There are many points in common between the story I have to tell and what has been happening in this country. Time and time again as I read the Rockefeller Panel Report on the performing arts, I had the pleasure of sidelining passages that we might have written ourselves. This is my delicate way of suggesting how good it is! The one great difference lies in the all-important role in our project played by our federal goverment, and I expect it would interest you if I went into this in some detail.

Ottawa is, as you know, our national capital and lies on the Ontario shore of the Ottawa River about 120 miles upstream from Montreal. The national capital area includes two adjacent cities, Hull across the Ottawa on the Quebec shore and Eastview in Ontario, plus some smaller communities. The present population of the area is nearly half a million, which is expected to double by the end of the century. About 44 percent of the population speak French, so that our two national culturals are strongly and almost equally represented in our capital, which is as it should be. However, this poses a problem for theatre - though not for music - by splitting the potential audience in half. Ottawa's educational level is the highest in the country and average family income is near the top - considerable plus factors where the arts are concerned. There is little industry apart from government, however, and hence no concentration of wealth in private hands to be tapped for expensive arts projects. Only the federal government could have built our centre.

First of all, as I am glad to report to this assembly - we set up an arts council, the National Capital Arts Alliance, composed of some fifty to sixty arts organizations in the area, to speak coherently and firmly on this and other matters of artistic concern. Second, the Arts Alliance commissioned a professional survey of the situation, and made sure that the excellent firm that took it on sought artistic advice in the right quarters. One of their consultants, by the way, was Robert Whitehead, an ex-Canadian whom many of you know. By October 1963 we had a weighty report in our hands - 105 pages long plus 31 appendices - which we thought would convince anyone that Ottawa needed an arts centre. And we were right. The Arts Alliance's third move was on the government, which was obviously the only possible source of vast sums of money required. We called on the Prime Minister early in November and on December 23, Mr. Pearson was able to announce the government's decision to build a performing arts center in Ottawa. (p. 87-93)

[Presented as part of the panel on Developing Cultural Centers introduced by Charles
 M. Spofford.  Additional presentations are all listed under Developing Cultural
 Centers and distinguished by author: Warner Bentley; Charles H. Jagels; O. William
 Severns; and Richard R. Teschner.]

There are many points in common between the story I have to tell and what has been happening in this country. Time and time again as I read the Rockefeller Panel Report on the performing arts, I had the pleasure of sidelining passages that we might have written ourselves. This is my delicate way of suggesting how good it is! The one great difference lies in the all-important role in our project played by our federal goverment, and I expect it would interest you if I went into this in some detail.