Why Does Canada Have a Queen?

The Queen of Canada, Elizabeth II, 1953-2022.

Canada has a queen because the founders of Confederation were determined to govern the country under the system that most of them had known since birth.  Indeed, under rule by either Britain or France, second born (the term I use for European colonists-First Nations Canadians I call first born, and yes, it is the truth to also say the word colonizers to mark the ruling powers sending people over in the first place), there had always been a crowned head and ruling aristocracy calling the shots back in the mother countries.  There was, of course, a marked journey toward something resembling our modern elected representatives, especially in Britain under the House of Commons (and to a lesser extent, the Burgh Commissioners in pre-Union Scotland).  By the time Canada had become a unique Dominion within the British Empire in 1867, elected representatives made up the bulk and most politically powerful elements in British government, a long struggle since the 1640's when the Crown succumbed to the political will of Parliament... or rather the House of Commons... or rather a military dictatorship under Oliver Cromwell.  OK, so that really happened in the 1650's, but the nuances can be tricky.

The distaste of anything monarchial or lordly in the United States did not exactly happen overnight in 1776, nor did representative government suddenly emerge there as such.  The colonies had their own constituent assemblies, albeit with voting rights limited to land-owning males.  The Founding Fathers, of course, were not openly in love with Democratic principles, despite what the national mythos might say these days.  There were exceptions in the more passionate people like Thomas Paine, and after he got a taste of France, Thomas Jefferson (which of course is a whole other story), but by and large the Fathers were Republicans (the philosophy of government, not the modern party) because they wanted power to rest in the hands of an educated electorate with an eye to the broader picture of history and the future.  They were somewhat afraid of the passion of the mob, some because of concerns of anarchy, some because of an elitism, some because of an concern over the stability of the young country.  Not all of them, in fact, wanted to throw out the concept of monarchy, at least not right away.  Blame even focused early on toward the distant elected body of the lower house of Parliament.  The King and Lords were rich, for the most part, but they held wealth passed down through generations and while greed stops nowhere, the concern was that some in the House of Commons were more concerned with fattening up their portfolios rather than engaging in discourse about how best to govern for the common good.  Sound familiar?  These days we call such corrupt politicians "shills" or in the pocket of some monied interest, and it seems that they are largely in control of things.

Of course, those with inherited wealth and titles are not above corruption, but the blame for mismanagement and disaster was harder to avoid in these cases.  Famously, the Duke of Buckingham botched a raid on France so badly that he looked like a traitor to his country!  He couldn't hide behind a defense of "well, vote me out, then".  An assassin channeled the fury of the populace and permanently ended his mistakes.  Truth be told, as much fun as it might seem to have such a pirate ship mentality take care of our political problems, well, we all decided, gradually, that representative democracy was instead the way to go.  I certainly think so.  The thinkers, politicians, economists, etc. that created new governments in the United States, Canada, and far beyond our shores did as well.  

In the United States, however, a more hands off approach would emerge from multiple sides of the political spectrum, born of the Federalism that saw its birth pangs as far back as the Magna Carta.  Initially, the Founding Fathers produced the Articles of Confederation out of a fear of how government can tyrannize private citizens and bring about an interruption of the free flow of commerce.  Capitalism was in it's young adulthood, and the colonies and Britain were the birth place of the philosophy as we have come to recognize it.  Alas, the Articles proved weak and ineffective, largely thanks to the American independent spirit.  A Constitution would emerge once independence from Britain had been secured, a largely stable document that has thus far managed to endure and act as the law of the land.

Canada was another story.  Seemingly in a continuation of "Tories" (conservatives, sort of) vs. "Whigs" (liberals, sort of), while the United States was all about keeping an eye on the wheel of the ship while letting it sail where the wind may provide opportunity (read: Whigs), Canada was dominated by a more paternalistic mentality that seemingly embraced some idealistic stability of the more controlled times of "before Capitalism", or rather mercantilism (read: Tories).  To date, this is why even conservative elements in Canada don't consider public healthcare or welfare spending to be the devil (though this is currently undergoing a bit of a challenge), whereas in the United States the "hands off" approach has tended to dominate (though this is currently undergoing a bit of a challenge).  As I noted in my last article, I've come to see this as a result of an unfinished war we have been fighting since those 1640's I talked about earlier.  The players just seem different.  Anyway, before I dive to deeply into that rabbit hole, what does any of this happen to do with Canada having (had) a queen?

Paternalism, or the concept of governing like a father.

