84 Facts About Vincent Massey

Charles Vincent Massey was a Canadian lawyer and diplomat who served as Governor General of Canada, the 18th since Confederation.

Vincent Massey was born into an influential Toronto family and was educated in Ontario and England, obtaining a degree in law and befriending future prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King while studying at the University of Oxford.

Vincent Massey was commissioned into the military in 1917 for the remainder of the First World War and, after a brief stint in the Canadian Cabinet, began his diplomatic career, serving in envoys to the United States and United Kingdom.

On September 16,1925, Vincent Massey was sworn into the King's Privy Council for Canada, giving him the accordant style of The Honourable.

However, Vincent Massey was later, as a former Governor General of Canada, entitled to be styled for life with the superior form of The Right Honourable.

Vincent Massey subsequently continued his philanthropic work and founded Massey College at the University of Toronto and the Massey Lectures before he died on December 30,1967.

Vincent Massey was thus raised among Toronto's elite, which gave him a number of social and familial connections throughout his life.

Vincent Massey was raised in the family mansion at 519 Jarvis Street and educated at St Andrew's College from 1902 to 1906, then at University College at the University of Toronto, despite his family's close ties to Victoria College.

In 1911, thinking that the University of Toronto lacked a facility where its 4,000 students could engage in extracurricular activities, Vincent Massey donated $16,290 to the students' fund to build a student centre and thereafter led the endowment and construction efforts.

Vincent Massey served as a lecturer on modern history at the college.

When Canada entered the First World War in 1914, Vincent Massey was commissioned as an officer for Military District No 2 and was called to work for the Cabinet war committee.

On June 4,1915, Vincent Massey married Alice Parkin, the daughter of Sir George Robert Parkin, who was a former principal of Upper Canada College and secretary of the Rhodes Trust; through the marriage, Vincent Massey later became the uncle of George Grant and the great-uncle of Michael Ignatieff.

Vincent Massey was discharged at the cessation of hostilities in 1918.

In 1921, Vincent Massey became president of his father's business, Vincent Massey-Harris Co.

Vincent Massey pursued philanthropic interests, mostly in arts and education, such as his collection of paintings and sculpture through his Massey Foundation, which he established in 1918.

Vincent Massey ran for the House of Commons in the riding of Durham in the 1925 federal election, but was defeated Though he thereafter resigned his cabinet post, Massey was still included in the Canadian delegation to the 1926 Imperial Conference, where was drafted the Balfour Declaration that would ultimately lead to vast constitutional changes in the role of the monarch and his viceroys throughout the former empire.

In 1932, Vincent Massey became the first president of the newly formed National Liberal Federation of Canada, before which the Liberal Party was a loose and informal association of national, provincial, and regional entities without a permanent central organization.

Vincent Massey would had preferred to return to politics, not the least because he thought he would make a better prime minister than Mackenzie King, whose muddled politics Vincent Massey privately held in contempt, but he accepted a diplomatic career as a consolation prize.

Vincent Massey believed that Canada was a British nation located in North America that had a French infusion and that the essence of being a Canadian was to adopt primarily British traditions to a North American settling.

Vincent Massey advocated excluding Jews from immigrating to Canada while Jewish refugees were fleeing Europe.

Vincent Massey believed Jews were likely Communists and would steal jobs from native-born Canadians.

Vincent Massey returned to Canada in 1930, as Mackenzie King had put his name forward for appointment as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.

However, five days after Vincent Massey relinquished his post in Washington, DC, Mackenzie King's Liberal Party was defeated in the federal election, and Richard Bennett became prime minister.

On November 8,1935, Vincent Massey was appointed the High Commissioner to the United Kingdom for His Majesty's Government in Canada and arrived at Canada House to find as his secretary the man who would be his successor as Governor General of Canada, Georges Vanier.

Vincent Massey was a passionate Anglophile for whom Britain was his ideal, and he had long wanted to be the Canadian high commissioner in London.

Vincent Massey told Baldwin that he had his full support in his demand that the king either give up his throne or Simpson, through he advised Baldwin that the king was popular in Canada, and many Canadians would not understand why the king could not marry Simpson, saying the matter had to be handled very carefully least it alienate the Canadian people from the monarchy.

Vincent Massey believed that Churchill was using the crisis together with the "press barons" Lord Beaverbrook and Lord Rothermere to start a popular movement aimed at deposing Baldwin as Conservative Party leader in order to make himself prime minister.

When Churchill gave a speech in the favour of the king in the House of Commons, Vincent Massey approvingly reported he was shouted down as Churchill had "shown his irresponsible, free-booting disposition".

In May 1937, Vincent Massey was greatly honoured to have taken part in the coronation of King George VI, where he served as one of the royal standard-bearers.

The only element that marred the coronation for him was Mackenzie King's order that Vincent Massey not wear knee breeches as anachronistic, an order he unhappily complied with.

Vincent Massey privately complained: "I wish to goodness that some of my countrymen wouldn't have an almost religious antipathy to knee breeches".

