Professor Charles MacDonald knows UCCB well – he has been here for half a century. His association began as a student in the mid-1950s when the institution was XaviercCollege. A few years after graduation, he was invited to join the Faculty. He taught through the 60s and 70s when Xavier College became the College of Cape Breton. In the 80s Charles was a senior faculty member when the College achieved University status and moved from George Street to the present site. In the 90s Charles remained ever true to UCCB as a dedicated teacher and trusted colleague. Throughout his career Charles
has been a leading figure in the events which have defined UCCB’s history: the struggle for independence from St.FX, the birth of the BACS and BA degrees, the creation of a centre for Mi’kmaq studies, the forging of a faculty union, the turmoil between faculty and various administrations. It is therefore appropriate that the leading article in the first issue of Our University be an interview with Professor Charles MacDonald.
–Richard Keshen
An Interview with Professor Charles MacDonald
Richard: When did you start teaching at Xavier College in downtown Sydney?
Charles: I went to teach at Xavier in 1964, though I had been a student there in the mid-50s.
Richard: Can you tell me something of the issues you faced when you started teaching there?
Charles: Richard, I had a very interesting assignment when I started. I was asked to upgrade Religious Studies. Up until that time, it was a two-credit course and the administration wanted to have the curriculum revamped and to put Religious Studies on the same level as the other courses. At that time, many of the courses in the B.A. were compulsory and many Canadian universities had a set curriculum; so people had to take Latin, some Philosophy, Mathematics Religion Studies, and so on. I had quite a nice challenge to enhance the Religious Studies programme. It was a challenge in another way. Since it was compulsory, I had many students in the class and it was my first-year teaching. I was brought into
teaching with two weeks’ notice and so I had many late nights. Most first-year teachers have late nights, of course. I enjoyed it a lot. Some of my former students are faculty people now like Terry MacLean, for example, very substantial people in their own right.
Richard: How did you come to be asked to teach at Xavier College?
Charles: Well actually, I was a cleric. I was in the priesthood at the time and the University was run by the Diocese of Antigonish, both St. F.X. and the branch campus here, and when they decided that they wanted to revamp the curriculum, they needed somebody to do that. So, I was actually recruited by Dr. MacLellan who was the founder of Xavier College and he had been a former teacher of mine and a man my parents admired, that I admired. I was really delighted to be asked to come to the University even
though it was under trying circumstances with such late notice. From the moment I arrived there, I felt that I belonged as a teacher in the University and I was glad for the opportunity.
Richard: You yourself had been a student at Xavier College and at St. FX. You must have developed intellectual interests and distinguished yourself academically in order to have received the invitation from Dr. MacLellan.
Charles: I was quite a successful student, I think, Richard. I had majored in Philosophy, I had studied Latin and was quite good at that. I was active as a student leader and put out the Year Book at St. F.X. and Xavier and then I went in for theological training at the University of Ottawa. They had two streams there, a pastoral stream and a more academic stream. I did the latter one and I ended up getting what they call a licentiate in theology which would correspond to a Master’s degree and I did quite well at that
and I enjoyed the studies there. I got along very, very well.
Richard: And then, after a number of years of teaching at the George St.campus you decided to go on for your doctorate. How did that come about?
Charles: At that time it wasn’t easy for universities to get staff. They had to go out to recruit people. When I came to the University, the University was anxious that I and other newcomers have good qualifications. So after two years teaching at Xavier College, I had the opportunity to begin studies for
my doctorate. I decided I was going to go to Europe and I went to Germany to study and that was in the 60s — really an interesting time, a terrific time. I was basically in Roman Catholic theology at that time but I knew that a lot of theology was becoming ecumenical in the sense that there was lots of dialogue between various Christian denominations. I was stimulated by this intellectually and also spiritually. When I started to think about this, I decided I was going to go to Holland or Germany because the theologians I was reading at that time–the leaders in the field– were from Germany and Holland. In the end, I went toTübingen University in Germany.
Richard: Which was and is a renowned theological and philosophical centre–a great university.