In the United States, the hands off approach tended to form because a distrust of official class divisions, which on paper sailed away with any surviving and remaining Loyalists at the end of the American Revolution/War of Independence.  Some went back to Britain, some stayed and made the best of it, but many went to Canada.  There, over a long period of struggle that we have not really resolved, they found a an existing paternalistic society in the form of the French-Canadians, and while the English speakers largely took refuge in places like Nova Scotia or Upper Canada (now Ontario), Montreal became a famous hub of interaction of ideals and philosophies and two worlds started talking to each other.  One can easily see that while the 13 colonies had to fight to find common ground in order to survive, with South Carolina and Massachusetts miraculously finding political harmony enough to muster political will, in Canada this was taken to a whole other level.  Confederation was a difficult baby to birth, and these days hot headed elements popping out of the landscape screaming "Quebec, Alberta, etc." prove that the struggle continues.  

Some say that it only happened because we did not want to be Americans.  We were more comfortable with paternalism, that is to say the government acting as parent, specifically father, than the Founding Fathers ever were (though Hamilton had a strong attraction to it in some ways).  To a degree, we largely still are.  This is not to say we are not into elections and individual liberty!  Those are good, necessary things, reminders of the accountability government has to all of us, that it rules by the consent of the governed.  Yet we still have a crown.  We delight in being Albertans, Ontarians, Quebecois almost as much, if not more so, than being Canadian, and yet when push comes to shove, we also have a very strong sense of community, which has thus far held us together.  Americans have it too, and this is going to explain a lot about the real question here: "why does Canada still have a crown?"

Americans sort of had one.  

He was many things, but George Washington is remembered as the quiet man in the room who everyone shut up to listen to.  He inspired unity in a way that no other president has since done so, and no other figure had managed to in his own time.  He is most significantly remembered for not taking a crown, for cementing into the national identity the concept of fair elections where one does one's duty and then moves on.  He was the chairman of the board that the new country needed.  Ever since 1660, when Britain decided that it needed that chairman of the board to come back after they chopped the head off King Charles I, flirted with a failed state under Cromwell, and then was plunged into the mess that both the Founding Fathers and Fathers of Confederation never wanted to repeat, even disconnected by centuries and ocean, so far away from such a chaotic "what's next?".  

Canada decided to stick with the existing British model of political parties forming ruling coalitions in an elected lower House of Parliament.  The leader of the dominant party would be a Prime Minister, just like back in London.  Much like the President, however, the Prime Ministers would often fall short of being the figure of unity and a manifestation of the larger nation, that chairman of the board.  Not being American, having a transcontinental railroad, other elements of the defensive nationalism that Canada may fairly be labelled as having in her history, these were not good enough reasons to stick together.  Community, on the other hand, took a Canadian identity out of the hands of negative definitions and moved from I am X because not Y to we are all in this together.  Canada not only drew its inspiration of government from what had been functioning in Britain in evolving form since the 1200's (or earlier, if we consider Henry II to be the founder of our modern rule of law), but had a figurehead already in place.  Her name was Victoria.  

Queen Elizabeth looks at Queen Victoria

I fully acknowledge that she has a complicated history.  She didn't, for example, support female voting, and while she was largely removed from the political process involved in colonization and atrocities like the Irish and Indian famines, she was still crowned while it was all happening.  That said, she also knew how to cool heads and tell, as Elizabeth would later put it, "grey haired old men" to think things through.  Like Elizabeth, and indeed like myself, she didn't want to throw the baby out with the bath water, and had a historical perspective to consider options with.

By the time she ascended to the throne in Britain, she was roughly in the same role as King Charles is today.  There were already vicious political factions vying for control, philosophical dominance, etc. by a hundred years prior to her crowning.  At the end of the day, however, your radical reformer and most stolid aristocrat alike all shut up when she would enter the room.  This is not because she was a figure of worship, but because she was, well, outside of the political realm.  Yes, much like King Charles, she lived in splendor and once she became queen, never really had to want for anything ever again, but it served as a golden cage from which she could not necessarily live her own life.  She was unelected, but she was also not making the decisions about how we ought to be governed; we had and have elections for that.  She was, and he is, however, the living reminder that those elected leaders cannot run amok and have to be accountable to us and the Constitution which is there to remind us, in paper, of accountability.  It may be bold to say so, but these days, Americans could use another Washington like that.  Alas, as he warned in his farewell address, his office got political.  A new crown is not the answer for the United States.  The selection process would be impossible, to say the least, but alas, the modern nature of the Presidential office requires an exceptional individual to serve as inspiring more than just consumer confidence.

