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Few figures have had as lasting an influence on Canadian institutions, history, politics, and culture as Georges and Pauline Vanier. Georges (1888-1967), a decorated military officer, became a professional diplomat, the first Canadian ambassador to France, and the first French-Canadian governor general of Canada. Pauline (1898-1991), a respected humanitarian, Privy Council member, and university chancellor, shared her husband’s responsibilities and helped shape his thoughts on foreign and domestic affairs.
Georges and Pauline Vanier follows their lives and travels across the world – from Canadian military life to the League of Nations, from the inner circles of British government to their harrowing escape from Nazi-occupied France – detailing their disappointments and triumphs during social and political turbulence.
The MQUP sits down with the author for a Georges and Pauline Vanier Q&A.
What inspired you to write a biography of the Vaniers?
I became interested in Pauline Vanier when I saw a 3-paragraph newspaper item in the mid-1970s that said she was selling all her belongings, leaving her home in Montreal and moving to Trosly, France, to live in the community of mentally disabled people that had been founded by her son Jean. She was in her seventies at the time, and I thought it was such a heroic thing to do. There were complexities in her life which I was obviously not aware of at the time, but when I did become aware of them, she became all the more interesting to me. The complexities in people’s lives are always of interest to a writer. But for me, that decision on her part, to leave her comfortable Montreal life and move into the L’Arche community, remains an indication of her essential character.
Georges and Pauline Vanier: Portrait of a Couple is the story of two very important individuals, and it is also the story of a marriage. How do you think the Vaniers shaped each other as leaders, as Canadians, and as people? What might Georges have been like if he had never met Pauline? What about Pauline, if she had never met Georges?
They had two extremely different personalities. Georges was serious, with a dry and ironic sense of humour, bookish, very meticulous and exact, with an iron-clad integrity. Pauline was highly extroverted, utterly spontaneous, with an anxious temperament, and was, at certain times in her life, given to depression. He was a trained lawyer, and by the time they met, in 1919, he had served at the French and Belgian front for most of World War I, and had lost a leg in battle two months prior to the end of the war. Pauline had little more than two years of formal schooling and then inadequate homeschooling from a governess. Her father was a superior court judge, and she moved easily within the well-to-do world of Montreal’s high society. As their marriage progressed, they brought out the best in each other, although not always seamlessly. But they genuinely and openly admired the best qualities in each other.
If they had never met and married, Georges might have remained a bachelor—he indicated as much in letters home from the front. He would probably have remained in the Royal 22nd regiment in some capacity (although he never left it; he always insisted, throughout all his years of diplomacy, that he remained seconded from the army). His health was never robust, and after his amputation, it was even less so. Without Georges, Pauline might have married a Montreal lawyer or businessman within her social circle. Given her particular temperamental tendencies, she might have become an unhappy and unfulfilled woman.
What legacy do you think the Vaniers left for Canadians today? What can we learn from the story of their struggles and triumphs as political and philanthropic, and academic leaders?
Their whole aim as a married couple was one of service. This is evident from their earliest letters to each other. It’s not exactly clear what they meant by “service” as they were in the midst of first love, but they certainly had a mutual understanding that their marriage wasn’t just for themselves alone. They felt a responsibility to life and to a world beyond themselves. I think they both knew early on that they complemented each other very well, that each had qualities that the other lacked. Georges had joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force going into the war from a keen sense of service. And so by the time they were married, he already had experience in serving in an important international capacity. And then as their married life unfolded, the opportunities for service were broadened and deepened. Georges Vanier took as his motto as governor general, “I ask only to serve.”
Georges Vanier was a military man, governor general of Canada, and businessman in his time. Pauline was University Chancellor of the University of Ottawa and a member of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada. Do you think that young Canadians can take this extraordinary couple as role models?
They are models of working for the common good—of doing one’s best in taking responsibility for a world beyond oneself.
Pauline Vanier was an extremely accomplished woman in her time. What difficulties did she come across? What lessons can young Canadian women learn from her story? Would you say that Pauline was a feminist, in her way?
She was a woman of her particular upbringing and her time, but proved able to rise beyond her limitations. She was an intelligent woman with little formal education, but she learned as she went along. Her role was very much that of her husband’s wife, but in spite of her constant tendency to anxiety and depression, she came into her own at various points in her life. Her work as Canadian representative of the Red Cross in devastated post-war France stands out. She was enormously proud of her only daughter, who went into medical studies when there was still a quota on women in medicine. She was not a feminist or a leader in the manner of Thérèse Casgrain, who was a friend and who became a Member of Parliament and fought for women’s rights in Quebec, and later, protested against nuclear weapons. It was not Pauline’s way to go to protest marches, but she applauded Thérèse Casgrain’s work for women and for humanity.
Pauline and Georges were known as devoutly religious people, and they have been nominated for beatification in the Roman Catholic Church. What role do you think religion played in shaping the lives and legacies of this couple?
They represented the best in Catholicism, which is also the best in Christianity and the best in all the great religions. Their religious faith was the heart and soul of their lives. They tried to live the golden rule: to do to others what you would have others do to you. Their faith matured and deepened throughout their married life, and Georges, in particular, moved far beyond the rule-bound, narrowly moralistic Catholicism he had been brought up with. They were not blind to church controversies and the failings within Catholic leadership, especially in France during and after World War II, but they didn’t depend upon church leaders for their spiritual sustenance. Although they became friends with Pope John XXIII when he was the papal nuncio in Paris (before he became pope), they mostly sought friendship and spiritual help from nuns in contemplative monasteries and people who worked closely with the poor. I think Georges Vanier would have been proud of Pauline’s decision to spend her last years among people whom society generally has little use for. This action on her part speaks of the essence of the couple’s religious faith.
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