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In 1972, Margaret Atwood wrote a book to guide thousands of previously ignorant Canadians who had suddenly shown a great interest in 'home-grown' literature. Public enthusiasm was so intense that well over 70 000 copies of Survival have been sold (and it is still in print). Yet only four years after the book first appeared, Atwood said she felt her work interpreting and introducing 'CanLit' was done. Canadians, in large numbers, had finally discovered their cultural heritage. What caused this remarkable, sudden interest is still an open question. Centennial celebrations in 1967 certainly left Canadians with residual nationalistic sentiments. The Massey Cornmission of the 1950s also left a legacy of cultural nationalism. And educational institutions had begun to put Canadian literature on the curriculum. Each one of these phenomena infused national arts and letters with financial support and other forms of encouragement as never before. Indisputably, the 1970s had been a turning point. But Atwood, when writing about previous generations, misrepresented historical fact by stating that "Canadian literature was not taught, required, or even mentioned (except with derision) in the public sphere."' She knew little of the careful attention paid to Canada's literary history by Communist cultural workers since the 1930s. Had she known more about educators such as Margaret Fairley, she might have seen the teaching of Canadian culture in a slightly different light. No highbrow royal commission or state-organized national anniversary gave rise to Fairley's educational work. Teaching the masses about their cultural heritage was part and parcel of a Marxist project. After all, people's labor had created the nation; their labor, therefore, was the basis of Canada's culture. Communist educators believed that teaching the masses was also instrumental in uncovering the spirit of democracy. To them, democracy meant the whole population knowing and sharing its heritage, drawing a sense of community and accomplishment from it, and knowing that everyone had or could have a hand in its consumption. Fairley's forty-year career as teacher, historian, editor, and journalist serves as one of the best examples of the work Canadian Communist cultural workers did. She fulfilled the cultural worker's responsibility to the people. She was born Margaret Adele Keeling in Bradford, Yorkshire on 20 November 1885. Like many British-born socialists of her generation, she came from a well-todo, conservative family. Her father was an Anglican priest and headmaster of a prestigious grammar school. One of her brothers, Sir Edward Keeling, was a Tory member of parliament, mayor of Westminster, and author of the anti-Communist

The Spirit of Canadian Democracy: Margaret Fairley and the Communist Cultural Worker's Responsibility to the People