But while the United States is best known for forging a new path, or at least trying to a new form of one, Canada looks to the future by drawing strength, and these days, more sobriety, from the past.  To quote King Charles in his first Royal speech made earlier today:

"In her life of service we saw that abiding love of tradition, together with that fearless embrace of progress, which make us great as Nations." 

He smiled a bit when he said that line, and no, it wasn't a smirk.  He said it because he was aware of his role, and hers, in wearing ermine and a jeweled crown while promoting various freedoms.  His mother, for example, was very much opposed to Apartheid in South Africa.  As early as her 1947 speech about the Commonwealth (which used, a product of its time, words we now shirk at, like "Imperial"), she was committed to leaving behind an empire and moving towards a global scale of cooperation and assistance.  The most ardent supporter of this is, well, the crown.  Many crowns in one person.  In Canada, we have 11 crowns shared by the same person, Federalism born from a Unitary state, the struggle that was the excuse for starting that fight that began in the 1640's, but turned out to be more of a power and wealth struggle egged on by religious fervor (sound familiar?).  You see, in the person of the monarch, who really lives in a manicured, arranged life, and is born to not be themselves, we have the representation of shared history, the legacy of the journey toward accountability, the rule of law, and the balance between freedom and the responsibility we have to each other.  We didn't just wake up one day and say "freedom", "elections", etc.  

The realm is not, you see, the extension of the will of the sovereign, but a community with whom the crown acts as a living embodiment of a unity over many voices and a desire to live free... together.

It's hard to go it alone.  A tyrant looks at all of us differently than just us.  That sentence can easily be at home in both the United States and Canada, no/non?

Canada still has a queen/king because we value democracy, the rule of law, political accountability, and the path to progress, rooted in a history that inspires and shows us how we got there, and how to avoid doing the same dumb stuff that took us a for a tumble or let a tyrant take control.

 Ten years ago, I started this blog with the intention of sharing personal reflections on the landscape, history, art, and current events surrounding the North American continent (important: inclusive of Mexico).  Life intervened here and there, and the blog largely took a vacation from 2015 onward.  I spent less time traveling, more time absorbed into the 9-5, and after 2017 I started looking back on what I had written and realized I was perhaps focused on the wrong subject matter.  In 2022, I find myself looking back at a decade of intellectual development and bearing witness to noticing how much my underlying bias went into my writing.  To our detriment, historical methodology is often ignored by armchair historians.  I can't really use the excuse that I don't know what this is, as I did pursue the liberal arts in my higher education, albeit in philosophy, theology, and art history rather than history proper.  All things considered, this is not an academic blog as much as a casual blog of reflection, but one also has to consider that history is a volatile subject these days.

My last blog entry was at the dawn of the Trump administration, a time where many governments and societies across the world were (and are) experiencing upheavals in historical memory and current understanding (to put it lightly!).  I stopped writing because my efforts would have been labelled as political, and as a foreign national living in the US, I didn't want to come across as an Ambassador Genet.  I have lived in this country now since 1994 and have paid taxes since 2000, so I figure I can probably say things about the amber waves of grain.

I come back to the blog to make a bold statement:

We are still fighting the English Civil War of 1642-1651.

The players in the conflict then were different enough from our contemporaries to not be able to draw direct comparisons to what sides fit in the picture today, but we definitely still have the dominant elements in play.  While there are no more Puritans (low-church Anglicans aside), we definitely have a booming Evangelical and Pentecostal population throughout the continent, largely in conservative populations in the United States but growing in both Canada and Mexico.  Like the Puritans, they are interested in making their voices heard in politics, and it must be said, interested in legislating their voices over the rest of the population.  On the other side, we no longer have a king or an established church, but we do have a political establishment that has largely been interested in law and order and societal stability, at least until recently.  

To elaborate further is going to take a lot of posts from here on out, especially as I find myself going back to school in terms of really trying to read up on the players in the conflict.  I decided to begin with prime excuse/cause number one, Archbishop William Laud.  While Parliament had many issues to bring them into conflict with the crown, the initial spark that ignited the fire was from Puritans upset about any slight inkling of Popery/Catholicism in the Church of England, to say nothing about King Charles being married to an outwardly devout Catholic, Henrietta Maria, who the state of Maryland is named after.  That factoid is just a reminder that while this is a blog about North America, our post-Columbian history is very much a trans-Atlantic story.  In any event, one could argue that we definitely have our Lauds out there today in the form of political figures interested in the sense of stability brought about by maintaining the Unitary State (power flows down from the top authority), in contrast to our Parliamentarians, those more interested in promoting Federalism (wherein power is shared between top and local authorities).  The lines blur quite a bit here and there, so we end this post with the caveat that our complicated time shares many features with that complicated time, while the particulars definitely vary.

