RENEGADE IN POWER: THE DIEFENBAKER YEARS by PETER C. NEWMAN By the Same Author 1959 Flame of Power Intimate Profiles of Canada's Greatest Businessmen 1968 The Distemper of Our Times Canadian Politics in Transition 1973 Home Country People, Places, and Power Politics 1975 The Canadian Establishment Volume One: The Old Guard 1978 Bron/man Dynast ' v The Rothschilds of the New World 1981 The Canadian Establishment Volume Two: The Acquisitors 1982 The Establishment Man A Portrait of Power 1983 True North: Not Strong and Free Defending the Peaceable Kingdom in the Nuclear Age 1985 Company of Adventurers (Volume One of a history of the Hudson's Bay Company) 1987 Caesars of the Wilderness (Volume Two of a history of the Hudson's Bay Company) 1988 Sometimes a Great Nation Will Canada Belong to the 2 1 St Century? An M&S Paperback from McClelland & Stewart Inc. The Canadian Publishers An M&S Paperback from McClelland & Stewart Inc. Copyright (~) 1963 by Peter C. Newman Copyright (0 1973 bv McClelland and Stewart Limited Copyright (D 1989 by Power Reporting Limited All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law. Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Newman, Peter C., 1929 - Renegade in power (M&S paperback) Includes index. ISBN 0-771o-6747-X i. Diefenbaker, John G., 1895 - 1979. - 2. Canada -Politics and government - 1957 - 1963.* 1. Title. FC616.D5N4 198997 i.o64'2'0924C89-094262-5 F'034-3.D5N4 1989 Cover design by Silk Questo Design Typesetting by Trigraph Inc. Printed and bound in Canada McClelland & Stewart Inc. The Canadian Publishers 481 University Avenue Toronto, Ontario M5G 2E9 Contents NEW INTRODUCTION TO THE 1989 EDITION 9 PROLOGUE 21 I. Assumption of Power 1 The Tory Tornado 29 2 The Formative Years 42 3 The Formative Circumstances 64 4 The 1957 Election and the Ecstasies of Office 85 5 The Charismatic Rampage of 1958 99 II. Instruments of Power 6 The Prime Minister 123 7 The Cabinet 139 8 The Disillusionment of Davie Fulton 152 9 The Humbling of Donald Fleming 175 10 Alvin 192 11 George Hees: Y.C.D.B.S.O.Y.A. 208 12 The Grey Flannel Eminence 223 13 A Footnote on Olive Diefenbaker 237 III. Exercise of Power 14The Philosophy of the Man from Prince Albert 249 15The Fiscal Sins of a Prairie Prime Minister 276 16 The Vision that Became a Mirage 295 17 The Bill of Rights 304 18 The Servile Press 314 19 The Eclipse of Prestige Abroad 335 IV Twilight of Power 20 Les Epaulettes Perdues 369 21 The Carnage of the Coyne Affair 391 22The Agonies of the 1962 Campaign 424 23The Nuclear Virgin Who Never Was 437 24 The Coup d'Etat 464 25 The Dikes of Power Burst 499 Acknowledgements 521 Index 522 New Introduction to the 1989 Edition IT WAS EASY ENOUGH to satirize his rages and caricature his crusades, but it was the stride and stance of the man -his sheer guts, the brew of his laughter and the dint of his compassion - that made John George Diefenbaker a politician apart. Like PG. Wodehouse's fictional butler, Jeeves, he entered any room "as a procession of one." Although he seldom stopped talking about himself, Diefenbaker remained a mysterious mixture of vanity and charm, vulnerability and brass, outrage and mischief. He single-handedly transformed Canadian politics into the country's leading spectator sport. The dilemma of most Canadian politicians is how to stress the marginal differences between themselves and their rivals so that they can conceal their basic similarities. Diefenbaker's problem was exactly the opposite: how to place enough restraints on his combativeness so that he would sound more like his electable and less individualistic contemporaries. Even in his declining years he remained a political giant on his knees, ambling in a land of midgets. Most leaders find themselves in conflict with their times because they become either reactionaries trying to resurrect the past or visionaries whose aim exceeds their grasp; Diefenbaker suffered the rare distinction of being both. His intellect was firmly frozen in another time-, his heart was an open city. 9 10 Renegade in Power Born only four years after Sir John A. Macdonald's death, he spanned most of Canada's modern history. He could draw on memories of times when the Red River carts still creaked along the Carlton Trail and buffalo bones littered the prairies. During a 1962 campaign stop at Melville, Saskatchewan, I happened to be standing behind him as he asked a group of oldtimers in what year they had come west. When the eldest replied, "April of 1903," a delighted Diefenbaker shot back, "We came in August!" No Canadian politician ever rose so steadily through a succession of defeats. He was soundly beaten in five election campaigns (including an abortive attempt in 1933 to become mayor of Prince Albert) before finally squeaking into the House of Commons as a member of the Conservative Opposition in 1940. Always the outsider, he seemed to thrive on rejection. After being trounced in a token run for the Pc party leadership against George Drew in 1948, he wrote in his diary: "On the night of Drew's victory, I went up to his suite in the Chateau Laurier. They were celebrating. I was an intruder. I walked into that gathering to congratulate him and it was as if an animal not customarily admitted to homes had suddenly entered the place." Driven by the compulsions of his self-imposed destiny, he won many converts on his endless circuit of speechmaking across the country. But inside the Conservative party hierarchy he was dismissed as "the Bolshevist from the West" while the Liberals harassed him by redistribu- ting his seat out of existence. But Diefenbaker knew how to wait and he had a nose for power. In 1956 he fooled the pundits by capturing the Tory leadership and the following year managed to scrape together the minority that made him Canada's thirteenth prime minister, a mandate confirmed by his 1958 sweep. Elections can savage a man's pride and poise, but Diefenbaker loved to campaign - and never more so than in 1958. He decided to transform himself into an incarnation of the Canada he knew. Asylums are full of people who imagine themselves to be Napoleon or Christ, but New Introduction to the 1989 Edition 11 Diefenbaker persisted in his aim of becoming a personification of the national will. Trumpeting his "Vision" of Northern development, he went on a charismatic rampage that left his audiences quivering with excitement. On election night Diefenbaker won 208 seats, wiping out the Liberals in six provinces. It was the largest mandate ever given a Canadian prime minister. Even though his French couldn't get him past a Berlitz receptionist, Quebec accorded him 62 per cent of its votes -just one point behind true-blue Ontario. In the golden months that followed, Diefenbaker seemed less a politician than a force of nature. But he took office at the age of sixty-one, too late to erase the habits of all those lonely years as a struggling defence attorney in the tomorrow country of northern Saskatchewan. His magnificent victory at the polls condemned him to a permanent sense of anticlimax; he interpreted the people's acclaim as-adequate proof of his greatness and became intoxicated with the trappings rather than the substance of his office. It was not power but the absence of power that corrupted him. He had spent thirty-seven long years in the political wilderness, denied what he felt to be his rightful place. Once he was in power, all that apartness and all that contempt simmered up to dominate his every act. He gave Canadians a leadership cult without leadership. His government initiated many enlightened measures, but as prime minister Diefenbaker remained stubbornly preoccupied with settling old scores. No imagined insult was small enough to claim his forgiveness. Before he became prime minister, Diefenbaker had heard his party vilified so often for being too cautious that once in authority he indulged freely in the populist radicalism that was his natural instinct. He had become convinced during the droughts of the 1930s in Saskatchewan that the economically underprivileged can help themselves only through collective political action. That conviction found its expression in his concept of social justice, based on the commendable notion that every 12 Renegade in Power Canadian had the right to expect equality of opportunity. During its six years in office, his administration spent almost as much money as all federal governments between Confederation and 1946 (including the cost of two world wars) in a wild outpouring of programs designed to improve Prairie opportunities, help develop the North, as well as assist farmers, fishermen, and other low-income groups. Instead of advancing any set of identifiable principles, Diefenbaker's brand of politics turned out to be little more than a drawn-out sequence of morality plays staged to combat imagined forces threatening his downfall. Whether his audience filled a tiny Legion hall in northern Saskatchewan or an auditorium at one of the thirty-five universities that granted him honorary degrees, he used every public occasion to hurl defiance at the nameless adjudicators of Canadian society's great power blocs. He thus cornered himself in the trap of demanding to be loved for the enemies he had made. A POLITICAL FAITH THAT PURPORTS to shape events must accept the limitations of the real world, reconciling itself to a tedious study of detail, acknowledging that public policy requires the imposition of political will on practical circumstances. John Diefenbaker subscribed to no such conventional doctrines. He turned the Progressive Conservative party into a front organization for his personal crusades, being more anxious to dominate its outposts and unbalance its rebels than to resolve actual issues of state. He was less interested in governing than in prevailing, and echoed with fervour the cri de coeur of Fran~ois Guizot, the French historian-diplomat: "How ever much you abuse me, you will never reach the height of my disdain." John Diefenbaker was at his best among his own people on the prairies, where he campaigned on every conceivable occasion whether or not there happen4 to be an election in the offing. He would turn on his audiences like New Introduction to the 1989 Edition 13 some medieval necromancer dispensing rhetorical fire, with energy born of gloating would dance out his joy at the wickedness of his political opponents. When he accused the Liberals of "shedding tears of falsehood," his audiences knew exactly what he meant, and when he confessed that his errors as prime minister were "mistakes of the heart," they rushed to forgive him. His language was a splendid artifice, a wash of words fanfaring his message in the biblical cadence of Southern camp meetings, where the language of exhortation plays better than logical discourse. "Join with me," he would plead, "join with me to catch the vision of men and women who rise above these things that ordinarily hold you to the soil. Join with me to bring about the achievement of that Canada, One Canada, the achievement of Canada's destiny!" And never was there a more perfect voice for a demagogue, its reverberations awakening echoes in every heart tumid with unrequited desire. But all that thunder had little to do with the art of governing the country, and it gradually became clear that Diefenbaker viewed legislation more as a posture than a process; his government never demonstrated any clear purpose except the retention of power. In every election after 1958, Diefenbaker found himself pursued across the hustings by a political ghost: himself. His most potent competitor became the John Diefenbaker who had created the closest thing Canada has ever had to a mass political movement. Like any virtuoso with a distinctive personal style, the Tory chief was measured not so much against his opponents as against his younger self and the unique vitality he had once possessed. His administration's final collapse in 1963 (with seventeen ministers leaving through various exits during its last ten months) was like the ruin of some great papier-mdch6 temple built for a Hollywood spectacular when the rains come down and wash the whole Technicolor mess into the sea. By the time Diefenbaker had lost the last election as leader in 1965, his once-great Conservative party had been 14 Renegade in Power hived into a coalition of the discontented and the dispossessed, with only one Tory m.p. surviving in the fifty constituencies of Canada's three largest cities. None of this particularly humiliated the Man from Prince Albert. Politics is a process of elimination, but John Diefenbaker refused to be eliminated. For him, still being around provided enough proof of his importance. In the last decade of his life Diefenbaker moved off into a private world, becoming a figment of his own imagination. The starved topography of his face illuminated the nation's TV screens as he gloomed about whatever was happening at the time. But the humour still occasionally bubbled up. He would tell his Prince Albert cronies, for instance, about Pierre Trudeau's swimming pool: "He's a great swimmer; a great athlete. But just after construction finished he got stuck on some of the underwater furniture. Standing alongside, looking down at him, was a chap with a sign of LIFEGUARD on his hat. Trudeau finally got out and said, 'Aren't you the lifeguard here? Why didn't you help meT "'I can't swim.' "'How the griggins did you get the appointmentT "'I want you to understand I'm bilingual!"' Diefenbaker's partisan fevers never subsided. In late 197 1, he was suddenly taken ill during a visit to Wales, and Trudeau extended the courtesy of sending a government jet to bring him home. The ex-prime minister was loaded aboard on a stretcher, but during the journey the attending doctor filled him with six pints of blood and so many iron pills that by the time the plane landed in Ottawa the old man was able to stride aggressively down the ramp. He immediately called a press conference to attack the Liberals' extravagant spending habits - especially their perni6ous use of government planes for private trips. Through Diefenbaker's long career and longer life-span it was always possible to admire the man's instincts without respecting his record. His was the most primitive of partisanships, but he shattered countless Canadian politi- New Introduction to the 1989 Edition 15 political traditions: the belief that the Conservative party was an instrument of Toronto's Bay Street, the longaccepted convention that political leaders in this country should talk grey and act neutral, and the very notion that prime ministers must lick the velvet hand of the Canadian Establishment. RENEGA DE IN PO 1iTR was never meant to be a definitive study of John Diefenbaker's career, only a personal and emphatically unauthorized assessment of his reign. For information I relied on my own observations, on the notes I made during nearly a thousand interviews, and on several private sessions John Diefenbaker was kind enough to grant me to deal with queries arising from my book. (This does not imply that he subscribed in any way to what I wrote in the pages that follow.) I was, and am, all too aware that by catching history on the run in this manner, unavoidable omissions and premature judgements affected some of my conclusions. But I set down this chronicle because I believed it would be wrong to allow the record of the astounding politician who was my subject to be obscured by the benign cloak of neglect drawn around some of his predecessors. When I moved to Ottawa in the summer of 1957 as a correspondent for Afaclean~, I had no fixed political affiliation. though I was buoyed up by the great expectations the Conservative leader had roused in the country. By the end of Diefenbaker's time in office I still had no fixed political affiliation. I made only one claim for Renegade in Power, that it would serve as a distillation of all the frantic elements - some obvious, some still obscure -that made up the Diefenbaker Years. Renegade in Power does not pretend to be history. It is journalism. History is a much loftier affair. History requires perspective, the distance in time that allows an academic historian to reduce many diverse trends into some kind of unified whole, relating all the vital movements of an epoch to one another. Journalism, written 16 Renegade in Power while the reporter is moving with the advancing edge of the present, on the other hand, offers few definitive conclusions. The difference between the journalist and the historian is the difference between a war correspondent who is at the fighting front, sending back dispatches on the course of a battle, and the historian who records, with the bloodless neutrality of retrospect, what happened and why. The validity of books such as Renegade in Power lies in the fact that important political events should be recorded from a contemporary viewpoint in addition to being reconsidered or revalued decades later. As T.H. White, the American chronicler of presidential campaigns, once remarked, "history written later isn't necessarily better history. It's just different history. Each generation re-writes history in terms of its own preoccupations and problems." Journalism does not compete with history. The historian performs the valuable function of interpreting the past to interested contemporaries; the journalist interprets the present in the hope of casting some light on the future. The journalist, unlike the historian, is not a dispassionate chronicler of events; he is a sharer in the experiences of the times. Not for him the silent sleuthing after the years that separate him from his material. Trapped in the turmoil of the moment, he transmits to posterity the raw emotions that have buffeted him. The 1962 election campaign described in this book, for example, will be dismissed by historians as an event of little consequence, since few seats changed hands. But they didn't spend six weeks on John Diefenbaker's campaign train as I did, jolting into small Prairie towns at twenty-minute intervals. I remember the little Kiwanis Club bands on the station platforms playing "Rule, Britannia!" I recall the old pioneers exchanging anecdotes with Diefenbaker, crying as the train pulled out - crying not so much for a man they admired as for themselves, because their way of life was on its way out, and even though they had built this country, they now felt irrelevant and lost. New Introduction to the 1989 Edition 17 Viewing such events, the scholar, all passion spent, in calm command of the historical realities, will paint quite a different picture. The passage of time will give him the long view he needs for objective analysis. But he will not have tasted the noises, the smells, and,the tensions of the events themselves. Wanting to be thorough in my research, I decided to have my hair cut by John Diefenbaker's favourite barber during one of my trips to Prince Albert. This intrepid bit of investigation yielded no pearl of insight into Mr. Diefenbaker's character. All the barber said was, "Well, John's always treated me right" - and it wasn't much of a haircut either. Fortunately some of my other sources proved more productive. Since writing Renegade in Power a quarter of a century ago, I have had little reason to change my assessment of John Diefenbaker, though I have had to modify the somewhat breathlessly idealistic expectations I had of anyone foolhardy enough to crave Canada's highest political office. In retrospect, it now seems clear that many of the failings I ascribed to Diefenbaker should, more fairly, be blamed on the dreadfully difficult situation in which he found himself (and which persists for every other Canadian head of government) - always having to reach out for just enough authority to hold back the constant forces of change threatening to overwhelm the office. When Renegade was published, Diefenbaker dismissed it by telling inquiring journalists he "hadn't read it yet." Some of his supporters, notably Senator David Walker, responded by attacking my integrity and intentions while not challenging the book's specific points. Others, Northern Affairs Minister Walter Dinsdale among them, quarrelled with statements of fact, but nothing that was said or written managed to discredit any substantial sections of the Diefenbaker story as I had recorded it. (The Honourable Mr. Dinsdale complained that I had been wrong when I referred to his part-time activity of playing second cornet with the Ottawa band of the Salvation 18 Renegade in Power Army; he issued a press release stating he had played first cornet.) John Diefenbaker himself promised a reply to my criticisms in his own memoirs, which turned out to be wellwritten and fascinating volumes. But once again, instead of challenging my contentions head on, he dismissed much of my text as merely a confirmation that during his time in power he had suffered from "a journalistic conspiracy in which Newman and Madean~ were leading participants." WHEN A GREAT MAN DIES, some promise of a country's life is buried with him. That sentiment was most dramatically caught in the terse obituary haughtily declaimed over French national television in 197o by President Georges Pompidou: "General de Gaulle is dead. France is a widow." On August 16, 1979, when John Diefenbake r died, Canada was not a widow, but we were no less bereaved. His passing begged to be taken more as a symbol than as an event. We mourned his death as we might grieve the loss of our youth, for a way we were and would never be again. When I heard the news that he had willed that his body be carried by train across the country he loved, my first reaction was to recall a phrase from the official program of Sir Winston Churchill's funeral, designating how his body was to travel on a funeral barge down the Thames "with pomp of waters, unwithstood." Somehow, that description fitted perfectly The Chief's own final journey as his unrepentant remains were borne from Ottawa to Saskatoon covered by the Red Ensign he had fought so hard to preserve. My second reaction was to relive in my mind the five elections I had covered from aboard the Diefenbaker train, tumbling through the night in a press car filled with the noise of typewriters and tinkling glasses. I particularly remember the 1965 campaign, which no one believed he could win. Diefenbaker kept searching for some totem to New Introduction to the 1989 Edition 19 further his fortunes. When a supporter in Richmond Hill, Ontario, gave him a canary, he spent hours coaxing the bird to sing, convinced that this was the omen he had been waiting for. The bird just sat there staring back at him. But a week before polling day, when Diefenbaker's back was turned, a railway steward took pity on him and did a passable canary imitation. Diefenbaker got very excited, and from that point his energies were noticeably boosted. He was at his best moving through the knots of Prairie farmers who turned out everywhere to greet him, looking into men's eyes and women's feelings, absorbing their sense of shared loneliness, the fear of living at the margin of things. Out there among his own people, The Chief became an icon - the breathing embodiment of a simpler age when God was alive and one man's courage could still change history. When we stopped briefly at Morse, Saskatchewan, a band of local musicians was on the platform, serenading Diefenbaker with their ragged version of "The Thunderer." None of us could file our stories because the telegrapher was playing drums. Later that day an old man sat by the tracks and, as the Diefenbaker train rattled by, held up a hand-lettered sign in the twilight that read: "JOHN, YOULL NEVER DIE." He was fight. Peter C. Newman Cordova Bay, B.C. August 1989 Prologue THE SOMETIMES MYSTERIOUS and always unpredictable alchemy of democratic politics has produced few more enigmatic personalities than John George Diefenbaker, the small-town lawyer who governed that thirteenth of the earth's surface which is Canada, between June 21, 1957, and April 22, 1963. No other Canadian politician in this century could claim the emotional conquest of a generation; yet no prime minister ever disillusioned his disciples more. John Diefenbaker had a large, abiding love for his country. He gave prodigious energy to his office and tried hard to bring the federal administration into a more meaningful relationship with the average citizen. Yet he only rarely had the courage to follow his privately held convictions. The right instincts were in him, but throughout his stormy stewardship, they languished in the cupboard of his soul. He gave the people a leadership cult, without leadership. IN HIS HUSTINGS CRUSADES Of 1957 and 1958, when he was swept into power with the largest mandate ever accorded a Canadian prime minister, John Diefenbaker seemed to be that rare kind of political leader who cared passionately about the fate of his people. He reached out and stirred in the voters a feeling of trust. His magnificent campaigns turned the nation into one vast constituency. 21 22 Renegade in Power The elections took on the form of plebiscites, for or against the bountiful, glorious, trouble-free future he was promising. Canadian voters thought they recognized in the outraged advocate from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, a man aspiring to become a leader with the clear sense of mission of a Winston Churchill or a Franklin Roosevelt. But once he was in office, something went terribly wrong. Elected as a spiritual leader at a time of growing national self-doubt, John Diefenbaker turned out to be not a spiritual leader at all, but a renegade in power -a renegade both to his own cause and to the greater aspirations of the nation he was meant to be governing. He interpreted the people's splendid acclaim of him as adequate proof of his greatness and became intoxicated with the authority of his office. He behaved as if he were the sacrosanct head of a people's government and tended to view events at home and abroad in black and white terms, depending on their appropriateness to his scheme of things. In the process, he ran against the grain of what was happening in his time, and got caught in the trap of trying to fight history. By enlisting the proffered energies of Ottawa's senior civil servants, Diefenbaker might have been able to carry forward the momentum of his electoral triumphs into the kind of leadership needed to burst the bonds of the nation's narrowing economic milieu. But instead, he refused to trust the bureaucrats, because they had been appointed by his Liberal predecessors, and fell back to relying for advice on the political hacks who sought his favours. These men were sensitive to the problem of con- tinued incumbency, and little else. No previous Canadian regime prompted such extreme reactions. David Walker, the Toronto lawyer who served as his minister of Public Works for three years, called Diefenbaker "the saviour of Canada." Joey Smallwood, the Liberal premier of Newfoundland, compared his administration to "the Great Plague, the Black Death." Neither verdict seemed justified. During their six years Prologue 23 in power, the Conservatives amply demonstrated their ability to operate some government departments far more imaginatively than their Liberal predecessors. Agriculture and Northern Affairs under Alvin Hamilton, Justice under Davie Fulton, Trade and Commerce under George Hees, Public Works under Howard Green, National Revenue under George Nowlan, and Post Office under Bill Hamilton, all flourished in the Diefenbaker Years. But no cabinet can advance very far beyond its head. And instead of providing the kind of imaginative direction he had been elected to give, John Diefenbaker became preoccupied with the personal stature he could extract from his position. His record suggests that despite a lifetime spent in trying furiously to become prime minister of Canada, the man from Prince Albert had not the least inkling of what he wanted to do when he achieved that high office, and was rendered impotent by the magnitude of the claim it places upon its incumbent. Overly concerned with maintaining his personal popularity, Diefenbaker appeared to be frightened of using his majority in the House of Commons to legislate the many unpopular measures the country so desperately needed. He seemed to forget that this was exactly the purpose of the mandate he had been given, and attempted to substitute breathless, short-run policies designed to discharge his election promises. While he did honour most of the specific pledges made on the hustings, the nation's basic difficulties were hopelessly compounded. Successful prime ministers of Canada have always made a virtue of their dependence on the people. But John Diefenbaker tried to respond to every gust of public opinion and the result, inevitably, was administrative chaos. He seemed incapable of distinguishing between what is essential and what is trifling in the discharge of political power. He lacked that attribute essential to leadership, once described by Walter Lippmann as "the ability to see what matters in the excitement of daily events." 24 Renegade in Power Constantly cultivating the mystery and isolation of a great man in the service of a consuming mission, Diefenbaker in his approach to politics nevertheless remained disdainfully narrow. He acted as if he believed that the nation was divided into inert blocs of voters whose loyalties could be secured with the appropriate political offering. He tried to reduce complicated national issues to memorable slogans - the Vision, the National Development Policy, Unhyphenated Canadianism, the Confederation Platform, the Five-Year Plan, the Bill of Rights, proCanadianism - then represented himself as having a personal monopoly over the undeniably good things for which they stood. The most successful of Canada's past prime ministers -Sir John A. Macdonald, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Mackenzie King - were vastly different personalities, but they had this in common: each man overshadowed his own party and became the unifying symbol to the nation at large. John Diefenbaker also overshadowed his party, but he became a divisive rather than a unifying influence. He could not rid himself of the distrust he felt for the nation's economic, social, and cultural Establishment, and he never even tried to comprehend the aspirations of contemporary French Canada. As the leader of a Prairie protest movement that managed to become national, the man from Prince Albert transformed the character of Canadian Conservatism. Throughout the Diefenbaker Years - far above the level of public attention and largely obscured by the rush of events - a struggle raged within the Conservative Party between its established elements and the rude new forces trying permanently to reorient its hierarchy. The ordinary Canadian Tory, who believed that his party stood for individual responsibility, the British connection, and free enterprise, could hardly be blamed for sadly concluding that these ideals had been placed in greater danger by Diefenbaker's tenure than by the preceding two decades of Liberal administration. Prologue 25 Macdonald, Laurier, and King exploited the democratic limits of the prime ministership, without pretending they were zealous reformers. But Diefenbaker attempted to create an image of himself as a fearless purifier of the political process. He gave the nation a pragmatic administration which, in terms of spending, increased public service, and intrusion into society, became the most radical government Canada ever had. Yet in the dictionary meaning of "radical," as a man who wants to get to the root of things and make basic changes in society, he never came close to earning the label. If he was a radical at all, John Diefenbaker was something of a rhetorical radical, who couldn't live up to the extraordinary vision he had of himself. Instead of advocating a set of clear principles that might allay the puzzlement of ordinary people in mid-twentiethcentury Canada, Diefenbaker seemed bent on destroying whatever ideological boundaries remained between Canada's political parties. It was as if he deliberately wanted to turn election campaigns into popularity contests, trusting in his metaphysical rapport with "the average Canadian" to bring him victory. Diefenbaker gave the impression, particularly at election time, that he believed his authority was derived, not from his office but from the mystical contact he felt he had with the people. He saw himself as a genuine folk hero. On the hustings his words appeared to spring instinctively from him as he exulted in his dreams for Canada, all the while blazing away against invisible villains who, unlike himself, had little concern for the common man. Although he had spent much of his life appealing to and trying to become one with the average Canadian, his years in office changed Diefenbaker. In the 1962 election campaign, he was no longer a man of the people. He had become a man of power. He gave the impression of bending over from a great height, rather than talking to voters on their own level, eye to eye. The mood of the electorate had also changed. In the 26 Renegade in Power 1957 and 1958 campaigns, Canada's voters had been eager for the kind of Utopian administration Diefenbaker seemed to be promising. But in the sober circumstances of the 1962 election -after four long winters of unemployment, the vanishing Vision, the debacle of the Coyne affair, and Canada's plummeting prestige abroad - they had become disillusioned and frightened. The veneration that had been accorded to Diefenbaker turned into dismay. By the constant overstatement of his case, the Conservative leader's appeal ran into the law of diminishing returns and multiplying public cynicism. To the unsympathetic, no matter how eloquent or impassioned he became, Diefenbaker sounded a little like an aging actor rendering his i, io6th performance of Hamlet, trying to breathe life into a too often repeated soliloquy that he could no longer really believe in. By the time he had been forced into the 1963 election, Diefenbaker's indecision and mismanagement had been publicly revealed by his inability to reach a sensible defence policy and by the disintegration of his cabinet. He had compromised so many convictions during six years of power that he no longer seemed to have any clear idea himself of the kind of future he was offering his followers. Sensing this, even some of his most loyal disciples began to regard him as a man to be cherished for his symbolic value, rather than for his capabilities as prime minister. There was, in the end, little logic or structure in his appeal beyond that of a man trying to vindicate himself. A self-charmed politician, John Diefenbaker foundered because he couldn't help believing his own legend. PART I Assumption of Power ONE The Tory Tornado THE DIEFENBAKER Years were a time not so much of broken promises as of shattered national expectations. But the central mystery of this period in Canadian history remains. How was it possible that John Diefenbaker, who had excited a political response in a larger proportion of Canadians than any politician before him, could leave the abiding impression of having headed a government which never achieved any clear purpose except to retain power? The tragedy of missed opportunity, which characterized the Diefenbaker Years, found its most poignant expression in the man himself. John Diefenbaker tried to administer his country by imposing the instincts of a humanitarian statesman on the administrative skills of backwoods barrister. This proved to be an unsettling combination that had many Canadians asking themselves the same question about the politician from Prince Albert which Adlai Stevenson posed, during the 1956 American election campaign, about Richard Nixon: "This is a man of many masks -who can say they have seen his face?" John Diefenbaker was at once sentimental and distinctly clear-eyed. There was in him an attitude of urgent personal assertiveness. Yet he suffered from an almost morbid reluctance to make decisions. He was the most approachable Canadian ever to occupy the office of prime minister. Yet he had few intimate friends. His outward 29 30 Assumption of Power bearing was one of easy confidence. Yet he continually suspected dark plots were being planned against him and once spent an hour explaining to a casual acquaintance that he would probably be the first Canadian prime minister assassinated in office. He was a stickler for protocol and at times insatiably vain. Yet he could be genuinely humble in exercising the privileges of his office. (He flew into a rage at the 196 1 convocation of Memorial University in Newfoundland, where he was receiving an honourary degree, because Eleanor Roosevelt, representing the President of the United States, was accidentally given precedence over him. Yet in 1958 when he unexpectedly brought Prime Minister Harold Macmillan of Britain and Chancellor of the Exchequer Selwyn Lloyd to his official residence. following a formal function at Government House, instead of summoning one of his four servants, he called up to his wife: "Olive, these boys down here are hungry. What have we got in the refrigerator?") He was a supremely able actor who could completely immerse himself in the role of the moment, as when reviewing guards of honour, he would keep his thumbs pressed down on closed fists according to the World War I military manual. Yet at times he could be quite insensitive to the feelings of those around him, as, for instance, on a Friday night in the winter of ig6i, when he invited a leading Quebec City Conservative to his suite at the Chateau Frontenac Hotel, and became annoyed because his guest would not break his religious habit to eat thefilet mignon the Prime Minister had ordered for him. A childless man with a strong sense of lineage, Diefenbaker sought his fulfilment in a lifetime of service to Canada's Conservative Party. Yet his deepest feelings of personal bitterness were directed at his own political cohorts for choosing George Drew over him at the Party's 1948 leadership convention. In Fredericton, N.B., where he was accorded the wildest welcome of the 1958 campaign, with women clutching at his coat and gasping: "I touched him!", Diefenbaker reacted by turning to a friend The Tory Tornado 31 and saying bitterly: "I could have had all this in 1948, but for them." The obvious relish with which Diefenbaker wielded political command reflected his long struggle in its attainment. Unlike most Canadians in public life, he went into politics not by chance but by choice. It was a choice so stubbornly maintained that he was willing to spend fifteen long years in the scuffle of unsuccessful electoral combat before gaining political office of any kind, and a further sixteen years enduring the frustrations of an opposition backbencher before capturing national power. He was trounced twice, in 1925 and 1926, for the Prince Albert federal seat and beaten in the 1933 Prince Albert mayoralty campaign. In 1929 and 1938 he lost his bids to get into the Saskatchewan legislature, and it wasn't until 1940 that he accidently won the nomination for the Lake Centre constituency and got into the House of Commons. He was beaten twice, in 1942, and 1948, for the leadership of the Conservative Party and twice, in 1943 and 195 3, for the Party's House leadership, before he was picked as something of a caretaker leader in December 1956. Alone confident that he would actually achieve his lifelong dream of becoming prime minister, Diefenbaker fought the 1957 federal election campaign virtually on metaphysical grounds, insisting to his multiplying audiences that he had "an appointment with destiny." When he won against odds that look impossible even in retrospect, he must have felt that his life had led him to this moment. How else was it possible to explain the fact that if any one of his previous forays into politics had been a victory instead of a defeat, he would almost certainly never have become prime minister? If, as a neophyte lawyer, he had succeeded in winning the Prince Albert seat in the federal elections of 1925 or 1926, when the Conservative Party was run by such giants as Arthur Meighen and R. B. Bennett, Diefenbaker would probably have been remembered only as an obscure minister in Bennett's Depression cabinet. If he had not lost the 32 Assumption of Power provincial seat of Prince Albert in 1929, he might have been tarred for life by his association with J. T. M. Anderson's administration and its uninvited support from the Ku Klux Klan. If he had carried his home-town mayoralty in 1933 (he lost by forty-eight votes), he'd possibly not be remembered at all, except by a few of the city's older inhabitants as the best mayor Prince Albert ever had. If as leader of the Saskatchewan Conservative Party in 1938 he had won his Arm River seat he might have survived no more than a few years in provincial opposition to the ruthless Liberal machine established by Jimmy Gardiner. If he had succeeded in his bid for the national leadership in 1942, he might have taken the place of John Bracken in his six-year march to oblivion as leader of a party that had not changed itself enough to follow a Prairie radical - even as moderate a one as poor Bracken. If Diefenbaker had won out over Gordon Graydon for the Tory House leadership in 1943, to fill in before Bracken could get a seat, he might have had a better chance of defeating George Drew at the party's 1948 leadership convention, and would then have been free to flounder before the political strength of Louis St Laurent in the 1949 and 1953 campaigns. No Canadian politician before him ever rose so steadily through a succession of personal humiliations. But John Diefenbaker knew how to wait and and he had a nose for power. In his dramatic upset of the Liberals in 1957, a lifetime of repeated political failure in the face of consummate political desire was suddenly justified. It was little wonder, therefore, that John Diefenbaker interpreted his electoral victory as being due to some greater providence than personal ambition, guiding his career to save him for the 1957 campaign, when he was exactly the right man contesting the right office at the right moment. DURING THE DIEFENBAKER YEARS the majority of Canadians never saw the Prime Minister Ottawa insiders gradually came to know. Most people saw him only as a televi- The Tory Tornado 33 sion performer or as a campaigner during general elections. He was supremely effective in both roles. The daily cycle of Diefenbaker's incredibly energetic election campaigning was set up to allow him maximum time for meeting his fellow Canadians. To every person pushed by the crowds to within range of his handshake, he'd give for however brief a moment his full attention. He would look straight into a face as if determined never to forget it, firmly grasp the outstretched hand, and move on. This dervish of democracy, which caused his aides to slump with exhaustion, left him still functioning at the end of the longest day, a vibrant political organism. He was at his best on the speaker's platform. He knew how to give himself to a crowd and how to sense its resonance to whatever he was saying. While his opponent, Liberal Leader Lester Pearson, carefully plodded through prepared texts, anxious "to get things on the record," Diefenbaker brushed aside his notes to exploit brilliantly the emotions of the moment. He would grip the lectern and lean into his audience. Then, with his head bouncing to emphasize every fourth syllable and his forefinger angrily stabbing at the crowd, he'd exhort the people to vote against the evil Grits. His speeches sounded much better than they read. His rococo style of oratory defied proper syntax. He often left sentences dangling and occasionally resorted to galloping non sequiturs ("You ask me about the Common Market? I'll tell you about our plans to open our northern fron- tiers!"); mixed metaphors ("This ceremony today marks another milestone in the unifying crucible of Canadian history"); endless repetition ("They said it couldn't be done . . . "); pretentious diction ("I am one of those who over the years . . . "); rare words ("It is very difficult for the prime minister to bifurcate himself"); unclassifiable grammar ("In the event that this eventuality should be eventuated . . . "); imaginary historical quotations ("I say, using Cromwell's words: 'do something to assure Canada 34 Assumption of Power legislation that we will pass ... and endless sentences.* The most damning description of Diefenbaker's assaults on language was in a Commons speech by Alistair Stewart, the Socialist m.P. for Winnipeg North on January 3, 1958. "The relationship between the Prime Minister and the clicM," said Stewart, "is not that between master and servant; it is that of master and slave, because he beats these clich6s and bruises them, sets them dangling before us, and then, having bludgeoned them with such violence, he buries their bleeding bodies in the pages of Hansard. If we want to find out what has been happening, we have to disinter these victims of verbosity and when we conduct a post mortern we find that nothing has been happening." Diefenbaker himself explained his unusual speech habits in an interview with Val Sears, Ottawa Bureau Chief of the Toronto Star, during the 1963 campaign: "You know," he confided, "sometimes I think of a clever phrase during a speech and I start to say it and then I stop and think 'that's taking me down a road I don-'t want to go' so I change direction, or don't finish the sentence. That way, they can't pin me down. They say: 'Diefenbaker * Reporting to the House of Commons, July i 1, 1958, on the visit to Ottawa by President Dwight Eisenhower: I must say that during the course of the three days I was more than ever impressed with the very reasonable and co-operative attitude that was taken to assure that at ail times anything that takes place in the economic field which might conceivably cause difficulty to either of our countries will to the limit of our respective capacities be resolved to the end that our unity shall be main- tained, and that in whatever we do there will always be full realization on the part of each of us that in taking our individual courses as individual nations every regard and respect will be paid to the fullest consideration that nothing that is done shall detrimentally affect the other country and that indeed we now approach an era internationally where it becomes more important than ever before that the nations of the free world must in the interests of survival itself, bring about economic changes in unity that might fifteen or twenty years ago have been regarded as impossible of achievement." The Tory Tornado 35 said so-and-so,' and they go and look it up and there's a turn somewhere. They can't catch me out." Diefenbaker's hustings orations were seldom drafted in advance. His assistants would compile a dozen or so memoranda on topics the Prime Minister had suggested, and place draft remarks in a blue file folder. Diefenbaker would then pick four or five of the subjects, according to his assessment of audience reaction, and hammer away with no attempt logically to link one section with the next. He had little respect for statistics. He nearly always used correct figures, but placed them in a context so favourable to his case that they became meaningless. During the winter of i 96o-6 i, when the number of jobless Canadians reached 9.o8 per cent of the labour force, Diefenbaker made many speeches claiming that unemployment had in fact been higher under Liberal regimes. In Fredericton, on December to, for instance, at a dinner in honour of Hugh John Flemming, the new minister of forestry, he said: "When the Liberals talk about unemployment, they do not talk about their own record in this regard. The reason is quite obvious when we look at the figures. The facts are that except for the war and immediate postwar period, unemployment in Canada was higher in almost every year of Liberal government than it is today." To demonstrate that unemployment had indeed been worse under the Liberals, Diefenbaker had to reach back to the years 193639 *, when Canada was struggling out of the Depression -hardly a valid comparison. At a Conservative meeting in Edmonton, on February 28, 1962, while summing up the economic advances made during his administration, Diefenbaker stated that "corporation profits are Up 22 per cent [since 1956] and unless the corporations make * From 1940 to 1958 the average percentage of the Canadian labour force unemployed, according to the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, did not rise above 4.6 per cent. During the Diefenbaker Years, it did not drop below 5.9 per cent. 36 Assumption of Power profits, there are no jobs." To arrive at that comparison, the Prime Minister had to exclude dividends worth $437 millions paid to non-residents in the 1956 figure and include these dividend payments worth $536 millions in the 196 1 figure, and the entire calculation had to be based on corporate profits before taxes. If the comparison had been carried out using figures after taxes, which is the amount of profit left to corporations, and the non-resident payments had been either included or excluded in both sets of figures, Diefenbaker would have had to admit that corporate profits had actually dropped by 5.4 per cent and not, as he was claiming, increased by 22 per cent. On less public occasions, when he was among friends, this kind of rhetoric was completely abandoned. For hours at a time, Diefenbaker became a charming raconteur, particularly when describing the inelegant political mores of the Prairies during the 'twenties and 'thirties. He loved to recount how he had lost his Saskatchewan teacher's certificate when an inspector caught him shooting gophers during school hours, and how he had slept "in almost every haystack in Saskatchewan" during the summer he spent as a travelling book salesman. His wit lacked the rueful self-deprecating quality that marks the quips of the intellectual, but his was a spontaneous sense of humour. On June 27, 1959, a call was erroneously put through the East Block switchboard, directly to his local. Without pausing to hear who was at the other end of the line, the caller demanded: "Are you the lady who wanted the fan?" Diefenbaker recovered instantaneously. "Who do you think I am?" he shot back, "Sally Rand?" and hung up with a chuckle. In private company, Diefenbaker loved to perform animated and excellent impersonations of the booming bass baritone of former Tory Prime Minister R. B. Bennett, the penguin-like posturing of J. W. Pickersgill, his most ferocious Liberal opponent, and the Oxbridge mannerisms of Michael Barkway, his most effective critic among the capital's news commentators. But he was at his best telling The Tory Tornado 37 anecdotes about Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister and Diefenbaker's official hero. As those who either sat beside him at official functions or chatted informally with him at other occasions could testify, Diefenbaker would use the remotest gambit to recount, with charm and gusto, a Macdonald story. His favourite anecdote concerned a stubborn, retired British officer from Lanark County in eastern Ontario named Colonel Playfair, who had repeatedly pestered Sir John A. with requests to be appointed construction superintendent of a government road being built near his home. As his letters were no longer being answered, the Colonel came to Ottawa and insisted that the Prime Minister be called out of cabinet to see him. Macdonald emerged smiling. "God bless my soul, Colonel Playfair, is that you?" he said warmly. "We have just been discussing in council a military matter that we cannot decide. Now you, with your great military experience and your memories of Salamanca and Talavera, will surely be able to solve the question." The Colonel, looking pleased and appropriately grave, didn't notice that the Prime Minister was edging back towards the Privy Council chamber. "The question is," Macdonald snapped at the surprised officerjust before slamming the door, "how many pounds of gunpowder put under a bull's tail would blow his horns oP" In recounting these anecdotes, Diefenbaker preferred to ignore Macdonald's affinity for the crock, except for repeating his rebuff to D'Arcy McGee, when that minister had been accused of drinking too much. "Look here, McGee," Macdonald was supposed to have said, "this government can't afford two drunkards. You've got to stop." Despite the eaae of manner that his humour seemed to The major source of Diefenbaker's Macdonald stories was The Anec dotal Lil~ o/Str John A. Macdonald by E. B. Biggar, given to him in 1937 by Leon Ladner, a Vancouver lawyer who became the Conservative Party's chief west-coast fund-raiser. 38 Assumption of Power indicate, Diefenbaker took the burden of his power seriously. He seldom allowed himself any recreation. In a telecast during the 1962 campaign, John Fisher, then Diefenbaker's chief personal aide, gave the first details of the Prime Minister's habits. "He loves TV, especially wres- tling," Fisher confided. "He's an ardent wrestling fan. He loves it. And circuses on TV - he doesn't get a chance to go to live circuses, but I do know he has a great passion for circuses and whenever he gets a chance, he watches them." Diefenbaker actually attended only one circus during his time in power. On August 26, 1957, he slipped into a box seat at the Canadian National Exhibition grandstand to watch the Ringling-Barnum-Bailey extravaganza. Otto Liebling, a clown from St. Louis, Missouri, dusted the Prime Minister's chair with exaggerated motions, and Diefenbaker loved it. He was less pleased when Liebling leaned close to him, and whispered: "Say, why don't you put another six cents on the dollar while I'm up here?" Aside from his fascination with TV wrestling, circuses, and fishing*, Diefenbaker had few diversions. He had no interest at all in music, art, literature, ballet, the theatre, or gourmet food. In New York, he fell asleep during the musical My Fair Lad ' v and, when reporters badgered Mrs Diefenbaker to tell them her husband's favourite food, she had no answer. Later, when she asked him, he hesitated for a while, then replied, "Oh yes, I know. Potatoes." Describing the qualities which in his opinion had moulded his brother's career, Elmer Diefenbaker told Jeannine Locke, of the Star Weekly, in a 1959 interview: "What impressed me in the old days - and still does - is the ability to keep his thinking unconfused by extraneous matters. He never followed art, for example, or music * Diefenbaker first learned to fish at the age of eleven when his father took him along to snare some goldeye on the North Saskatchewan. His pet spinning plug was something called a "blooper" - a gadget resembling a spider which bobbed realistically when drawn through the water -first demonstrated to him by President Eisenhower, during his visit to Ottawa in the summer of 1958. The Tory TornadO 39 although Father encouraged both of us to take piano lessons. He never had a passion for cars or tinkering with them -a car, even his first red Maxwell touring model, was just a means of getting from one place to another." Diefenbaker's single-minded quest for political success excluded even an ordinary preoccupation with financial security. One close acquaintance estimated that Diefenbaker never had more than $20,000 in his life. In the early 195o's he was offered a well-paid job in the legal department of the Chrysler Corporation of Canada, but he declined to leave public life. Without his active encouragement, some of his friends later banded together and collected money for the purchase of an annuity for him, so that financial problems would not stand in the way of his remaining in politics. His assumption of the prime ministership forced a fairly serious money problem on Diefenbaker, as it has on all Canadian politicians who were not rich before taking office. Throughout his term Diefenbaker was careful about accepting personal gifts that might imply an obligation to the donor. He did keep three boxes of kosher cookies sent to him by an admirer in Welland, Ontario, and some summer sausage from a farmer's wife at Leroy, Saskatchewan. But the Montreal industrialist who sent him a leather suitcase just before his 1958 world tour had it returned 11 with thanks for the courtesy of your gesture." To save money, Diefenbaker rented out his home at Prince Albert, and whenever he visited there lived in his private railway car. Although he could easily have charged most of his entertainment expenses at 24 Sussex Drive, his official residence, to the Conservative Party, he eschewed even this kind of financial help. The only expense he did allow the Party to pay was the $175-an-hour rental for the Department of Transport Viscount which flew him for occasional vacations to the Bahamas. After the j962 currency crisis forced his government to adopt stringent 40 Assumption of Power austerity measures, Diefenbaker personally ordered a $ i,ooo reduction in the operating subsidy of his residence, including a $300 cut in his food bills. His expense accounts while in office were astonishingly frugal. For a week-long state visit to Mexico, he submitted a personal bill Of$ 102.04; following a four-day sojourn in Washington he turned in a voucher for $5.68. IN HIS ATTITUDE TOWARD MONEY, in his deep resentment of Canada's Establishment, and in his approach to all the functions of his office, John Diefenbaker was never able to escape the imprint of his past. He was sworn into office at the age of sixty-one, too late to erase the habits of a lifetime spent as a criminal lawyer in the Canadian West.* His legal background showed itself even in his speech and posture. The dramatic swoop of pitch and volume in his voice was developed as a trial lawyer's trick to keep juries awake at long hearings. His stance in Parliament or on the election hustings was that of an attorney during his final summation - the right hand over the right kidney, pushing back the barrister's gown no longer there, while the left hand plucked at coat lapels, just where the black legal garment would fall open. Diefenbaker's impressive legal talents turned out to be both an advantage and a liability in the prime minister's office. Thanks to his training in mastering legal briefs, he had the faculty of grasping the essential meaning of documents with impressive ease. Because of his courtroom experience he could marshal arguments to lead logically forward to his clinching point, and present them with a criminal lawyer's unlimited capacity for believing what he wants to believe. But Diefenbaker's failure to pioneer any new, dynamic solutions to Canada's problems could also be blamed on his jury-lawyer approach. Law is a discipline that depends * Sir John A. Macdonald became prime minister at 52; Sir Wilffid Laurier at 54; Mackenzie King was onlY 47. The Tory TornadO 41 on established precedents; leadership feeds on bold innovations. As Prime Minister, Diefenbaker was not able to summon the energies of the nation to follow him in any new grand design for Canada, because to do so he would have had to repudiate the dependable political and economic axioms of the past. Instead, he treated most of the nation's difficulties like legal briefs -as though they could be disposed of by a forceful and reasonable presentation to Parliament, or in a television broadcast. Diefenbaker's dedication had been to the practice of criminal law. A criminal lawyer doesn't delegate authority, since he has no authority to delegate. He is a lone fox who must rely on his powers of persuasion to wrest a "not guilty" verdict from the jury. Much of his anger and indig- nation is simulated. Instead of attempting to prove that his client is an upright citizen, he usually depends on creating doubts about the prosecution's evidence. A cfiminal lawyer, too, can have his case remanded if he's not ready to proceed - a luxury seldom allowed prime ministers. John Diefenbaker came to the toughest job in the country without having worked for anyone but himself, without ever having hired or fired anyone, and without ever having administered anything more complicated than a walk-up law office. It was little wonder that as Prime Minister of Canada, the man from Prince Albert was replaying the only role he had ever mastered: that of an eloquent, underpaid defender of troubled underdogs in the courtrooms of dusty Prairie towns. TWO The Formative Years N EVERYTHING he did as Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker was profoundly affected by his family background, his Prairie upbringing, his experiences as a defence counsel in the rough tomorrow-country of northern Saskatchewan, and his sixteen-year-long struggle to capture leadership of the Conservative Party. In the old measure of family, Diefenbaker was among the least aristocratic of Canada's prime ministers. Like Mackenzie King, he was the inheritor of a certain political ambidexterity. He had ancestors on both sides in the Rebellion of 1837. His paternal forebears, who came to Upper Canada from Baden in south Germany, via the Netherlands, in 18 16, were Loyalists. His maternal greatgrandfather, who emigrated from the Scottish Highlands with Lord Selkirk in 1812, was a supporter of William Lyon Mackenzie's Reformers. John Diefenbaker's father, William Thomas Diefenbaker, was the son of George Diefenbaker who settled at Hawkesville, in Ontario's Waterloo County, and became a carriage-maker with an excellent local reputation. After he had qualified for his second-class teacher's certificate, William Dielenbaker was hired to instruct in an elementary school at Chesley, Ontario, where in 1894 he met and married Mary Florence Bannerman. She was a lively, upright, fiercely determined woman whose Scottish crofter ancestors had been members of Lord Selkirk's sec- 42 The Formative YearS 43 ond settlement expedition to Manitoba's Red River Colony. After spending three years in the western wilderness, the Bannermans joined an eastward trek to the Talbot Settlement near Lake Erie. In about 1820, they went to West Gwillimbury near York, which later became Toronto, and in 1855 moved to a farm at Port Elgin, Ontario, where Mary was raised. Her first son, John George Diefenbaker, was born on September 18, 1895, in a bleak, sandstone-brick house, on Lot 7, Barbara Street West, at Neustadt, a village in Ontario's Grey County, forty-four miles south of Owen Sound. Two years later, after the birth of their second son Elmer Clive, the Diefenbakers moved to Ontario County, north of Whitby, Ontario, and in igoo, to Todmorden, on the outskirts of Toronto, where the senior Diefenbaker taught at Plains Road School, and young John began his education. The father, a gentle bookish man who played the organ at the Todmorden Methodist Church, had taught the youngster to read before he went to school. In 1903, largely at the instigation of Mrs Diefenbaker, the family decided to seek greater opportunities in the opening up of the Canadian West. They journeyed westward at a time when Red River carts still creaked along the Battleford Trail and buffalo bones littered the horizonless prairie. Two years before Saskatchewan became a province, the Diefenbakers settled at Fort Carlton, eighty miles north of Saskatoon, where William Diefenbaker resumed teaching. Three years later, they moved to a quarter-section (16o acres) near Borden, Saskatchewan. The price of the new homestead was ten dollars, plus a pledge to live on the land for three years. The Diefenbak- ers put in the first wheat crop, built a comfortable sprucewood house, and William found a teaching job at the Mennonite settlement of Hoffnungsfeld. His brother Ed, also a teacher, soon joined them and took over the nearby school at Halcyonia, where young John attended. It was not an easy boyhood. The closest ice-cream parlour was nine miles away, the nearest movie house in 44 Assumption of Power Saskatoon. Mary Diefenbaker raised a few turkeys to supplement the family's teaching income of six hundred dollars a year. "In so far as my father was concerned," John Diefenbaker reminisced in later years, "the most important thing was the availability of worthwhile books, and it was in that atmosphere that I lived." By the light of a coaloil lamp, the future prime minister read G. A. Henty's historical adventure series, and the Encyclopedia of Biography. According to family legend, young John looked up from a book about Sir Wilfrid Laurier one night, and announced: "I'm going to be premier of Canada, some day." Of more immediate concern were the youngster's chores, which frequently included having to get up at four in the morning to take a wagonload of grain to Radisson, on the Saskatoon - North Battleford railroad line. He later recalled how the elevator buyers would try to cut the price below twenty-seven cents a bushel, by claiming the grain was damp. The most frightening incident of this period occurred on March i i, igog, when John had gone with his uncle Ed to HaIcyonia School for a minstrel show. Despite a raging blizzard, they left at io:oo p.m. for the three-and- a-half-mile ride home in a cutter, certain their horse would find the way. But the animal got lost and the pair had to spend the night huddled in the open sleigh. Both suffered frostbite. When John was not quite fifteen, the Diefenbakers decided to move into Saskatoon, which had just been picked as the site of the first Saskatchewan university, so that their sons could get a college education. The father was appointed to the Provincial Land Titles Office, and the family moved into a two-storey frame house at 4 11 Ninth Street, on the city's south side.* "I remember how, when we moved to Saskatoon, a gang of bullies used to pounce on us new boys on the way to * W. I Diefenbaker later became a federal customs officer. He retired from the government service in 1937, and died in 1945. Mrs. Diefenbaker The Formative Years 45 school," Elmer Diefenbaker reminisced in a 1959 interview with writer Jeannine Locke. "They fought with me twice a day, but soon learned to keep away from John. He gave one of them a licking. John was admired too for having walked the length of the Grand Trunk bridge on the railway track above the Saskatchewan River." The two boys earned extra money by hawking newspapers, and early on the morning Of July 29, 19 1 o, when Sir Wilfrid Laurier arrived in Saskatoon to lay the cornerstone of the University of Saskatchewan's new College Building, young John was down at the railway station and sold the Prime Minister a morning paper. Laurier paid him twenty-five cents, inquired about the youngster's business career, and expressed the hope that the boy would be a great man some day. "There we were," Diefenbaker loved to recall, "the Prime Minister of Canada and a newspaper boy. He told me something of his dreams for Canada and I told him of my youthful ideas." That afternoon, speaking at the university ceremony, Laurier remarked on the high calibre of local newsboys. "They certainly express themselves clearly and definitely," he said. "After I talked to a newsboy this morning, he told me: 'I can't waste any more time on you, Prime Minister. I must get about my wiork.' " Shortly afterwards John Diefenbaker almost gave up his ambition to enter university when a local bank manager offered to start him in a business career. But his mother firmly opposed the idea, and John returned to the Saskatoon Collegiate Institute for his matriculation. He was graduated with honours and recognition for having helped manage the senior basketball team, but without the gold continued to live in the Saskatoon home with her second son Elmer (who became a travelling representative for the Saskatchewan Retail Merchants Association) until 1957, when she entered hospital. She died at eightyeight, in 196 1. During her lifetime she exercised a tremendous influence over her son John. He wrote her every day after he became Prime Minister, keeping her informed of his every move. 46 Assumption of Power medal for oratory which had been his chief ambition. For weeks before the contest, he had rehearsed his speech, entitled "Canada's Future," in the empty school auditorium, with Uncle Ed offering critical comments from the back row, only to run second. He entered the University of Saskatchewan in 19 12 and received his degree four years later. Diefenbaker spent his vacations earning his tuition fees. During one season he taught Doukhobor children at Wheatheart School, near his former family homestead. The next summer, he and a friend bicycled through northern Saskatchewan trying to peddle copies of a virtually unsalable volume of illustrated Bible stories called The Chosen Word. At the university, Diefenbaker was something of a campus power, an associate editor of the student paper The Sheaf, a member of the Students' Representative Council, and a star of the debating team. The Sheaf once described his pet aversion as "sitting still at lectures." Although he was then courting Beulah Bridgeman, daughter of the local Baptist minister, he wasn't above participating in the occasional prank. At one dramatic performance in Saskatoon's Empire Theatre, Diefenbaker and a friend, who had smuggled in two roosters under their coats, let the birds go at intermission from the top balcony. The birds and the boys were both thrown out. The April 15, 1915, issue of The Sheaf, in a feature on the dreams of graduates, included a fantasy about those students who seemed to be headed for a political career: "[There was] Bob Grant explaining to a hostile House of Commons the necessity of raising another $ioo millions for defense purposes. Near him, Premier Sir A. L. Robinson was smiling across at J. G. Diefenbaker, leader of the Opposition, who was restraining himself with difficulty in the face of such an expenditure." Diefenbaker had earned his political reputation during the vigorous debates of the university model parliament, where the first resolution he The Formative Years 47 introduced urged the designation of Canadian citizenship, free from the verbal trappings of racial origin. Throughout much of his university period Diefenbaker had been a member of the local Officers' Training Corps and shortly after his graduation he was posted overseas as a lieutenant in the 19th Battalion, Saskatoon Fusiliers. He was stationed for a while at a British army camp in Shortcliffe and later at the Canadian Military School in Crowborough, Sussex, but the details of his military career are obscure. He seldom discussed his overseas experiences and consistently declined to wear his World War I service ribbons. After being invalided home in 1917, he returned to the University of Saskatchewan and in igig graduated with a Bachelor of Laws. When he had finished articling with Russell Hartney, E E MacDermid, and T. A. Lynd in Saskatoon, he established his own law office in Wakaw, a farming village of four hundred souls, forty-five miles south of Prince Albert. He lived at the home of George Moker, for $4o a month rent, and had his office in a small, tin-fronted building, later occupied by a meat market. In the evening he would sometimes attend the dances in the auditorium above the municipal hall and call on a girl who still remembers him as "a Baptist with Methodist feet." He bought a Maxwell touring car and on his excursions to Saskatoon occasionally squired Olive Freeman, the daughter of a Baptist minister. His law practice was successful from the start. During his first year, he handled sixty-two jury trials, winning about half of them. His first murder case, tried at Humboldt on his twenty-fourth birthday, involved the defence of a farmer accused of attempting to kill a neighbour with a shotgun. The farmer's only excuse was that he thought his victim was a wolf, and the judge issued a strong charge, all but directing the jury to convict. Instead, the verdict was not guilty. The astonished young lawyer met the jury foreman a few days later and asked him how the decision 48 Assumption of Power was reached. "Well," was the reply, "we talked it over, and somebody said: 'After all, it's the kid's first case.' Then somebody else said: 'And it's his birthday too!' That settled it. We all voted for acquittal." Most of Diefenbaker's legal successes were based on more solid grounds. He had a persuasive way with juries. "After the jury is selected," he once explained, "I focus attention on one person. I have a little chat with him - no exhortation or legal fireworks, but I attempt to speak to him in terms of reasonableness. Then I start on the second juror, and so on." He rarely called witnesses for the defence, thus avoiding rebuttal of defence evidence, and securing the last word for himself. Although his work in criminal trials gained him wide fame, he also fought many civil cases, some of which were recorded as precedents. Some forty of his cases were reported as presenting important points of jurisprudence. One of his most significant fights was Boutin et al. vs. Mackie, as recorded in the 1922 Western Weekly Reports. It involved a group of FrenchCanadian school trustees in the Etier School District who had been charged with "knowingly permitting the French language to be used as the general language of instruction contrary to the provisions of the School Act." The trustees had been convicted of an offence in the lower courts, but Diefenbaker appealed and had the conviction squashed. Having established a province-wide reputation after only three years in Wakaw, Diefenbaker moved to Prince Albert, which then had a population of twelve thousand, and entered a much more ambitious practice with two partners. The city had been founded as a Presbyterian Indian mission in 1866 by the Reverend James Nisbet, who named it after the Prince Consort and foresaw that it might some day reach a population of a hundred thousand. It grew as a lumbering, distribution, and mixedfarming centre, but never fulfilled the ambitions of its early settlers, The Formative Years 49 WHEN HE BEGAN LOOKING AROUND FOR A POLITICAL HABITAT in the early 192o's, Diefenbaker was faced by a difficult choice. The Prairie farmers had tried to form their own movement, the Progressive Party, but it had disappeared in Mackenzie King's machinations, and the CCF, the next instrument of western protest, had to wait for its birth until the trauma of the Depression. Since his father was a Liberal, Diefenbaker quite naturally drifted into the provincial Liberal Party. While in Saskatoon for a minor operation, he found himself elected, in absentia, Secretary of the local Liberal Association. He was later proposed as the Liberal candidate for the Kinistino seat in the 1925 provincial election, though he was never actually nominated. Eight weeks after the provincial election, however, he ran for and won the Conservative nomination for the federal seat of Prince Albert. This was a choice dictated by practical rather than ideological considerations. Prince Albert had two distinguished Liberal lawyer-politicians -T. C. Davis and W. E A. Turgeon, both later ambassadors-and there seemed to be more opportunity for a Conservative than for yet another Liberal lawyer-politi- cian in the district. During the 1925 election campaign, Davis publicly attacked Diefenbaker's alleged switch from Grit to Tory colours. The Prince Albert Herald of October 15, 1925, carried Diefenbaker's reply: "Judging by an account in tonight's Herald," he is reported as saying, "I C. Davis seems to think that the fact I was once a Liberal is an offence. Well, as I get older I see the indiscretions of my youth. I'm not here to tell falsehoods. I was a Liberal, but I could not help but see the failures of the Liberal Govern- ment in carrying out their promises. He says I sought a Liberal nomination; that's an unqualified falsehood. It is true that certain persons wanted me to accept nomination. But that I sought it, is false." Diefenbaker outlined his platform at a rally held in the 50 Assumption of Power Orpheum Theatre on October 7, 1925, as "lower taxation, a Conservative tariff policy, increased prosperity" and made an unusual pledge. "Providing I'm elected," he declared, "two years from now I shall resign from office, if rails are not being laid on the Hudson Bay Railway." The line was built, but that didn't help Diefenbaker, who came third in the balloting, after the Liberal and Progressive candidates. Charles Macdonald, the Liberal victor, resigned his seat shortly afterwards to make way for Mackenzie King who was seeking a safe constituency. In the 1926 election which followed eleven months later, Diefenbaker found himself running against the Prime Minister of Canada. In his final speech of that campaign, Diefenbaker initiated a technique that he was to revive in 1957: "The one issue of this election -I care not whether you favour high or low tariffs, whether you are Conservative, Liberal or Progressive - the one issue confronting you is honesty in government," he told the voters, referring to the Customs Department scandal which King had blurred with the constitutional crisis of his own manufacture. But he lost again, getting 4,838 ballots to King's 8,933 and stayed out of federal politics for the next fourteen years. King retained the Prince Albert seat until the 1945 election. Three years after this attempt, Diefenbaker transferred his efforts to provincial politics and contested the Prince Albert riding against his old enemy, T. C. Davis, who was by then Saskatchewan's Attorney General. Diefenbaker lost by 145 votes. All these political ventures had made him better known, and his legal career prospered. On December 3 1, 1929, he was named King's Counsel. Earlier that year he married the former Edna A Bower, of Langham, Saskatchewan, who had been a teacher at the Mayfair School in Saskatoon. She was a gracious, outgoing woman who taught him to enjoy bridge and even dancing. Stil I hungry for political prestige, Diefenbaker contested The Formative Years 51 the Prince Albert mayoralty against H. J. Fraser in 1933*, but was beaten. By the time he was thirty-eight, he had thus attained a somewhat ambiguous level of achievement. He was rapidly gaining a reputation as one of the West's leading lawyers, both in criminal and civil cases. But his real ambition for political office had been rebuffed at all three levels of government. A less determined man might have been content to give up politics, but Diefenbaker became increasingly active in the provincial party. In 1935 he was chosen president of the Saskatchewanr Conservative Association. It wasn't much of a prize. The Party had gained power in the 1929 election under the leadership of J. T. M. Anderson, an Ontario teacher turned politician, who campaigned wearing a billycock hat and wing collar. Anderson had become Tory provincial leader in 1924, and in the 1929 campaign won twentyfive seats. He became premier in September of that year after defeating Jimmy Gardiner's first regime in a legislature vote and forming a co-operative government supported by five independents and six Progressives. Although he publicly dissociated himself from the Canadian branch of the Ku Klux Klan, then active in Saskatchewan, he did receive the support of this violently antiLiberal element, and was tainted by it. His regime held power during the dreadful economic privation of the early Depression years in Saskatchewan. In the 1934 election, Anderson and all his followers were wiped out at the polls. The extent of Diefenbaker's involvement with the Anderson administration has not been clearly established. He certainly ran as an Anderson candidate in 1929, and newspaper reports of the day quote him boasting about "the proud record of the Anderson government." One of the few comments on the connection between Anderson and Diefenbaker was made by Robert L. Hanbidge, the * Fraser ran against Diefenbaker as a Liberal in the 1963 election. He received 3,2o6 ballots, compared with Diefenbaker's 17,827. 52 Assumption of Power Tory m.p. for the Saskatchewan seat of Kindersley in the 24th Parliament and a lifelong friend of Diefenbaker's. At a private ceremony on March 25, ig6o, held to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Prime Minister's election to the federal House, Hanbidge, who had served as chief whip during the Anderson administration, remarked that it had been a truly Conservative government and that John Diefenbaker had been one of "the powers behind it, in both legal and political matters." Whether or not this was actually the case, no evidence exists, despite the efforts by Diefenbaker's enemies to find it, that he himself had been associated with the Ku Klux Klan. His vilifiers have tried to prove their case by distorting quotes from speeches he made during a 1928 provincial by-election for the Arm River seat. By twisting his text, they pretend to show that the young Saskatchewan politician had advocated forbidding nuns to wear their garb while teaching school and the banning of crucifixes on classroom walls. The speech usually used for these distortions is one that Diefenbaker delivered on October 20 in a hall at Loreburn. What he actually said on that and other occasions was that religious symbols should be removed from public schools. The Ifoose Jaw Times quoted him as declaring that he had no argument "in respect of separate schools as such," because the question was disposed of by the British North America Act. "They are a part and parcel of the law, and it is not for me to say anything in regard to separate schools." But he did state forcibly that "the public schools of the province should at all times be free from sectarian influence" and attacked the Liberals for allowing the nuns at the Wakaw public school to wear religious garb while teaching. A close study of other speeches Diefenbaker delivered during that campaign clearly shows that he was opposed to the Klansmen and their vicious principles. Two years after the Anderson government had been wiped out at the polls, the young Prince Albert lawyer decided to try for his party's provincial leadership. At the The Formative Years 53 October 28, 1936, provincial leadership convention eleven names were places in nomination, but ten of the candidates thought the party was in such sad shape that they declined to run. Diefenbaker won the leadership by default. In the provincial election that followed two years later, he bravely tried to field a full slate of candidates, but could muster only limited backing from t he federal Tory Party. He had asked the national organization for $ i o,ooo, which he said would be enough to guarantee three or four seats, but he was refused. His platform for the 1938 provincial election reflected many of the concerns he was later to take with him into the federal field. It included promises of crop insurance, unemployment insurance, health insurance, old age pensions at sixty-five, lower prices for school books, increases in mothers' allowances, and a guaranteed minimum wage for teachers. "It surely breathes the western spirit," commented the usually Liberal Winnipeg Free Press. In one speech during that campaign, he characteristically declared: "If instead of worrying so much about the bondholders, the government would come to the conclusion that it ruled for the common people, and that Saskatchewan, as a province, cannot continue under the present set up, then something real could be accomplished." Despite Diefenbaker's strong personal efforts in the 1938 election, Liberal Premier William J. Patterson swept the province. Not one Conservative was elected, and Diefenbaker him- self lost the Arm River seat he had contested to Herman Danielson by igo votes. Having now been defeated five times, the Prince Albert lawyer finally decided he might have to quit politics. But early in 194o he was at Humboldt, Saskatchewan, taking part in a complicated grain elevator arson case, when he got a telephone call from William B. Kelly, president of the Lake Centre Conservative Association. The riding was holding a federal nomination meeting at Imperial, and Kelly wanted Diefenbaker as keynote speaker. Diefenbaker asked the judge presiding at the arson trial if John 54 Assumption of Power Cuelenaere, his lawyer partner, could take over the defence, the judge agreed and Diefenbaker drove the ninety miles to Imperial. He arrived just in time to hear himself nominated as a compromise candidate. He withdraw, because he felt a local man would have a better chance, and Kelly was given the nomination. Just then, a small fire broke out in the town, and the delegates ran out to give assistance. After they had returned, Diefenbaker prepared to leave town. He was standing beside his idling car, about to drive back to Humboldt, when a farmer asked him for some free legal advice on a cattle deal. As Diefenbaker was talking to the man, a friend of his from Prince Albert, Edward Topping, ran out of the hall, and said: "There's been a hitch. They want you inside." Back in the hall, Kelly announced that he would withdraw if Diefenbaker would agree to stand, because the consensus of the meeting seemed to be that the Prince Albert lawyer would, after all, be the best candidate. Diefenbaker concurred. Diefenbaker was in Ottawa on January 25, 1940, with a case before the Supreme Court, when Mackenzie King suddenly dissolved Parliament on the day it met and called a general election for March 26. By the time Diefenbaker had returned to Saskatchewan, the campaign was already underway. The sitting member for Lake Centre was J. Fred Johnston, Deputy Speaker of the Commons, who had won the 1935 election with a 1,794 margin. It was such and Conservative country that in some villages Diefenbaker could find only a single Tory. But he staged sixty-five rallies and slanted his appeal to the followers of all parties. On election day he astonished the political pundits by polling 280 votes more than his Liberal opponent. And so John Diefenbaker went to Parliament at last. THE 1940 ELECTION HAD BEEN AN UNPRECEDENTED CATASTROPHE for the federal Tories. They had won only thirty-nine seats, the lowest total since Confederation. The Formative Years 55 Their leader, R. J. Manion, had been defeated in his ~own riding, and except for Howard Green of Vancouver and Gordon Graydon of Peel (Ontario) few able debaters had survived. Against this dun background, the newcomer from Saskatchewan stood out immediately. He caught the nation's mood by advocating a cease-fire between political parties for the duration of the war. "I care nothing for party name," he told the members of the Davenport Dovercourt Conservative Association in Toronto on November 23, 1940. "1 say, forget about party in the greater danger that is facing our empire." In March 1941 he delivered an impassioned speech in the House of Com mons, urging that the government hire R. B. Bennett to clear up the mess in aircraft contract negotiations. "Today we must have planes, not promises. We must have action. Not just adjectives describing the perfection of perform ance," he declared, in the kind of criticism that was to plague his own administration twenty years later. He fought bitterly against the injustices inflicted on the Japanese Canadians relocated from their west-coast homes under the government's wartime powers, and at least once forced Munitions and Supply Minister C. D. Howe to confess that he had made a good case. In a 1945 debate on wasteful defence expenditures, Howe admitted that the member for Lake Centre might be right, and defiantly growled at him: "And what do you want me to do about it?" Two Liberal cabinet ministers, James Ralston and Angus L. Macdonald, publicly thanked Diefenbaker for having made the Veterans' Rehabilitation Act a more effective statute by his criticism. During his seventeen years as an Opposition member Diefenbaker justly earned a national reputation as a parliamentarian vitally concerned with the welfare of the average Canadian and the protection of his civil rights. He championed the idea of a Bill of Rights in Canada and attacked Senator Joseph McCarthy, the American demagogue, as "a destroyer of justice." Not all his crusades were palatable to his own party. In 56 Assumption of Power .e was chiefly responsible for blocking an elaborate ervative campaign to have Canada's Communist Party outlawed. Party Leader George Drew supported the ban, and thousands of pamphlets had been prepared advocating it. But Diefenbaker fought the idea in the Conservative caucus, using the same arguments as Liberal Justice Minister Stuart Garson was quoting in public: that to outlaw the Communists would merely drive the Party underground, and that people must not be jailed for their beliefs, no matter what they were. The anti-Communist campaign literature was eventually burned, but the Toronto Tories used the incident to confirm their previous suspicions that Diefenbaker was a "Leftist." Such sentiments were based in part on Diefenbaker's open break with his Party over its opposition to the Liberal government's 1944 Family Allowances Act. The Tory Leader, John Bracken, who had no seat in the House at the time, called it a "political bribe." George Drew, then Premier of Ontario, promised to do all he could to keep it from coming into effect. But Diefenbaker, supported by Howard Green, stood up in the parliamentary caucus against the Party hierarchy and declared he would vote for the Liberal bill. He gradually won over the other m.Ws, so that no Conservative m.p. actually voted against the measure.* In most of the succeeding general election campaigns, the Conservatives spent much energy denying that they had ever been against family allowances. "Diefenbaker's revolt against the party line of 1944 made possible the Conservative Party lines Of 1945, 1946 and 1953," Blair Fraser wrote in Maclean~ Magazine. "But this did Diefenbaker little good. Politicians don't like a man who was right when they were wrong." * The one diehard opponent, Dr Herbert Bruce, of Toronto-Parkdale, who during the House debates on the Bill had called it "a bribe of the most brazen character made chiefly to one province and paid for by the taxes of the rest," was persuaded to be absent when the vote was taken. The Formative Years 57 Diefenbaker further enraged the Conservative Party's right-wing element in 1953 when, in a Toronto speech, he urged that business executives convicted of combining to restrain trade should be jailed, not just fined - a most unTory-like suggestion. Later, when the Liberal government reviewed its anti-combines legislation it accepted an amendment suggested by Diefenbaker that allows any six Canadian citizens to lay a complaint against a business monopoly before a magistrate. John Diefenbaker in his Opposition days became something of a national institution - known across the country as the one parliamentarian not afraid to stand up for "the little man" against the Establishment. Probably his bestknown court case during this period was his defence, in 1950, of John Atherton, a railway telegrapher charged with manslaughter in a British Columbia court, because he had been held responsible for a train crash that killed four railwaymen and twenty-one Korea-bound Canadian soldiers. Diefenbaker paid the $1,500 fee so that he could be admitted to the British Columbia Bar, and in a dramatic trial won the case. Despite his growing popularity -and partly because of it-the palace guard of the Conservative Party did not trust him, while most Liberals regarded him as an insincere showoff. In a fit of pique brought on by a particularly ferocious Diefenbacker harangue, Liberal Finance Minister James 11sley, ordinarily a calm individual, once shouted at him: "Don't become so intoxicated with the exuberance of your own verbosity! Get away from this sophomoric invective and adolescent abuse!" Since he realized that he could not fit into any of the existing political hierarchies, Diefenbaker became fired with the momentous ambition of taking over leadership of his own party, so that he could refashion it according to his progressive ideals. His first attempt was at the Conservative National Convention Of 1942 in Winnipeg, called after R. J. Manion's humiliating defeat and the further failure of his successor, Arthur Meighen, who had 58 Assumption of Power resigned from the Senate to become Party Leader, to win a by-election in York South. Four other candidates besides Diefenbaker contested the 1942 convention: Howard Green, the Vancouver m.p., who caused a sensation by fainting on the platform during his speech; H. H. Stevens of Vancouver, whose resignation as R. B. Bennett's minister of trade and commerce had helped topple the Bennett regime; Murdo MacPherson, a well-known Regina lawyer and former member of the Anderson Cabinet, who at the time was thought to have been placed in the race to split the western delegates away from Diefenbaker; and John Bracken, a Liberal-Progressive, then Premier of Manitoba, who was so uncertain about wanting the job that he entered his nomination papers just three minutes before the deadline. After Meighen addressed the convention in a raspy bark and without a microphone, "refusing," as he said, "to talk through the instrumentality of any mechanism," Diefenbaker was introduced by Ray Milner, an Edmonton law- yer, who was Convention chairman, as "John G. Diefenbacker." Giving the Germanic pronunciation of his name, at a time when Canada was at war with Germany, was a good indication of how strongly the Old Guard Tories were opposed to Diefenbaker's candidacy. David Walker, Diefenbaker's nominator, tried to offset this impression by pointing out that his candidate was a fourth-generation Canadian and that his mother was a Campbell-Bannerman. Walker then took a poke at John Bracken, by adding: "First and foremost, [our leader] should be a Conservative; not an outsider. We don't want someone who is going to sell our birthright for a mess of pottage .. . " He was drowned out by cries of "Shame! Shame! We don't want any of that." Diefenbaker's seconder, his friend R. L. Hanbidge from Kerrobert, Sas- katchewan, added considerably to the fury of the Old Guard Tories by telling the convention: "Why, Diefenbaker's so far ahead of some of the members of our Party The Formative Years 59 [in the Commons] that when he went down there, he was sometimes referred to as the 'Bolshevist from the West'!" Diefenbaker's own speech, spoiled somewhat by the high, tense pitch in which he delivered it, was a masterly oration stressing the importance of Canadian unity but he was trounced in the balloting that followed. This was how the Convention's votes were divided: First Ballot: BRACKEN 420 MACPHERSON 222 DIEFENBAKER 120 GREEN 88 STEVENS 20 Second Ballot: BRACKEN 538 MACPHERSON 255 DIEFENBAKER 79 Diefenbaker's humiliation was made even more bitter by his failure to gain the House Leader's job the following year. Bracken still had no federal seat, and R. B. Hanson, the Tory House Leader who was in poor health, asked to be relieved. The caucus voted for a successor, with Gordon Graydon and John Diefenbaker standing as the main candidates.* Graydon won by a narrow margin. After Bracken had been soundly beaten in the 1945 general election and had finally resigned in 1948, another leadership convention was called. Although Diefenbaker appeared to have a good chance, the Tory Old Guard managed to rig the voting by appointing more than three hundred "delegates-at-large," who swung the convention * Mackenzie King, referring to this event in his diary, noted: "The Tories seldom choose a decent man. They are likely to take Diefenbaker as being the most bitter in his attacks." J. W Pickersgill, The Mackenzie King Record. Vol 1. University of Toronto Press, ig6o. 60 Assumption of Power behind George Drew. Commenting on this manoeuvre, one cynical Conservative remarked: "Ghost delegates with ghost ballots, marked by the ghostly hidden hands of Bay Street, are going to pick George Drew, and he'll deliver a ghost-written speech thatT cheer us all up, as we march briskly into a political graveyard." Many Prairie delegates arrived in Ottawa for the convention, bearing banners: WE LOVE JOHN, BUT WE NEED GEORGE. David Walker, Diefenbaker's campaign manager, urged him to have posters painted saying: DIEFENBAKER - THE MAN FROM MAIN STREET - NOT BAY STREET, but Diefenbaker killed the idea. Well-known Toronto Tories were stationed outside Diefenbaker's headquarters in the Chateau Laurier Hotel, ostentatiously entering in unexplained black notebooks the names of delegates who appeared to be friendly with the Westerner. No one was left unaware of the fact that the Party depended for its finances on Bay Street and that Drew was the Bay Street candidate. On the final night before balloting, two conga lines of enthusiastic delegates from each camp formed up in the front lobby of the Chateau Laurier to perform a victory dance around the bust of Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Symbolically, Laurier had been decorated with a placard, reading: WE'RE ALL, FOR DREW. Diefenbaker was nominated by Major-General George Pearkes, an M.P. from British Columbia, who declared, "It is the prayer of the common people of this land that John Diefenbaker be their leader." Diefenbaker himself delivered this brave appeal: "I will not, if chosen leader, offer something for nothing. I will require of you, my fellow Canadians, all the energy, all the faith and all the vision that the Canadians of yesterday gave to the foundation of this nation," He was beaten on the first ballot.* Diefenbaker was so shattered by his defeat that he stayed in his room at the Chateau Laurier for most of a * The vote totals were: George Drew, 827; John Diefenbaker. 3 1 1 ~ Donald Fleming, 104. 1 The Formative Years 61 week and would not receive visitors. During the parliamentary session that followed the convention, Diefenbaker never once referred to Drew as his leader. Relations between the two men softened a little when, during a swing through the Prairies, Drew visited Diefenbaker's mother and brought her a bouquet of flowers. The year 1948 also saw the first attempt by the Liberals to get rid of Diefenbaker by gerrymander. In the 1945 election he had increased his margin in the Lake Centre riding from the narrow 28o ballots Of 1940 to a more comfortable i,oog. But the redistribution of constituency boundaries carried on by the Liberal-dominated parliamentary committee in 1948 cut the south end, where he had heavy support, off his riding and added to its eastern tip some sections that had gone CCF in past elections. The Liberal manoeuvre backfired. His constituents, angered at the obvious attempt to muzzle their m.p., gave Diefenbaker a 3,432 margin in the 1949 general election, the largest vote he ever got as a private member. His victory contrasted sharply with the national picture. George Drew, the former Ontario premier, had waged a vigorous campaign, but became so desperate for issues that he concentrated on such trivia as the "noisy engines" in the North Star aircraft purchased by Trans-Canada Air Lines. He won only forty-one seats, the second-lowest total in Conservative history. The Liberals tried an even more vicious trick in the 1952 redistribution, when they wiped out Diefenbaker's Lake Centre seat altogether. A part of the old Moose Jaw riding, where the CCF's Ross Thatcher was strongly entrenched, was added to the Lake Centre constituency, which became Moose Jaw - Lake Centre. Diefenbaker had been the lone Saskatchewan Conservative elected in the 1949 campaign, and there seemed no other seat in the province worth contesting. (When they weren't trying to get rid of him through redistribution, the Liberals found other methods of harassing Diefenbaker. At one point the federal government rented an empty house next to his 62 Assumption of Power home at Prince Albert and converted it into a foster residence for unwed Indian mothers.) On his way back from Ottawa to Prince Albert, in the summer of 1952, Diefenbaker visited the Republican National Convention in Chicago, to watch Dwight Eisenhower being nominated for the presidency of the United States. Shortly after he returned home, he went on a fishing-trip to Lac la Ronge with his friends Tom Martin and Fred Hadley The three men heard the radio broadcast of Adlai Stevenson's acceptance speech at the Demo- cratic Convention and they talked politics far into the night. It was Hadley who suggested that Diefenbaker should run for the Prince Albert seat in the federal election expected sometime in 1953. It didn't seem a very propitious choice. The Tories had won the seat only once, in 19 1 1, since it had been created in i 9o6. To win, Diefenbaker would have to switch at least one out of every four Liberal and CCF votes to his cause. Instead of campaigning as a Conservative, Diefenbaker decided to try a non-partisan appeal. "Diefenbaker Clubs" were established all over the constituency; his riding executive consisted of fourteen former Liberals, ten Conservatives, and six former CCF members. Most of the key men from Diefenbaker's old Lake Centre riding had moved into Prince Albert to help him out when an election was called for August io. He won the seat with a margin Of 3,00 1 ballots. Again, he was the lone Conservative returned from Saskatchewan, In December Of 1953 John Diefenbaker married for the second time. Edna, his first wife, had died of leukemia two years earlier. He married the former Olive Freeman Palmer, whom he had briefly courted during his days at Wakaw a quarter of a century before. She had meanwhile been married and widowed. Olive Diefenbaker was a charming woman whose warm personality turned out to be one of the greatest assets John Diefenbaker brought to * See Chapter 13 for a description of Olive Diefenbaker's role. The Formative Years 63 the job of prime minister.* The couple was married on December 8, 1953, at a private ceremony, held in the study of the Reverend Charles G. Stone, in Park Road Baptist Church, Toronto. After dining at the Royal York the Diefenbakers flew to the Del Prado Hotel in Mexico City for a brief honeymoon. Happily married and basking in the unexpectedly warm mandate he had received from the voters of Prince Albert, Diefenbaker was to undergo yet one more humiliation from the Conservative Party's Old Guard. With the death of Gordon Graydon on September ig, 1953, the position of Conservative deputy House leader was thrown open. Although Diefenbaker was the logical choice, Drew picked instead Earl Rowe, a right-winger and the last of R. B. Bennett's cabinet ministers still in politics. Diefenbaker ` discouraged beyond endurance by yet another repudiation from his own party, considered quit ting politics. Some Regina businessmen wanted to back him in leading a new provincial coalition movement against I C. Douglas's socialist government. Once again, the man from Prince Albert seemed to have reached a terminal junction in his career. THREE The Formative Circumstances AT THE TIME John Diefenbaker was vaguely considertA ing his alternatives, fundamental shifts were taking place in Canadian politics that would eventually lead to the achievement of his lifelong ambition. The Liberals had by then been in power at Ottawa for nearly two decades. They had been returned to office in 1935 as a protest against Conservative mishandling of the Depression's effects on the economy. In his snap election Of 1940, Mackenzie King had received a whopping wartime mandate and by stealing the CCF'S welfare program he managed to squeak in with a margin of just half a dozen seats in 1945. In the 1949 campaign, with a new 'leader in the confidence-inducing figure of Louis St Laurent, matched against the blustering George Drew, the Liberals scored their greatest electoral triumph, gaining 193 of the 262 seats in the Commons. "The campaign of 1949," J. W. Pickersgill recalled later, "was more like a royal progress than a partisan tour." The 1953 election turned out to be a repetition of the 1949 contest, though the Liberal margin was reduced to 173 Out Of 265 seats. Despite these impressive victories, cracks had begun to appear in the monolithic structure of the Liberal Party. While it was true that about half the electorate had not, during their voting lives, known any other national government, it was also true that the new generation of voters no longer associated the Liberal Party with recovery from 64 The Formative Circumstances 65 the Depression. There was evidence of growing national frustration with a political party that regards itself as "The Government." This apprehension showed up in voting statistics. Although, in terms of the number of parliamentary seats gained, the Liberals had won five victories at the polls, in only one of those campaigns (1940) had they actually received more than 50 per cent of the popular vote.* "For years," wrote Tom Kent, then editor of the Winnipeg Free Press and later chief policy advisor to Lester Pearson, "the Liberals had provided what was, by and large, about as good a government as any country has ever enjoyed. But as the years went by, the members and close associates of the Government became themselves increasingly conscious of this; they began to feel secure and came to regard the support of the Canadian people as what they were entitled to, not something they had to earn afresh, year by year." The abnormally long Liberal ascendancy had left cabinet ministers preoccupied with administration. The more energy they devoted to seeking just solutions to national and international problems, the less time they spent trying to satisfy the rich variety of special regional interests which no Canadian politician can afford to ignore for very long. "The Liberal Government," wrote Professor Paul Fox, the University of Toronto political scientist in The Canadian Forum, "aims at operating noiselessly, like a respectable mammoth business corporatIon which fears nothing more than making people aware that it is there." * The Liberals went to ridiculous lengths to prove that they did, in fact, represent the majority of the Canadian electorate. After the 1953 election, the official statement of the Chief Electoral Officer showed that the Liberals had received 49.97 per cent of the popular vote. But two of the Liberal ridings (St Hyacinthe-Bagot and Terreborme) had been won by acclamation. By applying the percentage of the vote which had gone Liberal in the rest of Quebec to the two ridings, the Liberals managed to get their vote total up to 50.10 per cent of the vote. and their party propaganda proudly proclaimed that: "The St Laurent Government represents a majority of the voters in Canada." 