F. R. Scott - Life and Work

Life and Work

Scott was born in Quebec City, the sixth of seven children. His father was Frederick George Scott, "an Anglican priest, minor poet and staunch advocate of the civilizing tradition of imperial Britain, who instilled in his son a commitment to serve mankind, a love for the regenerative balance of the Laurentian landscape and a firm respect for the social order." He witnessed the riots in the City during the Conscription Crisis of 1917.

Completing his undergraduate studies at Bishop's University, in Lennoxville, Quebec, Scott went to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and was influenced by the Christian Socialist ideas of R.H. Tawney and the Student Christian Movement.

Scott returned to Canada, settled in Montreal and studied law at McGill University, eventually joining the law faculty as a professor.

While at McGill Scott became a member of the Montreal Group of modernist poets, a circle that also included Leon Edel, John Glassco, and A.J.M. Smith. Scott and Smith became lifelong friends. Scott contributed to the McGill Daily Literary Supplement, which Smith edited; when that folded in 1925, he and Smith founded and edited the McGill Fortnightly Review. After the Review folded, Scott helped found and briefly co-edited The Canadian Mercury.

Scott (assisted by Smith and Leo Kennedy) also anonymously edited the modernist poetry anthology New Provinces (in which he published ten poems), which was published in 1936.

The Great Depression greatly disturbed Scott; he and historian Frank Underhill founded the League for Social Reconstruction (LSR) to advocate socialist solutions in a Canadian context. Through the LSR, Scott became an influential figure in the Canadian socialist movement. He was a founding member of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and a contributor to that Party's Regina Manifesto. He also wrote a book advocating Social Planning for Canada (1935)."

Scott was elected national chairman of the CCF in 1942, and would serve until 1950.

In March 1942 Scott co-founded a literary magazine, Preview, with Montreal poet Patrick Anderson. Like the earlier Montreal Group publications, "Preview's orientation was cosmopolitan; its members looked largely towards the English poets of the 1930s for inspiration."

In 1950-51 Scott cofounded Recherches sociales, a study group concerned with the French/English relationship. He began translating French-Canadian poetry.

In 1952 he was a United Nations technical assistant in Burma, helping to build a socialist state in that country.

During the 1950s, Scott was an active opponent of the Duplessis regime in Quebec and went to court to fight the Padlock Law. He also represented Frank Roncarrelli, a Jehovah's Witness, in Roncarelli v. Duplessis all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada a battle that Maurice Duplessis lost.

Scott began translating French-Canadian poetry, publishing Anne Hébert and Saint-Denys Garneau in 1962. He edited Poems of French Canada (1977), which won the Canada Council prize for translation.

Scott served as dean of law at McGill University from 1961 to 1964 and served on the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. In 1970 he was offered a seat in the Canadian Senate by Pierre Trudeau but declined the appointment. He did, however, support Trudeau's imposition of the War Measures Act during the October Crisis that same year.

Scott opposed Quebec's Bill 22 and Bill 101 which established the province within its jurisdiction as an officially unilingual state within an officially bilingual country.

On his death in 1985, Scott was interred in Mount Royal Cemetery, Montreal.