Here's a short clip from the 1970 classic, Cromwell (featuring absolutely brilliant performances across the board), which features the main man getting riled up by some rather bland (from Catholic standards) altar adornments.  Wars of ideas often start from messing with small things.

A Turning Point, A Remembering

Welcome back to American Voyages!  Our long absence has come to an end as I find myself once again in possession of a workable computer.

Much has been going in North America lately, events setting in motion a rather vast set of political changes.  While life will continue as normal for many, the extremes of polarity that have built up between camps of ideology and alliance grow farther and farther apart.  At this point, I could easily turn this into a political blog, but there really is no point to such a disservice.  Rather, consider that American Voyages has always been about exploration and trying to paint a picture about the context of our history.  As a radical centrist, its, well, my "thing".  I'm also something of a royalist, at least in a constitutional sense; it's amazing what an un-elected political leader can do to keep a bunch of elected political leaders at bay.  The colonials in the thirteen colonies at first felt the same way; their grievance was with a bloated Parliament and its military-industrial machine.  In fact, they even sent a petition just to George III to ask for his help in dealing with Parliament.

That said, I'm in no hurry to see a king set up, deposed, or necessarily even considered for appointment.  But there are those out there who very much are.  France, much like the United States, is currently undergoing a period of cultural introspection, brought on by a number of different factors.  Extremist populist movements are no less prevalent there, as they have been now for quite some time.  A minority within the far right of the country has been quietly calling for the restoration of the Bourbons to the throne.  This past Saturday, the anniversary of the execution of Louis XVI, a memorial Mass was held in Paris at the Basilica of Saint Denis, the French equivalent of Westminster Abbey.  These faces should look fairly familiar:

They were the last monarchs before the first French Revolution.  Their descendants live on, as do their supporters.  I leave it up to each person to decide whether they were right to have been killed; personally, I think they made their own fate possible, even while I think that the revolutionaries were overreaching themselves.  They tried to flee and attack their own country, just as James II did so in Britain a hundred years before them.  They made little room for compromise, or at least made it a secondary concern, much as the last Catholic king of Britain did.  This was par for the course as far as the Bourbons (and Stuarts) were concerned.  Louis XIV started the process by trying to unify his kingdom through the sheer blunt instrument of an absolute monarchy.  He definitely had his reasons: his uncle Charles I lost his head over not gaining dominance over Parliament.  The Bourbons would ensure that their majesty, wealth, and power would put the nobility in their place.  The problem was, the nobility could be kept in check by ostentatious displays of the glory of the state.  The common folk, however, saw it as an affront to their very struggle for existence.

Populism toppled a regime in France, just as it had transformed a regime in Britain, just as it would change the game in the colonies and Mexico, just as it made the first half of the 20th century a rather terrifying era to live in... just as it keeps doing to this day.  While we need not and indeed should not be slaves to historical memory, we certainly should be aware that it has a lot to teach us, inspire us with, and warn us against.

For my part, I definitely see January 21st as something of a feast day, even while I would throw my support behind Henri d'Orleans and the Orleanist line of succession rather than the Bourbon.  That day in 1793 was a day to be remembered and pondered on for anyone serious about historical memory.  That day was a day in which both the Bourbons and the New Regime failed France, failed themselves, and was a day in which the dangers of extremes became truly painful and divisive, not just here but in a new American nation.  Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians, Anti-Federalists and Federalists started rallying behind supporting Republican France or divorced Mother Britain, even as they were more definable by preexisting theories of government.  People love a cause.  People love to get behind "Change we can believe in" just as much as they love to get behind "Making America great again".  Centrists like Benjamin Franklin, and later, a man very much touched by his aggravating advice, John Adams, would try to acknowledge passion even as they supported a little bit more sanity.  Mr. Adam's epitaph does not proclaim "I did for the dream of a strong central government", it reads:

"Here lies John Adams, who took upon himself the responsibility of peace with France in 1800."

