Frederick George Scott (7 April 1861 – 19 January 1944) was for the first part of his life an Anglican priest and a Canadian poet to whom the Canadian literary establishment gave the epithet "Poet of the Laurentians." He was associated with Canada's Confederation Poets, and wrote 13 books of Christian and patriotic poetry, often using the natural world to convey deeper spiritual meaning.
He is better known for the latter part of his life. In his fifties, Scott became a chaplain in the Canadian Expeditionary Force sent to France during the First World War. Despite his insistence on remaining close to the front line to give assistance to the wounded, he survived many close calls until he was seriously wounded only weeks before the Armistice. He was subsequently decorated for bravery under fire. His memoir, The Great War As I Saw It, was favourably received by both critics and the Canadian public. The book was still in print a century after publication. Scott remained a British imperialist his entire life, and wrote many hymns eulogizing his country's roles in the Boer Wars and World War I.
Early life Scott was born 7 April 1861 in Montreal, Quebec to Dr. William Edward Scott (a professor of anatomy at McGill University) and Elizabeth Scott (nee Sproston). On 1 July 1867, when he was six, his father took him to the grounds of McGill University to hear artillery being fired in celebration of the Confederation of Canada.
Ordination Scott attended Montreal High School before studying theology at Bishop's College, Lennoxville, Quebec, receiving a B.A. in 1881, and an M.A. in 1884. Scott wanted to become an Anglican priest but he was public in his admiration of the Anglo-Catholic views of the theologian and Anglican-turned-Catholic Cardinal John Henry Newman, who believed the Church of England needed to break away from political influences and return to liturgical practices similar to the Catholic Church. This was anathema to the fervently anti-Catholic Anglican church in Quebec, and Bishop William Bond refused to consider Scott for the priesthood.
Scott instead travelled to England in 1882, where he studied theology at King's College, London. While there, Scott befriended the 84-year-old hymn writer Matthew Bridges, another convert to Catholicism, who arranged for a meeting between Scott and Newman. Scott's biographer, Alan Hustak, believes that Scott, like both Newman and Bridges, might have considered converting to Catholicism and becoming a celibate priest, except he had recently met and become involved with a woman named Amy Brooks. Scott stayed an Anglican, becoming a deacon in 1884. Two years later he was ordained an Anglican priest at Coggeshall, Essex. Returning to Quebec, he served first at Drummondville, and then in Quebec City, where he became rector of St. Matthew's Anglican Church. In 1906, Scott became a canon of Holy Trinity Cathedral in Quebec.
Personal life In April 1887, Scott married Amy Brooks. They raised seven children: William Bridges (b.1888, became Chief Justice of the Quebec Superior Court); Henry Hutton (b. 1890, killed in World War I); Mary (b. 1892, married an Anglican priest); Elton (b. 1893, became professor at Bishop's College School); Charles Lennox (b. 1895, died age 9); Francis Reginald (b. 1899, became a lawyer, poet and co-founder of the New Democratic Party of Canada); and Arthur Elliot Percival (b. 1901, became a Quebec notary).
Poet In 1885, Scott printed his first chapbook, Justin and Other Poems, later included in The Soul's Quest and Other Poems (London 1888). Over the course of his life, he published another 12 volumes of poetry. Due to his use of spiritual and lyrical images taken from the natural world, he became known as "The Poet of the Laurentians." He was grouped with the Confederation Poets, first by anthologist W.D. Lighthall, who included two of Scott's poems in his 1889 anthology of the Confederation Poets, Songs of the Great Dominion. Lighthall also used a quotation from a Scott poem, "All the future lies before us / Glorious in that sunset land", on the title page as the book's epigraph. Scott was also a firm believer in the British Empire, and wrote several patriotic hymns during his life. In 1900, Scott was elected a Fellow to the Royal Society of Canada during the Quebec Tercentenary. At the ceremony he read an ode he had written for the occasion titled "Canada."
John Garvin, who included Scott's poems in his 1916 anthology Canadian Poets, wrote of him: "Frederick George Scott, 'The Poet of the Laurentians,' has this supreme gift as a writer: the art of expressing noble, beautiful and often profound thoughts, in simple, appropriate words which all who read can understand. His poems uplift the spirit and enrich the heart." "The Unnamed Lake " has been called his best-known poem.
