Ironically, MacLennan's foray into fictional nationalism began as a detour from his original ambitions. Both his education and his experience had conspired to foster goals of a quite different nature. The only son of Samuel John MacLennan, a stern Scots Presbyterian doctor, and Katherine Clifford MacQuarrie, a musical, artistic mother, MacLennan was born in the remote coal-mining town of Glace Bay in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, on 20 March 1907. When he was eight, the family moved to Halifax, transformed by World War I from a sleepy garrison town into a bustling naval base. There, early on 6 December 1917, the accidental collision of two ships in the harbor caused the well-known Halifax Explosion which occurred just as MacLennan was getting ready for school. This event made the war an immediate reality and raised questions of great moral significance in the mind of the ten-year-old boy who saw devastation in the streets and recoiled in shock.
MacLennan's father entertained extremely high ambitions for his son. He was obsessed with the classics of Greece and Rome which he translated as a hobby. With the aid of texts from Eton College, England, he subjected MacLennan to closely regimented hours of study after school; later he made it clear that MacLennan would take Honours Latin and Greek at Dalhousie University, win a Rhodes Scholarship, and attend Oxford University.
This is a free page. This page contains 182 words. This
biography contains 6,263 words (approx. 21 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our (John) Hugh MacLennan Access Pass.