66 Assumption of Power THE LIBERAL MASTERY OF NATIONAL POLITICS in the early 'fifties was due in large measure to the unusual personality of Louis St Laurent. Unlike most politicians, who set their sights on the prime ministership early in life, then spend the next three or four decades trying to achieve their ambition, St Laurent became prime minister only seven years after he had reluctantly entered politics. J. W, Pickersgill, who was intimately associated with both Mackenzie King and Louis St Laurent, once remarked: "Although there was only a few years' difference between them, the two men belonged to different generations. King and his generation were not Canadians by instinct; they could never quite take the Canadian nation for granted, because they had helped to create it. For St Laurent, Canada was the only country he knew. In his person he embodied the national unity that King worked, to some degree from the outside, to achieve." St Laurent was so perfectly bilingual that he thought about the Quebec civil code in French and about corporation law in English. He governed Canada for nine difficult years with an astonishing capacity for making his policies seem not only right, but inevitable. Although the Liberals managed to tag George Drew with the Bay Street label, he had far less contact with big business than did St Laurent. Within months of his retirement, St Laurent was appointed to directorships in six major Canadian corporations, with assets totalling more than a billion dollars,* while George Drew languished after his 1956 retirement until Diefenbaker appointed him High Commissioner to the United Kingdom a year later. St Laurent never tried to hide his attitude of championing free enterprise against government intrusion. During a House of Commons debate, on May 4, 1953, he summed up his feelings. "I think," he said, "all of us recognize the fact that there are *Rock City Tobacco Company, Industrial Acceptance Corporation, Investors Syndicate of Canada, Famous Players Canadian Corporation, Rothmans of Pall Mall Canada Limited, and La Compagnie Atiron D& The Formative Circumstances 67 some things which it is more appropriate to have done by public authorities than by free enterprise. But I think we are all most happy when free enterprise does what is required to be done and public authorities do not have to interfere." One of the main reasons why St Laurent's personality as a starchy corporation lawyer remained hidden from the public was the success of his image as "Uncle Louis," a sort of universal, slippered father-figure, chatting to voters as if they were members of his own family. The nickname "Uncle Louis" had been coined by Norman Campbell, then a reporter for the Toronto Telegram, while he was covering the 1949 election. When the Liberal campaign train was stopped at Field, B.C., Campbell spied St Laurent on the station platform patting the heads of little children and bussing an Indian woman's brown chubbycheeked baby. "I'm afraid Uncle Louis will be hard to beat," he remarked to Alex Hume of the Ottawa CitiZen, who was standing beside him, and used the phrase in his news dispatch. The tag was quickly picked up by other papers and used constantly over the next few years. But by 1956 St Laurent had turned seventy-four, and was no longer in the best of health. He had never fully recovered from his three-month world tour of 1954. Like a faulty radio, he would have his good and bad days, sometimes fully aware of the events around him, at other times fading out completely, and viewing the world with the unknowing, glassy stare of the very old. The Liberal hierarchy was determined that "Uncle Louis" would win one more election for them, even, as one outspoken cabinet minister admitted privately, "if we have to run him stuffed." THE VACUUM LEFT BY ST LAURENT'S ABDICATION of active leadership was not adequately filled by the Liberal cabinet. Its two dominant ministers - C. D. Howe and Jimmy Gardiner -were in their seventies and long past the point of reflecting or even being interested in public opinion. Not a 68 Assumption of Power single member of the 1956 cabinet had ever been through the chastening experience of having sat on the Opposition benches of the Commons. Between 194o and 1956 fourteen Liberals had entered the cabinet with very little previous political experience. Since the 1953 election seven ministers, including the two best ones - Brooke Claxton and Douglas Abbott - had left the cabinet. By 1957 only six of the ministers St Laurent had inherited from Mackenzie King were still active. Hugh MacLennan, the Canadian novelist, wrote of the Liberal cabinet in Maclean~ Magazine: "They treat the national mind much as the officials of a trust company treat the mind of a rich widow whose funds they have been hired to manage. To keep the widow from asking too many questions is always wise. Treat her with courtesy, of course. Talk to her with an occasional sally of ponderous avuncular humor, ply her with accurate reports couched in a jargon she cannot possibly understand, but whatever you do, don't let her get too inquisitive about what goes on behind the doors of the company." Gradually, the cabinet's vegetative mood spread to the Commons. David Croll, C. G. Power and Jean-Franqois Pouliot -the only Liberal m.p.'s who could be counted on to express independent opinions -had been retired to the Senate and most of the remaining backbenchers became a listless, unimaginative crew treated by their party chiefs as a vote-casting machine. Many of the new ideas emanating from Ottawa during the last few years of the St Laurent administration originated not with the cabinet or m.p.'s, but with senior civil servants. In the Liberal years 1935-1957, the civil service increased from 42,107 to j69,oo6. Inevitably, the government's senior advisors grew sensitive to the political feasibility of what they were recommending. "The situation," wrote Professor J. E. Hodgetts of Queen's University, "tended to dissolve the healthy tension which should exist between minister and senior officials." No man did more to change this traditional relationship The Formative Circumstances 69 than Clarence Decatur Howe, the energetic New Eng lander who built within the Canadian government a per sonal empire which eventually encompassed two large ministries and eighteen Crown corporations. He was fond of explaining to doubtful assistants that "nothing is administratively impossible," and during World War 11 he virtually brought the government to its knees by threaten ing to quit unless troops were dispatched to seize the strike-bound aluminum plant at Arvida, Quebec. When an opposition m.p. once reminded Howe that the establish ment of Trans-Canada Air Lines was a step toward social ism, the angry minister shot back: "That's not public enterprise; that's m - v enterprise." On May 21, 195 1, during a House debate on trade agreements, Howard Green, the Vancouver Conservative, expressed concern over govern ment action, indicating that it was trying to escape previ ous commitments. "Who would stop us?" Howe replied. "Don't take yourself too seriously. If we wanted to get away with it - who would stop us?" During a question on April 21, 1953, concerning an Order-in-Council banning all Canadian shipping to North Korean and Chinese ports, Howe answered Opposition criticism by saying: "If we have overstepped our powers, I make no apology for having done so." The first time that the Conservatives managed to demonstrate Howe's contempt for parliamentary procedure to the country at large was during the Defence Production Act debates in the summer of 1955. The government had moved an innocent-sounding motion, entitled "An Act to amend the Defence Production Act" which included the clause: "Section 41 of the said Act is repealed." Section 41 happened to be the provision which stated that the entire Act, passed during the Korean War, was to expire on July 3 1, 1956. In other words, Howe was demanding that the extraordinary powers he had wielded during a national emergency should become a permanent part of the Law. Under the provisions of the Act, the Minister of Defence Production had, among other things, the right to compel 70 Assumption of Power anyone owning facilities suitable to defence work to accept defence contracts "on terms and conditions which the Minister deems to be fair and reasonable." It also gave the Minister the right to put a Controller into a business to direct all its operations, if in his judgement it wasn't performing efficiently enough. The controversial Bill was brought up for second reading on June 7, and the fifty-one Conservatives in the Commons talked it to a standstill until July I I. J. M. Macdonnell, who led the Tory onslaught, declared that it represented "an affront to a free parliament." George Hees, in a characteristically explosive speech, said that "if this legislation goes through, it will make permanent the power of the Minister of Defence Production, who is the boss of the Liberal Party, to extract campaign funds from industry." George Drew delivered a four-hour and twenty-three-minute filibuster. C. D. Howe meanwhile expressed his objections to having the Bill limited to a three-year extension, with this curious statement: "That would mean coming back to Parliament in three years, and I've more to do than spend my time amusing Parliament." But in the end, the St Laurent government capitulated, and the Bill was extended for only three years.* Howe had lost his first parliamentary skirmish. The major battle of his career was yet to come. IN MID MAY OF 1956 HOWE introduced the government bill to lend Trans-Canada Pipe Lines Limited $8o million in federal funds. During the bitter, three-week debate that followed, the Opposition forced seventy votes - twentyfour of them appealing rulings by the Speaker. "In one sense," wrote Michael Barkway in the Waterloo Review, "the period resembled a Wagnerian opera produced by the Paris State Opera in its halcyon days, with the mediocrity of the performance covered by an armory of theatrical * During his term of office, Diefenbaker allowed this section of the Defence Production Act to lapse. The Formative Circumstances 71 mechanics. Dark clouds scudded across the cyclorama; orange spotlights flashed hither and thither as though a platoon of demented lighthouse-keepers was making up for a lifetime of sober regularity; smoke bombs exploded alongside the pounding tympanies as the orchestra crashed its way to the climax of the pipeline debate." Although the pipeline bill was finally rammed through the Commons, the manner in which the Liberals treated Parliament to achieve its passage succeeded in crystallizing in the public mind the feeling that men so long accustomed to power had finally grown arrogant in their use of it. The pipeline debate lasted roughly from May 14 to June 5, and the Bill was carried through all its stages -resolution, first and second readings, committee, and third reading - under closure. This had never occurred before in Canadian parliamentary practice. "Political historians may well conclude," wrote Blair Fraser, in Maclean~ Magazine, "that the Liberals fell, not because of any one policy, and certainly not a pipeline policy of which the average voter knew little and cared less, but because they failed to observe the proper limits of power... They had an obedient majority which would vote as it was told. They believed, probably rightly, that the general public hadn't much interest in the complexities of the pipeline bill. From these quite sensible premises the Liberals drew a dangerous conclusion -that they could do as they liked with Parliament ... events have shown that the conclusion was more than dangerous, it was wrong." The pipeline policy as it was presented to Parliament in Bill 298 was based on economic rather than political considerations. Foreseeing the problem of dealing with the movement of surplus natural gas out of Alberta, the government had previously decided to deal with gas as it had dealt with electricity: to allow no exports until present and future needs of the home market were fully satisfied. In 1954 the Alberta government had authorized the export eastward Of 500 million cubic feet of gas per day; the 72 Assumption of Power federal government ruled that 300 million cubic feet would fully meet Canadian needs. The balance Of 200 million cubic feet thus became available for sale in the United States. The export charter was given to TransCanada Pipe Lines Limited, a company controlled by American financial interests. It was late April when the firm discovered (or revealed) that it couldn't immediately raise the $8o million necessary to construct the line from Alberta to Winnipeg required for export of the gas. Trans-Canada officials themselves recommended that the project be postponed until they could find the funds, but the government turned down the suggestion, because it wanted the project completed before the next federal election. Another alternative discussed was the nationalization of the undertaking, with the government building the pipeline up to the distribution points at the United States border. TransCanada didn't support this idea, but it didn't oppose it very strenuously either, because its main interest was in the export of the gas. But C. D. Howe turned it down. The alternative adopted was Howe's suggestion that the federal treasury lend the $8o million to the firm, under an ironclad security: if the loan was not repaid (with interest at 5 per cent) by April 1957, the government would take over the line for io per cent less than its cost. This was not an unreasonable proposition, except for its timing. Trans-Canada claimed it could not complete its line as far as Winnipeg in 1956, unless construction could be started by July i. Three weeks would be required to move the pipe from where it was being rolled in the United States -thus the government funds would have to be available by June 7. To get Royal assent, this meant that the Bill would have to be out of the Senate by June i, which in turn meant that it would have to be passed by the Commons by May 31. So when Howe introduced the measure to Parliament on May 13 there were, according to his timetable, only fourteen days available for debate. In his very first speech, after a perfunctory explanation The Formative Circumstances 73 of the legislation, Howe gave notice of his intention to move closure. This was not only an unprecedented move in parliamentary procedure, it also violated the traditions of the Liberal Party. Closure had been used in the Commons only seven times since it was introduced by the Borden government in 19 13. It was applied at that time to end the filibuster of the government's navy bill and resorted to again in 1917, 1919, 1921, 1926, and 1932each time, except in 1926, by a Conservative administration. On none of these occasions - in fact, never before in the history of any democratic parliamentary institution -had closure been applied before debate had actually begun. Arthur Meighen, who drew up the original closure legislation, admitted at the time that it might sometime be used in the way Howe applied the rule in 1956, but he said that he saw no need to change the rule to safeguard against such an eventuality, "for if it were done, it would be a vicious and insane act." Howe's initial closure motion meant that debate on first reading would have to end within two days. Davie Fulton, the brilliant young Rhodes Scholar from Kamloops, British Columbia, very quickly established himself as the procedural expert of the Conservative Party in battling the Liberal move, while Stanley Knowles from Winnipeg, and Colin Cameron from Nanaimo, British Columbia, became the chief spokesmen for the CCF. Supported by their parties these three fought against the first reading of the bill until 4:42 a.m. of May 15, when closure finally ended the initial round of the debate. On May 17 Howe moved second reading and, in the debate that followed, the Liberals found new allies. Social Credit, with eleven of its fifteen members from gas-exporthungry Alberta, sided with Howe, and one of its leading members, the Reverend E. G. Hartsell, even asserted that anyone voting against the pipeline bill was "following the Communist line." The debate very quickly disintegrated into procedural wrangling. Whenever the Opposition fielded a valid point of order, the Liberal backbenchers 74 Assumption of Power would sing "I've Been Working on the Pipeline" to the tune of "I've Been Working on the Railroad." Several times at crisis points in the cut and thrust of debate, Walter Harris, the Liberal House Leader, walked up to the chair of Speaker R6n6 Beaudoin, and whispered in his ear - a flagrant and unprecedented violation of Mr Speaker's vaunted impartiality. Frequently, the Chair refused to recognize Opposition members on points of order or questions of privilege, although parliamentary rules clearly provide for such objections. Precedents presented by Davie Fulton and Stanley Knowles, some of them established by C. D. Howe himself and clearly applicable to the debate, were ruled irrelevant. "I am wondering," M. J. Coldwell, the usually imperturbable leader of the CCF, exclaimed at one point, "whether we are in the old German Reichstag or the Canadian Parliament." At 3:17 a.m. on May 22 second reading passed, again under closure. After a day of wild verbal crossfire - with the Opposition quoting everything from the Bible to the BNA Act against the Liberals, Howe remarked to a colleague, "I was never so bored in all my life." When the bill got to the committee stage for clause-byclause study, the Liberals produced a new device that wasn't provided for within the closure rule. They applied 11 closure within closure" by moving it at the end of every clause. Howe used a total Of 207 words to describe the Bill's clauses, then moved that "further consideration be postponed." Parliament became a bedlam. Rulings, points of order, questions of privilege, and appeals from rulings piled on each other, and on May 25, when Donald Fleming's refused to sit down, because the committee chairman wouldn't "see" him, he was "named" by the Speaker. "This isn't the way to run a peanut stand, let alone Parliament!" Fleming shouted in deep indignation as Walter Harris, the Liberal House Leader, introduced a motion to suspend Fleming "from the service of the The Formative Circumstances 75 House for the remainder of the day's sitting." Just after the motion to suspend him had been passed by the Liberal majority, and Fleming was walking stiffly down the greencarpeted centre aisle of the Commons, John Diefenbaker exclaimed: "Farewell, John Hampden!", in reference to the seventeenth-century British statesman who led the revolt of parliamentarians against Charles 1. Ellen Fairclough, a Tory backbencher, draped a Canadian ensign over Fleming's vacant parliamentary desk. When Fleming arrived back in Toronto, that evening, he was met at Malton Airport by five hundred cheering supporters. He made a twenty-minute speech in which he declared that he was fighting a battle "for the democratic rights of Canadians yet unborn" and, giving a Churchillian salute to the crowd, drove home. He returned without incident to his Commons seat the following Monday. Early in the afternoon of May 31, Louis St Laurent moved closure to get the bill out of committee. After two divisions on procedural points, Colin Cameron rose on a question of privilege to read two letters which had appeared in the May 30 edition of the Ottawa Journal. One of the letters was from Dr Eugene Forsey, the eminent Canadian expert on parliamentary practices. "The Speaker's words seem to imply," Forsey wrote, "that if the rules get seriously in the way of doing something the Government very much wants done, no reasonable person can expect the Government to follow them or the Speaker to enforce them." Cameron suggested that this constituted an attack on the dignity of Parliament. The Speaker agreed and guided the member on the correct procedure in bringing the matter before the House. This was the situation when the House went home on the night of May 31. The pipeline bill seemed finally to have been derailed. The Speaker had already ruled that Cameron's motion was debatable. This meant the Opposition could speak on it until Howe's deadline had passed. That night, four cars, including that of a Liberal cabinet minister, were seen outside the Speaker's home. When the 76 Assumption of Power House met at i i:oo a.m. the next day, which was labelled "Black Friday" in Tory propaganda, George Drew rose to continue the debate on the Cameron motion. He got as far as "Mr. Speaker . .. " when he was cut off. "I have read carefully the articles complained of," the Speaker said, "and I have come to the conclusion that because of the unprecedented circumstances surrounding the pipeline debate . . . it was and is impossible, if we are to consider freedom of the press as we should, to take these two articles as breaches of our privilege~ ... therefore I rule the motion made by the honourable member for Nanaimo out of order." Having ruled the motion which he himself had helped to draft out of order, the Speaker then moved that the House should return to the time before the motion was put - in other words, that the proceedings after 5:15 P.m. of the previous day simply did not exist. This was not a ruling but a motion by the Speaker, and therefore not a matter that could be debated or voted on. Opposition members swarmed out in fury into the green-carpeted aisle of the chamber, shaking their fists at the Speaker while the Liberal backbenchers resumed their cynical sing-song: I've been working on the pipeline all the day through, I've heen working on the pipeline just to make the Tories blue. Can't , iou hear the Tories moanin', getti . ng up so earlY in the morn' Hear the CCF &s groanin ~.fbr the pipeline ~ gett in' warm, The Canadian House of Commons had, in effect, been shorn of its rights and rules which the Speaker is sworn to uphold, No fewer than fourteen Standing Orders were clearly violated by the Speaker that day. "Through all this hubbub," wrote Grant Dexter, of the Winnipeg Free Press, "the most arresting figure on the Government side The Formative Circumstances 77 is Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent. He sits, impassive, expressionless, chin on hand, an open book on his desk. His aloofness is almost unbelievable. Especially at a time of high controversy, prime ministers always dominate proceedings and lead their party. Mr. St. Laurent does neither." John Diefenbaker remained behind his Commons desk that day, one of the most subdued of the Opposition members. At the moment when his colleagues rushed out to threaten the Speaker, he turned to George Pearkes, and said: "I've never felt like this in my life. I'm choking. But I'm going to stay in my place." That night he told a friend: "At last I understand the meaning of revolution." After St Laurent had again applied closure on third reading, the pipeline bill moved out of the Commons and into the Senate, which approved the measure in less than one day's comically ineffective debate. Trans-Canada got its cheque on June 7 - the promised deadline. Ironically, the company did not begin work during the 1956 season, after all, because the United States steel strike prevented the delivery of sufficient pipe. After the end of the pipeline debate, the Conservatives did not hold up the interim Supply vote which would have forced dissolution. A quick appraisal of the nation's mood convinced the Tories that they had little chance of coming out of an election with a majority. Besides, the Bay Street interests who would have had to put up the money for a Drew campaign were opposed to the Tory stand on the pipeline, at least partly because many of them held Trans-Canada stock. The company repaid its loan on time, but it became known that Nathan Tanner and Charles Coates, two Trans-Canada officials, had held stock options which allowed them to clear an estimated $1,700,000 in market profits out of the operation. "Canadian freedom is very sick," wrote Dr Forsey, summing up the pipeline debate. "The sickness will not be cured till the Canadian people win back parliamentary government. The first step in the cure is to turn the Liberals out." 78 Assumption of Power EVEN IN RETROSPECT, it is not easy to find an explanation for the Liberals' behaviour during the pipeline debate. Howe obviously saw the pipeline only in terms of a steel conduit to carry natural gas. His attitude was best summed up in this unusually emotional interjection dur- ing the pipeline debate: "This may be the last big project I will be called upon to undertake," he said, "I want to assure the members that it is not my purpose to close my years by undertaking a project that will stand to my discredit.... I believe this pipeline will make my children proud that their father had a hand in it." Why the Liberal cabinet went meekly along with Howe in degrading both Parliament and the Speaker will not be clearly established until the relevant confidential documents become available. But it is known that Howe threatened to resign if the bill were not pushed through the House in the required time. Many members of the Liberal cabinet were quite willing to suffer the loss of the obdurate Trade and Commerce minister, but Louis St Laurent made it clear that if he couldn't keep his cabinet together, he would also resign. In that case, he wouldn't have been available for the impending general election -even stuffed. One direct consequence of the pipeline debate was a io per cent drop in the Liberal Party's public opinion poll rating. A further decline in the administration's popularity occurred as a result of the Suez crisis, in the fall Of 1956. External Affairs Secretary Lester Pearson's vigorous action at the United Nations, which culminated in the establishment of the United Nations Emergency Force in the Middle East, brought Canada down on the same side as Russia and the United States - against Israeli "aggression" and the Anglo-French "intervention." The Conservatives attacked the Grits for deserting the British and becoming chore-boys for Washington, and Pearson's reply didn't help the situation very much: "If it's bad to be a chore-boy for the United States, it's equally bad to be a colonial chore-boy, running around shouting The Formative Circumstances 79 'Ready, aye, ready!... During the emergency session of Parliament held in November, St Laurent was asked why the smaller countries at the United Nations should have been allowed to deal with the vital interests of the great powers. "Because," he snapped back, "the members of the smaller nations are human beings just as are their people; because the era when the supermen of Europe could govern the whole world has and is coming pretty close to an end." Diefenbaker, then foreign affairs spokesman for the Opposition, replied he was scandalized that the Prime Minister saw fit to condemn Britain and France to the bag in which the USSR was placed. "I say this not in anger," he added. "I say it in the deepest feeling of sorrow, that Canada should have permitted the use of words which cannot hurt those against whom they are directed but will raise the hopes of Communists everywhere in the world and bring solace to the Khrushchovs and Bulganins." WHILE THE SUEZ CRISIS was dominating the international news Canadian political attention was focused on the Conservative leadership contest, called for December io. The convention had been made necessary by the resignation, in late September, of George Drew. The pipeline debate and the general frustrations of unsuccessfully battling the invincible Grits for six years had taken their toll. He interrupted a Bermuda holiday to enter Wellesley Hospital in Toronto in a state of severe physical and nervous exhaustion, and a few days later handed his resignation to L6on Balcer, president of the Progressive Conservative Association of Canada. Within hours of Drew's resignation, Kenneth C. Binks, a bright young Ottawa lawyer who had once worked for Diefenbaker in Saskatoon, launched a "Diefenbaker for leader" campaign.* His enthusiasm, was not unanimous. In Quebec City, Mark Drouin, first vice-president of the * Binks achieved a distinction few other Diefenbaker followers could claim: he stayed totally loyal to the Conservative leader throughout the Diefenbaker Years, yet he was not rewarded in any way. 80 Assumption of Power Progressive Conservative Association of Canada, urged that Drew's resignation should be refused and that Earl Rowe should become the pro-tem leader. But by October 4, a committee of Conservative m.p.'s had met in Ottawa and a letter was sent to Diefenbaker claiming that eighty per cent of the Party caucus was behind his candidacy. Significantly, the letter was signed by Gordon Churchill, the Winnipeg m.p. who first entered the Commons in a 1951 by-election. Within the Party he was a highly regarded member of the Old Guard, and in fact he had been the candidate put up in 1954 by the Old Guard, in an attempt to stop George Hees from being elected president of the Progressive Conservative Association. His shift to Diefenbaker was the first major defection from the Party's Establishment. George Hees, meanwhile, had embarked on a cross-country junket to test the atmosphere for his own candidacy. But a quick swing through western Canada convinced him that Diefenbaker was going to win. On October 5, he too hopped on the Diefenbaker bandwagon. The third important recruit was Allister Grosart, a Toronto advertising executive who had been active in some of George Drew's campaigns.t Grosart's conversion was particularly important, because it was the first solid indication of support for Diefenbaker from the Ontario Conservative Party. Of all the opposition to Diefenbaker as Conservative leader, the most determined came from Quebec.T The chief anti-Diefenbaker agitator was Uon Balcer of Three Rivers, the leader of the province's 342 delegates to the convention. Meanwhile a group of fourteen leading English-speaking Conservatives, led by George Nowlan, the amiable m.p. from Nova Scotia, and Dick Bell, a former national director of the Conservative Party, met in Ottawa's Chateau Laurier in a last-ditch effort to head off the Diefenbaker candidacy. At first, the group tried to persuade Davie Fulton to withdraw his name from the t For a fuller discussion of Grosart's role, see Chapter 12. t For the background to this opposition, see Chapter 20. The Formative Circumstances 81 leadership contest and shift his support to Sidney Smith, president of the University of Toronto. Fulton refused. Then Nowlan was dispatched to see Smith and persuade him to run, but was unsuccessful. Other candidates con- sidered by the anti-Diefenbaker clique included Leslie Frost, the Ontario Premier; W. A. C. Bennett, the British Columbia Premier and officially a Social Crediter; Duff Roblin, the Manitoba Conservative leader; Hugh John Flemming, the New Brunswick Premier; Henry Borden, a leading Toronto businessman; Garfield Weston, the international biscuit magnate; Paul Sauv6, the Quebec Minister of Youth and Social Welfare; John B. Hamilton, a Toronto m.p.; and James Duncan, former president of Massey-Harris Limited. But by the time the convention met, the Old Guard knew it was beaten. "Ah yes, the Old Guard," one of its members ruefully told a reporter. "Just before this convention we had a full-dress regimental parade in front of the Toronto armoury, but only two of us turned out. The rest of us are all dead or spavined." The convention's keynote speaker was Bob Stanfield, the forty-two-year-old premier of Nova Scotia, who a few days before had swept out the most solidly entrenched provincial Liberal administration in the country. "If I might paraphrase the remark of a distinguished Canadian politician," Stanfield told the cheering crowd of twelve hundred delegates, "the age of the supermen is fast coming to a close. The people of Canada will never again knowingly or willingly endorse the view that one party should govern their affairs in perpetuity." John Diefenbaker was again nominated by MajorGeneral George Pearkes, and seconded by Hugh John Flemming, the Conservative premier of New Brunswick. Pierre S6vigny, a leading Quebec Conservative, had been all set to second the nomination, but at the last minute, Diefenbaker asked Flemming to take his place. He thought that representatives from British Columbia and the Maritimes would better express the coast-to-coast 82 Assumption of Power appeal he was planning. Pearkes, in his speech, called Diefenbaker "the greatest living Canadian-a cross between Simon de Montfort and Benjamin Disraeli." Flemming described his nominee as " a man who always comes to the aid of the misunderstood, the forgotten, the underprivileged, and those suffering from what he considers to be injustice." Diefenbaker took the leadership on the first ballot.* "There are no words that will express my appreciation for the highest honour that can be conferred on a member of this party," Diefenbaker told the convention in his acceptance speech. "I say to you in all humility that the great trust that you have given me, the trust of the party of Macdonald and of Cartier and their successors, will be handed on by me to whoever my successor should be, unimpaired to the limit of my capacity and my ability." The new leader ended with this moving evocation: "I ask for your prayers. I ask for your assistance and your cooperation. I will make mistakes, but I hope it will be said of me when I give up the highest honour that you can confer on any man, as was said of another in public service: 'He wasn't always right; sometimes he was on the wrong side, but never on the side of wrong.' That is my dedication; that is my humble declaration." IN THE PRE-ELECTION PARLIAMENTARY SESSION which began on January 8, 1957, the Liberal government introduced nothing very significant or controversial. Diefenbaker turned over the House leadership to Howard Green and spent most of his time making speeches across the country, consolidating his support in the provinces. There had been a significant swing away from the Liberals by the country's provincial administrations during the Party's long tenure in Ottawa. When the Liberals had taken over the federal government in 1935, all provin- * The final tally was: John Diefenbaker, 774: Donald Fleming, 393; Davie Fulton, 117. The Formative Circumstances 83 cial governments except that of Alberta were Liberal. But by early 1957, only three small provinces - Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, and Manitoba -remained under Liberal control. This was important because the essential organizational help that a provincial party in power can grant its federal allies was not available to the Liberals. Federal campaign organizations were virtually non-existent in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The Prince Edward Island Liberals were furious with Ottawa, because the federal government was demanding a rebate on its taxrental as a result of a clerical error in estimating the province's population. In all provinces, the farmers were angry with the Liberals for claiming that the nation had never had it so good. Farm cash income was down sharply, and Ottawa wasn't doing much about it. This was the mood of the country when Liberal Finance Minister Walter Harris brought down his pre-election budget in the early spring of 1957. His calculations showed a budgetary surplus Of $258 millions, but he allowed only $ i oo millions for increased welfare payments, because he considered a larger distribution of cash might add to the economy's inflationary pressures. The $ ioo millions was split into $75 millions for pensions increases and $25 millions for a boost in family allowances. This meant that old age pensioners would receive an increase of just six dollars per month - carefully made effective only on July i, 1957 - two weeks after the election. The farmers' requests for cash advances on farm-stored grain were not even mentioned. When the 22nd Parliament was prorogued on April 12, 1957, the Liberal majority of 168 m.p.'s still looked invincible beside the tiny enclave of fifty-three Tories. The coterie of Liberal armchair strategists, gently rumbling in the palmy reaches of Ottawa's Rideau Club, smugly reminded each other of the hoary epithet that the Conservative Party's problems were, as always, insur- mountable, its policies insufferable, and its prospects 84 Assumption of Power invisible. After twenty-two years they could not know how wrong they were. FOUR The 1957 Election and the Ecstasies of Office DECISIVE shifts in a nation's political history are seldom discernible from their undramatic beginnings. Moods and ideas change, men begin to question accepted beliefs, and finally the shifting political climate finds expression in a strong new leader who, almost intuitively, manages to gauge the nameless but profound discontent stirring in the land. Having correctly interpreted and articulated the nation's mood, he becomes irresistible. This was the situation in the spring of 1957, as Canada prepared for its twenty-third general election. Most Canadians in the higher income brackets had become sated with the easy materialism of the lush 'fifties, and found themselves groping for some deeper personal and national purposes. Many citizens at the lower end of the economic scale were frustrated at not having gained a fair portion of the nation's abundance. John Diefenbaker successfully drew upon both these moods to create a shared vision of a more noble future for his countrymen. Audiences at political meetings across the country, once described by the dean of Canadian newspaperman, Bruce Hutchison, as "a collection of dull, skeptical haddock eyes to daunt the boldest politician," suddenly woke up. It wasn't so much what Diefenbaker was saying, as how he was saying it. In the fabric of their promises, there was little significant difference between the Liberal and Con- 85 86 Assumption of Power servative platforms. But while Louis St Laurent read his speeches like legal briefs that he had never seen before, John Diefenbaker purnmelled his audiences with highly evocative pledges of momentous (and impending) action on their behalf. The contrast was only accentuated by St Laurent's attempts to poke fun at his opponent. "An election promise, after all," he patiently explained to his dwindling audiences, "is a mere cream-puff of a thing, with more air than substance in it." Diefenbaker was well aware, as he moved into the 1957 campaign, that the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada was a declining political movement without enough permanent supporters to put him in office. He knew he couldn't hope to gain a majority of the nation's ballots unless he were able to rouse among the uncommitted voters a feeling of protest powerful enough to make them join his cause, if not his Party. In order to involve non-Conservatives in his struggle, Diefenbaker deliberately discarded most of his Party's traditional policies, and with the help of Allister Grosart transformed it into an organism for personal aggrandizement. "'It's Time for a Diefenbaker Government" -the main Tory campaign slogan - became something of a non-partisan rallying cry. But the Conservative campaign also needed an aura of political legitimacy, and this was provided by Leslie Miscampbell Frost, the genial premier of Ontario. During the 1953 federal election, Frost had limited his support of George Drew to one twenty-minute speech, which he managed to deliver without mentioning Drew's name. But in the 1957 campaign, he became the most willing of allies and personally supported Diefenbaker at election rallies all over his province. This abrupt change in attitude was not exactly a spiritual conversion. In a temporary departure from Ontario's traditional policy, Frost had signed a tax-sharing agreement with Ottawa in 1952, which granted his province $214 millions in conditional and unconditional payments for the 1956-57 fiscal year. But, in his 1957 budget address The 1957 Election and the Ecstasies of Office 87 to the Ontario legislature, he demanded a new arrangement that would yield the province an extra $ i 18 millions a year. A promise to revise the tax-sharing agreement in that direction, if he got into power, was the price that Diefenbaker paid for Frost's co-operation.* On April 25, when Diefenbaker arrived in Toronto for the opening speech of his election campaign, Frost postponed a cabinet meeting to spend an hour chatting with him, before they were driven together to Massey Hall. Elephantine enlargements of Diefenbaker photographs smiled down at the audience Of 2,6oo enthusiastic supporters, while on stage fifty of the Party's Ontario candidates sat before a thirty-foot-high map of Canada, bearing the legend DIEFENBAKER-CANADAS MAN. The word "Conservative" was nowhere in evidence. Joel Aldred, the master of ceremonies,t ended his introductory spiel with this unusual invocation: "Tonight we've kicked it off. We've lit the flame. Now we've got to wrap it up real big and send that li'l ole' Liberal Party packin'!" The Conservative leader was introduced by Frost, who defined the main campaign issue as one of Liberal centralism versus the Conservative ideal of balanced government, and concentrated his remarks on the need for Ottawa to give Ontario "about $ i oo millions" more of its revenues. "There," he said, turning to Diefenbaker, "is the only man who'll do Ontario justice." "I am one of those," Diefenbaker began, "who believe that this Party has a sacred trust, a trust in accordance with the traditions of Macdonald. It has an appointment today with destiny, to plan and to build for a greater Canada ... one Canada, with equality of opportunity for every citizen and equality for every province from the * Ontario did eventually get a greater share of federal revenues, but not nearly as much as Premier Leslie Frost had expected. A politically unpop- ular sales tax had to be instituted by Ontario's Conservative administra- tion to make up the difference. t Aldred was the unsuccessful Conservative candidate in TorontoSt Paul's in the 1963 election. 88 Assumption of Power Atlantic to the Pacific." The crowd was visibly moved, and cheered when he declared war on "the shocking contempt" and "bludgeoning" to which Parliament had been subjected by the "arrogant" Liberals. Then he outlined his "Canada First" Policy of "positive national development," and closed with this paragraph, taken verbatim from the official transcript issued by the Conservative Party: "If we are dedicated to this -and to this we are -you, my fellow Canadians, will require all the wisdom, all the power that comes from those spiritual springs that make freedom possible - all the wisdom, all the faith and all the vision which the Conservative Party gave but yesterday under Macdonald, changed to meet changing conditions, today having the responsibility of this party to lay the foundations of this nation for a great and glorious future." This kind of appeal was typical of Diefenbaker's speeches throughout the campaign. On the printed page, it makes little sense. But from the platform its effect was far different. Most Canadians who listened closely to the Conservative chieftain seemed to conclude that his faith was so powerful it could not be contained within the ordinary syntax of campaign oratory. "Underlying a good deal of what Mr. Diefenbaker said," wrote Professor John Meisel of Queen's University,* "was the assumption that Canada was on the threshold of greatness, if it could only get rid of its old and inadequate government. The voter need only to vote for the Diefenbaker party and he would at once become allied to those who were creating a dazzlingly bright and promising future. Each voter could, so Mr. Diefenbaker seemed to say, participate in an effort which would make his own dreams come true." Conservative campaign propaganda stressed this theme by constantly repeating Diefenbaker's statement: "We have a choice -a road to greatness in faith and dedica- * The Canadian General Election of 195 7, University of Toronto Press, 1962. The 1957 Election and the Ecstasies of Office 89 tion - or the road to non-fulfilment of Canada's destiny." Instead of urging support for the Conservative Party, most of the Tory pamphlets simply exhorted voters to keep a date with Diefenbaker and democracy on June io, election day. Although Diefenbaker made a great many specific promises during his cross-country electioneering junkets, his platform did not add up to co-ordinated plans for the grand design he was touting for Canada. Its strongest and most precise planks dealt with parliamentary reform. He pledged himself to appoint a "permanent" Speaker, to abolish closure, to revitalize parliamentary committees, and to call a dominion-provincial conference on Senate reform. Other promises concerned the establishment of closer trading connections with the United Kingdom to reduce dependence on the United States, a Bill of Rights, and a vigorous new national agricultural policy to achieve some degree of price and income stability in that depressed industry. Diefenbaker said very little about defence or foreign policy, except to leave the impression they had grown increasingly ineffective under the Grits. Although no one seemed to notice it at the time, the economic theories which could be extracted from Diefenbaker's campaign oratory were often contradictory. "The real causes of inflation," he declared in Truro, Nova Scotia, on May i, "are overspending by the Federal Government and too high taxes." He seemed unaware that high taxes are the classic anti-inflationary weapon, and in any case he was pledging even more government spending at every whistle stop. Diefenbaker's approach to economics was typified by this sally, during an election meeting on May 24, at Kamloops, a lumbering community in the British Columbia interior. "You have three thousand unemployed men here," he said, "and yet the government is unrepentant. High interest rates have reduced house building and struck down the lumber operators and put you out of work. That's what they ask you to vote for. If you've been 90 Assumption of Power Liberal in the past, don't you care what's been happening in this constituency? Don't you want your jobs back?" Diefenbaker spent thirty-nine days on the campaign trail - compared with St Laurent's twenty-eight. He covered a distance Of 2o,845 miles by rail, plane, and car, and delivered 103 speeches to audiences totalling more than 50,000 in i8o of the country's 265 ridings. The turning-point of his campaign probably came in Vancouver, on May 24. As he entered the Georgia Street Auditorium there, a surging, roaring crowd of three thousand gave him the largest and loudest ovation of his political career. Another two thousand supporters milled around nearby, sitting on curbs, car fenders, and tree branches, listening over outdoor loudspeakers. After the first cheers had died down, Diefenbaker looked at his audience and, in the awed tones of a prophet evoking a miracle, declared: "I think tonight across Canada something is happening, I think the Liberal Party is now realizing Canada is aroused as it has not been aroused in many years." Although his speech broke no new ground, he was interrupted forty-one times by applause and appreciative laughter. "It is a deep inspiration for me to see this vast audience," he concluded. "This is the kind of thing that gives me the strength to continue to work on behalf of the average men and women of this country. From the bottom of my heart I thank you. I won't let you down." After Vancouver, his audiences grew in both number and enthusiasm. At Hanover, Ontario, a small Bruce County town in the heart of Liberal Finance Minister Walter Harris's riding, a crowd Of 2,ioo heard Diefen- baker's warning that a vote against him was, in effect, a .vote against democracy. "If you send this Government back to office," he threatened, "don't ask Her Majesty's loyal Opposition to stand up for your rights. For you no longer will have any rights." As Diefenbaker's appeal was gathering momentum across the nation, the Liberal campaign was falling apart. Although the National Liberal Federation had invested an The 1957 Election and the Ecstasies of Office 91 unprecedented $4 million in the 1957 election (nearly three times as much as the Conservatives) its efforts seemed to lack even the semblance of an imaginative strategy. The Liberals had been so confident of victory that they went into the election without filling the sixteen existing vacancies in the Senate. In retrospect, the Liberal pretension, in attempting to win an election simply by telling voters they really had no alternative except to re-elect Louis St Laurent, appears to have been based on a serious lack of appreciation of the democratic process. J. W. Pickersgill, then Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, unabashedly declared that the Liberals should be returned to office "not merely for the well-being of Canadians, but for the good of mankind in general." The Liberal hierarchy deliberately eschewed television, while the Conservatives exploited the medium, which then still had the advantage of novelty. "I will be more interested in seeing people than in talking to cameras," St Laurent huffily told a television reporter at the start of the campaign. Only one Liberal cabinet minister-Ralph Campney - bothered to take advantage of the course in TV speaking techniques being offered by the Liberal organization, in a dummy studio set up in the garage of its Ottawa headquarters. The Liberals could have retained a plurality in the Commons by winning only four more seats than they got. But they lost a least nine ridings through default, by refusing to back the nominated candidates, because they hadn't been approved by national headquarters. When St Laurent launched his campaign in Winnipeg, the nation expected a vigorous reply to Diefenbaker's charges that the Liberals had been guilty of dictatorial conduct in pushing the pipeline legislation through Parlia- ment by the repeated use of closure. Instead, the Liberal Leader made fun of the issue. He referred to the debate as having been "nearly as long as the pipeline itself, and quite as full of another kind of natural gas." Less dramatic but just as damaging was the absence of any serious 92 Assumption of Power attempt to justify the "sound" financial policies of Walter Harris's disappointing April budget. Throughout much of the campaign, Louis St Laurent, the only prime minister since Macdonald to be in office after his seventy-fifth birthday, wore an ascetic look of disengaged wisdom. At times, be seemed quite unaware of what was happening around him. During a brief stopover at Jarvis, Ontario, for instance, he shook hands with some of the reporters who had followed him throughout the campaign, obviously under the impression they were local voters. He patted and kissed children, recited his ghostwritten speeches, and confided to an aide that he was afraid the right-wing, anti-Catholic Social Crediters would form the official Opposition in the next Commons. As it became apparent that their return to power wasn't going to be quite as automatic as had confidently been expected, some Liberal ministers resorted to questionable tactics. C. D. Howe, under pressure from Douglas Fisher, a local school teacher running for the CCF in his home riding of Port Arthur, went on television, and asked his constituents: "Now would you want a young fellow down at Ottawa who is under Communist influence?" Howe also succeeded spectacularly in alienating his Party's farm vote. After poking a rather tubby, complaining farmer in the stomach at a public meeting, in Carman, Manitoba, Howe commented: "Looks to me like you've been eating pretty well under a Liberal Government." At a Liberal rally in Mortis, Manitoba, later the same day, Howe got so enraged with a persistent questioner that he finally shouted at him: "When your party organizes a meeting, you'll have the platform, and we'll ask the questions." The angry trouble-maker walked up to the front of the hall and identified himself as Bruce Mackenzie, head of the local Liberal association. Mackenzie then recalled for the audience how he had once seen the Minister of Trade and Commerce sitting between two provincial premiers, like meat in a sandwich. "It must have been a baloney sand- wich!" he bellowed, as Howe tried to shove his way out of The 1957 Election and the Ecstasies of Office 93 the hall. At the doorway, one dissatisfied Liberal approached Howe and said he still wanted his questions answered. "Look here, my good man," Howe replied, 11 when the election comes, why don't you just go away and vote for the party you support? In fact, why don't you just go away?" Toward the end of May, the Liberals tried to influence the farm vote by banning imports of cheddar cheese and placing a price support under fowl, but the measures were, not unnaturally, interpreted as last-minute bribes. An unexpected misfortune occurred at St Laurent's final rally in Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens, when William Hatton, a fifteen-year-old heckler, was accidentally pushed while approaching the Prime Minister and hit his head on the concrete floor. He wasn't badly hurt, but the accident added to the image of the Liberal Party as an unrepentant arrogant group of old men, willing to ride roughshod over voters. As they were leaving Maple Leaf Gardens that same night, Walter Harris had a brief confidential chat with St Laurent. Harris predicted that he would lose his own seat, and Ontario would go Tory, but that the Liberals would still get enough votes to win. As late as June 8, the Conservatives appeared to have no prospect of forming a government. The final forecast issued by the Canadian Institute of Public Opinion showed a 43.3 per cent to 37.5 per cent margin for the Liberals in the popular vote. With this tabulation fresh in his mind John Diefenbaker returned to Prince Albert, at i i:oo a.m. on June 8, exhausted after six gruelling weeks of campaigning. But when he arrived, he was told that a Liberal motorcade was about to swing through the outlying parts of his riding, and that he'd have to do the same. He had been able to spend only three hours in his own constituency since the campaign opened. His own organizers were so afraid people resented his absence that he spent all of Saturday barnstorming through the environs of Prince Albert. On Sunday, he finally rested. 94 Assumption of Power The next day -June i o -in sultry, late-spring weather, Canadians turned out at the polls, 6.6 million strong. Early that evening, at his home on the Grande All6e in Quebec City, Louis St Laurent settled in to listen to the results over his living-room radio. The trend was established by the first poll to report - Sable Island, a traditionally Liberal sandbar, i8o miles east of Halifax, peopled only by meteorologists and lightkeepers. This night, the Sable Islanders went for Diefenbaker by a majority of two votes. Then Newfoundland, the closed preserve of Liberal Premier Joey Smallwood, reported the election of two Tories. The island had been solidly Liberal in 1953. In Nova Scotia, the trickle turned into a tide. Instead of their previous single seat, the Conservatives won ten. On Prince Edward Island - Liberal since 1935 - all four seats fell to Diefenbaker. In New Brunswick, the Conservatives scored a gain of two. Only in Quebec did the Liberal fortress hold; just three extra seats went Tory. The mood at Grand All& was gloomy. The radio had broken down. St Laurent was now watching results in front of an upstairs television set; Jack Pickersgill was in the parlour, phoning all over the country. In Prince Albert, meanwhile, John Diefenbaker had been sitting at home, nervously glancing at a biography of Abraham Lincoln which one of his image-makers had thrust into his hand for the occasion. BY 5:45 P.m., Prince Albert time, the Liberals and Conservatives had elected seven m.p.'s each. The Grits were ahead in forty-one ridings; the Tories in thirty-nine. Shortly before 7.00 p.m., as Diefenbaker boarded a Canadian Pacific Airlines Dakota for Regina where he had agreed to make a television appearance, he got word of Public Works Minister Robert Winters' defeat in Nova Scotia. "These Cabinet ministers are going down like flies," he grinned. During the flight, the pilot brought back bulletins of other upsets -at 7: 16 p.m. that of Walter Harris, the Liberal Minister of Finance who had been House Leader during the pipeline debate. Diefenbaker changed his metaphor. "They're going down The 1957 Election and the Ecstasies of Office 95 like ninepins," he crowed. At 8:12 came the news that Stuart Garson, the Minister of Justice and a former premier of Manitoba, had been defeated. "It's awful," Diefenbaker chuckled. "What a debacle." Finally, five minutes out of Regina, came the assurance that the Liberals had failed to win an over-all majority. Diefenbaker said nothing. He just slapped his knee. After his brief Tv address ("My fellow Canadians, this is a moment of deep dedication rather than elation for me . . . ") Diefenbaker flew right back to Prince Albert. As his plane was taking off, the defeat of C.D. Howe was announced. "Why," Diefenbaker quipped, "it's almost like the night after Waterloo." In Port Arthur, Ontario, on hearing the news of his defeat, C.D. Howe characteristically delivered himself of the opinion that the nation was being swept by some strange disease and he was going to bed. Shortly before eleven, Louis St Laurent was driven to Quebec City's Chateau Frontenac Hotel for a television appearance. Fifty sad well-wishers clapped as an uncomprehending patriarch spoke his tight-lipped elegy. By the time Diefenbaker's Dakota had landed in Prince Albert, a thousand well-wishers had flocked to the grubby little airport. Hares flickered over the muddy tarmac as the m6l6e of cars was noisily organized into a homecoming hero's caravan. At the precise moment when the Diefenbakers climbed into the lead convertible there was a shout: "MISTER PRIME MINISTER!" The brief ensuing hush was the measure of his victory. AN ASTOUNDED NATION WENT REELING TO BED. It was hard to say who was most surprised next morning when the full import of the ballot count became apparent: the victorious Conservatives, the humbled Liberals, the voters who had fashioned the spectacular upset, or the editors of Maclean's Magazine, who knew that within hours their issue, dated June 22 but put to bed weeks before, would be on the street, with an editorial that started: "For better or 96 Assumption of Power for worse, we Canadians have once more elected one of the most powerful governments ever created by the free will of a free electorate The Tory victory was far from decisive. The CCF and Social Credit had been returned with increased strength from the western provinces; the Liberals had held Quebec. For the first time since 1925, a federal election had failed to return a majority to the House of Commons. After one Tory member-elect died and the service vote had been counted the result was: CONSERVATIVES LIBERALS 105 CCF 25 SOCIAL CREDIT Ig INDEPENDENTS 4 Statistically, what Diefenbaker had accomplished was to increase the Conservative vote by 826,83o ballots - 38 per cent of the total popular vote as compared with 30 per cent in the 1953 contest. The Conservative Party still had 218,ooo fewer votes than the Liberals, but most of the Liberal margin had been wasted in safe Quebec seats. The results signified that Diefenbaker had persuaded one 1953 Liberal voter in twelve to abandon his Party for the Conservatives. Premier Leslie Frost had delivered Ontario. Diefenbaker received 48 per cent of the Ontario vote - 8 per cent more than in 1953 and enough to increase his party's Ontario representation from thirty-three to sixtyone. The Liberal losses looked even worse on close examination. Nine Liberal ministers - nearly half the cabinet - had been defeated. The Liberal Party had been cornered into becoming virtually a French-Canadian political move- ment. Seventy-five of the 105 seats it retained had predominantly French-speaking populations, or at least substantial French minorities. St Laurent could constitutionally remain in office until defeated on a non- The 1957 Election and the Ecstasies of Office 97 confidence vote in the Commons, but the Liberal humiliation seemed too great to permit this kind of manoeuvring. The phone call that woke up John Diefenbaker on the day after his dramatic electoral victory was from a former legal client who wanted advice on collecting a fifteendollar debt. But soon the congratulatory telegrams poured in, including one from George Drew ("Fiorenza joins me in extending to you and Olive the best wishes and luck in the days ahead"). Diefenbaker had breakfast, then wandered over to McKim's two-chair barbershop for a trim. That night he and his brother Elmer flew to Saskatoon for a visit with their mother. "This is quite a thing, isn't it?" she proudly remarked and the boys allowed that indeed it was. The next day Diefenbaker took his official party and press corps to fish at nearby Lac la Ronge, but he caught only two small jackfish. Most of Thursday, June 13, was spent trying to juggle air reservations. In one final gesture of arrogance, the Liberals were using the prime ministerial aircraft to fly two cabinet ministers - Ralph Campney (defeated) and James Sinclair - from Vancouver to Ottawa. Carrying their own luggage, the Diefenbakers. managed to get on a Trans-Canada Air Lines flight at Saskatoon. They arrived in Ottawa at 7:3o a.m. to be greeted by three hundred jubilant placard-waving Tories. St Laurent had come back to Ottawa by train two days before. His reception committee consisted of one paid official from the National Liberal Federation. On June 17, the Liberals decided to resign from the stewardship they had enjoyed for nearly twenty-two years and St Laurent issued a statement pledging his party's help in getting Parliamentary approval for the Conservative election promises. Just before noon, on June 21, 1957, John Diefenbaker and thirteen jolly Tories arrived at Rideau Hall to be sworn in as the new Government of Canada. "I, John George Diefenbaker, do solemnly swear that I will serve Her Majesty truly and faithfully in the Place of Her 98 Assumption of Power Council in this, Her Majesty's Dominion of Canada he repeated, bent down to kiss the ceremonial Bible, and whispered, "So help me God." With those words, he became the thirteenth man to serve as Prime Minister of Canada. He looked curiously taller that day, and somehow already alone. A man transfixed by the inextinguishable wonder of the occasion. Half a mile away, in an oddly silent office at the extreme west end of Parliament Hill, a proud old man was listlessly leafing through his appointments calendar. Eightyone supplicants had requested interviews with the Right Honourable Clarence Decatur Howe for after June 10, but it was doubtful that any of them would want to see him now. He shrugged. Then he leaned over to his telephone table, dialled a number, and ordered his broker to sell most of his equity stocks. I don't trust this new bunch," he said and hung up. FIVE The Charismatic Rampage Of 1958 UST FIFTY-THREE hours after the first session of his new cabinet, John Diefenbaker flew to London for the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference. The date for the meeting had been accepted by Louis St Laurent months previously, when he hadn't even contemplated the possibility that someone else would be representing Canada. The Liberal leader's daughter, Madeleine, who usually accompanied him as official hostess, had already bought new dresses for the trip, and Diefenbaker's rooms at the Dorchester Hotel in London were still being held in St Laurent's name. Despite a bumpy flight across the Atlantic, Diefenbaker was in an exultant mood when he landed in London, cheerfully repeating his pro-Commonwealth sallies to airport reporters before four separate banks of television cameras. "Where did you find him?" one BBC interviewer asked a member of the Canadian delegation. "He can have the Crown jewels after this." For its main headline, the Daily Mail passed up news of a shake-up in the Kremlin hierarchy, to hail Diefenbaker as: NEW STRONG MAN OF THE COMMONWEALTH The Canadian Prime Minister's impact was considerably amplified by the special circumstances surrounding the 1957 Conference. The United Kingdom government was, at the time, vaguely considering entry into a 99 100 Assumption of Power European free-trade area, but most of the British public was still emotionally committed to "the Empire." When Diefenbaker burst on the London political scene, he gave the Empire-worshippers a hero, and when he passionately advocated increased Commonwealth trade, he gave them a cause. "Mr. Diefenbaker has staggered the Commonwealth Conference," The Daily Mail editorialized. "It seems that faith and enthusiasm can still move mountains." The official communique issued at the close of the Conference made no mention of his proposal for a Commonwealth trade conference in Canada, but that didn't spoil the triumphant reception Diefenbaker was accorded. He had a thirty-minute private audience with the Queen, spent a weekend at Chequers, sat for his likeness at Madame Tussaud's wax museum, deposited a wreath at Sir John A. Macdonald's bust in St Paul's Cathedral and chatted through a private luncheon with Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian Prime Minister. Best of all, he and his wife, Olive, were invited to the Churchills' at Hyde Park Gate. At the start of the visit, Lady Churchill confided to Mrs Dietenbaker that Sir Winston had been greatly looking forward to meeting her husband. "When he heard about the election," she said, "he was so excited he danced." Churchill himself was impressed by the Canadian visitor, but slightly taken aback when his offer of some rare Napoleon brandy was politely turned down. "You're a teetotaller?" the grand old man demanded incredulously. "That's not quite so," Mrs Diefenbaker intervened. "He takes a glass of sherry now and then." Churchill shrugged and remarked that the worst defeat of his life was the time he lost an election to a prohibitionist. Several nights later, when she was seated at a formal dinner between Harold Macmillan and Winston Churchill, Mrs Diefenbaker commented that everyone seemed very interested in the Canadian election. "Interested?" Churchill rumbled. "Why shouldn't they be? It's the most important event since the end of the war." The Charismatic Rampage of 1958 101 AFTER TEN HAPPY DAYS IN LONDON, the Diefenbakers flew home to a capital still agog at the recent transfer of power. The changeover in administrations had been astonishingly smooth. Only one civil servant - Maurice Lamontagne, economic advisor in the Privy Council - had resigned directly because of the Tory victory. Senior government employees who recalled the slaughter in their ranks after R. B. Bennett took over the government in 1930 when, during five years in office, Bennett appointed twenty-four new deputy ministers, were singularly impressed with Diefenbaker's correctness. Even the personal staffs of the former Liberal ministers were either retained in their jobs or moved to positions with equivalent pay. Parliament couldn't be convened in the early fall because House of Commons facilities had already been loaned by the previous government to a meeting of the International Postal Union. But the Conservatives made excellent use of the summer months to acquaint the people with their new government, and especially with their new Prime Minister. Diefenbaker was away from his desk for thirty-seven of his first sixty days in office, parading about the country, gathering homage. In Calgary he officiated at the Stampede-, in Saskatoon, he inaugurated the Saskatchewan Exhibition; in Prince Albert, he opened a service-club playground; in Hamilton, he attended a memorial service for the local victims of an air crash; and at Maxville, Ontario, he watched the Highland Games. On Thursday, September 5, he left Ottawa after an all-day cabinet session for Saskatoon, where he visited his mother, then flew on to Calgary. The next morning he was driven to Banff, for an address to the annual banquet of the Canadian Bar Association. He left Banff at 1': 15 p.m., was driven back to Calgary, and flew to Ottawa. After an hour's stopover in the capital, he flew on to Darmouth College, at Hanover, New Hampshire, to deliver his first major United States speech and took off the same night for Quebec City. He arrived there some time after i:oo a.m., but two hundred* people were still waiting at 102 Assumption of Power Loretteville Airport to get a glimpse of him. He took time to reciprocate their welcome, so that when he finally got to bed that night, he had been awake continuously for fortyone hours. The next day, a Sunday, he gave a speech in French at a ceremony marking the 4ooth anniversary of Jacques Cartier's death; was guest of honour at a luncheon; called on the Governor General at the Citadel, and inspected a guard of honour from the Royal 22nd, complete with their famous goat mascot. After tea, he shook the hands of fifteen hundred local citizens who had answered a newspaper ad to "come and meet the prime minister," then flew back to Ottawa, and sharp at eight the next morning was in his office answering his accumulated mail. As well as the public activities involved in this hectic three-day whirlwind of activity Diefenbaker, at various stops, also took time for fairly extended private conferences with Sherman Adams, the chief assistant to President Dwight Eisenhower, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the Arc- tic explorer, and a young German student who had arrived in Canada the day before and wanted to meet the Prime Minister. The flair with which Diefenbaker performed his overloaded schedule served to confirm the opinion of many Canadian voters that they had acted wisely on June io in choosing this energetic man to lead them. They responded to him, as Canadians have seldom responded to any political leader. On September 18, 1957, most Canadian newspapers carried a briefitern that it was the Prime Minister's sixty-second birthday and that instead of celebrating it, he would be in Prince Edward Island to address the local Conservative Association. That night, when Diefenbaker climbed aboard the TCA Viscount for the trip back to Ottawa, his fellow passengers quite spontaneously burst into the song: "Happy birthday, dear John." He acknowledged the unexpected tribute with a grin and a victory wave. A good deal of Diefenbaker's growing popularity was based on the vigorous performance of the Conservative The Charismatic Rampage of 1958103 cabinet. Working at a tempo to which Canadians had not been accustomed, the Tory ministers in quick succession approved a series of popular measures. These included pay increases to 104,000 federal employees worth an extra $ i io millions a year (July i i); price support for turkeys at twenty-five cents a pound (July 17); a boost in the price ceiling on government-sold butter from 58 cents to 64 cents a pound (August 14); special assistance to the doomridden collieries at Springhill, Nova Scotia (August 22); the release Of $150 millions through the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation for loans on low-cost homes (August 22); and the dispatch of a grain-selling mission to the United Kingdom and continental Europe (September 16). The pace of Tory vote-getting announcements was significantly increased by the convening of the 23rd Parliament, on October 14. The opening itself was an unforgettable occasion in Diefenbaker's life. When he arrived on Parliament Hill early that morning a crowd had gathered in front of the Centre Block. They cheered at the sight of him and, for the first time, the salute "Vive le Premier Ministre!" was distinctly audible amid the shouting. Later in the day, Diefenbaker escorted Elizabeth 11, the first British monarch ever to be present at the opening of the Canadian Parliament, to the inaugural ceremonies. The gracious Queen and her proud Prime Minister stood side by side in the breezeless afternoon as a military band boomed out Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, punctuated by bursts from naval cannon and the peal of the Peace Tower's carillon. It was a propitious beginning for the Diefenbaker Years in Parliament, and the session that followed fully lived up to its billing. Diefenbaker's manner - his very presence - imparted to the House of Commons a sense of urgency and accomplishment rarely duplicated in democratic assemblies. The nervous ineptitude of the Liberals made the Tory per- formance look even better than it actually was. Louis St 104 Assumption of Power Laurent, who had resigned from the Liberal leadership on September 5 but agreed to stay on until the Party's leadership convention in January, sat slumped behind his parliamentary desk, like a collapsed effigy of himself. Of the former ministers, only Lester Pearson, James Sinclair, Jack Pickersgill, Paul Martin and George Marler seemed capable of intelligent opposition. Most of the "indispensable" Liberal frontbenchers had rushed out of politics, immediately after defeat. C. D. Howe was collecting com- pany directorships in Montreal; Robert Winters had become president of the huge Rio Tinto Mining Company of Canada; Dr James McCann was appointed vice-president of the Guaranty Trust Company; Milton Gregg had become the resident United Nations agent in Baghdad; Ralph Campney, Walter Harris, Hugues Lapointe, and Stuart Garson had returned to their law practices. The Conservatives swamped the surviving Liberals with the momentum of their legislative drive. On October 15, a Royal Commission on Energy was set up; on November 7, old age pensions were raised to fifty-five dollars a month, and the basic residence requirement was reduced from twenty to ten years; the same day, a bill was introduced to grant western farmers $150 millions in cash advances on farm-stored grain; on November 15, the discriminatory provisions against married women in the Unemployment Insurance Act were revoked; on November ig butter-oil imports were banned; on November 20, the winter works program legislation was introduced to help offset Canada's seasonal unemployment; on November 2 1, amendments were brought in to increase, by $ i io millions a year, benefits available under the Old Age Assistance, Blind Persons, Disabled Persons and War Veterans Allowances Acts; the same day, a fifty-man trade mission, led by Gordon Churchill, left for Britain; on November 25-26, a Dominion-Provincial Conference was convened to work out the details for starting the National Hospital Insurance scheme six months ahead of the previous deadline; on November 28, the Unemployment Insurance Act was The Charismatic Rampage of 1958105 amended to extend the period of supplementary benefits from sixteen to twenty-four weeks. In his first budget statement, on December 6, Finance Minister Donald Fleming cut taxes by an annual $178 millions. A hundred thousand Canadians in the lower income brackets were wiped off the tax rolls by the addition of $ ioo to dependent exemptions; the excise tax on automobiles was reduced from io per cent to 7.5 per cent; personal rates were reduced by 2 per cent on the first and i per cent on the second $i,ooo of taxable income; small businessmen were aided by having the corporation tax rate on incomes of $20,000-$25,ooo reduced from 47 per cent to 20 per cent. On December io, a Royal Commission on Price Spreads was established; on December 16, a price support Of $ 13.oo a ton was placed on sugar beets; on December 19, the Canadian Vessel Construction Act was amended to extend benefits for Canadian shipyards; the same day, another $150 millions was made available for loans under the National Housing Act; on December 20, the Export Credits Insurance Act was amended to allow Canadian businessmen the use of an extra $ ioo millions in outstanding credits; the same day, the Pensions Act was changed, further raising the allowances to disabled veterans; and on December 2 j, a bill was introduced amending the Criminal code to provide for the humane slaughter of animals. When the House adjourned for the Christmas recess, there was a well-justified feeling in the nation that the Conservative government had lived up to its promises. Diefenbaker himself spent Christmas Day in his private railway car, on a Saskatoon siding, where his mother, brought by ambulance from her hospital bed, joined the family celebration. Then the Prime Minister took off for a brief holiday in the Bahamas. Accompanied by his wife Olive and Allister Grosart and Mrs Grosart, Diefenbaker rested for the first time since his triumphal election campaign. He relaxed at Lord Beaverbrook's winter house and chartered the Sea-Pal, a 53400t cruiser, to fish for barracuda in the blue waters off Nassau. 106 Assumption of Power IN OTTAWA, MEANWHILE, the Liberals were preparing for a leadership convention - their fourth since Confederation. Paul Martin, who had become an m.p. thirteen years before Lester Pearson first entered politics, was easily beaten by Pearson for the Party leadership. Except for the acceptance speech by the new leader and Martin's moving nomination address, the convention was notable mainly for the bad-mannered exaggerations by former Liberal ministers. Walter Harris, for instance, said with a straight face that "the Tories didn't inherit unemployment from us; they created it ... In seven short months [as a consequence of Tory policies] trade is languishing, employment is falling." On Monday, January 20, four days after he had been chosen leader of the Liberal Party, Lester Pearson had the difficult job of offering an amendment to a supply motion in the Commons. He had spent the weekend fretting about the wording of the motion which, if supported by the smaller parties, could overthrow the government. It would have been simple to frame this kind of motion, but Pearson knew that his Party was not ready for an election and felt it would be irresponsible to plunge the nation into another campaign at a time when unemployment was growing worse by the week. Finally, the Liberal Leader and his small circle of advisors concluded that the safest way out would be to offer support for the Diefenbaker government through the winter, because of the bad economic situation. But during a private conference at a room in the Chateau Laurier Hotel, J. W, Pickersgill urged Pearson to accept an alternative motion which, in effect, would ask the Diefenbaker administration to resign, so that the Liberals could again take over their rightful place as the Government of Canada. Pearson was doubtful, but when both Louis St Laurent and C. D. Howe urged him to adopt the manoeuvre, he agreed. Later, recalling the incident, he confessed to a friend that he realized he had been badly advised the moment he got up to speak. The logic behind the Pickersgill amendment seemed to The Charismatic Rampage of 1958107 be that by tabling a motion that neither the Social Credit nor the CCF could support, the onus for dissolution would rest with the government rather than the Liberals. What Pearson suggested that day was that Diefenbaker should hand the government back to the Liberals without an election. "I would be prepared, if called upon," he said, "to form ... a government to tackle immediately the formidable problem of ending the Tory pause and getting this country back on the Liberal highway of progress from which we have been temporarily diverted." As soon as Pearson had finished moving his ill-fated amendment (" . . . in view of the desirability, at this time, of having a government pledged to implement Liberal policies, His Excellency's advisors should ... submit their resignations forthwith . . . "), Diefenbaker lunged to his feet, and after a few preliminary remarks, declared that he intended to show "as clearly as the printed word will make possible" that the Liberals had concealed "the facts" from the nation. He then proceeded to pick from a document called "The Canadian Economic Outlook" some gloomy predictions ("A higher average level of persons without jobs and seeking work is likely in 1957") which had been available to every Liberal cabinet minister three months before the 1957 election. The Grits squirmed as more and more damaging quotations were tolled out in the Diefenbaker courtroom manner, the famous finger pointing at them, the famous voice thundering some terrible questions: "Why didn't you tell the people these things?" and "What did you do about it?" The Prime Minister's attack grew into a devastatingly effective two-hour harangue which left the Liberals defenceless, except to plead that the report from which Diefenbaker had been reading was a secret" document. At the conclusion of his address, Diefenbaker tabled the document from which he had been reading. On page i, it bore only the caution "confidential," which is far less significant than the "secret" classification. But two pages had been torn off the copy Diefenbaker handed to the 108 Assumption of Power Clerk of the Commons. One page had been a cover of light blue cardboard and, in fact, the shreds of cardboard still adhered to the document's three staples; the other page was a frontispiece of mimeographing paper. Both these pages had been marked with the word SECRET. This type of report, signed by Mitchell Sharp, then Deputy Minister of Trade and Commerce, had been prepared annually since 1946 for the use of ministers and senior civil servants. It was classified SECRET, because it represented the personal views of one group of government advisors who had been asked for their opinions on a confidential basis. By making the document public, Diefenbaker destroyed the mutual trust that had gone into its preparation; a year later reports in that form were discontinued. What made Diefenbaker's attack less valid than it sounded was the fact that the glum Trade and Commerce verdict on the economy was a minority opinion. Most of the government advisors -the Bank of Canada, the Finance Department, and the Privy Council office -still believed that the main threat in the spring of 1957 was inflation, not recession. It was this latter majority advice that Walter Harris had taken in framing his anti-inflationary budget. Despite the dubious ethics of the Prime Minister's manoeuvre on January 20, 1958, the Liberals certainly had been guilty of ignoring Mitchell Sharp's warnings in their super-roseate election propaganda, dedicated to the proposition that Canadians had never had it so good. The incident was probably best summed up by Colin Cameron, the fatherly CCF member from Nanaimo, who questioned whether the exhibition put on by Diefenbaker really fitted the role of a prime minister. "I wonder," he said in the general debate that followed, "if [the Prime Minister] should have rushed with such relish into the abattoir. When I saw him bring whole batteries of guided missiles of vitriol and invective in order to shoot one forlorn sitting-duck - a sitting-duck, indeed, already crip- The Charismatic Rampage of 1958 109 pled with a self-inflicted wound - I wondered if the Prime Minister believes in the humane slaughter of animals." After Diefenbaker's dramatic performance on January 20, it became obvious that the next general election would soon be called by the Conservatives. Diefenbaker became convinced that he should go to the people immediately, as a result of the homage accorded to him during a trip he made to Winnipeg on January 27. Advertisements had been placed in the local papers that the Prime Minister would meet "the people of Winnipeg" at the Winnipeg Auditorium in the afternoon. Instead of the modest turnout expected, the building was mobbed by three thousand near-hysterical admirers, anxious to shake Diefenbaker's hand. They included Mrs Isabella Mary Gainsford, grand- daughter of Sir John A. Macdonald, who later told a friend: "He's got the punch." ON SATURDAY FEBRUARY i, Diefenbaker took a Department of Transport Viscount to Quebec City, where Governor General Vincent Massey was temporarily In residence to open the city's winter carnival. To put the Opposition off guard, the aircraft's flight plan showed Winnipeg as its destination. But at 12: 10 P.M. it touched down at Quebec City, and Diefenbaker was immediately driven to the Citadel for a thirty-three-minute conference with the Governor General. BY 3:5o he was back in Ottawa, and at 5:59 he walked into the Commons. Since the Governor General had five hours previously affixed the Great Seal of Canada to the proclamation of dissolution, Parliament no longer had any constitutional life when Diefenbaker made his election announcement. But the niceties of the situation had become irrelevant. As Jimmy Sinclair, the Liberal frontbencher from Vancouver, shouted "All by myself with my little hatchet, I chopped down the cherry tree!", Canada's 23rd Parliament ceased to exist, in fact as well as in law. That night Diefenbaker addressed a foot-stomping 110 Assumption of Power audience at the closing banquet of the National Young Progressive Conservative Association convention at Ottawa's Chateau Laurier Hotel. "The campaign starts tonight!" he shouted, and the young Tories cheered like first-nighters at La Scala. The official campaign did not actually begin until ten days later, when Diefenbaker left Ottawa by train for his first major speaking engagement in Winnipeg. As the cars jolted out of Union Station, he assured reporters that now he was Prime Minister, his campaign would be different. There would be no undignified whistle-stop electioneering, just one speech a day discussing national issues. Diefenbaker's resolve didn't last more than a few hours. At Capreol, north of Sudbury, when he spied a huddle of voters outside his car on the station platform, the Prime Minister threw on his coat, and bounded out into the 24below-zero night to shake their hands. Much later that night, as the train stopped briefly at Nakina, in the Thunder Bay wilderness of northern Ontario, Mrs Diefenbaker spotted a band of twenty-two shivering children and a dog, out to catch a glimpse of the Prime Minister. She went out to explain that he had long since gone to bed but, just as the train was pulling out, Diefenbaker appeared waving, in a dressing-gown, on the rear platform. He could hear an answering cheer, as the brave little delegation was left behind in the chill darkness. Diefenbaker spent much of the journey polishing the draft of his Winnipeg speech. By eight o'clock on the evening of February 12, the Winnipeg Auditorium was jammed with five thousand supporters; eight hundred others filled the adjacent Concert Hall; hundreds more had to be turned away. The evening provided a good preview of the campaign to come: Diefenbaker's fiftyfour-minute speech was interrupted forty-six times by laughter and applause. He began by poking fun at Pearson's January 20 supply motion: "Instead of challenging the government to go to the people, they said to us: 'Resign. Make way for us; but don't have an election. Give The Charismatic Rampage of 19581 11 us back our jobs. But by-pass the people.' " He dismissed the Liberal platform by sarcastically demanding: "Why didn't they do it then? Why didn't they do it when they were in power?" Then he outlined his Party's national development policy. "One Canada, one Canada, where Canadians will have preserved to them the control of their own economic and political destiny," he vowed. "Sir John A. Macdonald gave his life to this party. He opened the West. He saw Canada from East to West. I see a new Canada - A CANADA OF THE NORTH!" After vaguely outlining his intentions to improve the communications, transportation, and hydro facilities of the Canadian north, Diefenbaker abandoned his text and burst out with the rallying cry that he would carry across the nation: "This is the Vision," he proclaimed. "Canadians, realize your opportunities! This is the message I give you, my fellow Canadians. Not one of defeatism. Jobs! Jobs for hundreds of thousands of Canadians. A new Vision! A new hope! A new soul for Canada! We're going to call a national convention on conservation to map a national conservation policy to extend the principles of farm rehabilitation to all Canada, to maintain a continuing study of soils and land use, a possible second TransCanada Highway route. I see where they adopted that the day before yesterday, after they were opposed to it when they were in power. Why didn't they do it then? That's the question Canadians are asking. Yes, we intend to main- tain those inventories of power resources." By interjecting the concept of a great new Vision into his rambling outline of an election platform, Diefenbaker seemed to be offering his audience an exciting future. "One Canada, ladies and gentlemen, that's my message," he went on. "It will mean the creation of equal opportunities for all Canadians. I am not unmindful of those who are unemployed. For a little while the Liberal platform was to blame us, and then the secret document turned up. I don't care who is to blame, but at the moment, ladies 112 Assumption of Power and gentlemen, the cabinet of which I have the honour to be the Prime Minister will not fail those who are unemployed. That's my message to all. Completion of Confederation by developing a self-governing North. It will mean capital investment by Canadians and by foreign investors of many millions of dollars. It will assure to Canadians that renewable resources will be renewed. It is for those things that I ask a mandate, not giving you tonight the whole picture at all, by any means, but giving you some- thing of the Vision as I see it. The reason that I appeal to the Canadian people, [is for] a mandate, for a clear majority. You set a pace for Manitoba last time. Give us a few more, this. [sic] We need a clear majority to carry out this long-range plan, this great design, this blueprint for the Canada which her resources make possible." At the end of his speech, it was difficult to disagree with Diefenbaker's assurance that he was leading the Party of national destiny. "To the young men and women of this nation, I say, Canada is within your hands," he concluded. "Adventure. Adventure to the nation's utmost bounds, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. The policies that will be placed before the people of Canada in this campaign will be ones that will ensure that today and this century will belong to Canada. The destination is one Canada. To that end I dedicate this party ... Mr Chairman, my hope is that we make articulate the yearnings and the aspirations of the humblest of our people. To that purpose we are dedicated. And you, my fellow Canadians, will require all the wisdom, all the faith, all the vision that is necessary for the building of that Canada." During the next forty-six days, Diefenbaker journeyed seventeen thousand miles, delivering eighty-five variations of his Winnipeg opening speech. His audiences quivered. They cheered almost every time he paused for breath. "The memory of that sweeping tide lingers with all of us who faced it," Douglas Fisher, the CCF/NDP member from Port Arthur recalled later. "it was irrational in its surge." The Charismatic Rampage of 1958113 THERE WAS LITTLE DOUBT that the Vision had struck a response in the national subconsciousness. Having inadvertently elected John Diefenbaker as their prime minister eight months before, most of the voters now seemed determined to commit themselves to him. "A country starved of leadership for nearly half a century," wrote Hugh MacLennan, "had reached the profit where it craved leadership more than anything else." It was as if the people had come to identify John Diefenbaker with their own individual desires for a trouble-free future. At times, the election seemed somehow to move beyond politics. Diefenbaker transformed it into a secular passion play, with himself as its quasi-divine hero. In that campaign, Diefenbaker possessed that rare quality of leadership, known as "charisma." Charisma is a phenomenon which has been studied by many social scientists, who feel that it accounts for the magnetism with which such diverse figures as Jesus Christ and Adolf Hitler have swayed crowds. The German sociologist Max Weber, in his Wirtschaft und GeselIschaft, described charisma as an extraordinary quality which grants its possessor unique magical power. "The charismatic leader," he wrote, "is a man who demands obedience on the basis of the mission he feels called upon to perform.... He dominates men by virtue of qualities inaccessible to others and incompatible with the rules of thought and action that govern everyday life. People surrender themselves to such a leader because they are carried away by a belief in the manifestations that authenticate him. They turn away from established rules and submit to the unprecedented order that the leader proclaims." John Diefenbaker's charisma established an empathy with his audiences. His listeners came away lost in a cause they did not fully comprehend. When he stood bareheaded in the rain, addressing a small crowd at Penticton, British Columbia, some of his listeners were seen closing 114 Assumption of Power their umbrellas. In Fredericton, New Brunswick, a crush of swooning women held up their children to touch the hem of his coat. At Grand Falls, Newfoundland, he brought an audience of rough loggers to their feet with the appeal: "We'll build a nation of fifty million people within the lifetime of many of you here. I'm asking you to catch a Vision of the greatness and the potential of this nation." Everywhere, Diefenbaker repeated his message. "Join with me," he would beg, as the television spotlights shone on his piercing eyes, making them blaze like diamonds. "Join with me, to catch the Vision of men and women who rise above these things that ordinarily hold you to the soil. Join with me to bring about the achievement of that Canada, one Canada, the achievement of Canada's destiny!" During a whistle-stop at Armstrong, British Columbia, he was placed high on the raised platform of a fork-lift truck to proclaim his Vision. Despite the fact that the number of jobless Canadians had soared to new highs (8.8 per cent of the labour force at mid-January, 1958, compared with 5.3 per cent a year earlier), Diefenbaker left the clear impression that he held the magic key that would solve the nation's chronic winter unemployment problem. In Windsor, Ontario, where he was picketed by thirty-five jobless auto-workers, he told a rally: "I saw those men and my heart went out to them. I know what unemployment is. I know the needs of the humble and as long as I am in power, no person is going to suffer because of the inaction of the government." Ten days later, when Ed Morris, the local Tory candidate, was introducing Diefenbaker to a packed audience at a theatre in Halifax, he began by saying: "My friends, what shall we say of this great man?" A voice from the back rows chimed out, "Dear John ... Dear John." Morris bowed his head. "Yes," he intoned, "we may as well say: 'Dear John'..." Two thousand men and women stood up to roar their approval.* * On February 5, 1963, Ed Morris abstained from voting in support of his own party during the crucial roll-call that ended the Diefenbaker govern- The Charismatic Rampage of 1958 115 In Edmonton, a few days before, Diefenbaker had been mobbed by ten thousand admirers. His car took half an hour to drive the four short blocks from the railroad station to the Macdonald Hotel. An old man with a rheumy nose put his hand in the auto's open window and pleaded, "God bless you ... just let me touch your coat." In the lobby of the hotel, a blind woman pressed against him, crying: "Oh Mr Diefenbaker, it's so wonderful to hear your voice." Toward the end of the campaign, at a small Toronto rally, Diefenbaker confessed that his cross-country tour gave him "the heart throb ... the elevation ... the something indefinable that makes me forget the long hours, the labour, and the distance I have travelled.... Everywhere I go I see that uplift in people's eyes that comes from raising their sights to see the Vision of Canada in days ahead. Instead of the hopelessness and fear the Liberals generate we have given faith; instead of desperation we offer inspiration." Although his receptions at big-city meetings were the most dramatic, Diefenbaker was really making his greatest impact in the rural constituencies of western Canada. "The West, inarticulately but loudly, had been saying 'God damn it!'ever since the end of the First World War," wrote Hugh MacLennan. "The old parties had never been able to recognize this force - which is simply the spirit of pan-Canadianism - because of the strange manner in which the Westerners expressed it.... Without anybody consciously planning it, this new force encountered John Diefenbaker, and Mr Diefenbaker encountered it, and they married each other. Mr Diefenbaker met his political bride armed with a mighty weapon: his sincere, lifelong and obsessional devotion to the pan-Canadian ideal." ment's life. "I could not support him or vote to sustain him in the office of prime minister," he explained later. I was concerned simply about the capacity of Diefenbaker to lead this country." * Scotchman v Return and Other Fssays. The Macmillan Co. of Canada, i 96o. 116 Assumption of Power Until the Diefenbaker ascendancy, the Tory Party had stood for everything the Prairie farmer regarded as his enemy-the railroads, the protectionists, the bankers, the eastern financial houses. But Diefenbaker was a radically different kind of Conservative. He had passed some of the legislation for which the Prairie farmers had been un-suc- cessfully lobbying with the Liberals for years, and when he told his Prairie audiences, "one of the major reasons for my being in public life is to do something on behalf of Canadian agriculture," they knew he meant it. Even in Quebec, Diefenbaker was being heard with a new sense of urgency. The Liberals tried to paint the Tories as those wicked men who had ordered English soldiers to drag their fathers out of bed to fight the First World War. But the appeal sounded hollow beside Diefenbaker's promise that if they voted for him, they would share his power. "You can't win the heavyweight championship of the world from the champion by sitting at a ringside seat and giving advice," he warned his listeners, at a rally in Sherbrooke. No Canadian political party had ever conducted a more personalized campaign. Tory literature emphasized the fact that YOUR PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE CANDIDATE IS THE PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVE OF JOHN DIEFENBAKER AND THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY IN THIS ELECTION. The advertisements provided for newspaper insertions stressed Diefenbaker, before either his party or the local candidate. The Tory leader's most popular target was Lester Pearson's January 20 Supply motion. Diefenbaker would tell his audiences, pretending to mimic Pearson: "Put us back - but don't have an election!" Then he'd add scorn- fully: "Did you ever hear in the days when you used to play marbles and you won, that the other fellow said: 'Give me back my marbles'?" His audience lapped it up. Although it had already served as fodder for the 1957 election, Diefenbaker again made good use of the Liberals' six-dollar pension increase. This amount, he claimed, had been set, because members of the Grit cabi- The Charismatic Rampage of 1958117 net who were over seventy and received the pension felt that it was enough. "Mr St Laurent thought it was enough," Diefenbaker declared with irony in his voice. "They asked Jimmy Gardiner, and he said it was enough. Dr McCann thought it was enough. And then they asked C. D. Howe, and C. D. Howe said it was enough. And when C. D. Howe said it was enough, well, my friends, that was enough." Pearson's counter-measures were economically sound, but not, in the circumstances, easy to sell. He came out for a temporary tax reduction Of $400 millions a year, as a quick means of stimulating the economy. (A similar gimmick had been used by George Drew in the 1953 election.) He also advocated a federal scholarship plan and broader welfare measures. Most voters, however, found it difficult not to agree with Diefenbaker that if the Liberals really believed in these things, they should have done them when they were in power. And Pearson's hustings manner of talking to audiences as if they were United Nations delegations didn't help the Liberal campaign; neither did his mocking reference, at a rally in Regina on March I, to Diefenbaker's plans for northern development as the building of roads "from igloo to igloo." ON ELECTION DAY -MARCH 31 -Lester Pearson, a wilted carnation in his buttonhole, went to the Chateau Laurier Hotel to eat oyster stew and watch the results on television. "The oysters were wonderful," he told a friend later. "The television show was about the worst I ever saw." By the end of the evening, he announced that his immediate plans went no further than a brief vacation in Florida looking for sea shells. Diefenbaker spent most of election day relaxing in a room at Prince Albert's Avenue Hotel. He was, once again, trying to read the Abraham Lincoln biography, but still couldn't summon much interest in it. By three-fifteen Prince Albert time, the Maritime results began stuttering across the teletype machine at Diefenbaker's committee 118 Assumption of Power rooms. In Nova Scotia the Tories were leading in all seats. Senator Bill Brunt, a close associate of Diefenbaker's, leaning over the shoulders of Allister Grosart who was sitting behind the teletype, whispered "It's on. We're going to roll." By six-fifty, Prince Albert time, Liberal Quebec had crumbled. Twelve minutes later, with polls still open in the West, the Canadian Press flashed that a Conservative victory was indicated. "The results must be gratifying to you," Grosart remarked when he phoned the news to Diefenbaker. "Gratifying?" the Prime Minister replied. "They're stupefying." After returning from Saskatoon, where he delivered a brief television message, Diefenbaker was driven to the Prince Albert armouries. A thousand people had gathered to celebrate his victory. "For an average Canadian," he said gently, "being chosen as leader of a nation gives one a feeling impossible to describe. You feel a sense of loneliness." The victory, he said, was not one of person or of party. It was a victory for the democratic process. The final tabulations showed that Diefenbaker had achieved an unprecedented political victory. No Canadian parliament had ever been so one-sided. With the exception of Newfoundland, where he came within i per cent, Diefenbaker had been accorded the majority vote in every province. The Conservative Party not only won 208 of the 265 Commons seats, but it wiped out Liberal representation in six of the ten provinces. The Liberals, with just 36 per cent of the vote, were reduced to forty-eight m.p.'s, their smallest contingent since Confederation. Three more Liberal cabinet ministers-Jimmy Sinclair, James Gardiner, and George Marler - were defeated. The Social Credit Party, which had held nineteen seats in the 1957 House, was completely wiped out. The CCF membership in the Commons was reduced from twenty-five to eight. The leaders of both minor parties, M. J. Coldwell and Solon Low, went down to defeat. Probably the most astonishing result was the Tory sweep of Quebec, which elected twice as many Conserva- The Charismatic Rampage of 1958 119 tives as Liberals -something that hadn't happened since the days of Sir John A. Macdonald. Diefenbaker skyrocketed the popularity of his party in French Canada to 62 per cent of the vote -just one percentage point behind the Tory vote in "true-blue" Ontario. The Canadian Institute of Public Opinion showed Conservative popularity at 6o per cent -a higher standing than any party had achieved since its surveys began. When he flew back to Ottawa from Prince Albert the day after the election, John Diefenbaker was not only the most successful federal politician in Canadian history, but he had more support in his own country than the leader of any other democratic government in the world. The man from Prince Albert had promised that if the people gave him a mandate, he would ensure their wellbeing. The voters certainly had honoured their end of the unwritten compact. Now they confidently expected the Prime Minister to keep his.  