Parkin is forgotten but not by you. You show that Parkin was a welcome guest at the White House and Rideau Hall, a widely respected journalist, a popular speaker who captivated crowds on three continents over four decades, and was arguably the best-known Canadian in the world at the time of his death. How possibly could he be unknown today?

William Christian: I think it's possibly because he moved about so much. He lived the first forty-two years of his life in New Brunswick as a successful educator. Then he switched his base to England where he was imperial federation's most eloquent spokesman. By 1895, he was extremely well known in the United Kingdom, but money problems forced him to take a job in Toronto. By 1902 he was the most prominent educational figure in Ontario and a powerful political force. Then he was hired to become founding secretary of the Rhodes Scholarships and moved back to England. For the rest of his life, his time was divided between England and his travels to establish the scholarships. Perhaps his roots weren't deep enough in any one place or field of endeavour. But he is still remembered in New Brunswick. The University of New Brunswick, his alma mater, has a prominent permanent display about him in the university's old building. And a portrait of him by F.H. Varley hangs in the National Gallery of Canada.

How did you first discover this remarkable Canadian?

Christian: His grandson, George Grant, who was one of Canada's greatest political philosophers, was a friend of mine. Parkin was George's grandfather, his mother's father. Grant was a great storyteller and he was fascinated by his grandfather. He told me many stories that had been passed down through the family. Most important for him personally though, and he told me so often that I knew that it was terribly important, was that, when he was growing up, his mother told him over and over that he was supposed to be like his grandfather Parkin, to live by his ideals and to work to make his country a better place. I was fascinated to learn what sort of a man Parkin really was.
          As an academic, I also had read about Parkin in Carl Berger's seminal work, A Sense of Power. There was enough in Berger's book to tantalize, but nowhere near enough to satisfy.

You can tell another person's life in many ways. Why did you write this book the way you did?

Christian: I suppose like any good biographer I am bit nosey and like a bit of a gossip. Here was an incredible success story, the thirteenth child of an immigrant farmer to New Brunswick who ended up with a knighthood and became one of the most famous Canadians in the world. He was an extraordinary political orator, journalist and author, a political visionary. I discovered while researching the book that he was also a radical educationalist who altered the nature of the way children were taught in Ontario. Finally, I was interested in his relationship with his wife, one that seemed so beneficial for him and so debilitating for her. At one point, you know, she walked out on him, took the younger children and went to England. And he was principal of Upper Canada College at the time. Amazing.

People would be far more familiar with Parkin's philosopher grandson George "Lament for a Nation" Grant, whom you mention. Do you see links between their thought?

Christian: George Grant was tremendously influenced by Parkin, and I don't think that Lament for a Nation can ever be fully understood unless one grasps Parkin's ideals. Grant absorbed his grandfather's vision through his family. His father and his uncles worked toward the same goals Parkin did. Near the end of the Second World War, Grant wrote two short works about Canada's future. Basically, they shared his grandfather's view of the world, which was that Canada should look outward and globally, not inward and restrict itself to the confines of North America. In Lament for a Nation, Grant conceded that his grandfather's dream would not come true: Canada was destined to become a prisoner of North America, not a force for good on a worldwide scale.

Our interest in history springs from our fascination about our own times and the future. What is important about Parkin's life that affects people today?

Christian: A student from my university recently won a Rhodes Scholarship. She will have an opportunity to study for three years at Oxford and will, for the rest of her life, carry the prestige of being a Rhodes Scholar. You can never second-guess history, but it's unlikely that the Rhodes Scholarship plan would have been a success if it hadn't been for Parkin's intelligence, charm, incredible energy, and his commitment to the principles for which they stood. Upper Canada College, one of Canada's leading secondary schools, would almost certainly have collapsed if Parkin hadn't become principal. I was pleased when I was grading a paper on Sir John A. Macdonald to see a student cite Parkin's biography of Canada's first prime minister. This is also a feel-good story about a man who dedicated his life to making the world a better place and, in the end, was recognized and rewarded for it.

In terms of one of the great causes he devoted his life to, though, isn't Parkin's concept of a "British nation" totally obsolete?

Christian: No. By it he meant the cultural unity of the -English-speaking peoples and it lives on in concepts such as the Anglosphere, the idea that there is a common bond between countries that have democratic political institutions that were inspired by British traditions, share free market traditions, have common law legal systems, and have common body of literature and philosophy. Although its core includes the countries that Parkin was mostly concerned about, developments in other commonwealth countries such as India, Jamaica, and Bermuda would make them at least cousins.

In this book you present George Parkin as an educational revolutionary. What did he want to change?