Isolated from his enemies and his former architect of power, Alexander Hamilton, Mr. Adams found his life to be one of a dreamer of change who ended up simply wanting others to have the freedom to dream of their own change or stability.  In the history of my country, there was Guy Carleton, the first Baron Dorchester.  You see, even while I take interest in the revival of interest in a French monarchy (and the French do love their freedom even while they idolize "kings" like Napoleon and De Gaulle, because they are as into populist excitement as much as the Americans), I already have a monarch, Queen Elizabeth.  Her predecessor George III had the wisdom to see Lord Carleton as "a sensible man" who could effectively manage newly British Canada.  He saved my culture, managed to keep Canada out of the colonial cause for independence and helped create English speaking Canada by shepherding loyalists out of the United States when the war was over.  For her part today, the Queen has served as a place for rival camps in British politics to find at least a ceremonial common ground.  In 2011, she even became the first British monarch to visit Ireland as a guest rather than a general leading troops.  She is an ironic symbol, I think, for an alternative to the personalization of politics.

But what we all have is a shared history, progressives, conservatives, moderates, Caucasians, African-Americans, Native Americans... even while we still attend rallies to see a man of powerful presence in a red hat... or stand our ground in the cold as a pipeline threatens to cross close to our native land.  In Paris, a Requiem is celebrated for a long dead king, perhaps to stir up some concept of patriotism, even as others march against this and other visions of what they deem repression.  Lately, all sides seem to be calling their opposition the oppressor.

The king is called to the scaffold yet again; this time he is embodied in no single individual.  This is in many ways the perfect time to read 1984, and not because the "other side" is your enemy personified in Big Brother.  May passion inspire us, not rule us!

The Place Of Desert

For the last year or so in American Voyages, I have been largely focused on eastern North America.  My long-time readers and those who dig further into the heap of posts will find that my emphasis started out in a completely different direction, that of the vast, diverse wild-lands that is the West (or in the case of Mexico, the North).  My travels out there were what ultimately inspired me to give a go at this blog, but heaven knows I did not start out loving such a place.  I grew up in the boreal forest, which remains to me the most primal, holy, and majestic landscape on the planet.  I viewed the southern pinelands as the next most incredible landscape, followed by a child's imaginary view of the evergreen forests of the western rainy reaches, and largely disliked that which was in between, the world of the deciduous forests and grasslands.  When it came time for me to take my first ground trip across the continent, I was dreading the flat, boring plains that I would be forced to endure.

Of course my image of them was made uglier by what I figured they would be, a continuation of the flat, artificial cornfield "prairies" of far southern Ontario, Ohio, and southern Michigan.  There was no life between the Appalachians and the Rockies, I had gathered.  But then I drove into central Illinois and saw the sky get bigger.  I crossed the Mississippi and found Iowa to be rolling, and in places where the farms had gone fallow, lush green lands dotted with the occasional Bur Oak (Quercus Macrocarpa) standing as a lone witness to another world.  August rains had come and blessed the land so that it looked as if it were something out of Hobbit country.  Again, I placed my conception of the world on top of the landscape as it truly existed and was perhaps even eager to be seen by my overly-focused eyes. 

Then came Nebraska, and some more corn, especially between Lincoln and where the Platte and I-80 meet for the first time heading west.  That river though, that shallow, silty, seemingly unimpressive river... it stole my heart and my attention.  Perhaps it was the trees that did this; tough-as-nails Cottonwoods (Populus Deltoides) forming gallery forests that made the trip so much more enjoyable for my stubborn sylvan-centric tourist agenda.  The funny thing is, though, my eyes started looking for the prairie.  I had long wondered what the transition between eastern forest and western void was like, and found instead that the corn, or at least my concern for it, had prevented me from finding this remarkable transition area.  Around North Platte, however, I saw it; hills of grass and what I presumed was only grass.  I-80 kept following the rivers, but I was headed for golden California, and the majestic mountains of Colorado.  I turned onto I-76 and into the High Plains, and much like viewing a religious icon, my mind was made quiet and my gaze indirect.  The immensity of all that was not human overtook my concentration; not for nothing have many religious experiences of some of the most intense contemplative types from western Christianity (Jesus, in fact, started to "find himself" in the desert) to the Lakota mystics who once ranged far and wide over that same northeastern Colorado grass included sharing that nature made them forget the self and connect with the infinite.

Doubtless I found such a place in the small, innocent world of childhood.  I remember the towering pines and ancient granite of the Canadian Shield transporting me far away from the worries of the present.  Then I grew up, indulged in material culture, formed a rigid world view like most other college students sharply liberal and conservative alike tend to do, and forgot about my and my world-view's insignificant place in the cosmos.  At some point I started realizing that this was at best silly and at worst insulting to myself, my place in history, and my purpose in the greater world.  Maybe I was looking for something else, or something more whole... but that trip to California plunged me into less of a tourist run and into more of a pilgrimage.  The High Plains cleared my mind and prepared me for the grandeur of the mountains to come, and more surprisingly so, the desert beyond.  I was amazed at the vista given by the Front Range, but the High Plains managed to keep me even more enthralled with my first ever glimpse of an honest-to-goodness western plant, the Sand Sagebrush (Aretmisia Filifolia).

