THE CAPITAL BUILDERS
Southam gave city heart
Hamilton Southam was such a patriot, it’s not surprising he died on Canada Day.
Among his myriad accomplishments — which include war hero, diplomat and founding directorgeneral of the National Arts Centre — it was the NAC that shone brightest for Southam, the man for whom the sprawling complex’s signature 2,000-seat concert hall is named.
It was there, after his 2008 death, that guests at a reception in the NAC’s main foyer sipped on wine and nibbled on a spread of fine food before taking their seats inside the hall for a special tribute concert performed by Southam’s beloved NAC Orchestra.
A representative of the theatre’s stage employees’ union on that day coyly invited Southam’s spirit to keep an eye on the place from the great beyond.
“Brother Southam, when the teardown is over and the last piece of equipment has been put away and that particular stillness has settled on the stage, we look forward to your hauntings.”
Gordon Hamilton Southam was born in Rockcliffe Park on Dec. 19, 1916, in a house that now serves as Spain’s embassy. His father, Wilson Mills Southam, was publisher of the Ottawa Citizen, while his grandfather founded the Southam chain of newspapers.
He lived a life of great privilege, but with it came a sense of obligation to do something with it.
“I believe that those who have been given much should give much,” he once told the Citizen.
Southam attended Ashbury College, the University of Toronto and Oxford University.
He fought in the Second World War as a member of the First Canadian Armoured Division, ultimately promoted to the rank of captain.
He was briefly a journalist, first in London and later Ottawa, before beginning a career in the public service. Postings to Stockholm and Warsaw, where he was the first Canadian ambassador to Poland, followed.
After he returned to Canada, the lack of a proper concert hall in the nation’s capital spurred him to form the National Capital Arts Alliance, a group of city arts organizations that raised money for a study to propose exactly what Ottawa has today: a concert hall and two theatres in a centrally located building.
By then it was 1963 and Southam shared his grand vision with Lester B. Pearson, for whom he had worked at what was then the Department of External Affairs. The newly elected prime minister was casting about for a significant project to mark the celebration of Canada’s centennial in 1967.
“Mr. Pearson, this is your plan,” Southam urged. About a month later, the prime minister called Southam to say, “Yes, that’s what we’ll do, we’ll build that.”
The initial price tag was $9 million, but the NAC ultimately cost more than $40 million. Nonetheless, Southam thought it was a bargain because it transformed Ottawa and “gave the city a heart.” At the NAC’s official opening in 1969, then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau said the building represented a “promise for the future” for all Canadians.
“In a country often accused of a complex of inferiority, there is nothing inferior about this complex,” Trudeau said.
Southam’s tenure at the NAC lasted a decade until his retirement in 1977. But his desire to help shape Canada, particularly the way it remembers its heroes and battles, persisted. He was a driving force behind the creation of the Canadian War Museum and the visionary behind the Valiants Memorial, the 14 bronzes of military heroes and heroines placed on Confederation Square, unveiled less than two years before Southam’s death.
The public Southam had a commanding presence, rugged good looks and an enormous appetite for friendship. He was charming, charismatic and self-assured; a man with vision who could bring others along to achieve his grand plans.
He remained on affectionate terms with each of his three wives throughout his life; a man whose wit — even in later years, when his hearing was failing and he walked with the aid of a cane — was said to be drier than a well-made martini. Privately, he was something else. Hamilton Southam was loving, lovely, sweet and gentle, says Henrietta Southam, the youngest of his six children. He would listen to her “boy troubles” without thinking such topics were beneath him and only truly lost his temper once — after she returned from summer camp with a mouth full of swear words.
He never listened to music if it wasn’t live, never shopped for groceries and always wore heavy gold chains around his neck and wrist, pulling off such sartorial flourishes “without looking an iota like Liberace,” Henrietta says.
Peter Herrndorf, the NAC’s long-serving president and CEO, also saw both sides of the man. Herrndorf occupies the same office overlooking the Rideau Canal that Southam once did.
Nobody would have guessed, for instance, that Southam could be shy, often reluctant to go backstage after a show because he didn’t want to impose on the performers.
Herrndorf also recalls a level of personal kindness that extended far beyond a cursory first meeting with Southam after the much younger Herrndorf arrived in town in 1999 to head the NAC.
“He became very much like my second dad and although he had six kids, I became very much a kind of seventh during that period of time,” Herrndorf says.
The pair would meet for lunch every three weeks or so, sitting at the same corner table at the bar of downtown’s posh Rideau Club, Southam beginning almost every meeting by saying, “Now Peter, my boy, I have a few things I want to discuss with you.”
Were Southam alive today, there’s no doubt he’d be discussing the NAC’s current renovation, an ambitious $110-million project designed to finally give the 48-yearold centre a magnificent new entrance on Elgin Street across from Confederation Square. One of the largest capital investments made by the federal government as part of celebrations for the 150th anniversary of Confederation, it is scheduled to open July 1 — exactly nine years after Southam died.
He had picked Polish architect Fred Lebensold to design the NAC to stand with gravitas and look like a bunker. But times have changed and Southam, says his daughter, would be “overjoyed” by what’s happening now because it is evident Donald Schmitt, of the Toronto firm Diamond Schmitt Architects, admires and respects what is already there.
“It’s not a renovation,” says Henrietta, herself a clever interior designer. “It’s a deeply admiring and sensitive rejuvenation.”
Her father, she adds, “would probably say that’s exactly the way it was always meant to look.”
The feeling of youthful vitality sweeping the NAC would also please Southam.
From the arrival of hip new conductor Alexander Shelley to the creation of a department of indigenous theatre to the ambitious Canada Scene festival unfolding later this year, the NAC has a real swagger, standing firmly in the spotlight as Canada’s stage.
It’s the largest performing arts organization in the country with 1,200 performances last year and an annual budget of $75 million.
Southam had once feared the NAC was becoming smaller and less ambitious, but in his final years felt proud of his life’s work, which he would soon leave behind, Herrndorf says.
But Southam’s name and spirit have never actually left.
“He’s a very real presence,” Herrndorf says. “In the way that lore and culture is passed on, those of us who knew him and loved him pass on the Hamilton stories to each coming generation of people who work here.
“My sense is that Hamilton Southam continues to live in this building and continues to bring us good luck.”