Charles: Look–it was a marvellous university. It had two faculties. There was the Faculty of Catholic Theology and the Faculty of Lutheran Theology. At the time, Tübingen was the leading centre of theology in Germany and I’d say in Europe. A lot of people were coming from the States, Greece, France, Spain, Portugal to study there, as well as from Scotland and England. It was sort of a Mecca. One of the interesting things was that a lot of professors who had sabbaticals would come to Tübingen. It was a very stimulating environment because you had that traffic in scholars and I actually started a little round-table myself there. I got a group of people to meet for lunch on Tuesdays and Fridays at a lovely restaurant and we had this table at the end of the restaurant which would handle six or eight people or twenty people and there was hardly a Tuesday or a Friday when there wasn’t a guest scholar that came to our table to join us. It could be somebody doing research for their doctoral work or it could be an eminent professor. I used to take dinner once a week with two professors – one from Ireland and one from the States- who were writing books, one on systematic theology and one on scripture, and they were quite a bit older than me. They were on sabbatical writing these books and they lived in my neighbourhood and so I’d go and sit and listen to these people. The scholarly atmosphere was great and there was another thing too. After I was there for a while and I got more comfortable in the whole University environment, I used to go out in the evenings to one of these German pubs and we’d meet other students from other disciplines – law students, science students and they were always interested in what we were studying and they’d ask you a lot of questions about your work.
Richard: Wow. That’s great.
Charles: Also, the local newspaper had articles on the different disciplines at the University and when you read the newspaper you would read a very complete review of a lecture by a guest professor. So I met a lot of people and there was a lot of visiting back and forth by professors from within Germany. I heard most of the people whose books I was reading.
Richard: You became fluent in German. You speak and read the language beautifully.
Charles: Do you know what, when I started my doctoral work I thought I could become fluent quite quickly. I thought I could become comfortable in a matter of three or four months. Before I went over there my first exposure was a 6 weeks course down at Colby College in Waterville, Maine and then I went to one of the Goethe Institutes in Germany. In spite of this preparation, it took me quite a while to become fluent. It took me two years. It was a major undertaking. But, I made it a point to associate with
German speaking people. For the first month I was there I didn’t speak a word of English or meet any English-speaking people. I used to watch a bit of television to hear the language spoken by the best speakers. Also, I used to read different sections of the newspaper. I might read all of the culture section for a while and then I might read all of the sports section for a while or all of the legal section and also I even bought a few stocks as a motivation to read the business section of the paper. I lost money…
Richard: But at least you did it in German! Theology was in a revolutionary state during the mid-60s. It was a period of great intellectual excitement. Did you find a mentor and what kind of thesis did you end up writing?
Charles: I went over there because of the general atmosphere that I described but more particularly because there was a professor there by the name of Hans Küng whom you have heard of. Küng was all the rage world-wide, not only in theology. I was one of those who was very interested in his thinking. But when I got there I found that he was on sabbatical and I went to other courses where I met this other distinguished professor who actually lived in my neighbourhood. His name was Professor Ratzinger. I got to know him pretty well. He asked me what I was going to study and with whom. I told him very naively I was going to study under Professor Küng but that he was on sabbatical. He said, “Oh yeah, he’s a good professor”. But when Küng came back, I went to his courses and I wasn’t that impressed. I felt that I had learned a lot of the material he was lecturing on when I was studying theology in Ottawa. Then I went to Ratzinger and I asked him if he would take me on as a student and he said, “Sure, you could start right away” and I said, “ No, I would like to go to your seminar and do a couple of papers for you” At any rate, after awhile he agreed to take me on as a student. Ratzinger was an amazing person. He became my mentor.
I attended weekly seminars run by Ratzinger where doctoral students presented their work. I became interested in a French theologian by the name of Yves Congar who was really an interesting person. He was a member of the Dominican order and became a university teacher around 1931 or ‘32. He made it his life’s work to build bridges among the different Christian denominations. He spent a year touring all the sites where Luther had studied, and wrote a lot on the great issues of debate between Roman Catholicism and reformation or Protestant theology. He was an outsider, and wasn’t very well received amongst the conservative Catholic thinkers of his day. He was ahead of his time, and many of things he wrote received recognition only after he died.