PART II Instruments of Power six The Prime Minister TfiE MAN who attains the prime ministership of Canada is propelled into that breath-taking region of public life where action is transmuted into history He is more than the first politician in the land; he becomes keeper of the national conscience. The office combines titanic authority with tortuous responsibility. It is the ultimate place of political action. The prime minister has no equals. No man or combination of men can match his power. And yet, the holder of this high office finds himself shackled -like a Gulliver immobilized with a thousand Lilliputian cords -by the innumerable tendrils of Canada's social, economic, geographic, and religious problems. To govern Canada without offending and violating its divergent elements is the major concern of politics at the summit. Will a vote at the United Nations against French nuclear tests weaken the administration's attempts to bring Quebec into a national health plan? Will wheat sales to Communist China attract more votes in the Prairies than they alienate in the immigrant-dominated ridings? The successful Canadian prime minister soon discovers that in order to remain a unifying symbol to his party and to the nation, he must frequently diminish statesmanship with compromise, and even opportunism. His main problem is to chisel power out of the bedrock of other men's self-interest without being accused of abso- 123 124 Instruments of Power lutism. "Given a government with a big surplus, a big majority and a weak Opposition," Sir John A. Macdonald once remarked, "you could debauch a committee of archangels." To retain his power, a prime minister must blend selfconfidence with self-restraint, be prepared to suffer political abuse without inflicting it. To keep from being strangled by the machinery of his office, he must possess the fortitude to look beyond headlines, the intellectual agility to use proffered advice with discrimination and the courage to make tough decisions promptly and with finesse. He must, above everything else, gain effective control over his own party. His lieutenants have to remain genuinely convinced that factional differences within the party are worth ameliorating to keep him in office. Once this loyalty wavers, the prime minister's authority is fatally weakened. Although Canada's political system culminates in this one man, and the arsenal of his authority is indeed huge, both the basis and the boundaries of that authority are ill defined. Technically, the prime minister is merely the chairman of a committee of the Privy Council - "the influential foreman of an executive jury," according to Lord Rosebery, the British constitutional expert. The office of prime minister developed in England during the second quarter of the eighteenth century, after George I of Hanover had succeeded Queen Anne to the British throne. His inability to speak English and his indifference to government permitted power to gravitate to his ministers, who appointed Sir Robert Walpole, First Lord of the Treasury, to preside over their deliberations. Walpole's power depended less on his office than on his personality Modern Canadian prime ministers draw their authority from a similar source, although nearly a century of custom has significantly strengthened their position. The prime minister's power is based on the fact that, unlike anyone else in the parliamentary hierarchy, he carries with him, when he vacates his job, the resignation of his entire administration. With his staff, he sets the cabi- The Prime Minister 125 net agenda, he decides the most important federal appointments, including ambassadors, the chiefs of staff, privy councillors, the Governor General's staff, Crown appointments in the Commons and the Senate, cabinet ministers, lieutenant-governors, Speaker of the Senate, federal judges, treasury board members, deputy heads of government departments, and librarians of Parliament. It is on his advice that the Governor General summons or dissolves Parliament, and he dominates its proceedings. His clemency can lift the sentence of death from condemned murderers; his anger can destroy the career of ambassadors. As the final arbiter between the federal treasury and the spending members of his cabinet, he can control the government's annual seven-billion-dollar budget. He is the nation's chief diplomat. But as leader of his party, he must also concern himself with some of the more mundane aspects of democratic politics. His control of the party machine is what, ultimately, gives him political power, as distinguished from the constitutional power of his position. One prime ministerial function not envisaged by the Fathers of Confederation is that of caretaker of the nation's economic stability. Although most Canadians condemn excessive bureaucratic interference in their free-enterprise economy, they feel no compunction about blaming the prime minister when it flounders. A prime minister must play all these roles at the same time. What he does in one reflects on the others. A trivial decision that turns sour, a miscalculation in timing, a casual remark blown out of context, can all produce greater consequences than the most meticulously plotted policy shift. Woodrow Wilson might have been describing the Canadian prime ministership when he said of the American presidency: "The office is so much greater than any man could honestly imagine himself to be, that the most he can do is look grave enough and self-possessed enough to seem to fill it." 126 Instruments of Power WHAT THE PRIME MINISTER of Canada is not is established by legislative checks and the circumscribing realities of Canadian politics. What he is depends on him. The office is reconfigured by its occupant. It has shown an almost magical power to elevate men or to bring out the worst in them. For Mackenzie King, it became a hive of intrigue. Louis St Laurent treated the office as though it were the chairmanship of a large corporation. Under John Diefenbaker, who was neither a recluse like King nor a father-figure like St Laurent, the very metabolism of the office seemed to change. He made the prime ministership much more accessible to the average citizen and sometimes used its powers in helping the little man overcome the inevitable injustices of bureaucratic administration. But he also brought to the office a flair for selfaggrandizement and turned it into a focal point for the little arts of popularity that he insisted on practising. Diefenbaker tried to adapt the office to his view of politics. He behaved as if he subscribed to the Islamic idea of power: that a sovereign has the right to govern only until another, stronger one ousts him from his throne. Because he saw himself as a beleaguered figure, continually threatened by would-be successors, Diefenbaker suffered throughout his term from the pangs of insecurity. It was this feeling of personal fallibility that gradually prompted him to regard his office as a refuge, where his power could be kept away from the reach of potential rivals. This view of his office as a sanctuary was chiefly responsible for Diefenbaker's extraordinary reluctance to make major decisions. One sensed that he felt each unresolved national problem represented an addition to his power, since it left the advocates of alternate solutions at his mercy. A decision once taken, on the other hand, represented a dilution of that power, since it lined up the dissatisfied factions against him. Diefenbaker's attitude toward the decision-making process was thus seriously distorted. He came to regard com- The Prime Minister 127 mitments on important issues or appointments as highly dangerous intrusions into his state of self-imposed siege.* The history of the Diefenbaker Years in almost every field of federal endeavour testified to the Prime Minister's indecisiveness. His refusal to formulate a defence policy and his wavering on economic measures to combat unemployment were prime examples. On many vital issues of the day he resorted to the escape mechanism of appointing royal commissions, then shelving their recommendations. Fifteen royal commissions were named by Diefenbaker, including one charged with inquiring into "the desirability of establishing a new band of Indians on Seabird Island, British Columbia." While the secrecy of cabinet minutes helped keep the details of Diefenbaker's indecision from the public, he could not hide the length of time it took him to fill senior Ottawa appointments. At one point in 1959, forty-seven senior federal appointments - all of them the prerogative of the prime minister - were vacant at the same time. When he did make appointments, it was not uncommon for Diefenbaker to keep changing his mind right up to the final minute. AT LEAST PART of Diefenbaker's vacillation could be blamed on the disorder that existed in his own office. Letters were mislaid, appointments were missed, and Diefenbaker's penchant for preferring politics to paperwork occasionally halted the effective functioning of the office altogether. In the fall Of 1957 Diefenbaker lost a personal letter from President Dwight Eisenhower, although it contained some points that required reply. After weeks of searching by his staff, Diefenbaker finally found the letter himself - under his bed at 24 Sussex * This attitude was recognized by Elias Canetti, the Bulgarian-born Brit- ish philosopher. In his Crowds and Power (Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1962) he noted: "All the empty space which a man who holds power creates around himself, helps him to avoid being seized." 128 Instruments of Power Drive. Some eighteen months later, when Eisenhower asked Diefenbaker to Washington, his invitation went unacknowledged for three weeks. The American Embassy staff was forced to make embarrassed representations before an answer could be extracted. That Diefenbaker himself did not possess the administrative talents to avoid such incidents was not surprising. But instead of surrounding himself with a coterie of brilliant administrators, he signed up a feckless crew of political hangers-on. He didn't even try to find a chefde cabinet, the post that Jack Pickersgill filled under King and St Laurent, and during most of his time in office there were few men on his personal staff who were either trained administrators or even had the courage to discuss unpleasant truths with him. The nucleus of Diefenbaker's personal staff of twentysix consisted of his personal secretaries, Marion Wagner, Margaret Pound, and Dawn Cuggie. They accompanied him everywhere with inexhaustible loyalty. The Prime Minister's confidential messenger was Gilbert Champagne, a gaunt gentleman of indeterminable age. The Prime Minister's appointments secretary was M. J. Deacey, originally hired as a male stenographer by Mackenzie King and a junior clerk in St Laurent's office. His irresolute and contrary handling of his job made many enemies for the Prime Minister. Claude Gauthier, another former St Laurent secretary, was in charge of the Prime Minister's French correspondence. Gauthier was the only French Canadian Diefenbaker ever wholly trusted, although the advice he got from him was somewhat emas- culated by the fact he never fully understood the social, political, and cultural goings-on in Quebec. In charge of co-ordinating the tremendously complicated routine ofthe Prime Minister's office were his executive assistants. For the first few months of the Diefenbaker ministry, this job was ably handled by Derek Bedson, a former private secretary to George Drew. When Bedson left to become Clerk of the Executive Council in The Prime Minister 129 the Manitoba government of Duff Roblin, he was replaced by Gowan Guest, a young Vancouver lawyer who tried hard to impose some kind of administrative order on the office and did attempt to meet the press. Guest was succeeded by Neil Crawford, a young western lawyer with little influence. The only man in Diefenbaker's office whose personality had great impact on the Prime Minister was John Fisher, the professional Canadian. When Fisher was appointed Special Assistant to the Prime Minister in July ig6i, few Ottawa pundits thought the combination could either work or last. But Fisher surprised everybody. He fitted into the job as if he'd been doing it all his life and rapidly became one of Diefenbaker's chief confidants. Fisher's functions were never clearly defined, though one of his main assignments was to act as trouble-shooter and supplier of Canadiana during the Prime Minister's many journeys away from his office. When Fisher retired from this post at the beginning of 1963 to become chairman of Canada's Centennial Committee, the job was taken by Burton T. Richardson, a pleasant man who had formerly been editor of the Toronto Telegram. Part of Diefenbaker's difficulty in keeping up with the administration of his office was that he enjoyed travelling so much. Including his overseas trips and election campaigns, he logged the impressive average of a thousand miles for every week he spent in power. Aside from these trips - on which he was always accompanied by an attach6 case jammed with official correspondence and relays of secretaries - Diefenbaker spent little time away from the affairs of state. He was forced to forego work only twice, when he wrenched his back in January 1958 and when he caught a heavy cold a few months later. Each recuperation lasted less than a week. When he fractured his ankle just after the 1962 election, he set up a temporary office in his bedroom, and even held bedside cabinet meetings. He took less than ten days a year of holidays, and that 130 Instruments of Power reluctantly. Most of his vacations were spent fishing, at either Lac la Ronge, north of Prince Albert, at his summer residence on Harrington Lake near Ottawa, or in the Caribbean. The Prime Minister's most prized catch was a 142pound blue marlin that he landed after a igo-minute battle, off Jamaica in January of 196 1. He had the eight-anda-half-foot fish stuffed and mounted in his East Block office. Callers on Diefenbaker, sitting in the accustomed place to the right of his desk, would invariably find themselves unnerved by the cold squint of the opaque beast's unseeing eye. The stuffed fish dominated a room otherwise decorated with nineteenth-century grace. Diefenbaker worked at a plain oak table, unencumbered with ornaments except for a small, triangular clock-radio and a black leather letteropener with which he liked to play during interviews. The pale mushroom shade of the walls and broadloom was offset by a reminder of the Prime Minister's political roots: green drapes imprinted with sheaves of wheat. Diefenbaker preferred to work in the East Block, but when Parliament was in session, he occupied two other offices. As well as his official parliamentary rooms in the southwest corner of the Centre Block's third floor, he maintained a compact apartment a dozen steps from the Commons floor. This cosy suite, used for the same purpose by Mackenzie King but not by Louis St Laurent, included a bathroom, an office, and a small bedroom with a submariner's bunk along its east wall, where the Prime Minister would take brief naps during his long workingday. By the time he arrived at one of his offices around 8:oo a.m., Diefenbaker had nearly always already completed two hours or more of concentrated paperwork in his study at 24 Sussex Drive. He liked to get up at 5:3o a.m., go down to the kitchen for a glass of milk, then, at a time of day when the world seemed his own, he would wade into some of the most complicated documents of state. . The Prime Minister 131 During a typical working-day, Diefenbaker would have a dozen appointments and would often speak to several dozen more people by telephone. Except for a daily briefing by a liaison officer from the Department of External Affairs and at least one call from Senator William Brunt, Diefenbaker's office routine followed no set pattern. Ambassadors would sometimes have to wait an hour for a five-minute courtesy call, while an old sidekick from Diefenbaker's days in Prince Albert would be ushered in ahead of them. The ambassadors, when their turn finally came, might find themselves in an animated, informal discussion of world problems stretching to an hour, instead of the few minutes they'd expected. Or, on a sudden impulse, Diefenbaker might refuse to see them at all, despite their confirmed appointments. Callers on the Prime Minister, no matter who they were, never knew what to expect. Some visitors were charmed by the man, marvelling at the directness of his questions and his ability to get at the nub of issues. Others were appalled (and diverted) by his tendency to deal in personalities rather than ideas, and to discuss issues at the grassroots level of politics. One Montreal executive was subjected to an abusive ten-minute tirade, although he had come to make a constructive suggestion. Diefenbaker's anger was based on an accusation that the Mont- realer had sought the advice of Maurice Lamontagne -one of Pearson's economic advisors. The Prime Minister was so violent in his attack that the executive had difficulty butting in to ask just exactly who Maurice Lamontagne was. It was later revealed that just before their meeting someone had seen the Montreal executive on the same Commons elevator with Lamontagne and had reported this to the Prime Minister, who assumed that they knew each other. The daily round-robin of visitors was interrupted only briefly for lunch, which Diefenbaker usually ate at his desk. Most days at 12:30 p.m., Gordon McCartney, his chauffeur, would arrive from Sussex Drive with a 132 Instruments of Power varnished pine box, containing a thermos of soup, a plate of cold meat, a chunk of cheddar cheese, a bottle of milk, and an apple. When the House of Commons was not sitting, or following the question period when it was, Diefenbaker would set apart some time for answering letters. His private mail - amounting to nine hundred or more letters a week - was four times as voluminous as St Laurent's. He dictated an average of sixty replies a day. Much of his mail, especially during the first three years of his regime, started with the salutation "Dear John." This may not have been correct protocol, but it bolstered Diefenbaker's image of himself as a man of the people. Diefenbaker regarded his mail as an extremely important political listening-post. It was filed away by subjectmatter, with a geographical cross-index, so that the Prime Minister could quickly obtain a sampling of public opinion on any important issue. During election campaigns, Diefenbaker invited the members of his audiences to write him. "I want each one of you," he said at Herbert, Alberta, on March 2, 1963, "to sit down and write me your ideas and suggestions. There is no excuse for you not to do so, because you don't have to pay postage when you write to me." His mail often provided a court of last resort. Many Canadians, when official government avenues were closed to them, discovered that a letter to Diefenbaker frequently brought remedial action, occasionally overruling a decision already given by a civil servant, or even cabinet minister, and once, involving the prerogative of the Governor General.* Accommodating the impersonal government process to special situations served to bring out in Diefenbaker that humane concern for the rights of the individual which had always been the main source of his appeal. *On May 6, 1959, Eric Reisinger of Montreal came to Ottawa to pickup the papers for his divorce which he assumed had undergone all of the parliamentary procedure involved in such Quebec actions. He was horrified to discover that his divorce bill had not yet been granted royal The Prime Minister 133 But there were occasions when Diefenbaker acted less like a humane prime minister than a vote-hustling mayor of Ottawa at municipal election time. He took time out from running the country to officiate at such trivial events as the opening of the local Ontario Motor League branch, a Cradle League hockey playoff, a victory banquet for the Ottawa Rough Riders, and the inauguration of an Ottawa public school. However petty these activities may have appeared to outsiders, for Diefenbaker such occasions were a necessary relief from the racking, perpetual burden which the prime ministership lays on a man. IT WAS ONE OF THE MORE CURIOUS FEATURES of the Diefenbaker Years. that although he had been known as "a Commons man" during his years in Opposition, Diefenbaker did not enjoy or make the best of his time in Parliament as Prime Minister. Baiting by the Opposition, at which he himself had been such a master, seldom stirred him to bold, imaginative replies. It just aggravated him. Even routine issues sparked bitter accusations, and party discipline was strained, as angry men rose to champion their causes against an unheeding majority. On many occasions, the Commons took on the atmosphere of a nest of cats, about to break into violence. "There was a time in this country," Walter Pitman, the NDP member for Peterborough, Ontario, remarked on July 4, 196 1, "when the Government of Canada governed ... the problem today is that this government does not wish to govern. It would assent, and that no royal assent ceremonies were planned for the immediate future. Since Reisinger had already planned his second wedding for the Saturday afternoon of the week lie was in Ottawa, and had invited many guests, he felt in such a desperate predicament that he went to call on the Prime Minister. After he had explained the situation, and Diefenbaker had checked whether the bill really only lacked the one final step. a royal assent ceremony was arranged. That evening Chief Justice Patrick Kerwin, the Deputy Governor General, gave royal assent to the Reisinger bill, in a ceremony which set a precedent, since it included no public bills. 134 Instruments of Power far rather carry on the nation's affairs in a semi-hysterical state of electioneering." While Diefenbaker never attempted to use his huge majority in the 24th Parliament in a dictatorial manner, he sometimes treated the Commons with the impatience of a ringmaster not quite in control of his troupe. Diefenbaker's temper frayed often in the House, but never more noticeably than on May 25, 1959, when he brushed aside the Speaker. During a debate on a point of privilege concerning the minutes of an unemployment insurance advisory committee meeting, the Prime Minister, after listening to the crossfire of Liberal insults, suddenly leapt to his feet and demanded that J. W. Pickersol, the member for Bonavista-Twillingate, withdraw his charge that in refusing to table the minutes the government was depriving the House of debate "by trickery." Mr Speaker Roland Michener stood up to interject that the Prime Minister was introducing a second point of order, before the first one had been settled. A cardinal rule of the Commons is that when the Speaker rises, any m.p. on his feet must sit down to hear his ruling. But Diefenbaker didn't sit down. He wheeled around at Michener and snapped: "Will you allow me to finish now?" It was Michener who had to take his seat -a move that so surprised the page boys who sit below the Speaker, and stand when he rises, that they remained on their feet until it occurred to them that Mr Speaker had, in effect, been overruled. Daniel Roland Michener was one of the best Speakers Canada's Commons had since Confederation. A thoroughly civilized man, he ruled the Commons with an easy grace that added to the dignity on which his office depends. Nevertheless the Prime Minister grew to dislike Michener so intensely that at a cabinet meeting, shortly after the Speaker had ruled against one of his breaches of protocol, Diefenbaker actually polled every minister, to see which of them had recommended that Michener be made Speaker, and then launched into a tirade against the The Prime Minister 135 man whose job it was to protect the rights of Parliament, which Diefenbaker the campaigner had pledged to uphold. Although Diefenbaker had in the 1957 election suggested that the Commons should have a permanent Speaker who would not have to stand for re-election, and although politicians of every party agreed that Michener would be the ideal candidate for the job, the Prime Minister did not fulfil his promise and Michener was beaten in the 1962 campaign. Then, instead of following St Laurent's example in appointing a former Commons Speaker to the Senate, Diefenbaker named Michener only to the Privy Council - an empty honour that allowed him to place the prefix "Honourable" before his name and nothing else. "There are grounds for suspecting Mr. Diefenbaker of petulance in dealing with the former Speaker," wrote Charles Lynch, chief of Southam News Services. "The impression exists that Mr. Michener is being punished for having called the Prime Minister to order so many times in the House of Commons." Diefenbaker's debating tactics in the Commons were exactly those he had employed with such devastating effectiveness when he was on the other side of the House. His favourite trick was to pick holes in Opposition argument by quoting from old speeches. Once he went back seventeen years to embarrass Harold Winch, the veteran British Columbia socialist. Winch had accused Diefenbaker of trying to "get rid of Parliament" by rushing through legislation. The Prime Minister countered by quoting from a speech Winch had made on November jo, 1943, in which he had advocated the setting up of a socialist state in Canada by scrapping the British North America Act. Diefenbaker employed this strategy often. On December 15, ig6o, when he had used it once again, Paul Martin, the Liberal member for Essex East, gave him an effective reply. "My friend the Prime Minister always resorts to precedent," said Martin. "What he forgets is this: whatever may have been the situation in the past we are now confronted in this country with very serious 136 Instruments of Power problems, and the government should address itself to these problems. They should not seek refuge in mistakes or in history." Some of the Commons exchanges between Martin and Diefenbaker were crude reminders of the contempt with which the Prime Minister regarded senior Liberals. Typical was this sally, on May 25, 1961, following the govern- ment's change in the order of presenting its estimates: Mr. Martin (ESSEX EAST): May I ask the courteous Prime Minister a question? Would he tell the house why he could not have extended to opposition parties the courtesy of advising them before five minutes to eleven that there was going to be this change, when as a result of not doing so all the government was doing was putting a gun at the opposition's head? Mr. Diefenbaker: I do not know what good it would do to put a gun at the hon. gentleman's head. There would be no damage done in any event. Mr. Martin: What a wonderful reply. What a dignified Prime Minister. "The chief casualty of the Diefenbaker era has been Parliament," wrote Professor Frank Underhill, the dean of Canadian historians, in the Toronto Star just before the 1963 election. "The Prime Minister, with the untiring assistance of the Press Gallery, concentrates on keeping excitement over when the next election is coming at fever pitch, while avoiding real discussion of the issues that should be decided in parliament. This is plebiscitary, not parliamentary democracy." This was an ironic condemnation of a politician whose mandate had been based on one major undertaking: to restore the rights of Parliament, trampled upon by the Liberal administration during the 1956 pipeline debate. In his 1957 and 1958 campaigns, Diefenbaker had been elected with ringing pledges that he would restore Parliament's supremacy in the legislative process and reform its practices. But not one of the specific reforms he pledged - The Prime Minister 137 the abolition of closure, the appointment of a permanent Speaker, the establishment of an independent commission to deal with the decennial redrawing of constituency boundaries, and Senate reform -was implemented.* THIS FAILURE TO LIVE UP to the promises he had made didn't particularly dismay Diefenbaker. He believed that few people outside Ottawa really understood the mechanics of Parliament, and that any condemnation of him would be limited to opposing politicians and overly critical senior civil servants. Throughout his term of office, Diefenbaker acted as if he thought he really had two separate reputations to maintain: the professional prestige that existed in Ottawa among the officials who spent their working-days in close contact with him; and the general approbation of the Canadian public. He downgraded the importance of his professional prestige, since during his time in Opposition he had witnessed the erosion of the Liberal government's mandate, despite its high professional reputation. At times he seemed to regard the maintenance of his professional esteem as actually dangerous. Diefenbaker believed that Ottawa professionals tended to be aloof from the palpable goings-on that touch, in a vital way, the private life of the average Canadian. He was far more interested in fashioning an image of himself as a man capable of reflecting regional aspirations and identifying himself with local ambitions. This attitude was recognized by the bureaucrats, who stood back and watched Diefenbaker conduct his regime * Bills, for the abolition of closure, Senate reform, and a redistribution commission were introduced, but they were never carried forward into law. In a letter dated October 17, 1957, Diefenbaker asked Stanley Knowles, the (-CF/NDP member of parliament for Winnipeg North Centre, to stand for the Speakership of the 23rd Parliament, with a hint that his election might be extended "in the future." When Knowles turned down the offer, Diefenbaker called off his search for a "permanent" Speaker. 138 Instruments of Power without their counsel. Their absence, it turned out, was a crucial factor in the succession of reasons that eventually brought about the downfall of the Diefenbaker ministry. It need not have been so. During the first two years of the Diefenbaker regime, these men took great pride in the smoothness of the takeover. Most of them, though there were some notable exceptions, were willing to serve Diefenbaker, not because they agreed or disagreed with his politics, but because their paramount interest was the welfare of Canada. Along with most Canadians they thought they saw in Diefenbaker an activist who would pull the nation forward at a difficult time in its history. But Diefenbaker could never bring himself to trust these men who had risen to positions of responsibility during more than two decades of Liberal administration, He regarded everyone with a political bias. He had been kept away from power for so long, largely by the ideas fed to successive Liberal cabinets by many of these same officials, that when he finally achieved office he wouldn't allow himself to rely on their judgement. The essential dialogue between the administrative and execu- tive branches of government thus ceased to function. SEVEN The Cabinet THE CABINET that administered the nation's business during the Diefenbaker Years comprised a disparate mixture of patriotic radicals and weak-kneed reactionaries, earnest statesmen and artful dodgers. It failed to provide the Conservative regime with constructive policy leadership, not because its members lacked administrative ability or dedication of purpose, but because of the uncertain and erratic direction they received from John Diefenbaker. The effectiveness of any Cabinet depends directly on the prime minister. He draws up its agenda, interprets its collective views, and exercises a veto over its decisions. "He cannot be the first among equals," Professor MacGregor Dawson has written, "for the excellent reason that he has no equals." Ideally, the prime minister applies the lash of his leadership to bind together the various functions of government, leaving departmental details strictly up to his ministers. But John Diefenbaker, instead of allowing his appointees to apply their talents, acted as if he were the silent partner in every cabinet minister office. He ignored the normal delegation of authority, and attempted to operate the federal administration through personal prerogative. This might have worked had Diefenbaker been willing or The Government oj Canada, University of Toronto Press, 1954. 139 140 Instruments of Power able to transform his office into the decisive command post that such a process requires. It did not and could not work, because throughout his time in office Diefenbaker appeared to be congenitally indecisive. This indecision manifested itself at cabinet meetings in a curious way. Diefenbaker seldom approved any course of action until nearly every minister had been persuaded to support his point of view. Extracting unanimity from his colleagues meant that Diefenbaker only rarely had to exercise the decisiveness demanded of an arbiter between stubbornly entrenched disputing factions. It also meant that whenever some of his administration's moves turned sour, he could pass on the blame to the entire cabinet. He seemed temperamentally incapable of assuming the blame for mistakes himself. Diefenbaker's insistence on unanimity explained the apparent contradiction of a strong-willed Prime Minister holding cabinet meetings that were far longer than and more than twice as frequent as those of his Liberal prede- cessor.* During 1956, the final full calendar year of Liberal power, the cabinet met 91 times; during the Diefenbaker Years, the cabinet was convened an average Of 140 times per year. In 1959 -the year of most frequent cabinet sessions -there were 164 meetings. Three or four vocal holdouts could postpone even minor decisions for months, and even years. At the end Of 1958, for example, after the cabinet had for a full year been considering the advisability of bidding for the 1967 World's Fair, one Quebec minister finally told * One exception was the review of death sentences in murder cases, which is a federal cabinet prerogative. John Diefenbaker's distaste for capital punishment and his training as a criminal lawyer prompted him virtually to retry each condemned man, with discussions sometimes lasting three hours per case. During the Conservative term of office, there were fifty-two commutations and fourteen executions, though in only twenty-one of these cases had the trial jury recommended mercy. In a similar period of Liberal administration, there had been thirty-five commutations and fifty executions. The Cabinet 141 Diefenbaker that the decision would have to be made that day, because the deadline for application to the International Bureau of Expositions was only hours away. The Prime Minister advised him to poll all the cabinet members then in Ottawa. When the minister reported that twelve had approved; two had been non-committal; and three had opposed the idea, Diefenbaker retorted: "That proves we can't do it." (The Fair was awarded to Russia. But in 1962, after the USSR had backed out of its application, Montreal was approved for the 1967 show.) Such delaying tactics by the Prime Minister meant that the Conservative cabinet never really had a chance to consider an orderly legislative program. Even though the cabinet committee on legislation usually proposed a balanced and orderly schedule for each parliamentary session, cabinet ministers complained to each other that the Prime Minister was leaving over for renewed discussion subjects on which there had been more than ample debate, and occasionally even firm decision. "Instead of discussing what we should do next, we spent most of our time arguing: how do we get out of this one?" complained one former minister. Diefenbaker gave the impression that he regarded his cabinet as a handy political sounding-board rather than as an assembly of senior and influential advisors. "If there are any statesmen here, they'd better resign. I want politicians!" he told one stormy session. Topics with little political content, even important ones, were quickly disposed of, but politically sensitive questions were rehashed endlessly. Since most of Diefenbaker's decisions were politically rather than factually motivated, and since the Prime Minister was at the same time insisting on cabinet unanimity, the decision-making process became long and arduous. "Many of us," lamented one minister, "were forced into positions we didn't really support, just to give a semblance of unity to get some kind of action." As they began to realize that Diefenbaker would not make up his mind until a unanimous cabinet position 142 Instruments of Power had been hammered out, the ministers and their executive assistants resorted to internal lobbying - carried on behind Diefenbaker's back. A minister particularly anxious to get cabinet approval for one of his projects would recruit the backing of a colleague by bargaining off his own support for one of the other man's pet schemes. John Diefenbaker's ministers were aware that they owed their power to his magnetism in the 1957 and 1958 election campaigns, but only a minority of the cabinet ever put their whole trust in his leadership. At least half of them had vigorously opposed his choice at the 1956 Conservative convention. Six of Diefenbaker's ministers had staged the desperate last-minute attempt to head off the possibility of his becoming leader by trying to recruit Sidney Smith, the University of Toronto president, who later joined the cabinet as Secretary of State for External Affairs. When he assumed office, Diefenbaker felt compelled to place his former adversaries in the cabinet, because they happened to be, by quite a wide margin, the ablest members of his party. Furthermore, men like Fulton, Nowlan, Flemming, and Balcer still had strong regional power blocs behind them. But Diefenbaker never forgave them their old hostility. During his time in power he gauged his trust of cabinet ministers not on any scale of intellectual capacity or even political experience, but in descending order, according to their membership in one of four groups: 1. The Forty-Twoers: This 61ite consisted of the four men who had actively supported Diefenbaker at the first leadership convention he contested in 1942. They were: Alvin Hamilton, David Walker, George Pearkes, and Hugh John Flemming. 2. The Forty-Eighters: When Diefenbaker was beaten by George Drew, at the 1948 leadership convention, Michael Starr, Howard Green, Angus MacLean, and Pierre S6vigny joined the fraternity. The Cabinet 143 3. The Fifty-Sixers: Gordon Churchill, George Flees, Walter Dinsdale, Douglas Harkness. Alfred Brooks, and William Browne were loyal latecomers to the charmed circle at the 1956 leadership convention. 4. The Others: Never completely trusted by Diefenbaker were the Conservative ministers who had consistently opposed him for the leadership. They included: Donald Fleming, Davie Fulton, Bill Hamilton, Noel Dorion, L6on Balcer, Ellen Fairclough, George Nowlan, Ernest Halpenny, Paul Martineau, Richard Bell, Jacques Flynn, Henri Courtemanche, and J. M. Macdonnell. (Jay Waldo Monteith was an exception. Although he had opposed Diefenbaker as leader, once in power he became a loyal supporter.) The ideological split of the cabinet into right- and leftwingers generally followed this grouping with ministers in the first three categories and, to a lesser extent, Jay Waldo Monteith, supporting further intervention of the government into the economy, while the majority of Diefenbaker's former opponents advocated a fiscally responsible line that was much closer to true Conservative philosophy. The cabinet's most ferocious internal squabbles were over fiscal policy and, in the regime's last two years, over the acceptance of nuclear warheads for the armed services. Other epic cabinet battles pitted Davie Fulton against George Hees on combines legislation; Bill Hamilton against Noel Dorion on the desirability of maintaining close relations with the Union Nationale; L6on Balcer against Raymond O'Hurley on re-equipping Trans-Canada Air Lines with Canadian-built CL-44's or American DC-8F's; Donald Fleming against George Hees on the need for meaningful tax incentives to industry; and Alvin Hamilton against the majority on more legislation favourable to the nation's farmers. Ironically, Hamilton also had tough and unsuccessful battles with his right-wing colleagues on his suggestions to benefit the nation's non-rural population. These included the construction of a second 144 Instruments of Power Trans-Canada pipeline, the establishment of a National Development Corporation, more co-ordinated fiscal policies, and urban redevelopment. It remained one of the mysteries of the Diefenbaker Years why, faced with this constantly squabbling cabinet, Diefenbaker didn't replace it with a ministry that might easily have given his administration the energy and imagination it so obviously lacked. This was particularly puzzling because few prime ministers have had such wealth of talent on the back benches to choose from. Many Conservative m.P's, with outstanding records in private life, had gone into politics only because they wanted to follow John Diefenbaker in remaking a country that had lost its momentum during the grey Liberal years. They were bright, dedicated young men (92 of the 2o8 Tory m.P's in the 24th Parliament were under the age of forty-five), who might have given Canada a truly outstanding administra- tion. But Diefenbaker ignored them; he was suspicious of their impatience and afraid of their potential. Richard Bell, Frank McGee, and Ernest Halpenny - a trio of able administrators - were forced to remain on the back benches until the closing months of the Diefenbaker Years. Other backbenchers, who might have been good ministers but were never recognized by Diefenbaker, included: Gordon Aiken (PARRY SOUND), G. W. Baldwin (PEACE RIVER), Tom Bell (SAINT JOHN-ALBERT), Ernest Broome (VANCOUVER SOUTH), J. Ferguson Browne (VANCOUVERKINGSWAY), Egan Chambers (ST. LAWRENCE-ST. GEORGE), John Charlton (BRANT-HALDIMAND), Gordon Chown (WINNIPEG SOUTH), William Creaghan (WESTMORLAND), Lloyd Crouse (QUEFNS-LUNENBURG), Stuart Fleming (OKA NAGAN-REVELSTOKE), Alfred Hales (WELLINGTON SOUTH), John B. Hamilton (YORK WEST), W. Marvin Howe (WELLINGTON-HURON), Harry Jones (SASKATOON), Warner Jorgenson (PROVENCHFR), John Kucherepa (HIGH PARK), Robert MacLellan (I NVERNESS-R ICH MOND), The Cabinet 145 Arthur Maloney (PARKDALE), Bob McCleave (HALIFAX), Jack McIntosh (SWIFT CURRFNT - MAPLE CREEK). Heath Macquarrie (QUEENS), Douglas Morton (DAVENPORT), Ed Nasserden (ROSTHERN), Wallace Nesbitt (OXFORD), Louis-Joseph Pigeon (JOI,IETTE-I'ASSOMPTION-MONTCALM), John Pratt (JACQUES-CARTIER-LASALLE), Arthur Smith (CALGARY SOUTH), and Heber Smith (SIMCOE NORTH). Instead of turning to this supply of new blood, Diefenbaker sought most of his advice from a very different group of men. MORE THAN FOUR CENTURIES AGO, Niccolo Machiavelli, the wily Florentine, wrote: "The first impression that one gets of a ruler and of his brain is from seeing the men he has around him." In John Diefenbaker case, this would have been too harsh a judgement. Instead of surrounding himself with his intellectual peers, Diefenbaker settled for a palace guard of political cronies. They were "waiters on Providence," men who shared his tastes and prejudices, but not his breadth of outlook or patriotic zeal. Diefenbaker's reciprocal loyalty to this "kitchen cabinet" meant that he was ultimately surrounded by men prepared to indulge in a continuous process of buttering him up. They were covetous politicians, closer to Diefenbaker than to their party. This select group - unique in the layers and tiers of influence that made up the Ottawa power structure during the Diefenbaker Years - had a constantly changing membership. In fact, only three men - David Walker, Bill Brunt, and Allister Grosart - remained influential advisors throughout the Diefenbaker Years, but their prestige in the personal hierarchy of the Prime Minister's counsellors was paramount.* Diefenbaker granted the members of his "kitchen cabinet" great freedom to cook their schemes, and listened to * David Walker, a Toronto lawyer who won election to the Commons in the 1957 campaign, was appointed Minister of Public Works on August 20, 1959. He was named to the Senate, following his defeat in i~962. 146 Instruments of Power their opinions with a respect he never granted his real cabinet. He sometimes treated his ministers as if they belonged to a delinquent Scout troop. Because he didn't smoke himself, he would not allow ministers to puff cigarettes in the Privy Council Chamber, and to enforce his will, he had all the ash trays removed. On one occasion in the winter of 1959, he assumed the air of a schoolmaster and bawled out Mines Minister Paul Comtois, whom he had caught stealthily reading Le Devoir under the Privy Council table. His ministers competed with each other to flatter their chief. This process probably reached its peak at the 1961 annual meeting of the Progressive Conservative Association of Quebec, when L6on Balcer boasted: "Ninety per cent of the legislation planned by the Kennedy administration in the U.S. has been inspired by John Diefenbaker!" One mark of deference demanded by Diefenbaker was that his ministers gather at Ottawa's Uplands Airport to welcome him back from out-of-town visits. The length of his absence from the capital was not a determining factor in this rite. On February i 1, 1963, for example, when he flew to Toronto for an address to the annual meeting of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Association, the cabinet turned out to greet his returning aircraft, although he had been gone from Ottawa less than three hours. Ministers knew that to be absent would be interpreted as a mark of disrespect. When the arrival time of Diefenbaker's flight home from one of the Commonwealth conferences in London was suddenly shifted ahead, Public Works Minister David Walker was informed of the change William Brunt, a lawyer who practised in both Toronto and Hanover, Ontario, was named deputy government leader in the Senate on October 12, 1957. The two men had been lifelong friends of Diefenbakcrs~ along with their wives, they were the only outsiders to be invited to Diefenbaker's second wedding in 1953. For details of Allister Grosart's career, see Chapter 12. The Cabinet 147 at his summer cottage, near Penetanguishene on Georgian Bay. He immediately jumped into a taxi and for a fare of forty-five dollars was rushed to Toronto's Malton Airport, where he caught a commercial flight that landed him in Ottawa just minutes ahead of the Prime Minister. DIEFENBAKER KEPT HIS MINISTERS in a constant state of turmoil and hence divided among themselves by continually hinting that he might transfer them to less significant portfolios. By the end of the Diefenbaker Years, only three ministers - Michael Starr in Labour, Jay Waldo Monteith in Health and Welfare, and Angus MacLean in Fisheries -were still in their original jobs. Ministers were required to give priority to political commitments, even when they interfered with their departmental responsibilities. External Affairs Secretary Howard Green was recalled from the important Laotian peace talks in the spring of 1961 to campaign in a byelection. In November of that year, Agriculture Minister Alvin Hamilton had to cancel a proposed grain-selling trip behind the Iron Curtain to take part in the speech-making marathon that preceded the 1962 election. Between November 15 and December 15, 196 1, Diefenbaker's cabinet ministers filled 243 political speaking engagements in a hundred constituencies across the country. The frustration of having to operate in this politicallycharged atmosphere sapped the creative talents of the ministers and made their collective performance unimpressive. This was unfortunate, because most of Diefenbaker's cabinet ministers were thoroughly conscientious men who filled their posts with a patriotic dedication that matched or surpassed that of their predecessors. Angus MacLean and Jay Waldo Monteith were excellent ministers. George Nowlan, a shaggy St Bernard of a man and a topnotch Minister of National Revenue, was surely one of the most charming politicians ever sworn into a Canadian cabinet. Labor Minister Michael Starr, whose 148 Instruments of Power Ukrainian origin made him the first Canadian cabinet minister of East European descent, established a highly creditable record. Senator Malcolm Wallace McCutcheon, the Toronto business executive who was brought in after the 1962 election, was given only seven months to apply his cool competence to the nation's business, but even that brief tenure boosted the government's efficiency. Bill Hamilton conquered a serious physical handicap to become the most active and best Postmaster General in Canadian history. Used in a more senior portfolio, he could easily have become one ofthe administration's most effective ministers. James MacKerras Macdonnell, the most honourable Tory of them all, was accorded only two years in the perfunctory role of Minister without Portfolio. The only Diefenbaker minister who gave the impression that he was quite innocent of the higher arts of political statesmanship was David Walker, the pugnacious Toronto lawyer who occupied the Public Works portfolio for three years. Walker never seemed to recognize the boundaries of partisanship. During a 196 1 by-election in the Ontario riding of Leeds he cruelly ridiculed John Matheson, the Liberal candidate, whose grievous war wounds had forced him to use braces and crutches. He referred to Bank of Canada Governor James Coyne as an 11 oddball," and described Liberal frontbencher J. W. Pickersgill in "a one-syllable word starting with P" On July 5, ig6o, during the Bill of Rights debate he accused Lester Pearson, calmly sitting at his Commons desk, of"arrogant silence" - surely the strangest accusation ever hurled across the floor of the Commons. In the 1962 campaign, he justified the government sale of wheat to Communist China by stating: "We're quite willing to sell wheat to fill starving bellies, as long as they're willing to pay in cold, hard cash." Despite his antediluvian political manner, Walker was a competent Minister of Public Works. A ranking of the Diefenbaker ministry according to competence inevitably isolated Ellen Fairclough, the The Cabinet 149 chirpy lady from Hamilton, Ontario, whose approach to the problems of immigration lost the government support at home and abroad. Immigration declined steadily during the Diefenbaker Years (from 282,164 newcomers in 1957 to 74,586 in 1962) and in 196 1, for the first time since World War 11, more people left Canada than entered it. Mrs Fairclough's most damaging political gaffe occurred in April 1959 when an Order-in-Council was passed narrowing the range of close relatives who could be sponsored into Canada by non-British residents already in the country. The decision aroused a storm of protest, especially in Canada's Italian community, and a few days later Mrs Fairclough rescinded the changes, blaming "the propagandists of the Liberal Party" for the whole mess. Mrs Fairclough was demoted to the Post Office portfolio on August 9, 1962, and lost her seat in the 1963 election. At the start of her last campaign, she pledged that she would do all in her power "to prevent this riding failing into alien hands." With candidates named Gary Chertkoff and Joe Macaluso running against her, she had considerable difficulty explaining that she had only meant the seat should remain Conservative. A bewildering figure of the Diefenbaker Years was Gordon Churchill, who served in the portfolios of Trade and Commerce, Veterans Affairs, and National Defence, and acted as House Leader in the Commons. Although Churchill had no training in economics or business, Diefenbaker put him into the Trade and Commerce portfolio, whose previous occupant, C. D. Howe, had built it up into the government's key department. Under Churchill's stewardship, Trade and Commerce lost its momentum and, in the fall of ig6o, he was switched to Veterans Affairs. Churchill had also succeeded Howard Green in the key post of House Leader during the summer of 1959, and it was in this job that he proved to be most ineffectual. He needlessly antagonized the Opposition and planned the legislative schedule so badly that on May 6, 196 1, the Commons actually met with a blank order paper, because 150 Instruments of Power Churchill had failed to provide any business for the sitting - an unprecedented event in parliamentary history. (John Diefenbaker was at a Conservative rally in Western Ontario, on this strange blank day, attacking the Liberals for "obstruction of the nation's business.") The tragedy of Gordon Churchill was that much of his indecision in making up the schedule of the Commons was not his at all, but Diefenbaker's. Again and again, he had to take the brunt of the blame for the Prime Minister's irresolution, and he was always too loyal to object. That he thus became one of the political victims of the Diefenbaker Years was a pity, because Churchill was totally dedicated to his party and probably understood even more about electoral strategy than his chief He was also a kind and gentle human being. Although the public record of the Diefenbaker cabinet left the impression that it dealt only superficially with policies beneficial to the nation's long-range future, men like Alvin Hamilton, Davie Fulton, George Hees, Howard Green, Sidney Smith, and Gordon Churchill were, in fact, concerned about long-term goals, but mainly in an emotional or patriotic way. They succeeded only rarely in transposing feeling into fact. Under Diefenbaker's politically oriented overlordship, short-term objectives proved to be more amenable to embodiment in the existing legislative and administrative framework. Except for such relatively minor government decisions as appointing an Indian to the Senate,* building the northern "roads to resources," and proposing a diversion of trade from the United States to the United Kingdom, all of which were distinctly Diefenbaker's ideas, most of the laws implemented by the Conservative government involved the kind of legislation that is common to all Canadian political parties. * James Gladstone ofCardston, Alberta, known to the Blood Tribe ofthe Blackfoot Nation as Akay-na-muka (Many Guns), was appointed to the Senate of Canada, on January 31, 1958. The Cabinet 151 One criterion that Diefenbaker seemed to be applying subconsciously in his choice of measures to bring forward was the difference between "illuminating" and "obscure" government action. "Illuminating" action touched the practical lives of average people in an understandable way and was therefore desirable in the Diefenbaker scale of values. "Obscure" action reached the people indirectly, if at all, and therefore remained secondary in importance. Diefenbaker presented nearly all his accomplishments as national policies, but the greater part of his legislative program was actually based on a regional approach, designed to bring the Maritimes and the Prairies up to the prosperity level of the central provinces. This was desirable because the preceding Liberal regime had neglected the rural and resource sectors of the Canadian economy. But for John Diefenbaker, the regional character of his legislative drive also turned out to be self-destructive. It served to strengthen the centrifugal forces which would eventually tear his cabinet apart. The nature of these forces could be appreciated only through a close study of the men who played the chief supporting roles in the drama of the Diefenbaker Years: Davie Fulton, Donald Fleming, Alvin Hamilton, George Hees, and Allister Grosart. EIGHT The Disillusionment of Davie Fulton TWO OR THREE times a generation there appears in the House of Commons a very special kind of politician. He manages, without giving up any of his partisan principles, to draw respect from every corner of the parliamen- tary chamber. To the country at large he becomes a symbol of what lawmakers should be and hardly ever are. The Liberals had such a figure in James Ralston and the CCF in J. S. Woodsworth. The only minister in the Diefenbaker cabinet who might have aspired to this illustrious brigade was E. Davie Fulton, its most respected and most unhappy member. During his seventeen years in Ottawa, Fulton attained more at an earlier age than any other Canadian federal politician since Mackenzie King. When Diefenbaker named him Minister of Justice on June 21, 1957, he was forty-one and had a reputation unblemished by any of the flaws that can stop an m.p. from reaching the top. He felt a real pleasure in politics and genuinely believed himself fated to influence beneficially the course of Canadian history. This was an unlimited man, strong in principles, outstanding in intelligence, and the best parliamentarian in his party. Handling the most diversified portfolio in the cabinet, he accomplished nearly everything that was demanded of him and more. But as the frustrations of having to work under John Diefenbaker grew increasingly intolerable, the 152 The Disillusionment of Davie Fulton 153 joy he had found in politics began to ebb. He still maintained the manner of a politician running his affairs rather than being run by them, but gradually his zeal slackened and his poise became that of a man turned inward for comfort, rather than outward with assurance. No longer an agreeable companion, he became aloof and impatient. Through all his disappointments, however, Davie Fulton never lost the qualities that made him a man apart - a politician marked as the conscience of the Diefenbaker cabinet. These traits created at once an aura of excellence which surrounded everything he touched and a clear impression that his political behaviour was measured against an appreciation of Canada's long-term aspirations. "We must emphasize," he often argued with cabinet colleagues, "what we are for, rather than what we are against. We need to offer not so much evidence of the Liberals' past errors, as evidence of the Conservatives' plans for the future." Such an attitude isolated him among the members of the Diefenbaker hierarchy. He simply did not fit among his colleagues. He was a royalist by temperament; a true and reforming Tory by inclination; and an intellectual by training. "Where George Hees and Alvin Hamilton were going out of their way to build up good personal relationships with government members and constituency organizations across the country, Mr Fulton was carrying on as Minister of Justice, aloof, cold and intellectual," wrote Douglas Fisher, the m.p-columnist, in the Toronto Telegram. This was perfectly true. Unlike most of the other ministers, he never went out of his way to attract a following among the m.P's and fellow cabinet ministers. He was close to Jay Waldo Monteith and Douglas Harkness, but was completely businesslike with the others, and never allowed them to become his friends. His failure to become a commanding voice in the cabinet was partly attributable to the casual way in which he dealt with his associates. At the same time, Fulton did attract to himself a num- 154 Instruments of Power ber of unusual young men whose loyalty bordered on reverence. This group included: Ian Pyper, a driving, politically oriented Vancouver lawyer who later managed Fulton's British Columbia campaign; Chris Dobson, a funny Englishman with an unusual talent for law; Michael Pitfield, an exceptionally brilliant and charming young Montreal constitutional lawyer who later served as secretary of the Royal Commission on Publications; Marc Lalonde, a Montreal lawyer who was one of the most promising French Canadians ever attracted to non-elective office in Ottawa; and Lowell Murray, a warm and witty Nova Scotian whose political instincts stood out even in this unusual company. These were "Fulton's men," and in Diefenbaker's Ottawa they were a group unto themselves. To these youngsters (most of them were still in their early twenties during the Diefenbaker Years), Fulton represented the only leader on the federal scene who might transcend the narrow millieu of partisan politics to give the nation truly enlightened, responsible government. But their fierce longing placed a demand on Fulton to be greater than he really was or had the opportunity of being. He never found it possible to implement his philosophy of Conservatism which so attracted these and other followers. Diefenbaker, for instance, always considered Fulton a right-winger because of his opposition to increased welfare payments which were not accompanied by an explanation to the voters that they would someday have to pay for the extra benefits received. The Fulton version of Canadian Conservatism was most clearly expressed in a little-reported speech he gave to the spring conference of the Young Progressive Conservatives of Toronto and District, on March ig, ig6o. "The whole history of political parties," he said on that occasion, "shows that when they allow passion for power to replace pursuit of principle as their motivating force, then they cease to justify their existence." "I believe," he went on, "that the essential characteristic The Disillusionment of Davie Fulton 155 which identifies the Conservative is his belief that there is and must be an underlying moral and spiritual content to all political philosophy and action if it is to have lasting value. The Conservative believes that man is not sufficient of and to himself alone, but is answerable to a higher being upon whose example and inspiration he should as far as possible model himself, and whose great and abiding purpose he should ceaselessly strive to serve. It is this underlying -almost unspoken -concept that gives the true Conservative both his sense of responsibility and his sense of humility... The Liberal advocates the inevitability of progress, unrelated to basic principle. His reforms are, therefore, stop-gap measures designed without reference to the lessons of the past, without thought to the exigencies of the future, designed only to meet the needs of today. The Conservative, on the other hand, holds that true progress is made only upon the basis that every step taken, every law enacted, must be a part of an over-all plan which conforms to those moral and spiritual ideals for which he stands." FULTON'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY was not the product only of profound intellectual thought, but also of deep religious conviction. Although his Roman Catholicism was not a conscious factor in his decision-making process, it remained a subconscious force in everything he did. Liberalism, the antithesis of his political philosophy, thus came to be regarded by him as a negation of his personal beliefs - and equivalent to sin. Despite his high principles, he was the most partisan of men. His strict interpretation of Conservatism was based not only on his own experience but on his training and family background. His roots in British Columbia went back to his grandmother -the first white child born in Victoria -and an amazing procession of successful Tory politicians. His grandfather had been British Columbia's eighth premier, his great-uncle its tenth and later the province's chief justice. Another uncle was speaker of the British 156 Instruments of Power Columbia legislature from 1931 to 1933. Fred J. Fulton, Davie's father, served as attorney general in British Columbia's McBride administration near the turn of the century and later as federal m.p. for Cariboo. Davie (his mother's family name) was born in 1916 in Kamloops, studied at a private school in Victoria, took a general arts degree at the University of British Columbia, and in 1936 was appointed the province's Rhodes Scholar. After reading law at Oxford's St John's College he joined his father's legal firm in Kamloops. He left a few months later to enlist in the Seaforth Highlanders, and went overseas in October 1940, where he rose to command an infantry company during the Allied invasion of Italy. Later he served as deputy assistant adjutant general of the ist Canadian Infantry Division. In October of 1944, while he was still in Italy, Fulton received a letter from Dr Charles Willoughby,* an executive of the Kamloops Progressive Conservative Association. "Some of us here have been wondering if you would be prepared to consider accepting the PC. nomination in the next federal election," Willoughby wrote, then took four pages to describe local political conditions. The letter's final paragraph read: "We hope you won't mind, but as a matter of fact, we nominated you at a meeting last night." Fulton accepted the offer immediately, though at the time, the Kamloops riding looked like an impregnable Liberal preserve. Since its creation in 1935, it had been held by Liberal T J. O'Neill, an Irish locomotive driver who enjoyed efficiently marshalled support in its labour districts. In the five federal elections he fought and won after this initial victorious contest, Fulton was often accused of lacking the ability to lift his audiences. As he matured in politics, the effectiveness of his warcries became em- * Willoughby won the Kamloops seat for the Conservatives in 1963. after Davie Fulton resigned to enter provincial politics. The Disillusionment of Davie Fulton 157 balmed in adjectival clauses, knotting his platform appearances with unintended pomposity. But in the 1945 election, tempered by five harsh years of war, he waged the best and toughest campaign of his life. Fulton's looks and bearing-the pompadour of rusty hair, the oversize jaw, his military carriage - gave him the natural dignity of a bull moose stalking a forest full of lesser Canadian mammals. He campaigned in the kilt and square-danced at every Elk Hall in his constituency. For the railway ballots, he hopped the freight cabooses running into the Blue River country. On polling day, June i 1, 1945, he squeezed into office with a majority of 177 ballots. His parliamentary debut in Ottawa was auspicious. An m.p.'s maiden speech is, by tradition, a mutual truce. The novice talks uncontroversially about his constituency: the opposition benches allow him to proceed unchallenged. But in his first week in Parliament, the 29-year-old Fulton asked Prime Minister Mackenzie King a question which should have been given to the Clerk of the House for inclusion in the order paper. King, furious, lectured the neophyte on proper House procedure. On the afternoon of the same day, Fulton became the first English-speaking Conservative m.p. to give part of his maiden speech in French. He hardly mentioned Kamloops, but he attacked King's policies with such vigour that he was interrupted eleven times by three angry Liberal cabinet ministers. King was so impressed that he leaned over to his seatmate Ian Mackenzie, then Minister of Veterans Affairs, and whispered: "That young man will lead the Tories someday." During his first session, Fulton spoke forty-two timesan unprecedented record for a new member. The Liberal backbenchers nicknamed him Buttercup (because he had a reddish top and kept popping up all the time) and jeered whenever the brash young man from Kamloops rose to speak. In those days, he dressed as if he were still at Oxford: high starched collars and a handkerchief flopping 158 Instruments of Power out of his left sleeve. He still spent some of his spare time in Ottawa playing polo or throwing darts in his parliamentary office. Much of his time in the Commons was spent on a wide range of irrelevancies. He lectured Parliament on Canada's blueberry problem, complained bitterly about the excise tax on imported fire engines, the methods being used to dispose of second-hand army slippers, and the payment of copyright dues for band concerts at agricultural fairs. He attacked the variety of memo paper pads used by the civil service and the imports of Malayan throwing-daggers for police exhibitions. The Liberals' most crushing attack on Fulton came from Jimmy Sinclair, a fellow Rhodes Scholar who later became Minister of Fisheries in the St Laurent government. He told the House: "The member for Kamloops, with the arrogance of youth and the assurance that comes from membership in the Oxford Union, pontificates in lordly fashion over all public issues." The Conservative benches applauded the insult as hard as the Liberals, Tory Whip L. E. Cardiff later privately thanked Sinclair for his temporary silencing of Fulton. Sinclair and Fulton used to spend many after-session evenings in their parliamentary offices, drinking and loudly debating the merits of their rival political parties. At two o'clock one morning Ful- ton's temper exploded. He emphasized a particularly telling point by punching the tip of his umbrella through the glass panel of Sinclair's door. When Sinclair's spinster secretary saw the bullet-like hole next morning, she ran to the nearest Commons guard and cried: "Davie Fulton has finally shot Mr Sinclair." One of the few m.p.'s in Canadian history to push through an amendment of a major statute while in Opposition, Fulton in 1949 succeeded in having section 207 Of the Criminal Code altered to ban crime comics. During his two-year battle to have the law changed, he jolted dozing backbenchers by reading into Hansard Green Hornet episodes and a comic strip called "Undressed to Kill." The Disillusionment of Davie Fulton 159 In it, a slobbering gangster was forcing a shivering beauty called April to disrobe at gunpoint. She takes everything off, but is killed anyway. "No use," Fulton told the House. "A .45 slug rips through pale flesh, and April's out of season." Fulton also upset the parliamentary legend against personal attacks on the Prime Minister by calling Louis St Laurent "a worn-out caretaker" and "Saint Louis the Bold," and once referred to "the spectacle of Uncle Louis coming into the House brandishing an all-day sucker, giant-size,, Liberal brand." Early in 1956, when the pipeline debate might have ended as an unpopular filibuster, Fulton was one of the first Conservatives to distil the fight into a constitutional issue and, supported by Gordon Churchill, he became his party's chief House tactician. He argued about the shades of word definitions, questioned House rules which had always been taken for granted, and was often on his feet, shouting at the Liberals, before his chief, George Drew, had a chance to rise. The pipeline affair established Davie Fulton as a major figure in the Conservative Party. He had already attracted wide support among the upcoming generation during his term 0 946-49) as national president of the Young Progressive Conservative Association. It was at the urging of this young elernent in the Party that he became a longshot candidate at the 1956 leadership convention. Although he claimed to have had initial signs of interest from about four hundred delegates, in the last two days of the convention the Quebec contingent - fearing a Diefenbaker vic- tory-swung decisively behind Donald Fleming, while many potential Fulton backers, with overpowering antiFleming feelings, rallied behind Diefenbaker. When the ballots had been counted, Fulton trailed a poor third. Before the leadership convention, Diefenbaker and Fulton had been quite close. Diefenbaker regarded Fulton as something of a prot&g6, and Fulton had twice flown into Prince Albert to deliver Diefenbaker's French speeches. 160 Instruments of Power When John Diefenbaker's first wife died, in 1951, it was Fulton the Party sent out to Prince Albert to accompany him on the lonely train ride back to Ottawa, because he was considered to be Diefenbaker's closest friend. Two years later, Fulton was host at a dinner party in honour of Diefenbaker's second marriage. Although the Party closed ranks after the 1956 leadership fight, Diefenbaker never forgave Fulton for having run against him. Fulton, for his part, never stopped openly aspiring to the Party's top job. When the Conservatives unexpectedly squeezed into office on June io, Fulton thought he would immediately be offered a senior cabinet post. Instead, Diefenbaker asked him to become the Speaker of the Commons. Fulton declined. He told Diefenbaker that Justice was the portfolio he really wanted. He waited five days before the Prime Minister telephoned him to confirm his appointment. In the first few months of the Diefenbaker regime Fulton also occupied the office of Acting Immigration Minister and, during the Prime Minister's frequent absences from Ottawa, before Sidney Smith's appointment, he filled in as Acting Secretary of State for External Affairs.* These were the happiest days of Fulton's political career. Shortly after his appointment to Justice he went for a day to the Canadian Bar Association convention at Banff, Alberta. When he got there, he tiptoed into the opening session and sat down at the back of the hall. But the meeting's chairman spotted him and asked him to come up and say a few words. When Fulton reached the rostrum, the thousand lawyers in the room spontaneously stood up and cheered him. The gesture so moved the brand-new Minister of Justice that for minutes he just stood before the silent microphone, weeping. *While John Diefenbaker was attending the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference in London, a group of Russian scientists applied for permission to visit Cyrus Eaton's "home for thinkers" at Pugwash, N.S. The Disillusionment of Davie Fulton 161 FROM THE sTART, Fulton was determined to raise the status of the Justice portfolio so that it would become clearly identifiable as the cabinet's number two post. Although he had scarcely practised any law himself and received his appointment as a Queen's Counsel only nine days after becoming Minister of Justice, Fulton's vitality, intellect, and strength of character made him one of the ablest Justice Ministers in Canadian history. Like the External Affairs portfolio, Justice offers its incumbent scope for statesmanship. Using this approach, Fulton became an important figure in the Diefenbaker administration quite outside the list of responsibilities attached to his own department. He acted as chief inter- mediary in some delicate federal-provincial discussions with Quebec, took charge of the initial Columbia River Treaty negotiations, and even produced a plan to increase the flow of trade between Canada and South America. To everything he did, Fulton imparted an old-school kind of honesty that has become all but obsolete among twentieth-century politicians. When the Justice Department's combines investigation branch launched its inquiry into the monopolistic practices of Canadian supermarket chains, for example, Fulton insisted that his wife, Pat, do the family shopping entirely at corner groceries. Similarly, when one of his more politically oriented advisors warned him against attending the Stratford Shakespearean Festival, since it would only add credence to his bad political image as an intellectual, Fulton threw him out of his office, and at Stratford pointedly had his photograph taken in the theatre lobby. Probably Fulton's most important accomplishment at External Affairs was concerned because the request had come from the USSR Embassy. Justice was worried about the security aspects. Immigration wanted to know if it could issue the necessary visas. Ordinarily, the decision would be made by a committee of the three ministers but they all at that moment happened to be Fulton. After some deliberation, he referred the question to the rest of the cabinet, who approved the Russians' entry 162 Instruments of Power Justice was to lay the groundwork for making the British North America Act Canadian. His masterly negotiations with the ten provincial governments on the matter came so close to final agreement that only one more federal- provincial conference in the summer of j962 might have been required to reach agreement on a formula. But Diefenbaker vetoed Fulton's request to reconvene the meeting. Fulton's other major concerns at Justice included the drafting and preparation for implementation of Diefenbaker's cherished Bill of Rights;* pushing through Parliament a complete revision of anti-combines legislation which considerably eased anti-trust restrictions; revising the laws against obscene literature; and introduc- ing into the criminal code a category of non-capital murder which does not carry an arbitrary death penalty. Another of Fulton's important contributions was his partial reform of the bear-cage mentality in dealing with the inmates of federal penitentiaries which had existed under the previous Liberal administration. By pushing through the first major revision of the Penitentiary Act since 1883, Fulton allowed an element of hope to seep behind the grey walls of Canada's prisons. In fact, it was probably not an overstatement to say that no group of Canadians had their daily lives more radically altered for the better during the Diefenbaker Years than the inmates of federal penitentiaries. Prisoners had been spending their terms in eight federal institutions that had the look and feel of medieval fortresses. Locked in their cells for most of the day, they wasted much of the remaining time in the ceaseless and unvaried procedure of being counted and recounted. Under Fulton, the emphasis was on making the punishment ftt the criminal, instead of the crime. Like most of Fulton's actions, his stress on the rehabilitation of criminals had ideological roots. (According to his interpretation of political philosophy, the Liberal seeks only to punish See Chapter 17 for a discussion of this legislation, The Disillusionment of Davie Fulton 163 those who have broken society's rules, while the True Tory seeks to uphold what's good in man by being concerned with measures that will salvage the contribution to society dormant in the worst of us.) A National Parole Board was established, and the budget of the penitentiaries branch was doubled to finance the construction of a dozen medium- and minimum-security prisons. Instead of being herded into an identically hopeless environment, prisoners were, for the first time, segregated according to their chances of rehabilitation. During the five years he spent as Minister of Justice, Davie Fulton earned the reputation of being the brightest and most articulate member of the Diefenbaker cabinet, though his adherence to morality in politics didn't always please some members of his own party. It was Fulton, for instance, who suggested that Henri Courtemanche, then Secretary of State, be removed from the cabinet, at a time when no one suspected some of his misdeeds would become public.* SUCH AN ATTITUDE enhanced Fulton's reputation as a politician with principle. The only shadow on his record as a cabinet minister during the Diefenbaker Years occurred in the winter of 1958-1959 over the role of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the Newfoundland loggers' strike. It was a situation that had more victims than villains. It caused serious friction between the federal government and the RCMP for the first time in the force's history; it led to the resignation of Leonard Hanson Nicholson, the Rcmp's able and dedicated Commissioner; it caused unprecedented bitterness between the federal government and the Newfoundland administration; and, finally, it removed a little of the glow from the halo of unblemished virtue, up to then floating brightly over Davie Fulton's political career. * See Chapter 20 for details. 164 Instruments of Power Part of the trouble lay in the nature of the RCMP'S provincial contracts, which place the force in an awkward position between the provincial government for which it works and the federal government which pays its salaries and to which it owes its primary allegiance. Although the RCMP is a federal force, in eight of Canada's ten provinces (all but Ontario and Quebec) it also acts as a provincial police agency. More than a third of its uniformed men are engaged in provincial duty and five-sixths of its cases involve other than federal offences. Under the contract for police service between the provincial and federal governments, the provinces have almost complete freedom in their use of the RCMP. Clause 13 of the contract reads as follows: "Where in the opinion of the attorney general of the province an emergency exists within the province requiring additional members of the force to assist in dealing with such emergency, Canada shall, at the request of the attorney general of the province, addressed to the commissioner, increase the strength of the division as requested if, in the opinion of the attorney general of Canada, having regard to other duties and responsibilities of the force, such increase is possible." This particular clause had been applied only twice in recent years: once, when British Columbia requested and received RCMP reinforcements to help quell disturbances caused by the Doukhobor Sons of Freedom sect, and another time, to help maintain law and order during the Winnipeg flood. Late in December of 1958 some fifteen hundred loggers, members of the International Woodworkers of America, went on strike against Bowater's Newfoundland Pulp and Paper Mills Limited and the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Company. The loggers demanded that their sixtyhour week at $1.05 an hour be trimmed to fifty-four hours at $1.22 an hour. Although the union demands were backed by a provincial conciliation board, the companies, operating with a six-month stockpile of timber, had flatly rejected the iwA conditions. After the dispute had dragged The Disillusionment of Davie Fulton 165 on for two months, the strikers raided the camps of nonunion loggers hired by the companies. At this point, Joey Smallwood, the peppery premier of the province, entered the fight by ramming through his legislature a bill decerti~ying the iwA and setting up a new rival union (The Newfoundland Brotherhood of Woods Workers) in cooperation with the affected companies. This led to further tension in the woods around the companies' Grand Falls newsprint mills. On Sunday, March 8, 1959, Leslie Roy Curtis, the Attorney General of Newfoundland, sent a wire to Davie Fulton asking that under Clause 13 of the contract between the two governments, at least fifty RCMP reinforcements be sent into the strike area. At about the same time, Superintendent A. W. Parsons, the officer commanding the RCMP in Newfound- land, telephoned L. H. Nicholson, the RCMP COMITE[Ssioner, to advise him that he had requested the provincial Attorney General to apply for help. Nicholson ordered him to ask temporary assistance from the Newfoundland Constabulary, the provincial force that polices the city of St John's. Later in the day, Parsons telephoned again to report that he had been able to obtain a detail of fifty men from St John's and that with this help he felt his request for outside reinforcements might be held in abeyance. The following Tuesday morning, with Fulton's approval, Nicholson sent this telegram to Parsons: PLEASE DFLIVFR FOLLOWING MESSAGE'ro MR. CURTIS: BE- GINS RE YOUR TEL MARCH 9 TO MINISTER OF JUSTICE STOP MR. FULLON HAS REFERRED MATTER TO ME WITH INSTRUC TIONS TO WATCH SITUATION CLOSELY STOP HAVE ACCORD INGLY TAKEN STEPS NECESSARY TO INSURE THAT RCMP REIN FORCEMENTS ARE READY WH H AIR TRANSPORT AVAILABLE STOP I AM ADVISED CHANGING SITUATION INCLUDING STEPS TAKEN WI I HIN PROVINCIAL ESTABLISH MENT AND HELP FROM CONSTABULARYINDICATE REINFORCEMENTS FROM OUTSIDE PROVINCE MAY NOTNOW BE NEEDED STOP ACCORDINGLY SIT- 166 Instruments of Power UATION WILL BE WATCHED CLOSELY AND READINESS MAIN- TAINED PENDING FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS ENDS. Early in the evening of the same day, near the tiny lumbering village of Badger twenty miles from Grand Falls, a band of three hundred strikers armed with clubs and bottles clashed with a detail of fifty policemen, including fifteen members of the St John's Constabulary. In the wild m6l&e that followed, William Moss, one of the St John's constables, was struck on the head with a pulpwood club. He died without regaining consciousness. Seven strikers were charged with murder. Parsons telephoned Nicholson immediately after the fatal wounding of Constable Moss. He was still hopeful that the violence would subside because of the quick arrests by the police. But at six o'clock on the morning of March I I, Parsons phoned Ottawa again and told his Commissioner that instead of improving, the situation was deteriorating. Another hundred strikers had moved into the Badger area during the night and it seemed as if the woods were about to be the scene of further violence. At exactly 8:3o a.m., Nicholson telephoned Fulton, told him what was happening, and obtained his approval to arrange for the massing Of fifty RCM[P constables from the Maritimes at airports in Moncton, New Brunswick, and Sydney, Nova Scotia, for transportation to Newfoundland. Fulton instructed him to hold the men at the airports until he could consult with the full cabinet on the Newfoundland request. During the afternoon, Newfoundland Attorney General Curtis telephoned Fulton to stress the need for the reinforcements, but the federal Justice Minister told him that under the provincial contract more men could be supplied only if the federal government found the increase possible, "having regard to other responsibilities and duties of the force." Curtis replied that this interpretation was unacceptable and that he would reinforce the RCM[P with fifty more St John's constables. This left that city of more than The Disillusionment of Davie Fulton 167 sixty thousand protected by only fifteen policemen per shift. At 5:00 p.m. Fulton telephoned Nicholson to inform him that the cabinet had decided the reinforcements were to be maintained in readiness, but should not be dispatched to Newfoundland. Nicholson replied that he could neither understand nor agree with such a decision. He said that in his view the decision was a clear breach of contract, and that he would submit his resignation the next morning. Fulton then pointed out that if indeed there had been a breach of contract, it would be his duty to resign, but that no breach of contract had in fact taken place. It was during this telephone conversation that Fulton asked Nicholson the key question: whether he considered his men to be in physical danger. The answer was no. But, Nicholson added, this did not change the situation. Next morning, Nicholson came to present Fulton with his letter of resignation. A similar discussion took place, and Nicholson eventually promised to consider the matter, though he said that he saw no other course of action open to him. Later in the day, several cabinet ministers who were personal friends of Nicholson's, George Pearkes and Alfred Brooks among them, called on the RCMP Chief in an unsuccessful attempt to head off the resignation. Fulton, meanwhile, continued to argue in cabinet that the reinforcements should be sent to the island. He was backed by five other ministers, of whom National Revenue Minister George Nowlan and Minister without Portfolio W. J. Browne were his most vocal supporters. Finally, Diefenbaker, who opposed the move at least partly because it might be interpreted as strike-breaking, decided that he would confer with Fulton alone in his office on Saturday morning to settle the matter. In a two-and-ahalf-hour discussion the following day, Fulton and Diefenbaker agreed that the reinforcements would be sent only if the RCMP force already in Newfoundland was actually in physical danger without them. On Sunday morning, 168 Instruments of Power Nicholson came to Fulton's office, and the Minister of Justice again asked him the crucial question: Were his men in danger? The Commissioner might easily have said yes. But Nicholson, one of the most scrupulously honest men ever to adorn Canada's public service, replied in the negative, pointing out that it wouldn't be strictly correct to say that his men were in danger without the mainland reinforcements, since an equal number of extra constables had been moved in from St John's. Nicholson concluded by stating again that this was not the criterion by which he chose to judge the situation and that his resignation must stand. Since he'd been given Fulton's approval to move the reinforcements as far as the airports, Nicholson must have felt that his own authority would be threatened if he didn't resign, because it looked as if his orders had been countermanded by politicians worried about the labour vote. His stand was best summed up by 1. Norman Smith, the erudite editor of the Ottawa Journal, who wrote: "It does not take a clairvoyant to imagine what his [Nicholsons] conscience would tell him. The RCMP, he would reason, is no ordinary police force. It is the law. The world knows it never bends its standards. Its rules and discipline permit no tampering, no popularizing. A Mountie will walk into blizzard and death rather than compromise. How can its Chief do less than interpret contracts involving his force to what he believes to be the letter? If he remained at the head of the RCMP he would be obliged to keep silent over what he felt was a matter of gross dereliction of duty. That he could not do. The contract may be between governments, but he believed the Federal Government was breaking its contract and injuring the prestige of his force ... and that if his force was going to be withheld from duty for political expediency then he must make clear his objection by resignation." Fulton's counter-argument was based on his interpretation of the reinforcement clause in the federal-provincial police contract. He saw the controversial Clause 13 as The Disillusionment of Davie Fulton 169 being concerned with more than merely the counting of available bodies. "I do not accept, and the Government of Canada cannot accept," Fulton wrote Nicholson, "that an issue of this importance can be decided on the basis of a mere mathematical calculation as to whether men are physically available. We cannot discharge our responsibility by considering only the physical circumstances prevailing and examining the need for men under those cir- cumstances. We must also consider the over-all responsibilities of the Force, and our responsibility for the Force, in a much wider context. As I appreciate the situation ... the request made by the Government of Newfoundland for RCM Police reinforcements takes on the character not of a request to assist in the normal function of maintaining law and order, but of a request for additional help necessary in the course of the furtherance of a project to extinguish a union from the province." To this contention, Nicholson replied: "I realize that other issues are before you which arise from this strike but I feel most strongly that the matter of law enforcement should be isolated and dealt with on its own merits. This is the attitude the Force has taken throughout. It has not concerned itself with the issues back of the strike but has merely tried to maintain law and order in the area. I think the contract clause on this matter of providing reinforcements in an emergency is clear and I cannot escape the conclusion that failure to supply reinforcements in this instance is a breach of that clause. Bearing in mind that we have similar contracts with seven other provinces the decision of the Government has a particular significance. With these considerations in mind I feel I have no option but to ask you to accept my resignation.... I cannot close without telling you how much I regret having to take this step. I am within a year of completing my full service and I had looked forward to finishing my time in a a more pleasant way. I have enjoyed your support of the Force and your active interest and understanding in all aspects of its work. I assure you that it is only a firm conviction of 170 Instruments of Power the correctness of my view which leads me to take this disagreeable action." Since Nicholson based his resignation squarely on his personal interpretation of Clause 13, this became the heart of the dispute. "It will be argued," wrote Smith in the Ottawa Journal, "that Commissioner Nicholson's interpretation of this particular clause in this particular agreement was right, the Minister of Justice's interpretation wrong. The argument will be irrelevant. The interpretation of the Minister of Justice may be wrong, the interpretation of the Cabinet wrong, but wrong or right it was their sole responsibility to make it. Certainly if we come to the position where final interpretation of the meaning of agreement or treaties between the government of Canada and other governments, plus what action should be taken on them, must be left to the heads of government admin- istrative departments or branches or agencies, then our whole concept of government, of where government responsibility must rest, goes under." On Monday, March 16, while Commissioner Nicholson watched, ramrod-proud, from the Speaker's Gallery of the Commons, Fulton announced the resignation. The two men parted amicably, and Fulton accepted Nicholson's recommendation for a successor. A few weeks later they waltzed with each others' wives at the Governor General's Ball. BUT THE EFFECT OF NICHOLSON'S RESIGNATION on Fulton was spiritually crippling. Although he had behaved according to the constitutional niceties of the situation, Fulton felt that his strict personal moral code had been strained by the event, and thought of resigning himself. The Newfoundland affair marked the end of Fulton's joy in federal politics. Although he continued to perform ably in Justice, it become increasingly evident that Diefenbaker was determined to undermine him. At various times he suggested to Fulton that he should take the National Revenue portfolio. One shift called for George The Disillusionment of Davie Fulton 171 Nowlan to be moved into Finance and Donald Fleming to be transferred into Justice -the only other portfolio besides External Affairs that he'd accept. Fulton firmly refused the suggestions. An alternative shuffle was discussed, with Fulton being offered National Health and Welfare. This would have involved Jay Waldo Monteith going to Finance, Noel Dorion being transferred to Justice, and Donald Flemming becoming a sort of deputy prime minister, assuming the House leadership and presidency of the Privy Council. Fulton agreed to this proposal, providing he could take the Columbia River nego- tiations and his conference on the repatriation of the constitution with him. But this plan fell through as well, when Fleming saved his job at Finance by accepting Diefenbaker's demands for even greater deficits. In the cabinet shuffle that followed the 1962 election campaign Fulton was again offered National Revenue, on the understanding that it would be built up as a twin to Finance, and with the clear promise that in a year or so, he would inherit the senior portfolio, when George Nowlan, who was to follow Fleming, went to his longawaited reward on the Nova Scotia Bench. Fulton once again turned down the National Revenue offer and, just before a cabinet meeting on the morning of August 7, he was ready to resign rather than accept the demotion. He recited for Diefenbaker a number of portfolios he was ready to accept and midway through the list mentioned Public Works. Diefenbaker pounced on this and accused him of wanting to build himself up through patronage. He said Fulton could have it, however, if Hugh John Flemming, who had already agreed to take Public Works, could be argued into a lesser portfolio. This was done, and Fulton moved from Justice into the Public Works portfolio, while Flemming took over the National Revenue post. Diefenbaker's humiliation of Fulton reached a high point in the fall of 1962, with the Prime Minister's switch in attitude toward the Columbia River dispute. The fourteen years of talks between the United Stati-s 172 Instruments of Power and Canada, on how they might share in the development of the Columbia River system's hydro-electric potential of nearly thirty million horsepower, had been climaxed on January 17, 196 1, with the signing of a treaty by President Dwight Eisenhower and John Diefenbaker. This 37-page document - negotiated for Canada by Davie Fulton - provided for the construction of three huge storage dams in Canada, with all of the initial power production on the United States side of the border. In return, the Americans pledged to deliver half the electricity thus produced back to Oliver, B.C., on the Canadian-American border, for distribution in the Canadian province. The project was to bring about one of the largest single natural-resource developments in Canadian history, worth an eventual $1.5 billion, to be shared by Washington and Ottawa. Although B.C. Premier W, A. C. Bennett and his ministers had gone along with the negotiations, Bennett later refused to sign with Ottawa any implementation of the treaty. He insisted that instead of taking back electricity from the Americans he wanted to sell them the Columbia power on a twenty-five to sixty-year contract. Bennett's attitude was based partly on his administration's need for extra revenues and partly on his desire to develop the Peace River power potential instead which, unlike the Columbia, is entirely within British Columbia's jurisdiction. At first, the Diefenbaker administration maintained the policy of all previous federal governments in the twentieth century - that long-term, large-scale power exports such as Bennett was advocating were against the public interest -on the theory that once industries on the American side of the border had been established using Canadian power, it would become virtually impossible to recapture the electricity when it was needed in Canada. Fulton defended this position in the most vigorous language he has ever used in public. "To exchange [the Columbia River Treaty] for a penny-wise and pound-foolish agreement under which this country would dispose of a great The Disillusionment of Davie Fulton 173 resource in its entirety would be sheer madness," Fulton told a meeting of the Prince George, B. C., Chamber of Commerce, on November 28, 196 1. "It would," he continued, "be an act of such reckless and improvident philan- thropy that it would make this country the laughing stock of the world." In another part of his speech, Fulton declared that Bennett's plan for long-term exports would amount to offering the Americans "the greatest windfall since the purchase of Manhattan Island." Then, just to make certain that there would be no doubt left about his government's stand against the long-term export of power, Fulton added: "Let me state in the clearest, most unequivocal terms that our position has not changed and that we do not contemplate any change." But less than a year later, the Diefenbaker government's policy on Columbia River power exports was suddenly and inexplicably reversed. The Speech from the Throne which opened the first session of the 25th Parliament on September 27, j962, stated that "large-scale, long-term contracts for the export of power surpluses ... should now be encouraged." The government fell before the Columbia Treaty could come up for debate, but the switch left Fulton in an untenable position. On November 20, 1962, his voice husky with emotion, Davie Fulton called reporters into his parliamentary office and announced the terms of his retreat. "The call of my native province," he declared, "cannot be disregarded. At no time has there been a greater need for an effective and representative Conservative Party in British Columbia.... I have been pressed to return to take part in this process." As the news spread that he would leave Ottawa to head the defunct Conservative Party in British Columbia, there was a genuine feeling of regret in a town not given to much emotion about departing politicians. He was leaving the federal scene not because his experiences had been such that no politician of high principles could bear up under them, but because he had suffered humiliations that 174 Instruments of Power a particular politician named Davie Fulton could no longer endure. NINE The Humbling of Donald Fleming 0N THE BASIS of dedication to his portfolio and his capacity for sheer hard work, Donald Methuen Fleming should have turned out to be the best Minister of Finance Canada ever had. Instead, he became both the chief victim and the agent provocateur of John Diefenbaker's picaresque fiscal adventures. During the five contentious years he spent as Canada's Minister of Finance, Fleming appeared to be the most formidable member of the Tory cabinet, beating off the impious assaults of political opponents like a Salvation Army major decrying the taunts of street-corner drunks. But all the time, this show of besieged righteousness was really the mask for a betrayal of the financial orthodoxy that was the most cherished of his political beliefs. Even in a cabinet where conflict between ideals and expediency was regarded as a sign of weakness, Fleming stood out as a man who compromised his principles. The Minister of Finance is normally closer to the prime minister than any other member of the cabinet, enjoying a kind of veto power over the spending plans of all government departments. Under Diefenbaker, Fleming never achieved this status. He was constantly overruled and frequently not even informed ahead of time about new major spending proposals. Rather than insist on his prerogative, he failed to exercise it, and so lost it altogether. The dimensions of Fleming's surrender were impres- 175 176 Instruments of Power sive. He served as Minister of Finance for 1,874 days and tabled seven budgets. The federal revenues collected during his tenure amounted to just over $32 billions, while expenditures totalled just over $35 billions. This fact meant that Fleming was responsible for spending an average Of $ 1 .56 millions more per day than he was taking in -a record in peacetime deficit financing not surpassed even during the Depression of the 'thirties.* It was an astonishing performance for a man of Fleming's background and character, who viewed the slightest evidence of extravagance in the national estate with the disapproving eye of a parsimonious club steward, and was known to argue with members of his office staff over tendollar expense accounts. The dichotomy between his nature and his performance gave rise to a verbal rumpus over Fleming's qualities, both as a man and as a minister. He was admired in his department for his knowledge and addiction to work and won the respect of delegates at the many international conferences where he represented Canada. One senior Bank of England official, who had dealt with many of Diefenbaker's ministers, once remarked in private conversation, "I am impressed by Mr Fleming, as a one-eyed man impresses one in the world of the blind." A chunky-shouldered, compact man with a Napoleonic gait that expressed his determination to deal with all obstacles in fearless collision, Fleming consecrated ritualistic energy to his work, denying himself the release of total relaxation. He eschewed alcohol and tobacco and rarely entered into irrelevant pleasures of any kind. "May I say very humbly," he told the Commons at the close of his first budget speech, "that seventeen to eighteen hours work per day and a hundred hours work per week are an insignificant price to pay for the high privilege of serving Canada." The remarks prompted James Sinclair, then * Between 193 1 and 1939 the federal government's daily deficit averaged $329,000. The Humbling of Donald Fleming 177 Liberal financial critic, to whisper sotto voce, "If conceit is the small man's sword, Don's the best-armed man in Canada." HIS SPARTAN VIEW OF LIFE was instilled in Donald Fleming at an early age. He was born on May 23, 1905, into the piously frugal family of a high-school mathematics teacher in Galt, Ontario. He opened his first tiny savings account at eleven and, when he was studying law at the University of Toronto, insisted on paying interest for the tuition money lent him by his father. Always a deeply religious man, Fleming sang (bass) in church choirs, served as an elder and general Sunday School superintendent for six years at Bloor Street United Church in Toronto, was president of the Upper Canada Bible Society, and was for twenty years head of the Businessmen's Noonday Bible Club, a group of Toronto executives who met once a week for scripture study. Fleming began his political career by stumping Bruce County during the general election Of 1926 for Colonel Hugh Clark, the unsuccessful Conservative candidate. He was just twenty-one, and preparing to cast his first vote in the same election. In the next decade, he built up a com- fortable legal practice in Toronto, specializing in complicated litigation, and in 1937 he was persuaded by friends to contest the vacant Ward Nine seat on Toronto's Board of Education. He headed the polls, and the following year was easily elected Ward Nine alderman. He switched to federal politics in 1945, and won the Eglinton seat with an eight-thousand-vote margin. Probably Fleming's most important contribution as an Opposition m. P. was the I o I -minute speech he delivered in May of 1956, charging that the Liberals were ignoring the rights of Parliament by setting a deadline on legislative action concerning the proposal to help finance the contro- versial natural-gas pipeline with government money. He was one of the most vocal Conservatives in the debate that 178 Instruments of Power followed, bringing up many of the issues that later contributed to the Liberal defeat. As his parliamentary reputation grew and he realized that his main opponent in the Party was John Diefenbaker, Fleming began to plan his candidacy for the 1956 leadership convention. In 1948, he had run against George Drew, but not as a serious contender. In 1956 he received the almost unanimous backing of the Quebec delegation, but was easily swept under the Diefenbaker steamroller. IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE CONVENTION, Fleming became one of Diefenbaker's most loyal colleagues, even to the extent of renouncing his erstwhile claim to the Tory throne. "It's just three years since you made your choice," he told an Ottawa rally of the Progressive Conservative Association in December 1959. "The Party made no mistake that night!" During his time in Finance he very quickly earned a reputation as the Diefenbaker ministry's hardest-working member. Every ten minutes on his office calendar was accounted for in advance, and occasionally he even worked while his hair was trimmed by Emil Simonsen, the Danish-born Toronto barber he brought to Ottawa in 1957 as his confidential messenger. At night he would work late in the basement of his rented Rockcliffe split-level bungalow, in a study lined with the complete collection of Hansards that had once belonged to Sir Robert Borden. Although his reputation, even among close colleagues, was that of a cold martinet, he was genuinely puzzled by the accusations published about him that he was a man devoid of a sense of humour, and blamed the heavy bones in his forehead for his impassive appearance. Ewart Fockler, a Toronto consulting geologist and Fleming's closest friend, once described him as a positive clown in the appropriate circumstances. "Why," he said, "every time we're invited out together, just as we're leaving, Don and I switch hats. His is several sizes larger than mine. The Humbling of Donald Fleming 179 Then we parade about with an effect that makes everyone laugh very hard." Whether or not Fleming actually had a sense of humour, it usually remained buried in his preoccupation with detail. During the 1955 convention of the Canadian Bar Association, to which he was a delegate, Fleming stood up before a subcommittee of two hundred lawyers and argued against a proposal for changing the Canada Evidence Act, on the grounds that a semi-colon had been omitted. Fleming also possessed a limitless faculty for self-delusion. He was able to believe only what he wanted to believe, and would never admit to having been wrong about anything. When political circumstances changed, Fleming would simply execute a complete turnabout in positions, then defend his newly acquired stand with exactly the same pious vigour he had previously expended on the vindication of diametrically opposed ideas. Such vehemence seemed to be based on Fleming's conviction that he could, by definition, never find himself on the wrong side of any argument. Fleming's dogged opposition to the British application for Common Market membership, the unhappy results of the 1958 conversion loan he sponsored, the unexpected size of his deficits despite his painful dedication to balanced budgeting, the way he handled the Coyne affair in ig6i,* the sudden mid-campaign dollar devaluation of 1962 -these and many other issues that left his judgement at least open to question were defended by the Finance Minister with a savage fury that obliterated any admission of even the possibility of the slightest error. "Don Fleming doesn't just fight an issue," the late Austin Cross, a veteran Parliament Hill observer for the Ottawa Citizen, once remarked. "He beats it to death. Then cuts its throat, slashes its wrists, throws acid in its face, and sets fire to it." * For details, see Chapter 2 1. 