How Mel Hurtig defined the national debates of our time,
It’s a good thing for Canadians the furrier’s life did not appeal to Mel Hurtig. The author, entrepreneur and political activist, who died Tuesday at the age of 84, left his father’s Edmonton fur shop in the mid-1950s to found first a chain of bookstores, then a publishing house and eventually a series of public projects all dedicated to promoting the ideas he held dear: that Canadians should be allowed to shape their own future and that prosperity should be fairly shared.
Hurtig’s was a passionate, progressive voice that attracted followers and ruffled feathers in roughly equal measure. But neither ally nor enemy could reasonably deny his contribution to the defining Canadian debates of our time.
Hurtig first came to prominence as a publisher, most notably of the massive Canadian Encyclopedia, an ambitious project that hinted at the nationalism that would define his political life. After selling his publishing company, he became a key figure in the debates over free trade that divided the country in the 1980s.
Hurtig feared that with the North American Free Trade Agreement, Canada was selling off the resources that gave us our competitive advantage. He warned that by allowing powerful foreign states outside influence in our domestic affairs we were corroding our democracy and erasing our identity. However much one might disagree with his position, it provided an important counterpoint to the ascendant economic view.
It was to fight the swallowing-up of Canada that he founded the Council of Canadians and the National Party of Canada, nationalist organizations with none of the xenophobia or anti-immigrant sentiment that mark European — or, more recently, American — nativism. And while in his advocacy and writing he consistently understated the benefits of global trade, he did understand more clearly than most the democratic challenges posed by these deals — challenges that in recent years have prompted some rethinking of trade treaties as we know them.
Underlying all of his work, from his publishing to his politics, and especially what some might call his protectionism, was a profound, post-partisan belief that Canada was a project worth protecting. That was his impetus: For his Canadian Encyclopedia, which sought to chronicle the country’s story in all of its diversity and detail. For his lifelong fight, right or wrong, against trade deals he believed posed an existential threat to our country. For his outspoken opposition to the Harper government, whose dismantling of the progressive state and affronts to democracy Hurtig saw as chipping away at what is essentially Canadian.
He believed first and foremost that Canada was worth defending and he dedicated his life to doing just that. Reasonable people can disagree about whether he was right about how best to protect our country, but there can be no doubt he enriched it.