I had met him once or twice and I was interested in his understanding of history, his understanding of what it means when we talk of the “Kingdom of Heaven”, what it means when we talk of “Thy Kingdom Come”, and how we should understand the significance of what people do with their earthly lives. This last issue was a big question in the ‘30s because theology had drifted so far away from earthly concerns and the Church had lost the working class. The communists were basically the ones that had embraced the world and so these new-thinking Christian scholars, whom I identified with, were asking what’s in the Christian tradition that gives us a more positive outlook towards earthly and worldly concerns. They started writing on things like leisure and work and culture and politics. This began in the 30s. Yves Congar was part of that. And I decided to do my doctoral work on his thought.
Richard: I guess your background in Cape Breton would partly explain your interest in these ecumenical issues and also in the way Christian theology applies to earthly matters. Would that be true?
Charles: Well, I actually grew up in a fairly homogeneous town. I didn’t have much contact with other ethnic groups. There were no blacks in Dominion, no Mi’kmaqs in Dominion, we had one Jewish family; we were lucky that we had quite a few Italians in Dominion, but they didn’t really stand out as a “different” group. But in Dominion the religious differences weren’t strong. I’ll say that differently. In Dominion, in contrast to New Waterford, Glace Bay, Sydney Mines and to a certain extent Sydney, we
didn’t have separate schools. There were only public schools. Roman Catholics and Protestants went to the same school. There was a basic understanding they had. It was probably different from a lot of people I met later on that were involved in Catholic schools. So maybe that was part of it.
My father was a carpenter and all the men and women his age were all influenced by the Antigonish Movement through people like Dr. Coady and Dr. Tompkins. They met these men. It was understood that when you were 9 or 10 years old you would have a credit union account; there were credit unions in the school, and so on. So I think that that kind of social concern was part of the air in our household and in our town. In fact, Richard, I met Dr. Coady about a year before he died in 1958 or 59 at St. F.X. He was old and getting around with a cane and blind in one eye –a big man. I was the chair for the education
committee for the Co-op Society at St. F.X., and I arranged for him to give a talk to the members of the Society. When I met him, I walked him over to the auditorium and he said to me “You look like your father”.
Richard: Impressive man…I’ve read his biography and some of his writings.
Charles: At St. F.X., I met some of these people when I was a student there. Some of the guys who were clergy were very strong on the principles of the Antigonish Movement. And these are the people I admired. I admired these men.
Richard: Certainly it’s been a mark of your own work at UCCB to reach out to other groups, the Mi’kmaq and other faiths, for example. I guess there is a thread there from your family, the Antigonish Movement, your theological studies, and then your work at UCCB and in Cape Breton generally.
Charles: I was lucky that I had people who encouraged me. The first year I was teaching downtown, there was the other Charles MacDonald whom you heard so much about, though I think he predates you. He was a very, very interesting guy. He invited me to go to meetings of the area’s different Christian clergy. They were all 25 years or so older than me. I went to these meetings. These meetings were in people’s living rooms. All the people there, like myself, were dressed up in their clergy collars. This was
all new ground for us, and it was very difficult. People felt very, very strongly about the issues. Many of these issues are resolved now. But these issues were big and Dr. MacDonald was a pioneer. These people
were trying to develop the basic cordiality that you need for a conversation. And I was part of that before I went to Germany. It was spiritual. That was one thing and then of course you know our mutual friend Greg MacLeod was a person who really encouraged me. Greg recognized back then the importance of reaching out to the Mi’kmaq community. He encouraged me as Chair of the Humanities Department to
help start a university education programme for the Mi’kmaq, and I delighted in that work. I loved meeting the education officers from the various reserves. Sister Dorothy Moore was involved at the beginning. She is a wonderful person. She was like a mother, a truant officer, a teacher, a mentor and role model for the Mi’kmaq students. If a student wasn’t in class, she’d call them. You remember that…I’ve had encouragement from these wonderful people…
Richard: I have a memory of the two of us driving into work together just after you returned from Germany and we stopped for a moment before getting out of the car and you said to me “Now Richard, not many people will really be able to appreciate this in its fullest sense, but I know you will and I want to tell you that I received a magna cum laude on my doctorate work”.
