night, when the ballet danced John Cranko's Romeo
and Juliet, something went wrong with the technology in the
orchestra pit. Conductor George Crum and some of his
musicians slowly ascended above stage level, leading Mr.
Crum to say later that it was "the only time I ever looked
down on Celia Franca," who was performing as Lady Capulet.
After two terms as director-general, Mr. Southam stepped
down in March of 1977.
Less than a year later, after a short respite spent sailing
his yacht, Mr. Southam was persuaded by secretary of state
John Roberts to become chair of Festival Canada and take
charge of the national celebrations on Canada Day. He was
paid a dollar a year and required to appear before a Commons
committee to answer questions about his mandate and budget.
When some members criticized the fluently bilingual Mr.
Southam for preparing a report in English - he said later
that he hadn't had time to have it translated - he sent a
letter resigning from his post in French to the minister. It
was rejected and Mr. Southam oversaw celebrations in
hundreds of communities across the country and a blow-out
televised extravaganza on Parliament Hill on the theme "You
and Me - Le Canada, C'est Toi et Moi."In the 1980s, Mr.
Southam was a partner in Lively Arts Market Builders, a
scheme to create a television channel devoted to producing
and broadcasting plays, concerts, films and programs on the
arts. The group received a cable television licence and
launched the pay-television C Channel in January, 1983. But
it failed to attract subscribers and went into receivership
six months later. Rogers Cablesystems Inc. bought its pay-TV
licence that December for $12,500.
(The following year, Mr. Southam married for the third and
final time. Marion Tanton, a French woman he had known and
loved for many years, was the wife of the late Pierre
Charpentier, a former Canadian ambassador, and the mother of
his three children. She died of cancer in May, 2005.)
In January, 1985, prime minister Brian Mulroney appointed
Mr. Southam chair of the Official Residences Council, a
civilian oversight group he had established amidst mounting
criticism of the cost of maintaining official residences.
Mr. Southam's tenure was not an easy one; there were
political brawls about work done on the speaker's house in
Kingsmere; on Stornoway, the residence of the opposition
leader; and on both official prime ministerial residences.
His beloved NAC went through a long period of turmoil
beginning in the mid-1980s, involving funding crises, a
revolving series of chairs and artistic directors and a
strike by the NAC orchestra, before it began to stabilize
more than a decade later with the appointment in the late
1990s of David Leighton as chair of the board and Mr.
Herrndorf as president and chief executive - thanks in no
small part to Mr. Southam's behind-the-scenes lobbying.
Early in 2000, during Mr. Herrndorf's tenure, a grateful NAC
renamed its opera auditorium Southam Hall in his honour and
threw a lavish party for him on his 90th birthday.
After attending the rededication of the Tomb of the Unknown
Soldier on Sept. 17, 1999, Mr. Southam met some friends for
lunch at the Rideau Club. He had been "moved" by the
ceremony and by governor-general Adrienne Clarkson's
"wonderful" speech, and he began thinking that the fallen
soldier "should have some company on Confederation Square,"
rather like the "great cloud of witnesses," described by St.
Paul in his epistles. Those lunchtime musings led to his
final public campaign, which was realized seven years later
when Governor-General Michaëlle Jean unveiled the
$1.1-million Valiants Memorial. He considered the Valiants
his second great project after the NAC. "Parliament Hill is
full of statues of prime ministers and politicians, some of
them good, some of them not good. But in Ottawa, there
shouldn't just be statues of politicians," he said. "It is
the capital of the country and there should be statues of
the men and women who have made this country."
Aside from building monuments to others, Mr. Southam enjoyed
sitting in the study of his Ottawa home, a
well-proportioned, light-filled room lined with bookcases,
rereading the complete works of Anthony Trollope and
"contemplating three generations of reading." He had his
grandfather's books on the top shelf, his father's Everyman
editions on the second and his own books on the third shelf.
As well, he was examining his own soul. "I have lived my
life, and that which I have done may God himself make pure,"
he said. "I meditate and I don't compare today with
yesterday. I have more important comparisons, concerning my
inner life, and I have much to think about." He was an
Anglican, but he "was thinking the same thoughts" as a
Catholic or a Jew or a Muslim. The soul is a more important
part of our being than character," he said. "It is
essential."
And so he spent his last years in contemplation and in
visiting with close friends and family, enjoying life and
engaged with the world around him.
On Canada Day, he was about to go for a drive with his valet
when he suddenly felt tired. He lay down for a rest and
quietly died.
HAMILTON SOUTHAM
Gordon Hamilton Southam was born in Ottawa on Dec. 19, 1916.
He died July 1, 2008, at home in Ottawa of complications
from cancer. He was 91. He is survived by his second wife,
Gro Mortenson, his six children and his extended family. A
private family funeral is planned followed by a memorial
service at St. Bartholomew's Anglican Church, Ottawa, later
in July.