This one was taken at Pipe Spring National Monument, on the other side of its range compared to where we first met on the Colorado High Plains.  I think this is where we fell in love. 

If you've never experience one, I would say that it alone is an excellent reason to go out west.  It feels and smells incredible, with the best olfactory performance coming after a rain.  Like so many White people before me, I always viewed sagebrush as an afterthought, even a weed.  I had encountered its northernmost version, Artemisia Frigida, back in my magical boreal youth.  Perhaps I was bred to hate prairie, however, because I found nothing likeable in that patch of meadow that constituted the "back yard" where I found my first specimen of this plant.  I have since apologized to what I assume is its children.  Back then, however, I was all about the pines, like so many people are.  No one can tolerate the fly-over states, and they seem to view anything even drier as either a wasteland, the backdrop for Vegas and sci-fi movies, or a good place to extract resources and produce more crap for us to throw away.  I certainly headed into my California voyage with a similar attitude.  Then I saw the open skies, and then I saw the sagebrush, and then I saw the yuccas... and then the cacti.  Nearly two years later, on a misty March day, I saw the saguaros, and a view of the desert that had gone from hard on life that had turned into otherworldly had then become something closer to ethereal.  The desert is a place teeming with life that has managed to not only make the best of the situation, but in many cases to positively thrive there. 

I write this because far too often we dismiss the desert as an unwelcome, useless intrusion into our idealized view of the world.  We like it lush and green, happy and managed/cultivated.  Our vision of the world, even the wild portions of it, are often frowned upon if they do not conform to our place in it.  This attitude exists in persons as different as lobbyists for the Koch brothers or ecological restorers concerned with the dwindling wolf populations on Isle Royale.  Those religious types I mentioned would probably tell the rest of us to focus instead on greater things than our immediacy.  I write this because today I read a piece related to this post, written by an "activist" living in the Mojave, an atheist no less.  I wanted to share his piece here, with all of you, and give a brief description of my own of why I think it is important.  Please, take the time to read it, because I'm shutting up now.

https://www.beaconreader.com/chris-clarke/the-desert-is-not-your-blank-canvas

Wednesday Filler: Philadelphia's White Pines

Like D.C., Philadelphia is a city where one can encounter southern botanical elements such as evergreen magnolias and hardy palms next to a few northern ones like the Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus).

At Penrose ave. and Homestead st.

At Gloria Dei National Historic Site.

Unlike those zone pushed plants, however, the White Pine is actually native, albeit at the edge of its range, to the cities.  It found quite a bit of use as a landscape tree, often planted in more open situations to take advantage of the bold sweeps of its unrestricted form.  In the wild around these parts, it grows with a decent amount of vigor and majesty, and has enough of a winter chill and less than brutal summer heat in order to reproduce decently.  From here southwards, however, these conditions are only met in the Appalachians.

The Garden Spaces Of Philadelphia

Last year we explored the garden and green spaces of historic Charleston and found a subtropical paradise seemingly imposing itself, sometimes orderly, sometimes not, on a city.  Like downtown Charleston, downtown historic Philadelphia is a lot of stone and brickwork and various kinds of paved streets.  This was apparently not William Penn's intention, but the early settlers who came to Philadelphia for reasons other than religious freedom were merchants and tradesmen, and all of them wanted easy access to the river.  As a result, the rural flavored, open setting that was in mind for the city went by the wayside as it grew progressively denser.  To this day, people are crammed into homes side by side.  In contrast to the larger homes of Charleston, which had courtyards and exposed back gardens, much of Philadelphia is arranged more with a combined desire to be close to the water and close to the street. 

This is not to say that the modern city is lacking in greenspace, or that even the historic core is without gardens and peaceful areas:

I forget where this is, but it's pretty much in or near the big attractions of Independence National Historical Park.

That's Carpenters' Hall, home of the First Continental Congress.

