Transactions of The Royal Society of Canada 



SECTION II 

 Series III MAY, 1920 Vol. XIV 



PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 

 By W. Lawson Grant, M.A. 



(Read May Meeting, 1920) 



In 1893 Sir John Bourinot, so long of this Society decus ac tutamen, 

 delivered the Presidential address, taking as his subject: — Canada^ s 

 Intellectual Strength and Weakness; a short historical and critical 

 review of Literature, Art and Education in Canada. I have of late 

 occupied myself with the endeavour, however inadequately performed, 

 to bring this address up to date; to see how far we have increased 

 our strength or overcome our weakness; how far we may now deem 

 ourselves to have an intellectual standing among nations. In a 

 Kultur-map of the world, published by Germany in 1913, Canada 

 shared with the greater part of Africa the distinction of being black, 

 i.e., of having no assignable culture. Was this justified ? One limita- 

 tion I shall set myself: Sir John discussed, as was fitting for the 

 President of the whole Society, our achievements, whether wrought by 

 Canadians of French or English tradition ; as President of this Section 

 only I shall confine myself to the latter. 



In some lines of work at least we have made great progress since 

 1893; in the arts of painting and architecture Sir John could say that 

 "so public-spirited a city as Toronto, which numbers among its 

 citizens a number of artists of undoubted merit, is conspicuous for its 

 dearth of good pictures, even in private collections, and for the entire 

 absence of any public gallery." 



Toronto to-day not only possesses an Art Gallery, the nucleus 

 of which is the fine old home of Gold win Smith, but the gallery at this 

 moment houses an exhibition of the work of a Toronto coterie of 

 artists, Lawren Harris, J. E. H. Macdonald, F. H. Varley and others, 

 whose work is in the truest sense the product of a school. Whether 

 they depict the sterile and desolate beauty of Northern Ontario, and 

 draw their chief inspiration from the genius of Tom Thompson, 

 whether it is a scene from "the Ward," or the portrait of a Professor, 

 their work is in every sense Canadian, and yet done with a technique 

 which shows that they have not left unstudied the modern schools of 

 England and of France. That is the only true originality, to gain 



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