Christian: He was both democratic and spiritual. Education in his age, you see, was very elitist. Boys from rich families were sent to schools like Eton and Harrow. They were drilled in Latin and Greek and the brightest ones were rewarded with scholarships. It mattered who became prefect and captain of the cricket team. The best ones went on to Oxford or Cambridge where they continued to compete for top grades and prizes. The weaker students were ignored. Parkin believed that the dullest boy in his school had as much right to an education as the brightest. He also wanted a more rounded education. He lessened the emphasis on classics and introduced a range of other subjects. He also wanted his school to create an ethic of service. For Parkin, education was less about training the intellect, more about building character.

As a political philosopher at the University of Guelph and as author of ten prior books, would you like to comment on whether Parkin's role and influence not being known-at least before publication of your new biography about him-is because people don't know their history or because his philosophy is out of date?

Christian: I don't think that his philosophy is out of date, though I think that there is one problem in understanding him that is both big and small at the same time. He talks about British and the British Empire and to readers today, that makes him seem out-of-date. But if readers can get past these particularly words, they will realize Parkin's continuing relevance. By "British" Parkin doesn't mean English, you see, he means a set of values: balance, moderation, fair play, order, restraint, impartiality. He makes it clear that anyone can be British, most obviously in his own time French-Canadians, the Maoris of New Zealand, and the Boers of South Africa-if they wanted to.
          He talked about the British Empire, but it is clear that he meant some sort of international political unit of global reach that would act as a force for good in the world. He was very critical of the existing British Empire, and never wanted the colonies' interests subordinated to England's. After the Great War, he supported Woodrow Wilson's attempt to create the League of Nations.
          If readers can make the slight effort necessary to get past the terms Parkin used and understand his fundamental ideal, the need for a global moral order, they will come to terms with the mission that drove him over his lifetime.

Money plays a big role in Parkin's life, since he always seemed to be living above his means. How can you convey to the contemporary reader the meaning of the £ and the $ from Parkin's time?

Christian: That's extremely difficult. Roughly, you could say that one dollar in Parkin's era equalled about forty dollars now, and one British pound equalled about 100 dollars. In many cases, though, that's very misleading. Incomes in Canada weren't taxed until 1917, but there was no public healthcare either: some of what you saved by not paying income tax, you lost by having to pay for medical care. There weren't any benefits or pensions either. By contrast, servants were inexpensive to retain, so once you got to a certain level of income, the quality of life for the middle class dramatically increased. Values were fairly constant during Parkin's life, up to the First World War.

Some of Sir George Parkin's prejudices about other races and attitudes about women don't reflect present-day values of equality. Do you as a biographer explain his views in the context of his times?

Christian: I certainly do not leave things out because they are unpalatable today. I believe mature readers are entitled to more than a sanitized story. But I don't spend time in the book trying to explain him away, either, in terms of today's values early in the twenty-first century.
          As an historian it is not my place to intrude with my personal views or to critique my subject according to shifting cultural values. If I'd written this book in the 1950s or 1970s, say, standards of those days-as a benchmark to critique Parkin-could seem quaint and anachronistic to many people today. The subject-George Parkin-stands in his own times, not ours. I think readers of biography are sophisticated and grasp that. There are places in the book where I report Parkin using the extremely offensive word "nigger." I would prefer not to use that word ever, but if I don't honestly show the exact words Parkin used, the reader will not be able to understand his attitude, and they won't understand the attitude of people of his time and class.
          I certainly don't share his views on French-Canadians, Canada's native peoples, the Chinese, or many other subjects. As a biographer, I think my role is to understand my subject, not to agree with him, and certainly not in this case to defend him.

Don't you risk readers concluding he was bigoted so they won't think much of his other ideas?

Christian: This is actually quite interesting, because there's a bit of a puzzle I had to grapple with in writing this book. Parkin's own actions in these matters actually contradicted some of the things he said. For instance, in his letters in this book we see references to Blacks that are bigoted, but then when it comes to his official capacity, he behaves quite differently. He actively worked with the great Black educational leaders such as Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois to prevent the white universities from developing a system for selecting Rhodes scholars that would exclude the Negro Colleges. When a Black Rhodes Scholar was elected in 1907 and faced fierce opposition from Rhodes scholars from the American South, Parkin worked to ensure that he would be admitted to an Oxford College, and had him to his house.
          I think you also have to understand that, in many ways, Parkin's views matured over his lifetime. After all, he was born on a farm in rural New Brunswick and didn't see much of the world outside New Brunswick until he was in his mid-twenties. Although the views he held on racial matters when he died weren't compatible with the diverse, multicultural society we live in today, they were a lot closer to this than the views he had formed in his youth. He learned from his experience.