Garvin included a quotation from M. O. Hammond writing in the Toronto Globe: "Frederick George Scott's poetry has followed three or four well-defined lines of thought. He has reflected in turn the academic subjects of a library, the majesty of nature, the tender love of his fellowmen, and the vision and enthusiasm of an Imperialist. His work in any one field would attract attention; taken in mass it marks him as a sturdy, developing interpreter of his country and of his times.[...] Living on the edge of the shadow-flecked Laurentians, he constantly draws inspiration from them, and more than any other has made articulate their lonely beauties."
Sandra Djwa wrote of his work "Several of Scott's early narrative poems, and his later didactic novel Elton Hazelwood (1891), describe typically Victorian crises of faith and the recognition of 'life and death as they are'.... Scott's many religious poems and his novel offer a more explicit rendering of the Victorian pessimism underlying the poetry of his more significant contemporaries, Charles G.D. Roberts and Archibald Lampman."
Chaplain
In 1914, Scott at age 53 was not only canon of Holy Trinity Cathedral in Quebec, but had been the chaplain of the 8th Royal Rifles for eight years. As talk of a possible European war ramped up in August 1914, Scott considered it would be his duty to accompany the Royal Rifles to Europe despite his age. The day before war was declared, Scott volunteered to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force as a chaplain. He was taken on as one of 31 chaplains of the 1st Canadian Division, and was given the honorary rank of captain.John Garvin, "Frederick George Scott," Canadian Poets (Toronto: McClelland, Goodchild, and Stewart, 1916), 75, UPenn.edu. Web, 23 March 2011. At the final church parade at the Valcartier training camp before the 1st Division embarked for Europe, Scott was asked to give the sermon before all 15,000 soldiers, as well as many notables including Prime Minister Robert Borden, Minister of War Sam Hughes, and the Governor-General (Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn), his wife and their daughter Princess Patricia.
Scott travelled with the 1st Division across the Atlantic to their winter bivouac on the Salisbury Plain, where the men started to call him "Canon Scott." At the start of the war, chaplains were not seen as needed in France, and as the men prepared to leave for the front lines in January 1915, word reached Scott that only 5 of the 31 Canadian chaplains would be permitted to go to France. Scott spoke with the British Chaplain-General, who subsequently increased the number of chaplains to eleven. However, Scott himself was not included in this number, and was assigned to a hospital in Salisbury. Scott ignored this and smuggled himself into France by attaching himself to the 3rd Brigade under the pretense of searching for his hospital over in France, and convinced CEF commander General Edwin Alderson to make that appointment permanent. Despite Scott's apparent disregard for regulations, Alderson appointed him to be Senior Chaplain of the 1st Division in August 1915, and promoted him to the rank of honorary major in December 1915.
Scott and the other chaplains were under orders to remain in the rear areas, and were not given any means of transportation. Nonetheless Scott often hitched a ride with whoever was heading to the front in order to visit the men in the trenches. As fellow chaplain Llewellyn Gwynne noted, Scott was "Always in the thick of the fighting, bearing almost a charmed life, ignoring any suggestion that he should be posted to a softer job 'further back.'" An article in the Anglican Journal recalled that "He often courted death to be with the soldiers, whom he saw as 'his boys.' Though he was commissioned as a major, he frequently went in the trenches wearing a private’s uniform with his clerical collar so as to mingle with the men more freely." Private Donald Cleal, while recuperating from wounds in August 1917, wrote in a letter to the Toronto Star "We have a chaplain here, Canon Scott, of Quebec, who has several medals. He earned them too. He is the Divisional Chaplain and entitled to stay in the rear. But no matter how thick the fight is, he is always to be seen wherever the boys are." At the Second Battle of Ypres, Scott was close enough to the German front line that bullets were striking the wall of the stable where he was comforting the seriously wounded. For his courage under fire while aiding the wounded, Scott was Mentioned in Despatches for the first time on 1 January 1916.
Scott often used a humorous tone when talking to the enlisted men. One time, when the teetotalling Scott was billeted in a room above an estaminet (a bar), he recounted "looking out of my window in the upper storey one day when the 2nd Battalion was marching past, and, to the breach of all good discipline, I called out to the men and asked them if they did not envy me my billet. A roar of laughter went up, and they asked me how I got there and if I could take them in as well. I told them that it was the reward of virtue, and only those who could be trusted were allowed to be housed in estaminets." Another time, while accompanying soldiers into the Second Battle of Ypres, a sergeant asked him, "Where are we going, Sir?" Scott replied, "That depends upon the lives you have led."
In March 1917, Scott was promoted to honorary lieutenant-colonel, and was made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George, but still insisted on visiting the front lines. His excursions to the various battalions were now easier because he had been given a horse, whom he called Dandy.