Georges Vanier
Georges-Philias Vanier was a Canadian military officer, diplomat, and statesman who served as the 19th governor general of Canada from 1959 to 1967, the first Quebecer and second Canadian-born person to hold the position.
Vanier was born and educated in Quebec. In 1906, he was valedictorian when he graduated with a BA from Loyola College. After earning a university degree in law, he served in the Canadian army during the First World War; on the European battlefields, he lost a leg and was commended for his actions with a number of decorations from King George V.
Subsequently, Vanier returned to Canada and remained in the military until the early 1930s, when he was posted to diplomatic missions in Europe. With the outbreak of the Second World War, Vanier once again became active in the military, commanding troops on the home front until the cessation of hostilities in 1945, whereupon he returned to diplomatic circles.
Vanier was appointed to replace Vincent Massey as governor general in 1959 by Queen Elizabeth II, on the recommendation of Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, and he occupied the post until his death in 1967. Vanier proved to be a popular governor general, with his war record earning respect from the majority of Canadians; however, as a Quebecer, he was met with hostility by Quebec separatists.
Early life
Vanier was born in the Little Burgundy neighbourhood of Montreal to an Irish mother, Margaret, and a French-Norman father, Philias Vanier, who raised Vanier to be bilingual. Vanier was descended from Guillaume Vanier of Honfleur who moved to Quebec City around 1670 and in 1672 married Magdeleine Bailly, a fille du roi from Paris. The Vanier family resided in Quebec City at first and in the 18th century moved up the St. Lawrence river to Montreal, the biggest and wealthiest city in New France. Vanier's maternal grandparents were John Maloney and his wife Elizabeth, Irish immigrants who arrived in Montreal in search of a better life. Vanier's father was a successful businessman and was one of the first people in Montreal to own an automobile, which he never learned how to drive, instead hiring a chauffeur. Vanier's father was wealthy enough to own two cottages, one on Lake Memphremagog and another on the St. Lawrence.He attended the Jesuit-run Loyola College, receiving in 1906 a Bachelor of Arts degree in church devotional fellowship. At Loyola, Vanier received the typical collège classique education with a strong emphasis on Catholic theology, Latin, Greek, philosophy, the classics, literature and math with the only difference being that his education was in English instead of French, as was usually the case with the collège classiques. Vanier was considered to be a very good student who excelled both academically and at sports such as boxing and especially hockey.
At Loyola, inspired by his literacy heroes, John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he entertained the ambition of being a poet. Under the pseudonym Georges Raymound, Vanier had several of his flowery English language poems published in The Siemens Magazine of Toronto. Though Vanier later admitted that his efforts at poetry were somewhat embarrassing, his favorite English poets remained Keats and Shelly for the duration of his life. As a student, he was quiet and reserved with his passions reserved for hockey as he later recalled that his happiest moment at Loyola was scoring the winning goal for his school's hockey team with just a minute left in the game. The most important intellectual influence on Vanier at Loyola was a French Jesuit, Father Pierre Gaume, who taught French at the school. Inspired by Father Gaume, Vanier hired a tutor, a Frenchman living in Montreal, Camille Martin, who introduced him to French literature and culture in general. Martin was a mysterious character who had left France for unknown reasons and ran his tutoring services for the French-Canadian haut bourgeois out of his house on Mackay street, known locally as "The Hermitage". Martin was an inspiring teacher and his influence on the teenage Vanier was described as "enormous". In 1906, Vanier was the class valedictorian when he graduated from Loyola.
In 1908, Father Gaume, who continued to correspond with Vanier, criticized him for his reserve, leading Vanier to reply: "Intimate feelings of joy, sadness, desires, aren't something to write about. They can be spoken about, and in fact are more often understood, with gestures, looks and tones of voice". In another letter, Father Gaume criticized Vanier for his fondness for Molière, warning him that Molière had written "abominable things" about the Catholic Church, and should only be read in censored versions of his works. Though several of Vanier's Jesuit teachers had suggested that he pursue a career as a priest, the rigid worldview of his teachers such as Father Gaume who tried to steer him away from writers such as Molière seems to have persuaded him against a career as a priest. In May 1908, Vanier wrote to Father Gaume to say that after much thought, he had decided that he lacked the calling to be a priest.