Charles: I told you that, did I?
Richard: You told me that. Yes, it was a very nice thing. It wasn’t bragging. You wanted to share this. So the experience in Germany must have ended on a very positive note and you came back to continue teaching at Xavier College with your doctorate in hand.
Charles: Yes, that was ‘77 or ‘78.
Richard: Then you threw yourself full-time into university work. And this was the time when the College of Cape Breton was striking out as a separate institution. Your coming back to Cape Breton coincided with the birth of UCCB, and you made a tremendous contribution to that difficult political
and organizational process.
Charles: Here’s an interesting recollection. Greg came over to visit me just before I came back from Germany and we talked about the fact that we must work toward having our own university in Cape Breton. We started musing about a name for it. Greg thought we might name it after a famous person connected to Cape Breton, like Des Barres or Bourinot. “Greg you can’t do that”, I said. “You can’t name it after a person. You have to call it Cape Breton University”. I remember that discussion. It was rather
similar to the time when we named the chorale. It was the Xavier Chorale starting off. When it came time to move on and change the name I wanted it to be called the Cape Breton Chorale. It’s amazing how many people don’t want to identify themselves with Cape Breton, eh? Cape Breton is such an interesting place even for people who don’t live here. It’s like a badge of honour for me.
Anyway, we got our partial independence from St.FX and became “College of Cape Breton”. You remember all those meetings, the BACS business and how hard that was. Trying to find our way. It was hard.
Richard: Birth pangs.
Charles: Yes, those 70s were also tough because that was when we began to move toward unionizing the faculty. But we didn’t understand what that meant. I know I didn’t. We were still pining for another image of the university where there was a collaboration and collegiality between faculty and management. That’s the way I felt too. Probably you did too. But then it became us versus them. And we had a lot of friction then too. Sometimes people forget. We pine for the good old days. Remember all that stuff about management rights and how we couldn’t move ahead. We could never get a collective agreement because of that contentious issue.
Twenty-five years later we had to go on strike to get what we were looking for then. These issues from the 70s, some of them are just getting resolved. I guess that’s not surprising is it? Universities are old
institutions and we are young.
Richard: I remember Bill Wiseman saying we’ve got to think in terms of 50 years or 100 years with the birth of a university and not get too discouraged about these early difficulties.
Charles: It’s hard to see that when you’re mired in struggle and controversy. I find it hard to contrast the 70s with the 80s. Our first president, Dr. Campbell, was an interesting President. In many respects he was very good. We knew that he was an intellectual, that he loved books and had a genuine and informed appreciation of art. We were so intent on trying to build the place, putting the physical and the organizational structure together.
Before 1974, all we had in downtown Sydney was petty cash. Out here we didn’t even have petty cash, sometimes. We had to organize all the basic things, financial administration, athletic administration. Getting all that together was a Herculean task. And we didn’t have much experience. I didn’t have much experience, you didn’t, Greg didn’t. None of us had. Then we moved into the 80s when we lobbied to get our own charter. We struggled for complete independence from St.FX and that’s when we said we have to have our own B.A. Along with the Mi’kmaq project, it was helping to create our own B.A. That was one of the most fulfilling parts of my career at UCCB. We gathered a wonderful group together. People like Mike Manson and Donald Dunbar and Peggy Butts. We worked for three years. It was like an education.
Richard: You were chair of the committee.
Charles: One of the interesting things is that we decided we didn’t want to copy anyone else’s B.A. I mean, we could have just adopted St. FX’s B.A. But our committee said “No”, we have to have our own B.A.
Richard: And you came out in the end with the idea of core courses and interdisciplinary teaching. There were bits and pieces from other places. But in the end it was a distinctive B.A.
Charles: We heard about the Harvard core curriculum and we studied the changes going on at the University of Toronto. There was the foundation program at The Mount. We analyzed all of them and we brought people in to talk to us. There were many interesting discussions. Do you remember the
debate we had about French?
Richard: Yes, about whether or not it should be mandatory.
