ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses a largely unstudied event – Stanley Baldwin's visit to Canada in the summer of 1927. It argues that Baldwin played a critical role in the British Commonwealth's development that historians have entirely overlooked. Baldwin considered Canada 'a pioneer of Empire.' In earlier times, Lower Canada and Upper Canada had been 'pioneers in the change from representative institutions to self-government.' Baldwin's Canadian speeches received favourable press coverage in the UK. Twelve of Baldwin's Canadian speeches were published in Great Britain, Canada and the United States in 1928 as part of a volume tellingly entitled Our Inheritance. In Baldwin's estimation, publicly funded education extended much further than the provision of vocational skills. Baldwin's official but often critical biographer, G. M. Young, was quite right when he stated that 'whether or not Baldwin had interpreted England to Canada, he had certainly interpreted himself' to his Canadian audiences.