Vanier then went on to earn his Bachelor of Laws degree in 1911 from the Montreal campus of the Université Laval. Vanier was called to the Quebec bar that year and, though he took up the practice of law, he considered entering the Catholic priesthood. Though educated in English at Loyola College, Vanier had an intense love of French literature and poetry that was to last for the rest of his life. Like many other middle-class French-Canadians of his generation, France was his ideal, and his favorite city was Paris. Vanier considered Montreal to be a somewhat provincial city that lacked the glamour of Paris, and as a young man, he was a member of a group of intellectuals called École littéraire de Montreal that were sought to bring French-Canadian literature up as they saw it the standards of French literature. In January 1912, Vanier first visited Paris, where he attended a number of literacy salons to hear the readings of the latest in French poetry.
Soldier
With the outbreak of the First World War, he decided that offering his service to his country should take priority and thereafter enlisted in the Canadian Army. In response to the German invasion of Belgium, Britain as one of the co-guarantors of Belgian neutrality issued an ultimatum demanding that German forces leave Belgium at once; upon its rejection, Britain declared war on the Reich shortly before midnight on 4 August 1914. As a member of the British empire, Canada was automatically at war as well. Vanier took on a prominent role in recruiting others, eventually helping to organise in 1915 the French Canadian 22nd Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, of which he was commissioned as an officer, and which later, in 1920, became the Royal 22e Régiment.Through many French-Canadians were opposed to or at least lukewarm in their support of the war, for Vanier, France was the center of western civilization, and he felt compelled to volunteer to assist France with repelling the German invasion. In addition, Vanier was greatly offended by the German invasion of neutral Belgium, all the more so because Germany was one of the co-guarantors of Belgian neutrality, which led him to see the invasion of Belgium together with the atrocities against Belgian civilians as especially brutal acts. In a letter to his sister Frances, Vanier wrote: "I could not read the harrowing account if Belgian sufferings without feeling a deep compassion and an active desire to right, as so far as it is within my power, the heinous wrong done ". On 14 October 1914, Vanier attended the rally in Montreal's Parc Sohmer organized by a Canadian militia doctor, Arthur Mignault, where the lead speaker was the former prime minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, that led to the formation of the 22nd Battalion.
On 15 February 1915, Vanier passed the officers' exam and was commissioned as a lieutenant. On 20 May 1915, Vanier boarded in Halifax the ship HMT Saxonia that took him and the rest of the battalion across the Atlantic to Plymouth. In Britain, the battalion went to the East Sandling Camp in Kent for more training together with visits by King George V, the prime minister Sir Robert Borden, and the minister of national defense, Sam Hughes. On 13 September 1915, the battalion arrived in Le Havre and then boarded a train that took them to the front. On 2 January 1916, Vanier led a trench raid at night that took out a heavily fortified German machine-gun post as Vanier led his men across no-man's land, captured the post, blew it up, and then led his men back to the Canadian trenches. The success of the raid was widely reported in Montreal and even in the neutral United States where the Christian Science Monitor covered the raid with the headline "Canadian Exploits in Flanders Region". During a visit to Paris in January 1916, Vanier noted in a letter to his family the most disturbing aspect of Paris in wartime was the disproportionate number of women wearing black in morning for their husbands, boyfriends and sons who had been killed in the war. In the same letter, he expressed his love of France as he wrote: "Ah, the sheer joy of it-to visit Paris on leave from the trenches where we are all trying to do our bit for the triumph of civilization". Vanier sent his family a postcard where he wrote: "Affectionate greetings from Paris, the center of civilization". On 12 April 1916, Vanier made a will that began with: "I believe in God and the Holy Catholic Church. I believe in eternal rest and divine mercy. I confide my soul without fear to our Lord Jesus Christ. I renew all promises made at my baptism and confirmation. I believe in the sanctity of our cause and the triumph of justice. I believe in the future of French-Canada".
