Peter, I think you are right that even though there were people like Edith Fowke and Helen Creighton et al around doing a similar kind of work, for some reason folk music did not worm its way into the national consciousness in the same way that it did in the United States.

From reading that I've done, it sounds to me like people like Charles Seeger and Alan Lomax and their colleagues in the US actually set out to get American folk music forms recognized at a government level as a unique cultural heritage that should be preserved, and managed to get federal money dedicated to some of the programs that I mentioned above. I think they had a grand vision, if you will, that included ideas like making sure all Americans learning folk songs in school, creating national events where Americans would come together and celebrate their cultural heritage, having places like the Library of Congress where important field recordings could be made available to the public, etc. etc. They were highly patriotic, very visible and vocal, and very blatant about their mission, and I think they succeeded to a certain degree.

I'm not aware of any of Canadian folklorists/musicologists who had quite that kind of "take no prisoners" approach to their work (I'd love to be corrected here!). Maybe it's yet another difference between Canadian and Americans -- the Americans went BIG with their folklore, while the Canadians quietly and politely worked away...