180 Instruments of Power FLEMING'S UNERRING DEVOTION to the Prince Albert politician was surprising, in view of the deep ideological differences between the two men. Just before the 1963 election, Harry Jones, a "progressive" Conservative m.p. from Saskatoon, while chatting with Fleming listed some of the Diefenbaker government's accomplishments in the manner in which he planned to present them to the electors. Fleming grew pale, and finally exclaimed: "But that's socialism!" "Maybe," Jones chuckled, "but you did it." On another occasion, when a senior official of the French Embassy in Ottawa suggested to Fleming that he would gladly import some of his country's planning experts to help solve Canada's economic difficulties, Fleming replied that he didn't want "that kind of socialist nonsense here," and angrily stalked out. Donald Fleming was the epitome of the right-wing Tory. He regarded the NDP/CCF as an utterly irresponsibfe movement, and liked to boast that "there is no creeping republicanism in the Conservative Party." Fleming's political ideology was easy to classify, but his fiscal philosophy was less clearly definable. It seemed to begin and end with his Holy Grail attitude toward the desirability of having federal budgets that are exactly balanced - no surpluses, no deficits. In effect, this meant that Fleming spent the Diefenbaker Years vainly attempting to set limits on the politically motivated spending plans of his cabinet colleagues. Probably the main reason he failed was that in trying to block higher spending requests, he and his officials seldom offered alternative methods for stimulating the economy. Faced by the two main factions in cabinet -the ministers advocating higher welfare benefits and those urging the adoption of industrial and development incentives to stimulate private capital investment - Fleming came down against both sides, since their ideas ran counter to his hallowed objective of balancing the budget. As a result, budget-making under Fleming returned to the concept that the government only taxed to raise funds. The Humbling of Donald Fleming 181 The combination of the ever-mounting financial commitments made by the Diefenbaker cabinet and his own continued avowal of balanced budgeting never allowed Fleming to use taxation in its more imaginative application, as an instrument for modifying the nation's economic climate. This meant that the anti-cyclical budgeting concept of John Maynard Keynes (that tax reductions at a time of impending recession stimulate business, while tax increases keep a business upswing from getting out of hand) was more or less abandoned. Instead of relying on Lord Keynes, Fleming seemed more inclined, at least during his first four years in office, to follow the theories of James Coyne, the controversial Bank of Canada Governor, who maintained that blunderbuss blasts of extra consumer spending (aided by tax cuts) were no longer an effective anti-slump weapon. At the time of Fleming's "baby budget" of ig6o, for instance, unemployment in Canada was moving into a postDepression peak, yet retail sales -the index that most readily expresses consumer spending behaviour - were running at a record high. One inheritance of Fleming's stewardship at Finance was the reduced ability of future federal administrations to apply the Keynesian method. By returning direct taxing powers to the provinces, the Conservative government took the country back to the pre-Rowell-Sirois days of decentralized fiscal control. At the close of the DominionProvincial Conference that reluctantly endorsed the move in 196 1, Tommy Douglas, then Premier of Saskatchewan, sadly told a federal finance official: "All your fiscal control's gone now. The Keynesian idea -it's all gone." During his days in Opposition, it seemed almost as if Fleming didn't appreciate the Keynesian thesis; he constantly advocated a perfectly balanced budget. On March 21, 1957, following Walter Harris's last budget, which predicted a $152 million surplus, Fleming stated with some indignation: "We of Her Majesty's Opposition demand more careful budgeting." Later he attacked Harris for his 182 Instruments of Power surplus by charging that the Liberals "do not trust the people with their own money They seem to think they have a higher claim upon the money of the people than the people themselves who have sweated to earn it." During the 1957 election campaign, Diefenbaker and Fleming both claimed that the nation was being overtaxed by $500 millions a year, and pledged to reduce the burden by $120 per family. Swept into office with this promise, the Conservatives produced a financial statement (but not a full budget) on December 6, 1957, bringing tax relief to both individuals and corporations, totalling $178 millions per full fiscal year. Fleming's first full-scale budget, tabled on June 17, 1958, was a 128-minute oration which he read without even pausing for a sip of water. ("It's all a matter of complete control over your nervous system, and using your voice properly from the diaphragm.") Although this was also the Canadian Conservative Party's first budget since Keynes had formulated his anti-cyclical theory, the document barely acknowledged the fact. It was a stolid stand-pat budget with only minor tax changes that added up to a tax reduction of only $26 millions per fiscal year. The 1958 budget's predicted deficit of $648 millions demanded an early increase in taxes and in his second budget on April 9, 1959, Fleming raised personal and corporate income taxes by 2 per cent and 3 percent - the first such boost since 195 1. He held out the prospect of "a balanced budget at the appropriate time," and on March 3 1, 1 96o, in a ninety-minute speech punctuated by fortyfour outbursts of applause from the Tory benches, Fleming introduced his third budget and first surplus. "The position we have now reached,"he gloated, "with its sound prospect of a fully balanced budget, represents the fruits of carefully designed policies carried out over the past eighteen months. This is not something that just happened. It is the result of considered aims and efforts." He added that he looked forward confidently to the orderly reduction in the nation's public debt. But Flem- The Humbling of Donald Fleming 183 ing's budget forecast of a $12 million surplus was based on his prediction of a 6 per cent jump in Canada's gross national product. By the late fall of i 96o the gross national product was running less than 2 per cent ahead of the previous year's figure and, with the nation heading into its worst unemployment winter since the Depression, Fleming was obliged to table a "baby budget," on December 20. Although he was widely expected to try stimulating the economy by cutting personal income tax, Fleming chose instead to hand out some minor tax incentives to manufacturing industries. He also made his first move against American investors by withdrawing a range of exemptions from the withholdings tax on dividends and interest pay- ments leaving Canada. Fleming's next budget, brought down on June 20, 196 1, showed that the $12 million surplus predicted ' a year ear lier had turned into a $340 million deficit. Fleming had boldly stated in his i 96o budget that to make any attempt to force the value of the Canadian dollar down by artificial means would be "to embark upon a gigantic financial speculation with no assurance of success," but in his ig6i presentation Fleming pledged that it would be government policy to "facilitate" the devaluation of Can ada's currency.* Although his previous fiscal year had ended with a deficit Of $791 millions and there were definite signs of an economic pick-up, in his final pre-election budget on April io, 1962, Fleming put through tax reductions amounting to $130 millions per year. The result was a predicted $745 millions deficit - Fleming's highest deficit forecast. Despite the economy measures forced on the Diefenbaker government by the devaluation emergency that followed the budget, this deficit actually amounted to $692 millions. In retrospect, the most remarkable feature of the See also Chapter 15, in which the economic effects of Donald Fleming's policies are outlined. 184 Instruments of Power Fleming budgets, aside from their record deficits, was the 11 error" in forecasting year-end revenue-expenditure balances. The magnitude of these "errors," as shown on the accompanying table, had nothing to do with the prophetic sagacity of Fleming's staff at Finance. The Department has always been staffed by the ablest economists in the civil service. The blame was attributable directly to the Diefenbaker cabinet's predilection for handing out federal funds between budgets. Alan Macnaughton, the Liberal m.p. for Mount Royal who was chairman of the Public Accounts Committee between 1958 and 196 1, calculated that during the last five years of Liberal administration such supplementary estimates averaged $ 1 16 million per year, while in the first five years of Diefenbaker rule, an average Of $413 millions in supplementaries was added to treasury expenditures per year. As a result, Fleming's careful calculations were thrown off, and any attempts he made to economize by his severe pruning of departmental estimates at Treasury Board sessions were more than can- celled out. In 196 1, for instance, the Diefenbaker cabinet, in Fleming's absence, approved $40 million for an acreage payment to western farmers, although no provision for such an amount had been included in Fleming's budget. Then, during the Berlin crisis in September of that year, the cabinet chose an occasion when Fleming was out of town on a speaking engagement to push through a $35 million increase in defence expenditures for the recruitment of an extra fifteen thousand men. Diefenbaker saw this as an aid to reducing unemployment. But when the matter had been brought up in cabinet on other occasions, Fleming had strenuously objected, because he had recently presented to cabinet a report prepared by the Treasury Board intimating that overseas reinforcements could easily be supplied from the existing military establishment, through a system of reclassification. His failure to take a stand against such tactics by his own colleagues lost him the fear of his enemies. His supporters, who had hoped that his presence in the Diefenbaker cabinet would keep government spending at a level The Humbling of Donald Fleming 185 reasonably commensurate with what the nation could afford, realized that his loyalty to Diefenbaker had overcome his deep personal distaste for financial mismanagement. During the 1963 election campaign, John Diefenbaker claimed that despite his generous attitude toward the federal treasury, most Canadians were paying less income tax in 1963 than they had been when he took power. It was true that the net effect of Fleming's seven budgets was to lower total tax payments by nearly $ioo millions a year, but the financial record established by the Diefenbaker administration also made it clear that this was not the kind of fiscal management the nation could afford for very long. The Diefenbaker-inspired but Heming-sponsored extravagance of the Conservative government was reflected by a jump in Canada's national debt. On March 31, 1946, the net national debt amounted to $13,421,400,000 of which $10,2oo,ooo,ooo had been the result of the huge expenditures involved in fighting World War 11. During the next decade, successive Liberal sur- pluses whittled the debt down to $11,007,700,ooo by March 31, 1957. But at the end of the Diefenbaker Years (March 3 1, 1963), the figure was back up to $13,920,000,000 -higher than it had been after five years of paying to fight the most expensive war in the history of mankind. The gross cost of carrying this debt (interest paid on total debt) increased from $520 millions in 1957 to $804 millions by 1962 - a jump of 64 per cent. A MAJOR CRISIS- in Fleming's career occurred during Christmas week of 196 1. Rumours had been floated out by David Walker and other intimates of Diefenbaker's that following the fiasco of the Coyne affair, Donald Fleming would be dropped from Finance. This corridor talk took on the status of a cabinet leak when the Toronto Telegram, which then functioned as an unofficial Tory house organ, forecast that Fleming was about to be moved into 188 Instruments of Power the Justice Department. At about the same time, Diefenbaker announced the cabinet would journey to Quebec City on December 28 for an unusual meeting, implying that important portfolio changes would be announced. Some of the nation's most influential businessmen, aware of the Fleming rumours since the morning of December 2 1, had meanwhile been bombarding Diefenbaker's office with letters, telegrams, and telephone calls, urging him not to move the Finance Minister because they considered him to be the only remaining link between the federal government and the country's investment community. On the morning of December 27, Fleming went to Diefenbaker's East Block office and emerged eighty-five minutes later, ashen-faced, refusing comment to reporters. At the time, this confrontation was interpreted as a victory for Fleming, because he had retained his job. The argument between the two men rested squarely on the contents of the Throne Speech of the forthcoming parliamentary session and on whether Canada's money market could safely absorb the financing needed to support the huge deficit its proposed legislative content implied. Because the 196 1 budgetary deficit had increased the government's cash requirements to more than a billion dollars, the Bank of Canada had raised the 1961 money supply by an unusually high 8 1/2 per cent. Three factors had contributed to making this a relatively harmless undertaking: it had been done at a time when the lagging pace of economic expansion kept down bond requirements from private sources; the government issues were mostly shortterm; and $865 millions of the total had been taken up through chartered bank bond purchases, lessening the impact on the money market. But it was an open question whether this kind of operation could be repeated, and even more important than that, whether the floating exchange rate for the Canadian dollar would withstand the nervousness that might be induced by another huge budgetary deficit. At the confrontation on December 27, Diefenbaker The Humbling of Donald Fleming 189 demanded a commitment from Fleming that, if retained in Finance, he would be willing to put forward an expansionist (election) budget and to approve a further boost in the old age pension. Fleming's capitulation took place at the moment when he agreed to support the sessional program. His retention of Finance, therefore, came to be based both on his strength and on his weakness. He had proved that he possessed strong support within the finan- cial community, but at the same time he demonstrated that he was willing to bow before his leader's dictates. Fleming's surrender had far-reaching implications. It meant that the final coup de grdce had been administered to the right wing of the Conservative Party. By cutting down the man who was both literally and figuratively their symbol, Diefenbaker, in effect, served notice that if Canada's hardrock Tories still wanted a means of political expression, they had better establish a party of their own. They couldn't use his. The cabinet's much-publicized pilgrimage to Quebec City of December 28 ended in anticlimax. The excited speculation about Fleming's position continued until reporters had crowded into the white-and-gold brocaded ballroom of the Governor General's apartments in the Quebec Citadel, to hear the Prime Minister announce a series of minor appointments: Jacques Flynn, the member for Quebec South, as Minister of Mines; Noel Dorion, the Secretary of State, as President of the Privy Council; Antonio Drolet, of Laval University, as a member of the National Library Advisory Council, Leslie Frost and Senator Walter Aseltine as Privy Councillors. Donald Fleming's future had been decided hours before John Diefenbaker and most of his cabinet had climbed aboard two special coaches that had been hooked onto the Ottawa-Montreal express for theirjourney to Quebec City. There was much melodramatic speculation about the fact that the train moved off into the snowy night with all blinds drawn on the official cars. But the Prime Minister, his victory over the Finance Minister achieved, spent 190 Instruments of Power most of the journey doing nothing more significant than enjoying a game of bridge. THE 1962 ELECTION that followed six months later was the toughest fight of Fleming's career. In his home riding of Eglinton, he was threatened by Mitchell Sharp, a Toronto business executive and former Deputy Minister of Trade and Commerce who had been so incensed by Conservative policies that he became a Liberal candidate. Sharp's campaign was brilliantly directed by David Anderson, a fiery young Toronto lawyer who built the Eglinton contest into the most exciting constituency battle of the election. Fleming also had to contend with the nation's currency difficulties, which forced an emergency devaluation just as Diefenbaker's national campaign was getting under way.* Although he had always been a tough campaigner, Fleming had in past elections fought a clean battle, but in 1962 he ended his appeal for votes by accusing Lester Pearson of being the Kremlin's candidate for the prime ministership. He told his final election rally that the Soviet government wanted Pearson to win the election, because "the man they want is the one who said - much as he regretted it later-that he'd rather be Red than dead." With this kind of foolish accusation helping him, Sharp managed to reduce Fleming's 1958 majority of 19,097 votes to a slim 78o-ballot margin. When he was trying to repair his cabinet following the massacre of the 1962 election, Diefenbaker realized that the one absolutely essential move was to replace Fleming at Finance. He transferred him to Justice, displacing Davie Fulton, and moved the amiable George Nowlan into the senior fiscal post. Donald Fleming's loyalty to the Chief was unflagging through the Party crisis that climaxed in the dissolution of Parliament on February 5, 1963. But at about this time, his taste for politics was blunted by a family tragedy, and * For details of the dollar crisis, see Chapter 22. The Humbling of Donald Fleming 191 on February 18, 1963, he dictated a five-paragraph letter to the Prime Minister, tendering his resignation. "The time has come," he wrote, "when the exactions and sacrifices imposed by public service are too heavy to be continued." TEN Alvin T WAS AN indication of how much the Conservative Party changed during the Diefenbaker Years that at the end of them, the most influential Tory, next to John Diefenbaker himself, was Alvin Hamilton, a cheerful exfarmhand from Delisle, Saskatchewan, whose chief delight lay in deflating what he called "the pomposity of the barons from Bay and St James Streets," and whose happiest hours were spent in the fragrant farmyards of the Prairies, propounding impossible schemes while waving a five-cent cigar. Canadian Conservatism seldom had a more unlikely champion, yet Alvin Hamilton represented the very prototype of the kind of politically conscious citizen Diefenbaker appealed to most. In public, he acted like everybody's favourite country cousin, a lovable hayseed whose explosive and sometimes crude remarks could be condoned because he was strange to the ways of city folk. He smoked Big Ben cigars, "only a nickel and rolled right in Joliette County," and once in Saskatoon he interrupted his own press conference by announcing that he'd have to have the ingrown toenail on his left foot pared before answering any more questions. Hamilton's idea of effective speech-making was to pack his addresses with images borrowed from the animal kingdom. As the climax to some of his Prairie speeches during the 1963 election campaign, he would strut up and down 192 Alvin 193 the platform, beating his chest like an anthropoid, in imitation of "Lester B., howling like an ape." Then, when the audience had caught the mood, he'd whoop: "Let's send these apes back to the trees." Equally effective in Hamilton's scale of political values was to find a Toronto audience of what he called "General Bull Moose Tories" and to tell them his somewhat unusual version of Conservative philosophy: "The aims of the Tory Party should be to help farmers, the pensioners, the fishermen, and the residents of the north." Such statements made him the despair of the Party's right wing. But for all his bucolic airs, Alvin was a shrewd politician who understood his public. His unique approach to Canadian problems made him a hero to the nation's less privileged groups. At heart a very shy man, he became uncomfortable in the presence of urbanity and employed a rough tongue and a low-brow manner as a defence mechanism. He was well aware that whenever spokesmen of Canada's economic establishment attacked him, his own supporters rallied even closer behind him. His reputation during the Diefenbaker Years was that of a mental lightweight chiefly noted for his many public gaucheries. But, in retrospect, it was evident that Hamilton and the clique of brilliant assistants he was able to attract functioned as the source of nearly all the N~orthwhile legislation likely to survive the Prince Albert politi- cian. It was Hamilton who gave Diefenbaker's Vision its meaning in the roads-to-resources program. It was Hamilton who thought up the 196 1 Resources for Tomorrow Conference. It was Hamilton who introduced the agricultural rehabilitation program which will change the face of rural Canada during the next generation. He was probably the best and certainly the most popular minister of agriculture in Canadian history. His zeal once even prompted Lester Pearson into an unusual tribute. "We on this side," he told the Commons during a debate on Northern Affairs estimates, "feel that at times the minister's enthusiasm overruns his wisdom and judgement, but that doesn't alter 194 Instruments of Power the fact that the minister has brought qualities of great energy and enthusiasm to his work." Hamilton received little credit for his good ideas during the Diefenbaker Years, because most of the public statements in which he expressed them were superficially absurd, semantically crude, and blunt to the point of insult. His sayings, which became known in Ottawa as "Alvinisms," included such pronouncements as this answer, which he gave during a press conference at Victoria in December 1961 when asked about the Common Market: "If Britain goes in and joins this cloister, everybody will be taking in everybody's washing." Later in the same conference he was questioned about government promotion of activities that private industry might undertake. "Well, when I was back on the farm," he replied, "they used to put a hand on the calf's head, two fingers in its mouth, then ram its head into a bucket of milk. After a while you could take the fingers away. Finally you only had to hold the bucket for it to drink. This is what we have to do with our businessmen." During a joint meeting of Winnipeg Kiwanis Clubs at the Royal Alexandra Hotel on March 5, 1963, he delivered this unusual description of American-Canadian relations: "We want to maintain on the northern half of this continent a civilization that is peculiarly our own. We're something like that comic strip character Tiny who has a brother called Uil Abner. Uil Abner is big and strong. You can call him Brother American, if you like. He's got a younger brother Tiny who is bigger and stronger yet. But the big brother hasn't realized that Tiny is big and strong because he's only fifteen and a half years old. All the little brother wants - and that's us - is to let Big Brother know we are growing strong.... All we ask in this sharing of the same bed is a fair share of the bedclothes on a cold night." In the same speech he used a striking illustration to explain what tight money was all about. "Just like I remember going down to visit some cousins of mine and we got into the apple orchard at the wrong time of year Alvin 195 and we ate too many of those green apples. Two or three of my cousins got tummy aches. My aunt called us all in -the whole bunch of us -and gave us castor oil. And we had to take it. And that ~ what tight money was, a castor oil treatment for the ones who were sick and for the ones that weren't." Nearly every speech he made contained some such homely metaphor. Two less public Alvinisms involved suggestions he made to the Diefenbaker cabinet. One was a scheme to encourage Canadian wheat sales to China by establishing a chain of outlets to market Communist Chinese handicraft to American tourists in Canada; the other was a plan to ease Canada's shortage of dollar reserves by selling Hmcs Bonaventure, the nation's only aircraft carrier, to Norway for $go millions. The theory held by Hamilton's political enemies -that he never thought hard enough before speaking out on contentious subjects-was hotly disputed by his supporters. They maintained that his manner was all a deliberate part of his grand plan to implement useful political, social and economic reforms in Canada. Hamilton himself admitted that at times he tended to sweep himself off his own feet when on a public platform. "But," he said, "the only way I seem to be able to make an impression is to oversimplify things and occasionally to use crude language, though I'm not a crude person, you understand. If you sound professorial, you don't get any publicity." Aside from the publicity which helps any politician, Hamilton was convinced that by taking extreme positions, he had often succeeded in forcing his party colleagues into accepting a compromise closer to his liking. He considered himself a political radical, but firmly believed that radical ideas could be implemented most effectively by working inside the old-line parties. "The radical who places himself outside the established order of things won't have much lasting impact," he maintained. 196 Instruments of Power HAMILTON'S IDEAs about Canadian economic development and his political principles had a long and painful gestation period. He spent more than twenty years as an active politician, advancing ideas without achieving office of any kind. The root of his ideology - the underlying thought of nearly all the programs he advanced while in office - was that people at the lower end of the economic scale must not be denied alternative ways of life, but given a choice and the freedom to better themselves. His Agricultural Rehabilitation and Development Act, for example, was specifically designed to finance subsistence farmers in exploiting such alternatives as turning their marginal land into revenue-producing forests. Hamilton considered this provision of alternative opportunities for the underprivileged as his highest political calling, because his own harsh upbringing had allowed him no choices whatever and very little opportunity. He was born in 1912 at Kenora, Ontario, the second of the five sons of a CPR locomotive engineer. Both his parents died before he was fifteen and he was shipped off to an uncle at Delisle, Saskatchewan, to work as a farmhand. Alvin went to school whenever he could, but he didn't do well. His insecure childhood had left him painfully shy and afflicted with a stutter so severe that he could hardly make himself understood. W.J. Loucks, a local Sunday School superintendent, took an interest in the lonely youngster and encouraged him to study public speaking as a cure. Hamilton exerted himself fiercely to overcome the stutter and within a year he had won a province-wide speaking contest. Loucks was a backbencher in R. B. Bennett's government and he managed to stir in young Alvin an interest in politics. In the 1929 provincial election, Hamilton spent part of every day working for the Liberals at the orders of his uncle who was a prominent local Grit. But in the evenings on his own spare time he campaigned for the Conservatives. It was during this election that he first met John Diefenbaker, then the provincial Tory candidate for Alvin 197 Prince Albert. Hamilton was picked to introduce Diefenbaker to an audience at Bounty, Saskatchewan, and remembers being awed by Diefenbaker's oratory. A year later, Alvin managed to get enough money together to go to Normal School in Saskatoon. He spent the next three years teaching in a one-room school near Rosetown, for a hundred dollars a month. During this period he became a devoted Tory. "The Liberals," he recalled later, "weren't interested in the farm problem and I wasn't interested in the CCF because I didn't like the way socialism set one class against another. It seemed to me that Bennett was at least trying to help the farmers, so I wrote him and offered myself as a supporter." Soon after the 1935 defeat of the federal Tories Hamilton, who was only twenty-three, became a part-time organizer for the provincial Conservatives under Diefenbaker's leadership. At the same time, he enrolled in the University of Saskatchewan and took a part-time job as assistant manager of a hockey rink in winter and farmhand in summer. During the 1938 provincial election, Alvin decided to contest the Rosetown seat. He was unopposed for the nomination, but he couldn't run because none of the local Tories would sign his nomination papers. They recognized that he had no chance and they liked Alvin too much to allow him to waste the hundred-dollar deposit. Hamilton campaigned anyway and saw his Party (under Diefenbaker's leadership) lose every seat it contested. Hamilton joined the RCAF during World War 11, qualified as a navigator, and put in a stint with a combat cargo squadron in Burma. While he was still overseas he was nominated to contest the Rosetown-Biggar seat against M. J. Coldwell, the CCF leader, in the 1945 election. He returned home just two weeks before polling day, and was promptly beaten. During the next decade Alvin ran in five provincial and federal elections and never even came close to office. He 198 Instruments of Power was talked of up and down the country by ffiends and political enemies alike as "poor Alvin." His spectacularly unsuccessful record was due more to the fact that he was a Tory in Saskatchewan than to any lack of zeal or political acumen on his part. The Conservatives could get nowhere in the province because most farmers associated the Party with high tariffs, eastern mortgage companies, and the Depression, as Conservative governments had been in office in both Saskatchewan and Ottawa during the early 'thirties. The disillusioned Conservatives in the province usually voted CCF rather than Liberal, as a means of more significant protest. The Party was in such a bad state that only ninety-eight voting delegates could be mustered for the convention that picked Hamilton as provincial leader in 1949. For the next eight years, he crisscrossed the province, speaking to ever dwindling audiences in a more and more hopeless cause. In all his time as leader, Alvin succeeded in getting only half a member into the provincial legislature. Robert Kohaly, a lawyer from Estevan, was so popular that he was nominated in 1953 by both the Liberals and Conservatives at separate conventions and won his seat. When the legis- lature met, Tommy Douglas, then Premier of Saskatchewan, took pity on Hamilton and allowed him to sit behind the rail on the floor of the House so that he could prompt his half-partner, but Hamilton, of course, could not speak. Despite this impediment, the two men provided a lively Opposition. Kohaly was defeated in the 1956 election and Alvin himself, running in the two-seat constituency of Saskatoon, came in seventh in a field of nine. The Party slipped to a new low of 1.9 per cent of the popular vote. Hamilton's luck finally changed in the 1957 federal election when, hurtled onto the Diefenbaker bandwagon, he managed to get elected with a margin Of 705 ballots as the member for Qu'Appelle, a constituency that stretches from Regina to the Manitoba border along the CPR. When Diefenbaker named him Minister of Northern Affairs and Alvin 199 National Resources, all of the enthusiasm for legislative action stored up in the man during twenty years of useless electoral combat suddenly exploded. He recruited a staff of assistants, headed by Roy Faibish, who was later joined by Dr Merril Menzies, Diefenbaker's original economic adviser. Throughout the Diefenbaker Years, Hamilton also received valuable advice from Don Johnston, a Toronto lawyer. Working through Hamilton, this trio persuaded Diefenbaker to use northern development (the Vision) as the main theme for his 1958 election campaign.* Hamilton's enthusiasm for the North was without limit. He referred to the Vision as "the hottest thing in the world" and "the foundation for a nation of two hundred million people," and hinted that Canada's Arctic might become "The Mediterranean of the modern world." His only regret, he once confided to a reporter, was that he had not been Minister of Northern Affairs when the Russians wanted to sell Alaska, so that he could have had a shot at bidding on it. Hamilton even learned a few phrases of Eskimo so that he could greet his new "constituents" in their own tongue. While he was at Northern Affairs, he was responsible for what probably stands as the most bizarre order issued by a federal government since Confederation. On July 22, ig6o, he instructed his Department that the hairy derri&es of naughty bears in Jasper National Park should henceforth be painted a bright red. Because bears had been mauling visitors in the park, Hamilton had earlier ruled that the offending animals should be trapped and carted off to haunts far from the tourist trails. There remained the problem of distinguishing between harmless bears and those who had retzmed from exile to endanger tourists once more. To * For more detailed analysis of the role played by Faibish, Menzies, and Johnston, see Chapter 14. For a description of what the northern Vision did and did not accomplish, see Chapter 16. 200 Instruments of Power differentiate between them, the Minister devised the scarlet-bottom badge. Most of Hamilton's activities at Northern Affairs were on a more serious level, however. At the International Conference on the Law of the Sea, held at Geneva in April Of 1958, Hamilton led the fight which eventually won for Canada sovereignty over the continental shelf stretching under the coastal waters - a step that increased the nation's resource-bearing land mass by 12 1/2 per cent. In April of 196o Hamilton introduced a new set of regulations for the exploration of northern oil and mineral deposits, designed to guarantee at least some degree of Canadian financial participation. The effectiveness of these laws was left in some doubt, however, when Hamilton told a press conference that "any lawyer could tear holes in them." PROBABLY HAMILTON'S most important contribution was an intangible one. It consisted of providing an economic rationale for the national development policy, of which the Vision was an integral part. It explained how the Conservatives -or any future administration of Canada -could legitimately claim that, under a free enterprise system, pouring taxpayers' funds into the North - or any other underdeveloped region - was a proper function of the federal government. The question had probably never been considered by Diefenbaker but Hamilton, aided by Faibish, Menzies and Johnston, established an important theory to justify such expenditures. The cost of Canada's social capital, so the theory went, is borne by too few citizens. One way to extend the responsibility for these costs is by investing government funds into areas and enterprises that might eventually feed money back into the federal treasury. This added stream of income could then be channelled into higher "social justice" payments. This was the philosophical basis for the national development policy of the Conservative government. The Alvin 201 Hamilton brains trust envisaged it as a three-stage evolution: The first phase (which included the Vision) was meant to catalogue precisely Canada's natural wealth. The establishment of the National Energy Board, the Resources for Tomorrow Conference, and the significant multiplication of the federal government's mapping efforts were all part of this initial effort to compile a national resource inventory. The second phase was designed to make the resources discovered in the first stage more easily accessible to exploitation. This included the Roads to Resources scheme, the government's substantial railway-building program, as well as the second trans-Canada highway and the second cross-country oil pipeline suggested by Diefenbaker during the 1962 and 1963 campaigns. The third phase was meant to emphasize the growth ofjob opportunities in Canada by encouraging more domestic raw material processing. Specifically, the measures that fell into this category included establishment by the Diefenbaker government of the National Productivity Council, the subsidization of industrial research, the formation of a Royal Commission on Taxation, announced by the Prime Minister during the 1962 election campaign, and the studies initiated into the feasibility of constructing a national power grid in Canada. From the time he took up his Northern Affairs portfolio, Hamilton had also been involved in planning the Dicfenbaker government's agricultural policy. The farmers had grown restless under Douglas Harkness's steward- ship in Agriculture, because he treated their demands with complete honesty and no finesse. On October i i, ig6o, Diefenbaker switched Harkness to National Defence and named Hamilton to Agriculture. Fortunately for him, Hamilton's assumption of his new 202 Instruments of Power portfolio coincided with a drought in mainland China so that within months he was negotiating with the Communist Chinese for the sale of Canadian wheat. Although Hamilton later tried to create the impression that the Chinese wheat sale had come about because of his initiative, the contract for 186.7 million bushels of wheat and 46.7 million bushels of barley was signed between the Canadian Wheat Board and Tin Ke-chien, managing director of the China State Resources Company, three days before Hamilton flew from Ottawa to Hong Kong, ostensibly to negotiate the deal. Nevertheless, the Conservatives cleared out most of the 733-million bushel carryover that had accumulated when they came into office, and during the 1962 campaign Hamilton was able to tour the west and tell farmers: "Go out and grow all the wheat you can because I'm going to need it to meet my commitments." Here was a new kind of language for the Prairie wheatgrowers who in the past had been badgered for harvesting crops that were too big. The west felt that in Hamilton it had found a champion at last. This feeling was reinforced by the avalanche of cheques that flowed out of Ottawa to the farmers during the Diefenbaker Years. The Conservative government did more for farmers than for any other sector of the popula- tion, not only because they were a fertile source of votes, but because this had been a legislative area largely ignored by their Liberal predecessors. Under the Tories, the budget of the Agriculture Department was increased by 240 per cent - from $84 to $286 million. Government handouts of various kinds multiplied five-fold between 1957 and 1962, raising the realized gross income per Canadian farm from $5,241 to $7,575. Some of this money, such as the $121 million in acreage payments, was a straight handout, but most of Hamilton's agricultural legislation was based on sounder economic principles. The Agricultural Stabilization Act passed by the gov- Alvin 203 ernment in 1958 covered twenty-four products, giving farmers a reasonable chance to plan ahead. The following year the Crop Insurance and the Farm Credit acts were passed, significantly broadening the federal government's activities in these areas. But the outstanding example of Hamilton's accomplishments was his Agricultural Rehabilitation Development Act (ARDA) passed in May 1961 and designed to bring revolutionary changes to rural Can- ada. Under ARDA, federal and provincial governments will spend $2.5 billion between 1961 and iggi, taking marginal land out of agriculture and putting it into pasture, tree-farming and other uses. The Act was designed to eliminate with minimum hardship that quarter of Canada's half-million farmers who sell less than $ 1,200 worth of agricultural products a year. The Financial Post, which traditionally opposes agricultural giveaways, applauded Hamilton's scheme. "The Diefenbaker government," it editorialized, "merits kudos for launching the first basic attack in decades on the crazy-quilt, multi-million-dollar boondoggle, which in this country has long masqueraded as honest and thoughtful farm policy." Getting ARDA launched involved Hamilton in a tough fight with his more conservative cabinet colleagues, as well as civil servants. On one occasion, when a senior Finance Department official objected that the ARDA provisions would allow a farmer to claim federal subsidies to finance indoor plumbing, Hamilton cut him off by asking, "What's wrong with that? When's the last time you used an outdoor privy on a cold winter night?" The exchange was fairly typical of his relations with civil servants. Although he was passionately interested in both the portfolios he held and was always thoughtful in his personal relations with his subordinates, Hamilton was impatient with the administrative process and couldn't understand why civil servants kept shooting down some of his more unorthodox schemes. "They give you good reasons why something shouldn't be done," he once complained, "but sometimes, by God, you know that you're 204 Instruments of Power right and you resent their attitude of merely tolerating a minister." Hamilton's storm of legislative activity in Ottawa halted suddenly in mid January of 1962. He had caught a bad cold while attending the funeral of the Rt Hon. J. G. Gardiner, his Liberal predecessor, and instead of recovering, had contracted shingles, erysipelas, and Bell's palsy, which partially paralysed his facial muscles. Following an operation and a brief holiday in Jamaica, he entered the 1962 election campaign, under strict medical orders to limit himself to one speech a day. Although few realized it at the time, he had to wear a painful metal frame in his mouth while on the platform to keep his top lip from drooping perceptibly. At the end of one speech at Nanton, Alberta, he passed out from exhaustion. But by that time the Conservative agricultural policies were so successful that most of his audiences didn't want to hear him talk; they just wanted to see and touch him. "Alvin has taken the walking-on-water concession away from Diefenbaker," reported Clark Davey in the Toronto Globe and Mail. Hamilton was taking a temporary respite from the campaign in Ottawa in the early part of May, when the government decided that in order to slow the outflow from foreign exchange reserves, the Canadian dollar would be pegged at United States 92 1/2 cents. Hamilton was Acting Prime Minister on May 2, when the devaluation was announced, and personally telephoned most of the editors of Prairie newspapers, hinting that the main purpose of the move had been to raise the external price of Canadian wheat. Then, on June 8, during a press conference following a campaign appearance in Vancouver, Hamilton was asked how the 92 1/2-cent level for the Canadian dollar had been arrived at. Alvin, in an expansive mood, promptly explained that in his opinion the dollar should really have been set at go cents -"a natural peg which is defensible with our negative trade balance." But he recalled that Alvin 205 some cabinet ministers had been advocating 95 cents, and the 92 1/2-cent decision had seemed like a handy compromise. His offhand comment was interpreted by international financiers, who didn't know Alvin, as a sign that the government might not continue to support the 92 1/2-cent price, and was responsible for wiping out a hundred million dollars' worth of the nation's foreign exchange reserves during the next five days. Further panic selling of the Canadian currency was averted only when Finance Minister Donald Fleming sharply and publicly repudiated his cabinet colleague. In a formal statement issued on June io, Fleming declared: "After consultation with the Prime Minister, I wish to make it clear beyond question that the rate Of 92 1/2 cents in United States funds is definite and final. We chose this rate after careful consideration of our balance of payments outlook." Hamilton came out of the 1962 campaign with fortytwo of the Prairie provinces' forty-eight seats-a drop of only five from the 1958 sweep. Two days after the election, while the final details for the nation's austerity program were being approved by cabinet, Hamilton went on a national television program (the CBC'S "Newsmagazine," June 20) and announced: "This country has never been in better shape, and with every indicator rising, there is no crisis that anyone can point a finger at. In fact, just the opposite is the case." Four days later, the Diefenbaker government clamped on the most rigid peacetime austerity program in Canada's history. It was this kind of simple-minded optimism that dismayed Hamilton's supporters and encouraged his enemies. It had no effect at all on the Prairie voters. In the 1963 campaign, when the Conservatives were losing ground everywhere else, Alvin enjoyed an even more triumphant reception than he had been given in 1962. In Estevan, Saskatchewan, the chairman of a Tory rally introduced him by gloating, "We should all thank God and Mr Diefenbaker for having the foresight to appoint 206 Instruments of Power Alvin as Agriculture Minister." At the conclusion of most of his meetings, at least one farmer would come up to Hamilton to ask if he might remain in charge of Agriculture in a Liberal administration formed by Pearson. "Not a chance," was Hamilton's standard reply. "If you want me, you've got to vote Conservative." On April 8, j963, Hamilton delivered forty-one Prairie seats, making a respectable showing out of what might have been a Conservative rout. Nearly every rural constituency in Ontario and Quebec that he had visited during the campaign stayed Tory, and he finally achieved his ambition of unseating Hazen Argue, the former NDP House Leader who had become the Liberals' farm critic, in the Saskatchewan riding of Assiniboia. Since it had been largely Hamilton's efforts that had held the farm vote for Diefenbaker, the Conservative chieftain might have been expected to be grateful to Alvin for his efforts. But this was hardly the case. The relationship between the two men had always been somewhat difficult. Diefenbaker had known Hamilton since 1929, when Alvin was an overly idealistic and naive youngster, and the Conservative leader still thought of him in those terms. During the Diefenbaker Years, Hamilton disagreed with the Prime Minister's emphasis on short-term political objectives, advocating instead a series of long-term measures. Ideas which Alvin could never successfully sell the Prime Minister were often accepted when they came from other sources. Diefenbaker often humiliated Hamilton in private, and at least once in public. On November 9, 1962, Hamilton made some startling proposals to the annual meeting of the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool in Regina. Instead of telling the farmers that he would do even more for them, he asked them to consider the idea of setting aside a portion of their final wheat payment to build up a fund for sharing any losses that might occur in credit sales abroad. He also proposed that western wheat pools set up their own Alvin 207 aggressive marketing organization. Questioned in the Commons about these suggestions, Diefenbaker immediately repudiated the minister by announcing that his views "in no way represented government policy." When Hamilton returned to Ottawa, he was reprimanded by the Prime Minister. Writing about his reception in the Montreal Star, W A. Wilson noted that Hamilton had told an associate: "If I took my shirt off and showed you my back from here (pointing to his hips) to here (pointing to his shoulders) you'd see nothing but whip marks." Despite this and other rebuffs, Hamilton remained completely faithful to the Prince Albert politician. In February of 1963 when some members of the Tory cabinet attempted their coup d'&at against Diefenbaker's leadership, it was Hamilton who rallied the backbenchers and successfully beat down the insurrection. In one of his final appearances as Minister of Agriculture during the 1963 election campaign, Hamilton told his audience: "I just want to leave one thing with you. You have had a government in Canada this last six years that has a simple philosophy, an old philosophy. That's to build Canada. Not by worshipping statistics, but by watching for areas and people that need help - that's the One Canada, One Nation basis. Our task for the next two or three hundred years is going to be moving from the south into the north, so that future generations will know that we have not forgotten the principles upon which this nation was founded and which generation and generation have had to stand together to protect." It was an appropriate expression of Alvin Hamilton's own flowering in federal politics - a unique phenomenon of the Diefenbaker Years. ELEVEN George Hees: Y.C.D.B.S.O.Y.A. To THOSE who observed the Ottawa scene closely in the years between 1957 and 1963, the most improbable figure in John Diefenbaker's improbable cabinet was George Hees, the member for Toronto-Broadview who served first as Minister of Transport and then took on Trade and Commerce, the portfolio that had so long been the personal domain of Clarence Decatur Howe. "Gorgeous George," as his detractors called him, brought gusto to the business of government, a delight in power and in self that few men can sustain past the age of twenty. A huge man, healthy, rich, and handsome, he was a master of the Big Hello. He loved partying, swimming, football, and sometimes gave the physically frail the uneasy feeling that he might, at any moment, get down on the rug and wrestle in a burst of boyish goodwill. From the time that Hees went into politics he was plagued by charges that he was a mental lightweight, a perpetual playboy, an amiable goon. But, to the utter astonishment of the people who thought they knew him well (and this meant everybody who'd ever shared an elevator with George, so transparent seemed his talents), Hees turned out to be the most successful of the Conservative cabinet ministers. It was a success based not on good luck but on hard work and on an untarnable zest in everything he did-which ironically, in the end, brought about his dramatic downfall. 208 George Hees: Y.C.D.B.S.O.Y.A. 209 Part of John Diefenbaker's appeal in the 1957 and 1958 election campaigns had been the feeling he gave that his party would handle the people's business with a dedication and excitement that hadn't been seen in the land during the Liberals' fat, smug years of corporate efficiency. But once the Tories were firmly ensconced in office, the problems of power wore down the enthusiasm of nearly all the major figures in the Diefenbaker cabinet. Hees remained a refreshing exception, not because of any outstanding personal brilliance, but simply because he cultivated with flashy single-mindedness the limited talents he did possess. He applied to politics the same animal will power that characterized his approach to everything. He had compensated for his failure at high-school football with a grim private training schedule that eventually made him a star linebacker of the Toronto Argonaut team which won the 1938 Grey Cup - Canadian football's most coveted award. After he had been flattened in a 1933 amateur boxing bout at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens, he resolutely slugged his way to the heavyweight championship of the British armed services. When World War 11 broke out, he trained himself just as hard to be a good officer, and eventually earned battle honours as an infantry brigade major. He then proceeded to prepare for public life with the same dogged determination he had shown in sports and the army, and became a key influence in the Conservatives' return to power. Although he turned fifty while in office, Hees continued to look more like an athlete in his prime than a middleaged politician. His face, flushed with good health and bursting out of a perennially too-tight collar, was nearly always adorned with a "Let's go team!" kind of grin. His big frame (21o-pound, six-foot-three) seemed to be planted on the ground with a permanent backward lean, as if he were holding the world on a leash. George Hees was a hard-breathing refutation of the theory that Canadian politicians have to be stuffy and 210 Instruments of Power pompous to be successful. He loved to lead singsongs at parties, to play catcher at the m.p.s' annual baseball game, and to trade quips with backbenchers in the parliamentary corridors. His political duties seldom limited his fun. Mounted on a bronco and waving a cowboy hat, he led the parade that opened the fiftieth anniversary of the Wainwright, Alberta, Stampede. When he was supposed to turn the sod for Edmonton's new international airport in 1958, instead of meekly digging up a ceremonial shovelful of dirt, he mounted a bulldozer and efficiently ploughed up the first twenty feet of excavation. He seemed to be a man without any of the restraints of introspection, To work hard, he also had to play hard, even when his hi-jinks were unbecoming to the dignity of a cabinet minister's position. At the Ottawa Philharmonic's 1958 Spring Time Party he rode a dapple grey farmhorse called Dan into the City's Coliseum. He was dressed as Prince Charming and his assignment was to rescue Snow White, portrayed by the television star, Joyce Davidson. Hees's costume included a gold tunic which might have been taken for that of a storybook prince, but his pants were definitely those of a twentieth-century RCMP constable. At dress rehearsal, his outsize haunches astride the outsize farmhorse had split the rented costume's white-satin pants from knee to knee. Hees franti- cally telephoned Ottawa Hunt Club members for a replacement, but the only pair of white riding-breeches that would fit him were owned by a Liberal whose wife wouldn't lend them to a Conservative cabinet minister. The RCMP had to supply the emergency replacement. HEES COULD GET AWAY with participating in such pranks, because he possessed that natural ebullience that comes from being born into a very rich family. His grandfather had established a prosperous Toronto window-shade and house-furnishings manufacturing firm in i88o. George received his early education at Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario; then attended Royal Military College George Hees: Y.C.D.B.S.O.Y.A. 211 in Kingston where, despite the indiscretion of running a car onto the commandant's front lawn on the night of the June ball in his second year, he graduated in 1931. He spent the next two years studying political science at the University of Toronto, and another year at Cambridge, without qualifying for any degrees. After he returned to Canada in 1934, Hees married Mabel Dunlop, the daughter of Ontario's provincial treasurer, joined his father's Toronto manufacturing firm, and signed up as a defensive linebacker with the Toronto Argonauts. He maintained the connection he had established with the army at Royal Military College by becoming a member of the Toronto militia, and at the outbreak of World War II was called up as a lieutenant in the Third Anti-Tank Battalion. After serving with distinction in the Normandy landings, he was promoted to brigade major of the Fifth Canadian Infantry Brigade. His last action was a combination of the brashness and wild luck that characterized his life. It happened during the Canadian advance along the Walcheren Island Causeway, off Antwerp. Hees was leading an infantry charge with his revolver tucked inside his battledress tunic. Then he felt something go through his elbow and passed out. When doctors removed his pistol they found it had been cocked by the impact of a German sniper's bullet. The revolver had served as a shield, and the shot that might have entered his stomach had been deflected to cause only a minor elbow wound. While Hees was home on convalescent leave, George Drew, then leader of the Ontario Conservatives, asked him to make a speech in the by-election being bitterly fought in the Ontario constituency of Grey North. The Liberal candidate was General A. G. L. McNaughton, the former commander of the First Canadian Army, who had been appointed by Mackenzie King as his Minister of National Defence. The by-election was the first expression of public opinion regarding King's policy of limiting overseas reinforcements to volunteers, a measure designed to 212 Instruments of Power keep anti-conscriptionist Quebec within the Liberal Party. McNaughton dismissed attacks on King's policy as nothing more than petty electioneering. Hees was one of several army officers imported by the Conservatives to give eye-witness accounts of overseas troop shortages. He strode into the last election meeting at the Owen Sound town hall in uniform, his wounded arm strapped grotesquely under an army walking-coat. His empty right sleeve undulating with the passion of his plea, he described how in his job as brigade major he had been forced by the manpower shortage to order into combat cooks and postal-corps men untrained for fighting. McNaughton, who was badly beaten in the election two days later, demanded that Hees be court-martialled for political activity while in uniform. But King interceded, pointing out that it would only make Hees a popular martyr. In the general election that followed a few months later, King allowed the armed services to grant special leave for officers and men who wanted to campaign. Hees took his discharge and ran as a Conservative in Toronto's Spadina riding against Liberal David Croll, a former Ontario provincial cabinet minister, who easily beat him. When Tommy Church, a Tory who had held the Toronto-Broadview riding for fifteen years, died in 1950, Hees managed to beat Ralph Day, a former mayor of Toronto, for the nomination, and in September of that year he won the seat in a by-election. Soon afterward, the Hees family business was sold to a Bay Street syndicate for three million dollars. Hees hired an investment counsellor to look after his stocks, and took on politics as a full-time occupation. In Ottawa, he quickly gained the reputation of a parliamentary lightweight; Liberal backbenchers goaded him with the chant "Good suit - no brains," whenever he rose to speak. He was labelled "the malarkey man in the House" by Jimmy Sinclair, the Liberal Minister of Fisheries, who called him "very charming, but better endowed physically George Hees: Y.C.D.B.S.O.Y.A. 213 than mentally." Even when Hees's attacks on government policies were well documented - such as his speeches on national defence and housing -Liberal cabinet ministers brushed them off as "nothing but Heesteria." The Conservatives seemed to agree with the Liberals' assessment of the member from Toronto-Broadview. Despite the shortage of parliamentary critics, Hees was never assigned any higher duty than deputy leader of the public works caucus. It was little wonder that his colleagues were shocked when Hees announced in 1954 that he planned to campaign for the presidency of the Progressive Conservative Association. This was a job that elder statesmen of the Party normally had to be persuaded to fill - an unpaid position that involved little more than interminable meetings and the assumption of blame for lost elections. Parliamentary firontbenchers campaigned against Hees and put up Gordon Churchill as their challenger, but Hees, who had gained the support of the Party's growing Young Turk element, forced the issue to a vote and won easily. Hees's presidency of the Progressive Conservative Association turned out to be a decisive influence in preparing the Party reactionaries to feel more amenable toward -if never to entirely accept - the rhetorical radicalism of John Diefenbaker. He turned the job into a personal crusade to sell his formula for a Conservative election victory. A booklet lie wrote on political strategy advocated that Progressive Conservative candidates be promoted "in the same manner that corporations sell a particular brand of soap," and urged candidates to plan their campaigns according to what the residents of their ridings liked to do. "I don't care if they like acrobatics or eating cream cheese," he advised. "If they like it; give it to them. It's about time we realized that people would rather be entertained than educated." Hees's most important activity was to journey into nearly every one of the nation's constituencies, carrying his lecture course in political charm to anyone who would 214 Instruments of Power listen. His arrival in some out-of-the-way ridings. gave local Conservatives the first indication in two decades that their Party was still functioning nationally. In Prince Rupert, British Columbia, for example, a grizzled old man who claimed to be the town's only surviving Tory told Hees that no Conservative official had come near Prince Rupert since R. B. Bennett's time. One of Hees's journeys into Saskatchewan won him the dubious distinction of having addressed the smallest public meeting in Canadian history. On a trip through Saskatchewan with Alvin Hamilton, then the Progressive Conservative leader for that province, Hees gave advance copies of his speeches to the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, marked with dates of delivery. When Hees and Hamilton arrived at Star City, 120 miles northeast of Saskatoon, they were told by Jim Hill, the local organizer, that no hall had been hired because no other Conservative could be found in the district. Hees insisted that he had to make the speech, because the Saskatoon paper might run its report. Hill rounded up his brother George, and the two men sat in the back of Hamilton's car while Hees loudly intoned his address to them. This kind of determination was reflected even more flippantly in some of Hees's bets. He once promised to eat his shirt if Elizabeth Janzen, the Progressive Conservative candidate for Waterloo North, was not elected. When she lost, he mounted the steps of Kitchener city hall and told the crowd of two thousand that had gathered for the occasion: "You've heard of nylon, Orlon and Dacron - you know, those materials you can do anything with except eat. Well, this shirt is made of Heeslon, which eliminates that exception!" It turned out to be a shirt-shaped cake with red candy buttons, which Hees distributed among the delighted kids at the edge of the crowd after taking an enormous bite out of the cake's "collar." To more conservative Conservatives such tactics were tasteless heresy. Hees made so many speeches on so many subjects that old-line Tories complained he was hewing George Hees: Y.C.D.B.S.O.Y.A. 215 away from Progressive Conservative policies. Less charitable critics maintained that he didn't even know what the Conservative line was. When he was asked by a friend about his political credo as president of the Progressive Conservative Association, Hees replied: "Whenever I see a hand sticking out of a sleeve, I shake it." Hees's success in stirring up the dormant Tory organization and his growing popularity with young members of the Conservative Party eventually convinced him that he should try for the leadership. His first legitimate opportunity came when George Drew retired in the fall Of 1956. Hees immediately set off across the country to assess his chances. In Ottawa meanwhile, Gordon Churchill led the Tory caucus in declaring itself for Diefenbaker. Hees had tried unsuccessfully to obtain a commitment from Churchill that, in return for his support, he'd be named deputy prime minister in any Diefenbaker administration. Journeying across the West to enlist constituency delegates, Hees came up against a solid phalanx of Diefenbaker supporters. When he got to Trail, he telephoned the Ottawa office of the Canadian Press to declare that he too was a ioo-per-cent Diefenbaker supporter. Having made this decision, Hees flung himself completely behind the Prince Albert politician and, when he won the leadership, Diefenbaker publicly acknowledged that Hees and Churchill had been mainly responsible for his victory. During the election that followed, Hees helped to bail the Party out of a serious financial problem. In the final week of the campaign the agents for some Ontario candidates were due to call on E. A. Goodman, a prominent Toronto lawyer, to receive a final and vital thousand dollars each from the Party treasury. But the money was not available. Diefenbaker, campaigning in Fort William at the time, instructed Goodman to get in touch with Hees. The amiable George immediately took a cab to his bank, signed a note for $69,ooo, and arrived at Goodman's office, clutching a paper bag brimming with the cash. 216 Instruments of Power Diefenbaker deeply appreciated this tangible expression of loyalty and, when he was drawing up his first cabinet, readily granted Hees's wish to be named Minister of Trade and Commerce. But as soon as the Toronto investment community heard rumours of the Hees posting, strong objections were made to Diefenbaker, and in the final cabinet roster Gordon Churchill got the Trade job, while Hees was given Transport. Because Hees moved into Transport just as the previous administration's $15o million airport expansion program and the final stages of St Lawrence Seaway construction were being completed, he was able to give the impression of tremendous achievements and activity. At the same time, he studied the anatomy of his sprawling department with the care of a medical student learning the bodily functions, so that he really did provide able administration to a complex enterprise staffed by fifteen thousand civil servants. He dictated up to a hundred letters a day and refused to read bulky briefs, passing them back to one of his thirteen assistants with the notation: "Shake it down." His telephone calls began with a hearty: "How- you-doin', it's George Hees! and ended with a cheerful "Right-ee-0 Boy!" He seldom missed his daily swim in the Chateau Laurier pool (twenty lengths without a pause) and usually managed to arrange his daily routine so that he walked four miles. In the parliamentary session that followed Diefenbaker's 1957 victory, the Liberals were certain they could capitalize on Hees's reputation as a trifler to demonstrate to the nation the weakness of the neophyte Conservative cabinet. "He's a birdbrain and we'll prove it," chortled one Liberal frontbencher. Lionel Chevrier, who had been Transport Minister in the former government, was picked to swing the hatchet. Chevrier waited until he spotted what he considered to be an obvious Hees blunder. A foreman had been dismissed from his job with the St Lawrence Seaway Authority, on Hees's orders, when a Tory m.p., A. Clair Casselman, complained that the man George Hees: Y.C.D.B.S.O.Y.A. 217 had worked against him during the election campaign. Chevrier angrily protested the dismissal. Hees sheepishly replied that he thought such firings were in line with parliamentary practices. "I can find nothing in the rules which permits it," Chevrier shot back indignantly. Hees, grinning broadly, next day produced a letter written in 1936 by C. D. Howe approving the firing of a federal dockworker in British Columbia for Tory politicking. The Conservatives pounded their desks with delight, and even Paul Martin, the former Liberal Minister of National Health and Welfare, put his head in his hands to hide his guffaws. It quickly became obvious that Hees was the best-prepared minister on the Tory front benches. While his colleagues took most embarrassing questions as "notice," Hees not only had his replies ready, but seemed actually to be expecting nearly every Opposition query. "I just happen to have brought my music with me," he would boast before batting down some potentially explosive enquiry. The man who wrote Hees's "music" was Mel Jack, whose official job designation was executive assistant to the Minister of Transport, but who in fact was one of the most important backstage Ottawa influences during the Diefenbaker Years. A man of seemingly endless inventiveness and sure political know-how, he gave his energy to each day as if it were his final one on earth. Jack was without doubt the best alter ego any Canadian politician ever had. He came to work before eight every day that Parliament was in session to scan newspapers-they arrived by special-delivery mail from a dozen key cities across the country-for items that might provide the Opposition with barbed questions. Jack would extract 'answers from department officials, then rehearse Hees until the minister was thoroughly familiar with each situation. Jack tended to treat Transport, and later Trade and Commerce, as a fight promoter's training camp for "his boy, George," but in the process he got things done. Much of Hees's success as a minister was based on his willingness 218 Instruments of Power to make use of Jack's sound political judgement and spectacular administrative ability. Jack had thirty-two years' service as aide to Conservative politicians, including Hees's father-in-law, E. A. Dunlop, an Ontario government treasurer; Earl Rowe, a Leader of the Opposition in the Ontario legislature; and Conservative federal chieftains R. J. Manion, Gordon Graydon, John Bracken, and George Drew. When the Conservatives came to power, Jack was offered many jobs, including the chairmanship of the Civil Service Commission and the Clerkship of the Privy Council, but he chose to remain with Hees. The Hees-Jack combination proved so effective in Transport, and Gordon Churchill turned out to be so unerringly inept in Trade and Commerce, that by the fall of 196o the same businessmen who had previously made fun of Hees begged Diefenbaker to have him replace Churchill.* Hees was transferred to Trade and Commerce on October i i, ig6o. His main mission was to find a way of curing the nation's chronic trade deficit. To balance at least the merchandise account the new minister somehow had to stimulate a significant expansion of the nation's secondary manufacturing industry -a sector of the economy that had enjoyed only two brief peacetime periods of prosperity. Manufacturing in Canada grew quickly during the igoo-igio opening up of the western wheat economy when the rapid expansion of the railways gave impetus to capital-goods investment, and experienced a short, sharp boom during the late 1920's. But in the postwar years, manufacturing had been declining in relative importance. * Probably Churchill's most important contribution during his tenure in the portfolio was to bring into the government service Brigadier James Roberts, a former Bay Street investment counsellor who had been Churchill's commanding officer in the i2th Manitoba Dragoons during World War 11. Roberts eventually became the Department's Deputy Minister and proved himself to be one of the ablest administrators ever attracted to Ottawa. George Hees: Y.C.D.B.S.O.Y.A. 219 To place the federal government actively on the side of promoting the country's manufacturing interests called for a complete reorientation in Ottawa's postwar emphasis on the development of the natural-resources sector. Just as the notched profile of C. D. Howe had been the symbol of the rugged individualism required to open up Canada's hinterland, so the sprinting silhouette of George Hees would have to be recognized as the driving spirit in the barefisted process of persuading reluctant Canadian businessman to get out and sell their products in strange and difficult markets. "I'm willing to do anything that will increase Canadian exports. I'd stand on my head in Piccadilly Circus, if I thought it'd do any good," said the new Trade and Commerce Minister a few hours after taking on his new assignment. Just three days later, Hees called in his departmental officials and asked them how long it would take to gather the i i i Canadian trade commissioners stationed overseas for an Export Trade Promotion Conference with the nation's export-conscious businessmen. This scheme had been suggested under Churchill's stewardship. When Hees was told it might be done within six months, he snapped back that it would have to be done in six weeks. "You and I,- he told the assembled commissioners six weeks later, 11 came here to embark on the greatest selling effort this country has ever seen. I'll be watching with interest, in the months ahead, the sales increases that take place in your areas. They'll have a direct bearing on your advancement." If civil servants weren't used to being talked to in this way, neither were callers on Ottawa ministers accustomed to being greeted by a man prominently sporting a tie clip, bearing the letters "Y.C.D.B.S.O.Y.A." Hees would fidget with the gadget until visitors asked what it meant, then he'd burst out with "You Can't Do Business Sitting On Your Ass!" and tell the astounded caller that he'd better get going and hustle up more export orders. As the fourteen hundred businessmen who registered 220 Instruments of Power for Hees's first Export Trade Promotion Conference entered the wartime temporary building on Ottawa's Wellington Street that had been specially reconditioned for the occasion, they were escorted by pretty girls to cubicles manned by the visiting trade commissioners. Every twenty-seven minutes, their interviews were interrupted by a girl's voice on a loudspeaker system, gently announcing: "Gentlemen, your interview is coming to a close." Three minutes after that, the businessmen had to move into a different cubicle for another interview with a trade commissioner representing yet another potential sales area. Eventually, some eleven thousand interviews were recorded, and Hees was moved to sum up the results of the Conference in Churchillian tones. "Never," he declared, "were so many potential business deals discussed by so many, in so short a time." The Conference resulted directly in the setting up of more than a thousand new sales agencies abroad and a considerably increased export volume. The Minister followed up the Ottawa conference with a road show that played every province, featuring eighteen of the Department's top officials talking up the export message. He also toured several Canadian communities accompanied by a retinue of trade attacUs from Ottawa embassies. When Treasury Board bounced one of his trade promotion gim- micks (bringing buyers from New York and Boston to Montreal and Toronto on a govern ment-chartered aircraft) Hees threatened to pay for the plane out of his own pocket. Treasury relented. For the spring of 1963, he organized Operation World Markets - a repeat of the first Trade Promotion Conference, expanded to include government-sponsored visits by five hundred foreign buyers to Canada. The precise impact of Hees's energetic export campaign was difficult to assess. During his two years at Trade and Commerce, Canada achieved a favourable balance in merchandise exports over imports, for the first time in a decade. Devaluation of the Canadian dollar, the wheat George Hees: Y.C.D.B.S.O.Y.A. 221 sales to Communist China, and the post-Coyne monetary expansion certainly were all partly responsible, but so was George Hees. If he had done nothing else but firmly establish in the minds of Canada's businessmen that exporting can be fun, his efforts would have been well worthwhile. But Hees's greatest accomplishment was to alter the stereotyped attitude that business had toward government. He proved to even the most rabid of free enterprisers that the federal administration need not be a bureaucratic nuisance, but could, if properly exploited, become a positive agency on their behalf. Hees's enthusiasm was not entirely constructive. His indiscriminate zest for increasing Canada's exports prompted him, on December 9, ig6o, to declare, "You can't do business with better businessmen anywhere," although he was referring to an eleven-man purchasing delegation sent to Canada by Cuba's Fidel Castro. On another occasion, at a Paris airport press conference, Hees thoughtlessly threatened the Common Market countries with "retaliation" unless they lowered their common tariffs vis-d-vis Canadian imports. The Minister's most outlandish statements, however, were reserved for the Liberal Opposition. "You should see them when they hear the latest unemployment figures," he stated before a Tory convention at the Chateau Laurier Hotel on March 18, 196 1. "They sit there in the Commons mentally rubbing their hands. They giggle and snicker and smirk like a bunch of teenage girls. It's something that disgusts an honest Canadian." Speaking to the members of the Ottawa West Conservative Association during the 1962 election campaign, Hees explained his theory of how political candidates should be chosen. "When we were boys," he said, "we used to stand on the corner and watch the girls go by. Some girls had IT and some didn't. Now, we could tell just like that which ones had IT and which ones didn't. And that's how you pick candidates - they've got to have IT." This slapstick approach to politics was typical of the 222 Instruments of Power public impression Hees frequently projected of himself. It was only upon more intimate acquaintance that his effervescent charm and boisterous goodwill revealed themselves as the protective colouring for an outrageous ambition. With the robust resolution born of a lifetime spent achieving unlikely objectives, George Hees craved the prime ministership of Canada. It had been John Diefenbaker himself who first mentioned the swashbuckling Torontonian as a possible heir. At a trade conference dinner in Ottawa during the winter of ig6i, the Prime Minister had placed his arms on Hees's shoulder, anointing him with these words: "George, nobody can take your place. You're the first." But less than two years later John Diefenbaker's reaction to the name George Hees would be a very different one. TWELVE The Grey Flannel Eminence THE MAN who during the Diefenbaker Years came to symbolize the backroom political power of the Conservative Party was a chunky, singularly brilliant newspaperman-turned-image-maker named Allister Grosart. His personality and accomplishment isolated him among his fellow political organizers as a target for private and public attack, both on his integrity and on his calling. So many myths grew up around him that his name was added to Canada's political dictionary. The expression "Grosart tactics" became a sneer or a compliment, depending on the political persuasion of the speaker. Very few people who encountered Allister Grosart during his five-year tenure as National Director of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada could look on him with a neutral eye. At the 1959 annual meeting of the National Liberal Federation, Lester Pearson accused Grosart of "misinterpretation and dishonesty by unprincipled, huckstering techniques." At the same gathering, William Henderson, president of the Ontario Liberal Association, described Grosart's influence as being so immense that Prime Minister Diefenbaker was dancing to the tune "of this grand master of the Madison Avenue Theatrical and Drama Society." Paul Martin flatly declared that Grosart had become "the new foreign minister of Canada," and Major-General A. Bruce Matthews, president of the National Liberal Federation, referred disparagingly to 223 224 Instruments of Power "the nimble tactics of Mr Grosart's Machiavellian techniques." As a serious assessment of Grosart's function, this round-robin of name-calling was unjustified. Allister Grosart did become a new and important power in Canadian politics. He did have absolute authority in the operation of the Party machine, and he was in constant touch with Diefenbaker on political questions. But if there was any unusual aspect to the relationship between the two men, it was in Grosart's ability to provide the logical framework for the realities of politics that Diefenbaker had already perceived intuitively. Whatever tension existed between them was probably due to Diefenbaker's realization that to a considerable degree Grosart, and not he himself, had been responsible for the favourable image that had propelled him into office. Joey Smallwood, the premier of Newfoundland, sniffed at the root of the trouble when he said in an interview midway through the Diefenbaker Years, "Grosart's a thorn to Diefenbaker; he's a continuing reminder that the man's divinity is limited." Yet it was with Grosart that Diefenbaker broke his rule of never publicly sharing the credit for political accomplishments. On election night in 1958, during the flight from Prince Albert to Regina for his jubilant TV victory speech, the Prime Minister acknowledged the debt to his political organizer by saying, within hearing of accompanying reporters, "Well, how does the architect feel?" At the main banquet of the 1959 Progressive Conservative Association meeting, Diefenbaker publicly repudiated the many Liberal attacks on Grosart, then, turning to him, declared, "You'll be here just as long as we can induce you to say." Grosart's role within the orbit of prime ministerial counsel-giving was two-fold: he advised Diefenbaker on his television technique and other matters of personal imagery; he also made recommendations on how govern- ment policies should be presented to the voters, and what The Grey Flannel Eminence 225 the likely effect of future policies on public opinion might be. But the formulation of these policies was not his direct concern. The two men were able to work together because Grosart, unlike nearly all Diefenbaker's other advisors, harboured no egocentric political ambitions. While almost everyone else around Diefenbaker passionately clutched at more personal power, Grosart was astute enough to realize that at this level of the political pyramid gradations of power become meaningless. The prime minister's power is supreme by definition. At such altitudes it's not power that counts, but influence. That was what Grosart sought and achieved. By being honest with his leader and not asking for rewards, he built up a trust which, when reciprocated, made him one of the most influential men in Canada. Whenever the Prime Minister had a problem on which he wanted advice uncoloured by the ambitions of its giver, it was Grosart that he called. At least twice a week, Grosart would be invited to have breakfast at 24 Sussex Drive to discuss the affairs of state. That kind of intimacy prompted understandable jealousy among the legion of Tory politicians who thought they had a stronger claim on the incumbent. The antiGrosart whispers began in the summer of ig6o after the defeat of the Conservative administration in New Brunswick, despite the considerable involvement of Grosart's federal machine. The 1962 election turned the whispers into open grumbling. At a post-election meeting of elected m.p.'s, Lawrence E. Kindt, the Tory m.p. for Macleod (Alberta), pointedly objected to the campaign's "Madison Avenue" attempts to "herd" the voters, and when Diefenbaker praised Grosart's contribution, he was answered by silence. After the disaster of the 1962 campaign, former admirers of Grosart within the Party accused him of having built up the Prime Minister's image to a level impossible to sustain. Publicly, Grosart himself blamed the urban voters of Ontario and Quebec for the 1962 results, 226 Instruments of Power because, he maintained, they had resented a politician like Diefenbaker who identified himself with the "have not" provinces. But privately, he might have assumed more of the blame himself, because he had encouraged Diefen- baker to make his personal popularity the central issue of the 1962 contest. It was Grosart who overruled the few muted pre-campaign suggestions that the Prime Minister's image had become so tarnished that an appeal based on it was bound to fail. "The P.m. is the campaign," Grosart insisted. It was Grosart who approved "Diefenbaker: the Man for All Canada" as the campaign's main motto, although Don Johnston, a Toronto lawyer, thought up the slogan. When the electors demonstrated that Diefenbaker's popularity was not nearly as intense as he and Grosart had fondly imagined, that Party turned against Grosart. A few days after the 1962 election, he went into hospital with a bleeding ulcer. His collapse was a symptom of the kind of loyalty he gave to his job. It was a dedication with few boundaries. Just before the ig6i by-election in the New Brunswick riding of Restigouche-Madawaska, the Conservative finance committee in Ottawa had decided that the seat was hopeless, and that it would contribute only a token amount to the campaign of Edgar Fournier, the local candidate. Grosart disagreed with this assessment. He thought the riding could be won with the help of Charles Van Horne, the rebel Conservative m.p., whose resignation had caused the by-election. When he found out that he couldn't get national party funds to back his hunch, Gro- sart took a $20,000 mortgage on a house he owned at Pickering, Ontario, and tossed the money into the campaign. Part of it was spent for the rental of a helicopter that visited the riding's hamlets, carrying the most popular stars of French-Canadian television, all urging the people to vote Tory. The by-election's results, which gave the Conservatives a healthy win, proved him correct. Because of the curious mixture of sentiment and ruth- The Grey Flannel Eminence 227 lessness in his nature, Grosart's true character managed to elude most of his casual acquaintances. The key to knowing the inner man was to realize that despite his very real dedication to his job, he was neither able - nor willing - to immerse himself totally in politics, For Allister Grosart, beyond everything else, saw himself as a serious student of human nature, an avocation requiring more than the single-minded pursuit of power that is the dominant instinct of the political animal. Dated in his habits and mannerisms, Grosart seemed to the perceptive who encountered him casually during the Ottawa years a somewhat lonely man. It was a solitude all the more crushing because it was the loneliness of an extrovert. All through a crowded, motley life, he had advanced himself by a combination of native cunning, driving ambition, unbounded self-confidence, and the silky-tongued blarney that was his birthright. Born in Dublin, on December 13, 19o6, he was the grandson of Alexander Balloch Grosart, a Presbyterian preacher who turned literary critic and publisher after marrying the daughter of a wealthy Irish landlord. Young Allister was eight when his widowed mother decided to establish a school in China. Grosart's early education was completed at the China Inland Mission Boys' School, in Chefoo on the China coast, an institution that boasted such famous graduates as Henry Luce, of Time Inc., and Thornton Wilder, the playwright. He played soccer every Wednesday afternoon, spoke a kind of Mandarin patois, learned a great deal about the Bible, and was imbued with a rigid self-discipline that never left him. In his mid teens, he and his mother left China for Canada, where Mrs Grosart took charge of a Red Cross hospital at Kenora, Ontario, and Allister enrolled at the University of Toronto in politics and law. He earned his tuition by working at Eaton's department store and becoming campus reporter for the Toronto Star. One summer he spent preaching three sermons a week to Baptist congregations around Collingwood, Ontario. The 228 Instruments of Power local deacons frowned on his frivolous interest in sports, but he must have been persuasive even then, because by the end of the seasons his girls' choir had fielded a softball team. He got his B.A. in 1927 and enrolled in the Osgoode Hall Law School, where the following year he won a Carnegie Fellowship to study International Law at Harvard. Instead of pursuing his studies, he joined the Star as a junior reporter. After stints on the hospital, waterfront, and hotel beats, he became mining editor, and later headed the paper's "flying squad," which became justly famous for blanketing spot news anywhere on the continent. In 1934 Grosart formed the Canadian Publicity Bureau, the country's second public-relations firm, for which one of his biggest deals was the Canadian promotion of the movie, Gone With the Wind, and later wrote a show business column for the Toronto Mail and Empire. At the outbreak of World War 11, he joined the army and became a machine-gun instructor, but was washed out for overseas service because of the after-effects of childhood pneumonia. He spent thewar in the militia, ending up as a major in the 2nd Battalion ofthe Irish Regiment ofCanada. After the war he switched lines again and formed three separate firms to market Tin Pan Alley songs in Canada. His job was to make the rounds of bandleaders and vocalists plugging the songs whose United States publishers he represented. His repertoire included such ditties as "Deep in the Heart of Texas" and "You Are My Sunshine." He retained a one-third interest in the song, "When My Baby Smiles at Me." As the music business moved into the hands of disc jockeys, Grosart turned to advertising, and by 1948 was public relations manager in Toronto of McKim Advertising Ltd. One of the agency's clients was the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, then led by George Drew. Grosart originated the successful Queen's Park Reports broadcasts and became public relations adviser for the Party's by- elections and the 1951 and 1955 provincial contests. The Grey Flannel Eminence 229 He planned Drew's successful campaign against John Diefenbaker at the Party's 1948 leadership convention, and ran Drew's disastrous 1949 and 1953 federal campaigns. Between 1949 and 1957 he helped to plan eighteen federal by-elections, in different parts of the country, and it was here that he really learned practical politics. By 1956 Leslie Frost and Michael Starr had convinced him that the only man who could return the Tories to power was John Diefenbaker. Despite the long association with Drew, Diefenbaker asked Grosart to lead his fight for the Party leadership. It was in the hectic manoeuvring of the convention that Grosart performed his biggest service for Diefenbaker. By continually hammering his slogan "We can win with Diefenbaker" so that it mesmerized the many doubters, he did more than any other individual to swing the majority of delegates behind the Prairie politician. One of Grosart's minor but effective ploys during the convention was to find a way of finally teaching the Party how to pronounce Diefenbaker's name. Even in 1956 many Tories were saying the word as if it were written Diefenbacker, which gave it an alien, Germanic sound. Grosart searched for a campaign song that would emphasize the long "a," and came up with a ditty (sung to the tune of "Coming Through the Rye") that demanded the emphasized repetition of the correct and more Canadian pronunciation of the name: "Die(enbay-ker, Dio~fenbay-ker Ditfienbay-ker, Yeah! He vvil/ lead its On to victory, On Election day. John ~ the man Wholl get 'em sivingin' Swinging back our vvaY. It v Dielenba ' i-ker, Diefenba ' v-ker, Dicf~nbay-ker, YEAH!" In exhorting delegates to swing behind Diefenbaker, 230 Instruments of Power Grosart pointed out that in the past five federal elections Tory strength had fluctuated between 27.3 per cent and 30.1 per cent of the total vote. This meant that the political lines in the country had become hardened and that only a leader who could appeal to the large proportion of uncommitted voters in the country could bring the Party into power. Diefenbaker, he insisted, was just such a man. "We can win with only 8 per cent more votes, and we'll get them with Diefenbaker," Grosart kept predicting. (He was dead on. When the 1957 ballots had been counted, the Conservatives had received 38 per cent of the ballots.) A few months after he won the Party leadership Diefenbaker appointed Grosart campaign manager for the 1957 election. To capture the allegiance of the uncommitted voter, Grosart decided to sell his movement not as the Conservative Party (which Canadians had been rejecting with boring regularity since 1935) but as a dynamic new political force under the leadership of a vital and fresh personality. Everything in the 1957 campaign was directed toward promoting this image, including its major slogan, "It's time for a Diefenbaker Government," thought up by Dalton Camp, a Toronto advertising executive. The slogan, which was used prominently in the Party's one major full-page newspaper ad of the campaign, prompted an illtimed burst of irritation from Louis St Laurent. Speaking to a rally for Ottawa-area candidates, the Liberal chieftain help up the ad featuring this slogan and, with undisguised contempt, told his audience: "You see, here is the ad, and what does it say? It's time for a Diefenbaker Government. Where's the name of the party? In the smallest print that they could put it in!" By stressing that most of the Tory candidates were not running as Conservatives at all, but as Diefenbaker men, St Laurent was helping to make credible the very argument Grosart was so anxious to put across. So much so, that the Tory organizer seized on a strange device. He had St Laurent's speech mimeographed on plain white paper and mailed it in unmarked envelopes to every Liberal The Grey Flannel Eminence 231 constituency organization in the country. The Liberal candidates thought the St Laurent speech had been sent to them by their own headquarters, and faithfully repeated the line set down by their leader. They were, in effect, telling the voters that their political opponents were not the same old Tory Party they'd been in the habit of defeating, but something very different. Shortly after the voters nudged Diefenbaker into office, he asked Grosart to become, at a rumoured $27,ooo a year, the full-time national director of the Party. It was a position that at the time had a strong amateur tradition, little influence, and undefined authority. As late as 194 1, the Party had only two thousand sustaining members, and it wasn't until the purchase in 1943 of a rundown brick house, once a high-priced Ottawa bordello, at 141 Laurier Avenue West that the Tories even had a permanent home. For the first few years of its existence, the national headquarters had a full-time staff of only two, and maintenance of the building was financed by renting out its garages. Grosart's immediate concern in the new post was to find a way of giving its many supporters across the country a sense of participation in Party affairs. This meant reversing the traditional policy of the Tory machine, which had been dedicated to keeping decisions in the hands of a few inside men. Grosart realized that participation in the political process can engage people's emotions, giving the Conservative-inclined voter a real stake in the victory of the national leader. With Diefenbaker's sup- port, Grosart eventually persevered over reactionary elements in the Party to have its constitution changed, so that the voting base on policy decisions - once firmly entrenched in the hands of fewer than two hundred Party executives - was increased to fifteen hundred men and women, representing every constituency in the county. He decentralized Party finances and introduced at least a rudimentary element of democracy into Quebec's system of nominating Conservative candidates. 