 The city is, however, much more closed in than Charleston and even New York was in the same era.  Washington might have been developed according to a more open plan under possible direction from politicians used to having the seat of government in both cities.  As noted in the last post, many politicians ducked in and out of the city whenever possible, feeling it somewhat cramped.  This was probably in large part due to the fact that some of them were less than democratic and did not enjoy proximity to the average citizen, and/or the fact that many of them were used to a more open and rural existence, especially the gentlemen of the South.  Cramped or not, the city certainly has its fair share of things paved and bricked, and the side streets off the historic core are certainly more restrictive of viewpoints than colonial Georgian or Regency era surviving cores like Charleston, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Cooperstown, and especially Williamsburg. 

But as you can see, the streets are not devoid of life.  In fact, Philadelphia does individual specimen trees remarkably well!

This is a very old American Sycamore (Platanus Occidentalis) growing in the cemetery of Gloria Dei National Historic Park.  The guide told me it was either there already, or that it had been planted during the building of the church.  Considering as how, either way, that was 1700, this is a very old tree.  The church is on an ecotone bordering the bottomland of the Delaware River, so a natural origin is not out of the question.  Come to the site just to see this beauty!

Two lovely Sweetgum (Liquidambar Styraciflua).

In short, Philadelphia is all about trying to fit life back into whatever available spots there are.  In contrast to Charleston, which I keep comparing to as it was indeed the competing botanical export center, Philadelphia is less a city seemingly overtaken by the wild as it is a city containing or built around and over top of it.  This is in part due to climate; Charleston gets a lot more rain and heat.  Still, there are the odd spaces where nature looks like it explodes.

The next three photos were taken along a little side alley off of Elfreth's Alley, a very scenic little part of the old town that has remained largely unchanged since colonial times.

But there are also many places where it is bricked and potted in. 

This should not be seen as a reflection of the attitudes of a citizenry who wished to dominate nature so much as find a place for it in a place where space was at a premium.  Cities like Chicago and New York took time to become as dense as they are, but Philadelphia started out that way, if much smaller in vertical scale.  Like Charleston, however, the surrounding environment never became as much of a secondary feature but got slowly reabsorbed into the setting.  There are many gardens, some restored, some surviving, that attempt to capture the changing face of the populace and its relationship with its environs.  The best way to see them, or any city, really, is to walk around and take in the sights. 

The Magnolias Of Philadelphia

When I was first learning about various trees of the continent back in my idealistic youth, I was blessed to come across a free copy of Audubon's Field Guide to North American Trees (Eastern Region).  This was a marvelous book full of fun things like maps, pictures, and even illustrations of trees in silhouette, with the evergreens being nice and full, and the deciduous trees shown in their bare winter glory.  Now and then, I came across a remarkable leafy tree... with leaves on it!  I knew about them before, of course, being a traveled veteran of Southern Florida, but what really impressed me was the fact that some of them could be found very north, namely the American Holly (Ilex Opaca) and above all else, the majestic Southern Magnolia (Magnolia Grandiflora).  In specific, the guide noted that the beauty is noted for hardiness "north to Philadelphia".

In gardening circles, people are lately growing fonder of the art of "zone pushing", which is to say that they, ahem, we, like to grow things far north of where they are considered hardy.  Gardeners in Detroit, Chicago, Toronto, and Cleveland (and associated friendly cities) have long since considered anything that retains leaves in the winter to be of high prestige and a reminder that life goes on during otherwise snowy and cold dark months between November and March.  Alright, so October and April...  Anyway, its a hard thing to take even a cold hardy palm or broadleaved evergreen and expect it to dance for you while the blizzard rages, at least this far inland.  Philadelphia, on the other hand, is perhaps in one of the perfect situations for attending to a variety of cultivation.

While it has far more in common with the ocean than the Appalachians, it has elements of both; pine species form extensive barrens in nearby rural areas in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey, as well as more mountain species like rhododendrons in surviving woodlands.  It's not too hot, it's not too cold, and due to an atmosphere of tolerance, it was the American city that got the most brains to boot.  Massachusetts was all about religious agenda/freedom, New York was all about commerce, Charleston and Williamsburg were all about slave-powered farming, but Philadelphia was about letting you pray how you wanted, letting you argue with people over politics, and, surprisingly, letting you talk about what academic subjects were currently in vogue.  Alexander Hamilton of the spice islands by way of New York tried to get finance to set up a crown here too, but ultimately the city is still best remembered as more of a home to the Benjamin Franklin type.  This is a city of books, trees, and people who still like to read newspapers on a park bench.