Vanier for his efforts, received the Military Cross on 3 June 1916, he continued fighting in the trenches. On 10 June 1916, Vanier was wounded by the explosion of a German shell, which led him to being assigned to a Trappist monastery that had converted into a hospital to recover. In his letters to his family, he spoke of his sense of peace as he heard the Trappist monks chant while he rested in the monastery's garden; in his diary, he wrote about feeling depressed at the sight of so much death and suffering that it made difficult for him to sleep at night. While on a visit to London later in June 1916, Vanier again collapsed from shell-shock and was sent to the Perkins Bull Hospital for Convalescent Canadian Officers in Putney Heath. Despite the efforts of his parents who had wanted to declare him medically unfit to continue fighting, Vanier chose to return to the front in July 1916, telling his parents: "I can't go back to Canada now with the boys fighting in France". In a letter to his brother Anthony, Vanier sent a post-card showing the execution of Edith Cavell in October 1915 that featured a cruel-looking German officer shooting the noble-looking Cavell with the comment "To Dear Antony, this is the sort of thing that makes one glad that he enlisted". Vanier saw the war as a "holy war" and a "sacred war" to defend freedom from tyranny with himself and the other Canadian soldiers as "knights" who had to perform the hard and gruesome, but very necessary task of winning the war. Vanier sent his brother an article from The Spectator claiming there was a straight line of continuity from the mythical heroes of the Trojan war such as Achilles and Odysseus to the medieval knights to the Allied soldiers currently fighting in the war. Vanier endorsed the claims made in the article, telling his brother that the article perfectly explained why he had chosen to fight in the war. For Vanier, the knightly ideal of a man who has to be courageous and honorable in upholding what is right and just in the world no matter what the cost was to be his lifelong ideal, and was to greatly influence his actions throughout his life. In September 1916, Vanier visited Windsor Castle where the king personally awarded him the Military Cross.
Vanier took part in the action that saw the Canadian Corps take Vimy Ridge on 9 April 1917. The ridge, which towered above the Douai Plain, allowed any force that occupied it to dominate the plain and had been held by the Germans since October 1914. Vimy Ridge had become one of the most heavily fortified places on the Western Front, and French attempts to capture Vimy ridge in 1915 together with British attempts in 1916 had been repulsed with heavy losses, turning Vimy Ridge into a symbol of German power. Vanier was elated by the fall of Vimy and in a letter to his mother wrote: "You know of course that things are going with a tremendous swing, and that we are pursuing the Boche. The morale of our troops is magnificent. We cannot lose-what is more we are winning quickly and the war will be over in six months".
In July 1917, he was appointed a knight of the French Legion of Honour. In late 1918, he led an attack at Chérisy and was shot in the chest and both legs, resulting in the loss of his right leg due to a shell blast. His recovery was lengthy, though he spent it in France, refusing to be evacuated while his fellow soldiers remained fighting. With the cessations of hostilities, Vanier was mentioned in despatches and was awarded a Bar to his Military Cross for his bravery during this action:
He was further appointed to the Distinguished Service Order :
Thereafter, Vanier returned to Montreal and once more found employment practicing law. On 1 April 1920, he received a regular commission as a major in the Canadian Militia. On 29 September 1921, he married Pauline Archer and the couple had five children, including Thérèse Vanier and Jean Vanier.
For four years beginning in 1921, Vanier acted as aide-de-camp to Governor General the Viscount Byng of Vimy, leaving this post when he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel and took command of the Royal 22e Régiment at La Citadelle. Vanier occupied that position for only one year before again becoming aide-de-camp for Byng's viceregal successor, the Marquess of Willingdon. Vanier was very close to Lord Byng, who had commanded the Canadian Corps in 1916–1917. During the King-Byng affair of 1926, Vanier felt that the charges of William Lyon Mackenzie King that Byng had acted illegally in not dissolving the House of Commons for a new election as Mackenzie King had asked to do were absurd. He then went to England where he attended the Staff College, Camberley from 1923 to 1924, where Harry Crerar, later Chief of the General Staff and commander of the First Canadian Army during World War II, was a fellow student and J. F. C. Fuller was an instructor.