232 Instruments of Power Because he believed that except when a country is aroused by grave political abuses, elections are won by the continuous work of political organization, Grosart spent much of the time between electoral contests building up a cadre of forty-six thousand poll captains across the country. He also became an expert on public-opinion sampling techniques, but never relied on any polls he hadn't checked with his own "play-back guys." These were such people as taxi-drivers, barbers, grocery clerks, and poolhall owners who, because they were in jobs where they hear hundreds of people sounding off about politics, could supply him with a montage of local opinion. During every by-election, Grosart would quietly visit the area, talk to his "play-back guys," then return to Ottawa and reassess his strategy. Before the 1958 by-election in the Manitoba constituency of Springfield, for example, Ottawa Tories were worried about the effects of a recent freight-rate increase. Grosart sat around local beer parlours and country stores, asking dozens of people, "What's all this fuss about freight rates?" He soon discovered that few voters realized the higher transportation costs would affect them. Instead of worrying voters by trying to justify the increase, the Tory candidate ignored the issue and won. A more sophisticated group of "play-back guys" included a roster of twenty or so personal friends Grosart had in each province, on whom he could call for a frankly worded assessment of local conditions. This system, plus Grosart's investment in a continual private poll of Canadian political opinion, allowed him to make some surprisingly accurate guesses. When Major-General Georges Vanier was appointed Governor General, Grosart pre- dicted the Tories' popularity would jump io per cent in Quebec. It did, exactly. During general elections, Grosart's desk functioned as the control centre of the Conservative battle for votes, with Grosart as chief-of-staff, planning and co-ordinating the multitude of concerns that must be injected into a national campaign. He would spend from twelve to eight- The Grey Flannel Eminence 233 een hours a day at his desk, taking and placing twenty long-distance calls an hour, and ceaselessly scribbling notes on a desk-blotter-size white pad. He chain-smoked and drank one glass of milk after another. His instructions were issued in a voice which, as the campaign proceeded, became an ever lower-pitched growl. But in his manner he always managed to maintain the harsh authority of a third-quarter harangue by the coach of a well-disciplined football team. Each of the campaigns proved such a strain that they cost him at least twelve of his 178 pounds. Flora MacDonald and Pat MacAdam, his assistants, were a great help in reducing some of his burden. Grosart's strength as a political organizer was based on his ability to plan a campaign right down to the most minuscule detail. Before the 1958 election, all Conservative candidates were told how to have themselves photographed with their families. "The ideal setting," the instructions read, "is the Candidate and family in his own backyard, setting off to Sunday morning church, hand-inhand with wife and children. An ordinary back fence is a good background; a split-level $25,ooo ranch house is not. The reproduction process is most important. It should be a 133-screen engraving on chrome-coat stock, 120-lb. weight, bled at the edges." Another communication to candidates urged them to "associate" themselves with proper causes. "The principle of association only applies when the association with the candidates is believable," the memo warned. "John Smith, farmer, will gain little from associating himself with provincial rights or the supremacy of parliament. But he will do himself a lot of good by saying his first job in Ottawa will be to expose what 'those income tax snoopers are up to in this part of the country.' " Another memo, designed for distribution to local party functionaries, concerned with looking after the Prime Minister during his visit to their constituency, detailed every minute of the occasion, right down to the desired measurements and lighting methods of the lectern, 234 Instruments of Power solid and heavy, four feet six inches high, tilted upwards in the front." During the 1962 election, the Tories mailed out fifteen million pamphlets. Described by Lester Pearson as "crime comics," their format was deliberately less elaborate than Liberal publications. Grosart believed that by printing his propaganda on inexpensive paper, with indifferent layout and minimal party identification, he would produce the effect of an impartial newspaper report, rather than special pleading. Much criticism was heaped on Grosart for applying the subliminal techniques of advertising to politics. "Experts like Mr. Grosart," wrote Bruce Hutchison, in the Victoria Times, "do not ask the public to consider the abilities of a party leader in public business, but only as an actor. By this theory the best actor must make the best prime minister. The real test of government is its entertainment value." Grosart never regarded himself merely as a promoter of men in power and a manipulator of public opinion. He had, as well, an ideal for himself- to become a latterday Renaissance man. No facet of living was too small or too broad to engage his passionate intelligence. He had written a dozen unpublished essays on William Shake- speare, and owned a library devoted to Shakespearean criticism. He could recite the histories of most Canadian regiments without notes, would talk for an authoritative hour on Canadian art, or on the breeding of Irish setters, or on some obscure passage in the Bible. He was interested in the hair-dos of his teenage daughters, Dene and Vicki, and conducted seminars for their benefit on Shakespeare and religion. A volume incongruously con- spicuous behind his desk at Progressive Conservative headquarters was the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. During most of the Diefenbaker Years, Grosart served as the resident eminence grise of the Conservative government, respected, even if reluctantly, by members of all The Grey Flannel Eminence 235 parties. But something changed in him during the 1962 campaign. His efforts to prove his loyalty to Diefenbaker reached a strange extreme. Near the end of that campaign, Dr Amasasp Aroutunian, the Russian ambassador to Canada, delivered a routine diplomatic note to the External Affairs Department, protesting "Canada's acquisition of nuclear weapons" which, he said, would have "a negative influence on Soviet-Canadian relations." Diefenbaker promptly seized on the note as an attack on his government, and boasted that Nikita Khrushchov had become frightened by his atttacks on Russian colonialism. Grosart jumped on this theme and, on the afternoon of June 15, dispatched a full rate telegram to all provincial Party headquarters and to cabinet ministers. In retrospect, the message epitomized how blindly Grosart had come to follow Diefenbaker. This was its text: MOST IMPORTANT ALL CANDIDATES STRESS SIGNIFICANCE KHRUSHCHOV'S ATTEMPT TO INTERVENE IN THE ELECTION STOP FACTS ARE NOW CLEAR K IS TRYING TO PREVENT RE/ELECTION OF THE PRIME MINISTER FOR THREE MAJOR REASONS: (i) THE LEADERSHIP GIVEN BY CANADA IN MARSHALLING WORLD OPINION ON THE SIDE OF UNIVERSAL NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT; (2) THE ASSERTION OF ACTUAL CANADIAN SOVEREIGNTY IN THE FAR NORTH THUS STYMIEING K'S INFILTRATION PLANS~ (3) K'S DETERMINATION TO PREVENT THE PRIME MINISTER PRESENTING HIS RESOLUTION TO THE UNITED NATIONS CONDEMNING AND EXPOSING SOVIET COLONIAL OPPRESSION BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN STOP THE CANADIAN PEOPLE ARE ENTITLED TO BE FULLY INFORMED ON THE SINISTER BACKGROUND TO THIS FOREIGN INTERVENTION STOP IT WOULD APPEAR TO BE A PRIME RESPONSIBILITY OF EVERY CONSERVATIVE 236 Instruments of Power CANDIDATE TO FULLY INFORM ELECTORS IN HIS OR HER CONSTITUENCY OFTEN AND EMPHATICALLY IN THE NEXT FORTY-EIGHT HOURS STOP PLEASE COMMUNICATE FASTEST TO CANDIDATES STOP FULL TEXT KHRUSHCHOV STATEMENT AVAILABLE FROM CANADIAN PRESS OR TODAY'S GLOBE AND MAIL Four months after the disastrous 1962 campaign, Diefenbaker named Grosart to the Senate. For the 1963 election, his place was taken by Dalton Camp, the immensely capable Toronto advertising executive who had been associated with Grosart's three campaigns. But it was Grosart who personified the Tory machine during the Diefenbaker Years. He used the occasion of his maiden speech in the Senate, on October 24, 1962, to exalt his hero, John Diefenbaker, one final time, by praising "The veritable chorus of approval from all parts of Canada and from all walks of life on ... the sagacity ... of the Prime Minister." Then he faded from the Canadian political scene into the plush anonymity of the Red Chamber. THIRTEEN A Footnote on Olive Diefenbaker N THE RETINUE that Surrounds any head of government, there is always a special glowing place reserved for that one person whose reassurance and strength, whose sympathy-in fact, whose very presence-is most important to the leader in the loneliness of his high office. At various times during the Diefenbaker Years, it might have seemed that several people aspired to this role of chief confidant; the names most frequently mentioned were those of Bill Brunt, the wheeler-dealer lawyer from Hanover, Ontario, and Allister Grosart, the big-city pitchman from Toronto. But these men - and everyone else who came into the intimacy of John Diefenbaker's inner circle - soon realized that the part had long been filled, not by any politician or indeed by any man, but by a woman of enormous charm and personal strength - Olive Evangeline Diefenbaker, the Prime Minister's second wife and unfailing ally. When her husband's sudden accession to office brought her into prominence, Mrs Diefenbaker stepped into a role that had very little tradition attached to it. During the regimes of bachelor prime ministers R. B. Bennett and Mackenzie King, it had been performed by the wives of the governors general. Her immediate predecessor, Madame St Laurent, never liked and hardly ever made public appearances. By 1957 Ottawa officialdom had become so accustomed to prime ministers appearing alone at public 237 238 Instruments of Power functions that during the first few months of the new administration, seating arrangements frequently ignored Mrs Diefenbaker's attendance. Finally, a protocol memorandum was sent out by the Prime Minister's office, stating that unless otherwise specified, all evening engagements accepted by the Prime Minister should include his wife. Olive Diefenbaker was free to interpret her function exactly as she wished, and it was a measure of her accomplishment that she managed to transform her informal place in the official hierarchy into a position of considera- ble prestige. By offering him a centre of loving calm, giving advice that he grew to respect, and effectively campaigning at his side, Olive Diefenbaker signi~cantly influenced her husband's success. A pleasant, handsome woman, slighter, younger, and prettier than she appeared in her photographs, Olive Diefenbaker treated nearly everyone she encountered with warm, infectious grace. "She's just as interested in the smallest Conservative meeting as she would be in a Royal visit," gushed Dorothy Downing, head of the Progressive Conservative Women's Association at the Party's 1963 convention, and added: "We Conservative women are so lucky in our first lady!" Such munificent praise was based not only on Mrs Diefenbaker's public appearances, but also on stories told about her many private acts of kindness and concern for other people. When she was about to take off for London, shortly after the 1957 election, she was standing at the airport chatting to Norah Michener, the Speaker's wife. A press photographer asked Mrs Michener to stand aside. "Oh, but she's my friend," Mrs Diefenbaker objected, protectively stepping closer to her companion, "you take her with me." In London, her official car, driven by a girl chauffeur, scraped another vehicle in a traffic jam. At the end of her visit, because she realized the driver felt miserable about the accident, Mrs Diefenbaker unpinned from A Footnote on Olive Diefenbaker 239 her lapel a valuable maple-leaf brooch and presented it to her. Through all the honours - and difficulties - that her husband's electoral triumphs brought them, Olive Diefenbaker never lost her sense of perspective, or of wonderment. When a newspaperman told her that the youthful Canadian Press reporter chosen to accompany the Prime Minister's party on the 1958 trip around the world was practically beside himself with excitement, she replied: "Confidentially, so am L" Olive Diefenbaker did not regard herself as a leading lady whose own popularity might attract converts to her husband's cause. "My job as John's wife," she once told a close friend, "is to fit in as each duty comes up. It's not a political part. He's so far ahead there, I could never catch up. I'm happy to adapt to each situation." The four general elections which marked the six Diefenbaker years served to display the unstudied charm of Olive Diefenbaker to a great many Canadians. She accompanied her husband on nearly every mile of his exuberant electioneering -even in 1958, when a slipped disc forced her to use crutches. Whenever the Prime Minister forgot a name, she could very often supply it. On the platform she listened to his speeches as if each one con- tained some major revelation, and occasionally -if he went on too long or failed to notice the arrival of some local vip -she scribbled a note behind her purse and had someone pass it to him. During the 1963 campaign, while Diefenbaker was addressing a group of Cape Breton coal miners at Sydney, Nova Scotia, she passed him a note which read: "Over the fireplace at home, we have a painting of Cape Breton." Her habit of breaking one blossom from the bouquets presented to her at nearly every appearance, then handing it back to the shy but elated child who had made the presentation, won her many admirers. "I'll vote for your 240 Instruments of Power John," women were often overheard reassuring her at the close of political meetings. In the brief privacy allowed the couple during campaigns, Olive tried to preserve the Prime Minister's energy and to soothe his temper. On one overnight motor trip through Quebec in the 1957 election, she sat awake in the front seat of a car, so that her husband could curl up and sleep in the back. In the ugly demonstrations against Diefenbaker at the 1962 rally in Chelmsford, Ontario, she stood slightly in front of him and jabbed one of the male rioters in the stomach with her elbow. During the campaigns it was inevitable that the Diefenbakers should constantly be scrutinized, but between elections it was Olive's determination that their home would be a personal haven rather than a tourist attraction. Under her direction, the three-storey grey stone house on Ottawa's Sussex Drive, which serves as the official residence of Canadian prime ministers, was geared to be a refuge for the Prime Minister, with everything planned around his activities and needs. Because he never enjoyed official entertaining, parties were kept to a minimum. The dinners and receptions that did take place were pleasant enough, but some of the more sophisticated Ottawa hostesses could become quite sarcastic about the Diefenbakers' penchant for holding afternoon teas, and actually serving only tea or coffee. Her temperate social habits reflected Olive Diefenbaker's early life in a parsonage. She was the daughter of Dr C. B. Freeman, a hard-shell Baptist minister whose calls kept the family moving about the Prairies. Two of her ancestors - Richard Warren and Elder William Brewster -were part of the Mayflower company that landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620. Her forebears left New England for Nova Scotia in 176o, making her a sixth- generation Canadian and an eleventh-generation North American. Olive started her studies at the University of Saskatchewan, but in her third year she followed her father to A Footnote on Olive Diefenbaker 241 Brandon, Manitoba, and graduated from Brandon College in 1923. Then she went to the Ontario College of Education and later taught high school at Guelph and Huntsville. In 1933 she married Harry Palmer, a Toronto lawyer who died three years later, leaving her with an infant daughter, Carolyn. During the next decade she taught high school, in Port Arthur and Owen Sound, gradually getting more and more involved in vocational guidance work. She eventually became assistant director of the Ontario Department of Education's Guidance Branch, and would have been promoted to the directorship in 1953, if she hadn't left her job to marry John Diefenbaker, whom she had first met in Saskatoon, when his family belonged to her father's congregation. Her background titted her well for her demanding position as the Prime Minister's wife. Despite her intention to subordinate herself to him, many citizens seemed to regard her as something of a court of last resort, and wrote her an average of twenty letters a day asking for advice, help, money, favours, and jobs. She spent most mornings answering this mail in a stylish longhand, nearly always leaving her petitioners with the feeling that she understood their interests and had acted within the limits of her position. The official prime minister's residence in which the Diefenbakers lived (bought and renovated by the government in 195 1 at a cost of $6oo,ooo) has eight bedrooms, eight bathrooms, and a small elevator linking the first and second floors. The downstairs hall area leads into a dining-room big enough to seat twenty-four at a formal dinner. Shortly after the Diefenbakers moved in, the diningroom, formerly plum-red, was repainted in Wedgwood -Tory - blue. The living-room and study which make up the balance of the first floor overflowed with some of the mementos the Diefenbakers had received during their 1958 world trip. On one living-room table a large leather box held three pieces of ancient pottery (circa 1500 B.C.) dug up near Jerusalem. Near it there was an intricately 242 Instruments of Power carved Chinese puzzle, with seven ivory balls rotating one inside the other, given to them by the government of Malaya, and a sterling silver tray engraved with the signatures of the 1957 Conservative cabinet. On the piano in the living-room, there were several autographed photographs of world figures, including Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, Prime Ministers Robert Menzies of Australia, and Harold Macmillan of Great Britain, as well as various members of the British Royal Family. Other souvenirs included a poison-dart blow gun from Malaya, a lighter mounted in a kangaroo's foot from Australia, a key dipped in gold from Dawson City, and a screen carved out of ivory, personally presented to the Diefenbakers by Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. In the small passage between the living-room and Diefenbaker's downstairs study there was a marble replica of the Taj Mahal and a carved teakwood palace from the King of Nepal. Among the books in the private library that Diefenbaker treasured most was a ten-volume edition of the works of Molifte. The books, published in 1739, had once been in Sir John A. Macdonald's library and still bore his bookmark. They had been presented to Diefenbaker in 1958 by Henri Laurier, Sir Wilfrid's great-nephew, a Montreal lawyer who campaigned for the Conservatives in the 1957 and 1958 elections. As well as his Macdonald collection, Diefenbaker's private library contained nearly all the works of Sir Winston Churchill, many of them autographed. While his reading consisted mostly of history and political biography, the books in Diefenbaker's study also included Kate Aitken's Travel Alone and Love It and Dale Carnegie's How to Stop Worrying and Start Living as well as such titles as Tom Brown ~ School Days, The Black Deeds of the Kremlin, The Red Fog Over America, Crime and Punishment, and The Essentials of Descriptive Geometry. The overflow of books, including Diefenbaker's law texts, was kept in a downstairs recreation room which also contained a kennel for Happy, the Diefenbakers' Labrador A Footnote on Olive Diefenbaker 243 pup. The panelled walls of the room were decorated with Diefenbaker's thirty-one honorary degrees and various other plaques, sometimes incongruously placed. A tablet from the Knights of Columbus hung beside Diefenbaker's 33rd Degree Masonic Order, and a satirical notice declaring him to be an honorary Yukon Pioneer was next to the august declaration making him a member of Great Britain's Privy Council. Also in the basement was an automatic washer and dryer so that the Diefenbakers' staff could do the house laundry. As well as the laundress, the Diefenbakers' staff included a cook and her helper, a seamstress, two maids, and a steward who was in charge of the household details. Although most official visitors to Canada stay at Government House, the Diefenbakers had four guest rooms for personal friends. Their own private bedrooms on the second floor, each with an adjoining bathroom, were con- nected by a long dressing-room. The decor of Mrs Diefenbaker's room was mauve with periwinkle overtones and brocaded curtains of the same hue. Her wardrobe was attractive but not extravagant. She had eight evening gowns, most of them made for her by Frances Stewart, a young Ottawa designer. All of her expensive pieces of jewellery were gifts -a triple strand of exquisite pearls, from the Japanese ambassador; an antique necklace of amethysts and gold filigree, from the National Conservative Women's Association; an amethyst pin, from India; a cross on a chain, from Roy Thomson, the Canadian-born publisher; and a hammered silver pin that she'd admired on a Montreal woman, who promptly insisted on giving it to her. John Diefenbaker's adjoining bedroom was painted very dark green and seemed constantly untidy because of the uneven stacks of books and reports piled on the large library table at his bedside. In public, Diefenbaker con- stantly built up his legendary connection with Sir John A. Macdonald. Here, however, in the privacy of his bedroom, there were no dusty relics of Canada's first prime minister. 244 Instruments of Power Instead, there was a treasured memento from another of his predecessors- Mackenzie King-whose mannerisms Diefenbaker attempted to imitate. In an ivory frame, hanging above Diefenbaker's bed, was a scrawled note from Mackenzie King, written on the afternoon of July 27, 1944. King had just introduced for second reading his bill to provide family allowances. In a thirty-minute speech, Diefenbaker had attacked the measure on consti- tutional grounds, but agreed with its principle. At the end of his speech, King had penned the brief note to Diefenbaker, which was to become one of his proudest possessions. "My dear Diefenbaker," it read. "I thought you made an exceedingly good speech this p.m. As you know, I do not share your view of the constitutionality of the measure, but I doubt if a better presentation could have been made. I am pleased to join with your friends in a word of congratulation - KING." The few accoutrements in the Prime Minister's bedroom - the sun lamp, the large television set, the tartan blanket hung over the fireplace - gave it a feeling of practical comfort and little else. Yet it was here, with the Prime Minister reading as he leaned against the leather backboard of his bed while Olive sat nearby knitting or doing petitpoint, that the Diefenbakers spent some of their happiest hours. Commenting on his happy marriage and the good press his wife was receiving, Diefenbaker once told a friend: "You know, no matter what they say about her, it will always be an understatement." In the last telecast of his 1962 election campaign, on June 14, Diefenbaker paid a rare public tribute to his wife. "I am constrained," he said, 11 although she would not want me to do so and will upbraid me for it, to mention my wife, Olive. No man could have had a better helpmate or a more devoted partner." In a less public but more revealing moment, while boarding an aircraft during the final, desperate hours of the 1963 campaign, Diefenbaker couldn't see where his wife had been seated. He turned to an aide, and A Footnote on Olive Diefenbaker 245 demanded: "Where's Olive? If I lose her, I'll lose everything." Amid the frenzy of self-generated controversy in which he existed, Diefenbaker's relationship with his wife was a constant, sustaining comfort. But even in the seclusion of his happy home life, John Diefenbaker came to realize that there was no outside remedy for the burdens of his office; that he was, and would ever remain, alone with himself and with history. I  PART III Exercise of Power FOURTEEN The Philosophy of the Man From Prince Albert A LMOST everything that happened during the Diefenbaker Years -from the small triumph of the Bill of Rights to the bald fiasco of the Coyne affair - reflected the attitudes and motives of the man from Prince Albert. Because his nominally Conservative administration was concerned with short-run objectives rather than any logical progression of long-term priorities, most Canadians who worried about such things believed that John Diefenbaker had no political philosophy of his own. This was neither fair nor convincing. There was, of course, an underlying opportunism to his politics, as there must be in the professional make-up of every democratic leader, but Diefenbaker was also driven by more noble concepts. For the few men and women who caught a glimpse of them, it became possible to admire his ideals, without respecting his performance. By picking John Diefenbaker as their leader in 1956, Canada's Conservatives had committed themselves to an ideological and emotional upheaval. But the transfiguration that Diefenbaker brought about in his Party, once he attained office, was more distinct than even his own sup- porters had anticipated. The trappings of true Tory philosophy were swept away as the man from Prince Albert laid down his personal testament of what Canadian Conservatism meant to him. By instinct, Diefenbaker was a humanitarian and, to 249 250 Exercise of Power that extent, a liberal. By temperament, he was a high Tory. This unique combination produced a political philosophy that defied simple classification as either Liberal or Conservative. The philosophy of John Diefenbaker was by no means a consciously contrived creed. It was a cast of mind, lacking coherent and continuing expression even in his own speeches, But occasionally, its governing precepts could be winnowed out of his rhetorical torrent. And even more important clues could be gained from analysing his background and the conditions of the times in which he formed his remarkably enduring political theories. The philosophy that has to be called "Diefenbakerism" amounted, in essence, to a distrust of the great power groupings in contemporary Canada and the belief that broadly based citizen participation, speaking through a strong political leader, can reconcile the opposing economic interests of individual citizens. Nearly all Diefenbaker's principles were based on this assumption. From it flowed his positive identification with minority groups, his demands for a more egalitarian society, and his hostility toward the men of power whose ambitions were too broad for the nation he sought to build. Historically, he was influenced by three men: Sir John A. Macdonald, in his political psychology; Mackenzie King, in his political tactics and strategy; and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his policies. The personal roots of his political dogma stretched back to the grain-growing West of the 'twenties and 'thirties. He came to maturity among men who cursed their isolation and damned their unavoidable dependence on the goods and services of Toronto manufacturing interests. He felt -and was profoundly influenced by - the economic carnage of the Depression, which hit no part of Canada more severely than Saskatchewan. World demand for wheat had dropped so low by 1931 that the province's agricultural The Philosophy of the Man From Prince Albert 251 income totalled only $8-millions, compared with $228 millions for 1928. Diefenbaker forged his liberalism out of day-to-day experiences rather than abstract contemplation. To prevent the recurrence of the misery wrought by the Depression seemed a high calling. Like many others of his generation and upbringing, he realized there was only one way for Prairie farmers to help themselves: through collective political action. That was the foundation of Diefenbaker's deep-seated faith in politics as a means for furthering individual welfare. A typical exposition of this belief was his impromptu oration to a group of Tory m.P's who crowded into his parliamentary office on March 26, ig6o, to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of his first election to the Commons: "I would remind you," he told them, 11 of all the discoveries made in medicine, science, sociology, and economics that must be translated in this House of Commons through legislation, before they can be put to use and work for the public good. Every advance in human welfare that is achieved must come through this translation, by the parliamentarian." Diefenbaker was convinced that politics was the highest form of human activity. In an address to the 1952 convocation of McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario, he had advocated the establishment of academic courses for professional politicians. "One or more Canadian universities," he said, "might consider the establishment of a Chair of Politics, so that young men and women imbued with a desire to enter parliament or a legislature might take postgraduate courses, where practical politics would be studied." IN POLITICS, more than in any other field of endeavour, men are changed by their positions. But Diefenbaker was remarkably consistent in his crusades. Many of his legislative achievements were based on ideas he had been pro- pounding on the hustings for decades. 252 Exercise of Power When Diefenbaker first came to Ottawa, after the 1940 election, he was shocked by the reactionary Toryism of his eastern colleagues. He regarded most of the Ontario members as men who believed that the function of gov- ernment was to create the conditions in which big business can flourish. This, to him, amounted to a deliberate repeal of the twentieth century. In three general elections Diefenbaker had watched his party being denied power because of its espousal of a philosophy which to him appeared hopelessly dated. He waged a sixteen-year battle to reorient the economic, social, and racial principles of his party, then finally smashed the hurdle himself in the 1957 campaign, by adopting liberal policies and ignoring Tory philosophy altogether. Once in power, he transcended the most sacred of Tory tenets: that it is wrong for citizens to cast the responsibility for their personal prosperity onto the state. He thus shattered the basic belief of Canadian Conservatives, who had always opposed undue government interference with the capacities of the individual. Diefenbaker's brand of Conservatism continued to stress his party's traditionally "unshakable belief" in the preservation and strengthening of the family, the community, and small business. But in a marked departure from Tory philosophy, he attempted to encourage the welfare of these social institutions through multiplying government handouts. In the process, Diefenbaker committed his party to bringing the nation closer to a welfare state than any previous government of Canada. "We socialists," Douglas Fisher, the outspoken CCF/NDP member from Port Arthur, Ontario, remarked during the 24th Parliament, "find it quite simple in many cases to cast our vote for most of the measures that are brought in here. I have not been able to recognize in that monster party that flows around the sides of this chamber any clear-cut exposition The Philosophy of the Man From Prince Albert 253 of what I thought they were directly concerned with, that is free enterprise, private enterprise, and all that." Diefenbaker's overriding consideration was to avoid the identification with Bay Street that had brought about the ruin of R. B. Bennett and hurled the Conservative Party into the political wilderness for twenty-two years. It becames obvious very early in the Diefenbaker Years that his was a Conservative government in name only. Instead of moving to promote and strengthen the country's financial community, Diefenbaker rushed in the opposite direction - harassing, curbing, and discouraging free enterprise at every turn. In the privacy of their clubs, dismayed executives clucked their disapproval of Diefenbaker and all his works as a fundamentally disruptive force. The right-wing Fort Erie Letter Review condemned Diefenbaker's concept of social justice for being "as revolutionary as Marxism, but perhaps a better name for it would be Robin Hoodism." Diefenbaker was not swayed by these attacks. He never lost the conviction that he was fulfilling the historical purpose of his concept of Conservatism. He realized that some form of the welfare state would eventually come to Canada. By putting into effect his version of that welfare state, he thought he could crush the Liberal Party between his own group and the socialists. He tried to trap the Liberals into opposing his leftist legislation, to isolate them on his right. This was difficult enough to do while trying at the same time to govern the country, but it also meant that Diefenbaker had to reorient the thinking and feeling within his own ranks. This struggle with the reactionaries in the Conservative Party -who made up the majority of its senior and most censorious element - was one of his ugliest problems while in office. To outsiders the landslide proportions of his 1958 victory seemed to indicate that Diefenbaker could mould his party as he wished, but this was not the case. The Con- 254 Exercise of Power servative parliamentary caucus was a motley crew ranging in the political spectrum from two former lieutenants of Adrien Arcand, the leader of the prewar fascist National Unity Party, to a left-wing Quebec M.P. who campaigned on a platform of state medicine, against "the evil power of the doctors." DIEFENBAKER'S MAIN CAMPAIGN to reform his party was directed over the heads of both his cabinet and his political organization, to the man he thought he understood best of all: "the average Canadian." He had a moral proclivity to be at one with this mythical creature and in nearly every speech repeated an incantation for his benefit. "My abiding interest is your interest; my guiding principle is the welfare of the average Canadian," he char- acteristically declared in the opening telecast of the 1962 election. In his final telecast of that campaign, broadcast on June 14, he tried to invoke his rapport with "the average Canadian" to support his stand on devaluation. He leaned into the camera, and earnestly asked his unseen audience: "Do you really think that the Government and I would bring in anything that would harm you -the average Canadian?" Throughout his term of office, Diefenbaker catered to "the average Canadian" in almost everything he did. On November 15, iq6i, for instance, he participated in a realistic civil defence exercise which called for him and six ministers to huddle in the basement of his official residence, and go through the motions of invoking the War Measures Act. Since it was obvious that if the practice alert had been real, the Prime Minister would have been killed, reporters asked him whether he really intended to remain at 24 Sussex Drive, if war came. "This is one of those decisions not subject to change," was the reply. "I would not take any more precaution than is available to the average Canadian." Because "average Canadians" don't ride around in Cadillacs, Diefenbaker refused to use the luxury automo- The Philosophy of the Man From Prince Albert 255 biles while campaigning. In Edmonton, during the 1962 election, he passed up four shiny limousines offered by the local Conservative committee, before climbing into a nondescript Chevrolet. (His aversion to Cadillacs dated from the 1957 campaign. While riding in one in Nanaimo, British Columbia, he noticed a butcher come out of his shop, cup his hands, and shout: "Here come the Tories in their Caddies.") To identify not only his office but himself with the aspirations of the legendary "average Canadian," Diefenbaker always attempted to ally his past personally with the area where he was speaking. This was an old habit. It never sounded more preposterous than in a speech he made in Halifax on July i 1, 1947. Trying to establish his family contact with the Atlantic port, he earnestly proclaimed: "Had it not been for the trade winds between here and Newfoundland, my great-great-grandmother would have been born in Halifax." Despite such absurdities, there was no doubt that he cared passionately for the large land he governed. He never revealed his patriotism more openly than on Dominion Day of 196 1, when he rose in his parliamentary seat and declared: "I know there are some who feel a sense of embarrassment in expressing pride in their nation, perhaps because of the fear that they might be considered old-fashioned or parochial. I do not belong to that group. I realize that a warped and twisted nationalism is productive of tyranny. But a healthy loyalty and devotion to one's country constitutes a most fruitful inspiration in life." In a raspy tenor, Diefenbaker then led the House of Commons in the singing of "0 Canada" and "God Save the Queen." Although there was a strong strain of nationalism inherent in Diefenbaker's appeal and personality, it did not show up very clearly in his legislative efforts. Aside from establishing the Royal Commission on Publications, whose recommendations to save Canadian magazines he ignored, and calling federal-provincial meetings on Canadianizing the constitution and the adoption of a 256 Exercise of Power distinctive Canadian flag, he did nothing significant to further the cause of Canadian nationalism. Still, he believed in the need to build on the upper half of the continent a northern nationality that would become pow- erful enough to withstand absorption attempts by the United States, and it was in this passion that Diefenbaker saw his place in history. OUT OF HIS PERSONAL ANALYSIS of Canadian historyparticularly that of the Conservative Party - came Diefenbaker's conviction that instead of rallying behind contemporary leaders, Canada's Tories had, for generations, been expending their energies in an obsessive, unrequited quest for a reincarnation of Sir John A. Macdonald, the Party's founder and most successful prime minister. While their beatification of him might have prompted little more than a thigh-slapping guffaw from the irreverent Sir John A., Canadian Conservatives had always been deadly earnest about exalting Macdonald's memory. At the Party's 1942 leadership convention, for instance, speaker after speaker supporting John Bracken's candidacy gravely reminded the delegates that Bracken's father had been one of the mourners at Sir John A. Macdonald's funeral. Nobody mentioned that this, in fact, was the only previous connection that Bracken, a Progressive who had governed Manitoba for twenty years with Liberal support, actually had with the Conservative Party. Once Diefenbaker had recognized the unquenchable longing of Canadian Conservatives for another Macdonald, he resolutely set about to cast himself in the role. By fostering the myth that he was the twentieth-century embodiment of Sir John A.'s sober virtues, Diefenbaker was at first merely accommodating his ambitions to the collective dream of his followers. But gradually he inspired himself into thinking that Macdonald's magic mantle had indeed come to rest on his shoulders. Like most self-made men, he became adept at worshipping his creator. The Philosophy of the Man From Prince Albert 257 To substitute for Macdonald's self-imposed destiny of giving Canada its nationhood, Diefenbaker chose as his destiny the economic emancipation of the North. "Just as Sir John A. led in the securing of the West," he repeatedly asserted during the 1958 campaign, "so we must win the new Northern Frontier." The Party faithful across the country not unnaturally interpreted Diefenbaker's impressive electoral victories in 1957 and 1958 as proof that their patiently preserved fantasy of the day when another Macdonald would lead them out of the political wilderness had finally come to pass. Only a politician with some sort of hereditary link to Macdonald, they reasoned, could have succeeded so magnificently in basing his assumption of power on a direct appeal to the people. Loyal Conservatives responded by sending Diefenbaker the many souvenirs of their Party founder that they and their fathers had collected and cherished. It was as though these well-intentioned donors hoped that, by surrounding the Prime Minister with physical reminders of his illustrious predecessor, some of Macdonald's flair for leadership might rub off. That the expected alchemy failed to take place was certainly not due to any shortage of totems. At his office in Parliament Hill's East Block, Diefenbaker worked under a portrait and beside a full-figure statuette of Macdonald. His inkwell had once belonged to Sir John A. In the Privy Council chamber, Diefenbaker sat in Macdonald's original chair, and dried the signature on his instructions with Sir John's spring blotter. One of Macdonald's mantel clocks timed his movements and had to be carted to whichever of his three Parliament Hill offices Diefenbaker was occupying. In his official residence, at 24 Sussex Drive, Diefenbaker encircled himself even more liberally with Macdonald relics, including parts of his library, many portraits of him, his easy chair, another clock, and a medallion given to a barber who had once shaved Sir John. The most valuable item in the 258 Exercise of Power collection was a copy, in Macdonald's own handwriting, of the original National Policy, drawn up on January 16, 1878, at a political meeting in Toronto's Shaftesbury Hall.* During his years in office, Diefenbaker was surrounded by these trappings of another age, but his homage to Macdonald went far beyond the accumulation of physical objects. Every January i i he commemorated Sir John A.'s death by leading a pilgrimage of Tory parliamentarians to lay a wreath at the foot of Macdonald's statue on Parliament Hill. Allister Grosart's party machine capitalized on the Diefenbaker-Macdonald myth by issuing large, Tory-blue posters during the 1958 election which showed the Prime Minister standing before a framed portrait of Macdonald. The only text on the poster was: TWO GREAT CONSERVATIVES: SIR JOHN A. - RT. HON. JOHN D. Diefenbaker's Macdonald cult probably reached its climax during a small election meeting at St Boniface, Manitoba, in the 1962 campaign. Laurier Regnier, a local lawyer who had been elected as the Tory M.P. in 1958 after five * The recording secretary at the meeting was a young reporter for the Guelph Herald called Acton Burrows, later Manitoba's first Deputy Minister ofAgriculture. He willed the document to his son Aubrey, a Toronto publisher who, just before he died in 1957, sent it to Diefenbaker. The statuette in Diefienbaker's office, the work of Louis 116bert, was donated by Major E. G. Cahoon, a retired road engineer living at Aylmer, Quebec, who inherited it from his father, a Toronto painting contractor who had been the local manager of Macdonald's election campaigns. The clock in Diefenbaker's office came from Sir Joseph Pope's descendants. The easy chair was a present from Mrs Walter Evans of Waterloo, Ontario, whose father had been Macdonald's law partner. The medallion was sent in by Frank Pethick of Bowmanville, Ontario, who got it in i8gi, when, as an apprentice barber in Toronto, he shaved Sir John. He recalled that when he took hold of the Prime Minister's nose to scrape his upper lip, Macdonald quipped: "You're the only man who can lead me by the nose that way. The Philosophy of the Man From Prince Albert 259 previous defeats at the polls (he lost again in 1962), introduced Diefenbaker as the man who put Macdonald in the shade. "When history is written and the new generations read it, it probably will say that Sir John A. Macdonald was only the precursor of the Rt Hon. John G. Diefenbaker," he told the audience Of 150. A MUCH MORE PRAISEWORTHY and realistic historical concern of John Diefenbaker was his view of Canada not as a bi-racial, but as a multi-racial, nation. As the first Canadian prime minister who was not of purely British or French stock, Diefenbaker was genuinely sympathetic to the welfare of the two million immigrants who had crossed the Atlantic in the postwar years. "Being of mixed origin myself, I knew something, in my boyhood days in Saskatchewan, of the feeling that was all too apparent in many parts of Canada, that citizenship depended upon surnames, or even upon blood counts," he told a meeting of eighty-five ethnic editors in Ottawa, in the winter of 196 t. "It was then, as a boy on the empty Prairies, that I made the initial determination to eliminate this feeling that being a Canadian was a matter of name and blood." "It was little wonder that Diefenbaker was sensitive and bitter about the Canadian attitude to non-Anglo-Saxon names. His own was not infrequently abused. As late as February 1943, at a meeting of the Women's Conservative Association of Toronto, Diefenbaker was urged to change his name for the sake of his own political career. But he refused. "It's'Dief' as in 'chief,' " he explained, "followed by 'en,' and then 'baker.' " Before he became well known, Diefenbaker would tell speakers whose job it was to introduce him that all they had to remember was that his name rhymed with "Studebaker." Inevitably, in August 1953, at a Tory rally in Van- couver, he was presented as "Mr John Studebaker." Curiously enough, he was dogged by such mistakes even after he became a national figure. At St Leon, Quebec, during the 1957 election campaign, he was introduced to local 260 Exercise of Power Conservatives, by a Conservative, as "Monsieur Diefenburger." On March 15, 1958, at a small ceremony in West Vancouver's Park Royal, an Indian chief called Mathias Joe, presented an Indian walking-stick to him, with the tribute: "John Diefenbacon, you are the thunderbird of our country." Diefenbaker was inordinately proud of the fact that in the 24th Parliament, his Conservative contingent included representatives of eighteen different racial origins, including a Chinese Canadian (Douglas Jung -Vancouver Cen- tre) and a Lebanese (Ed Nasserden - Rosthern). One of his chief accomplishments within the Conservative Party was to open its hierarchy to all races and religions -a state of affairs that had not always been true. Diefenbaker enjoyed speaking to audiences of varied ethnic origin, always stressing his sympathy with their aims, and underlining his fervent anti-communism. In a typical utterance, on July 9, 1961, at a commemorative rally marking the hundredth anniversary of the death of the nineteenth-century anti-Czarist Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, Diefenbaker, quivering with emotion, intoned this tribute: "As I read this thrilling and often heart-rending story, I wonder how the Ukrainian race and nation ... survived. There is no simple answer. But ... there is the hand of a Divine Providence preserving an amazing people for eventual deliverance.... If I did not believe that, I would not believe in the establishment of Ukrainian nationhood ... in God's good time." The emotional impact of such appeals was difficult to exaggerate. Petro Wolyniak, editor of New Da - 1,,s, a Ukrainian monthly published in Toronto, described the scene in this moving eulogy: "The Prime Minister stood as if cast in bronze. I wondered if he would shed a tear. I saw that he was moved no less than 1, that he felt as each of us that this was no ordinary singing, that this was a people's prayer to the great martyr of the Ukrainian earth.... Well, I thought to myself, praise be to God that we have as a leader of Canada a human being not only of great politi- The Philosophy of the Man From Prince Albert 261 cal wisdom, able to foresee many things, but a person of great heart and soul as well." Diefenbaker's speeches raised the hopes of Canada's Ukrainian community to such a pitch that the editor of Ukrainsky Visti (Ukrainian News) suggested that Ottawa should immediately begin negotiations for the establishment of diplomatic recognition of an independent Ukraine. One of the unfortunate side-effects of Diefenbaker's presentation of himself as the only Canadian political leader with the courage and the ideological stamina to stand up to the Kremlin was the Conservative Party's attempt to smear Lester Pearson as being "soft on communism." It was an undercover campaign that generally took the form of snide insinuations which, because they were not open accusations, could not effectively be contradicted. The defamation of Pearson dated back to the 1958 campaign. One curious incident was a letter written by Dr Joseph A. Sullivan, a long-time friend of Diefenbaker, who was named to the Senate early in the Conservative regime. The letter was sent to Father William Muckle, pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes Church in the Toronto constituency of Rosedale, where David Walker was running as the Conservative candidate. Dated February 24, 1958, it read: Dear Father Muckle, I am writing you on behalf ofthe Conservative candidate in the coming election on March 31, 1958. 1 have no hesitancy in endorsingiltr. David Walker. It is my considered andfirm belief'that as a result of that distinguished statesman and Christian gentleman, the Rt. Hon. Louis St. Laurent, that the enclosed clipping reveals my own thinking. I can assure ' iou that with the Catholic minister of justice we have in the Hon. E. David [sic] Fulton and the other members (?fthe party, to which I heartily 262 Exercise of Power subscribe, that you can rest assured that there will be no possibility of any left- wing tendencies in this present government. I trust that you will accept these remarks in sincerity and a true Christian belief. Yours sincere~v, Senator Sir Joseph A. Sullivan,* M.D., FRCS ENG. QHS. KCSG. With the letter, written on official Senate stationery but mailed from the Senator's St George Street office in Toronto, was enclosed a transcript of an editorial in the Rightist American publication National Review, which claimed that Pearson had been running "the Soviet Union's errands" and that only the restraints of Mr St Laurent had kept him in line. Despite such excesses, the Conservative Party under Diefenbaker's leadership was genuinely concerned with the rights of ethnic minorities. The man from Prince Albert undoubtedly was the first Canadian prime minister to understand the urgent problems of the immigrants. This understanding flowed from his concept of "social justice" - one of the pillars of Diefenbaker's political philosophy. He believed passionately that it is the duty of the undeserving rich to support the deserving poor, of whom he elected himself the articulate representative. He defined "social justice" as "the concept of fairness to each and fairness to all," and came closest to clarifying what he meant during a House of Commons debate on March 4, ig6o, when he broke into a routine agricultural supply motion to attack the deficiency payment demands of western farm leaders. "We recognize," he said, "the principle that public money should be used to relieve distress on the basis of need, and any scheme which gives no help, or very little, to those who are most in need, is socially indefensible." * The "Sir" is a papal knighthood. The Philosophy of the Man From Prince Albert 263 The idea of "social justice," which Diefenbaker never really managed to interpret meaningfully to the voters, was at the very root of his political persuasion. He tried to appropriate to himself the cry from every underdeveloped sector of the country's population - a cry not for charity or special privileges, but for an equalization of opportunity within the Canadian confederation. It was Diefenbaker's privately held conviction that neither Christian charity nor free enterprise is adequate to rescue the underprivileged. The gap between the two seemed to him to require a comprehensive contributory system covering the aged, the unemployed, the sick, the injured, and the otherwise underprivileged, with the state guaranteeing assistance where adequate facilities were not available. Diefenbaker seemed to believe that such a system would by no means rob the individual of the chance to become a proud, participating member of a self-reliant society. His insistence that no government had the right to interfere with the sanctity of the family unit had its basis in the Judaic rather than Christian tradition. This was an important, if subtle, departure from the social welfare policies of Mackenzie King. While King's social welfare measures were designed as handouts to fill demonstrated needs, Diefenbaker claimed to be giving Canadians help that it was their right to expect. It was social weU~re to get emergency protection against the hazards of modern life; but it was social justice to get help that brought the individual citizen to the same economic level as his fellow Canadians. While Diefenbaker was never able to raise government transfer payments to the astronomical proportions required to implement fully his concept of social justice, his administration did increase welfare payments by ioo per cent - from $885 millions in 1957 to $1,970 in 1962. (Roughly Wo millions of this jump, however, was accounted for by benefits paid under the Hospital and Diagnostic Act, given royal assent on April 1, 1957, two 264 Exercise of Power months before the Conservatives took office. Another $ioo millions was directly attributable to population increases during the Diefenbaker years.) Under Diefenbaker, Canada surpassed even the welfare statism of the United Kingdom in the proportion of individual incomes accounted for by government transfer payments in the form of unemployment insurance, family allowances, veterans' pensions, and the like. By the time Diefenbaker had been in power three years some 14,800,000 Canadians - about 8o per cent of the population - were receiving direct government aid in one of its many forms. DIEFENBAKER'S PRINCIPLE OF SOCIAL JUSTICE gave rise to his demands for a new National Development Policy, as an instrument of his intention to redress the chronic imbalance among Canada's economic regions. Canada's Conservatives had traditionally been centralizers, while the Liberals had fought for provincial rights. But Diefenbaker deliberately reversed this relationship. Under the dominion-provincial agreements renegotiated by Diefenbaker, conditional federal grants to the provinces went up from $552 millions (in 1956-57) to $875 millions (in ig6i-62). However, Diefenbaker's emphasis on equalizing opportunities within the Canadian confederation left the impression with many of the urban taxpayers of Ontario and Quebec that the Prime Minister intended to use their money to develop the have-not provinces, for his own political purposes. This was not an altogether unjustified point of view. The Diefenbaker administration was disproportionately concerned about the welfare of the Prairies and the Maritimes. Although net income of farm operators from farm production actually dropped 34 per cent during the Diefenbaker Years, the transfer payments of the government raised total western farm incomes by 12 per cent. On June 20, 1962, just before the government clamped The Philosophy of the Man From Prince Albert 265 on its emergency austerity program, Agriculture Minister Alvin Hamilton declared in a television interview: "Never in the history of this country have conditions been so good. We've got a good crop coming up in the West for the first time in six years - it looks like a good one - after six years of the worst drought we've ever had out there. And when we get a good crop in the West you know what it means to all of Canada. It means money is flowing in, our trade is increasing, our export is increasing, our gross national product is going up; we are moving on a new plateau." Commenting on this statement, Professor Ramsay Cook of the University of Toronto wrote in the Canadian Forum: "What all this meant, in effect, was, 'What's good for the West is good for the country.' This is exactly what Western politicians and publicists have been saying since at least igoo. It was fundamental assumption of the Western Progressive movement that flowered in the twenties, But that agrarian philosophy, which probably carried a good deal of truth in it during the years of the great wheat boom, was an agrarian myth by the twenties and, until Mr. Hamilton's recent re-statement of it, had been thought dead even in the West." Because they recognized the political motives in his economic National Development Policy, most of Canada's businessmen refused to co-operate in Diefenbaker's greater vision of Canada. Without their active co-opera- tion, the National Development Policy never achieved its objectives and became an empty electioneering slogan. During his time in office John Diefenbaker jettisoned with gusto the historic compact between the Tories and the financial men of St James and Bay Streets.* Diefenbaker enjoyed baiting businessmen, and his Prairie-born suspicion that eastern financial interests could not be *Prophetically, the first telegram that Diefenbaker opened after he returned to the Chateau Laurier Hotel from the Ottawa leadership con- vention Of 1956, read: CONGRAJ ULATIONS AND MUD IN THE EYE OF BAY STREET. 266 Exercise of Power trusted led him into many clashes with them. His discussions with Crawford Gordon, the president of A. V Roe Canada Limited, over the cancellation of the Arrow turned into a personal vendetta. A less well-publicized squabble involved the huge Dominion Steel and Coal Corporation, which controls a fifth of Canada's steel-making capacity and the country's largest coal mines. In the spring of 196o Dosco was virtually ordered not to close down even its least economic Cape Breton pits until the Royal Commission on Coal had published its report-a major issue in Nova Scotia, where Robert Stanfield's Conservative government planned to go to the polls in June. As part of his anti-business campaign, Diefenbaker attacked the banks for lending too much of their money to large corporations, and blamed this policy exclusively for the tight money situation prevailing in the autumn of 1959. The report by the Restrictive Trade Practices Commission charging E. R Taylor's Canadian Breweries Limited with setting up corporate mergers not in the public interest, which had been shelved for two years by the Liberal government of Louis St Laurent, was published by Diefenbaker five months after he took office. The government lost its court case against Taylor, but Diefenbaker's attitude toward the consolidation of industry was clearly defined. Diefenbaker never publicly justified his anti-business bias, but occasionally, in private conversation, he liked to paraphrase Franklin Delano Roosevelt, by saying, with a half-averted poker face: "There are more votes on Main Street than Bay Street." During the 1963 election campaign, at a press conference in Guelph, Ontario, Diefenbaker was asked whether he agreed with recommendations of the Royal Commission on Government Organization that for economy's sake some veterans' hospitals should be closed. "That's wrong," he snapped in reply. "We're not running the government like a big business corporation." Until M. Wallace McCutcheon, the former managing The Philosophy of the Man From Prince Albert 267 director of E. R Taylor's Argus Corporation, joined the cabinet in the summer of 1962, when it was too late for his sound advice to have much effect, Diefenbaker had few friends and no senior advisers among Canadian businessmen. Not one other member of the Diefenbaker cabinet had ever been exposed to the problems of running a major commercial concern. When the assumption of office forced the new Conservative cabinet ministers to resign from their commercial directorships, the rule affected only Davie Fulton, Ellen Fairclough, and Jay Waldo Monteith, who were on the boards of six small private companies.* The only wealthy man in the cabinet was George Hees, but his inherited fortune was handled entirely by a Toronto investment counsellor. If the country's businessmen had a spokesman in cabinet, it was Donald Fleming, whose experience with large financial interests included a term as Canadian counsel for the New York Central System. Efforts to bring business judgement to bear on government policy-making were constantly rebuffed. A suggestion for a 25-man committee of businessmen to advise the Trade and Commerce Department was dropped in May 196o, when cabinet decided the political risks of appearing chummy with big business were too great. The anti-business prejudice of the regime also coloured its approach to the problem of American investment in Canada. Diefenbaker tended to regard American financial intrusion into Canada in much the same way Prairie farmers had, a generation earlier, resented eastern industrialists who opened western branches and took their profits back to Ontario. Before he took office, Diefenbaker had often complained about the proliferation of Crown corporations * Mrs Fairclough relinquished her directorship in Hamilton Office Services Ltd., J. Waldo Monteith resigned from two Stratford, Ontario, accountancy firms (Farquharson-Gifford Ltd. and James Lloyd & Son Ltd.)~ Davie Fulton from three small ranching companies (EM. Cattle, Riverview Holdings, and Seven-0 Ranches Ltd.). 268 Exercise of Power placed beyond the scrutiny and the control of parliament." But once in power, he did nothing to reduce their scope. Although generous offers were received for the government-owned Polymer Corporation and Eldorado Mining & Refining Limited - both established to take care of wartime emergency requirements -the government refused to sell them. On the contrary, at least one government monopoly was strengthened. An amendment to the Telegraphs Act passed in 1958 gave the Crown-operated Canadian Overseas Telecommunication Corporation the power to license and control submarine cables entering Canada from abroad - a measure that the Conservatives had vigorously opposed while in Opposition. Instead of softening the federal government's massive intrusion into the economy, Diefenbaker pushed the state into areas formerly occupied by private enterprise. Because he disliked bankers and thought they were not properly looking after the interests of the small businessman and farmer, he injected Ottawa into money-lending on a grand scale, by widening the terms of reference of the Industrial Development Bank and the funds available under the National Housing Act, and by establishing the Farm Credit Corporation. Diefenbaker's idea of state intervention into the business community was to place as much government aid as possible on a self-liquidating basis, so that Ottawa could eventually get back in taxes as much as - or more than - it had invested in providing business firms with roads, docks, and even loans. "The Prime Minister is convinced that public activity can be just as enterprising as private industry," Alvin Hamilton, who was ideologically closer to Diefenbaker than any other cabinet minister, once explained. "He believes that government is not just an organization to collect taxes and pay for social welfare services, but thinks of the federal role as a partnership in which the government, on behalf of all the people, sets planned objectives and does its part with its resources to direct private enterprise toward those targets." The PhilosophY of the Man From Prince Albert 269 Hamilton's logic could be followed only by giving the usual philosophy of state intervention an unusual twist. According to this theory, Diefenbaker seemed to believe that free enterprise makes the welfare state necessary. That is, since private industry can concern itself only in a limited way with the social costs of its drive toward competitive efficiency, the industrialist's best friend is the politician willing to underpin the private sector with large shafts of social capital, made necessary because of the unique influences of Canadian geography and climate on employment opportunities. This kind of ideological sleight of hand didn't impress many Canadian businessmen. But since the financial community was the main contributor to Party funds, Diefenbaker tried to assuage its members by representing his party as the only true champion of the capitalist system and a dike against the rising bogey of socialism. It was a false appeal and it drew no converts. JOHN DIEFENBAKER'S philosophy of government never managed to stir much of a response from Canadian political scientists, either. Diefenbaker discouraged such debate by being openly anti-intellectual. His administration failed to recruit the kind of idea-generating junta that could produce dashingly original legislative proposals. This was in marked contrast to the nervous clutch of right- and left-wing intellectuals Mackenzie King ushered in and out of Laurier House. Louis St Laurent made less use of a brain trust, but members of his cabinet, particularly Brooke Claxton, C. D. Howe, and Lester Pearson, had their own intellectual retinues. A close associate of Diefenbaker's once estimated that Canada's twenty-odd degree-granting universities housed fewer than half a dozen professors of any stature willing to serve the Prime Minister, or even offer him ideas. One of the few intellectuals who could articulate, in abstract terms, the pragmatic motivations of the man from Prince Albert was Roy Faibish, who served through- 270 Exercise of Power out most of the Diefenbaker Years as special assistant to Alvin Hamilton. The best mind the Tories had attracted in a generation, Faibish was a history, English, and philosophy graduate from Queen's University. A knowing sparrow of a man, he was intensely loyal to his chief, yet tried to provide the same kind of intellectual stimulus to the whole administration as the Bow Group gives the Conservatives in the United Kingdom. Faibish's grasp of the notalways-compatible sciences of politics and government was remarkable; his knowledge of anthropology, history, economics, and literature was equally impressive. Another influential adviser was Don M. Johnston, a lawyer who had known Diefenbaker in Saskatchewan and had helped him during the 1949 election. Johnston stayed in his job as legal adviser to Trans-Canada Pipe Lines Limited in Toronto, but he often journeyed to Ottawa, and many of his suggestions found their way anonymously into cabinet deliberations. He travelled with Diefenbaker as his main speech writer during the 1963 election. The most important source of imaginative ideas for the Diefenbaker government, however, was a benign-looking scholar with a large soul, named Merril Warren Menzies. This remarkable, self-effacing economist arrived In the capital early in 1957, under the exalted personal patronage of John Diefenbaker. He left Ottawa five years later, unrecognized and unsung, having been severely humbled by an ungrateful head of government who, instead of applying Menzies' unusual talents, thoughtlessly ruined his career in the public service. Oddly enough, Menzies had exactly the kind of personal background that was attractive to Diefenbaker.* He was born on October 31, 192o, at Melfort, Saskatchewan, a CNR divisional point sixty-two miles east of Prince Albert. His early life on his family's farm was plain and * Significantly, Menzies, Faibish. Johnston and Alvin Hamilton - Diefen- baker's chief advisers -were all natives of Saskatchewan. The Philosophy of the Man From Prince Albert 271 harsh and made him realize at first hand the significance of wheat to the Prairie economy. He joined the South Saskatchewan Regiment in March 1942, rose to command a front-line infantry platoon, and was wounded twice leading his troops during the Belgian and German campaigns. He used his veteran's credits to enroll in the economics course at the University of Saskatchewan, where by 1949 he had earned a master's degree for a thesis on the national and international factors influencing the development of Canadian wheat policy. Following his graduation, Menzies decided to continue his studies in the same field at the London School of Economics. There he eventually produced a 483-page tome entitled The Canadian Wheat Board and the International Wheat Agreement. When he had to interrupt his studies in 1953 to earn tuition money, an Ottawa lawyer close to the Liberal government helped him get a job as executive assistant to Stuart Garson, then Minister of Justice. This experience convinced Menzies that the Liberal Party had abandoned the enlightened tendencies that had been a hallmark of its administration during the immediate postwar years. After he was granted his doctorate, in the spring of 1956, Menzies joined his brother, a mining engineer, in a geophysical survey party exploring the interior of British Columbia. It was here, in the fall of 1956, while trekking through the bush, that he heard about George Drew's resignation from the Conservative leadership and the possibility that John Diefenbaker might succeed him. Menzies had never met Diefenbaker, but his brother-in-law, Dr Glen Green, a Prince Albert physician who was one of the politician's best friends, had often talked admiringly about him. Menzies felt that Diefenbaker, in his personality at least, stood for the kind of imaginative government policies he had advocated in his thesis. When Dr Green wrote to ask him for "a few thoughts on the lines which Conservative policy might take," 272 Exercise of Power Menzies replied in a 39-page letter which he modestly described as "some rough jottings." In that letter, Menzies handed Diefenbaker many of the ideas that eventually helped him win office. In its key section, Menzies accused the Liberals of having become so mesmerized by the cult of the gross national product that they thought all governments needed to do was maintain short-run economic stability. "This is an essential objective," he wrote, "but the Canadian people want more than this. They ask for vision in their statesmen, a sense of national purpose, and national destiny. . . . 'Where there is no vision, the people (and the nation) perish.' " It was this sentiment which provided the key word for Diefenbaker's 1958 campaign. The main suggestion in Menzies' letter had been that the Conservative Party should revive Sir John A. Macdonald's National Policy in the contemporary guise of a National Development Policy. "Its aim," he wrote, "must be a greater Canada in which rapid development and increasing prosperity are not purchased at the expense of economic independence and effective national sovereignty." Menzies included some specific suggestions, such as a study for a national power grid, and a roads-to- resources scheme, as well as greater emphasis on resource conservation, all of which were profitably adopted by Diefenbaker. More prophetically than he realized at the time, Menzies added a warning: "There is grave danger in thinking of national policy in terms of popular slogans - in simplifying matters of infinite complexity. If important matters such as trade and investment are dealt with on a negative and emotional basis, serious damage will be done to our national welfare.... The formulation of national policy requires hard thinking and profound understanding." Dr Green gave the remarkable document to Diefenbaker during the December 1956 leadership convention, The new Conservative leader immediately recognized the letter as just the kind of bold economic program he The Philosophy of the Man From Prince Albert 273 needed for his campaign. He hired Menzies as the main speech-writer for the election tour, and later, when the Conservatives had achieved office, appointed him his personal economic adviser in the Privy Council office. Although his ideas had been generously exploited by Diefenbaker on the hustings, once at work inside the Prime Minister's office, where he was hired at a modest $7,98o a year, Menzies quickly discovered that Diefen- baker didn't really intend to implement in any coherent way the imaginative concepts so righteously expounded during the campaign. Had Menzies been more politically inclined, or even a member of the Conservative Party, he might have received a generous hearing from some of Diefenbaker's politically acceptable advisers, who then might have been able to persuade their chief to listen. Menzies felt that to achieve the progressive kind of federal administration he envisaged, the relationship between the state and society in Canada needed to be completely re-examined. He urged Diefenbaker to launch a study comparable in scope to the epochal 1945 White Paper on Employment and Income, in which the Liberals had outlined their postwar policies. No such project was approved. Through most Of 1959 - two years before James Coyne's epic tussle with the Diefenbaker administration came out into the open -Menzies had been urging Diefenbaker to establish a royal commission on finance, charged with defining the exact relationship between Parliament and the Bank of Canada. The commission finally was established, but not until long after the Coyne affair, which it might have been able to prevent. Since his advice was being ignored, Menzies grew so frustrated in the Prime Minister's service that in November 1959 he resigned to join the grain division of the Trade and Commerce Department. When it was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture, he became chief grain policy adviser to Alvin Hamilton. Here, Menzies' eleven-year academic concern with the 274 Exercise of Power nation's agricultural problems finally found a useful outlet. He played a prominent part during the negotiation of Canada's share in the International Wheat Agreement and acted as one of the principal advisers in the Chinese wheat deal. By the spring of 1962 Menzies had been promoted to an Economist Grade 5, at $ i i,8oo a year. He had bought a house in Ottawa and was settling down to a useful and influential career. But shortly after noon on April 24, just before Diefenbaker set off on the first leg of his 1962 campaign, John Fisher, the Prime Minister's executive assistant, told Menzies that Diefenbaker had assigned him to the campaign as a speech-writer and researcher. Although Diefenbaker had vigorously attacked the Liberals in the House of Commons for the presence of Jack Pickersgill, then a civil servant, on Louis St Laurent's 1949 campaign train, the Prime Minister was now ordering another civil servant to do the same thing. Diefenbaker thus placed Menzies in the position of either having to disobey a prime ministerial directive or having to violate the sanctity of his civil service status. Menzies resigned immediately from his job at Agriculture, and reluctantly joined the campaign caravan. At the end of the campaign, Menzies quietly left Ottawa for Winnipeg, where he later established a small economic consulting firm in partnership with Ralph Hedlin, a leading Winnipeg writer. Menzies never once complained to anyone about the treatment he'd received from the man he tried so hard to help. And if there was an element of tragedy in his Ottawa experience, it was not in the shameful way his career was sacrificed by Diefenbaker. Politics at the summit can seldom afford to move courteously. The real tragedy of Merril Menzies was that in adopting his ideas, Diefenbaker took over only the slogans that expressed them. Properly exploited, Menzies' nimble economic insight might have made the Prince Albert politician one of Canada's great prime ministers. There was no The Philosophy of the Man From Prince Albert 275 more telling indictment of his administration than John Diefenbaker's failure to grasp that graciously tendered opportunity. FIFTEEN The Fiscal Sins of a Prairie Prime Minister THIS FATAL inability of the Prime Minister to act on much of the good advice that was offered him had grave ramifications for Canada. Nowhere was this more obvious than in the management of the nation's economic affairs. Instead of being able to revel in a century that was supposed to belong to them, Canadians found themselves during the Diefenbaker Years beset by grave economic difficulties. Not unnaturally, the opposition parties tried to blame all of these problems on John Diefenbaker. Certainly a review of his administration's economic record did reveal considerable mismanagement of the nation's monetary and fiscal affairs. But it was quite unfair to place all of the blame on the Prime Minister. Many factors outside the jurisdiction of the federal government contributed to the decline of the Canadian economy. Diefenbaker took office just as the rate of increase in foreign demand for Canadian raw materials declined sharply, due partly to the discovery of alternate, and cheaper, sources. The rate of family formation - one of any economy's main stimulants -was lower in 1958 and 1959 than in any other postwar year, and immigration reached a postwar lowpoint. In 196 1, more people actually left the country than entered it. The abrupt expropriation by Premier W. A. C. Bennett in August of that year of the B. C. Electric Company cut deeply into the confidence with 276 The Fiscal Sins of a Prairie Prime Minister 277 which foreign investors had viewed Canada as a safe haven for their funds. Most important of all, the galloping growth of the Canadian economy during the first decade and a half following World War 11 had been taken so much for granted, that it was allowed to become a condition of national survival. From 1945 until 1957 Canada had been the envy of the world. No other nation on earth seemed to place so few limitations on man's universal dream of attaining material comfort. Some two million people crossed the Atlantic for the privilege of sharing in a prosperity which, it then appeared, would never end. Everywhere, for those dozen years, there was an intemperate rush among normally temperate businessmen to tame the nation's assets. London's Financial Times commented: "The whole world appears to be in conspiracy to find more and more uses for Canada's natural resources." Canada was even able to help substantially in the postwar recovery of Great Britain with billion-dollar loans and food shipments. The Canadian standard of living climbed ever higher. Edmonton taxi-drivers complained that cash-happy oildrillers were hiring cabs to cross the street. Toronto's per capita population of Cadillacs increased at a rate that ranked the city ahead of Los Angeles and Detroit. "The rest of the world," according to Professor Clarence Barber, the University of Manitoba economist, "was having a love affair with the future of the Canadian economy." But five years later in the spring of 1962, that love affair seemed to be as dead as a middle-aged housewife's first April flirtation. The nation had landed in the grip of an austerity program more commonly associated with wartime emergencies. The United Kingdom was lending Canada money. More people were leaving than entering the country and the once enthusiastic Financial Thnes was righteously warning that "the process of adjustment will be painful." American investment funds which, in the first decade 278 Exercise of Power after World War 11, had been cascading into Canada at a gross rate of three million dollars a day, began to flow out during the first six months of 1962 at the rate of one million dollars daily. Worse than that, Canadians able to move their funds abroad were sending money out of the country in unprecedented quantities. Canada's currency, once the hardest on earth, was being supported at its devalued rate of United States $.92 1/2 through international bank loans. By the summer of 1962, when the nation's economic difficulties culminated in Diefenbaker's having to impose his emergency austerity program, Canada had dropped from second to eighth place in per capita trade, and Sweden had usurped Canada's position as the country with the world's second highest standard of living. In terms of providing adequate jobs - one of the most important standards by which the performance of modern societies is measured - Canada, during the first five of the Diefenbaker Years, did so badly that its unemployment rate exceeded that of any other industrialized nation in the world. According to the usual measuring standard of national growth - per capita gross national product in constant dollars - between 195o and 1956, the Canadian economy had been expanding at an average annual rate Of 2.7 per cent.* But between mid 1975 and mid 1963 the per capita gross national product in constant dollars went up at an average annual rate of only i per cent. The circumstances that came together to turn prosperity into stagnation during the Diefenbaker Years were just as varied and complex as the factors that had combined to generate the boom in the first place. The end of World War 11 automatically cancelled two, billion dollars' worth of defence orders and * The gross national product is the market value of all goods and services produced by the nation in a given year. The per capita calculation makes the index more meaningful by removing the effects of population increases; expressing the figure in the same dollars removes the distortions of inflation. The Fiscal Sins of a Prairie Prime Minister 279 terminated the jobs of half a million defence workers. Meanwhile, close to a million Canadian servicemen were waiting impatiently to rejoin the labour force. Nearly everyone expected serious unemployment to develop. J. D. Dean, a prominent London financier, flew to Ottawa with a plan for converting Canada's shipyards to build floating whale factories. Pockets of unemployment did develop, especially in Quebec armament centres, but Canadians didn't find time to go whale-hunting. Canadian industry - its capacity boosted by the $7 billion invested in new machinery duri ng the war - rushed its conversion to civilian production and, with a war-accumulated backlog of nearly $8 billion in savings, Canadian consumers set off the biggest spending spree in the nation's history. Even before this demand for goods could be filled, a new wave of investment activity in Canada was triggered by the discovery of the petroleum deposits at Leduc, Alberta, on February 13, 1947. Americans poured so much money into the exploitation of natural resources that Canada became the world's largest importer of private capital. The first wave of prosperity was just slowing down, when the impetus of the Korean War and its accompanying demand for the raw materials from which armaments are manufactured launched another gush of investment in Canada. Meanwhile, domestic demand for consumer goods was kept at peak levels by the high rate of immigration from Europe. Following a brief recession from May 1953 to June 1954, the influx of foreign capital seeking profitable habitat in Canada led the way into the third and last great wave of postwar prosperity. But by the beginning Of 1957, Canada's boom had finally lost its momentum. Capital expenditures in primary industry were falling and by the autumn of that year an unsalable surplus of wheat, timber, paper, and minerals was plugging Canada's trade channels and, for the first time since the 'thirties, unemployment was becoming a 280 Exercise of Power national problem, with 7.1 per cent of the labour force out of work during the winter of 1957-58. The massive development projects that had powered Canada's postwar growth - the oil of Leduc, the iron ore of Ungava, the uranium of Blind River, the aluminum smelter of Kitimat, the building of the St Lawrence Seaway, the construction of the Trans-Canada, Trans Mountain, and Westcoast Transmission pipelines - all happened to slow down at about the same time, and there were few new projects of similar stature to take their place. The continuing decline of immigration, which meant that Canadian business wasn't gaining enough new customers, and the side effects of unemployment, which placed a damper on consumer spending, meant that most Canadian factories found themselves with excess capacity. This, in turn, seriously reduced the total amount of private capital investment flowing into the economy. Between 1957 and 1962, the amount of money being invested in plant construction, industrial machinery, and other fixed assets that help to guarantee an economy's future expansion and create employment dropped by 25 per cent. The paradoxical fact about this decrease in private investment was that, until the exchange crisis of 1962, the inflow of American and other foreign capital into the country did not suffer a corresponding decline. While the share of business capital spending financed by Canadian funds was shrinking, Americans and other outsiders continued to pour an average of $ioo millions a month into the acquisition of Canada's resources and factories, or into Canadian government bonds. The postwar influx of foreign investment funds placed 6o per cent of Canada's manufacturing industries, about 8o per cent of petroleum holdings, and 61 per cent of mining enterprises under outside control. But there was an even more serious short-term effect. By 1962, the investments made by foreign investors in Canada were earning dividends and interest of nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars a year, which had to be sent out of the The Fiscal Sins of a Prairie Prime Minister 281 country. In order that the economy could afford this outflow of funds, more and more investment dollars had to be enticed into Canada. That left the nation in a unique economic trap: the only way enough foreign funds could be raised to pay the financial obligations owed on that portion of national assets already in foreign hands was to keep selling more and more of the assets still domestically owned. Canada was in a position comparable to that of a troubled proprietor of a gambling casino who had allowed his clients to win a great deal more money than there was in the house bank. To keep the gamesters at the tables, and at the same time stop them from cashing in their chips, the odds had to be made ever more favourable. So favourable, in fact, that the continued winnings had to be financed by selling an overwhelming proportion of the casino's ownership. What threatened to upset this finely balanced situation during the Diefenbaker Years was that the customers were no longer eager either to acquire the casino or even to continue playing its wheels. SOLVING THE DILEMMA required skilled guidance from Ottawa. Instead, the Diefenbaker regime's blunders seriously aggravated already unfavourable economic trends. The main trouble was that the Prime Minister maintained a political veto over the cabinet's economic deliberations. "To the Diefenbaker Government," wrote John Bird, the perceptive Ottawa columnist for the Toronto Star, 11 economics is a boring nuisance thought up by egghead professors to obstruct its political ambitions. Finance, to it, is something to be taken out of the hands of experts and put to practical use -such as making payments to wheat farmers which yield political dividends." During his 1957 and 1958 campaigns, Diefenbaker had made five main economic pledges: that he would shift Canada's imports away from the United States towards the United Kingdom; that he would bring the nation's foreign trade into balance; that he would try to increase 282 Exercise of Power the proportion of domestic ownership in Canadian enterprises controlled from abroad, that he would balance the budget-, and that he would end the agony of unemployment. The record of the Diefenbaker Years shows that Canada's imports from the United States grew faster than imports from the United Kingdom; that the nation's foreign trade was balanced in only one year; that outsiders significantly extended their hold over Canadian enterprises; that budget deficits set new records; and that unemployment averaged twice the rate of the early 'fifties. Yet this was hardly a fair condemnation, since the promises Diefenbaker made were too ambitious to be fulfilled in their entirety by any government. Still, with sound policies, he might at least have been able to improve the nation's economic situation, instead of aggravating the very trends he had been condemning. A review of the fiscal and monetary policies of the Diefenbaker government reveals at least a dozen major blunders: 1. THE CONVERSION LOAN OF 1958: The largest refinancing operation in Canadian history was the Conversion Loan, involving nearly half the country's total outstanding debt. Under the terms of the Loan, holders of 3 per cent Victory Bonds maturing between 1959 and 1966 (worth some $6.4 billions) were offered new bonds with interest ranging from 3 per cent to 4 1/2 per cent, maturing between 196 1 and 1983, plus cash bonuses for the longterm units. Approximately $1 .7 billion of the old issues were held on government accounts; $1.4 billion by the chartered banks; $1.2 billion by large financial institutions; and $2. 1 billion by other investors.* The Conversion Loan was launched on July 14, 1958, with the announced purpose ofgenerating new confidence For the best description of the Conversion Loan see Douglas H. Fullerton, The Bond Harket In Canada. The Carswell Company, Toronto, 1962. The Fiscal Sins of a Prairie Prime Minister 283 in government bonds and clearing away the congestion of early maturing debt to make it easier for provinces, municipalities, and corporations to borrow. Three agencies (McKim Advertising Ltd., Hnot PublicW Lt~e., and Spitzer, Mills & Bates Ltd.) received nearly $2 millions for a razzle-dazzle advertising campaign, and investment dealers were paid commissions of up to i per cent for selling the new issues. One Toronto firm - Saunders Cameron Limited -withdrew from the operation, because it felt that to sell the Conversion Loan bonds would amount to misleading its clients. By the deadline of September 15, some go per cent of the Victory bonds had been converted. Since at least some of the new bonds had been purchased by Canadians, not because they wanted them but because they found it difficult to resist the mammoth sales campaign that was behind them, heavy selling of the issue began as early as September 16, the day after the books closed. At first the Bank of Canada supported the market, but the selling wave grew so quickly that at the beginning of October the Bank had to withdraw. James Coyne, its Governor, explained that "the prices of the long-term Conversion issues could not be maintained ... without a dangerous degree of monetary expansion." There was a very considerable expansion, even so. The market for the bonds kept sliding. A year after their issue the 4 1/2 per cent bonds due in 1983 that had been priced originally at $ i oo were worth only $ 8 3 1 /8. * The immediate effect of the Conversion Loan was to raise interest rates generally, so that more and more investors- including provincial and municipal governments - turned to the United States money market and its lower interest rates. As a result, the inflow of American funds was significantly increased at a time when it should have been slackening off. It was the Conversion Loan's * On April 9, 1963, the day after the Diefenbaker government was defeated, the bid price on Canada Bonds went up 3/4 of a point. 284 Exercise of Power indirect effect of bringing more American money into Canada that kept the premium on the Canadian dollar artificially high and helped produce the 1962 exchange crisis. Another result of the Conversion Loan was that government bonds, which had traditionally been regarded as the most stable of investments, took on some of the characteristics of unstable mining stocks. Harold Cameron, a partner in Saunders Cameron Ltd., estimated the Loan damaged the reputation of Canadian bonds to such an extent that subsequent issues cost an extra .25 per cent yield, or $2,5oo,ooo a year per billion dollars of financing. Aside from its adverse effects on future government financing and the bond market in general, the Conversion Loan was condemned by many experts on straight economic grounds. It was presented by Diefenbaker, who called it "in every sense anti-inflationary," as a device to combat the threat of inflation. Its high interest rates and its effect in extending the term of the national debt certainly were anti-inflationary, but the chief inflationary threat had been created by the deficit - largest since World War 11 - in the budget brought down by Diefenbaker's government just a few weeks before the announcement of the Conversion Loan. Although the Conversion Loan was touted as a means of allowing the Bank of Canada to tighten the nation's money supply, between June and October 1958 the money supply was expanded by more than a billion dollars-an unprecedented peacetime rise for such a short period. 2. THE LACK OF CO-ORDINATION BETWEEN MONETARY AND FISCAL POLICIES: The Conversion Loan blunder could have been alleviated if it had been followed by consistent monetary and fiscal policies. Instead, from October 1958 until late in ig6o, Bank of Canada Governor James Coyne - driven by what seemed to be a pathological fear of inflation - instituted a tightmoney policy so rigid that interest rates climbed to their I The Fiscal Sins of a Prairie Prime Minister 285 highest levels in forty years. As a result, the money supply remained relatively fixed during a period of heavy unemployment, and at a time when the Diefenbaker government was running huge budgetary deficits to try to generate economic expansion in the country. The drum-tight monetary policy thus offset the potential benefits of the easy fiscal policy. 3. DIEFENBAKER'S HESITATION TO OVERRULE JAMES COYNE: Instead of moving to overrule the Bank of Canada Governor when it became obvious that his policies were sabotaging the intended effects of the government's plans for cutting unemployment through budget deficits, the Diefenbaker government merely absolved itself of responsibility. "Under Canadian law," Donald Fleming told the Commons on April 27, 1959, "the federal government does not exercise control over the money supply... In the matter of monetary policy this Parliament has placed the responsibility, and indeed the power, in the hands of the Bank of Canada." 4. DIEFENBAKER'S ATTACK ON THE CHARTERED BANKS: Since he claimed that he could not overrule Coyne's monetary manoeuvres, Diefenbaker, in the fall of 1959, decided to blame Canada's chartered banks for the tight-money situation. In his Nation's Business telecast on October i, the Prime Minister stated that the time had come to explore all avenues for a proper distribution of credit. "Perhaps," he said, "one answer is for the banks to reconsider their lending policies and rearrange their outstanding loans to the end that some larger borrowers will be taking less so that smaller borrowers can get more." The chartered banks were able to prove the next day that 8o per cent of their outstanding loans were for amounts under $ io,ooo, but the damage had been done. From the date of this television broadcast, Canada's business community realized it did not have a sympathizer in the Prime Minister's office. 286 Exercise of Power 5. THE MOVE AGAINST FOREIGN INVESTORS IN THE BABY BUDGET OF 1960: In line with his hustings promises of the 1957 and 1958 campaigns, Diefenbaker spent much Of 1959 and 196o making vaguely chauvinistic statements about the dangers to the Canadian economy of foreign domination. But he didn't go as far as James Coyne (whose speeches indicated that he wanted to cut off the capital inflow and the imports that the influx financed) and his statements were interpreted abroad as politically necessary though not economically harmful. This was all changed by the "baby budget" of December 196o. Instead of merely talking against outside investment, the government moved to cancel exemptions from the 15 per cent withholding tax on foreign earnings in Canada. The measure was not unfair, but foreign investors interpreted it as evidence that Canada no longer welcomed their funds. Accordingly they sought and found more lucrative investment opportunities in other areas, particularly western Europe. The rate of foreign investment dropped from an inflow Of $443 millions in the first quarter of 1961 to a net outflow of $i million by the first quarter of 1962. By bringing down legislation to cut the inflow of foreign funds and at the same time abandoning the unmanipulated exchange rate for the Canadian dollar, the Diefenbaker government planted the seeds of the exchange crisis which exploded during the 1962 election campaign. 6. THE MANNER OF JAMES COYNE'S DISMISSAL: From the point of view of world confidence in his administration, John Diefenbaker's worst blunder was the manner in which he removed James Coyne from the governorship of the Bank of Canada.* Although this unsightly squabble was based on the government repudiation of some of Coyne's personal and doctrinaire policies, * It was not the removal itself that was considered a blunder, as few international bankers trusted Coyne. For a full account of the affair, see Chapter 2 1. The Fiscal Sins of a Prairie Prime Minister 287 many foreign investors interpreted it as somehow casting doubt on the integrity of Canada's entire banking system. The significance of the Coyne affair lay in the fact that Diefenbaker tried to use a respected public servant as a scapegoat for his own failings. In a typical hustings reference to Coyne, Diefenbaker said in Edmonton, on May 26, -1962: "When we removed the headship of the Bank of Canada, we removed the strangulation of tight money." Yet in his ig6o budget and other public utterances Donald Fleming had agreed with Coyne's monetary policy. 7. THE MISHANDLING OF THE MOVE TO PEG THE CANADIAN DOLLAR: The fact that the Canadian dollar had, alone among the world's major currencies, been permitted by the Liberals to float freely since October 1950 was, by the late 'fifties, considered a liability to national progress, as the dollar's high premium had by that time seriously undercut Canada's competitiveness in export markets. The government began to force the value of the dollar down by using its foreign exchange reserves in December i 96o. But in his budget of June 196 1, Donald Fleming rejected the idea of pegging the dollar at a fixed rate, though he later informally set a desirable rate at U.S. $.95. An outlay Of $120 millions from the Bank of Canada reserves dropped the value of the Canadian dollar down half a point between December ig6o and May ig6i; the confidence-shaking row over the dismissal of James Coyne helped produce a two-point drop in one month. The government's attempts to bring down the value of the dollar began to backfire early in 1962, when it became obvious that Canada simply did not have enough reserves to support the Canadian dollar at any set level in the face of speculation against it. By the end of April, this speculation had become so great that Bank of Canada reserves of $25 millions a day were needed to prevent complete collapse. At that rate, the nation's reserves might have been exhausted by the end of May. At midnight on May 2 Donald Fleming who, in his budget only three weeks 288 Exercise of Power before, had declared that it would be inappropriate to adopt the fixed exchange rate being urged on Canada by the International Monetary Fund, pegged the Canadian dollar at U.S. $.92 1/2. But the momentum of the dollar's decline was not halted even then. Between May 2 and June 22 another $5 194 millions drained out of Bank of Canada reserves. Finally, on June 24, Diefenbaker was forced to announce an austerity program. It included loans of more than a billion dollars from the International Monetary Fund, the Export-Import Bank in Washington, the United States Federal Reserve System, and the Bank of England to shore up the Bank of Canada's reserves, cut in half by the hapless manoeuvring and stopgap measures that characterized the Diefenbaker government's handling of the exchange crisis. 8. THE MISINTERPRETATION OF DEVALUATION BY DIEFENBAKER IN THE 1962 CAMPAIGN: In the 1962 election campaign Diefenbaker made two major claims about the devaluation of the Canadian dollar into which he had been forced at the start of the campaign: that "obstruction by former Bank of Canada governor James Coyne had prevented the government from pegging the dollar earlier"; and that the devaluation really made no difference to the value of Canadian currency ("Your Canadian dollar is still a hundred-cent dollar!") because it would mean "more jobs for every part of Canada." Both these claims had previously been contradicted by Donald Fleming, Diefenbaker's own Minister of Finance. The Conservative government's attitude toward forcing down the dollar was enunciated in the House of Com- mons on March 31, ig6o, when Fleming proclaimed that 11 an attempt by the government to lower artificially the external price of the Canadian dollar would involve borrowing or raising by taxes very large sums with which to buy up foreign exchange.... In other words, we would be embarking upon a gigantic financial speculation with no assurance of success." The Fiscal Sins of a Prairie Prime Minister 289 As to the effect of devaluation, Fleming gave an appraisal in the House of Commons on June 17, 1958, which pointed out that a reduced value of the dollar would help some Canadians, and harm others. "It is often said," he declared, "that a decline in the exchange value of the Canadian dollar would contribute to the profitability of our export industries and, at the same time, improve the position of those producers who are most exposed to import competition. It is true that some benefits of this sort would accrue to some industries, but at the same time we would lose certain advantages which a strong exchange rate gives us. The weakening of our exchange rate would turn the terms of trade against us, and to this extent we would pay more for our imports and receive less for our exports. Prices of imported raw materials, machinery, equipment, and tropical foods would tend to rise in Canada. In other words, a change in the external value of the Canadian dollar brings gains to some Canadians and losses for others." 9. THE HAPHAZARD ACCUMULATION OF BUDGETARY DEFICITS: The single attitude of John Diefenbaker that probably caused the most consternation among investors both in Canada and abroad was his disregard for the budgetary deficits that new politically motivated spending commitments automatically cause. To have budgetary deficits in times of a business decline is sound economic theory, because the high taxes that might balance the budget would act as a damper on economic activity. But when federal expenditures grow at the same time as deficits, then, as Graham Towers, the former Bank of Canada Governor, put it, "the national economy is not being given the chance to grow sufficiently to keep abreast of the state's ever-increasing demands on it." If the exchange crisis had not occurred, and if the Diefenbaker government had continued for two more years spending money at the same rate as during its first five years in office, its total expenditures would have been 290 Exercise of Power equal to the total amount of money spent by Canadian governments between Confederation in 1867 and 1946, including the cost of two world wars. By 1962, the annual interest Canadians were paying on the national debt amounted to more than $8oo millions-an amount that exceeded the cost of the old age pensions. Twelve cents out of every dollar in the government's budget was going toward the interest on the national debt. 10. THE DIEFENBAKER ADMINISTRATION'S ANTI-PLANNING ATTITUDE: The Diefenbaker government's enormous budgetary deficits might have been justifiable, had they been part of a concerted plan to cut unemployment through massive expansion in the economy's public sector. But the Tory administration saw economic planning as a diabolical precursor of socialism. "A planned economy for Canada would be a backdoor introduction of socialism. A planned economy means state control," declared Public Works Minister David Walker, in a Toronto speech on November 29, 196 1. Federal expenditures under the Diefenbaker regime increased from $5.o billions to $6.6 billions. This multiplication was based not on the attainment of any particular objectives, but simply on the payments out of the federal treasury for the promises Diefenbaker made during his election campaigns. It was a pork-barrel approach at the national level. 11. DIEFENBAKER'S OUTDATED APPROACH TO THE CHANGING PATTERNS OF WORLD TRADE: During its first years in office the Diefenbaker government's trade policies were founded on two basic assumptions: that there would be no major realignment in the economies of Europe and that the United States would not undertake any substantial tariff cuts. The signing of the Treaty of Rome and the passage by the American Congress of President John E Kennedy's Trade Expansion Act turned these postulates upside down, but the Conserv- The Fiscal Sins of a Prairie Prime Minister 291 ative administration seemed incapable of reacting to the altered situation. The Diefenbaker government's recriminations against proposed British entry into the Common Market* and the ugly threats it used to back its stand demonstrated that the Conservatives remained immersed in the nineteenth-century approach to nationalism - an attitude made obsolete by the Treaty of Rome. "Mr. Green" editorialized the Winnipeg Free Press, "saw the whole situation emotionally as only a threat to the Commonwealth, a betrayal of Britain by the British government. Mr. Fleming saw it mathematically as only a threat to the Commonwealth preference system which he had been turning against Britain by restricting British imports. Mr. Diefenbaker saw the Common Market as a passing experiment which must soon disintegrate." President Kennedy's Trade Expansion Act, passed by the United States Congress in the fall of 1962, could, had it been properly exploited by Ottawa politicians, base Canada's future prosperity not, as in the postwar splurge, on grossly exaggerated expectations, but on genuine participation in the forward sweep of a changing world. It opened a new way for Canada of bargaining with and competing against the principal industrial powers, con- centrating themselves into ever larger trading units. But on January 13, 1962, when four members of President Kennedy's cabinet conferred privately with six members of the Diefenbaker cabinet in Ottawa to advocate Canadian support for the Trade Expansion Act, the American ministers left deflated by the Canadian attitude which, summed up in the communique issued after the meeting, did little more than vaguely reiterate "Canada's readiness to play a constructive role in the promotion of freer world trade." It was not until nine months later that Diefenbaker came out in support of the United States legislation. * See Chapter ig for a fuller discussion. 292 Exercise of Power This kind of unimaginative approach toward the rapidly changing patterns of international trade spread the impression abroad that the Conservative government was only interested in preserving the international status quo. Instead of following the contemporary trend toward freer trade, Canada under Diefenbaker retreated to modified protectionism. In a 1962 campaign speech Maurice Allard, the Progressive Conservative candidate in the textile-producing constituency of Sherbrooke, Quebec, listed nineteen ministerial acts which, during the Diefenbaker Years, had increased the protection enjoyed by the Canadian textile industry. The change in the definition of 11 a class or kind made in Canada" contained in Donald Fleming's "baby budget" of 196o was a measure that would have granted the Minister of National Revenue tremendous and discretionary powers to raise duties. It meant that higher tariffs could be applied not only to goods of exactly the same type as were already being made in Canada, but also on products of a class or kind as were being made or could be made domestically. The legislation was never passed, because the Liberal-dominated Senate demanded the inclusion of a provision for appeal procedures of ministers' rulings. 12. THE ATTEMPT TO COMBAT UNENIPLOYMENT BY TRYING TO CURE ITS EFFECTS INSTEAD OF ITS CAUSES: When Vernon I Butterfield, an unemployed plumber, was given a two-year suspended sentence in a Winnipeg court on June 27, 1962, for setting fire to three boxcars, he explained to the judge that he had committed the public mischief for one reason: "I was angry at Mr Diefenbaker, because I couldn't get a job." An even stranger form of protest over a lost job was that of Aurel Thomas, who was fined $ i oo and costs for attempting to dive off Montreal's Jacques Cartier Bridge during rush hour in the summer of ig6i. Thomas explained that he couldn't find work in his specialtydiving sixty feet into a tank of water with his clothes on The Fiscal Sins of a Prairie Prime Minister 293 fire to attract crowds to shopping centre openings -because few new shopping centres were bring inaugurated in the Montreal area. He had decided to dive into the river to show his friends that his temporary retirement was due, not to a loss of nerve, but to laggard economic conditions under the Diefenbaker government. These were dramatic if untypical illustrations of the nation's mood during the Diefenbaker Years. Because he had been so persuasive in guaranteeing that his election would solve the nation's unemployment problem, the unemployed tended to blame Diefenbaker - or at least "Ottawa" - for their lack of jobs. While the Conservative administration couldn't be condemned for not keeping impossible promises, it was responsible, for pretending that Canada had no serious job problem - a myth that Diefenbaker tried to maintain throughout most of his time in office. During the Diefenbaker Years, the direct welfare burden of supporting the jobless amounted to an average of $16 millions a week. In February 1961 the number of unemployed reached 719,000 or 11.3 per cent of the labour force - an army ofjobless that equalled the number enrolled in Canada's World War 11 active-service forces, at the peak of their strength. Much of this unemployment was due, not to any mismanagement by the Diefenbaker government, but to structural weaknesses in the economy. Among others, these included: - The fact that the resource boom of the 'fifties, spectacular as it was, failed to provide any base for expanding employment opportunities. Despite the billions of dollars poured into the exploitation of Canada's hinterland, by 196o all of the mining, quarrying, forestry, pulpmaking, sawmilling, and non-ferrous-metal smelting being carried on in the country was employing less than 4 per cent of the labour force - i per cent less than in 1950. - The fact that employment in manufacturing also declined during the 'fifties by 5.8 per cent. The percentage 294 Exercise of Power of Canada's gross national product accounted for by manufacturing had actually decreased in postwar years from 26. 