Vincent Massey was dressed in his best clothes for the coronation and was described as looking "like a medieval strained glass window".

However, both Bruce and te Water were held in far higher esteem by the British than Vincent Massey, who was felt to be an embarrassment as he tried too hard to be accepted by the Establishment.

Vincent Massey cultivated an aristocratic, sophisticated demeanor which gave him a reputation in London as a snob.

In common with the other high commissioners, Vincent Massey believed that the efforts of the Reich to challenge the international order created by the Treaty of Versailles was just and moral, and it was France's efforts to upheld the Versailles system made the French rather the Germans the main danger to world peace.

Vincent Massey was opposed to the alliances that France signed with Czechoslovakia in 1925 and with the Soviet Union in 1935, seeing this as irresponsible diplomacy on the part of the French who were attempting to preserve the Versailles system instead of giving in to German demands as he felt that they should.

One of the most important influences on Vincent Massey was Lord Lothian, a Scottish aristocrat and a liberal intellectual whose perspective was always more in terms of the British empire than in terms of Britain, a viewpoint that endeared him to Vincent Massey.

Seven decades later, these accusations against Vincent Massey resulted in a campaign in Windsor, Ontario, to rename a high school that had originally been named in his honour.

Halifax told Vincent Massey he wanted to see Czechoslovakia turned into a Canadian-style federation so that the Czechs and the Sudeten Germans would act more like English Canadians and French Canadians and less like themselves.

Vincent Massey saw the Sudetenland crisis as a matter of "saving civilization" as he believed that another world war would be the end of Western civilization.

The fact that Hitler engaged in much personal abuse of Benes in his speech was not helpful to peace as Vincent Massey reported to Mackenzie King, but he still clung to his belief that it was Benes who was the problem, not Hitler.

Vincent Massey believed that Hitler's demands for the Sudetenland were moral and just, that Czechoslovakia was not worth fighting for, and it was France that by refusing to renounce its alliance with Czechoslovakia was the principle trouble-maker.

Vincent Massey believed that Britain should only go to war if Hitler was seeking world domination, and as he did believe that this was the case with the Sudetenland, he was opposed to war with Germany in 1938.

On 14 September 1938, Vincent Massey met with te Water where both men agreed that "this astonishing episode" as they deemed it with Britain on the brink of the war must not be allowed to come to war, and that Britain should pressure Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudetenland.

Vincent Massey added that he still felt that Benes was the main danger to the peace, saying his main fear was that Benes might reject the British peace plan.

On 28 September 1938, both Bruce and Vincent Massey supported te Water's statement that it was "psychologically wrong" to blame Hitler for the crisis and with te Water's demand that Chamberlain find a way to silence the "bellicose" MPs like Winston Churchill who were criticizing his government's policies in the House of Commons.

When Chamberlain left Heston airport to attend the Munich conference on 29 September 1938, both te Water and Vincent Massey were there to offer him their best wishes to save the peace at Munich.

Vincent Massey was greatly influenced by te Water, and usually followed whatever line te Water was taking with regard to the British.

At a meeting with the Dominions Secretary Sir Thomas Inskip, te Water, supported by Vincent Massey, assailed the change of policy, saying that Germany still deserved "one more chance of saving face".

Later that same day in a meeting at 10 Downing Street, te Water and Vincent Massey both told Chamberlain that Germany "had a genuine claim to Danzig", which made it an "extremely bad reason" to risk a war over.

Vincent Massey had been planning the visit ever since the coronation, and spent much time corresponding with the Governor-General, Lord Tweedsmuir about the preparations for the visit, as the impeding royal visit had less interest for Mackenzie King.

The royal visit was a great success with the king being cheered whatever he went as he visited all nine provinces, leading Vincent Massey to write: "The Royal visit to Canada was an event so happy in its conception, so gloriously successful in its achievement, and so fragrant in its memory, that any comment seems both inadequate and superfluous".

Nevertheless, Vincent Massey was a Canadian and British patriot and worked not only to maximize Canada's war effort once the Second World War broke out, but served through 1936 as the Canadian delegate to the League of Nations, between 1941 and 1945 as a trustee of the National and Tate galleries, and as chair of the Tate's board of governors from 1943 to 1945.

Vincent Massey always regarded his work as in helping to create the Commonwealth Air Training Plan as one of his great achievements.

Once the war began, the deeply Anglophile Vincent Massey wanted Canada to do as much as possible to help the "mother country", leading Mackenzie King to marginalize him as Vincent Massey's views about Canada's role in the war were not his views.

Vincent Massey welcomed the appointment of Churchill as prime minister on 10 May 1940 by King George VI, through he never lost his doubts about the fitness of Churchill to be prime minister, regarding him as an adventurer with a questionable sense of judgement.

In late May 1940, Vincent Massey informed the British that Canada was sending all of the Royal Canadian Navy's destroyers to Britain to assist with the defense of Britain if France surrendered.

