Mike Pearson at Oxford: War, Varsity, and Canadianism

The connection between Oxford University and Canadian nationalism is often cited but has been little explored. Oxford appears to have been something of an epiphany, a rite of passage from which the Canadians returned confident of their equality and distinctiveness, determined to be colonial no longer. It was, after all, a circle of Oxford alumni who presided over so great a symbol of independent nationhood as Lester Pearson's Maple Leaf flag of 1965, based on a design submitted by George Stanley. Still, if Pearson and his contemporaries gained a new consciousness of themselves as Canadians, it tends to be overlooked that Oxford reinforced their Britishness as well as their Canadianism. The flag was fundamentally an expression of British-Canadianism that can be traced, in part, to Oxford where Pearson and Stanley earned their ‘blue’ playing hockey. It was a fulfilment, rather than a rejection, of British liberal imperialism. The ‘Res Canadiana’ (as distinct from the Res Britannica) was the product of a British world, and post-1965 Canadianism cannot be understood without reclaiming and deciphering the Britishness underneath.