Canada, Fair Canada (1902)

Albert Ernest Knight (pseudonym A. E. de Garcia)

Montreal Business College

Canada, Fair Canada, by Albert Ernest Knight (published under the pseudonym A. E. de Garcia) was published in 1902 by the Montreal Shorthand Institute and Business College. The play relies heavily on Romeo and Juliet for its plot. It tells the tragic story of two lovers, George Kingheart and Alice Chopineau, who fall victim to the economic struggles between their families. Alice's father, Jean Chopineau, is the president of the Great Canadian Transportation Corporation, and the head of a family that claims to have arrived in Canada with Samuel de Champlain. George's father, Henry Kingheart, is the head of Royal Atlantic, a competitor transportation company. His family also has links to the British aristocracy; when news comes that Kingheart's brother has died childless, George is next in line for the title of Earl. The family feud is thus constructed along French-English, and new money-old money socio-economic lines, with the Montreal Stock Exchange serving as the site of "battle" between the families. Fornin, an employee of Chopineau's, reports the bankrupcy of Kingheart like a soldier reporting a major victory:

You say you don't know? Of course we have won. The battle-field is strewn with dead and wounded bears. We remain complete masters of the field. Henry Kingheart and Joe Jessop are hardest hit. Kingheart has lost everything he had in the world. (26) [indent]

The changing business fortunes of the two families advance the various storylines of the play. The bankrupcy of Henry Kingheart, along with family interferance, prevents the marriage between George Kingheart and Alice Chopineau, which leads to the final tragedy. At the same time, the success of Jean Chopineau on the Stock Exchange leads to an additional storyline that resembles the opening of King Lear. Chopineau is going to give gifts of $500 000 worth of stock to each of his two daughters, but decides to give $800 000 worth to Juliette and nothing to Alice when Alice refuses to marry his choice, Lieutenant Gobin. This decision inevitably turns out to be a terrible mistake for Chopineau, because Juliette sells her stake in her father's company at a time when he desperately needs it, resulting in his own bankrupcy.

When George returns to avenge his father's bankrupcy, another "battle" takes place at the Stock Exchange; the "Bears" who support Kingheart (wearing red rosettes) rally to defeat the "Bulls" who support Chopineau (wearing blue rosettes)-a symbolic reenactment of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759. Although George and Alice are reconciled in the end on her deathbed, it is significant that the two families are never united; thus, the play expresses an early theatrical reflection on what Hugh MacLennan famously called Canada's "two solitudes." The latter phrase (relayed to the notion of biculturalism first used by Graham Spry in 1929, describes the relations between English and French Canada and resonates within the the national struggle to address multicultural realities.

The publication of the play by a business college raises questions about who the intended audience was. Set in the same year it was published, at times the play resembles a business lecture on prudent investment strategies. Kingheart, for example, dissects the financial state of Chopineau's company:

You launched the Great Canadian Transportation Company on a capital of $75,000,000. Now there are not more than 41 boats owned by companies purely Canadian. Of these, 8 of the best boats belong to the Royal Atlantic, and they are worth $13,000,000. The remaining 33 being small boats can be duplicated new brand for $25,000,000, but you are capitalized now at $125,000,000. What does the remaining $100,000,000 represent? Watered stock. ... What, then, must be the inevitable result of this over-capitalization? You will be utterly unable to pay your interest charges, and the small shareholders-the unsophisticated rabble-will wake up one day to find their many years' earnings completely swamped. (31) [indent]

This lesson will sound painfully familiar to those who invested in the "dot-com" bubble of the 1990s. After Nortel reported lower-than-expected earnings in October 2000, the company lost $114 billion in stock in a single week (Finkel and Conrad 441). Could Canada, Fair Canada, then, have been presented as a type of financial seminar? If so, Knight's idea that Shakespeare could be enlisted to teach business strategies was a century ahead of its time. A quick search turned up two business self-help books published in 1999: Norman Augustine's Shakespeare in Charge: How to Lead and Succeed on the Business Stage; and Jay M. Shfritz's Shakespeare On Management: Wise Business Counsel From the Bard. Virtually nothing is known about A. E. Knight (and the enigma surrounding his choice of a pseudonym) and CASP is continuing its research into both play and playwright.

Gordon Lester

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Sources:

Finkel, Alvin, and Margaret Conrad. History of the Canadian Peoples: 1867 to the Present. Vol. II. 3 rd ed. Toronto: Addison Wesley Longman, 2002.