In July 1940, Vincent Massey supported a declaration of proposed British war aims written by Bruce which stated that "we make it abundantly clear that we stand not only for liberty, but for economic and social justice" because that would "give us every chance of mobilising a revolutionary movement in Europe behind the ideals of the British empire".

Vincent Massey was opposed to Britain taking a hardline with Vichy France, as he believed that Marshal Philippe Petain had only signed the armistice with Germany on 21 June 1940 to save his nation and that Petain could be persuaded to reenter the war on the Allied side, provided the British were tactful with him.

Vincent Massey was strongly opposed to the Destroyers-for-bases deal, under which Britain gave the United States 99-year leases on various British air and naval bases in the British West Indies, British Guinea, Bermuda and Newfoundland in exchange for 50 elderly American destroyers, some of which were barely seaworthy.

Vincent Massey was especially opposed to the United States taking over naval and air bases in Newfoundland, which he viewed as a future Canadian province.

Vincent Massey felt that the American bases in Newfoundland were the first step towards the United States annexing Newfoundland, and in March 1941 delivered a formal note of protest, saying that Churchill signed the Destroyers-for-bases deal without consulting Canada.

Vincent Massey was closer to Crerar than to McNaughton, with whom he had difficult relations, and increasingly came to share Crerar's conviction that McNaughton in a classic case of the Peter principle had been promoted to his level of incompetence.

However, Crerar felt and Vincent Massey came to feel likewise that whatever McNaughton's gifts as a "gunner" that was not capable of commanding an army in the field.

Vincent Massey seems to have missed that Crerar was an intriguer who was always plotting to secure himself a promotion, and that at least part of his animosity against McNaughton was his desire to command the 1st Canadian Army.

Lester Pearson during a visit to London reported that McNaughton preferred to deal with him rather than with Vincent Massey, reporting to Mackenzie King: "Their temperaments [Vincent Massey and McNaughton] were at opposite poles and neither felt at that early stage very comfortable and relaxed with one another".

Vincent Massey sat as chair of the National Gallery of Canada from 1948 to 1952 and served as Chancellor of the University of Toronto from 1948 to 1953.

In 1949, Vincent Massey was appointed head of the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences, which resulted in the Vincent Massey Report of 1951 and led to the establishment of the National Library of Canada and the Canada Council of the Arts.

Vincent Massey was the first Canadian-born individual to be appointed Governor General; all his predecessors had been born elsewhere in the British Empire or British Commonwealth.

On February 1,1952, the Office of the Prime Minister of Canada announced that George VI had approved Prime Minister Louis St Laurent's choice of Vincent Massey to succeed the Viscount Alexander of Tunis as the King's representative.

Five days later the King was dead and Vincent Massey, upon his swearing-in, became the first Canadian-born representative of George's daughter, Queen Elizabeth II.

Vincent Massey, thus, was to be a compromise: while it was known he was closely associated with the Liberal Party, having been the group's chairman during the 1930s, the governor general-designate was a Canadian by birth but he embodied loyalty, dignity, and formality, as expected from a viceroy.

Vincent Massey similarly believed that the arts were a way to assert Canadian sovereignty and that the various artistic fields should be accessible to all Canadians.

On February 28,1952, Vincent Massey was sworn in as governor general of Canada in a ceremony in the Senate chamber, where he was presented with the Canadian Forces Decoration.

Vincent Massey gave a silver spoon to each child born on that day.

Vincent Massey welcomed the Queen and her consort, the Duke of Edinburgh, to Ottawa on three occasions from 1957 on; when the royal couple were engaged in a cross-country tour, Vincent Massey invited them to stay at his private estate, Batterwood, near Port Hope, Ontario.

Vincent Massey hosted a number of foreign heads of state, including United States president Dwight D Eisenhower on November 13,1953.

Vincent Massey travelled across the country, using any and all available transportation, including canoe and dog sled, and delivered speeches promoting bilingualism, some 20 years before it became an official national policy.

Vincent Massey toured the Canadian arctic extensively, journeying to such places as Frobisher Bay and Hall Beach in the Northwest Territories, meeting with local Inuit residents, participating in their activities, and watching their performances.

Further, Vincent Massey initiated in 1954 the Governor General's gold medal for the Institute of Chartered Accountants, as well as in 1959 the Vincent Massey Medal, for excellence in geographic endeavours for the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.

Vincent Massey continued his philanthropic work, dedicating his time to the stewardship of the Vincent Massey Foundation, and its endowment to the University of Toronto, in particular.

In 1961, the Vincent Massey Lectures were initiated, conceived as a focus on important contemporary issues by leading thinkers, and they remain considered as the most important public lecture series in Canada.

Vincent Massey's remains were returned to Canada and he was, as is customary for former governors general, given a state funeral, in early January 1968.

Vincent Massey was buried alongside his wife at historic St Mark's Anglican church in Port Hope; his was among the last burials permitted in the small cemetery.