1 per cent in 1946 to 25.9 per cent in 196 1. - The fact that the high birthrate of the war and immediate postwar period was pushing teenagers into the job market during the Diefenbaker Years at the rate Of 3,5oo a week - twice the rate of the early 'fifties. - The fact that the labour force between 195o and ig6o swelled under the influx of half a million women workers, many of whom had never worked before, and some 340,000 workers who left agricultural employment to seek work in the cities. - The fact that the growing effects of automation took an increasing employment toll during the Diefenbaker Years. Canada's newsprint mills, for instance, increased their capacity by more than a million tons between 1956 and 1962 without hiring any extra mill workers. The Diefenbaker government reacted, not by trying to correct the causes of these unfavourable employment trends, but by attempting to alleviate their effects. The best of the federal schemes was the winter works program, under which Ottawa paid 50 per cent of the labour costs of approved municipal works projects; but, like most of the other measures undertaken, it did little more than create some badly needed temporary jobs. Plans to deal with unemployment on a long-term basis never materialized. The disillusionment of Canadians with Diefenbaker's economic policies was all the more bitter because he had given the impression in the 1957 and 1958 campaigns that he was promising a dazzling future for all. The hollowness of his platform rhetoric was nowhere more evident than in the most imaginative of his campaign promises, a concept that was known as "The Vision." SIXTEEN The Vision That Became a Mirage PROBABLY the prime example of John Diefenbaker's genius for practical politics was the use he made during the 1958 election campaign of a mesmerizing concept he called the "Vision." His implied promise - that the forsaken upper three-quarters of the Canadian subcontinent would suddenly burst forth into feverish activity -touched off an immediate response among the overwhelming majority of the nation's citizens who never venture farther north than their summer cottages. During the 1957 election, when he was concentrating his rhetorical fire against the parliamentary misdeeds of the Liberals, Diefenbaker alluded only casually to the development of Canada's North. After the Conservatives had formed a minority government, agricultural and social welfare legislation received top priority. The most significant event in relation to northern development during that first session was the appointment on August 22, 1957, of Alvin Hamilton to the Northern Affairs and National Resources portfolio. Hamilton knew the North, had for years been preaching its potential and was now at last in a position to act. His opportunity came just before noon on February io, 1958. Diefenbaker, about to set off for Winnipeg, on the first leg of his second national election campaign, asked his economic adviser, Dr Merril Menzies, to expand on the national-development theme 295 296 Exercise of Power which he had outlined in his original letter to the Conservative leader. Menzies telephoned Hamilton to ask about some of the specific suggestions he knew the Minister and Roy Faibish, his chief adviser, had been drawing up. During the next two hours, with the assistance of Faibish and Don Johnston, Hamilton dictated two long memoranda, containing the economic and political justification for northern-resources development. On the train to Winnipeg, Menzies incorporated into the notes for Diefenbaker's speech most of the Hamilton-Faibish-Johnston suggestions, as well as some ideas of his own. On the evening of February 12, before an overflow audience at Winnipeg's Civic Auditorium, the Vision was brought forth into an unsuspecting world. After blasting the Liberals for their past misdemeanours and continuing arrogance, Diefenbaker began to pour forth his aspirations. "I think of a vast program on Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, hiding resources that Canadians have little realization of," he began, winding himself up into a crescendo of enthusiasm. "We intend," he proclaimed, "to start a vast roads program for the Yukon and the Northwest Territories which well open up for exploration vast new oil and mineral areas -thirty million acres! We will launch a seventy-five million dollar federal-provincial program to build access roads. THIS IS TIIE VISION!" The very word seemed to wrench him into a frenzy of rarely equalled oratory. "We are," he proclaimed, "fulfilling the vision and the dream of Canada's first prime minister-Sir John A. Macdonald. But Macdonald saw Canada from East to West. I see a new Canada. A CANADA OF THE NORT111" "As far as the Arctic is concerned," Diefenbaker sang that night, "we intend to carry out the legislative program of Arctic research, to develop Arctic routes, to develop those vast hidden resources the last few years have revealed. Plans to improve the St Lawrence and the Hud- The Vision That Became a Mirage 297 son Bay route. Plans to increase self-government in the Yukon and Northwest Territories. We can see one or two provinces there." Throughout his 1958 campaign, the Conservative leader expanded and emphasized his Vision. The voters were caught up in the imagined pageant of Diefenbaker's new "Canada of the NORTH." To stab the hump of mine headframes against the brumal blankness of the Arctic twilight; to erect lavish plastic bubble settlements in a hinterland that had previously abided silent and inaccessible; to tame the wilderness that had always whispered to the nation's adventurers - these things seemed a noble and compelling mission to mid-twentieth-century Canadians. During the five years that followed, more was accomplished in the Canadian North than in any previous period of the nation's history. But the results never came within a light-year of the expectation aroused by the Prime Minister's 1958 campaign oratory. DESPITE DIEFENBAKER'S BOASTS about "the vast mineral resources" of the North, not a single new mine was brought into production during his term of office. Yukon and Northwest Territories mineral output actually dropped from $35 millions in 1957 to $20 millions in 1962. In spite of the excitement about the petroleum rush into the North, only four minor gas discoveries were made during the Diefenbaker Years, and the wells were promptly capped. By 1963 the North's total annual oil production was still not enough to supply an average day's consumption in Canada. From 1957 to 1963, the perma- nent population of the North increased at a rate of only one hundred new settlers per month, and the gleaming $75 million Arctic metropolis promised for Frobisher Bay never materialized at all. In 1962, four years after the Vision was first projected to the public, nearly half the revenues collected by the Northwest Territories Council came not from royalties paid on the North's fabulous 298 Exercise of Power mineral riches, but from the tax and profits on the sale of bottled liquor there. The Vision's main memorial will undoubtedly be the "roads to resources," built under cost-sharing arrangements with the provinces, and the grid-road construction undertaken in the Yukon and Northwest Territories. Of the 6,8oo miles of highway, costing approximately $250 millions, promised by Diefenbaker under these two schemes, well over 4,000 miles had been completed by the spring of 1963. Under the roads-to-resources program, many areas of potential mineral wealth in the northern sections of the provinces were made more accessible for detailed exploration. But the program did feature some off-beat items, including the $2 millions spent to erect a new bridge across the North Saskatchewan River at Prince Albert, in the Prime Minister's home constituency. This was 150 miles south of the nearest federally assisted resource road.* The road development program north of the 6oth parallel in the federal government's two territories involved an eventual expenditure of $too millions for 2,200 miles of highway, spread over five to seven years. (In the last fiscal year of the Liberal administration, $2,655,615 had been spent on 71o new miles of northern roads.) "If one of these roads," Alvin Hamilton said while he was Northern Affairs Minister, "produces another Porcupine or Sudbury, it will pay for them all - and I predict there won't be one find, there'll be a dozen." Hamilton's prediction may yet come true, but during the Diefenbaker Years the roads were indirectly responsible for only one major mineral discovery: the impressive tungsten strike at Flat River, just east of the Yukon - Northwest Territories boundary. The * Diefenbaker had promised the bridge to his constituents in the 1957 campaign. Having the cost of the structure included in the cost-sharing arrangements of the roads-to-resources program was ingenious: it allowed the Prime Minister to keep his pledge, without setting a precedent of financial assistance from Ottawa for less auspiciously sponsored municipal bridge-building. The Vision That Became a Mirage 299 largest northern mineral deposit discovered during the Vision years - the vast iron-ore lode in the Snake River area of the Yukon - was found by Crest Explorations Limited, a subsidiary of California Standard Company, while hunting for oil. While this find was not connected with the government's road-building program, its discovery was indirectly the result of the incentives the government gave for oil and gas exploration. Exploration of gold showings in the Barren Lands, northeast of Yellowknife, and lead-zinc and iron-ore deposits on Baffin Island, as well as many other geologically favoured regions continued apace throughout the Diefenbaker Years. But since mineral production of the North was based almost entirely on the depressed gold and uranium markets, the value of northern mineral output actually dropped at a time when the Vision was supposed to be in its full glow. The North's two uranium mines - Eldorado on Great Bear Lake and Rayrock in the Marian River area -ceased operation in 1959 and ig6o. The Rankin Inlet nickel mine -Canada's northernmost mining operation -shut down on September 20, 1962, after five brave years of producing $8.3 millions worth of nickel and copper. Aside from the tungsten property at Flat River, the only new mine that even approached production during the Vision years was Taurcanis, a tiny gold operation in the Matthews Lake area, 150 miles northeast of Yellowknife. One major northern orebody whose exploitation was assured by action of the Diefenbaker government was the massive lead-zinc deposit near Pine Point, on the south shore of Great Slave Lake. The showing was first spotted by the sourdoughs tramping towards the Klondike in 1898 and the ensuing exploration by the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company, controlled by the C.P.R., had confirmed the find as one of the world's great base-metal formations. But no mining could begin without a rail connection to the company's smelter at Trail, British Columbia. By subsidizing the construction of a railroad 300 Exercise of Power from Roma, Alberta, 438 miles north to Pine Point, the Conservative government guaranteed development of the huge deposit, as well as opening up the arable, virgin expanse of the Peace River Country. Another long-term benefit of the Vision may be future oil production in the Canadian North. That there was oil in Canada's sub-Arctic had been suspected ever since 1789, when Alexander Mackenzie discovered some pieces of yellow waxy material he called "petrolium" along the banks of the river that bears his name. More than sixty exploratory wells had been drilled in the Mackenzie River delta between igig and 1957, but the only significant strike had been the Norman Wells field, tapped in 192o by Imperial Oil Limited. A minor gas discovery by Western Minerals' Chance No. i in the Yukon's Eagle Plain area, 150 miles northeast of Dawson, made in the summer of 1959, stimulated extensive exploration. By ig6o fifty-eight aircraft and five hundred men were involved in an oil hunt that covered an area nearly three times as large as the oil-producing region of Alberta. Permits on more than 125 million acres were eventually taken up, with the participating companies pledging to spend Up to $2.90 per acre on development activities to maintain their drilling rights. Three other small gas wells were found in the Trout Lake area north of the British Columbia border, but the boldest gamble of all - a scheme by Peter Bawden Drilling Limited of Calgary to sink a 12,500400t well on the Melville Island in the Arctic archipelago -turned up a dry hole. The Northern Affairs Department drew up unprecedentedly favourable legislation to encourage the production of northern petroleum, but the isolation of the fields meant that even the few successful wells had to be capped. Commercial ekploitation of the Yukon petroleum-if proved in sufficient quantities- would require the construction of a 6oo-mile pipeline to tidewater at Skagway, Alaska, in order to reach potential sales areas such as Japan. The Arctic islands, The Vision That Became a Mirage 301 where geologists predict the most significant pools of oil will eventually be found, are closer to the huge European market than the fields of the Middle East. But again, there is no known way to transport the oil there cheaply. Alvin Hamilton once had a scheme for pumping the oil through plastic pipelines into the holds of atomic cargo submarines lying off-shore, under the icecap. They would have emerged again at the terminal of another pipeline, off the coast of Europe. The engineering plans for such a vessel were actually completed by the Mitchell Group in England, but the prototype would have cost $54 millions -not an economic price for an oil tanker. Petroleum geologists who studied the sedimentary structures of the Canadian Arctic estimated that the area had the hypothetical potential of another Middle East, but at the same time they admitted that the oil would probably stay in the ground for some time to come, and that their rush into the Canadian North had been prompted mainly by a wish to protect their long-term interests. The thorny obstacles to the large-scale development of the Canadian Arctic were swept aside as irrelevant details by the breath-taking enthusiasm of Alvin Hamilton. He referred to the Vision as "the hottest thing in the world," or "the foundation for a nation of two hundred million people." Under Hamilton's direction, the budget of the Northern Affairs Department, which during the last full year of the Liberal regime had totalled just over $34 millions, was raised to $71.5 millions for the 1958-59 fiscal period. In co-operation with George Hees at the Department of Transport, expenditures were tripled for northern airport construction, northern harbour development and the building of federal ice-breakers. Probably Hamilton's most important contribution as Minister of Northern Affairs was his establishment of the Resources for Tomorrow Conference - the first time since 19o6 that federal and provincial agencies had met in plenary session for the purpose of formulating a program for the better conservation and management of the nation's natural resources. 302 Exercise of Power The Conference was held in Montreal in October of 196 1, a year after Hamilton had left Northern Affairs to fulfil his own political destiny in the more important Agriculture portfolio. Hamilton's replacement was Walter Dinsdale, a Conservative who got into the Commons by winning the Brandon, Manitoba, seat in a 1951 by-election. Dinsdale was a gentle slump of a man more interested in picayune detail than visionary planning. One of his few distinctions was that he occasionally played second cornet in the band of the Salvation Army's Ottawa Citadel Corps. He had been a full-time musician and social worker with the Salvation Army before World War 11, and in 1962 confessed to a group of church newspaper editors that "politics is a power struggle and its values are not those of Christian ethics." Under Dinsdale's dampening influence, Northern Affairs returned to its more pedestrian pre-Alvin ways. With Hamilton's departure Diefenbaker seemed to lose interest in Northern Affairs. Left without a strong advocate in cabinet, the Department's budgets were trimmed, and the Vision became a faintly absurd political clich6. One irony of the Vision's brief flowering was that Canada's Eskimos, who might have been expected to be among its prime beneficiaries, were only slightly better off at the end of the Diefenbaker Years. This remarkable band of people had managed to survive with only primitive instruments in a land where the white man, with all his technical skills, can scarcely exist. During the Vision period, a great deal of money was pumped into a sincere effort to improve the Eskimo's lot. In fact, according to a United Nations survey, Canada in 1959 was spending an estimated $2,3oo a year per Eskimo in health and welfare costs - an amount equivalent to the theoretical cost of wintering Canada's entire Eskimo population at the Cha- teau Laurier Hotel, in Ottawa. Yet most of these unfortunate people continued to live in unimaginable squalor. The United Nations World Health Organization estimated that 50 per cent of Eskimo babies die in their first The Vision That Became a Mirage 303 year. The average life expectancy of the Canadian Eskimo remained an incredibly low twenty-nine years, compared with 67.6 years in the rest of Canada. One area in which the Conservative government did significantly help the Eskimos was in advancing elementary education facilities for their children. In 1957, when the Liberals surrendered power, only 18 per cent of young Eskimos had access to schools. With the investment Of $20 millions in 158 new classrooms, this important ratio was raised to 66 per cent by 1963, and plans had been made to advance this figure close to ioo per cent by 1968. One indication of the tremendous complexity of integrating the Eskimos into the white man's world was that by j963, even with the increased educational facilities, fewer than a dozen Eskimo teenagers were continuing their studies into high school. That more could not be done to help the Eskimos was not the responsibility of Northern Affairs personnel. The Department has always been staffed by some of the most competent civil servants in Ottawa, and Gordon Robertson, its deputy minister during the Diefenbaker Years, is one of the outstanding members of Canada's public service. The trouble was, rather, in the character of the North itself. Political rhetoric, no matter how inspired, could work little magic in that inhospitable barren land. SEVENTEEN The Bill of Rights FOR JOHN Diefenbaker himself, probably the headiest moments of the Diefenbaker Years came on July i, i 96o, when he rose in the House of Commons to deliver a sixty-two-minute address that eloquently climaxed the chief legislative crusade of his political life: the adoption of a Canadian Bill of Rights. He wound up his speech with a rhetorical flourish which will probably be quoted by afterdinner speakers at political banquets for as long as there are Tories in Canada: I am a Canadian, a free Canadian, ftee to speak without fear free to worship God in my own way, free to standfor what I think right,firee to oppose what I believe wrong, orfree to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of fteedom I pledge to upholdfor mysel(and all mankind. Forty-six m.p.'s followed the Prime Minister in the Bill of Rights debate. One of the Conservatives who spoke compared the document to the Sermon on the Mount. Others saw in it a kinship with Magna Carta, and nearly all Diefenbaker's supporters predicted that the Bill of Rights would become his chief monument, just as Confederation had been that of Sir John A. Macdonald. The Conservative Party took advantage of such partisan enthusiasm by treating the new Bill of Rights as a propaganda broadsheet. At least one cabinet minister sent a copy to every schoolchild in his riding and Party officials 304 The Bill of Rights 305 distributed copies of the Bill, issued by the Queen's Printer, bearing extracts from Diefenbaker's Commons speech and a four-inch-long reproduction of his signature. The Tories announced that the calfskin original from which these prints had been drawn would become the centrepiece of a "freedom train" exhibition which would cross Canada during the 1967 centennial celebrations. It was little wonder that Lever Brothers, the Toronto toiletries firm, caught the spirit of it all and in mid-1962 offered free copies of the Bill with the large-size tube of its toothpaste. The practice was stopped when John Matheson, the Liberal member for Leeds, brought it to the attention of Parliament. Although the end effect of the Conservative propaganda was to reduce the Bill to a measure brought forward chiefly for its political salability, passage of the Bill of Rights actually did represent the climax of Diefenbaker's intensely felt, life-long battle to strengthen Canadian statutes against threats to the basic freedoms essential for human dignity. During his seventeen long years in Opposition, he frequently urged Parliament to adopt a rights bill, and proposed several drafts. His most eloquent appeals on the subject were delivered in the House of Commons on May 16, 1947, and March 24, 1952. But once he was in power, Diefenbaker waited for nearly three years before suddenly rushing the Bill through Parliament. On March 14, 1958, during an election rally in Vancouver, Diefenbaker disclosed that the Justice Department was considering the draft for a bill of rights which, he said, would "preserve and maintain those great things - those things of the soul, those things of faith that are greater than any other consideration." The bill was introduced to the Commons on September 5, 1958. Nothing was heard for the next eighteen months. Finally, in the dying weeks of the 196o session, the legislation was brought in as a matter of pre-prorogation urgency. The bill was given second reading on July 7, then sent 306 Exercise of Power to a special committee where legal experts were urgently requested to give their opinions. After twenty-five sittings, the committee returned the bill with nine amendments and a more inspiring preamble.* Back in the Commons, the government accepted a Liberal amendment specifying the right to use interpreters in court, and on August 4, Diefenbaker moved third reading. The Liberals and CCF went on record as favouring an extension of the bill to cover rights of the family, social security, free movement, freedom from attacks on personal reputation, and the right of privacy, but the Conservatives defeated the motion 141-34. The Bill of Rights finally became part of the law of the land at ii:oo p.m., August to, ig6o. Though Toronto's Salurday Night labelled the Bill a "sonorous, solidified hunk of Diefenbaker vision," most editorial writers and commentators welcomed the measure, suggesting that its worth would soon be established in the nation's courtrooms. In contrast, most members of the legal profession gave the new law a less than luke-warm reception. The handful of citizens who immediately attempted to utilize the new law in their court battles found themselves disappointed and confused by the narrowness of its application. At least part of this confusion was due to a widespread misunderstanding of what the Bill was designed to accomplish. It was never meant as a law to protect Canadians from one another; its fundamental purpose was conceived as a protection for Canadians from abuses of *The Committee discarded the original preamble written by Diefenbaker and substituted a version drafted under Davie Fulton's direction. Future schoolchildren who may have to memorize Fulton's simple, dignified phrases should be grateful that the committee did not adopt instead the flowery preamble suggested by Paul Martineau, Diefenbaker's parliamentary secretary. Five times as long as Fulton's version, the Martineau declaration began: "Oh Canada, land of endless vistas. old as the rocks of time, yet fresh as the newest dawn, forged from the strange convulsions of the earth's bowels, vast, sprawling, sweeping spaces, rich and varied, offering hope and over-renewed promise.. .. " The Bill of Rights 307 power by the federal state. In essence it was meant to be a set of instructions to the courts of Canada to interpret federal laws in a way that would provide the maximum protection of individual rights - a worthwhile codification of legal ideals. That, and nothing more. It was ironical that one of the first test cases of the teetotalling Prime Minister's Bill of Rights concerned an admitted alcoholic's liberty to keep drinking. Harold Griffen, a sixty-year-old resident of Kitchener, Ontario, who had a record of more than two hundred arrests, had assaulted Jack Kauk, a waiter at a local hotel, because he had been refused further service. The magistrate ruled that this was a violation of the guarantee of "equality before the law" as set out in the Bill of Rights, dismissed the case, and ordered the waiter to pay court costs. But Griffen's triumph did not last long. He was arrested a few weeks later and given a thirteen-week jail term, for daring waiters to throw him out again, now that he had Mr Diefenbaker on his side. For the first few months after its passage, lawyers appeared to bring the Bill of Rights into just about every conceivable legal situation. It was unsuccessfully invoked in trying to persuade the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto to hire a six-year-old saxophonist who had been refused membership in the musicians' union. Douglas Campbell, a bearded apostle of nuclear disarmament, found it useless in preventing a conviction of impeding traffic, after he'd lectured a downtown Toronto crowd on the horrors of atomic war. The lawyer for Max Bluestein, a convicted Ontario gambler, had no success pleading the Bill against policemen who used as evidence telephone conversations they had conducted while posing as bookies. One case where the Bill did apply but actually had a detrimental effect on the accused was the trial, in August, ig6o, at Surnmerside, Prince Edward Island, of fifteenyear-old Andrew Arsenault, charged with the murder of a farmer at Abram Village. Section 427 of the Criminal 308 Exercise of Power Code provides that trials of juveniles can take place in camera, but Magistrate Chester MacDonald ruled that under Section 2 (0 of the new Bill, even juveniles "have a right" to a public hearing, and so ordered. In the original Commons debates on the Bill of Rights, government spokesmen confidently indicated they expected the new law would become a sort of superstatute, shielding the ordinary citizen from the injustices of any federal laws or regulations whose effects might invade basic freedoms. "It doesn't make any difference," said David Walker, the Conservative Minister of Public Works, during the Commons debate, "what stupid government might in another twenty years follow this government. No matter what it does, there will always be the Bill of Rights to ensure that even though an act may have been passed clandestinely or surreptitiously, or people may have missed the meaning of it, there is nevertheless superimposed upon that particular piece of legislation the protective terms of the Bill of Rights." But even before the bill was given royal assent, Walker's interpretation was disproved. The lawyer for Irene Rebrin, a Russian-language teacher at the University of British Columbia ordered deported seven months previously by Ottawa, used the Bill of Rights for his appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, by contending that the Immigration Department had denied her the basic rights inherent in the new legislation. The Supreme Court dismissed the case and ruled that Miss Rebrin had not been deprived of her liberty, except by "due process of law" -in other words, the ordinary, legal working of the Immigration Act. In effect, the old Act had been given precedence over the new bill. A similar judgement was handed down some months later in a case involving a British Columbia Indian accused of having liquor in his possession while away from his reserve. The defence lawyer's contention was that his client was entitled to equality before the law and that Section i (a) of the Bill of Rights gave him "the fight to ... enjoyment of property and not to be deprived The Bill of Rights 309 thereof except by due process of law," thus overruling the liquor-prohibiting section of the Indian Act. But the magistrate decided the Bill of Rights did not overrule existing legislation. Because of the wide publicity it received, the Bill of Rights became one of the most controversial legislative acts of the Diefenbaker Years. The most thorough investigation of its effectiveness was carried out by the Manitoba section of the Canadian Bar Association under the direction of Richard S. Bowles, a Winnipeg lawyer. To the delegates at the Association's 1962 meeting in Halifax, Bowles reported that the government had made promises of the Bill's effect but court decisions had failed to fulfil or justify these promises. Bowles and his committee recognized that two years of testing might be too short a period "to justify the making of comments overly critical of the Bill's long-term effect," and noted a few instances of the Bill's change of the law, but they concluded that during its first two years it had proved to be of very little value." Few of the organizations whose daily concern is the defence of human rights could find much praise for the legislation. Officials of the Jehovah's Witnesses, a minority religious group that had been much persecuted in Quebec, the Negro Citizenship Association, and the Christian Science movement publicly declared that the Bill of Rights had not helped them in a tangible way. There were some exceptions. Saul Hayes, executive vice-president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, predicted that the Bill would produce a certain amount of soul-searching in the courts on the question of human rights. The legal profession itself gave Diefenbaker's bill a divided verdict, with most of the country's best constitutional lawyers opposed. W. R. Lederman, the Dean of the Queen's University law faculty, concluded that it was 11 well worth doing." But Dr Ronald Dehler, of the University of Ottawa, told the parliamentary committee sitting on the Bill: "I think the thing is absurd, because it's trying 310 Exercise of Power to put on statute law that which cannot be put into statute law. It's trying to take a universal and put it into concrete. These creatures are protected by a corpus which grows with honest judges, and not with this kind of nonsense." Somewhere in between was the opinion of D. W. Mundell, professor of constitutional law at Osgoode Hall, Toronto. "The Bill will not likely lead to any development of the law that would not have taken place without it," he wrote. "There are uncertainties in the Bill that will lead to a vast amount of litigation." Dean Ivan C. Rand of the University of Western Ontario law faculty, a former judge of the Supreme Court of Canada and one of the nation's best judicial minds, came out against the bill. "It is basically defective in its character as a statute," he wrote. "As an Act to govern the interpretation of other Acts it is lacking in specific direction for dealing with language which clearly violates the freedoms declared but for which no alternative interpretation is possible. The Bill's provision for due process of law, a phrase which could establish an overriding necessity for rational legislation, is without a definition which no court could disregard." Most of the legal experts objected on the grounds that instead of adding to the protection of the individual, Diefenbaker's legislation was confusing an already complicated area of jurisprudence. They pointed out that the bill has few guarantees not already embodied in the British North America Act's provision of a "constitution similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom." This affords Canadians all the protection of the ancient tripod of British Common Law: Magna Carta (1215), the Habeas Corpus Act (1679), and the Bill of Rights (1689). The 1948 Canadian parliamentary committee which investigated the need for a Bill of Rights concluded that it would be "unwise" to write it into federal statutes because, as W. P M. Kennedy, dean of the University of Toronto School of Law, wrote at the time: "Our freedoms are well enough protected in the ordinary law, and if this is not so, it ought to be possible to change the law in the various The Bill of Rights 311 jurisdictions to suit the occasion." Dean Frank Scott of the McGill Law School continued to advocate this course even after passage of the Diefenbaker Bill. Scott maintained that since the federal government has the authority to create new crimes, it would be simple to make acts of racial prejudice, for instance, punishable under the Criminal Code -just as firing a worker for trade-union activities was made an offence. Diefenbaker's Bill of Rights specifically stated that "any act or thing done under the authority of [the War Measures Act], shall be deemed not to be an abrogation, abridgement or infringement of any right or freedom rec- ognized by the Canadian Bill of Rights." Apart from this weakness in not increasing the protection of citizens in wartime, the Bill of Rights was attacked by lawyers for merely stating worthwhile principles without providing the sanctions required to make any law effective. The bill included no machinery to enforce the fundamental rights which it declared all Canadian citizens shall possess, and set out no penalties for their abuse. One of the basic reasons why the Bill of Rights could not be made a stronger document was that to do so would have required agreement from all the provinces for an amendment of the British N orth America Act. Diefen- baker wished to do this, but he felt he could not win provincial approval. The Diefenbaker Bill itself clearly stipulated that its guarantees apply "only to matters coming within the legislative authority of the Parliament of Canada." Since this does not include civil rights-the most often violated of all rights -the bill virtually had no effect in correcting the abuses stemming from prejudices involving race, colour, and religion. "The Diefenbaker Bill of Rights," quipped one Toronto lawyer, "provides protec- tion to all Canadians, just so long as they don't live in any of the provinces." Diefenbaker himself recognized this limitation in his July 1, 196o, speech. "The Bill of Rights," * Part II, Section 5, paragraph (3). 3 12 Exercise of Power he declared, "is entirely within the jurisdiction of the federal parliament. It covers only those matters which under the division of powers are allocated to the federal parliament and thereby in no way will it impinge upon or infringe the absolute powers provided in both section 92 and one or two other sections of the British North America Act." On the hustings, however, the Prime Minister made quite different claims for his Bill. "Recognizing the sacredness of the human personality, we've placed on the Statute Books the Bill of Rights which assures equality to every Canadian, whatever his race, his colour, or his religion," he stated at a Tory banquet in Fredericton, New Brunswick, on March 14, 1962, in a sally typical of the way he treated the new law in his political presentations. Most of Diefenbaker's speeches during the 1962 campaign referred to the Bill of Rights in similar terms. He told the annual meeting of the Progressive Conservative Association in Ottawa on January 18, 1963: "We've brought about the Bill of Rights to assure that Canadians would be free from discrimination whatever their race, their colour, whatever their religion." During the 1963 election campaign, he played on the fact that the Liberals had never introduced a Bill of Rights. "When I used to advocate the Bill of Rights," he told a breakfast rally in Saskatoon on March 2, "the Liberal Party said No. But I said we must banish discrimination under the law." Such pronouncements distorted the intent and effect of the Bill. By pretending that through its passage he had "assured equality to every Canadian," Diefenbaker raised the aspirations of his listeners far beyond possible realization. But as a testimonial to his regime, the Bill of Rights at least had the virtue of being completely typical of John Diefenbaker: it was a well-intentioned, inexplicably delayed piece of legislation, so oversold to the voters that The Bill of Rights 313 eventually most of the beneficial if limited influence it deserved was dissipated. EIGHTEEN The Servile Press N HIS TURBULENT relationship with the news media of Canada, John Diefenbaker behaved more than a little like an inept suitor, whose passionate longing for the wilful siren he was so assiduously trying to court lacked both understanding and respect. Few Canadian public figures have paid more heed to the press and understood the real nature of its function less. Diefenbaker became the victim of his own attempts to manipulate the news so often, because he seemed to believe that the various communications media ought to act as direct transmission lines between himself and the public -passing on nothing but his own version of the valiant efforts he was making on behalf of "the average Canadian." When reporters insisted on prying backstage into his regime, he sincerely convinced himself that their behaviour amounted to an unpatriotic conspiracy, probably Liberal-inspired. He was particularly frustrated by the intractibility of Ottawa correspondents, because during his seventeen years as an opposition m.p., he had enjoyed a warm relationship with most members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. In those days, he seldom went for a long trip without sending reporters postcards describing his journey, and often entertained correspondents casually in his centre-town Ottawa apartment. Nearly all the stories 314 The Servile Press 315 then written about him were favourable portraits of an admirable underdog, tussling with the arrogant political Establishment. James A. Oastler, Ottawa Bureau Chief of the Montreal Star, a man of wisdom and tender conscience who before his untimely death in 1962 had been close to Dienfenbaker, once described the relations between the Prime Minister and the press this way: "After John became prime minister, he expected that his past friendship with reporters would prevent them from criticizing his performance. He felt then and feels now that you're either wholeheartedly for him, or you're against him. He refuses to understand that good newspapermen - even those who were his cronies - can't let personal feelings interfere with their objectivity. Because he can't comprehend the motives of correspondents who write critically about his administration, he interprets their comments as personal insults. At the same time, the reporters who had been his friends also feel betrayed, because he no longer shares confidences with them. Of course he can't. No prime minister can. The office necessarily formalizes human relationships." The deterioration in the Prime Minister's press relations was particularly noticeable, because it had a definite evolution. During the 1957 and 1958 election campaigns, most Ottawa correspondents wrote about Diefenbaker as if he were their personal idol, instead of the Conservative leader. They had all witnessed, and in some cases been victims of, the arrogance displayed by the Liberals in the 22nd Parliament. Diefenbaker seemed a refreshing alter native. He chatted easily with reporters and enlisted their emotions on his side of the political struggle, while the Liberals, having been condemned by most Canadian newspapers for their stand during the pipeline debate, behaved as if the press was momentarily deluded and deranged. The first minor incident in the eventual breakdown of confidence between the new Prime Minister and the 3 16 Exercise of Power Ottawa press corps occurred during May of 1958. Sidney Smith, the Secretary of the State for External Affairs, had turned down an Opposition request for a debate on the ratification of the North American Air Defense Command agreement, by stating that NORAD formed part of Canada's contribution to NATO, and therefore did not need to be debated separately. The following day, May 20, Diefenbaker reversed Smith's stand on a debate, but he also emphasized again that NORAD was part Of NATO. Then on May 28, Paul-Henri Spaak, the Secretary General Of NATO, arrived in Ottawa and held a press conference. He was, not unnaturally, asked whether NORAD was, as both the Prime Minister and the External Affairs Secretary had claimed, part Of NATO. His reply was an astonished and definite negative. Asked about the Spaak statement in the Commons two days later, Diefenbaker blithely replied: "It is apparent that the interpretation given in the press is not in accordance with the statement made by Mr. Spaak ... there is no change in the viewpoint expressed respecting the position Of NORAD." In effect, the Prime Minister was accusing the twenty correspondents who had attended the conference of having deliberately misinterpreted Spaak's reply. This incident was followed on June 13, 1958, by a more serious episode. During a press conference given by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who was paying a brief call to Ottawa on his way home from Washington, the British statesman was asked whether the United Kingdom free trade offer made in the fall Of 1957,* was still open. Macmillan had simply answered "Yes." Since radio and television reporters had not been allowed to take their equipment to this initial conference, Tom Earle, the parliamentary correspondent for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, had asked the British Prime Minister for a brief TV interview later in the day. Macmillan agreed to * For the Diefenbaker government's reaction to this offer, see Chapter ig. The Servile Press 317 see Earle after he had finished his conference with the Canadian Prime Minister. When the two leaders walked out of Diefenbaker's office that afternoon, Earle guided them to the Tv recording equipment set up in a nearby corridor. As a courtesy, Earle advised Macmillan that it was his intention to ask him the same question about the United Kingdom trade offer which he had already answered at the morning press conference. Diefenbaker overheard the exchange, and snapped at Earle: "No, no, you can't ask that!" The CBc reporter had no choice but to obey the Prime Minister's instructions and the television interview with Macmillan, broadcast that night, included only one innocuous question, dealing with what Mr Macmillan felt had been the main accomplishments of his visits to the United States and Canada. When Lester Pearson accused Diefenbaker of having interfered with the freedom of the CBc during the next Commons question period on June 16, the Prime Minister confirmed that he had prevented Macmillan from being questioned, but stated that this was not his idea of interference. "I can only say," he told the House, "in so far as this government is concerned, at no time has there been, directly or indirectly, any interference with the CBC ... there has not been and will not be interference of this kind on the part of this government." His pledge was soon to be tested. As part of his morning routine, Diefenbaker always made it a point to tune into the CB(-'s eight o'clock news -either on his car radio while being driven to work, or on the desk clock-radio in his office. On weekdays, the news was followed by a three-minute talk called "Preview Commentary," featuring members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery analysing current events in the capital. In the spring and early summer of 1959, when the Conservative government was facing its initial wave of troubles, the "Preview Commentary" speakers grew increasingly critical, and rumours began circulating in Ottawa that the Prime Minister was displeased. 318 Exercise of Power At io:oo a.m. on June 15, 1959, Frank Peers, the CBCS supervisor of talks and public affairs, who had been called to Ottawa from his office in Toronto the day before, was handed an unusual memorandum by Charles Jennings, Comptroller of Broadcasting for the network. The memo ordered the cancellation, on June 22, of "Preview Commentary." The chief reason given was that "daily commentary does not permit ... a considered approach. Journalists in the Gallery have a heavy daily work-load. Any additional assignments may suffer for lack of sufficient time for reflection and checking." Peers was told to substitute a five-minute factual summary of the Ottawa scene based on the neutral dispatches of the Canadian Press, to be read by a staff announcer. Peers protested, calling the order an intrusion by management into programming unprecedented during his twelve years with the CBC. He immediately requested an opportunity to discuss the matter with Ernest Bushnell, who was the network's acting president, since Alphonse Ouimet was on sick leave. Bushnell refused to see Peers. H. G. Walker, the director of the CBC's English network, confided to Peers a few days later that Jennings had been told by Bushnell about "external political pressures" involved in the "Preview Commentary" cancellation, and that "the CBC'S corporate structure would be endangered" if the offending program were not immediately removed. After several more days of trying unsuccessfully to negotiate an appointment with Bushnell, Peers returned to his Toronto office, and reported his conversations to his assistants. The Toronto group finally met with Bushnell, in tcLwn for a meeting of the cBc's Board of Direciors, during the evening of June 21. The acting president remained adamant, and when asked what the effects might be if the directors reversed his decision to kill the program, he replied: "I suppose I'd be sent to Siberia." Although Peers had already mentioned the matter to Dr W. L. Morton, the University of Manitoba historian who The Servile Press 319 was a member of the Board,* when the Directors met the next day little discussion of the controversy took place, and the management decision was merely confirmed. Because they then felt that every protest open to them within the Corporation had thus been exhausted, Peers and his senior deputies -Hugh Gillis and Bernard Trotter - resigned. They were shortly joined by thirty-two fellow producers -at different CBC production points across Canada. Faced by the loss of the network's talks and public affairs staff, the directors relented late in the afternoon on June 24, and agreed to reinstate the program.The following week, the Commons Committee on Broadcasting called a special session to investigate the controversy. H. G. Walker, the English network director, set off the hearing's main bombshell, when he testified that on June 17, when he had telephoned Charles Jennings at his home to get the real reason why "Preview Commentary" was being cancelled, he was told that "heads would roll," if the program wasn't off the air by June 22. The "heads" mentioned were those of the CBc's acting president, Ernest Bushnell, and George Nowlan, the Minist& of National Revenue, whose portfolio included responsibility to Parliament for the CBC. Walker also told the Committee of a telephone conversation he'd overheard between Bushnell and Alphonse Ouimet, the ailing CBC President, during which Bushnell advised his boss that the "Preview Commentary" cancellation was absolutely necessary, otherwise they would both lose their jobs. The case documenting the existence of political pressure against the CBC was impressively strengthened by all the witnesses who testified before the committee, until Bushnell himself took the stand. I want to say," he began, 11 as simply and directly as possible, that never at any time has an order or directive been given to me, or to my * Professor Morton was vigorously opposed to the cancellation of "Preview Commentary" and said so to the Board. 320 Exercise of Power president, by the Hon. George Nowlan or by any member of parliament, or by anyone else who could be said to wield political influence." In the face of all the previous testimony, which had fully corroborated the charge of political pressure on Bushnell, he then declared that he had cancelled "Preview Commentary," not because of political threats, but "because it seemed to me that it had somehow changed from the original intention and was not doing a good job.... This is the truth and the simple explanation." He did admit that Nowlan had complained about the quality Of CBc administration, but stoutly denied that political influence of any kind had been applied against him. Instead, he blamed the complaints of 11 certain businessmen" and "schoolteachers" as having been responsible for his decision to change the program. The parliamentary committee was adjourned immediately after Bushnell's appearance. The hearings did serve to bring into the open something Ottawa insiders had suspected for a long time: that the Conservative government, particularly John Diefenbaker, felt the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the govern- ment's own national broadcasting system, had a Liberal bias. Diefenbaker often told political associates that he intended "to clean up the CBC," but his attitude didn't become public knowledge until late in his regime, when David Walker told a public rally in Kingston, Ontario: "Listeners hear nothing but so much propaganda through the CBC. After twenty-two years of Liberal rule, I suppose it's natural that the govern ment-owned CBC should, through it's commentators, be not only tinged with the Liberal brush, but be right down the Liberal side. If you listen to your commentaries you must have realized how disgustingly one-sided the CBC commentators have become." SOME OF THE REPRIMANDS handed to the press during the Diefenbaker Years took the form of indignant telephone calls from the Prime Minister himself. There were cases of The Servile Press 321 highly qualified correspondents being moved out of Ottawa because Diefenbaker had applied personal pressure on their publishers. These tactics were not limited to domestic publications. Time, for example, initially enjoyed excellent relations with John Diefenbaker. When the magazine published a favourable cover story on him, Publisher Henry Luce journeyed to Ottawa and presented the Prime Minister with the original oil painting used on the cover. Diefenbaker had private luncheon with Luce and later attended a Time cocktail party. In the 1958 budget, the Conservatives removed the 20 per cent tax on advertising in the so-called "Canadian" editions of foreign magazines, instituted by the former administration as a last-ditch effort to save Canada's own publications. (On September 16, ig6o, Diefenbaker appointed a Royal Commission "to enquire into and make recommendations concerning the position of and prospects for Canadian magazines and periodicals." The Commissioners -Grattan O'Leary, Claude Beaubien and George Johnston - produced a report making two main recommendations for legislation to aid the ailing industry. Despite the Prime Minister's frequently repeated pledge to implement the report's recommendations, nothing was done.) But when the June 8, 1959, issue of Time suggested that Canada under Diefenbaker was moving toward Nehrustyle neutralism, the Prime Minister called in the magazine's Ottawa Bureau Chief and said he was the best friend Time ever had in Canada, and that if the magazine continued to criticize the administration, he would "expose" Time in the Commons. A few weeks later, Diefenbaker lashed out at the Times of London for a lead editorial suggesting that he was showing a "lack of grip" and had been procrastinating and indecisive. His protests were so strong that the Times felt compelled to send one of its senior editorial writers (then touring North America) to meet him. Again there were vague threats of retaliation, and later in the Commons, Diefenbaker accused Hilary 322 Exercise of Power Brigstocke, the Times correspondent in Ottawa, of publishing statements "that bear no resemblance to the facts." These were merely small skirmishes in a long siege. It wasn't until the Accra affair during the autumn of 1961 that the squabbling between Diefenbaker and the press turned into open hostility. Shortly after Britain formally applied for membership in the European Common Market, a meeting of the Commonwealth Economic Con-, sultative Council was convened at Accra, in Ghana, to explore the difficulties to Commonwealth trade that might arise. Diefenbaker instructed Donald Fleming and George Hees, the Canadian delegates, to make strong statements in defence of Commonwealth trading traditions and privileges. Fleming and Hees submitted drafts of their intended remarks to the Prime Minister, had them approved, then flew to Accra accompanied by six Canadian correspondents. On the evening of September 12, the day before the Canadian ministers were scheduled to address the Conference, Bruce Williams, Canada's High Commissioner to Ghana, held a garden party for the Ottawa visitors. At the reception, Mel Jack, George Hees's executive assistant, told the reporters that he would make available to them a full text of his minister's speech at ten o'clock the following morning at the Star Hotel. Jack waited in the Ghana Supreme Court building, where the conference was held, until Hees started to speak; then he brought the text to the reporters' hotel. Later the same day, Grey Hamilton, Donald Fleming's special assistant, briefed the Canadian reporters on what his minister had said. The dispatches of the correspondents, based on the Hees text and the Fleming briefing, correctly reflected the gravity of the Canadian ministers' concern over the effect of United Kingdom membership in the Common Market. "In an uncompromising statement to the Commonwealth Economic Conference here, Mr Hees presented what amounted to a flat Canadian demand that Britain not join the Common Market," wrote Clark Davey, the Globe and The Servile Press 323 Mail's top reporter, "He indicated that the only terms on which Canada could gracefully accept U.K. membership in the Common Market are British guarantees of maintenance for full Commonwealth preference - terms which Britain cannot hope to obtain and which the Inner Six could not be expected to accept." Davey's story - and those filed by his colleagues - was based on the tone and contents of the Canadian ministers' speeches. "If the great mass of the people who make up the Commonwealth," Hees had said, "believe that the leader member, the United Kingdom, has taken action which, though beneficial to itself, has adversely affected their standard of living, there will be a proportionate weakening of the ties which hold the Commonwealth together. If this feeling were strong enough, it could decrease the effectiveness of the Commonwealth to a point where it exists in name only. The fibre of our economic life from coast to coast will be affected. If four main segments of the nation's economy - agriculture, fisheries, industrial base materials, and manufacturing- feel the impact, I cannot overemphasize the seriousness of this matter for us." Fleming adopted much the same line: "The United Kingdom cannot have a foot in each group and retain the freedom of action which is necessary to the leadership of the Commonwealth"; "Britain is launched on a slippery slope"; "The Commonwealth can never be the same again." The attitude of the ministers' declarations seemed so extreme to Christopher Young, a serious young Southam reporter so capable that he was shortly afterwards named editor of the Ottawa Citizen, that on the final evening of the conference, he sought private interviews with both Fleming and Hees. They confirmed the contents of their speeches and the substance of their attitude, so that Young wrote a further dispatch, which began: "Canada has launched an all-out campaign to keep Britain out of the European Common Market." In Ottawa, meanwhile, the press reports coming back 324 Exercise of Power from Accra were causing considerable excitement. Editorial opinion -especially in staunchly Conservative papers - was unanimous in condemning Canada's uncompromising attitude toward the mother country. Faced with this crescendo of criticism, John Diefenbaker disowned his cabinet colleagues and blamed the press. When Pearson asked him to comment on the Accra reports, the Prime Minister replied he was confident that the stories did not represent what was said. "The interesting point here," Diefenbaker lectured Pearson, "is that this was a meeting behind closed doors. I have found in the past, as the honourable gentleman must have found in his experience, that some of the interpretations, speculative and otherwise, that follow such meetings very often bear little relationship to what was actually said." Even as Diefenbaker was replying to Pearson on Parliament Hill, the text of Hees's speech was being teletyped to the newsrooms of Canadian papers by the press services, confirming exactly the quotes contained in the original stories written by Clark Davey and Christopher Young. Fleming and Hees had no idea of the furor they had caused in Canada, until they landed in Rome the day after the Accra conference. They were met by the Canadian ambassador to Italy, literally hopping from one foot to the other, who urged Fleming to call Diefenbaker immediately. The Prime Minister was blazing mad and warned Fleming that he would renounce the Accra performance. When the two errant ministers returned to Ottawa, they too promptly turned on the press. "The misinterpretation of what happened at Accra has been enormous," Fleming righteously complained to the Commons. "It has been said that Canada led a ganging up on the United Kingdom. Nothing could be further from the truth. That statement was published by the nephew of the Leader of the Opposition." (Christopher Young's mother was Pearson's sister-in-law.) Never in his public life, Fleming declared, had he experienced so much inaccuracy and misunderstanding. The suggestion that he had pursued an anti- The Servile Press 325 British line was "a blatant lie." Hees limited himself to claiming that his speech had been distributed without his knowledge. The Accra incident marked a definite turning-point in Diefenbaker's press relations. It clearly demonstrated to Ottawa correspondents that the Prime Minister had no compunction about using them in his political manceuvres. That this atmosphere of mutual distrust ever developed was probably due in part to the absence of a knowledgeable full-time press secretary on Diefenbaker's staff. James Nelson, a former Bureau chief of the British United Press in Ottawa, had ftlled the job from June 1957 to the end of February ig6o. But he was not granted enough authority to make his position effective, and when he resigned he was never replaced. (This lack of press contact in the Prime Minister's office was in sharp contrast to the minis- ters in his administration, who built up a cadre of seventythree aides, most of whom were concerned with some aspect of public relations.) Between parliamentary sessions, Diefenbaker distributed most of the news he wanted reporters to get by allowing himself to be quizzed during the short stroll from his office to the Privy Council Chamber, on the second floor of the East Block. He invariably gave just enough of an answer to be formally satisfactory without opening himself to a new question which might go further than the first. When he didn't want to honour a query with a reply, he'd tell one of his Macdonald anecdotes or throw off the question with a quip, such as: "For me to be able to instruct you in that would take a great deal of time." Diefenbaker seemed to regard every one of his encounters with reporters as a contest of wits, and he loved to taunt any questioner who was not properly prepared. "The press conference is his cross-examining session," wrote Philip Deane, of the Globe and Mail. "He is asked a question and up shoot the eyebrows into two sarcastic angles, off pop the tortoise-shell glasses, round 326 Exercise of Power goes the head, sweeping along the audience. The question, we are given to understand, is puerile." Reporters who had written critical stories about any phase of his administration could count on being ticked off for their misdemeanours. During a press conference in the winter of 1962, for example, Diefenbaker chided one Ottawa correspondent for having described the government scheme to increase university grants as a mere bookkeeping entry. "You called it that in the second line of your first paragraph," he accused the abashed scribe. To gauge how well his public image was being projected, Diefenbaker regularly read eight newspapers: the Toronto Daily Star, the Toronto Telegram, the Toronto Globe and Mail, the Montreal Gazette, the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, the Prince Albert Herald, the Christian Science Monitor, and the New York Times. His office staff included eight clerks whose full-time job it was to prepare daily a portfolio of clippings for him from other papers and magazines. His concern with the public's image of him included an unusual one-man press conference held in his bedroom on January 20, 1958. Diefenbaker had been kept at home by a torn muscle in his back, suffered when he slipped on a stone while walking from his East Block office to the Commons. Rumours had begun to be heard in Ottawa that he might be seriously ill. Since his office refused to issue any statement about his health, Charles Lynch, the chief of Southam News Services, telephoned the Prime Minister at his residence to inquire about his condition. Diefenbaker immediately asked him to come over. Lynch was shown straight into the Prime Minister's bedroom. "Dressed in a bright-blue dressing-gown adorned with gold brocade, he strutted up and down, flexing his muscles and kicking his knees," Lynch reported later. At one point, the Prime Minister even threw off his gown to show Lynch just exactly how fit he was. But very rarely were newsmen given the chance to take such initiative. Unlike most democratic politicians who use the news reports of their activities as a convenient The Servile Press 327 measure of their impact on the public mind, John Diefenbaker tried to reverse the process: he devised headlines, then acted on them. He often gavt the impression of operating the nation's affairs according to press deadlines. During the 1958 Liberal leadership convention, for example, when Pearson was getting most of the political headlines, Diefenbaker suddenly announced that the government would immediately launch a great study of United States social security laws, to see whether the more generous allowances paid to retired Americans might be made available in Canada. The announcement set off much press speculation - at least temporarily moving Pearson off the front pages - and raised the hopes of pensioners that they might soon expect the higher payments. Nearly a year after Diefenbaker's announcement, Dr Robert Clark, a University of British Columbia economist, delivered the study to the government. No legislation based on it was introduced. During the federal-provincial conference on unemployment in the winter of ig6o, after some of the provincial leaders had given their views, and British Columbia Premier W A. C. Bennett had risen to speak, Diefenbaker, who was presiding at the "closed door" sessions, unexpectedly proposed a ten-minute adjournment. Since lunch hour was approaching, Bennett suggested they might wait, but the Prime Minister insisted. During the brief interval, he slipped out of the conference room and told reporters waiting outside that he was proposing the establishment of a commission to study the unemployment problem. The announcement caught the banner lines in early editions of the afternoon papers. Had Diefenbaker waited until lunch he would have missed the headline, and his comments would have had to be shared with the provincial premiers. Similarly, during the Throne Speech debates that open the parliamentary sessions, Diefenbaker invariably attempted to steal the news impact away from Lester Pearson. During the ig6o debate, for example, when Pearson led off by delivering a carefully documented 328 Exercise of Power indictment of the Diefenbaker government, the Prime Minister replied, not answering any of the Opposition Leader's accusations, or even by defending his own Throne Speech. Instead, he proceeded to outline some further headline-catching items of intended government business, such as the establishment of a royal commission to examine the efficiency of the federal civil service, and a plan to Canadianize the British North America Act. Dur- ing the 1962 Throne Speech debate, Diefenbaker again swept Pearson's meticulous indictment of Conservative policies off the front pages by suddenly announcing that the government intended to implement most of the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Publications. That won him prime space in the morning editions. Next day, again eschewing any defence of his government's record, he rose in his seat at I I:4o a.m., and barely caught the afternoon paper headlines with his peremptory announcement of a ten-dollar increase in old age pensions. As the editorial support of Canadian newspapers drifted away from him, Diefenbaker turned more and more to television - a valuable medium for its neutrality in merely transmitting his pronouncements without editorial com- ment. A natural actor, he quickly mastered a sincere look and lofty diction calculated to sway his viewers. He made a role out of each TV performance. "The harsher the studio lights, the more he looks like Abraham Lincoln," Allister Grosart, his television mentor, once observed. Diefenbaker was finicky about his television appearances and would sometimes not go on the air unless his mood was exactly right. It cost the CBC $i,6oo to record his five-minute Christmas message in 1962, for instance, because the Prime Minister postponed his appearance at the Ottawa TV studio five times, without sufficient warning to call off the crew of technicians standing by. Once at the studio, he could be a demanding performer. On July 14, 1958, when he arrived at the CBC'S Ottawa TV station to make a national appeal for support of the Conversion The Servile Press 329 Loan, only to be told that the station's teleprompter wasn't working properly, he became so enraged that he threatened to have the responsible technicians fired. In the TV studios, he advised producers on how he wanted to have his face lighted, and fretted about the angle from which he would be shot. Diefenbaker worried about his appearance with the unabashed vanity of a matinee idol. When his cabinet colleagues presented him with an oil portrait of himself by the Toronto artist Kenneth Forbes, Dielenbaker complained about the reproduction of his coiffure, and Forbes had to make a special journey to Ottawa and retouch some of the curls. Although he enjoyed the attention of photographers, he went to some length to prevent himself from being photographed in embarrassing poses. On March 4, 1958, during a campaign reception at Scarborough, Ontario, a middleaged woman expressed her admiration of the Conservative leader by bussing him firmly on the right cheek. The Prime Minister, who had been chuckling affably a moment before, turned pale with fury and snapped at a photographer who had captured the kiss: "I won't have that used!" Shortly after Diefenbaker assumed office, a reporter walked with him from his East Block office to a noonhour banquet at the Chateau Laurier Hotel. As they made their way through Confederation Square jammed with summer tourists, the newsman noticed that the Prime Minister managed to spot every amateur camera pointed at him and contrived to give each of them his favourite angle-just off full-face. It was a calculated response, yet grown so instinctive that all the way to the Hotel, he continued answering the reporter's questions without a pause. BY 1962 DIEFENBAKER'S press relations had reached their breaking-point. That winter the Prime Minister confided to an associate that he felt the really effective opposition to 330 Exercise of Power his regime was coming not from the Liberal Party but from the reporters on Parliament Hill. On January 5, 1962, at the annual meeting of the Progressive Conservative Association of Toronto, he attacked "the servile press which day in and day out preaches the doctrine that we in Canada are economically not making the advancement we should." By election eve the feelings between the country's political press and the Prime Minister had deteriorated to such"a degree that some Ottawa correspondents were convinced Diefenbaker was trying deliberately to goad reporters into intemperate criticism so that he could appeal to the elector's sympathy as the victim of a spiteful press that deliberately distorted all the good he had tried to do. III feeling between the Prime Minister and the press developed almost as soon as the 1962 election campaign began, when the surge of affection he had expected to feel from the crowds was not forthcoming, and the reporters accompanying him reported this fact. At first the squabble turned on such minor matters as the size of the audiences. The impartial Canadian Press, for instance, reported that the Diefenbaker election rally in the Charlottetown Sports Arena on May 17 had been attended by a crowd Of 2,300, During his flight from Prince Edward Island to his next speaking engagement at Windsor, Ontario, Diefenbaker called a press conference aloft and announced that the crowd had totalled 4,000. In his Windsor speech the next day he accused newsmen of slanting their reports of the Charlottetown meeting, and declared that the real attendance figure there had been 4,400. In another speech the same day, at nearby Chatham, he referred to Charlottetown again, and said that the crowd had "numbered well over 5,400." Meanwhile back in Charlottetown, Walter Shaw, the Island's Conservative premier, made his own contribution by declaring that the Charlottetown crowd had, in fact, totalled "over 6,ooo." This war of attendance figures turned ugly a week later when only 1,350 people showed up to hear the Prime The Servile Press 331 Minister in the 5,ooo-seat Edmonton Arena. Earlier the same day, the Edmonton Journal, which had supported the Tories in 1957 and 1958, published a front-page editorial, condemning Diefenbaker for giving Canada an "alternatively unsteady and blatantly opportunistic" administration, and accused him of "appalling mismanagement." Instead of attacking the Liberals and praising his own accomplishments, Diefenbaker turned his speech in Edmonton that night into a tirade against the newspaper, and unnamed forces which, he claimed, had been in clandestine opposition to him over the years, "Strong interests are against us," he warned his audience in grave and mysterious tones, "but whatever the strong interests may be, I prefer to have the people with me." When Charles King, a correspondent for Southam News Services, reported of the Edmonton meeting: "In the same city where the Conservative campaign caught fire in 1958, the Diefenbaker bubble burst Friday night," Diefenbaker refused to answer any further question put by him. The next evening at Trail, British Columbia, the Prime Minister shouted at King: "I have nothing to say to you at all. Anybody can ask me questions but not you.... I mean that, too. That's final with you." He continued to berate King, rudely and bitterly, accusing him of "that ten-thousand-dollar fish story.* ... I thought you were through with that kind of thing ... it's another diabolical concoction." On the morning after he blew up at King, Diefenbaker discussed the episode with two of his aides, John Fisher and George Hogan. They suggested it might be a good idea if he apologized to King for attacking him in public, * Diefenbaker was referring to a story written by Charles King, on September 28, 1958, describing a fishing trip into the Yukon during which the Prime Minister caught a two-and-a-half pound speckled lake trout. To ensure his comfort, various government agencies spent an estimated $ io,ooo on the expedition, including construction of a small air strip. The money had been spent without Diefenbaker's permission and he was furious with King for implying that he had ordered the expenditure. 332 Exercise of Power without actually retracting what he had said. The Prime Minister was on the point of accepting this suggestion when Olive Diefenbaker intervened. She said the Prime Minister might look foolish if he apologized, and that he would be wrong to allow King or any other newspaperman to write such things with immunity. Her advice prevailed. Diefenbaker eventually strained his relations with accompanying reporters so badly that as he climbed on the Prime Minister's aircraft on another leg of the campaign, Val Sears of the Toronto Star summed up the feelings of most correspondents at that stage when he sarcastically remarked: "To work, gentlemen. We have a government to overthrow." THE UNHAPPY OUTCOME of the 1962 campaign further aggravated the relations between Diefenbaker and the Ottawa press corps. By the time the 1963 election had been called, only four important dailies-the Winnipeg Tribune, the Fredericton Gleaner, the Victoria Colonist and the Ottawa Journal - still supported the Conservative Party under Diefenbaker. At the Speaker's reception following dissolution of the 25th Parliament, Health and Welfare Minister Jay Waldo Monteith slugged Clark Davey of the Globe and Mail, whom he overheard making a disparaging remark about Diefenbaker. The Toronto Telegram, once the most loyal of his supporters, turned sharply against Diefenbaker, in an editorial, which read in part: "The Telegram has consistently supported the principles advocated in the past by the Progressive Conservative Party. In now advocating the election of Mr Pearson and his Party, the Telegram has not deserted these principles. But the Telegram believes the Prime Minister has so compromised these principles that Canada's position at home and abroad will immeasurably deteriorate under his continued leadership. The election campaign has hardened and sharpened this view." The Servile Press 333 The Montreal Gazette, house organ of Eastern Canada's Establishment Conservatism, came out with a frontpage editorial, gently demanding Diefenbaker's resignation: "Perhaps it may be the time for searching the inner heart and for finding the right answer there ... and if so it be, history will not fail to honour the man who in the last painful choice would not place himself on the wrong side of a choice that concerns the larger interest of the nation, the party and his own life's work." The Globe and Mail, which had been a voice of Canadian Conservatism for a generation,, called Diefenbaker "unfit to lead the Conservative Party ... for the sake of the Party and the country, he should give up the leadership," On March 23, 1963, the Globe ran a front-page editorial in favour of the Liberal Party: "This election would not have been necessary if the Diefenbaker Government had been doing what needed to be done. Nothing in the Conservative campaign had indicated any reawakening of the Government's responsibility in this regard. Mr Diefenbaker has played the martyr, indulged in histrionics, and tampered with the truth.... No question of Mr Diefenbaker's serving the country appears to have entered his head." At a Tory rally at Victoria, British Columbia, on March 26, Diefenbaker attacked the Globe as being part of the never-defined forces of evil trying to prevent his re-election. "The eastern magnates ran an editorial on the front page in Toronto Saturday, saying they wouldn't support us. The only reason they put it on the front page was because nobody would read it on the editorial page!" he jeered. One of Diefenbaker's chief targets during his 1963 campaign was the magazine Newsweek, which had published a grossly unflattering profile of him. Diefenbaker was especially bitter about the photograph of him used on the magazine's cover -a pose that tended to make him look slightly demented. "Satan saw my picture in Newsweek, and said he never knew he had such opposition in Canada," the Conservative leader complained at a rally in Strathmore, Alberta, on March 22. 334. Exercise of Power "The Newsweek article was all part of a plan to destroy me," he insisted in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. "A man came from Washington and met with the Who's Who of the Liberal Party. They planned that. They awaited that. It was conceived in Liberal headquarters in Ottawa." George V Ferguson, the erudite editor of the Montreal Star, accurately reflected the opinion of the majority of the nation's press in an editorial obituary of the Diefenbaker regime. "No more incompetent administration has ever tried to serve the national interest," he wrote. "The record of failure in every broad field of policy is impressive and sustained. Once Mr Diefenbaker had increased social services and organized a western farm program, his drive and his imagination failed.... The man who could - and did - make magic on the platform could not make it in the council chamber. He leaves office with the curious and perplexing record of a man unmatched as a courageous campaigner, but as a man also quite unfitted to deal with the arduous and complex tasks of government." Diefenbaker himself chose to make his attacks on the nation's press one of the major pillars of his 1963 election campaign. It was typical of the man from Prince Albert that his strongest political testament in these final days of power was not the defence of some principle, but a quarrel with the projection of his image. NINETEEN The Eclipse of Prestige Abroad THE NOTION Canadians so long cherished that their country counted as an influential power in world affairs did not survive the Diefenbaker Years. Much but not all of the blame for the deterioration in Canadian prestige abroad was due to the Prime Minister's outdated and sloganeering approach to international problems. In his dealings with other nations, particularly with the United States and Great Britain, John Diefenbaker seemed to be inflamed by the issues of an earlier era while strangely immune to the hopes that animated his own. However, more than a change of administration was responsible for Canada's reduced status in world councils. The middle-power policies originated by Mackenzie King and fostered by Lester Pearson briefly allowed Canada to exercise international influence quite out of proportion to the nation's real stature. In the loosely organized world of the postwar years, the constructive statesmanship offered by Canada was pre-eminent in the organization of the United Nations, the transition from the British Empire to a Commonwealth, the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the establishment of the Colombo Plan. Lester Pearson's personal triumph in settling the Suez crisis of 1956 was the climax to this impres- sive phase of Canada's external authority. The nation's international pretensions were in part a prolongation of the prestige gained as the fourth-ranking 335 336 Exercise of Power power of the Allied coalition during World War 11. Canada's relative importance was bound to fade as countries with larger populations and industrial bases recovered from the ravages of wartime occupation and bombing. It faded further when military power began to be measured in the wild new dimensions of outer space. The circumstances that diminished Canada's power during the Diefenbaker Years need not have eliminated the country's international influence. The effectiveness of external policy, however, depends ultimately on the health of a country's internal affairs, and it was the domestic crisis of confidence during the Diefenbaker Years that contributed most heavily to the tarnishing of the nation's image abroad. The carnage of the Coyne affair, the absence of clear fiscal and monetary policies, the government's shifty defence stand, and the mishandling of devaluation affected Canadian prestige at least as much as the Prime Minister's combative international behaviour. The root of Diefenbaker's problem in handling Canada's foreign relations was that he genuinely failed to differentiate between the subtleties of modern diplomacy and the approach he used to elicit ballots from his Prairie constituents. He never realized that his offhand rhetorical assurances were all being taken seriously, made the subject of diplomatic notes, and filed for future reference and action. The diplomatic community, on the other hand, was slow to recognize that most of the Canadian Prime Minister's promises meant nothing more than an expression of what he would like to see happen - not what he intended to do. But once they realized this, the diplomats lost their respect for him, totally and ruthlessly. That, in turn, hardened Diefenbaker's attitude. His petulant conduct of international affairs, particularly vis-dvis the United States and Great Britain, gave the impression that Diefenbaker thought he could write more history as the author of bold measures of rejection, rather than as the sponsor of small measures of improvement. Following the triumphs of the 1957 and 1958 election The Eclipse of Prestige Abroad 337 campaigns, Diefenbaker became a national leader in search of an international cause that might earn him an assured place in world history books. He boasted of his personal involvement with world statesmen; ("Oh, it's not easy for us, the Macmillans, the Kennedys, the Adenauers, and the de Gaulles, . . . ") and at a tea party in Kuala Lumpur, Malaya, during his 1958 world tour, he surprised his host by telling him: "Why, I can get Ike at any time. Just by picking up the phone at my elbow." With the flourish of a master of ceremonies in a vaudeville house, he produced a series of dramatic schemes designed to push himself onto the centre of the international stage. These included no fewer than four suggestions that East-West summit talks be held in Canada, and such worthy but impractical projects as an international Declaration of Freedoms Creed (1959), the establishment of an international court of law (ig6o), and the adoption of a Commonwealth Declaration of Human Rights (196 1). It was ironic that the only international meeting of importance which he attracted to Canada - the spring 1963 gathering of NATO ministers - had as its host his successor, Lester Pearson. JOHN DIEFENBAKER'S MAJOR PERSONAL VENTURE into world diplomacy was the 35,ooo-mile, 53-day world tour that he undertook in the autumn Of 1958, involving thirtyone stops in fifteen countries. In London's Albert Hall he addressed the Commonwealth and Empire Industries Association, and assured them: "The Commonwealth has an appointment with destiny!" Following talks with Harold Macmillan, Charles de Gaulle, and Konrad Adenauer, he was received for a fifteen-minute audience by Pope John xxin. He was understandably anxious to be photographed with the Pontiff, but the arrangement requested by the Canadian Embassy for a photograph didn't work. The Papal Master of Ceremonies was at the time feuding with the Vatican Court Photographer and prevented him from entering the papal apartments while 338 Exercise of Power His Holiness was receiving the Canadian Prime Minister. Diefenbaker was infuriated by the incident and blamed it all on the Canadian Embassy. From Rome, he flew on to Pakistan, inspected the Khyber Pass ("the one place I have always wanted to see"), then continued to New Delhi for a conference with Jawaharlal Nehru. On November 21, 1958, he went on his first tiger shoot. The Maharao of Kotah was his host as he floated down the Chambal River, and beaters tried to lure a Bengal tiger near its shores. But none appeared. Later, in Colombo, Ceylon, he had his first elephant ride. When Nik Cavell, then Canada's High Commissioner in Ceylon, tried to explain that S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, the island's Trotskyite Prime Minister, was actually a devoted Commonwealth man, Diefenbaker dismissed the explanation with the comment: "Oh, I know you. You're a Liberal." At the same time, Diefenbaker asked Cavell to send his dispatches directly to him, instead of to the Department of External Affairs, and was annoyed when the High Commissioner pointed out that this could not be done. Except for these and other private incidents, the tour was a triumph; the Canadian Prime Minister was hailed everywhere he went. WHILE THE BROAD LINES of external affairs policy were not significantly altered by the Conservative government, the approach to foreign affairs underwent a radical transformation. Unlike his Liberal predecessors who tried to keep external disputes out of domestic politics, Diefenbaker deliberately injected international issues into his hustings orations. This meant that moves in foreign policy were planned and exploited for their partisan publicity value. Lucien Cardin, the Liberal m.p. for Richelieu- Verch&es, once unkindly compared Diefenbaker's international behaviour to that of a silent movie hero "blasting his way through paper walls and open doorways, and then waiting for applause." Gradually Canada's longstanding reputation in interna- The Eclipse of Prestige Abroad 339 tional disputes as a disinterested mediator began to fade. "The Diefenbaker Cabinet," wrote Peyton Lyon, a former Canadian diplomat, in his study of external relations during the Conservative regime,* "reversed the previous Canadian policy of seeking the maximum of diplomatic achievement with the minimum of publicity; for Canada, indeed, the second is a condition of the first. Several of the new Conservative ministers acted as if uninterested in diplomatic activity which could not be speedily converted into favourable headlines. Too often our initiatives, however minor, became the occasion of self-congratulatory press conferences. I recall, for example, a moderately useful but premature Canadian suggestion that the United Nations be asked to participate in the policing of a new Berlin settlement if and when one was negotiated with the Soviet Union; this was announced with such a fanfare by the Canadian ministers that foreign diplomats were incredulous when the details of what we envisaged were explained to them. Other Canadian initiatives have suffered by being similarly oversold." In public, Canada's career diplomats stoutly defended the Diefenbaker government's actions. In private, however, they found it difficult to conceal their dismay and embarrassment. Diefenbaker, in turn, had little respect for officials of the External Affairs Department. He regarded most of them as intellectual snobs and, even worse, as Pearson partisans. "They don't do enough to keep themselves warm," he once told a political associate. In private conversation, Diefenbaker frequently referred to External officials as "the Pearsonalities." Norman Robertson, one of Canada's most distinguished diplomats who served as the Department's Undersecretary through most of the Diefenbaker Years, was formally consulted only twice by the Prime Minister during the six years of Conservative rule. * The Policy Question, McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1963. 340 Exercise of Power FOLLOWING HIS vicToRy at the polls in 1957, Diefenbaker retained the External Affairs portfolio for twelve weeks, then turned it over to Sidney Earle Smith, who had been president of the University of Toronto since 1945. Smith ran into trouble on the very day he was sworn into office. As he was leaving the Supreme Court building where the ceremony had taken place, he was asked by reporters whether he had agreed with the Canadian government's stand during the 1956 Suez crisis, which at the time had been bitterly attacked by the Tories. "Yes, in the main," he replied, "though I wish there had been better Commonwealth inter-communication." Did he, then, agree with the British and French action at the time of Suez? the correspondents persisted. At this point, Diefenbaker, who had accompanied Smith, intervened to say, "The stand taken by the Conservative Party in the House of Commons at the time is the same stand taken now by the government." Smith was a kind man and an enlightened political thinker. In cabinet, the force of his argument and influence fell always on the progressive side of issues, particularly in agricultural and economic matters. He achieved little during his brief tenure, mainly because he could never accustom himself to the cut of parliamentary debate, and instead of trying to build up his confidence, Diefenbaker bullied him and kept him nervous. At one meeting of the Commons External Affairs Committee, having inadvertently contradicted an answer given previously in the Commons by Defence Minister George Pearkes, Smith sadly remarked: "I forgot the previous answer; I was not in the House. I was in the Gallery. Perhaps that is where I should have stayed." Early in the afternoon of March 17, 1959, while resting alone in his apartment, Smith, suffering from the strains of office, was stricken with a fatal heart attack. Diefenbaker repossessed the portfolio for another twelve weeks, then astonished official Ottawa by appointing to the post Public Works Minister Howard Green, a The Eclipse of Prestige Abroad 341 veteran British Columbia parliamentarian who had shown so little interest in world affairs that he had never visited Washington and had not gone overseas since crossing the Atlantic in 1917 as a lieutenant with the 54th Kootenay Battalion. Green had a remarkably good record both in Public Works and Defence Production (the portfolio he held from June 21, 1957, to May 12, 1958), particularly in fending off backbenchers seeking pork-barrel contracts. A parsimonious, somewhat old-fashioned gentleman, Green neither smoked nor drank, never learned to drive a car, and refused to work on Sundays. Although he had run against Diefenbaker for the leadership in 1942, he had long since become one of the Prince Albert politician's most loyal followers. "I've never seen Diefenbaker's equal," he often said, "and never expect to again." Moreover, unlike Davie Fulton or Donald Fleming -the other aspirants to the External Affairs post -Green harboured no residual leadership aspirations of his own. But the most important quality Howard Green brought to his new job was that his limited but strongly held opinions on world affairs were not far removed from those of John Diefen- baker. The two men shared a deep emotional attachment to Great Britain and a conversely profound suspicion of the United States. John Diefenbaker's public affirmation of this feeling dated from the federal election Of 1926, when he was waging a hopeless political battle for the Prince Albert constituency against Prime Minister Mackenzie King. Shortly after he had won the nomination as Tory standard-bearer, he journeyed to nearby Macdowall for the first speech of his campaign. Following the polite preliminaries, there issued from the gangling young lawyer a cry from the heart about the kind of Canada he would endeavour to build. "I want," he proclaimed, "to make Canada all Canadian and ALL BRITISH!" No better definition of the true roots of his foreign policy was ever uttered by John Diefenbaker, and since his 342 Exercise of Power concept was in itself illogical, the external relations of the government he eventually formed were bound to be unsatisfactory. Howard Green was less vehement in his pro-British pronouncements, though he continued to speak of "the British Empire," long after "Commonwealth" had become normal usage, even in Conservative circles. Referring to the European situation during the 194o election campaign, at a rally in Vancouver, British Columbia, Green said: "It must be commitments to Britain or the U.S., for Canada cannot stand alone, and as far as I'm concerned, you'd better know that I prefer Britain." Green's Anglophilia reached its peak with his outrage during the Suez crisis of 1956. He was infuriated with Canada's condemnation of the British and French attack on Egypt. "It's high time," he declared, "that Canada had a government that won't knife Canada's best friends in the back." In power, Green's pro-British and anti-American tendencies manifested themselves even before he took over the External Affairs portfolio. During the fall Of 1958, for example, when Diefenbaker was away on his world tour and Green was Acting Prime Minister, a complicated vote came up at the United Nations on the Cyprus crisis. Since Sidney Smith was away on a tour of South America, the United Nations delegation asked for voting instructions from the cabinet. Green sent back word that Canada should find out what Britain planned to do, then vote the same way.* On another occasion, Green was approached by the United States Defense Department for permission to build part of the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (13MEWS) communications network in Canada. He hedged about allowing American surveyors into the sub-Arctic to * These instructions considerably embarrassed the Canadian delegation at the United Nations, because the resultant stand was inconsistent with the previous Canadian position, and Green's reasoning could hardly be made public. The Eclipse of Prestige Abroad 343 pick the sites for micro-wave relay stations, and in the end placed so many obstructions in the way of the Americans that they built an underwater communications system instead, at nearly twice the cost. Once he was made External Affairs Secretary, demonstrating his independence from American pressure became Green's chief preoccupation and the standard by which he measured his performance. At the Fourteenth General Assembly of the United Nations, for instance, the Canadian delegation supported Poland instead of Turkey, the United States candidate, for the nomination to a vacant temporary seat in the Security Council. "We no longer are a vassal of the powerful United States," Green told a reporter from the London Free Press, on October 30, 1959, referring to the incident. "It's only too obvious that we have adopted a more independent attitude toward our friends and neighbours across the border." An independent point of view didn't prove to be feasible very often at the United Nations, but in the smaller context Of NATO, Green laboured hard to display his country's autonomy. He clashed with Lord Home, the British Foreign Secretary, on the use of United Nations troops in the Congo; with Maurice Couve de Murville, the French Foreign Minister, on France's disdain of the United Nations; with Christian Herter, the United States Secretary of State, on greater consultation among all NATO partners; and with Paul-Henri Spaak, the NATO SecretaryGeneral, on his advocacy of a NATO block within the United Nation. Green's behaviour prompted C. S. Sulzberger of the New York Times to include, in a cata- loguing Of NATO's shortcomings, "the individual aspirations of Canadian and Greek politicians." Green enunciated his politique de grandeur in a Commons speech on February 2, ig6o. "The time has come," he said, "to drop the idea that Canada's role in world affairs is to be an honest broker between the nations. We must decide instead that our role is to determine the right stand to take on problems, keeping in mind the Canadian 344 Exercise of Power background and, above all, using Canadian common sense. In effect, the time has come to take an independent approach." This "independent approach" showed up most dramatically in the Conservative government's refusal to stop trading with Communist China and Fidel Castro's Cuba despite heavy pressure from the United States. It was also at the root of Howard Green's obsession in keeping American nuclear warheads off Canadian soil.* Green's obdurate stand on these and other issues gradually persuaded him that Canada enjoyed some sort of special status among the nations of the world. "Add Canada's good record generally ... and the courage, common sense, and God-fearing character of her people, and you will agree with me that we can give leadership in the finest sense of the word," he said in a speech on November 26, 1959. Given this moral superiority, Green seemed to believe that by showing "friendliness," Canada could somehow lead the world out of confusion. "Canada today has only friends, and no enemies," he assured the Commons during an External Affairs debate on February to, ig6o. Such a Kiwanian approach to world problems exasperated the cynical professionals at the United States State Department, and the sophisticates of Whitehall undoubtedly derided the man's lack of finesse. But at home, the Canadian public seemed at least initially to react with warm sympathy toward this rather frail, angular gentleman who looked and acted like everybody's favourite uncle, holding out hope for world peace and goodwill among men, at a time when seasoned statesmen saw only despair. Green enjoyed deflating the elegant jargon of professional diplomats by speaking of world tensions in such homely terms as, "Canada's main role in the world is to keep the big boys from rocking the boat." Of diplomacy, he once said, "The most important thing is to be friendly. * See Chapter 23 for a discussion of the nuclear controversy. The Eclipse of Prestige Abroad 345 It's just like politics. If you're not friendly, you don't get elected." One of his best-remembered remarks at the United Nations was not made on the rostrum. At a press conference following his maiden address to the Assembly in September of 1959, he was askedwhat the phrase in his speech, "without disarmament, control of course would be irrelevant," was supposed to mean. Green, obviously baffled, smiled disarmingly and replied, "Oh, I thought it was just put in there to round out the sentence." Green's most serious - and most disappointing - pursuit was his attempt to interpose between the rival power blocs compromise initiatives toward at least partial disarmament. Perhaps no Western statesman banked more openly on the possibility of success at the interminable and largely ritualistic Geneva disarmament negotiations. At the beginning of his term, Green diligently advocated what he himself called "the soft approach to the Russians" and declared that "the time has come for the West to accept Russian protestations of sincerity at face value." He gave the impression that he genuinely believed he could shame the Communists into disarming through moral persuasion. "A few weeks ago in Geneva," he confided to the Commons during one of his reports on the progress of the disarmament negotiations, "I had a brief talk with Mr Gromyko, the Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union. There was, of course, a certain amount of banter, but finally he said, 'I know that Canada stands for peace.' That is our reputation in world affairs and it is a very good reputation to have." Neither Green nor Lieutenant General E.L.M. Burns, Canada's able disarmament negotiator, was able to come up with any spectacular proposals to break the Geneva deadlock, although Canada did on occasion persuade both the United States and the USSR to yield on procedural points, so that the talks could at least continue. In his sincere efforts to reduce the tensions of the cold 346 Exercise of Power war, Green sometimes found himself bucking his own Prime Minister. On February io, 196o, during a Commons debate on external affairs, for example, Green had fended off repeated Opposition requests for details of a "fresh" disarmament approach he had promised to stress at pre-Geneva talks in Washington. Green refused, and righteously pointed out that he was "not at liberty to disclose" the government's proposals, hotly decrying the notion that countries involved in disarmament negotiations should "rush out now" with their various ideas. The next day, Diefenbaker neatly scuttled his own External Affairs Secretary by listing the six points Canada would be stressing in the talks. The feeling of most witnesses to this manoeuvre was summed up by Lucien Cardin, Liberal m.p. for Richelieu-Verch&es, when he accused the Conservative leader of having administered to Howard Green "an unjustifiable, uncalled for and unpardonable repudiation." JOHN DIEFENBAKER'S own most important contribution to international politics was the influence he exerted at the 1961 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference in London, which prompted the Union of South Africa to withdraw its application for continued Commonwealth membership following its change to republican status. (Previously, only Ireland and Burma had decided not to join the Commonwealth on becoming republics.) At their 196 1 meeting the Commonwealth prime ministers were deeply split on the issue of South Africa's continuance in the Commonwealth. The white prime ministers, with the exception of Diefenbaker, advocated that mem- bership of South Africa as a republic be approved without discussion, the African and Asian prime ministers, especially the representatives of Ghana and Nigeria, were determined to expel South Affica unless its apartheid racial segregation policies were changed. When the Canadian Prime Minister realized that the Commonwealth might thus be split along racial lines, he proposed a com- The Eclipse of Prestige Abroad 347 promise: South Africa would not be expelled, but the conference's final communique would declare that racial equality was a principle of the Commonwealth -a position that South Africa clearly could not endorse without drastically altering its domestic policies. This suggestion was approved, over objections from Great Britain and New Zealand, and Eric Louw, the South African External Affairs Minister, withdrew his country's Commonwealth application. "Mr. Diefenbaker's role was of decisive importance," remarked the London Observer, "Not only did he provide a bridge between the old white dominions and the new non-white members; he also demonstrated the importance of somebody giving a lead." Dielenbaker flew home, a hero. Three hours after he had landed back in Ottawa, he gave the Commons a stirring report on his journey. It was one of his best parliamentary speeches, and he was hailed from all sides of the House. That evening he described his triumphs in another moving address to a rally Of 1,35o Tories meeting at the Chateau Laurier Hotel. "My hope," he concluded, "is that they [the South Africans] will return to the Commonwealth in due course. There will always be a light in the Commonwealth window." AN EVEN MORE DRAMATIC, though vastly less meaningful foreign affairs initiative was undertaken by Dielenbaker during the 196o General Assembly of the United Nations. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchov had delivered a wild 140-minute tirade against the West in which he declared that his country would not resume disarmament negotiations unless his plan for replacing the Secretary General of the United Nations by a triumvirate was adopted immediately. The Canadian Prime Minister's position on the speaker's list for September 26 meant he was the first Western leader with an opportunity of replying to the Russian outburst. He made the most of it. He attacked Khrushchov for his "bizarre proposal" which would reduce the United Nations to an "instrument of indeci- 348 Exercise of Power sion and impotence," then launched into an attack on the Russian dictator's call for "the complete and final elimination of colonial regimes." "How many human beings have been liberated by the USSRT' Diefenbaker demanded. "Do we forget how one of the postwar colonies of the USSR sought to liberate itself four years ago, and with what results? ... What of Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia? What of the freedom-loving Ukrainians and many other Eastern European peoples which I shall not name for fear of omitting some of them? There can be no double standard in international affairs. I ask the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR to give to those nations under his domination the right of free elections - to give them the opportunity to determine the kind of government they want under genuinely free conditions." Although Khrushchov himself was not in his seat when Diefenbaker was speaking, Valerian Zorin, the chief USSR representative at the United Nations, walked out midway through the Prime Minister's oration and, next day, the Russian government paper Izvestia attacked Diefenbaker's statements as "slanderous" and "a cheap masquerade." Most Western leaders applauded the Canadian effort. British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan described it as "arresting'" and "brilliant." At Ottawa's Uplands Airport, Diefenbaker was welcomed home by three hundred cheering representatives of eight ethnic groups, including two Latvian flower girls who presented a bouquet to Mrs Diefenbaker. Although his magnificent speech was predictably ineffectual in softening Russian attitudes, it did serve to remind the uncommitted nations in the United Nations of the true motivation of international communism. But Diefenbaker cheapened the effects of his impressive oratorical performance by using it as the basis of a partisan appeal for the ballots of Canada's voters with Eastern European background. With each of his references to the United Nations speech before these audiences, Diefen- The Eclipse of Prestige Abroad 349 baker improved on what had actually happened until at a meeting in Montreal's Ukrainian Centre, near the end of the 1962 election campaign, he came out with this version: "I said to Mr Khrushchov, 'Give the Ukrainians the vote!' Then he got mad and that's where he took off one of his shoes, you remember!" This was great platform material, but unfortunately the imagined sequence of events simply was not true. Official United Nation records showed that the shoe-pounding incident had occurred a full sixteen days after the Diefenbaker speech. On that day, the Canathan Prime Minister was actually at home, in Prince Albert. (The Russian leader hammered his shoe in protest against a reference to Communist satellites made by Lorenzo Sumulong of the Philippines.) Diefenbaker referred to the incident again during the 1963 campaign. On March 7, at Guelph, Ontario, trying to stress his anticommunism for the Eastern European members of his audience, he cried, "Oh, I've seen Khrushchov using his shoe!" DIEFENBAKER'S ASSIDUOUS COURTING of the immigrant vote caused at least one international incident. On March 23, 196 1, Diefenbaker received in his office a delegation of anti-Titoist Serbs from Toronto, headed by Bob Marko- vich. They had come to protest Canada's invitation to the Yugoslav Foreign Minister, Koca Popovic, who was passing through Ottawa on his way home from an official call to President John E Kennedy. Diefenbaker gave his solemn pledge that he would not receive the diplomat. "I am well aware that these Communist emissaries carry a smile on their face and a knife in their hand," he told the delegates. When Popovic arrived in Ottawa on March 27, he conferred officially with Howard Green, and three days after he had left the country, the Toronto Serbs were assured by an emissary from the Prime Minister that - as was promised - Popovic had been refused an audience with the Canadian leader. But a few months later at a reception in London, an 350 Exercise of Power angry Popovic described what had really happened during his Canadian visit. His version was quietly, if unofficially, confirmed by senior members of the External Affairs Department in Ottawa. Popovic, it turned out, had seen Diefenbaker. But instead of being invited to present himself at the Prime Minister's office, he was interrupted by a call from Diefenbaker during a dinner being given in his honour at the Yugoslav Embassy. He was asked to come immediately and by himself to the Prime Minister's residence at 24 Sussex Drive, where the two men had a brief chat in a cloak-and-dagger atmosphere designed to hide the encounter from the public. SUCH A PAROCHIAL APPROACH to the complex art of diplomacy caused Diefenbaker the most trouble in his dealings with the United States. The Conservative leader's approach to United States - Canadian relations was coloured by the image he had of himself as the greatest champion of Canadian nationalism since Sir John A. Macdonald. While he did succeed, largely through oratory, in destroying the influence of the continentalists in the American State Department who believed that what's good for the United States is automatically good for Canada, Diefenbaker never managed to make convincing his often-repeated boast that his anti-Americanism was actually pro-Canadianism. In his 1957 election campaign Diefenbaker had stressed that the flow of United States investment funds, cascading across the border at the net rate of nearly $3 millions per day since 1947, had given Americans far too much control over the country's national resources and profit-producing enterprises -a theme he took up in his first United States speech on September 7, 1957, at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. "There is," he said on that occasion, "an intangible sense of disquiet in Canada over the political implications of large-scale and continuing external ownership and control of Canadian industries. The question is being asked: 'Can a country have a meaningful The Eclipse of Prestige Abroad 351 independent existence in a situation where non-residents own an important part of that country's basic resources and industry, and are, therefore, in a position to make important decisions affecting the operation and development of the country's economyT Canadians ask that American companies investing in Canada should not regard Canada as an extension of the American market; that they should be incorporated as Canadian companies making available equity stock to Canadians." During his term of office, Diefenbaker introduced only four minor measures toward this objective. One 1957 amendment made it a requirement for the majority of the directors of Canadian insurance companies to be Canadian citizens and gave the federal government the power to prevent transfer of control in these firms outside the country. In ig6o, Alvin Hamilton introduced new oil-lease laws for the Yukon and Northwest Territories specifying that holders must be Canadian citizens or companies either listed on Canadian stock exchanges or with 50 per cent Canadian ownership. In his "baby budget" of December 196o, Donald Fleming increased the tax bite on United States investors in Canada by an estimated $50 millions a year, through a series of changes in the with- holding-tax arrangements on Canadian earnings of United States parent firms. The National Energy Board Act, passed by the Diefenbaker government, decreed that applications for licences to construct oil and gas pipelines must provide for giving Canadians rights to purchase equity shares. These measures did not cause nearly as much friction between the two countries as the broader international issues, particularly the controversy over Canadian acceptance of nuclear warheads.