Charles: Yes. Well, I was very strong that it should be mandatory. And we even had the Commissioner of Official Languages come talk to us. There was a contingent which said it wasn’t feasible. I said to them, “Listen, the University of Alberta requires two French courses for many of its BA. students, and they’re supposed to be the rednecks of Canada. You know the backlash against Trudeau… “. I also argued that the expansion of French would be a good thing as a way to open our doors to the Acadian community in Cape Breton.
Richard: A battle well fought, even if you lost that one.
Charles: But anyway it was marvellous. I remember three Faculty meetings for three hours each in which we discussed reports on diverse issues related to the B.A. The records are in the archives. When I hear about people today designing programmes in a week or contracting external people to design a programme, I have to question the value of that. If you don’t go through an education with your faculty and get them on side…..The other thing that I enjoyed were the symposia our Department put on.
Richard: I remember those symposia.
Charles: We brought Hans Küng here in 1984-85 when he was at the centre of the world-wide debate about inter-faith dialogue. That was a big highlight for us. I remember when I took him back to the airport, he said “You people in Cape Breton seem to be very ecumenical” because he saw all the different religious backgrounds that came to his lecture.
When Shaw and Downie did their management audit of UCCB, during the Peter Hill crisis, the Humanities Department was singled out for its work on the Mi’Kmaq Centre, for its work on the B.A., and for its symposia. I was proud of that.
Richard: You are well known as a dedicated teacher. Can you reflect in conclusion about some of the students you’ve had? There was for example that student of yours who went on to do a doctorate in Religious Studies and is now a professor in the United States.
Charles: Jennifer Reid. She really took off here and developed an interest in the relationship between Mi’kmaq spirituality and Christianity. She went to Syracuse University and won a scholarship. For domestic reasons, she had to spend a year at the University of Ottawa before going to Syracuse. They were very impressed with her. A very able person. And another student of mine, Kristen McLaren, got her Master’s degree and is pursuing an academic career. There was Kim Hicks…
Richard: Oh yes, a wonderful student.
Charles: I think she is a truly outstanding person. Also Sherri Hutt. She was from Louisbourg. Also, a wonderful student.
Richard: Sherri went on to study law at Osgoode Hall in Toronto. It was as if the B.A. was made for students like that and they were made for it.
Charles: I also had some outstanding students in my first couple of years when I taught all the students in the B.A. programme. From time to time I meet them. I recently met a man who took a course from me years ago. I actually met him in the elevator at the regional hospital! He said, “I owe a lot to you. My wife is a teacher and I encourage her to model her teaching on yours.” I am proud of my relationship with individual students, and also of the fact that students from many denominations–Baptist, Presbyterian, United, Anglican–have taken my courses and felt comfortable in them.
Now there is another thing that is important to say, Richard. I’ve been a pretty good teacher and pretty good at offering leadership, but I haven’t been strong on the research side. And that’s a fact in the overall picture. In some sense it’s a weakness and I paid handsomely. I know research is essential to the university, the university can’t survive without research. But I opted to be a leaven in other ways, and those ways are not always honoured to the same degree as research. Well, I think the university needs
different kinds of people. At any rate, we’re building a university in Cape Breton, and I feel happy to have made my contribution.
Richard: You’ve worked in interesting times, and that usually means great opportunities for achievement as well as the inevitable trade-offs.
Charles: I feel I’ve been lucky. When I was a university student I came to believe I belonged in the university, and the idea of returning to Cape Breton to help start our own university became a strong ambition. I’ve had a fulfilling job and public respect. Richard, you know I still want to be part
of the University.
Richard: And you should be.
Charles: I want to be. I still feel heavy coming here. A lot of people are grieving for me. They feel bad, but I am not going to go off in a corner and sulk.
Like I said before, these things have a long life-span.
Richard: And who knows once the current administration moves on. You, more than anyone, should be made to feel that you have a place here, to feel welcome And you will.
Charles: Look, you have a student waiting for you at the door….I think we should finish.
Richard: Charles, thank you very much. I’m sure our colleagues, present and future,
will find this interview most interesting.