One such popular academic interest was plants.  Aristocrats in Europe went crazy over trying to acquire New World vegetation for their estates, especially in England.  Various botanists made quite the name for themselves detecting and acquiring such treasures, and Philadelphia's own John Bartram earned the respectable but low paying title of the "King's botanist".  While Charleston, under Michaux, served as a secondary port for the thriving plant and seed trade, the varieties of climate and plant life meeting here, as well as the royal connection, ensured that Philadelphia would remain the chief point of departure for the finest trees finding their way to the finest clients.  Unlike Charleston, however, Philadelphia grew up much more snug and dense, seemingly paved over, much to the distaste of the founders and succeeding generations of planners in the city who wanted everyone to have a growing space.  Thomas Jefferson disliked the environment, and like many other politicians, wanted to try to escape to greener pastures when possible, which usually meant taking a trip to Bartram's house (which I regret upon regret not stopping at).  There they talked about plants.  No, really.  Jefferson and Washington were plant geeks.

Philadelphia has since greened rather nicely, even if the concrete which has replaced the brick is still the dominant feature everywhere.  The riverbanks are lush, there are parks and green spaces never far away, and the city is home to the United States' first urban national wildlife refuge.  Out of all this, however, what caught my eye was, well, the magnolias.  My little guide book did not disappoint.  I can't remember where half of them were taken at, with the exception of the line of tall ones at Betsy Ross House.  They are not hard to find, though.  Just wander through the historic core and you will find quite a few, some very impressive in size.

Yeah, that's a Sugar Maple (Acer Saccharum) intruding on the top left.  Pretty cool seeing them together!

These last fellows were at the Betsy Ross House.

There is also a garden consisting almost entirely of imported magnolias which, while not the majestic Southern Magnolia, do put on quite the show in spring.  I ran into some volunteers at the garden who gave me the unofficial history of magnolias in the city, as well as the intent behind the creators of this garden.  They explained that Washington, plant geek, wanted to green up the city he had to spend so much time in as president.  He was particularly fond of magnolias, which the ladies and I deduced to probably be his proud Southern Magnolias, arboreal symbols of American robustness.  As a symbolic tree, Magnolia Grandiflora is much more associated with the deeper South and with Andrew Jackson, who planted them at the White House as they were his wife's favorite tree.  Nevertheless, Washington probably would have run into plenty of them in his boyhood tidewater stomping grounds, as the tree was already making quite the impression in the trans-Atlantic trade and was already being cultivated as an ornamental in the southern lowcountry.  He probably enjoyed seeing a tree as robust as this in remaining green even in colder winters, and as a horticulturalist probably thought about bringing them further north with him into his presidential exile from Mt. Vernon.  The creators of the garden, acting 150 years later, apparently did not have the same design in mind, which the volunteers and I grumbled about.  The Asiatic magnolias, they said, are nice, but they only flower in the spring, and, well, are not very American.  At the risk of sounding like an ecological imperialist, considering the intent of the design of the garden, I have to agree.

Still, it's a nice garden (with a fountain, which I did not take a picture of), a quiet space of reflection surrounded by quiet streets (Locust between 4th and 5th streets) and various quiet places of worship.  There are thirteen flowering trees and shrubs which represent the thirteen colonies, but most of them are imports, and ironically, two of the species are iconic of England!  I'm a proud subject of the Commonwealth myself, but the concept seemed rather nutty to me.  If I had to guess, I would think that the creators wanted to put on an incredible burst of spring and early summer color, and to be fair, the garden was set up long after the colonial era passion for natives had faded and the Victorian and Imperial passion for exotics had become the rage.  Remember what I said about zone-pushing?  That's something fairly new, the current emerging vogue.  People maybe just weren't planting southern trees here back in the day, just as they weren't planting palms in Vancouver or London until fairly recently.

The worm has since turned, and the National Park Service tends toward at least the homegrown and preferably native ecological restoration as much as possible (and to be fair, as much as they work here and are not too distantly native, Magnolia Grandiflora is native no further north than the central Chesapeake, if I am allowed to make such a bold statement).  In the garden we get to see shifting trends in horticulture presented as a history lesson about a history lesson.  I have to admit, regardless of my angst, I stopped and enjoyed the patch of green for a while.  Washington probably would have done the same.  Jefferson would have turned cross, purchased nearby land, and started over on a superior garden.  Bartram would have sold him the plants.  All of them probably would have been in awe of the many Southern Magnolias found through the rest of the city.  I have to admit, seeing them together with so many other trees, including my favorite Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus) gave the city a pretty interesting arboreal landscape.  You can do that in DC too, but then you have to pay for it with hot, muggy summers that do not get nearly as bad here.

What's the rest of that city treescape look like?  Come on by next post for a tour.