* Some resentment was also roused between the two nations by Diefenbaker's insistence on continuing to trade with Cuba, even after that * See Chapter 23 for details. 352 Exercise of Power country became clearly recognizable as the first Communist satellite in the western hemisphere. The United States placed a complete embargo on its trade with Cuba on October 19, 1 96o. Diefenbaker waited for six weeks, then stated Canada had no quarrel with the Cuban government and that aside from strategic goods, Canadian-Cuban trade would continue unhampered. Fidel Castro promptly announced that he was sending an eleven-man trade mission to Ottawa, headed by Regino Boti, his Minister of Economic Affairs. The delegation arrived in Ottawa on December 9, to be greeted by a beaming George Hees who said he'd be happy to sell the Cubans $150 millions' worth of Canadian goods a year. He topped off his salute to the Cubans with the statement, "You can't do business with better businessmen anywhere. They're wonderful customers." Hees later apologized for his misguided enthusiasm on "Front Page Challenge," a national television program, by quoting Fiorello LaGuardia's classic comment: "When I pull a blooper, it's a real beaut." But anti-Castro demonstrators had already begun to picket the Canadian Embassy in the United States with signs inscribed: "Down with Canada," and Jos6 Miro Cardona, a former premier of Cuba who became head of the Cuban Revolutionary Council in Washington, bitterly told Ralph Allen of Maclea0 Magazine: "The Canadians are the Phoenicians of America. Their ships and their cargoes go where there is business to be done." Canadian exports to Cuba jumped from $ 13 millions to $3 1 millions in 196 1, but by 1962, when the Cubans had run out of dollars, trade fell back to $io millions. A much more important transaction was the sale by the Diefenbaker government of nearly half a billion dollars' worth of Prairie wheat to Communist China. It was doubtful if any single action won the Tories more domestic political support. Yet on an earlier occasion, Diefenbaker himself recognized that such dealings are hardly compatible with a policy of strict anti-communism. Dur- The Eclipse of Prestige Abroad 353 ing an external affairs debate on March 25, 1954, Diefenbaker lectured the Commons on the pitfalls of trading with the enemy. "I fear," he said, "that the economic advantages of the present will lure many to believe in the necessity or at least in the attractiveness of trade with the USSR on the assumption that we can restrict the things in which we trade to non-strategic commodities. In my opinion, there is no more strategic commodity in the world than the production of agriculture for, after all, the Hweapon of communism in Asia is hunger." DIEFENBAKER'S POLICY OF THUNDERING against international communism in world councils, yet actively pursuing trade with communist regimes, was one of the inconsistencies which puzzled world leaders who had to deal with him. No head of state had a tougher time understanding the Canadian Prime Minister than John E Kennedy, the President of the United States. The personal relationship between Diefenbaker and Kennedy was probably stormier than any previous dealings between the two leaders responsible for the nations that share the North American continent. They belonged to different generations, came from vastly different backgrounds, and in outlook had almost nothing in common. Late in Diefenbaker's term he was referring to Kennedy in the privacy of his office as "that young fool," and Kennedy, for his part, told one senior aide that he thought the Canadian Prime Minister was "nothing but a platitudinous bore." This was not the mood, however, at their initial meeting, on February 20, ig6i, when Diefenbaker flew to Washington, the first chief of state to be invited there by the newly installed American President. The two statesmen seemed to get along famously during their brief meeting, and when he arrived back in Ottawa, Diefenbaker referred to his journey as "an exhilarating experience." Yet even this meeting had one unpleasant aftermath. When the American President was showing Diefenbaker 354 Exercise of Power the paintings in his office - most of them depicting United States victories over the Royal Navy during the War of 1812 -the Canadian Prime Minister pointedly told his host that there were some battles the Americans hadn't won. He mentioned specifically the encounter off Halifax between the American frigate Chesapeake and the British frigate Shannon, on June 1, 18 13, which ended with the capture of the Yankee vessel. "I'll show you," Diefenbaker promised. After he returned to Ottawa, Diefenbaker immediately asked the Public Archives to obtain paintings of the Chesapeake-Shannon duel. Archives officials managed to find two excellent tinted prints in New York and the Prime Minister picked out the gorier of the two, depicting American naval officers, with Yankee blood flowing free, being overwhelmed by British sailors and ordered it sent to Kennedy.* When Kennedy returned Diefenbaker's Washington visit by coming to Ottawa May 16- 18, 196 1, the War of 1812 was not mentioned, but a number of other touchy subjects did come up. At the breakfast, set aside for an informal private discussion between the two men, Kennedy placed in front of the Prime Minister a sheet of paper listing five things for which he wanted Canadian support. The list included Canadian backing of the United Kingdom's proposed entry into the European Economic Community. Diefenbaker took a gold pencil out of his vest, and marked a "No" beside each of the five suggestions. The two men finished breakfast in silence, then Kennedy asked Diefenbaker why he was not willing to help get Britain into Europe, since in his opinion, the move was important to the future of the free world. Diefenbaker answered by asking Kennedy why he didn't lower American tariffs to allow European goods into the United States. * The print was never actually given to the President. Diefenbaker took it with him to the brief meeting he had with Kennedy at Nassau in December of 1962, but there was no time to make the presentation. The Eclipse of Prestige Abroad 355 Kennedy said he couldn't do that, because it was one of the realities of politics that the President could not sacrifice the votes involved in such a step. "Exactly," Diefenbaker replied. That afternoon, the United States President went before a joint session of the Canadian Commons and Senate to issue his eloquent pledge of Canadian-American friendship: "Geography has made us neighbours. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies. Those whom nature hath so joined together, let no man put asunder. What unites us is far greater than what divides us." Sometime during the two-day visit, Kennedy mislaid his personal working-paper - half a typewritten page entitled "What We Want from the Ottawa Trip." The memo, written by Walt Rostow, the State Department's Policy Planning Director, reminded the United States President to "push for": Canadian support for the Alliance for Progress. Canadian membership in the Organization of American States. More Canadian support for foreign aid, particularly to India. Stricter control measures against the Communists in Laos and South Vietnam. The memorandum eventually came into Diefenbaker's possession, and instead of following diplomatic protocol by returning it, or diplomatic practice by having it copied and then returning it, the Prime Minister used it as a threat against the President. When Livingston I Merchant, the retiring United States Ambassador to Canada, came to pay a brief official farewell call on May 4, 1962, he was greeted by an abusive tirade lasting ninety minutes, in which the Prime Minister accused President Kennedy of interference in Canadian political affairs. The immediate cause of Diefenbaker's fury was a dinner given by President Kennedy on April 29, 1962, just as 356 Exercise of Power the Canadian election campaign was beginning, for all the Nobel Prize winners in the western hemisphere. Kennedy had promised to see Pearson in private, at Pearson's request, but, because the day was busy, couldn't do so until it was time for him to change for dinner. Pearson was invited to the presidential quarters, had a brief chat with Kennedy, then descended the White House stairs for dinner with the President and his wife. Press photos of the occasion suggested that an unusual honour had been paid to Pearson. The fact that Kennedy would dare to confer with his opponent so enraged the Canadian Prime Minister that he told Merchant he intended to use in his election campaign "an offensive document" which the President had left behind during his 1961 Ottawa visit. Merchant's report of this threat alerted the White House for the first time as to the whereabouts of the missing "working paper." Following instructions from Washington, Merchant returned to see Diefenbaker to state that after lengthy consideration he had decided not to report his previous conversation officially to his government. To do so would mean that the President could no longer have any dealings with the Prime Minister.* Diefenbaker, in a much calmer mood, agreed not to publicize the document during the 1962 election campaign. Existence of the contentious "working paper" became public knowledge, however, on March 27, 1963, in a story written by Charles Lynch, the Chief of Southam News Services. A followup report by Peter Trueman of the Montreal Star stated that the Rostow memorandum had contained a marginal note in President Kennedy's writing, saying, "What do we do with the -now?" and John Maffre, a staff reporter for the Washington Post, wrote, I learned that the expression deleted from The Star's published story was the famous 'S.O.B.' once used with such * Merchant actually did report Diefenbaker's statement directly to President Kennedy, who instructed him to request Diefenbaker to say that he had been "misunderstood." Diefenbaker concurred. The Eclipse of Prestige Abroad 357 effect by former President Harry Truman." This report was denied, and it hardly seemed plausible. Kennedy was so upset by what he privately called "Diefenbaker's blackmail tactics" that he vowed never again to meet him face to face. As his personal contribution toward the defeat of the Canadian politician, he gave his unofficial blessing to Lou Harris -the shrewd publicopinion analyst who had tested the trends so effectively for him during the 196o presidential campaign -to work for Canada's Liberal Party. Using a pseudonym and working in such secrecy that only half a dozen key people in the Party's hierarchy were aware of his activities, Harris spent much of the 1962 and 1963 election campaigns with the Pearson organization, conducting intensive studies on Canadian voting behavior. They were considered key contributions to the Liberal victory of 1963. Despite his resolve never to meet Diefenbaker again, Kennedy did meet him at Nassau in December of 1962. The two men had not seen each other for eighteen months, when the American President flew to Nassau for defence talks with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Diefenbaker had originally been scheduled to arrive a few hours after Kennedy had left, but discussions lasted longer than expected, and he arrived in time to join the two leaders for a rather cool interval over lunch. After the meal, Diefenbaker called a press conference. One of the items on the Kennedy-Macmillan itinerary had been a discussion of increased military aid to India. But the final communique had skirted the topic, because the Indian government had not been officially informed of the decision. Also, the two statesmen wanted time to reassure the Government of Pakistan that the weapons could be used by India only against China, and not in its dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir. At his own press conference, however, Diefenbaker cheerfully divulged the details of the military aid program ($120 millions to be shared by the United States and the Commonwealth countries) and thereby got himself into the news. His indiscretion had a 358 Exercise of Power serious disrupting effect on the Indian-Pakistani negotiations over the settlement of Kashmir then in progress. THIS KIND OF GRANDSTAND PLAY no longer surprised diplomats at the time of Nassau, because they had learned to expect such behaviour from Diefenbaker. What still did astonish international experts who had taken the trouble to inform themselves on Diefenbaker's past record, however, was his failure to become a recognized booster of British interests. His obvious suspicion of Washington's motives might have been expected to drive him closer to the British line, especially since throughout his career he had been a staunch supporter of Great Britain and the Commonwealth concept. Once he was in power, however, Diefenbaker's dedication to the Commonwealth ideal seemed to survive only in his rhetoric. His narrow approach to Commonwealth problems, when contrasted with Lester Pearson's Atlantic Community concept, para- doxically gave the Liberals the right to call themselves the pro-Commonwealth Party. The prime example of the divergence between Diefenbaker's verbal assurances and his actions was his 1957 proposal to divert 15 per cent of Canadian imports to the United Kingdom. On July 6, upon his return to Ottawa from his first Commonwealth Prime Minister's meeting, Diefenbaker was asked at a press conference by Vladimir Vashedchenko, the Ottawa correspondent for Moscow's Izvestia, whether he planned to divert Canadian imports from the United States to the United Kingdom, as he had promised during the recent election campaign. When the Prime Minister replied that this was indeed his intention, Robert Taylor, then Ottawa Bureau Chief of the Toronto Star, asked whether he had any specific figure in mind -something like 5 per cent, io per cent, or 15 per cent? "Yes," Diefenbaker shot back, as if he were announcing a well-considered policy, " 15 per cent." He later denied that he had actually given this commitment, but even four months after the press conference on November 22, when The Eclipse of Prestige Abroad 359 he was seeing off a trade mission to England led by Gordon Churchill, Diefenbaker stated: "I have every confidence that this mission will achieve its objective of diverting 15 per cent of Canadian imports from the United States to Britain, and thus save this country from ultimate economic danger." The trade shift represented by Diefenbaker's proposal could have been impressive. In 1957 Canada had bought goods and services from the United States worth roughly $4 billions. A 15 per cent diversion of this trade would have meant an increase of $6oo millions in Canadian purchases from the United Kingdom. But actual Canadian imports from the United Kingdom were then running at just under $500 millions. The intended diversion would thus have required nothing less than the doubling of the United Kingdom's exports to Canada. The British government was pleased by Diefenbaker's offer, but its experts realized that a trade diversion on this scale could not be achieved without the kind of discriminatory measures specifically forbidden by the conventions of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, to which both Britain and Canada subscribed. Under GATT, the only exception to the prohibition against new preferences is the total removal of tariffs to form a free trade area. This was what the British proceeded to propose - though they excluded agricultural products. The offer of a Canada - United Kingdom free trade area was first brought to Ottawa on September 9, 1957, by Derick Heathcoat Amory, then Britain's Minister of Agriculture and later, as Viscount Amory, British High Commissioner to Canada. Amory met Diefenbaker and Finance Minister Donald Fleming, but found only hostile reaction to his general outline for the free trade area plan. At about the same time, Sir David Eccles, President of the United Kingdom Board of Trade, presented the plan to George Drew, Can- ada's High Commissioner in London. Here, the reaction was less unfavourable but also cool. News of the daring British proposal first became public 360 Exercise of Power at the Commonwealth Finance Ministers' meeting at Mont Tremblant, Quebec, on September 30. At the press conference following the meeting's first session reporters asked Fleming to comment on the scheme, the outline of which had been revealed in an exclusive story carried in that day's Montreal Slar. Fleming blanched, then huffily replied that the never commented on speculative press reports. When the same question was put to Peter Thor- neycroft, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, he blithely confirmed that the free trade area was indeed one of the proposals he would be putting forward at the bilateral Anglo-Canadian talks in Ottawa, scheduled to follow the Mont Tremblant conference. Thorneycroft went on to comment that the Canadian Prime Minister's proposal for increasing trade by 15 per cent appealed very much to the British people. "Of course we cannot stop at that," he added. "We have to consider how it can best be implemented." After termination of the Mont Tremblant talks, Thorneycroft was joined by Sir David Eccles for the formal presentation of the free trade offer to Canadian ministers. On October 2, at a meeting with Diefenbaker, Fleming, and Churchill, the British envoys proposed an annual reduction of duty rates to zero between the two countries over a fifteen-year period, and presented the Canadians with an aide-memoire outlining their plan in detail. Diefenbaker was so vehement in condemning the idea that he insisted the final communique of the meeting not even mention his reaction, and that on no account was there to be a joint press conference at the conclusion of the talks. The communique, issued on October 4, merely stated: "Among the proposals discussed ... was the proposal of the UK ministers for a Free Trade Area with Canada.... In view of the long-term nature of these pro- posals, the UK ministers did not ask the Canadian ministers for their view of the proposals." Nothing official was ever heard again about either the 15 per cent trade diversion or the free-trade-area offer. The Eclipse of Prestige Abroad 361 Ironically enough, the only legislature action that the Diefenbaker government took vis-d-vis Britain was to increase Canadian tariffs on British woollens and rubber footwear, and to alter upward the valuation method on British cars. The surcharge program on imports that was imposed by Diefenbaker following the currency devaluation emergency of 1962 hit British exports the hardest, causing a 9.2 per cent decline for the year. In 1957, when Diefenbaker made his original 15 per cent offer, Canadian imports from Britain had amounted to 9.3 per cent of Canada's purchases abroad, while imports from the United States accounted for 71.0 per cent. In j962, the last full year of Diefenbaker's stewardship, the British share of Canadian purchases had declined slightly to 9.o per cent, while United States imports were 68.7 per cent of the total. It had not been much of a diversion. DIEFENBAKER'S PERFORMANCE with his own 15 per cent diversion scheme taught the United Kingdom government not to expect very much support from the Canadian Prime Minister, but even England's most cynical politicians were unprepared for the petty, scolding attitude Canada was to adopt toward the British application for membership in the European Economic Community. Throughout the British negotiations, Canada made tremendous exertions for preservation of the status quo. This attitude was typified by a comment in Donald Heming's 196 1 budget. "The situation," he said, referring to the EEC negotiations, "is much too unsettled to consider seriously a sharp reorientation in our policies." Having repudiated the future, Diefenbaker tried to resurrect the past. He based his objection to British entry into Europe on the desirability of keeping inviolate the imperial preferences system negotiated by R. B. Bennett in 1932, when the trading triangle between Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States was a significant factor. Long before the British Parliament voted to seek 362 Exercise of Power EEC membership (on July 3 1, 196 1), the Diefenbaker government had begun to undercut the British position. Despite their sincere pro-British feelings, Diefenbaker, Green, and Fleming never seemed to appreciate that Britain's application for EEC membership was a desperate effort by the United Kingdom government to halt the continuing decline in the country's rate of economic growth, and not, as the Canadian ministers seemed to think, a plot to eliminate an obsolescent system of preferential tariffs. Instead of commiserating with the economic plight of the British, the Canadians blustered and snarled, hurling threats of retaliation against any tariff adjustments the United Kingdom might have to make in its EEC negotiations. At a press conference on September 23, 196o, following the meeting of a Commonwealth consultative conference in London, Donald Fleming stressed that "any tampering with the advantages we have in the British market could result in far-reaching examination of the access of British goods to the Canadian market." When the English papers reported that the British EEC application had Commonwealth backing, Fleming made it clear that "nothing could be further from the truth." His attitude took an even harder turn, when he decided that he must have the full text of the opening statement given by chief British negotiator, Edward Heath, to a secret session of the EEC on October i o, 196 1. The British government had provided all Commonwealth countries with a summary of Heath's remarks, and no other Commonwealth members would support Canada in its public demand for the complete text. But Fleming must have felt that some breach of faith had been committed and vital points had deliberately been left out of the summary. Harold Macmillan personally refused Fleming's request for the document but as the Canadians increased their pressure, the British government yielded and made the speech public. Although it contained no major points not previously brought out in the summary, Fleming was delighted by his victory in changing the British attitude on The Eclipse of Prestige Abroad 363 the document. "In all good taste," he said proudly at an Ottawa press conference, "I can go no further than to say we are extremely gratified." At about this time, the Diefenbaker cabinet dissolved into an uproarious menagerie of ministers junketing across the country, contradicting other about what the British application and the Common Market would really mean to Canada. In Timmins, Ontario, External Affairs Secretary Howard Green blamed United States interference for the whole thing. "The Americans," he said, "are crowding the British, trying to force them into the Common Market." In Windsor, Ontario, Donald Fleming noted sadly: "Even with the fullest safeguards that we could expect, there would be serious trade losses for Canada." In Halifax the next day, November io, the Prime Minister underlined his confidence in the assurances of Prime Minister Macmillan that "Commonwealth ties would not be greatly harmed by the United Kingdom entry." Back in Ottawa, Alvin Hamilton explained that the Canadian objections were really aimed at helping the United Kingdom into the EEc, by "providing the arguments required to turn the Common Market into a less restrictive trading area." In Toronto, George Hees hinted that there still might be a way for Canada to solve all the difficulties by enlisting in the Common Market herself, and that studies being carried out by his Department would show whether "we would gain or lose by joining." In Montreal, Pierre S6vigny introduced a new tack by suggesting that what Canada really should do is form a common market with North and South America." Across the Atlantic, George Drew contributed his share to the confusion by snubbing a briefing session at the Commonwealth Relations Office given on November 12 by Edward Heath on the progress of the EEc negotiations. Although he later denied that his absence from the meeting had been intended as a snub, on the day of the meeting an official spokesman for Canada House, on Drew's instructions, volunteered the information to the Canadian 364 Exercise of Power press corps in London that the High Commissioner had used this method of expressing his dissatisfaction with the information provided by the British government about its dealings with Common Market countries. Nicholas Car roll, writing in London's Sunda ' v Times, summed up the United Kingdom reaction to all this: "British patience with the Diefenbaker-Fleming administration is wearing thin ... no one in London wants to quarrel, but nobody seems to be able to keep on terms with the Canadian government." EARLY IN SEPTEMBER 1962, as the leader of a minority government due to face Parliament immediately following his return, Diefenbaker flew to London and his last Commonwealth Prime Ministers' conference. At the airport upon his arrival and during a speech to London's Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Prime Minister hinted that he had an alternative trade plan that would prevent Britain from having to join the Common Market. Asked in Ottawa what this alternative might be, Trade Minister Hees replied: "I have no idea." When the Prime Minister did finally reveal the alternative, it turned out to be a call for "like-minded nations" to hold a tariffcutting conference in Canada under authority of President Kennedy's Trade Expansion Act, in spite of the fact that his initial reaction to the Kennedy legislation had been hostile. At the Prime Ministers' conference itself Diefenbaker created a sensation by assaulting not only the British application, but the very idea of the Common Market. His strategy was a familiar one. He attacked the United Kingdom government by quoting the 1959 speeches of Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald Maudling, who had then been in charge of Britain's Common Market studies. Diefenbaker demanded to know what had happened to Maudling's assurances that on no account would the British government sign the Treaty of Rome, if that meant the end of Commonwealth free entry privileges. He charged The Eclipse of Prestige Abroad 365 that the EEC negotiations at Brussels had not provided any real assurance that Canadian trade to the United Kingdom could be maintained at satisfactory levels. "Macmillan had hoisted the flag of Europe; Diefenbaker was shooting it down," noted the London Observer. "As he went on, the British became more and more anxious, and more and more annoyed. Must he go on for ever about Maudling? By the time Diefenbaker sat down, the damage was done. A fuse had been lit. If Macmillan's speech had met with applause, the reception accorded 'Dief' was an ovation. One of the Ghanaians, as he told the Queen a few nights later, 'was so moved that I thought I was going to cry'." Although Diefenbaker's position found much support among fellow prime ministers, the British government was by this time so annoyed with his attitude that United Kingdom ministers - particularly Duncan Sandys -leaked the impression to the press that the Canadian Prime Minister had been isolated from his colleagues in his demands. The British application for EEC membership was scuttled by France's President, Charles de Gaulle, four months later. But the 1962 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' conference did give Diefenbaker one final chance to display his deep concern for the unchanging concept he held of the Commonwealth and its importance to Canada as a countervailing force against the United States. At one private session, he spoke earnestly of Canada's dilemma. "We have spent a hundred years resisting the magnetic pull of the United States," he said, "Now, this [the British application] will put us in danger of being sucked into their orbit." The context was very different, but the appeal itself was not very far removed from the anguished cry of the youthful Tory at Macdowall, Saskatchewan, thirty-seven years previously, who had vowed he'd build a Canada that would be "all Canadian and all British."  PART IV Twilight of Power TWENTY Les Epaulettes Perdues DEMOCRATIC governments die a little at a time. But in the procession of causes that eventually overthrow a ministry, some event always marks a turning-point when the inevitable recession of power begins. This moment of demarcation arrived for the regime of John Diefenbaker on the wantonly cold night of January i, i 96o. Although no one could perceive it at the time, the tragic events which occurred that night in the drowsy Montreal suburb of St Eustache eventually grew in their consequences to humble the pride and the power of the man from Prince Albert. The Honourable Paul Sauv6, twenty-first premier of Quebec and St Eustache's representative in the provincial legislature for most of the past thirty years, had spent New Year's Day of 196o holding an informal lev~e for constituents at his century-old clapboard family home. At i:oo a.m., after watching the film Cyrano de Bergerac on a late television show, the Sauv6s turned off the Christmas tree lights and went to bed. Three hours later, stricken by agonizing chest pains, the Premier got up and began painfully to pace the floor of his bedroom. "I don't fell well at all," he gasped, trying to hide the intensity of the spasms from his worried wife. A moment later, he collapsed and lost consciousness. Madame Sauv6 woke up her eldest son Pierre, a 21year-old University of Montreal law student, who imme- 369 370 Twilight of Power diately telephoned Dr Claude Guilbault of Oka, his father's personal physician; Msgr Louis Rodrigue, the parish priest; and H. J. O'Connell a wealthy contractor who was the family's closest friend. The priest arrived in time to whisper the last rites over the dying Premier. The doctor pronounced Sauv& dead at 5:45 a.m. O'Connell meanwhile had called Fernand Dostie, Sauv6's executive assistant, who was staying the night at Montreal's Queen Elizabeth Hotel; Dostie telephoned John Bourque, the province's Finance Minister, and asked him to notify the newspapers. Among those Bourque telephoned was the duty desk man at the Montreal Star. To get an Ottawa reaction for his first edition, the Star man relayed the news to James Oastler. chief of the paper's Ottawa Bureau. Oastler immediately phoned Mike Deacey, a secretary in the Prime Minister's office, who conveyed the sad message to Diefenbaker. That was how word reached him of the death of the man who alone might have saved his ministry. Diefenbaker could not, of course, appreciate at the time the extent of the threat to his power that the news represented. Yet in retrospect it seems clear that had Sauv~ lived, Jean Lesage and his Liberals could never have captured provincial office in June 196o. Without Lesage's victory, and the resultant collapse of the Union Nationale, enough of the French-Canadian contingent in the Conservative Party would almost certainly have survived the 1962 election to give Diefenbaker the majority that would have extended his mandate. Paul Sauv6's absence deprived the Tories of more than a valuable political ally. In his death, they lost the real leader of the federal Conservative Party in Quebec. In recent years it had been the machine of the Union Nationale premiers of the province, rather than federal politicians, who had provided whatever organizational strength the Tories could muster in Quebec during national elections. Ottawa's Conservatives had such extravagant confidence in the ability of the Union Nationale machine to deliver Les Epaulettes Perdues 371 the Quebec vote that the Party didn't even try to establish an effective provincial organization of its own in the province until after the humiliation at the polls on June 18, 1962. Two months before the 1962 election the Party's total organizational strength for the vital twenty-seven counties of eastern Quebec had consisted of a tiny office, staffed by one girl, at 64o Rue St Jean in Quebec City. Maurice Duplessis and John Diefenbaker never got along, because the sense of racial autonomy of the one and the Baptist morality of the other were too explosive a mixture, but in f 958 the Quebec Premier ordered his omnipresent political machine into the federal fight, and as a result, Diefenbaker garnered fifty of the province's seats - more than any previous Conservative prime minister in Canadian history. SauvCs accession to power following Duplessis' death immensely improved the Conservative position. The new Premier was even more anxious to extend organizational support to the Diefenbaker regime. Moreover, unlike any partnership with Duplessis, an alliance with the enlightened Sauv6 would not have lost the Tories votes in the rest of the country. Sauv6's achievement during the hectic 114 days he spent in office won great praise in Ottawa. Whispers were heard in high places that he might very well become the first French Canadian to serve as national leader of the Conservative Party. A true Tory by birth and acceptance, Sauv6 was only fifty-two when he died, but his career marked him as a man who might have given this nation the kind of strong, unified administration it lacked since the days of Sir Wilfrid Laurier. The son of Senator Arthur Sauv6, who led the Conservative Party in Quebec from 1916 to 1927 and later served in R. B. Bennett's cabinet, Paul Sauv6 was just out of law school when he was first elected to the Quebec assembly for St Eustache in 1930. During World War 11 he led a regiment, Les Fusiliers Mont-Royal, into Normandy and across Western Europe, though he never surrendered his 372 Twilight of Power legislative seat. He joined the Duplessis cabinet as Quebec's first Minister of Social Welfare and Youth on September 18, 1946. The only one of Duplessis's ministers who would not allow himself to be bullied by the capricious premier, he won the respect of Quebec City political observers by answering Opposition questions in the legislature without waiting for Duplessis's nod of approval, as was the custom with all other ministers. Once in power, Sauv6 demonstrated that he believed in the preservation of French Canada's culture fully as much as Duplessis, but that he did not consider federal-provincial warfare a prerequisite to its survival. At the time of his death he was close to agreement with Ottawa over an acceptable formula for federal grants to Quebec universities and talked of participation in such areas of shared jurisdiction as construction of the Trans-Canada Highway and hospital insurance. In a posthumous attempt to capitalize on Paul Sauv6's popularity, the federal Progressive Conservative Association of Quebec elected his widow as president at its annual meeting on March 5, 196 1. It was an empty gesture. For in the interval, Jean Lesage had come to power and the province that only three years before had given John Diefenbaker two-thirds of its seventy-five seats had assumed an altogether different political complexion. Six days after Paul Sauv6's death, the Union Nationale Party slipped under the command of Antonio Barrette, the Former Minister of Labour.* Barrette wanted desperately to be another Sauv6, not another Duplessis, but the Party's money was controlled by the Duplessiswing, and he couldn't succeed. In the provincial election on June 2 2, 1 96o, the Liberals under Jean Lesage squeezed into power with eight more seats than Barrette's dispirited Union Nationale. The Liberal mandate, narrow as it was, *Barrette was named Canadian Ambassador to Greece on March 2, 1963. This was Diefenbaker's last appointment. Les Epaulettes Perdues 373 had shattered the country's most efficient political machine. THE ELECTION OF JEAN LESAGE and his young men set off a political revolution in the province that severely altered the pattern of Canada's French-English relations. Despite his personal tendencies toward reform through gradual compromise, Lesage found himself presiding over some of the most drastic changes in Quebec society since the French empire in North America was crushed on the Plains of Abraham. After two centuries of uninterrupted partnership between church and state in Quebec, the clergy came under pressure to confine its influence to spiritual things, while the provincial government increasingly took over the Roman Catholic church's traditional control of educational, health, and welfare institutions. This kind of liberation had been deliberately impeded from its natural flowering by the policies of Maurice Duplessis. His death brought on a feeling of deliverance, not dissimilar to that experienced in Russia after Stalin died. By manipulating the folk memory of the Conquest, Duplessis had managed to transform the state into an instrument of fear, using it to fan the racial anger of an exploited populace. In the process, Quebec nationalism came to be nourished by two distinct forces: an understandable will of the people to preserve their distinctive French-Canadian culture, and a paternalistic, basically reactionary objection to unsanctioned political change of any kind. Lesage's prime concern was to dissociate these two elements from each other. He was determined to go beyond anything Duplessis had dared to do in order to guarantee the survival of French Canada, but at the same time he intended to use the powers of the state to interfere powerfully on the side of the ordinary citizen. This was a political leap of awesome proportions, 374 Twilight of Power though few English Canadians were even vaguely aware of its implications. What Lesage set out to accomplish was nothing less than to create a situation in which the English - in fact and not just in theory - would accept the French-Canadian concept of Canada as a nation that is not a homogeneous entity but the political home of two quite separate though not necessarily incompatible societies. This was the great idea stirring in Quebec. It was also the very antithesis of the fondly cherished ambition of John Diefenbaker. His most noble political motive had always been the propagation of "unhyphenated Canadian- ism." The two goals were totally incompatible. Diefenbaker often reiterated his abiding passion to foster in Canada a single nationality which would wipe away any stigma that could be attached to a man's ancestry. He never spoke with more passionate zeal on the subject than during an interview with Maclean ~ Magazine, just before the 1958 campaign. To a question about what had motivated him to become a lawyer and a politician, he replied as follows: I am the first prime minister of this country of neither altogether English nor French origin. So I determined to bring about a Canadian citizenship that knew no hyphenated consideration. At university they used to laugh about this dedication to a certain purpose. I said: "You will never build a Canada on this basis, when every ten years a person has to register on the basis of his paternal origin." And when I made my first speech in parliament in June Of 1940, that was it, and on the i ith of August, 1944, 1 came back to it again and I said, "This is wrong." I said that those who served in the Canadian Armed Forces with "Canada" on their shoulder-straps, when they came back, were going to have to start to register again according to their racial origin. Mr. Mackenzie King said he would join with me. I said that I never thought of Roosevelt as a Dutch-Ameri- Les Epaulettes Perdues 375 can or General Eisenhower as a German-American or Pershing as a German-American. I said that they were all Americans and that we were building up in Canada this hyphenated citizenship, and I said, "That is what I am going to change." John W. Dafoe used to take a strong stand on that. His people came to Canada - this is from recollection -around 16go and 17oo, and he had to register every seven years as being Dutch. It was so bad in this country that Edward, Prince of Wales, was an Englishman in Wales but when he arrived at High River, he had to register in Canada as being of German origin. Well, I never deviated from this purpose. It's the reason I went into public life. In his 1957 and 1958 campaigns Diefenbaker promised to turn these sentiments into concrete action by having the forms for the 196 1 census drawn up so that people could call themselves Canadians, without having to admit to their previous racial strains. On "The Nation's Business" telecast of April 12, ig6i, Diefenbaker announced the fulfilment of this pledge. "For the first time in Canada's history," he proudly proclaimed, "you, no matter what your racial origin may be, you have the opportunity of registering [in the census] as a Canadian." On Diefenbaker's personal orders, the replies to Question Ten of the 196 1 census forms, "What is your origin on your father's side?" included, for the first time, the printed insertion "Canadian origin." This decision triggered off an immediate volley of protests and petitions from French-Canadian organizations and individuals. During the two hundred years since the Conquest, the French-Canadian entity in Canada had grown from a mere seventy thousand to nearly five million - one of the most remarkable feats of ethnic survival in recorded history. Now, the Quebec nationalists claimed, the revised version of the census was robbing them of the only means by which this racial strain could be tabulated and sustained. They felt that to allow the "Canadian 376 Twilight of Power origin" option on the census form would prompt many citizens with French roots to list themselves in this category, thus submerging their separate identity. As a result of the outraged reaction, which was obviously going to mean lost votes, Diefenbaker retreated. At a cost to the federal treasury Of $ 125,000, the seven million census forms already printed were destroyed, and a revised Question Ten* was substituted. The furor over the 196 1 census appeared to the rest of the country as little more than picayune bickering by headline-hungry French-Canadian extremists. But it caused quite a different reaction among thoughtful Que- beckers. To them, the episode confirmed something they had suspected all along: that John Diefenbaker had not the slightest comprehension of the ideological upheaval which had taken place in the province since the death of Maurice Duplessis. And further, that the Prime Minister had no close advisers capable of understanding it. (As a matter of fact, Diefenbaker did have one enlightened adviser in the province of Quebec. His name was Brian Mulroney and he spent most of the Diefenbaker Years as a law student at Laval University. Though only in his early twenties, he was politically mature beyond his years and had a perfect appreciation of Quebec's political aspirations. Unlike most of the other men who had access to the Prime Minister, he was unafraid to be openly critical. It was largely because - Mulroney's advice went unheeded that the Tories lost the confidence of Quebec.) In picking his official advisers from Quebec, Diefenbaker followed the same dependable principle that had been used by every Ottawa administration since the days of Sir Wilfrid Laurier. This selection method was once described by Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the witty Montreal intellectual, as choosing men "not so much for their abil- * "Are you a Canadian? If not, of what country are you a national or citizen? To what ethnic or cultural group did you or your ancestor -on the male side - belong on coming to this continent?" Les Epaulettes PerdueS 377 ity to serve democracy, as for their ability to make democracy serve the party; their main qualifications being familiarity with machine politicians and schemers." Diefenbaker failed to take into account the changed and charged political climate of Quebec. With the new spirit of release which followed Duplessis's death came a wave of popular protest against old-line Quebec politicians -both provincial and federal - for failing to lead the province into the twentieth century. After decades of shrugging off political immorality as an inevitable result of the system of government imposed on them by the British, French Canadians awakened to a feeling of revulsion against the readily corruptible politicos who had become their spokesmen. Instead, they hungered for men with the integrity and stature that would allow them to serve in Ottawa as Quebec's ambassadors, with their power based on respect rather than on the facile persuasion of patronage. After Diefenbaker swept the province in the 1958 campaign as no Tory had before him, there were forty-two French-speaking Conservative m.p.'s eligible for his cabinet. The representatives he picked were a sad sextet who easily earned their reputation as the Conservative cabinet's least effective ministers. "Not since the days of R. B. Bennett," complained Andr6 Laurendeau, editor of Le Devoir, "have French-Canadians felt themselves so absent from the affairs of state, as under Mr. Diefenbaker." Having made his selection, Diefenbaker promptly demonstrated his distrust for the men he picked by placing them in the cabinet's least important portfolios. Azellus Denis, the Liberal member from St Denis, once scathingly described Quebec's cabinet contingent as comprising "a stone crusher" (Paul Comtois, Minister of Mines and Technical Surveys, later succeeded by Jacques Flynn and still later by Paul Martineau); "a store clerk" (Raymond O'Hurley, Minister of Defence Production); "a minister to prisoners" (1-6on Balcer, Solicitor General for three years before being promoted to Transport); and "a batman to 378 Twilight of Power the Minister of National Defence" (Pierre S&igny, the associate Minister of National Defence). Mark Drouin, Diefenbaker's chief Quebec lieutenant, served two terms in the "non-political" position of the Senate Speakership. Diefenbaker defended his choices from Quebec in public only once. Speaking to the 1963 annual Progressive Conservative Association meeting in Ottawa, he said: "Man for man and pound for pound our French-Canadian ministers are the equal of any that have ever occupied that position." Aside from the choice of Major-General Georges Vanier for the office of Governor General, which virtually had to be filled by a French Canadian, Diefenbaker didn't award any major Ottawa appointments to Quebeckers. His naming of fifteen royal commissions, for instance, entailed the appointment of sixty-eight commissioners. All but nine were English-speaking Canadians. The honour of sharing the Prime Minister's parliamentary desk -traditionally reserved for the Quebec lieutenant of an English-speaking Prime Minister - went instead to Donald Fleming. It was not a simple matter to rank the quality of Diefenbaker's Quebec ministers in descending order of their effectiveness. One of the ministers, being groomed by Diefenbaker as his chief Quebec lieutenant, eliminated himself from the race by going on a drinking spree in Montreal which reached its climax when he relieved himself into a potted palm at Montreal's Dorval Airport. Even this might have been forgiven, but for two facts. First, he insisted on pulling his pants down instead of merely unzipping them, and second, he was accompanied at the time by the editor and a photographer of one of the largest Quebec dailies. Probably the worst of Diefenbaker's Quebec ministers was Henri Courtemanche, described by the Peterborough Examiner as "the buffoon of Parliament." Appointed Deputy Speaker on October 14, 1957, he was later promoted to Secretary of State but, on January ig, 196o, at Les Epaulettes Perdues 379 the age of forty-three, he was moved to the Senate because of "ill health." Although he'd been privately trying to persuade him to resign for weeks, Diefenbaker finally ushered Courtemanche out of the Commons in a glow of praise. "He has given of himself unselfishly in the service of Parliament and Canada," the Prime Minister eulogized. I am sure the House will join with me in expressing the hope that in the days ahead, he may be able to continue his public service in whatever capacity his health will permit." The tribute was remembered in Ottawa with some glee less than two years later, when Courtemanche was temporarily disbarred by his own province for accepting rakeoffs totalling at least $6o,ooo on federal and provincial grants given to Montreal's Jean Talon Hospital. Under pressure from Diefenbaker, he resigned his Senate seat. Far less harmful but still damagingly ineffective was Mines Minister Paul Comtois, the former mayor, of Pierreville -a village of less than two thousand souls in Quebec's Yamaska County. On April 21, ig6i, he was caught dozing at his desk in the Commons during the debate on estimates of his own department. When Bert Herridge, the NDP member for Kootenay West, apologized for disturbing the minister's afternoon nap, Comtois blustered that he had, in fact, been "listening with my eyes closed." This gentle nonentity's finest hour arrived on October 6, 196 1, when he was retired from the cabinet, and, against his will, appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec. "What can I say?" Comtois shrugged in a memorable leave-taking, "I didn't ask for the job, but the Prime Minister said he felt I was the man." . Contrary to established custom, Diefenbaker did not inform the Quebec government of his choice. Jean Lesage, the provincial premier, was out of the country at the time and Acting Premier R6n6 Hamel was given the news from an elevator operator in the legislative buildings, who had heard it on his portable radio. 380 Twilight of Power Jacques Flynn, who succeeded Comtois in the Mines portfolio, might have given the constructive leadership Diefenbaker needed in Quebec, but his appointment preceded his personal defeat in the 1962 election by only six months. He was later appointed to the Senate and placed in charge of the Party's Quebec organization. Raymond O'Hurley, the Minister of Defence Production, who had spent most of his life as a lumber grader and woods manager for the Ross Seigniory at St Gilles, Quebec, described his role in Ottawa politics during an interview with Guy Rondeau, of the Canadian Press. "There is a vast difference," said O'Hurley, "between the outdoor life I knew and my job now which forces me to remain long hours cooped up in an office." The only Privy Councillor from Quebec who at least showed flair for playing the public figure was the Honourable Joseph Pierre Albert S6vigny, the associate Minister of National Defence. First elected to the Commons in 1958, S&igny owed his immediate elevation to the Deputy Speakership to the fact that his father, a former Chief Justice of Quebec, had once been a member of Sir Robert Borden's cabinet. Although he had difficulty fulfilling the meagre functions of this office - having to be prompted almost continuously by Commons clerks to prevent serious procedural errors - he was, nevertheless, promoted to the cabinet on August 20, 1959, and immediately rumours spread that S6vigny was the man Diefenbaker had chosen as his Quebec lieutenant. S&igny never denied these rumours. He didn't have to. Soon after attaining cabinet rank, he got into the habit of making bombshell pronouncements which created headlines, even if they contradicted cabinet policy. After one trip to South America, for instance, he publicly advocated Canadian membership in the Organization of American States, although the Prime Minister had already vetoed Les Epaulettes Perdues 381 such action. In another speech he bewailed "a South America where in just the past six months Communist governments have taken over British Guiana and Ecuador." In the same address he managed to brand most of the Far East nations along with China as "the yellow peril." "S6vigny later apologized for his statement about British Guiana and Ecuador with a unique explanation. His remarks, he said, had "gone beyond" his thoughts. Diefenbaker forced S&igny to make his apology in the Commons, but didn't trust him entirely even there. The text of S6vigny's apology was written for him by Davie Fulton who gave a carbon copy to the Prime Minister. Diefenbaker followed Rvigny's speech from his own copy, ready to leap up, should the Associate Minister of National Defence depart from his text. S6vigny's attacks on the Liberal Party were just about as well thought out. On January 24, 196 1, in the House of Commons, S6vigny compared Liberal political tactics to 11 communist subversion." His services in the Department of National Defence, where he might have contributed more materially to the fight against world communism, were not spectacular. The terms of reference of his appointment as Associate Minister included responsibility for military bands, the issue of medals, and the retirement of personnel. In a parliamentary committee investigating the theft of toll money from Montreal's Jacques Cartier Bridge, S6vigny was accused by J. A. Clement, the bridge's supervisor, of seeking favours in the naming of toll-collectors. On one occasion, S6vigny sent a National Defence transport plane that had flown a group of his friends from Ottawa to Montreal on an extra round-trip to retrieve the handbag one of his guests had forgotten at the Ottawa airport.* An altogether different character was Uon Balcer, the S&vigny resigned from the cabinet on February 9 (see Chapter 24), but ran as a Conservative in the 1963 election and was defeated. 382 Twilight of Power member for Three Rivers since 1949. After doing penance for having vigorously opposed Diefenbaker's candidacy at the 1956 leadership convention by spending three years in the meaningless job of Solicitor General, Balcer was finally promoted to Transport on October i i, i 96o. A wartime deck officer of the frigate Hmcs Annan, whose gun crew sank a surfaced German submarine, Balcer was one of the few Quebec ministers who took his cabinet job seriously. He gave his department sound administration and carried himself with a deserved dignity quite lacking in his Quebec colleagues. The French Canadian who attained the most impressive title in the Conservative cabinet was without doubt Noel Dorion, who became Secretary of State and President of the Privy Council. The latter honour was late in coming -on December 28, 196 1 -and it didn't mean a great deal. As President of the Privy Council, Dorion presided over exactly three Privy Council meetings; Diefenbaker chaired the rest. Just a few days after he was elevated to the Privy Council presidency, a letter written in the spring Of 1958 on Dorion's personal stationery became public. Signed with Dorion's name, the letter was addressed to Wellie CW, then Deputy Chief of Quebec's notorious Liquor Police. "Ever since the election," the letter read, "I've been flooded with work and unable to express my thanks to those who have helped me. You have personally rendered great service which I fully recognize." The note then proceeded to thank other members of the liquor squad for their assistance in getting out the vote. Dorion's eldest son Louis flew to Ottawa a few days before the letter became public, to beg the Prime Minister to endorse his father as an honourable man; but Diefenbaker refused. Dorion never denied that the Liquor Police had aided his election, but he threatened to sue any newspaper that dared to publish the letter,* and claimed he had neither * Le Nouveau Journal and the Toronto Star did, with no ensuing court action. Les Epaulettes Perdues 383 seen nor signed the correspondence. According to Dorion someone had visited his office while he was away and talked his secretary into typing the letter and signing it in his name. Only four months before the letter became public, however, three members of the Quebec Liquor Police had testified during a trial for fraud that they had worked for Dorion during the 1958 election. C.A. Faucher, the third Liquor Police official to admit his involvement with Dorion, was particularly explicit. He explained that he had been paid a special six-dollar-a-day allowance plus ten cents a mile for his car during the Dorion campaign. One of his jobs was to drive a nurse to various convents in the riding. "When the round was finished," Faucher testified with some feeling of pride, "the nurse told me she goes to see the nuns and gets them to vote for Monsieur Dorion." Dorion lost his seat to a Social Crediter in the 1962 election and was the only defeated Quebec Tory who publicly blamed Diefenbaker. "We were not in contact with our constituencies. I told the Prime Minister that very often," he complained. In an interview with Mario Cardinal of Le Devoir on January 14, 1963, he charged that what he and his colleagues had lacked was the confidence of the Prime Minister. Noel Dorion was an interesting and pathetic figure of the Diefenbaker Years. An extreme autonomist and anticentralist, a strong Union Nationaliste of the Duplessis vintage, his credentials gave him some standing in the provincial Party, but they made him anathema to large portions of the rest of Canada. The Union Nationale machine, which had been so largely responsible for the election of nearly all the Quebec Conservatives who came to Ottawa in 1958, threw a weird assortment of politicians on the federal scene. One Conservative m.p.. was a Montreal municipal politician, on the run from a threatened rumble with another gang of 384 Twilight of Power Montreal municipal politicians. He did not spend much time in Ottawa, but when he came he actually sat at his Commons desk with a pistol in a concealed shoulder holster and drove around Ottawa in a bullet-proof limousine, accompanied by a bodyguard. Also in the Quebec contingent was Jean-Noel Tremblay, who was summed up in a description by the Globe and Mail's Robert Duffy as "the best medixval mind in the Commons." FOR HALF A CENTURY it had meant nothing, literally nothing, to be a Conservative in Quebec. The last provincial Conservative administration had gone out of office in 1897. The Conservative Party had not been able to come to terms with the French-Canadian mind and milieu since 1885, when a Tory cabinet in Ottawa refused to intercede in the hanging of Louis Riel. In parts of Quebec, the twelfth of July was still considered "a Conservative day." In ten of the eleven federal elections between 1917 and 1958, the Conservatives had won less than nine seats in Quebec. On November 4, 194 1, when J. S. Roy, a Quebec Conservative, resigned from his party, he placed on Hansard a bitter indictment of Tory policies. "Any FrenchCanadian member of this House," he said, "who has mixed with the Conservative Party as it now exists must realize that he is not a member of their political family. He is at best a tolerated stranger, accepted from necessity and looked at with a certain degree of curiosity. His view of Canada is not their view... There is no friendship or sympathy between them and us." John Diefenbaker became the focal point of this deep French-Canadian distrust of the federal Tories. At the 1956 leadership convention, nearly all the province's three hundred ballots were cast against his candidacy. Quebec's dislike of Diefenbaker had a long and unsavoury history. Clandestine pamphlets widely distributed in the province, some by Liberals, purported to document Diefenbaker's alleged animosity to the Catholic church by linking him to the activities of the Ku Klux Klan in Les Epaulettes Perdues 385 Saskatchewan during the late 'twenties - a charge that was patently false. Another accusation made against Diefenbaker by French-Canadian nationalists was that he had fought against the issuing of a CBc French-language radio station licence for the Prairies. This was not true; Diefenbaker had not supported the licence application, but he had not fought it either. A more realistic charge held against him in Quebec was Diefenbaker's politically courageous stand on conscription during World War ii. On July 11, 1944, Diefenbaker had read into Hansard a return of the call-up by mobilization districts, which showed that Kingston, Ontario, had fifteen times as many recruits as Quebec City, although the two areas had about the same population. "I believe," he said, "in the principle of Canadian unity, and I say that in adopting a policy of this kind - one of not giving men in all parts of Canada an equality of opportunity to serve - the Government is doing more to cause disunion and friction across Canada than through any other act in the administration of the war effort." Still another reason for the condemnation of John Diefenbaker among some French-Canadian Conservatives, nearly all of whom were supporters of Maurice Duplessis provincially, was his lifelong crusade for a Canadian Bill of Rights. In his many speeches on the restriction of civil liberties in Canada, before he became Prime Minister, Diefenbaker had ceaselessly denounced Duplessis's infamous Padlock Law, by which anyone Duplessis or his police cared to call a Communist could be deprived of the use of his property. Diefenbaker also championed the cause of such militant religious sects as the Witnesses of Jehovah, openly persecuted by Duplessis and his henchmen. While these sentiments did Diefenbaker honour in the rest of the country, in Quebec they earned him the hostility of the very elements on which his party depended to make any headway federally. 386 Twilight of Power DIEFENBAKER'S QUEBEC STRATEGY in the 1957 general election was based on two confidential memos prepared by Gordon Churchill, who led the pre-convention Diefenbaker for Leader Committee and was later named National Director of Organization for the campaign. During the spring of 1954 Churchill had undertaken an analysis of past Canadian election results. In his report he argued that in eight of the nine general elections since Confederation in which a government had been toppled, the decisive margin of seats had been supplied not by Quebec, but by the Maritimes, Ontario and the Prairies. He used the historical analogy to advocate that the Conservatives not over-emphasize French Canada in their next campaign, since attempts to conquer Quebec would most likely squander already inadequate funds and energy that could be applied more fruitfully to the English-speaking provinces. "The major effort of the Conservative Party must be made in Ontario and to an almost equal degree in the Maritimes and the West," Churchill recommended. "In these areas the Party has formerly had considerable strength, whereas in Quebec it had very little strength since 1891 and practically none at all since 1935." In an additional secret memorandum to Diefenbaker, written in January 1957, Churchill reiterated his arguments. "Quebec should not be ignored," he wrote, "but it is extremely doubtful that Quebec can be decisive. The military maxim, 'reinforce success not failure,' might well be considered as applicable to the political strategy." This counsel was followed and Party campaign budgets for Quebec were slashed to $200,000. For his single appearance in Quebec City during the campaign, Diefenbaker called on the Mayor, visited the Most Reverend Maurice Roy, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Quebec (the Anglican Bishop declined to see him), and spent an hour shaking hands at an afternoon sherry party of women, most of them English-speaking. In the evening, he attended a rally which attracted fewer than four hundred Les Epaulettes Perdues 387 mildly enthusiastic partisans. Premier Maurice Duplessis was pointedly out of town. During a last-minute swing through Quebec in June 1957, Diefenbaker alternated between threats ("If you don't go along with the rest of the country, you'll be left behind") and promises ("If you send us members, after June io we'll see you have the same cabinet representation you have now"). At every stop in the rural districts, two little men ran furiously to the head of the Diefenbaker caravan, carrying a banner emblazoned with the words "BIENVENUE JOHN." As soon as the speeches were ended, the two men would fold their placard, toss it in the back of their stationwagon, and race ahead of Diefenbaker to the next town. In the 1957 election, the Conservatives managed to raise their total number of French-speaking Quebec m.p.'s from three to six but, just as Gordon Churchill had predicted, enough ridings turned Tory in the rest of the country to allow the formation of a minority administration. Diefenbaker appointed only one French-speaking member to his first cabinet: Uon Balcer, who became Solicitor General -a supernumerary position with trivial duties. To make the insult even more pointed, Balcer got his lowly post while five more important cabinet jobs remained vacant. Two months later Paul Comtois was added as Minister of Mines and Technical Surveys. The only patronage-rich portfolio given to a Quebecker was Post Office, taken by the English-speaking Bill Hamilton, from Montreal's Notre-Dame-de-Grdce constituency, who promptly eradicated its patronage practices. During the 195.8 campaign, Diefenbaker switched his Quebec tactics to an appeal for more m.Ws, in exchange for more cabinet posts. "You have it in your power - and I know you understand me well when I say this -to surround me with the talented lieutenants I need to direct efficiently the destinies of our country," the Prime Minister said in French at a meeting in Rimouski. At a later 388 Twilight of Power rally in Montreal on March 27, Diefenbaker urged his listeners to "embarrass" him with a large number of Quebec Conservatives of cabinet calibre. The connection between the federal Tories and the Union Nationale became increasingly public in the 1958 campaign. At a rally in Sherbrooke on March 24, held to encourage the federal candidacy of Th6og&ne Ricard, a longtime Union Nationale supporter, Diefenbaker turned to Daniel Johnson, later the Union Nationale leader, and said: "I thank you Mr Johnson for having kindly attended this meeting and for all you have done to assure Mr Ricard's success." Later at St Hyacinthe, Johnson replied: "Some people are raising their eyebrows because some National Union members stand with you, Mr Diefenbaker, on the same platform and speak the same language. But this is only logical, because the Conservative Party stands for provincial rights in contrast to the centralizing tendencies of the Liberals." On March 31, 1958, the Union Nationale machine delivered fifty Tory m.p.'s from Quebec - twice the number of Liberals elected -something that had not happened since Sir John A. Macdonald's campaign of 1882. It was a great victory, but the sweep seemed to have little impact on Diefenbaker, because once again Gordon Churchill's maxim had held true: the Conservatives did not owe their power to French Canada: without the fifty Quebec seats, the Diefenbaker administration would still have had a comfortable margin of twenty-four. For his 1962 campaign, Diefenbaker retreated to a revised version of the original Churchill directive. It read something like this: "If you go out of your way to try to hold Quebec, you might alienate the rest of Canada; but if you can demonstrate to French-Canadian voters that you're likely to hold the rest of the country, you have a chance of retaining Quebec as well." The only major measure passed specifically for French Canada during the Diefenbaker Years was the introduction of bilingual government cheques, but it was done as a grudging, last- Les Epaulettes Perdues 389 minute concession, so that it lost most of its potential impact on the hustings. Dorion and S6vigny were so out of touch with Quebec by this time that they assured Diefenbaker that bilingual cheques would satisfy the aspirations of French Canadians. Thirty-six Quebec Tory m.p.'s lost their seats on June 18, 1962, mostly to the Social Credit Party which had jumped into the political vacuum left by the major parties. Swelling from the most stubbornly nationalistic strata of the province's rural population, more than half a million voters cast their ballots for the compelling monetary mysticism of Wal Caouette, the Party's Quebec leader. In the 1963 election, the Conservatives more or less wrote off Quebec, and Diefenbaker waged only a token campaign. Just three weeks before polling day he appointed two new Quebec ministers - Martial Asselin as Minister of Forestry and Th~og~ne Ricard as Minister without Portfolio - and assigned them to travel at his side during his whistle-stop tour of the Gasp6 peninsula. To produce crowds at the way stations, an extra coach was hooked on the train and jammed with loyal French-Canadian Conservatives. Whenever the train halted, they'd jump off, run to the back of the train and mingle with local villagers, cheering as the Prime Minister alighted from his official car. Then as the train whistle blew for the departure, they'd race back to their car to repeat the performance at the next stop. Diefenbaker's efforts to prove that he really did care about Quebec and that he had done a great deal for French Canada during his stewardship took on an air of desperation. In his speeches he was reduced to listing such things as the publication of a French-language Atlas of Canada and increased diplomatic representation in Africa's former French colonies. On April 8, j963, Quebec voters elected only seven Tory m. Ws and gave the Conservative Party just 19 per cent of the ballots cast - a peacetime low. Although they had given him their support only five 390 Twilight of Power years before, most French Canadians seem to have realized that they could not make their influence felt in any administration headed by John Diefenbaker. They had voted Liberal for three generations, because they knew that Liberal prime ministers always kept at their right hand a proconsul from French Canada who in fact, not just in symbolic fancy, governed his people in subdued harmony with the rest of the country. Diefenbaker never succeeded in finding such a man, and Paul Sauv6 died too soon. In their disillusionment, Quebec voters turned in 1962 to the political iconoclasm of Social Credit, and in 1963, back to the Liberal Party. The entente cordiale initiated when Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Georges-Etienne Cartier joined in the Great Coalition that brought about Confederation, collapsed during the Diefenbaker Years. TWENTY ONE The Carnage of The Coyne Affair THE SINGLE most disturbing episode of the Diefenbaker Years - and the event which destroyed the political invincibility of the Prime Minister -was the clash in the summer of 1961 between the federal government and its own fiscal agent, the Bank of Canada. In his successful attempt to dislodge James Elliott Coyne, the Bank's troublesome Governor, John Diefenbaker found himself engaged in the least admirable crusade of his career. Of the many men who committed their passions to that historic episode, none escaped without in some way being tarnished by its outcome. Not the least of its consequences was the fact that the Prince Albert politician's inept handling of the whole affair instilled the first realistic hope in Lester Pearson that the thrones of Tory power were not as impregnable as they appeared. James Coyne was responsible for one of the most searing indictments ever levelled at a Canadian government by a senior civil servant. He accused the Diefenbaker administration of attempted blackmail, character assassination, and the propagation of deliberate falsehoods. These charges were, of course, not brought to a court of law and therefore never proved. Grant Dexter, the scholarly editor emeritus of the Winnipeg Free Press, wrote, "Jim Coyne was the victim of the most squalid political conspiracy in our history -which is taking in a lot of territory." 392 Twilight of Power The Conservative strategy against Coyne misfired spectacularly because it didn't take into account the potential zeal of an aroused Senate. But an even more important reason for the debacle suffered by the Tories in the Coyne affair was that John Diefenbaker grossly misjudged the character of his adversary. For the first two and a half decades of its existence the Bank of Canada, a Crown agency that dominates Canadian finance, remained a cloistered tower of silence. Its Governor, a remote eminence appointed by the government for seven-year terms, was seldom seen, even more seldom heard, and always a model of prudence and restraint. But James Coyne was different. An elegant patrician with strange ideas, he seemed, a most unlikely candidate to be a central Bank governor, and an even unlikelier candidate to lead a public crusade, particularly against his own government. His own staff found him so aloof that before one Bank of Canada Christmas party, they toyed with the idea of presenting him with an icicle bound in blue ribbon. The idea was reluctantly abandoned, as apt but incautious. Yet there was one thing that this cold and complex whippet of a man was concerned about, even to the extent of behaving contrary to the discreet habits of a lifetime: James Coyne was an ardent nationalist who cared passionately about the economic independence of his country. The Governor sacrificed his own career and humiliated the institution he loved, because he was unalterably convinced that if allowed to go unchecked, Diefenbaker's economic excesses would ruin Canada's chances to survive as a sovereign nation. This was a dubious thesis, but the significance of the Coyne affair cannot be properly assessed unless it is viewed in the context of the Governor's unusual personality and his remarkable concept of patriotism. A fierce nationalism was bred into James Coyne by his The Carnage of The Coyne Affair 393 family - a group that one contemporary described as "a clan of plain-living, high-thinking, hot liberals dedicated to the ideals of the Canadian nation." His father, Mr Justice J. B. Coyne of the Manitoba Appeal Court, was a leading member of Winnipeg's famous Sanhedrin -an informal gathering of local intellectuals, including John W. Dafoe, the Winnipeg Free Press editor, who met to expound the virtues of Canadian autonomy. Young Jim was made aware at almost every dinner-table conversation of the duties and sacrifices involved in being Canadian. After graduating with a cum laude B.A. in history and mathematics from the University of Manitoba in 193 1, Coyne applied for a Rhodes Scholarship. George V Ferguson, later editor of the Montreal Star, who sat on the selection board, recalled that Coyne was so far ahead of other candidates that the committee held one of its shortest meetings on record. At Oxford, Coyne read law and briefly toured the continent as part of an all-star hockey team.* When he returned to Winnipeg, Coyne joined his father's law firm for four years. In 1936, Colonel J. L. Ralston, then counsel for the Turgeon Royal Commission investigating wheat-marketing, picked Coyne as his assistant. The Commission happened to be touring the West at the same time as a Bank of Canada research team, and Coyne spent many evenings chatting with the central bank economists. It was here, during long summer nights, in run-down Prairie hotel rooms, as the country was trying to struggle out of the Depression, that the young lawyer first became fully aware of the economic problems involved in Canadian nationhood. He decided to devote his career to them. Coyne resigned from his increasingly * The fact that Coyne had no academic background in banking or economics was often mentioned by his detractors. In a rare public display of humour, Covne once declared at a private Ottawa dinner, where every guest was requested to state his profession, "The bankers class me as a lawyer; the lawyers class me as an economist, and I'd hate to think what the economists class me as." 394 Twilight of Power lucrative law practice to become a $15o-a-month clerk in the Bank of Canada's research department. A year later, he was seconded to be secretary of the Central Mortgage Bank, formed by the government to relieve private mortgage-holders on the Prairies. But the mortgage bank never functioned. On the day Hitler walked into Poland, its machinery was converted into the Foreign Exchange Control Board, charged with preventing dollars required for the war effort from leaving the country. Later Coyne was sent to Washington as the Canadian Embassy's first financial attach6. There he helped to draft the Hyde Park Agreement that set up a mutual defense-production system. Meanwhile the heavy demand for goods from a still immature industrial economy, war scarcities, and rising United States prices were creating severe inflation in Canada, and Prime Minister Mackenzie King decided to establish the Wartime Prices and Trade Board to clamp a freeze on price levels. Donald Gordon, then the Bank of Canada's Deputy Governor, was named chairman. Coyne became his assistant, and later the Board's deputy chair- man. Gordon became a public hero, because he treated every situation with humour. (When a file of gloomy undertakers crept into his office to protest the Board's restrictions on cotton in coffin linings, Gordon threw them out, and bellowed after them: "If I die, the regulations will be relaxed!") But Coyne, who had deliberately cut himself off from public contacts, came to be regarded as a dictatorial backstage influence in the WPT13 organization.* Ottawa reporters tagged him "Jesus E. Coyne" and several commentators began to wonder in print why, as a 32-year-old * In this and his other positions, Coyne never tried to hide his distrust of the Americans. When an Ottawa deputy minister, attending a confidential wartime seminar on United States -Canadian relations, remarked that it was a pity American news media did not cover Canadian news more extensively, Coyne shot back: "As far as I'm concerned, the longer the Americans ignore Canada, the better I'll like it." The Carnage of The Coyne Affair 395 bachelor, he wasn't in uniform. Coyne had actually been trying to join the RCAF for some time, but Finance Minister James Ilsley felt he was much more valuable in his Ottawa assignment. He was finally released in 1942. Over- night the man who, as deputy chairman of the Wartime Prices and Trade Board, had been second in command of the Canadian economy, found himself standing eight-hour watches as a security guard at the Portage la Prairie RCAF training base. He later topped his class of pilots, but at thirty-four was ruled too old for combat. Coyne returned to the Bank of Canada in 1944 and was appointed Deputy Governor in 1950, when Donald Gordon left to head the CNR. Five years later he succeeded Graham Towers in the Bank's top job. Although the $50,ooo he received as Bank of Canada Governor placed him in a salary bracket $13,ooo higher than the nation's Prime Minister, Coyne did nothing to change the reputation he'd long had in Ottawa for being parsimonious to the point of stinginess. He drove an aging Ford and when he travelled packed an iron, so that he could press his own suits. He carried $3.95 vest-pocket watches which he would discard when they stopped running, and one acquaintance remembered hearing a long lecture from the Bank of Canada Governor on the virtues of buying cardboard luggage. When he was cooking his own meals, he followed supermarket advertising so closely that he knew which chain was selling cans of salmon a cent or two cheaper than its rivals. This penny-pinching attitude was partly the result of the quarter-century of Coyne's adult life spent as a bachelor, with what one Ottawa hostess called "an underdeveloped sense of social obligation." Coyne had few hobbies. He once purchased a do-it-yourself computer construction kit on which he played lonely games of noughts and crosses with himself. Although Coyne became more gregarious after his 1957 marriage to Meribeth Stobie Riley, a gracious Winnipeg widow, he continued to give the impression of being much 396 Twilight of Power more concerned with ideas than with people. The honed brilliance of his mental equipment was often awkward to keep under control. He once listened to a Bank of Canada economist expounding his pet theory for an hour, then cut him down with the remark: "I think that the exact opposite of what you've been saying is nearer the truth." He was rude and intolerant of others. His main defect was his exaggerated sense of pride; he was afflicted with what the Greeks called hubris. THIS, THEN, WAS THE MAN who single-handedly challenged the biggest parliamentary majority in Canadian history. But the extent of his audacity cannot be fully measured without an examination of just how the institution he headed functioned, and how the government he challenged attempted to weaken it. The Bank of Canada was set up mainly to offset the near collapse of confidence in the Canadian financial system brought about by the Depression. It was charged with regulating "credit and currency in the best interest of the economic life of the nation" and generally promoting "the economic and financial welfare of the dominion." Under the terms of its incorporation, one of the Bank's primary duties is to ensure that there is the right amount of money in existence at any given moment for the development of the country's economy. The Bank achieves changes in the money supply by increasing or lowering the funds that the Canadian banking system as a whole is able to lend and invest. It can do this because under the federal Bank Act each chartered bank is required to maintain cash reserves with the Bank of Canada equal to at least 8 per cent of its deposits. If the Bank of Canada wants to increase the funds of the banking system it buys government securities in the open market, and pays for them with cheques drawn on itself. These cheques are eventually deposited by the individuals who sold the government bonds at their own chartered banks. These banks, in turn, return the cheques to the The Carnage of The Coyne Affair 397 Bank of Canada. The cheques are then credited to their accounts at the central bank - thereby increasing the cash reserves they have on deposit. Because this raises their reserves to more than the minimum requirement of 8 per cent, they can then increase their loan and investment operations. If. on the other hand, the Bank of Canada wants to reduce the money supply, the whole procedure is simply reversed. The central bank sells government bonds from its portfolio in the open market and accepts in payment cheques drawn on the accounts the buyers maintain with the chartered banks. The Bank of Canada charges these cheques against the cash reserves of the chartered banks on deposit with it - reducing their totals below the required 8 per cent level. To bring up their reserve ratio, the chartered banks have to increase their cash deposits with the central bank, thus slowing down the rate at which they can lend money to their customers. The decisions that direct the monetary management of the nation are taken by the Governor of the Bank, in consultation with his experts. But the Governor himself exercises an unusual degree of authority. He even has the power to overrule decisions taken by Bank of Canada directors - a body of twelve businessmen appointed by the government, who meet seven times a year -although such a veto has to be referred to the cabinet. The relationship between the Bank of Canada and the federal government has always been touchy, probably because any institution that has the power to create money is naturally subject to political pressures. But under Graham Towers, its first Governor, who had been plucked out of his job as the Royal Bank's assistant general manager by R. B. Bennett, no open clash was ever precipitated. Towers was an unassuming but accomplished banker with an astonishing capacity for making Bank of Canada policies function smoothly. Unlike Coyne, who much preferred to stay barricaded in his Ottawa office, Towers enjoyed travelling to Toronto and Montreal for informal lunches with the senior officers of 398 Twilight of Power chartered banks. In such expeditions, he had the advantage of being regarded by the private bankers as one of their own. Constitutionally, there has been little doubt about the relationship between the administration and its central bank. The government is directly responsible for its policies, and the Bank must obey government instructions. In case of disagreement, the Governor and directors of the Bank must resign. This attitude was confirmed most forcefully by C. A. Dunning, the Liberal Minister of Finance, during a 1936 Commons debate. "In the long run," he said, "the Bank in the performance of a vital sovereign function must be responsible to the sovereign will expressed through a government. There cannot be two sovereigns in a single state." J. L. Ilsley, a successor to Dunning, further strengthened this view when he observed that "the monetary policy which the bank carries out from time to time must be the government's policy." Douglas Abbott, the next Liberal Finance Minister, was even more blunt. "The government," he said, "if it were not satisfied with the action taken by the Governor of the Bank of Canada, would have to change the management." When Walter Harris, Abbott's successor, during a Commons debate on August i 1, 1956, retreated from this hard position, he was immediately attacked by Donald Heming, then Opposition financial critic, who scornfully accused the Liberal government of denying its responsibility for what the Bank of Canada was doing. "The government," he declared, "cannot shed its responsibility for full fiscal policy in the broadest sense of the word, and that must include the actions of the Bank of Canada." During the 1957 election, the Conservatives maintained their tough posture on the question of monetary responsibility. "The little man - the farmer, the fisherman and the small businessman - is being crushed by the Liberal government's tight money policy," Diefenbaker charged at Truro, Nova Scotia, on May 2, 1957, then promised that The Carnage of The Coyne Affair 399 "tight money will disappear under a Conservative administration." On June 21, 1957, when Diefenbaker formed his first government, the three-month treasury bill interest rate (the foundation of the bank rate)* was 3.8 per cent. The rate rose to 4.o8 per cent by August 2 1, but swung back to 3.74 per cent by November and 3.25 per cent by January 31, 1958. This was in line with Tory pledges, and Conservative ministers were quick to take the credit. On January 25, f 958, when Donald Fleming was asked in the Commons whether the government intended to ease the bank rate further, the Minister of Finance proudly replied: "The answer is 'yes.' The government has taken steps towards easing the former policy ... and hopes to see that this beneficial trend will continue." Six days later, Fleming further confirmed the government's direct responsibility for monetary policy. Asked whether the reduction in interest rates was the result of government policy, he replied: "Yes, there has been action on the part of the government." The next day the House was dissolved for the 1958 election. During that campaign, the interest rate continued to fall, and the Conservatives continued to claim credit for the drop. But in the twelve months after the 1958 election, the size of the 1957-58 budgetary deficit became known, and the even larger 1958-59 deficit was revealed. These deficits, on top of the Conversion Loan and the accompanying expansion in the money supply of some $1,300 millions, pushed interest rates up sharply. On March 19, 1959, Donald Fleming began to retreat from his previously rigid stand that the government controls monetary policy. Asked in the Commons if the government approved of the monetary policy being followed by the Bank of Canada, he retorted: "The Bank of Canada carries on certain of its operations in the market without any instructions from the Minister of Finance and it is not inhibited in any way * After November 1, 1956, the bank rate was allowed to move freely, to be determined by the weekly sale of three-month treasury bills. 400 Twilight of Power in this regard." Then, on April 28, 1959, came Fleming's first outright repudiation of monetary responsibility. "In the matter of monetary policy," he told the Commons, "this Parliament has placed the responsibility ... and the power in the hands of the Bank of Canada. The government does not exercise any sway in the field of monetary policy." As interest levels climbed (on August 12, 1959, the rate passed 6 per cent), the Tory government continued to absolve itself ever more boldly of any blame. "I should point out," Diefenbaker declared during a Tv broadcast on October j, 1959, "that the Bank of Canada, not the government, controls the money supply in Canada.... It is independent and autonomous." Finally, on December 2, ig6o, in his bluntest comment, Fleming told a Commons questioner: "The Bank of Canada is not responsible to the Government." Fleming, in effect, pictured the cabinet as being constitutionally helpless before the policies of the Bank of Canada Governor. But non-partisan constitutional experts in Ottawa disagreed with such an interpretation. They insisted that the fact Coyne was still in his job clearly indicated at least tacit approval of his policies. Coyne himself had supported this interpretation, when he told a Commons committee in 1956 that if the government were displeased with the management of the Bank "they could put in motion steps which would bring about a change in the management. At some stage in that process ... the Governor would have to resign." Complete documentation won't be available until the publication of official correspondence, but the economic circumstances of 1958 and 1959 indicate that despite his public repudiation of Coyne's tight-money philosophy, Fleming was using the Bank of Canada policy to combat the financial profligacy of his fellow cabinet ministers. One clue to the relationship then existing between the two men leaked out of a private dinner for bond salesmen given in Ottawa in the fall Of 1959. "When the history of The Carnage of The coyne Affair 401 these times is written," Coyne was reported to have said, 11 and the whole story of the part that Donald Fleming played is known, the people of Canada will realize their debt to him." But at the same time, obsessed by what he called "the abominable wickedness of inflation," Coyne had been restricting the money supply when, according to orthodox economic theory, Canada should have been fighting its way out of recession by heavy spending. It was largely Coyne's influence that kept long-term interest rates up to 1 1/2 per cent higher than comparable rates on the United States money market, making it more difficult for Canadian business to expand. The Conversion Loan (which had been advocated by Coyne) had enabled the Bank of Canada to resort to tight money without having to worry about the mass Of 1959- 1962 Victory Bonds falling in. It seemed to take Fleming nearly three years to become fully aware of the fact that by his strict monetary policy, Coyne was offsetting the potential benefits of the government's budgetary deficits. When Coyne's policies helped offset the budgetary surplus Fleming had hoped to achieve in ig6o, the Minister of Finance became determined to terminate the Governor's career. THE INCREASINGLY UNEASY RELATIONSHIP between the Diefenbaker government and the Bank of Canada was also aggravated in the fall Of 1959 when Coyne launched a series of precedent-shattering public speeches. His purpose seemed to be an appeal to the Canadian people over the heads of their elected leaders. Starting on October 5, 1959, in Calgary, the Governor began preaching that Canada, since World War 11, had been living beyond its means. The text of his lonely sermon was that by living off the proceeds of foreign capital and covering the resultant deficit by selling an ever-increasing share of natural resources to the Americans, Canada stood in danger of losing economic - and eventually political - control over its destiny. "We are now," he said in one typical sally, "at 402 Twilight of Power one of the more critical crossroads in our history, perhaps the most critical of all, when economic developments and preoccupation with economic doctrines of an earlier day are pushing us down the road that leads to loss of any effective power to be masters in our own household and ultimate absorption in and by another." In another characteristic war cry, he proclaimed: "If we do not effectively change the trends of the past, we shall drift into an irreversible form of integration with a very much larger and more powerful neighbour. I do not believe this is what Canadians want. For it means surrendering the very idea of Canadianism, the dream of Canada which gripped the imagination of Sir John A. Macdonald, Georges-Etienne Cartier, and so many Canadians of their time and since." Dam up the flow of American capital, Coyne contended, start living strictly on national resources, and Canada would be galvanized into such a burst of new creati ve and productive activity as had never been seen before. "I feel," he said, "the time has come when only such an effort can save us, and entitle us to share in the progress of the extraordinary modern age which is now opening for the world." While the Governor only vaguely outlined the exact remedies that in his opinion would save Canada, a study of his statements left the impression that he wanted to transform his country into an insular economy, ruled by a government with near-dictatorial powers to retain business ownership in domestic hands. "The final controls that Mr. Coyne wants," wrote Dr J. R. Petrie, a Montreal economic consultant, "would determine where we work, what we build, what we make, what we consume, and even how we live. This to me, verges on dictatorship, and I believe we should fight against it with all our resources." As Coyne continued to make his speeches, the attacks on him grew in intensity. Referring to an interview he'd had with Governor Coyne, W. E. Williams, president of the Procter & Gamble Company of Canada, told a Toronto audience: "I'm not saying he's a nut, but he's the The Carnage of The Coyne Affair 403 most illogical person I've ever run into." Donald Fleming, challenged in the House of Commons to defend some of Coyne's proclamations, replied, in a tone of injured innocence, "I trust that I am not to be held responsible for what is said by the Governor of the Bank of Canada." The most serious attacks on Coyne came from university economists. "The scope of his remarks," wrote Professor Scott Gordon, of Carleton University," "has transcended even the most generous limits to independent expression that might be accorded a central banker. They have extended far beyond the boundaries of economics and have entered not merely the area of politics but that of fundamental political sociology and political philosophy. Mr Coyne's opinions on these matters are presumed by the press and the general public to spring from his high expertise in economic matters. Such unreasoned reference to authority would be undesirable even if the economic analysis underlying Mr Coyne's political views were scientifically unexceptionable. This is not the case however." Finally, a round-robin letter, signed by twenty-nine of Canada's leading academic economists, was sent to Fleming, urging Coyne's immediate dismissal for incompetence and irresponsibility. Drafted by University of Toronto professors H. C. Eastman and the late Stefan Stykolt, the letter included this damning paragraph: "We are facing serious economic difficulties in Canada, both in our domestic economy and in our trade and financial relations with other nations. The undersigned economists wish to express to you that we have lost confidence in the ability of the Bank of Canada under its present management to play its proper role in ameliorating and resolving these difficulties." * The only unequivocal public converts to Coyne's "living within one's means" philosophy were eleven Sons of Freedom Doukhobors in the British Columbia interior, who set fire to their automobiles, declaring their support for Coyne and his fight against "the life of luxury." * *The Economists versus the Bank qt Canada. The Ryerson Press, 196 1. 404 TWilight of Power Fleming curtly acknowledged receipt of the economists' letter, but outwardly at least no action was taken. Behind the closed doors of the Bank of Canada, however, at stormy cabinet meetings, and in private conferences of Finance Department officials, tension was growing. James Coyne and John Diefenbaker were inexorably moving towards a clash which in retrospect seems to have been foreordained, like a latter-day re-enactment of the collision between the proud Titanic and the indomitable mountain of ice that humbled her. This is what happened, day by day, in that epic encounter: FEBRUARY15 Coyne sends Fleming a confidential, 24-page memorandum, outlining his ideas on reducing unemployment to 4 per cent, at a time when 1 1 .3 per cent of the labour force is out of work, balancing the budget, and eliminating Can- ada's trading deficit. "It is urgently to be desired," Coyne writes, "that a strong new initiative be undertaken, aimed directly at achieving increased production and employment in Canada." Among the specific measures he recom- mends are: i. A temporary tariff surcharge of io per cent on the value of imported goods to provide a stimulus for increased Canadian production. 2. Abolition for two years of all Canadian tourist tariff exemption privileges. 3. Establishment of a National Development Corporation - to provide funds for large-scale enterprises previously dependent on foreign capital. 4. Formation of a federal deposit insurance scheme to encourage higher rates of savings by Canadians. 5. Establishment of a national highways system to relieve provincial governments of a part of their financial burden. 6. Levying a temporary 3 per cent surtax on personal and corporation incomes, as well as stiffer taxes on luxuries. 7. Pegging of the Canadian dollar at par with the United The Carnage of The Coyne Affair 405 States dollar, by applying the resources of the central bank's Exchange Fund. Fleming does not acknowledge the receipt of Coyne's communication; it is not given cabinet consideration. FEBRUARY 20 At a regular Bank of Canada board meeting, anxiety is expressed for the first time about Coyne's nationalistic speeches. The Governor agrees not to take any further speaking engagements, except for the two he has already accepted - in New York, on March 7, and at Lennoxville, Quebec, on March 17. FEBRUARY 21 Questioned in the House of Commons about the propriety of Coyne's speeches, Fleming replies: "May I say that I have no right of censorship over the speeches of the Governor of the Bank of Canada. He does not refer them to me. Why should he do so? This is a free country." MARCH 18 On this, the day after Coyne's final public address at Lennoxville, Quebec, Fleming tells the Governor that his statements are embarrassing the government. Coyne insists that he has the right to make speeches, but points out he has no other engagements, and promises not to accept any more invitations. The two men part amicably, with Fleming saying he is glad they have at last had a frank discussion. MARCH 20 At another regular Bank of Canada directors' meeting, Coyne reports on his conference with the Finance Minister. One of the directors suggests that the government's objections to Coyne's speeches may mean they won't reappoint him when his term expires, on December 31, ig6i. "Do you think then, that I should resign now?" Coyne asks, with some incredulity. He is answered by a chorus around the table of. "No, no, certainly not." 406 Twilight of Power MARCH 21 John T Bryden, a Bank of Canada director and general manager of the North American Life Assurance Company, Toronto, calls on Fleming and, while discussing another matter, makes a reference to the action taken by the directors on February 15, ig6o, raising the Governor's pension to $25,000 from $ i i,goo a year. Fleming seems shocked and surprised to learn of the move; Bryden is equally surprised that Fleming appears not to have known about it, since the Assistant Deputy Minister of Finance was present at the meeting that approved the pension increase, and since Bryden remembers discussing the issue with Fleming previously. APRIL 7 Bryden writes a confidential letter to Fleming, outlining the deliberations that led up to the directors' decision to increase the Governor's retirement pay. The letter reveals that Bryden had briefly mentioned the matter to Fleming as early as March 1959, while he and the Finance Minister were vacationing in Muskoka. Bryden's note also confirms the opinion of the directors that according to legal advice from the Privy Council and the Department of Justice, it was within the competence of the board to raise pension payments, without reference to cabinet. MAY 30 Kenneth Taylor, the Deputy Minister of Finance, phones Coyne at noon and asks him to meet with Donald Fleming and himself in the minister's office at 3:00 P.m. Coyne interprets the request as the long-delayed reaction to his memorandum on the need for a new economic policy, sent to Fleming three months previously. He asks his secretary to get a copy of his own memo for him, rereads it, and jots down some clarifying notes on a sheet of scratch paper, which he puts in his pocket. When Coyne walks into Fleming's office, he is greeted by a thirty-minute verbal onslaught from the Minister. Fleming informs Coyne that he has been instructed by cabinet to tell the The Carnage of The Coyne Affair 407 Governor that he ~ will not be reappointed for another term. Fleming also requests Coyne's immediate resignation and tells him that the government wants the Bank of Canada directors to name a successor at their next meet- ing, on June 12. When Coyne requests an explanation of the urgency for his resignation, Fleming replies that the Governor's speeches have caused considerable trouble for the government and that they have embroiled the Bank of Canada in political controversy. Coyne defends himself by saying that he had no such intentions. Fleming replies: "No one in this room will question your sincerity." At Coyne's request, Fleming then repeats his indictment of the Governor. They discuss the pension raise. Fleming condemns Coyne for not having vetoed the directors' ruling that raised his own retirement pay. He also charges Coyne with not having informed him of the change, and with not having published the amended by-law in the Gazette. Fleming lists one other reason for the resignation request: that the government is considering certain programs it feels the Governor would doubtless oppose. The details of these proposals are not revealed. At the end of the interview, Coyne asks again about the pension and is told: "The matter is still under consideration." The Governor interprets this reply as an unspoken promise that if he goes quietly, he'll probably get his full pension. JUNE 2 Two Bank of Canada directors who had been hesitant about the government's request for Coyne's resignation are called into Fleming's office. They promise to alter their position, but later tell the Governor that they are still not clear about the nature of the policy differences between the Bank and the government. That evening, Coyne seeks advice from Graham Towers, the former Governor, now living in semi-retirement in Rockcliffe. Towers gives the hypothetical opinion that if a government, about to call an election, wants to use the Bank of Canada Governor as 408 Twilight of Power a scapegoat during the campaign, the Governor has a duty not to resign. JUNE 5 Coyne telephones J. I Bryden. He tells him about Heming's accusation of May 30, that as Governor he had been guilty of a dereliction of duty in not vetoing the directors' decision to raise his pension and in not submitting the pension by-law amendment to the cabinet. Bryden replies: "What complete and utter God-damned nonsense," and immediately sends Coyne a copy of his April 7 letter to Fleming in which he had established that the Minister of Finance must have been aware of the pension increase for more than a year. JUNE 9 Coyne writes three confidential letters to Fleming, covering the pension dispute. By quoting precedents and statutes he documents his contention that Bank of Canada pension by-law changes do not have to be approved by cabinet, or listed in the Gazette. Coyne cites three other Pension Fund by-laws altered without cabinet consideration or Gazette publication, and refers to an opinion by the Department of Justice that cabinet approval of such changes is not required. He also quotes a Privy Council legal advisor's 1954 ruling which objected to the idea of having the by-law changes submitted either to cabinet or the Gazette. However, to satisfy the government, Coyne agrees to have the new pension by-law published in the next issue of the Gazette. JUNE 12 Bank of Canada directors meet in Quebec City, under instructions from Fleming to demand Coyne's resignation. They delay their decision for one day. Two directors telephone Fleming, urging him to settle the dispute without an open breach. They point out that Coyne could be quietly dropped in only six months, when his term expires. Fleming remains adamant. The Carnage of The Coyne Affair 409 JUNE 13 The Board reconvenes at 9:3o a.m. Fleming telephones one of the directors from Ottawa and delivers his final ultimatum. Coyne asks the gathered directors: "The door is closed? There is no possible avenue of exploration left?" "That's right," is the reply. "We're sorry but we can't budge him." Coyne asks to be excused, retires to his room at the Chateau Frontenac Hotel and just before i i:oo a.m. transmits a press statement to his Ottawa office, announcing that he will not resign, even if the directors request him to do so. George G. Crosbie, a Bank director from St John's, Newfoundland, visits Coyne in his room, to express his regrets. "We all belong to the same Party. We all know what we must do," he sadly tells the Governor. Coyne returns to the board meeting at 12:15 p.m. and informs the directors of his stand. After he has read the press release, C. Bruce Hill, of St Catharines, Ontario, acting Board Chairman, moves the resolution requesting Coyne's resignation.* The Governor polls the directors. The resolution is carried nine to one, with Coyne himself abstaining and Crosbie voting against it. Coyne adjourns the meeting. Asked a few days later by Michael Barkway, an Ottawa reporter who later was named editor of The T'inancial Times, why he refused even the directors' request to resign, Coyne replied: "If I had caved in, no future Governor of the Bank of Canada would have been able to make a stand against any government whims. Besides, I couldn't resign quietly after Fleming's aspersions on me over the pension fund." In Ottawa, meanwhile, at 10:42 a.m., the Canadian Press downtown office gets a phone call from a Bank of Canada official that an important news release would soon be available. Since all his reporters are already dispersed * "That it is in the best interests of the Bank of Canada that the Governor do immediately tender his resignation to the Board of Directors of the Bank, and further that this action and decision on the part of the Board has been taken after prolonged consideration and with regret." 410 Twilight of Power on other assignments, Bureau Chief Fraser MacDougall sends his assistant, Graham Trotter, to the Bank. Trotter reads Coyne's statement and races to a telephone. The House of Commons meets at i i:oo a.m., with no one yet aware of the news from Quebec City. At 11:20 a.m., Liberal front-bencher Paul Martin is called out of his parliamentary seat by a telephone message from one of his Press Gallery friends and told about Coyne's statement. He rushes back into the Commons, and without even taking the time to inform Lester Pearson of the news, rises in his seat, glances at Donald Fleming and says: "May I ask the Minister of Finance a question. Is it a fact, as now reported by the Canadian Press, that the Minister of Finance has asked for the resignation of the Governor of the Bank of Canada?" Fleming, who had been expecting a question about consultation with Britain in Common Market negotiations, is aghast. "I have not seen the report," he mumbles, "and I do not think I wish to make any comment on that matter, until I have had an opportunity to examine the report." In Coyne's statement, copies of which are distributed to the Parliamentary Press Gallery at I: 3o a.m., the Governor takes strong exception to Fleming's contention that he should have vetoed the pension increase approved by the directors. "This slander upon my own integrity I cannot ignore or accept," he declares. "It appears to be another element in a general campaign of injury and defamation directed against Crown corporations, their chief executive officers and other public servants. I cannot and will not resign quietly under such circumstances. For the sake of future Governors of the Bank, and in the interests of propriety and decency in the processes of government and in the conduct of public affairs, I feel myself under an obligation to ensure that this matter is brought into the open in order that it may receive full consideration and discussion." Just before noon, word of the demand for Coyne's resignation reaches the Toronto and Montreal financial districts. It is here that the Governor's saddest The Carnage of The Coyne Affair 411 requiem is written. Bond prices react to the news by advancing strongly, with some issues up as much as a full point. Coyne has spent most of the day driving to Ottawa from Quebec City. At 9:oo p.m., a Bank of Canada official telephones the Press Gallery to announce that the Governor will hold a press conference in the Bank's boardroom at 9:15 P.m. Coyne answers questions for an hour and twenty-five minutes, stressing his difficulty in believing that the core of the government's case against him really involves his pension rights. JUNE 14 Appropriately enough, the Parliament Buildings shake, as miners digging a tunnel to connect the main structure with the West Block set off small dynamite charges intermittently throughout the day. The Galleries of the Commons are crowded with diplomats, civil servants, tourists, and two Bank of Canada stenographers who begin the vigil they are to keep throughout Parliament's handling of the Coyne case. Special Bank of Canada messengers rush their transcripts of the proceedings to Coyne, so that the Governor does not have to wait for the next day's Hansard. Fleming rises in his seat just after the House meets, to announce that his 196 1 budget will be brought down on June 20. He remains standing to deliver a long statement about Coyne's press release. He accuses the Governor of a rigid attitude on the maintenance of high interest rates. "During Mr Coyne's period in office," he says, "there has been a steady and deplorable deterioration in the relations of the Bank of Canada with the public. The Governor, by a course of ill-considered action and a series of public declarations of policy on public issues quite outside the realm of central banking, and by his rigid and doctrinaire expression of views, often and openly incompatible with government policy, has embroiled the Bank in continuous controversy with strong political overtones." Then the Minister of Finance moves on to the pension 412 Twilight of Power issue. He charges Coyne with "lacking a sense of responsibility" in accepting the higher pension "without ensuring that the matter was brought to the attention of the government." He concludes by announcing that he plans shortly "to take appropriate legislative action to meet the needs of the situation." In the debate that follows, Lester Pearson insists that the Bank of Canada Governor should be called before the Commons banking and commerce committee to clarify his stand. The government's case against Coyne emerges in this first day of debate. It is Fleming's contention that he was not told about the pension increase granted to Coyne by the Bank of Canada directors on February 15, 196o. Fleming points out that Ken Taylor, his deputy minister, had to be in Toronto on the day of the Board meeting to make funeral arrangements for a relative, and that A. E W. Plumptre, his assistant deputy minister, attended instead. Fleming states flatly that he received "no report ... no copy of the minutes." In his later testimony, Coyne does not involve Plumptre, but he insists that the pension proposals had been discussed a week before the February 15, ig6o, Board meeting with Ken Taylor, and that the Deputy Finance Minister had said that he considered the proposal reasonable. Coyne also points out that on April i 1, 196o, at the next directors' meeting, which Taylor did attend, the minutes of the February 15 decisions were read, and the amendment to the pension by-law was explained in detail. The core of the case comes down to the question of crediting Fleming's contention that Ken Taylor, one of Ottawa's most conscientious civil servants, had failed to inform his minister of an important decision taken by Bank of Canada directors. JUNE 23 Fleming introduces Bill C- 114 to the Commons. It has only one clause: "The office of Governor of the Bank of The Carnage of The Coyne Affair 413 Canada shall be deemed to have become vacant immediately upon the coming into force of this act." JUNE 26 Second reading of Bill C- I 14 begins with Fleming delivering one of the best speeches of his parliamentary career. "I have found to my great regret," he declares, "that the Governor has not possessed the confidence of the public and of those institutions in the Canadian economy with which the Bank of Canada must work.... The Governor has not fulfilled the terms of his appointment ... only Parliament can remove him. By the present bill, Parlia- ment is asked to take that action." Pearson and other Liberal spokesmen attack the Conservatives for denying Coyne "the justice" of a full hearing before a Commons committee. That afternoon, Coyne issues an open letter to Fleming, accusing the Finance Minister of "misrepresentation ... blackmail tactics ... and undermining the independence of the Bank of Canada." In tones lacking the tempering obscurity of legal language, Coyne bitterly attacked his main accuser: "You, Mr Fleming," he writes, "behind the shelter of your parliamentary immunity, have brought serious charges of misconduct against me in relation both to the pension fund and other matters. I believe the public are entitled to have these charges and the true facts reviewed by a parliamentary committee -before I am wrongfully removed from office-and to have all aspects of the matter brought out and considered. I demand that they be reviewed by a parliamentary committee where I can be given a fair opportunity to be heard, and where they can be submitted to the judgement of public opinion. The use of smear tactics, and the attempt to intimidate public servants with the idea that smear tactics will be used against them in public if they do not bow to improper suggestion from the Government, should not be allowed to go on." 414 Twilight of Power JUNE 27 - JULY 6 The Coyne debate degenerates into the most unruly parliamentary spectacle since the pipeline hassle Of 1956. David Walker, the Tory Minister of Public Works, calls Coyne "an anarchist" and accuses J. W. Pickersgill of writing Coyne's letters.* Grant Campbell, the Conservative member for Stormont, suggests that Coyne should really be in jail "for misappropriation approaching larceny in using the facilities of the Bank of Canada to promote his private purposes." C. A. Cathers (pc-York North) wonders whether Coyne "knows that two and two make four." Speaking outside the House, at Bobcaygeon, Ontario, Clayton Hodgson, the Tory M.P. for Victoria, describes Coyne as "a Communist in sheep's clothing." Paul Martin of the Liberals calls repeatedly for Fleming's resignation, while Yvon Dupuis, Liberal M.P. for SaintJean- lbervi I le-Napier ville, shouts that the least the Minister of Finance could do would be to submit himself to a lie detector test. JULY 7 The day begins in farce. Bank of Canada messengers trying to deliver Coyne's latest missive are chased, KeystoneCop-fashion, down parliamentary corridors by Commons guards whose commander, J. R L. Groulx, huffily declares that only his men are allowed to deliver mail to m.P's offices. C. H. Richardson, the Bank of Canada deputy secretary, hurls back the charge that he won't stand for his messengers being interfered with by the Commons' guards. An open clash is prevented, when the Bank of Canada messengers agree to deposit their releases with the Commons Post Office for distribution to the m.P's mail- *Coyne wrote his letters himself, but he did have some indirect help from the Liberal Party on his parliamentary tactics. Those who helped him plot his strategy included J. W Pickersgill, Senator David Croll, Senator W Ross Macdonald. Alistair Fraser (Macdonald's executive assistant), and Duncan MacTavish, a prominent Ottawa lawyer and former president of the National Liberal Federation. The Carnage of The Coyne Affair 415 boxes. "We'd deliver it if it was dynamite," boasts Yvon Lavoie, the Commons Postmaster. And dynamite it is. For the tirst time, Coyne brings the Prime Minister into the dispute. "Mr Diefenbaker has been the evil genius behind this whole affair," he charges. "It was his unbridled malice and vindictiveness which seized on the Bank of Canada's pension fund provisions with respect to the Governor and Deputy Governor as a clever stick with which to beat me, and intimidate me. If he had succeeded in getting me to resign meekly under such a threat, he would then have launched a smear campaign against me, which would have been represented as all the more damning because I had meekly resigned and admitted my error and guilt. Mr Diefenbaker boasted about this in advance to some close friends. One of these was not so close as he thought." In the House of Commons meanwhile, the ftnal debate on Bill C- 114 is in progress. John Diefenbaker sums up for his administration. Personal attacks and recriminations are not to his liking, he says, but is it "impugning a man's integrity to say that he sat, knew, listened, and took?" The Governor's letters and statements, he charges, "reveal an attitude which, if accepted by the government, would result in two sovereignties in Canada, the government of Canada and the Governor of the Bank of Canada; but not in that order. They would set up a rival government." Mocking the Opposition's concern for a fair hearing, the Prime Minister jubilantly tells the Liberals: "Before we are through with this we are going to have you all lined up with Mr Coyne's thinking. That is the position you are putting yourselves in, and that is the position I want you to put yourselves in." He denounces Pearson's contention that Coyne should have a hearing under the Bill of Rights, by a strange device: he refers all the way back to the 1945 Igor Gouzenko spy case to make the point that the Liberals have little solicitude for j udiciaI rights. Diefenbaker then proceeds to reveal hs own personal reason for so ftercely advocating Coyne's dismissal: 416 Twilight of Power Mr Diefenbaker: Right Hon. Louis St Laurent, a man who gave devoted service to his country for the greater part of nine years as prime minister and who is today practising law, receives a pension of less than $3,ooo a year. That is because he was a member of this house. Here we are considering a pension of $ i i,goo a year which was increased to $25,ooo a year within the last two years of the term the governor was going to serve. Mr Pearson: It was increased by action of a Tory board. Mr Diefenbaker: And at 51 years of age. The less I say about that, the better. Mr Pearson: That is right. Mr Diefenbaker: How many people in public life receive a, pension of that size? I have been in public life longer than Mr. Coyne. When I retire, no matter how many years from now it may be, I will be in the same position as Mr St Laurent. Mr Pearson: Oh, that is the reason. Mr Diefenbaker: Yes. Mr Pearson: Now we know. Paul Martin follows Diefenbaker and once again calls for Fleming's resignation. He pleads that Coyne should at least be allowed a Commons Committee hearing, as "even Eichmarm had his day in court," but the Conservatives refuse. The bill is then read for the third time and passed by a vote Of 129 to 37, with the NDP joining the Liberals in opposition. JULY 8 Bill C-1 14 comes up for consideration before the Senate, itself under attack by the Conservative administration for refusal to pass the "class or kind" tariff legislation. The Liberal majority in the Senate moves quickly to refer the contentious Coyne bill to its banking and commerce committee, where the Governor can get the hearing denied him by the Tory majority of the Commons. Before the bill leaves the Red Chamber, however, it is the subject of a long oration by Senator Adrian Hugessen, a Montreal The Carnage of The Coyne Affair 417 barrister, appointed to the Senate by Mackenzie King in 1937. Hugessen, who has rehearsed his speech before his wife for the past ten days, delivers a masterly summing up of the Coyne affair. "There are," he maintains, "two reasons behind this bill. The first and more remote reason was the desire of the government to find a victim for its own policy failure, and to sacrifice the Governor of the Bank of Canada upon the altar of political expediency. The second, more direct reason, was the bungling ineptitude of the Minister of Finance in trying to force the Governor's resignation." Hugessen finished his speech with this powerful condemnation: "Yes, Coyne must go. But what will he leave behind him? He will leave behind him two things: first, a tarnished Minister of Finance, a negligent administrator of his department, an inept bungler in the matter of the pension with, I am afraid I must add, a reputation for telling the whole truth which leaves a good deal to be desired. The second thing that Coyne will leave behind him is this: a discredited government, stumbling aimlessly along from blunder to blunder and from crisis to crisis." JULY 10 Thirty-three senators, puffed up with seldom accorded importance, gather at 9:3o a.m. to begin their committee consideration of the Coyne affair. Ten minutes after they meet, they lose the spotlight to the Governor, who begins to read a massive 16,ooo-word statement, which reviews his version of the events leading up to the request for his dismissal. Two new issues are introduced: Coyne debunks Fleming's contention that he is being fired because he might oppose some of the measures in the 1961 budget, since "the only concrete measures of any consequence ... turned out to be a meagre selection from a number of recommendations in my memorandum of February 15." He also reveals for the first time the details of his June 2 conversation with Graham Towers, the former Governor. "What is important now," he tells the hushed Senators, "is 418 Twilight of Power not the personality of the person who holds that position [the governorship of the Bank of Canada], although that is the only thing the government appears to think is important. What is important is the fact that Parliament has endowed that position with certain responsibilities, duties, and powers, and has taken special care that the holder of that position shall not lightly be made subject to the whims of a particular Minister of Finance, or to the immediate political expediency of the government of the day." JULY 11 The Senate hearings continue and in the torrent of words, the case finally assumes its proper proportions. Coyne has obviously been a troublesome Governor. Two Tory Senators consult the Senate Law Clerk to see if Coyne could be "arrested" for violating the oath of secrecy in his testimony. Clearly, Coyne's usefulness as the head of the central bank is at an end. But if the Governor has been tarnished so has the administration of John Diefenbaker. At no time has the government come up with a convincing reason why, having managed to co-exist with the contentious Governor for four years, it should suddenly become essential to fire him five and a half months before his term is due to expire. Is the real reason that the Conservatives need a scapegoat for the failure of their economic policies? Does Diefenbaker really dislike Coyne that much because of the pension issue? Or have the Tories simply bumbled myopically into this mess? By basing its case on the Governor's failure to veto a bylaw amendment passed by the Bank's Board of Directors, the Diefenbaker administration has stretched credulity past accepted limits. Fleming's contention that he didn't learn about the pension issue until the spring of ig6i is open to two interpretations only: either he is acting to save face for Diefenbaker, or his department is not properly run. The Carnage of The Coyne Affair 419 In the Commons debate on Fleming's motion to dismiss the Governor, the Finance Minister insists that during the winter of 1957-1958 Coyne had "firmly and angrily" rejected a government request that the Bank of Canada ease its tight money policy, although "no communication in writing passed between the Governor and myself in respect to this incident." Coyne is able to prove that the suggestion had been rejected only after the experts in Fleming's own department had decided that an easy money policy was not advisable. He also produces three letters exchanged between Fleming and himself on the subject. In his many statements on the case, Fleming is never able to establish that his government's monetary policy had actually been opposed by the Bank of Canada Governor -though this is the very core of the case for his dis- missal. In the 1961 budget speech Fleming insists that James Coyne had been guilty of standing in the way of 11 expansionist" policies. Yet in his 1958 and 196o budgets Fleming himself had preached against the dangers of easy money. "If we go too far," he said in 1958, "we might find that we have planted an inflationary time bomb which might later go off with a dangerous explosive effect." In his 1961 budget speech, Fleming also makes an effective attack on Coyne's policies, summing them up in four points: (i) Coyne's stand implies an ultra-protectionism which could not be carried out within the framework of the international institutions, such as GATT, of which Canada is a member; (2) Coyne's contention that the level of interest rates has little influence on development is not economically defensible; (3) Coyne's arguments for a lower fixed exchange rate are not compatible with the flexible rate then in effect; and (4) Coyne's tight monetary policy is not suitable to combat unemployment and is offsetting the potential effects of the government's deficit fiscal policy. Coyn e's case, though he never admits it, is rooted in moral not economic grounds. Since he is a civil servant 420 Twilight of Power appointed "during good behaviour" and not "during pleasure," he believes that the administration has no fair grounds on which to seek his dismissal. He feels he has disproved, or at least Fleming has not been able to prove, that the reasons given for demanding his resignation con- stitute "lack of good behaviour." JULY 12 The muggy weather intensifies official Ottawa's uneasiness about the Coyne hearings. There is a feeling among everyone touched by the affair that this inexhaustible Governor, who continues to look like a champion tennis player just out of the shower, and his damned drawerful of incriminating private correspondence, must quickly be exiled far, far from Ottawa, so that the decent cloak of anonymity can again fold around the inner processes of federal administration. The Senate committee meets again, but does not come to life until 11:05 a.m., when Coyne rises to make his final statement. "I regret having said certain things, and I regret having done certain things - since May 30," he begins. "I felt I was fighting for important principles, and fighting very largely alone against an extremely powerful adversary - so powerful, indeed, that it was bound to win in the end. There could be no question of that. The object of removing me from the Bank of Canada was certain to be achieved within a short period, but it was important to fight against the methods adopted by the Government, against the abuse of power, against the attack on the integrity of the position of the Governor of the Bank of Canada, whoever the holder of that office might be." After affirming that it has become impossible for him to continue in the Bank of Canada governorship, Coyne reaches the final, key paragraph of his statement. In a barely audible tone he speaks of personal honour: "A vote in favotir ofthis bill is a verdict ofguilty," he murmurs to the hushed Committee room. "I shall be marked for life as a man ... unfit to hold a high office of Parliament." Then he pauses, and very close to tears, delivers his final plea. The Carnage of The Coyne Affair 421 "A verdict of not guilty will not prevent my immediate departure from office, but it will permit me to retire honourably, and to hold up my head among my fellow citizens as one whom this body of honourable Senators of Canada declared to be a man of honour and integrity, devoted to the interests of the Bank of Canada and to the general welfare. This can only be said if this bill is defeated . . . " Finally drained of his bravado, the Governor turns away from the Senators and leaves the room. His wife, who has attended all the sittings, rushes out too. Her hair flying, she catches up to him at the top of the Tower steps and they walk, hand in hand, down Parliament Hill. Back in the Committee room, David Croll speaks for his fellow Senators when he says: "I move that the committee adjourn until two o'clock to enable us to think about this . . . we are not emotionally in a position to deal with the matter at this moment." When the Committee reconvenes, the Senators are uncertain about the next step, because they expected Coyne to announce his resignation. Without fully knowing his intentions, but remaining convinced that Coyne must leave the governorship, they debate procedure through the afternoon. But when Senator Gunnar Thorvaldson, also president of the Progressive Conservative Association of Canada, complains that the committee has been dominated "by a solid phalanx of Senators appointed by the Liberal government [which] has suffered this body to pass through the darkest hour of its long history," the majority of the members of the committee become determined to give Coyne the "not guilty" verdict he asked. It is possible to detect the rekindling gleam of old political loyalties in the rheumy eyes of even the oldest Senators. At the Bank of Canada, Coyne is taking part in an unusual ceremony. Four hundred of the Bank's senior staff members attend the presentation to the departing Governor of a gold medal carrying the inscription: 422 Twilight of Power "Presented to James Elliott Coyne by his staff for his courage and integrity in defending the position of Governor of the Bank of Canada, June and July, 196 1."* JULY 13 The Globe and Mail carries the headline: NATION ON THRESHOLD OF GENERAL ELECTION John Diefenbaker spends the morning in consultation with Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh, the Nigerian Minister of Finance. In the Commons, J. W. Pickersgill asks the Minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources whether the exact place of John Cabot's 1497 landfall in Newfoundland has been determined. A notice arrives in the Parliamentary Press Gallery that cabinet has commuted the death sentence of Joseph Timon Comeau, age 2o, convicted of murdering his mother with a fish knife after a New Year's Eve drinking party. The nation's attention, however, is focused for one final time on the Senate Committee. A motion by Senator Walter Aseltine, Conservative leader in the Upper Chamber, to report Bill C- I 14 without amendment is defeated, 19 to 7. The committee then votes, j6-6, in favour of a motion by Senator David Croll that "this bill should not be further proceeded with, and the committee feels that the Governor of the Bank of Canada did not misconduct himself in office." The Liberal Senators meet in private caucus over the lunch period, still uncertain whether Coyne will, in fact, * Coyne's most important, though much belated, victory was to force the Conservative government to reverse its stand on the responsibility for monetary policy. In an exchange of statements with Coyne's successor, Louis Rasminsky, Fleming underwrites the new Governor's assertion that "if there should develop a serious and persistent conflict between the views of the government and the views of the central bank with regard to monetary policy . . . the government should be able formally to instruct the Bank what monetary policy it wishes carried out, and the Bank should have the duty to comply with these instructions." The Carnage of The Coyne Affair 423 turn in his resignation. At 1:30 p.m., Coyne telephones a prominent Liberal friend to assure him that he fully intends to resign, as soon as the Senate rejects Bill C- 1 14. The friend conveys the news to Alistair Fraser, executive assistant to Senator Ross Macdonald, the Liberal leader in the Upper House. Fraser finds the door to the Liberal caucus barred by a Senate guard, but finally manages to get into the room and delivers his message. The Liberal Senators decide to cast their votes against the bill. The full Senate meets at 3:00 P.m. On a vote Of 33 to 16, the committee's "not guilty" verdict is confirmed. Ten minutes after the Senate vote, Coyne issues his resignation, effective at 5:30 P.m. the same day. The statement proclaims Coyne's view that by its vote, the Senate has vindicated his conduct, his personal honour and the integrity of the position of Governor of the Bank of Canada. He calls the result of the proceedings "a precedent which will deter any government in the future from adopting methods designed to remove any person from any high office established by Parliament to be held during good behaviour, such as the methods which have been attempted in the present case." At 5:45 p.m., a Bank of Canada official flashes the word to the Parliamentary Press Gallery that the Governor will be leaving his office at 6:15. Reporters and photographers rush across Wellington Street. At 6:2 1, six minutes behind schedule, a bulging black briefcase in his left arm, and guiding his misty-eyed wife with his other hand, Coyne steps out of the Bank's elevator. He shakes hands with the elevator operator. Seeing the wall of newsmen, he barks out a brusque "No comment," then catching one of the reporter's questions, "Do you have any last words?" he replies: "No. Not for another forty years." Then he walks out of public life. TWENTY TWO The Agonies of the 1962 Campaign AT EIGHT O'clock of a Saturday night in late April 1962, PV the Prime Minister of Canada got up to speak in a stuffy little movie house called the Orpheum Theatre in his own Prairie town of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. That night John Diefenbaker was still leader of a government with the largest parliamentary majority of any western democracy, and he had every expectation of maintaining the glory of that power. He was on the verge of his ninth federal election campaign, which ought to have been the easiest of them all, and he'd come home to be nominated in his own riding by his neighbours and friends who'd turned out eight hundred strong, eager to be swayed by sentimentality and nurtured on nostalgia. The Prime Minister had no intention of disappointing them. For nearly an hour he talked about his Prairie childhood, about his struggles as a young lawyer obsessed with the cause of the common man, about the rise to glory that came late in his life and was all the sweeter for it. Finally, in that hot little hall, the climactic moment arrived and the hometown boy back from the thrones of the mighty grasped his lectern and leaned forward into the microphone. "You have no idea what it means," he breathed in emotion-charged syllables, "what it means to come here and be addressed by myfirst name. I tell you," and the long head shot back, and the soft jaw worked, "this is something that money can't buy." 424 The Agonies of the 1962 Campaign The words were right and the sentimen, there was a note of false humility in his mannt the audience shift in their seats; and in the ft long-necked lady in a blue cr6pe dress muttert i her husband: "I wonder what else he thinks I'd call him, after forty years?" That curiously flat moment seemed symptomatic of the reason why only seven weeks later, the greatest parliamentary majority in Canadian history collapsed like a snowbank in May, leaving Diefenbaker in office but not in power. IF HIS FAILURE IN THE 1962 CAMPAIGN could be traced to one simple cause, it was this: John Diefenbaker thought he understood the people better than he did. On June 18, 1962, Diefenbaker lost ninety-two seats and surrendered 17 per cent of the popular vote - a figure that gained meaning when compared with the fact that Louis St Laurent, in the dramatic upset Of 1957, lost only sixtyfive seats and 9 per cent of the popular vote. Diefenbaker in 1962 actually polled 4,815 fewer votes than the Liberals, leaving his once abundant majority resting precariously on less than two-fifths of the ballots cast. Nearly all the things that went wrong with Diefenbaker's campaign had their roots in his misjudgement of the people and of himself in relation to them. He misjudged the sophistication of his urban and suburban audiences, and instead of talking frankly to them about the unpleasant realities of Canada's economic difficulties, he tried by skilful imprecision to persuade them that such problems did not exist. He misjudged the credulity of the ethnic voters and the pride of French Canada. He misjudged the influence of the press and put too much faith in his attacks on the vague bureaucratic villains of his own devising. JOHN DIEFENBAKER MADE FEW more self-revealing statements during his term of office than his comment, in a TV 426 Twilight of Power oadcast on J tine 14, just four days before polling day, on his view of the electoral process: "I have always," he said, " thought of an election as a great trial in which the electorate listens to and weighs the evidence. I have found, too, from my experience in previous elections that a reasonable presentation of the facts and their significance must win the verdict." This view of an election as "a trial" and its results as "the verdict" characterized what went wrong with Diefenbaker's 1962 campaign. Even in its legal sense, this approach can be successful only if a lawyer doesn't have to face the same jury more than once. But in 1962 Diefenbaker was appealing to virtually the same people as in 1957 and 1958. In the earlier campaigns he had cast himself successfully as the angry avenger of Liberal insolence. The jury was on his side to start with; it was already of a mind that the Liberals should be given a fast trial, and hanged. But in the 1962 contest, Diefenbaker was still stuck playing the role of the backwoods attorney, propounding his familiar testament across the hustings. His undisputed genius as a defence counsel was no longer effective. For one thing, he was defending not some benighted underdog, but himself. For another, the mood of the jury had changed. In 1957 and 1958, Diefenbaker had successfully and with cogent documentary evidence, painted the Liberals as being arrogantly unsympathetic to the unemployed, the frail, and the poor. In 1962 he attempted to distract attention from the nation's problems by setting up an enemy for the voters to hate. By personal attacks, which grew in intensity to become the main theme of his campaign, he tried to portray in the public mind an image of the Liberal Party as "the same old bunch" - a group of unrepentant, unsavoury characters dedicated to fooling the people under the guise of socialistic promises that would ruin the country. During the campaign, Diefenbaker's cabinet ministers echoed their leader's message by referring to The Agonies of the 1962 Campaign 427 leading Liberals as "apes," "stinkers," "criminals," skunks," and, most often, "oddballs." Because it was difficult to charge the leaders of a party that had been out of power for five years with arrogance, Diefenbaker concentrated his attacks on Lester Pearson's better known candidates and backroom advisors. Again and again he vilified Walter Gordon, "the Toronto taxidermist who fills Mr Pearson with flossy economic ideas"; Mitchell Sharp, "the man whose favourite sport is pushing people around and breaking the law"; Maurice Lamontagne, "an impractical economist who wants to set up a board to control industry"; and Tom Kent, "a dreamer and philosophic socialist who wants to tax advertising." He tried to picture the Liberal Party as a victim of these somehow sinister influences, describing the four men col- lectively as "a circus of bureaucrats" and "a collection that has never been seen outside a menagerie." But even to Diefenbaker's most sympathetic listeners, these men represented only the vaguest of villains. He wasn't helped much in his tactics by the fact that nearly every newspaper in the country was running biographies of the four men showing that none of them had ever held government jobs which would have allowed them to push people around. These biographies also made it clear that the targets of Diefenbaker's wrath were successful, dedicated men whose only common characteristic was high scholastic achievement. Gradually, in the collective subconsciousness of the voters, Diefenbaker's repeated assaults on the Liberals spread the impression that what he was really doing was making fun of educated men, an attitude that might win votes in small Prairie towns but lost much prestige for the Conservatives in the urban sections of eastern Canada. Diefenbaker employed similarly heavy-handed and strangely outdated tactics in shaping his appeal for the votes of the two million immigrants who had settled in Canada since World War 11. This became a major effort 428 Twilight of Power after Allister Grosart had calculated that 102 of the country's 263 ridings could be considered "ethnic sensitive." Throughout the campaign, Diefenbaker attempted to persuade the immigrant voter that he would become a feared enemy of the Kremlin. He proposed to accomplish this by presenting before the United Nations a new resolution condemning Russian imperialism, and requesting the USSR "to give its subject peoples the right to decide their own future by a free vote." Aside from the cynical timing of this promise - such a resolution might have been presented at any time before the election - it was a serious affront to the already declining prestige of the United Nations, by attempting to use its forum for personal political advantage. Part of the Conservative anti-Communist campaign was to identify Lester Pearson as an ineffective dupe of the Kremlin. In a speech at Neepawa, Manitoba, Diefenbaker accused Pearson of failing to raise any protest against Soviet colonialism during his time as Secretary of State for External Affairs. "For a period of twelve years," the Prime Minister charged, "he remained silent in the U.N., despite the sufferings th~ough Soviet tyranny of these people." Attempts to show that Pearson was soft on communism also took less subtle forms. Harry White, the Tory member from Middlesex East, told the annual meeting of his riding at London, Ontario, shortly before the election that Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize "because he sided with the communist world against Britain and France." Three days later, Eldon Woolliams, m.p. for Bow River, told a political meeting in Calgary that the federal Liberal Party was "a cesspool of civil servants with Red friends." The quote most frequently used against Pearson was the flat assertion that he had said on television: "I'd rather be Red than dead." This was a somewhat distorted reference to an interview on the CBC'S television program "CloseUp," on which Pearson had been asked by Pierre Berton whether he would rather live under Khrushchov than suffer a nuclear war. With only ten seconds remaining in The Agonies of the 1962 Campaign 429 the show, Pearson had replied: "Well, I want to do what I can to make that choice unnecessary, but if I had to make it, I would live under Mr Khrushchov rather than die, and do what I could to throw him and his type out of power." A few months after the broadcast, Diefenbaker told a meeting of Conservative Party executives in Ottawa: "We don't want to die in a nuclear war, but we have no common ground with those who would offer as an alternative that we could live under Khrushchov with the hope of throwing him out of office. We don't intend to adopt this policy of defeatism." A large part of this effort to link the Liberals with communism was concentrated in Quebec, where the Liberal Party was portrayed to Tory spokesmen as advocating a brand of socialism so extreme that it might turn into communism. In a speech to the 1962 Conservative nominating convention in the Montreal riding of St Denis, Pierre Sdvigny called the Liberals more leftist than the NDP. "The choice at the next election," he said, "will be between free enterprise and the slavery of socialism, which has destroyed every country it entered." THAT THE CONSERVATIVES MANAGED TO WIN the largest number of seats despite such tactics, was due in part to the advantages John Diefenbaker enjoyed by going to the country, not only as a party leader, but as The Prime Minister. This office gives the politician who holds it an aura of inestimable value. Word of his approach invariably sets up a certain tension among the members of an audience, no matter what their politics. Hearts pump a bit faster and lips tighten as the man who holds the nation's highest elected office strides into view. In 1962 Diefenbaker made the most of this automatic response. He behaved on the public platforms with a selfconscious dignity, reducing the tempo of his limb movements to just a fraction slower than those of the people around him. Because Diefenbaker believed in his own political invin- 430 Twilight of Power cibility, one of the main objectives of the Tories' 1962 campaign strategy was to institutionalize him in the office of prime minister. Party pamphlets were designed to feature the achievements of the Prime Minister and little else. The main pamphlet of the campaign mentioned the Prime Minister by name eleven times; the name of his party once. Diefenbaker took over all but two of the CBCS free-time television periods. On the eve of the dissolution of Parliament, Allister Grosart had told a caucus of Tory members to forget everything else, and concentrate on Diefenbaker. The Conservative leader's sense of timing and drama seldom had the impact of the 1957 and 1958 contests. But there were times when the old warmth came into his voice as the emotions of his audience reached and stirred him. At the remote Newfoundland logging community of Deer Lake near the beginning of the campaign, he caught the mood of his audience perfectly. Exalting in his dream of Canada, he tremored: "Those who are living in castles don't understand. But I understand. I understand the average people of this country." The audience stood up and cheered. While Diefenbaker could only occasionally summon up this kind of magic in his 1962 campaign, he was aided considerably by the fact that Lester Pearson engendered no magic at all. The campaign left little doubt about Pearson's understanding of Canada's domestic problems. But he simply could not bring himself to make any of the calculated gestures a Canadian politician must perform to win a parliamentary majority. During his tour of Toronto a traffic light happened to halt the Pearson caravan in front of the Scott Mission - a charity organization that provides free meals for indigents. About four hundred men, obviously unemployed, stood before the building, and stared back at Pearson whose white convertible was stopped alongside. The men yearned to be recognized. A few arms rose in a half-wave and somebody shouted: "Come on in, the soup's fine." The Agonies of the 1962 Campaign 431 But Pearson, although he had stumped the nation declaring that unemployment was the issue of the campaign, didn't move. His advisers tugged at him, hoping he'd mingle with the men. But Pearson sat there, apparently unmoved. "I just can't exploit their misery for politics," he told one persistent lieutenant, as the cavalcade moved on. It was only a minor incident in a long campaign, but it emphasized both the man's humanitarian feelings and his lack of political instinct. The Liberals also had trouble dissociating themselves from the violence that erupted at Diefenbaker's meetings in Vancouver and the northern Ontario mining town of Chelmsford. In Vancouver a platoon of young toughs disrupted the Prime Minister's meeting and almost mobbed him. At Chelmsford there was even greater physical violence. Although the politics of Chelmsford were heavily influenced by a local labour dispute, the Tory candidate being the leader of one of the union factions, many of the rioters were Liberals. Such outbursts, plus Newfoundland Premier Joey Smallwood's refusal to allow Donald Fleming to address the St John's Rotary Club about dollar devaluation, gave Diefenbaker a valid base from which to reawaken the resentment against Liberal arrogance that had been strongly felt by Canadian voters in 1957. "The philosophy of the Liberals," he thundered from the hustings, "is the philosophy of closure." This was a dependable old approach, but it didn't work in 1962 as well as it had before, because Diefenbaker seemed to be attacking the methods of others without offering a constructive alternative. In 1957 and 1958, his attacks on the Liberal regime became merely the backdrop for his positive promises about what he himself would do when elected. The Conservative leader was severely hampered in the promises he could make in 1962, because even before the campaign had started his Minister of Finance warned him that an austerity program might be necessary to help solve the nation's currency difficulties. Diefenbaker refused 432 Twilight of Power even to consider such a vote-killing move but agreed not to aggravate the precarious situation by making a surfeit of expensive election pledges. The temptation to revert to his old tactics overcame him during a rally at Welland, Ontario. The Welland seat had been Liberal since 193o, but Dr W. H. McMillan, the incumbent, was such an ineffective m.p. that the Tories thought they had a good chance of upsetting him. At his Welland meeting, the Prime Minister announced to a cheering noonday crowd of a thousand supporters that tolls on the Welland Canal would be suspended immediately and that the government had decided "to proceed as quickly as possible with the twinning of the canal's locks." This statement came as a surprise to the St Lawrence Seaway Authority, which operated the Welland facilities. Just two months earlier, Transportation Minister L6on Balcer had told the House of Commons that Canada would not alter the level of Welland Canal tolls without prior consultation with the United States. No such consultation had taken place. The Diefenbaker announcement abruptly reversed the stated policies of both the Canadian and American Seaway administrations, based on the assumption that the Welland Canal should operate on a pay-as-you-go basis. Probably Diefenbaker's least responsible promise was his announcement in the House of Commons on April 17, 1962, that studies had established the feasibility of building a causeway between Jourimain Island, New Brunswick, and Borden Point, Prince Edward Island, at an estimated cost Of $105 millions. Just thirteen days before Diefenbaker made his statement, Howard Green, speaking for the absent Minister of Public Works, had informed the Commons that the technical equipment set up by the National Research Council to measure the wave force in Northumberland Strait had been destroyed by ice during the winter and that "no significant results were obtained." He pointed out that the feasibility study of a causeway could therefore not be The Agonies of the 1962 Campaign 433 completed, and that no date could be set for a resumption of these tests. Nevertheless, at an election rally in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, on May 17, Diefenbaker said: "Since investigations have shown that a causeway is feasible both from an economic and engineering standpoint, we are proceeding with it." The political promises that Diefenbaker made during the 1962 campaign were basically different from the usual brand of hustings pledges. In his 1957 and 1958 campaigns, he was making promises that he intended to keep; in 1962, he was pledging projects to the electorate that his own Minister of Finance had advised him could not be redeemed. This became clear only six days after the end of the campaign, when Diefenbaker announced that because of the nation's foreign exchange crisis, federal expenditures would have to be reduced by a quarter of a billion dollars, washing out every monetary promise he had made, including the Prince Edward Island causeway. That he would be forced into such a retreat should have been evident to the Prime Minister even before he began the campaign. In its attempt to hold back pressure against the Canadian dollar, the Bank of Canada allowed the reserves of its Exchange Stabilization Fund to drop by half a billion dollars during the first four months of 1962. In a final, desperate move to halt the haernorrhaging of these reserves, which had by then reached their lowest level in a decade, the government was forced to peg the Canadian dollar at 92 1/2 cents in United States currency on May 2 -three days before Diefenbaker kicked off his election campaign. In nearly every other western country during the postwar period, such a devaluation was followed immediately by a heavy influx of investment funds, stabilizing the currency at its new level. But in Canada's case, funds continued to flow out of the country at an increasing rate. During the month of May a further $104 millions had to be used out of the reserve funds to help stem the outflow, and in the first twenty-three days of June the 434 Twilight of Power stream became a torrent, with $400 millions required out of the Exchange Stabilization Fund to offset the monetary exodus. There was no mystery about these figures. They were relayed to Diefenbaker daily in communications from Donald Fleming. Yet throughout the campaign, Diefenbaker and his ministers insisted on claiming that Canada's economic outlook was rosy. On June 14, just four days before the election and ten days before he had to admit that the country was facing a grave financial crisis,-Diefenbaker went on television for his "final word" to voters. Although Canada's foreign exchange reserves dropped $70 millions in the three days before the broadcast, Diefenbaker assured his audience that all was well. "The truth has been on our side," he concluded. "We have given you the facts. We have bared the record. We have concealed nothing and shaded nothing." On June 24, when Diefenbaker announced the details of his austerity program, he asserted that the situation had deteriorated "only in very recent days to a point requiring emergent action." But there were only four working-days between the election on June 18 and the announcement of the austerity program including loans for a billion dollars from the International Monetary Fund and other monetary agencies, as well as an ingeniously prepared list of surcharges (extra tariffs) ranging from 5 per cent to 15 per cent, applicable to a selected group of Canadian imports. That loans of this size and lists of this complexity could be drawn up in four days was difficult to credit. During the campaign itself, Diefenbaker had tried to brush off the devaluation of the dollar as being nothing more than a gimmick to help Canada's export and tourist trade. "My brother Elmer," he told a rally at St Stephen, New Brunswick, "was in New York the day we did it. He was told three times what a marvellous thing this would be for the tourist trade." The Agonies of the 1962 Campaign 435 IN DELIBERATELY SHAPING HIS APPEAL to the emotions rather than the intellect, Diefenbaker was ignoring the many factors that had drastically changed the composition and distribution of Canadian voters. The most important of these changes was the continuing exodus from the rural areas, which meant half of Canada's population now lived in fifteen metropolitan centres and their suburbs. The suburbanites, who among them controlled seventy seats, were a new and highly volatile element in Canadian society. In the 1957 and 1958 contests, their influence had been masked by the collapse of the Liberal machine and by the fact that Diefenbaker seemed to stand for the kind of progressive thinking they could support. In the 1962 election, however, the suburbanites rejected the Tories and out of the fifty-eight seats in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Vancouver, Diefenbaker held on to only nine. Five of the survivors were aided by the prestige of being in the cabinet. Diefenbaker's half victory of 1962 would have been a crushing defeat but for the continued loyalty of the Prairie provinces which gave him - and Alvin Hamilton - fortytwo of their forty-eight seats, only five fewer than in 1958. A close analysis of the constituencies across the country dominated by rural electors showed that the agricultural vote remained firmly Tory everywhere except in those sections of southwestern Ontario where the farmers were so advanced in their tastes and thinking that they had virtually become suburbanites. JOHN DIEFENBAKER'S APPEAL in the 1962 campaign misfired because he left the voters with the impression that he no longer really cared whether votes were bestowed on him with passion or indifference, just so long as they were bestowed. Instead of appealing to the countrywide longing for national greatness, as he had done so successfully twice before, he seemed to assume that people 436 Twilight of Power would recognize that voting for him meant voting for their own material benefits. He demonstrated this approach right at the beginning of the campaign. Speaking at his own nomination meeting in Prince Albert, he reminded his audience that during his time as Prime Minister, the city had benefited from a new railway station, a new bridge across the North Saskatchewan River, a $i,65o,ooo expansion of facilities at Prince Albert National Park, and the construction of a $500,000 government laboratory to study the effects of northern lights on radar. "If you mark ballots against the P.C. candidate," he said, his words heavy with meaning. "you'll be saying: 'I don't appreciate what the Government has done for this riding.' " Then, paraphrasing the famous obituary to Sir Christopher Wren, he told his constituents: "If you would see what has been done, look about you." That quotation, he said, expressed the feeling he had as he travelled across the country. On June 18, the voters reduced the number of Conservative seats to 1 16 from 208. The Liberals won 98; the Social Credit 3o; the NDP 19. In his 1962 election campaign, John Diefenbaker committed the fatal political error of overestimating the stretch of his authority and the limits of his influence. He lost sight of the fact that in the average Canadian, whose self-proclaimed champion he had aspired to become, there is a strong, inborn aversion to the manifestation of political power in the raw. During his five years in office, the man of the people had become a man of power. By the time the last ballot had been counted, he was neither. TWENTY THREE The Nuclear Virgin Who Never Was THE FINAL DRAMATIC DOWNFALL of the government which took place in the nine months following the 1962 election was due mainly to a fatal flaw in John Diefenbaker's political make-up: an inability to harness the forces of change to his own advantage in time to prevent the disintegration of authority. This deficiency in the Conservative leader was attributable directly to the profound difficulties he had in selecting optional courses of behaviour. Diefenbaker had been indecisive enough when he had commanded the largest parliamentary majority ever accorded a Canadian politician. But the wounds of the 1962 electoral contest left him in a state of such desperate irresolution that he seemed somehow to have become allergic to the decision-making process itself His attitude of vacillation so increased the centrifugal strains, which his erratic leadership had nurtured within the Conservative Party, that in the end, as London's Daily Telegraph noted, " .. . the Diefenbaker Government disintegrated, like the mythical motor car all parts of which wore out simultaneously." This fall from power was not brought about by any one incident, but by combination of all the events of the Diefenbaker Years. It took the Cuban crisis of October 1962 -the most dangerous East-West confrontation since World War 11 -to show the Canadian people that John 437 438 Twilight of Power Diefenbaker's state of indecision had passed the point of responsible statesmanship. The Cuban affair also destroyed any remaining illusions Canadians might have had that the Diefenbaker government had a rational defence policy. The history of his relations with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the North American Air Defence Command indicated that Diefenbaker had led Canada into military undertakings which he had then prevented from being met. When this was revealed, some of his own ministers turned against him and staged a coup d'&at to rid the Party of his faltering leadership. The revolt did not succeed, but it did split the Conservative Party, bring about the resignation of some key ministers, and it ended the life of the 25th Parliament. The April 8, 1963, election that followed demonstrated again the political genius of John Diefenbaker. He managed to save his Party from the humiliation which it had earned during his term of office. But he did lose the election, and on April 22 he surrendered the office he had so cherished. THE EVENTS OF THAT DESPERATE SUMMER Of 1962 began on June 24 with the national austerity program Diefenbaker was forced to impose as a means of shoring up the nation's foreign exchange reserves, following the currency crisis of the election campaign. This move left the widespread impression that the Conservative leader had glossed over the dollar's difficulties until after voting day. Then, in early July, as he was stepping off a flagstone patio at his summer residence on Harrington Lake, near Ottawa, Diefenbaker violently twisted his ankle, fracturing the fibula in his left leg. The injury healed so poorly that for a few days his doctors were not ruling out the possibility of amputation. Diefenbaker suffered a further blow when on July 8, Senator William Brunt, his closest friend, was killed in an automobile crash. For most of the next six weeks, Diefenbaker Jay in the bedroom of his Sussex Drive residence in a mood of total and uncomprehending dismay. He felt that he had The Nuclear Virgin Who Never Was 439 laboured hard on behalf of the average Canadian and could not understand why he had been rejected. He delayed fifty-one days before replacing the five ministers who had fallen in the June 18 election. Instead of carrying out the kind of drastic reconstruction of his cabinet that might have been expected from a wounded party chieftain anxious to rebuild national confidence in his ministry, Diefenbaker by his choices clearly indicated that he intended to carry on exactly the same kind of government that had been rejected by three-fifths of the nation's voters on June 18. The only important new influence added to the cabinet was M. Wallace McCutcheon, a leading Toronto business executive, who was sworn in as a Senator and appointed Minister without Portfolio. Davie Fulton was shuffled off into Public Works. Donald Fleming finally departed from his embattled Finance Portfolio to the prestigious Justice Ministry. Although by law Parliament could have met on July 30, and although by practice minority governments are expected to expose themselves to a vote of confidence as soon as possible, Diefenbaker declined to convene the Commons until September 27, following his return from the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' conference. When the House did meet, the Conservatives brought forward only noncontroversial legislation, dodged confidence votes by introducing only two supply motions, and presented the detailed estimates of only two departments for debate. Because Diefenbaker had called the June 18 election before resolutions of the 1962 budget had been approved and supply for the year had been passed, the work of the Commons bogged down in a futile attempt to tidy up its own housekeeping backlog. Of the thirty-four items in Diefenbaker's September 27 Throne Speech, only eight relatively insignificant items were passed into law and only two pieces of important legislation - a bill to establish a National Economic Development Board and a measure to allay the impact of automation - ever reached the debating stage. 440 Twilight of Power Because he realized that Diefenbaker might charge the Opposition with obstruction, Lionel Chevrier, the Liberal House Leader, on November 26 offered his Party's cooperation in passing any legislation the government felt was essential. The offer was ignored. In early December, the House leaders of all parties concluded a private agreement to pass a list of key bills. The compact was to have been ratified by a meeting of party leaders the following day, but Diefenbaker personally cancelled the conference without explanation. The 25th Parliament staggered on uselessly through seven votes of confidence, including one on November 6 when the Liberals voted with the Social Credit to advocate "debt-free money," and the NDP came to the rescue of the Conservatives. BUT ONE MOMENTOUS EVENT did interrupt Ottawa's legislative inertia during the fall of 1962. Shortly after two o'clock on the afternoon of October 22, Ivan White, the charg~ d'affaires at the United States Embassy in Ottawa, telephoned the Prime Minister's office requesting an appointment for Livingston Merchant, the former United States Ambassador to Canada, who would be arriving that afternoon from Washington bearing an urgent personal message from the President. Merchant's aircraft set down at Uplands Airport at 3:45 p.m., and White drove with the envoy directly to the East Block. There he met Diefenbaker and later Douglas Harkness and Howard Green. During the next hour and a half, Merchant outlined the stand that the American President would take in a nation-wide television address to be delivered that evening. United States air reconnaissance had revealed that the Soviet Union was turning Cuba into a base for offensive missiles capable of destroying the most heavily populated areas of the Americas. Kennedy, Mer- chant told the Canadian ministers, would charge the USSR with a "clandestine, reckless and provocative threat to world peace," and would order the imposition of a naval The Nuclear Virgin Who Never Was 441 quarantine on the further shipment of offensive military equipment to Cuba. Following Merchant's briefing, Diefenbaker went home to watch the President's dramatic television address. Lester Pearson, who had also heard the President's declaration, telephoned the Prime Minister to suggest he make some comment to Parliament. Diefenbaker agreed, and shortly after 8:oo p.m. an economic debate was interrupted to allow him to speak. "This is a time for calmness," he !old the Commons and the nation. "Above all, it is a time when each of us must endeavour to do his part to assure the preservation of peace not only in this hemisphere, but everywhere in the world." He admitted that "there had been little time to give consideration to positive action that might be taken," but went on to suggest "an on-site inspection of Cuba" by "the eight nations comprising the unaligned members of the eighteen-nation disarmament committee ... to ascertain what the facts are." He later told reporters: "In that way the truth will be revealed." In effect, the Prime Minister was questioning the American President's word of the existence of the offensive missile bases on the island until independent observers had confirmed the fact. At National Defence Headquarters, meanwhile, Douglas Harkness was closeted with his Chiefs of Staff. A request had been received from North American Air Defence Command Headquarters at Colorado Springs, for the Canadian government to bring its forces to a state of readiness known as "Defcon 3" and to initiate "certain other measures to improve the operational capability" of the Canadian area of command. Under the NORAD agreement, a state of increased alert could be ordered, if the NORAD Command felt there was imminent danger, and the Canadian and U.S. Govern- * The term means Defence Condition 3. The scale Of NORAD's alerts ranges between Defcon 5 (normal) and Defcon o (nuclear attack). 442 Twilight of Power ments were expected to give their approval in the light of this "expert opinion." The United States sector Of NORAQ (the United States Continental Air Defence Command) had already proceeded to the high state of alert and the NORAD Deputy Commander, RCAF Air Marshal Roy Slemon, was anxious for Ottawa's permission to bring the Canadian sector to equivalent status. The Canadian Chiefs of Staff approved the NORAD request, and so did Harkness. Most of the discussion in the Minister's office that evening concerned the actual mobilization arrangements. Details were worked out, right down to catering services for the USAF air crews expected to land the next day on Canadian airfields as part of the alert procedure. At about nine o'clock Harkness left the Chiefs to call on Diefenbaker for instructions. He reported his decisions and received the Prime Minister's tentative approval, although Diefenbaker insisted that the final step toward the requested alert not be taken until the next day, so that he'd have time to co-ordinate the move with an increased state of readiness in the federal civil defence organization, which then fell under the jurisdiction of the Prime Minister's office, Cabinet met next morning, with most of the ministers feeling that endorsement of the American move would be nothing more than a formality. But the mood around the Privy Council table changed when Howard Green delivered what was the most impassioned appeal of his political life. He pleaded that reconsideration be given to the idea of blindly following the United States lead, particularly since the United States President had not kept the commitment to consult with Canada over the impending crisis. "If we go along with the Americans now," he said, we'll be their vassals forever." Diefenbaker jumped into the ensuing debate to back up Green's statement, and that was enough to swing the cabinet against Harkness who was ordered not to permit the alert of Canadian forces. Air Chief Marshal Frank Miller, The Nuclear Virgin Who Never Was 443 Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff, spent most of the day with Harkness, urging reconsideration of this position. When the House of Commons met at 2:30 that afternoon, Diefenbaker explained that his suggestion of the previous evening for a neutral inspection commission had not been intended "to compete with any proposal of the United States that might be placed before the United Nations Assembly, but rather to supplement it." He still refrained from expressing his government's approval (or disapproval) of the United States' move against the offensive Soviet weapons on Cuba. When H. W, Herridge, the NDP member for Kootenay West, asked him if Canada was consulted or informed prior to President Kennedy's statement, Diefenbaker snapped back angrily: "The Gov- ernment of Canada was informed." And when Paul Hellyer, the Liberal m.p. for Trinity and the Liberal Party's defence critic, asked Harkness whether his department had taken any direct steps as a result of the Cuban crisis, the Defence Minister replied with an ambiguous: "By and large, the answer to that question is no." Trade and Commerce Minister George Hees confirmed that the government was contemplating no change in its policy of sanc- tioning non-strategic trade with Cuba. This lackadaisical attitude contrasted sharply with the actions of the other allies of the USA. By the evening of October 23, Kennedy had received unanimous support from the Organization of American States. He ordered the naval blockade against Cuba to begin at io:oo a.m. the following day. Air Marshal Slemon, the NORAD Deputy Commander, had meanwhile been telephoning government officials in Ottawa (including Howard Green who refused to take the call) trying to persuade them to approve the alert. Wednesday, October 24, was United Nations Day, the 17th anniversary of the United Nations charter, and the Opposition felt they'd have a chance to debate the Cuban situation by taking advantage of the motion customarily 444 Twilight of Power presented to commemorate the occasion. But Diefenbaker anticipated them, and made his commemorative statement outside the Commons. When Parliament met that day, Paul Martin, the Liberals' external affairs critic, asked Howard Green why in this t0e of crisis he was not in attendance at the United Nations. I can assure the honourable member," Green replied, "that my one interest in this present crisis is to do the very best I can for Canada and for peace in the world, and I really do not need any prompting from him as to what is my duty." What Green did not say was that, until shortly before the Commons had convened that day, he had still been fighting in cabinet against Canada's falling in behind the Yanks. But the pressure exerted by NORAD, the American State Department, and the nation's military establishment proved too great. At exactly coo p.m., a full forty-two hours after it had been requested to do so, the Canadian government allowed its NORAD units to assume the "Defcon 3" state of readiness. On a national television program that evening Green refused to commit himself on how his government felt about the United States military quarantine of Cuba. "The Government," he explained, "is trying to keep the -Canadian people from getting all excited about this business. Canada should show some steadiness." He claimed that the Cuban crisis "had nothing to do with NORAD." It was not until the afternoon of Thursday, October 25, three days after the United States had revealed the existence of the Soviet missiles on Cuba -that Diefenbaker came out in support of the American stand. "So that the attitude of the government will be clearly understood," Diefenbaker told the Commons, "we intend to support the United States and our allies in this situation." His backing of the United States came just as the crisis was beginning to ease. The naval units of the United States and USSR had carefully avoided each other on the Carib- The Nuclear Virgin Who Never Was 445 bean, and the United Nations was moving in to prevent an armed confrontation. CANADA:S ATTITUDE during the Cuban affair had been a matter of little consequence in the power play of the crisis itself, but its domestic effects were considerable. It demonstrated to the Canadian public that the Diefenbaker government's indecision had isolated their country among the Western family of nations in failing to offer immediate moral support for the anti-communist stand of the American President. Diefenbaker claimed later that his hesitation had been based on the failure of the United States to consult Canada in advance about the proposed action - a procedure that is specified in the NORAD agreement. But this didn't alter the fact that even after the Diefenbaker cabinet had allowed the RCAF to come up to the level of the NORAD alert, severe obstacles were placed in the way of the United States in its attempts to provide effective North American air defence. Hours before Kennedy's speech the United States Defense Department had been urgently requesting permission from Ottawa to move nuclear warheads from Bangor, Maine, to its interceptor squadrons at Goose Bay, Labrador, and Stephenville, Newfoundland. It also wanted to disperse some of its nuclear-armed fighter planes to forward bases in Canada. The United States military planners considered both these moves essential to the continent's air protection and thought that obtaining Ottawa's approval would be a formality at a time of mutual danger. But permission for these manoeuvres never came. Marquis Childs, a respected Washington correspondent, later reported that during the Cuban crisis the United States Strategic Air Command had asked the Canadian government for permission to make 640 overflights with nuclear-armed bombers, but that the Diefenbaker government would grant only eight. "Both the delay and what appeared as a wiggling and almost obstructive response had the look, to those manag- 446 Twilight of Power ing the deterrent ... of the deliberate refusal on the part of an ally and nearest neighbour to co-operate in the mutual defense of North America," he wrote in the Washington Posi. This report was never officially confirmed. The most unusual interpretation of Canada's role in the Cuban crisis was advanced by Alvin Hamilton in a speech to an audience of Ontario sugar-beet growers on March 15, 1963. "If we can get the United States and Cuba to cool down, it'll help sugar producers all over the world," he explained, then added: "We've been taking a lead in this matter." AT THE CONCLUSION OF THE CUBAN CRISIS, John Diefenbaker's inability to make up his mind was a cabinet secret no longer. It had been exhibited for all the world to see, and at a moment when his country's existence was under threat. Moreover, the Prime Minister's behaviour in first heeding Howard Green's appeal, then overruling him, had opened wide and fatal fissures in the Tory cabinet. Only Diefenbaker's closest disciples continued to regard him as a masterful politician; the others began to speculate among themselves on how he might be persuaded to step down before the minority Conservative government would again have to face the people. In the nervous groping for alternative defence policies that took place within all Canadian political parties following Cuba, no decision was more significant, as it later turned out, than Lester Pearson's determination to review his own stand on nuclear weapons. In the country at large, the main effect of the Cuban fiasco was to move the debate about Canadian acceptance of nuclear warheads out of the area of hypothetical semantics. Canadians-at least those who worried about such things - became aware of the fact that even when the military establishment of their country did, finally, come up to the full alert status during the Cuban crisis, it had been a largely meaningless gesture. The RCAF'S sixty-four supersonic CF-101-B "Voodoo" fighters had no nuclear war- The Nuclear Virgin Who Never Was 447 heads with which to attack any incoming Russian bombers. The fifty-six Bomare missiles, guarding Canada's industrial heartland, pointed at the sky, supposedly alerted but in reality unarmed and totally useless. In Europe, meanwhile, the four Honest John atomic artillery pieces in service with the Canadian sector of the NATO shield, mounted missiles with sand in their warheads. The first squadron Of CF-104 fighters, meant for NATO's front-line defence, had begun arriving at the Canadian Air Division bases in West Germany but they, too, had no sting in them. All this military hardware had been acquired and then allowed to become useless for one reason: John Diefenbaker could not make up his mind to arm the weapons. He seemed to fear the political consequences of decision. His cabinet was hopelessly split on the issue. Douglas Harkness led the pro-nuclear faction, while Howard Green bitterly opposed the acquisition of the warheads. The External Affairs Secretary was profoundly convinced that Canada's adoption of nuclear warheads would nullify the nation's influence in the vital business of helping along disarmament negotiations between the major powers. Conversely, he believed that his administration's refusal to acquire such warheads could be used as a respected bargaining lever at the disarmament talks. Green would have nothing whatsoever to do with military people and on December io, 1962, he proudly confessed to the Commons that he had never visited the headquarters of the North American Air Defense Command, that he had never met in conference with any Of NORAD'S senior officials, and declared that he had no intention of doing either.* Howard Green may have been perfectly correct in his During the nearly six years of Conservative government, only three ministers- Douglas Harkness, Pierre S&igny, and George Hees-visited NORAD headquarters at Colorado Springs. The same three ministers later resigned from the Diefenbaker cabinet, ostensibly over defence policy. 448 Twilight of Power assessment that Canada without nuclear weapons could be a more effective disarmament mediator. But to have the Canadian External Affairs Secretary proclaiming the country's nuclear virginity, while his own government was at the same time purchasing $685 millions' worth of weapons systems designed for atomic warheads, didn't add up to a rational or, in the long run, a tenable position. Throughout 196 1 and 1962 the Diefenbaker administration continued to build up its arsenal of these weapons, while simultaneously trying to disguise the fact that they'd someday have to be armed. In the process, Diefenbaker allowed a heated national debate to spring up in the country over the acquisition of the warheads. Having helped to generate the nuclear controversy, he hesitated about which side of the argument he himself should supp~rt. He tried to soothe both factions by promising that his government would only adopt the atomic warheads at a time when grave international tensions indicated the weapons might have to be used. The Cuban episode shattered this comfortable compromise. It clearly demonstrated that a period of international tension was the very worst time to adopt the weapons, because it would be interpreted by the Communists as an aggressive act. A few weeks after the end of the Cuban crisis, John Dietenbaker came close to revealing just why it was that he had hesitated so long about taking the nuclear warheads. When a delegation from the Royal Canadian Air Force Association, a veterans' group, came into his office to urge their acceptance, he called in a secretary and sent for his correspondence file. He pulled out a few samples and read them to the delegates. "The letters are running two or three to one against nuclear weapons," he said. "The people of Canada don't want them." Until the end of his term in power, John Diefenbaker acted as if "the people," and not he and his government, were charged with the task of deciding whether or not to The Nuclear Virgin Who Never Was 449 accept nuclear arms. As well as being a denial of responsibility, this proposition was based on a false premise. The many sincere advocates urging Canada not to adopt nuclear arms may have had a perfectly valid argument. But, by the fall of 1962, the choice was not-as Diefenbaker pretended -between arming or not arming Canada's small but important contribution to NATo and NORAD with atomic warheads. The only choice that remained was whether Canada should accept the American warheads or scrap $685 millions' worth of military hardware, and thereby publicly renege on international obligations voluntarily undertaken by the Diefenbaker government. Despite the Prime Minister's frequent hints to the contrary, no other choice did in fact exist. THERE WAS A TIME, of course, when alternatives had been possible. The Diefenbaker government was not pushed into its nuclear dilemma. The acceptance by Canada of each of the four nuclear weapons systems involved was the result of a deliberate choice by the cabinet. Significantly, the decisions that led to Canada's taking on nuclear functions both in NATo and NORAD were made when John Diefenbaker was acting as his own secretary of state for external affairs. Except for the nuclear controversy which marked the last three years of his stewardship, John Diefenbaker paid little attention to national defence policies. Modern weapons and geography had made Canada, not the United States or the USSR, the front line of World War 111, but the implications of this harsh truth were not reflected in the government's attitude. Lester Pearson described the Conservative defence policy as "a fog of silence penetrated occasionally by a ministerial platitude," and on January 25, 1963, he complained to the Commons: "In the five years since the present government took over, I doubt if there is any legislative assembly in the democratic world which has had less discussion of, or less information sub- 450 Twilight of Power mitted to it on national defence, than has this parliament." The Cabinet Defence Committee, the body charged with recommending changes in national military policy, which had sat at least once a month under the previous Liberal government, met only seventeen times between June 21, 1957, and April 22, 1963. The Canada -United States Cabinet Defence Committee, which was supposed to convene every six months, met only three times during the Diefenbaker Years-in December of 1958, November of 1959, and July of 196o. Defence expenditures declined to 26 per cent of federal spending, from an average Of 4 1 per cent of the federal outlay in the previous six Liberal years. By 1962, 83 per cent of Canada's defence budget was being used simply to operate and maintain the military establishment. Only 17 per cent of the funds were available for new equipment, and most of this amount was being spent for the various nuclear weapons systems which the Diefenbaker govern- ment had insisted on purchasing. THE DECISIONS TO PROVIDE the armed forces with a nuclear capability were taken under quite different and separate circumstances in the two military alliances in which Canada is a partner. In the case of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the choice was based on the changing nature ofthe alliance itself. Initially, NATO strategy had been based on the "sword and shield" concept announced by General Alfred Gruenther at Lisbon in 1952. The armies of the alliance were to have built up to ninety divisions, a force powerful enough to hold back the first push by the 175 divisions that the Communists then were maintaining west of the Ural Mountains. Behind this 11 shield" stood the "sword" of the USAFS Strategic Air Command - prepared, if necessary, to back up the NATO troops with attacks on the enemy's homeland. But the ninety divisions never did materialize. France withdrew all but two of her divisions to the Algerian war. The Nuclear Virgin Who Never Was 451 The West Germans delayed their contribution. The British left only a skeleton garrison on the Continent. The NATO shield became a sort of glorified border patrol able to do little more than signal the news of the Russian attack that would trigger off the thermonuclear deterrent of the United States Air Force. At the annual heads-of-state conference in 1954, NATO's military experts were instructed to draw up a strategic alternative based on a levelling off of defence expenditures by the members of the alliance. The generals produced a foot-thick secret document called NIC 70. It recommended the adoption of tactical nuclear weapons by the NATO troops as a means of what the military men called "graduating the West's deterrent." This meant that the NATO armies, by having nuclear weapons less deadly than the city-obliterators in the bellies of the SAc bombers, would create a secondary deterrent - strong enough to discourage the Russians from attacking the NATO countries with their overwhelming land forces, but not powerful enough, if such an attack came, to engulf the world automatically in a thermonuclear holocaust. This strategy was officially adopted by the NATO headsof-state meeting in Paris, on December ig, 1957. Prime Minister Diefenbaker signed the agreement for Canada by which the NATO allies agreed to the stockpiling of tactical nuclear weapons for their troops, which in Canada's case meant the army brigade and air division in Europe. In March ig6o the Canadian government decided to station a battery of Honest John rockets - a tactical artillery missile having a range of about twenty miles - with its Brigade Group in NATO. The Canadian Honest John contigent was trained in Canada and dispatched to Europe in December of ig6i. Although non-nuclear Honest John warheads did exist, none were ordered. But neither did the Diefenbaker government decide to take atomic warheads for the weapon. Instead, the Honest John heads were stuffed with bags of sand ballast and, thus disarmed, the 452 Twilight of Power Canadian sector in the front line Of NATO was considerably weakened. The definition of the nuclear role for the Canadian Air Division in NATO followed a similar sequence. As the interceptor role for the Air Division's eight squadrons of F-86 day-fighters to peter out in 1957, NATO military officials suggested that Canada might take on a strikereconnaissance role, involving nuclear attack on military targets immediately behind the enemy's front line. The NATO planners picked this particular function for the Canadians, because the RCAF contingent was the only one manned entirely by career airmen and was considered to be the best-trained among the allied formations. Also, unlike other groups, the Canadians could be converted to their new function without having to be taken out of the line. In December of 1958 a Canada - United States Cabinet Defence Committee meeting was held. It was attended by National Defence Minister George Pearkes, External Affairs Secretary Sidney Smith, Finance Minister Donald Fleming, and General Charles Foulkes, Chairman of the Canadian Chiefs of Staff. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Defense Secretary Neil McElroy represented the United States. "We put forward a proposal in which the United States would supply nuclear weapons for Canada," General Foulkes later recalled. "This was approved in principle, and both sides agreed to have it put in writing later. Nothing was signed, but a draft agreement was made up at the time." Six months later, in May 1959, General Lauris Norstad, the Supreme Allied Commander Of NATO, came to Ottawa to brief the Diefenbaker cabinet on exactly what the strike-reconnaissance role entailed. Canadian military men were skeptical as to whether the ministry would agree to the proposal, because it involved a fundamental shift in the nature of the Canadian commitment: instead of remaining entirely a defensive force, the Canadian contingent in NATO would be expected to fly offensive strikes The Nuclear Virgin Who Never Was 453 against specified targets in East Germany and other satellite countries. Nevertheless, the Canadian government did accept the new assignment, and pledged to have eight squadrons of the new aircraft operational by May 1, 1963. John Diefenbaker was at the time acting as his own Secretary of State for External Affairs, as Sidney Smith had died earlier in the year, and Howard Green, his successor, had not yet been appointed. Barely two months later, the Canadian government firmly established its intention to fulfill the promise made to Norstad. The Lockheed Starfighter (F-104-0 was selected for the NATO Air Division as a replacement for the F-86, and a contract for $43 1 millions was negotiated with Canadair Limited, in Montreal, to manufacture two hundred of the aircraft as low-level nuclear-weapons carriers. The resultant modification, called the CF- 104, was so drastic that the finished aircraft could be used in no other than the strike-reconnaissance (nuclear) function. (The RCAF deliberately had the conventional capability designed right out of the machine.) The first full squadron Of CF- I 04's was formed at the RCAF base in Zweibriicken, West Germany, in December of 1962, five months before Diefenbaker had pledged to make his new NATO contribution operational. But in order to meet this May 1, 1963, deadline, the Canadian government would have had to sign a nuclear agreement with the United States, on or before November 1, 1962. This involved two contracts: a general government-togovernment agreement and a series of technical negotiations between the defence departments of the two countries, covering custodial, security, and training arrangements for the weapons. Although the government's own cabinet decisions had made it clear that a nuclear role had been accepted for Canada in NATO, the final contracts were not sealed as long as Diefenbaker was Prime Minister, and so the CF-104 took its place beside the Honest John as a useless weapon in the NATO arsenal. 454 Twilight of Power THE MORE COMPLICATED CHAIN of events that eventually led to the acquisition of nuclear equipment, if not warheads, for the domestic defence of Canada, began on July 27, 1957, when John Foster Dulles came to Ottawa for his first call on the recently elected Conservative administration. One result of the visit was the announcement, five days later, by George Pearkes, that Canada and the United States had agreed to establish integrated control of the air defence of their countries in a new organization to be known as the North American Air Defence Command (NORAD) with headquarters at Colorado Springs, Colorado. Air Marshal Roy Slemon, one of the ablest military men Canada has ever produced, then the RCAF'S Chief of Staff, was named Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the new Command which became operational on September 12. The new defence arrangement seemed then like a timely precaution. The USSR had launched its first intercontinental ballistic missile on August 27 and the original Sputnik satellite on October 4. Whether or not NORAD was a sound concept, the new government handled the important agreement with slapdash informality. Just before the 1957 election the American request for the NORAD agreement had been removed from the agenda of the Cabinet Defence Committee, because both Louis St Laurent and Lester Pearson felt it was too grave a matter to be considered hastily in a preelection atmosphere. Officials at National Defence headquarters had been urging the plan's adoption, and Ralph Campney, the Liberal Minister of National Defence, had at least informally promised Washington that the NORAD plan would be implemented. Instead of reviewing the terms of the NORAD agreement when he came to office John Diefenbaker, who was then acting as his own Secretary of State for External Affairs, merely gave his verbal approval of the scheme to John Foster Dulles. He consulted neither his cabinet colleagues nor officials of the External Affairs Department. In a The Nuclear Virgin Who Never Was 455 Commons debate ten months later, Sidney Smith admitted that neither he nor his department had been aware of the NORAD compact's details. It then appeared that Canada's main contribution to continental air defence would be the CF-105 Arrow allweather, supersonic interceptor, being built at the Malton, Ontario, plant of A. V Roe Canada Limited. The initial 1953 contract envisaged an eventual production of five hundred aircraft at an estimated unit cost Of $2 millions. By 1958, the contract had been set at thirty-seven preproduction models with orders for an eventual one hundred planes. The development costs had by this time exceeded $300 millions, and the unit cost was running close to $7 millions. On September 23, 1958, Diefenbaker announced in the Commons that the entire Arrow program would be subject to review in six months. He hinted that he considered the Russian bomber threat, which the Arrow had been designed to answer, a declining factor. The A. V Roe company - which had gathered a team of nearly two thousand engineers to build the aircraft and conceived a special power plant for it which was then the most powerful fighter engine in the world - lobbied furiously with the government not to cancel the order. In one memorable session, Crawford Gordon, the President of Avro, was asked to leave the Prime Minister's office, so violent had been his appeal. But on February 20, 1959, six weeks ahead of his own deadline, Diefenbaker announced to a hushed House of Commons that the Arrow contract was being terminated immediately. "The Arrow has been overtaken by events," he said. "In recent months it has come to be realized that the bomber threat against which the Arrow was intended to provide a defence had diminished, and the alternative means of meeting the threat have been developed much earlier than was expected." The Avro plant management received the news from a wire service reporter, though an I 456 Twilight of Power official telegram from the Prime Minister did arrive later, and impulsively dismissed its 13,8oo employees the same day. Diefenbaker personally insisted that the test models of the aircraft be blowtorched into scrap, so that there would not even be a memento of the Arrow program - the most complicated assignment ever successfully carried out by Canadian industry.* The death of the proud plane represented a choice by the government as fundamental as the decision a decade earlier by the Royal Navy to scrap its capital ships. Diefenbaker placed much of the blame on the intense lobbying by the company. "No one will ever know," he complained to the Commons, "the strength of the pressure that was brought against the cabinet to force it to do that which was not fair to the Canadian people." His case for claiming that to produce the Arrow would not be fair was based on the economics of its production. He estimated that the cost of a hundred Arrows would be $780 millions, and pointed out that the company had not been able to sell the plane to the United States, or to any other potential customer, so that the production run could not be increased and unit costs would remain high. In place of the Arrow, Diefenbaker announced that Canada planned to acquire two squadrons of Bomarc "B" anti-aircraft missiles for installation at North Bay, Ontario, and La Macaza, Quebec. The United States was at that time planning to erect some thirty Bomarc bases along its northern approaches. Since this could have meant that, in case of attack, a major atomic air battle would have taken place directly over Toronto and Mon- treal, the Diefenbaker government persuaded the Pentagon to move two of the bases, originally scheduled to be built in northern Michigan and northern New York State, into Canada. The Americans agreed to pay for the mis- * The five existing models of the Arrow were sold to Waxman's junk yard in Hamilton, Ontario. The Nuclear Virgin Who Never Was 457 siles, reducing the Canadian share of the Bomarc program to only $14 millions. In announcing the switch to the Bomarc, Diefenbaker did not specify that the new weapons would carry nuclear warheads. But the implications of such a policy were there, because no conventional warhead for the Bomarc "B" Model had ever been designed or manufactured. In the development stages of the Bomarc "N' Model a highexplosive warhead had been used, but it was scrapped when the miniaturized nuclear warhead became practical. The Prime Minister further strengthened the pronuclear case in his February 20 Commons announcement which stressed that, since "the full potential of these defensive weapons is achieved only when they are armed with nuclear warheads," negotiations had started with the United States for the acquisition of atomic warheads. "We are confident," he concluded, "that we shall be able to reach formal agreement with the United States." On May 25, 1959, an agreement between the two countries was tabled outlining an "exchange of nuclear information for mutual defence." It covered the training of Canadian troops in the use of some nuclear weapons, but included no mention of any Canadian obligation to accept them. The Diefenbaker government never actually signed any NORAD commitment to acquire nuclear warheads. During the negotiations for the Bomarc and the Voodoo, Canadian cabinet ministers had assured their United States opposite numbers that no such formal step was necessary, since they would arm the weapons once they had become operational but did not want to upset the domestic political situation by publicizing a nuclear commitment. When the time came for the Conservative cabinet to approve acceptance of the warheads, another issue arose. The Americans insisted that, under Section 92 of the United States Atomic Energy Act, United States atomic warheads could not be transferred out of American custody, and that they would therefore have to send troops 458 Twilight of Power into Canada to guard them. This fact, though it should have been obvious when the purchase of the weapons was first made, appalled Diefenbaker's more nationalistic ministers. They persuaded their colleagues not to allow Yankee soldiers into the country, because it had taken two world wars to get Canada's armed forces away from British control, and now they would be subjected to "foreign orders" again. By February 1, 1962, the RCAF had taken over the completed Bomarc base in North Bay. But since the Diefenbaker government refused to accept their nuclear warheads, and since no conventional warheads existed for the weapon, the Bomarc remained headless, and totally useless. United States military strategists were understandably upset by the Canadian government's attitude. They had moved the two bases north of their border, and out of their control, at Canada's insistence. Under Diefenbaker's non-nuclear policy, the main corridor of Russian attack into the industrial heartland of the eastern United States now lacked whatever protection was afforded by the Bomarcs. Although the American Bomarc program had since been cut to only eight bases, the missile was still considered to be an effective weapon against bombersbut only if armed with a nuclear warhead. The argument the Americans used to urge Canadian adoption of the atomic charges was that this would actually reduce the amount of radioactivity spilled on Canada in any future war. Their theory was developed as follows: the successful interception of Russian bombers bound for North American targets is most likely to occur over Canada. It can be expected that the Russians will have armed their nuclear bombs with "dead-man fuses," gadgets that automatically detonate the bombs at pre-set altitudes, whether or not the bomber's flight crew is still alive. A Russian attack intercepted by Bomarcs armed only with high explosives would rain the fused nuclear weapons, in The Nuclear Virgin Who Never Was 459 the bomb bays of the downed enemy aircraft, on Canada, spreading clouds of fallout as they burst. But, according to the American theory, Bomarcs carrying atomic warheads would be able to "cook" the incoming bombers and their nuclear loads without setting off the bombs. Instead of the massive devastation caused by the fused bombs, the territory below the air battle would only be subjected to the relatively minor nuclear explosion of the Bomarc warhead. The same argument was used by Pentagon officials to urge nuclear warheads for the CF- 10 1 B Voodoo jet interceptors which the Diefenbaker government had ordered from the United States, in a swap deal involving the manning by Canada of sixteen radar stations on the Pinetree Line, to replace the obsolete CF-ioo's. The decision to obtain sixty-four of the United States fighters for the RCAF Air Defence Command was announced on June 12, 196 1. The planes came into service in the spring of 1962, armed with conventional Falcon rockets, instead of the nucleartipped Genie missiles carried by Voodoos in the USAF. As in the case of the Bomarc, North American air defence had been weakened by the withdrawal of the weapons from their nuclear role under United States command, to their ineffectual function in Canada. WHAT REALLY PUZZLED the American defence officials, whose hemispheric responsibility included Canada, was John Diefenbaker's apparent misunderstanding of the deterrence concept on which the world's uneasy nuclear balance was based. Late in 1961, the Canadian Prime Minister began to hint that he had solved his nuclear dilemma: the warheads would be brought into the country, and presumably accepted by the NATO contingents, just before the outbreak of any future nuclear war. State Department and Pentagon officials said privately that this attitude had turned a muddle of indecision into a quibbling absurdity. Aside from their claim that modern 460 Twilight of Power warfare simply does not allow time for such a pre-hostilities transfer, they insisted that even if it did, the Canadian politician's attitude undermined the very idea of deterrence, which depends on fully armed, ready-to-shoot weapons being in place to discourage the enemy from ever starting his attack. Then, in a Commons speech on February 26, 1962, Diefenbaker's nuclear policy took a significant turn. "We take the stand," he said, "that in the interests of disarmament, everything must be done to assure success if it can be attained, and the nuclear family should not be increased so long as there is any possibility of disarmament among the nations of the world." By implying that Canada would not accept nuclear warheads "so long as there is any possibility of disarmament," Diefenbaker moved the issue into limbo, since by 1962 disarmament talks had been in progress for sixteen years without agreement and would presumably be continued indefinitely. This was the line echoed by the Conservatives throughout the j962 election campaign. In a national television address on June 14, Diefenbaker summed up his defence policy by declaring: "To the mothers and wives we have given the assurance that Canada will not join the family of nuclear nations, but at the same time discharge our responsibility for the security of Canada by assuring that if war should come - which God forbid - Canadian armed forces will be in a position to defend with the best defences available." No action was taken after the 1962 election and, until the Cuban crisis, the government treated the nuclear warheads problem as a dead issue. Negotiations for a nuclear warhead agreement between Ottawa and Washington did begin in November of 1962, but the Canadian delegation was not instructed to advance a proposal compatible with United States legislation on the bilateral control of the weapons. On December 17, when External Affairs Secre- The Nuclear Virgin Who Never Was 461 tary Howard Green was reporting to the Commons on his attendance at the NATO Council in Paris the previous week, he said with characteristic optimism: "We were pleased to have it pointed out, not by ourselves but by the NATO military authorities and the United States, that Canada had lived up to her commitments ... there was not a word of criticism of Canada's military efforts in NATO." THIS WAS TO BE THE LAST of the many comforting statements made by ministers of the Diefenbaker government which was allowed to go unchallenged by the military authorities who had spent three years in frustrated silence, exasperated by the Canadian stand, but unable to contradict publicly the smooth assurances of the politicians. The rebuttal came from General Lauris Norstad, who could speak out by virtue of the fact that on January L, 1963, he had retired from his post as Supreme Commander of the NATO forces. Norstad spent five hours in Ottawa on January 3, the final call in his round of official farewells to NATO capitals. In other NATO countries he had been met at the airport by the head of government, but at Ottawa, only Associate Defence Minister Pierre S6vigny came to greet him. He was not invited to call on the Prime Minister. Instead he sipped tea with Governor General Georges Vanier. But he did hold a thirty-five-minute press conference, and that was enough to destroy the Diefenbaker government's stand that, despite its refusal to accept nuclear warheads, Canada had met all defence commitments. This was the key exchange of questions and answers: Reporter: General, do you consider that Canada has committed itself to provide its Starfighter squadrons in Europe with tactical nuclear weapons? Norstad: That is perhaps a question you should direct to the 462 Twilight of Power Minister [S6vigny] rather than to me, but my answer to that is "Yes." This has been a commitment that was made, the continuation of the commitment that existed before, and as the air division is re-equipped, that air division will continue to be committed to NATO and will continue to play an extremely, an increasingly important role. Reporter: In the field of tactical nuclear ... ? Norstad: That's right. Reporter: I'm sorry, sir -will play an extremely important role with or without tactical nuclear weapons? Norstad: I would hope with both. Is Air Marshal Miller here? I don't want to release anything you people haven't released here on this. Air Chief Marshal Frank Miller: I think you're right on that; quite right on that ... Norstad: We established a NATO requirement for a certain number of strike squadrons. This includes tactical atomic strike squadrons, and Canada committed some of its force to meet this NATO-established requirement. And this we depend upon. Again, we depend upon it particularly because of the quality of that air division. Reporter: Does it mean, sir, that if Canada does not accept nuclear weapons for these planes that she is not actually fulfilling her NATO commitments? The Nuclear Virgin Who Never Was 463 Norstad: I believe that's right. Told of Norstad's statement, General Charles Foulkes, the former chairman of the Canadian Chiefs of Staff then living in retirement near Victoria, British Columbia, confirmed its truth. "There was a definite commitment, and there is no excuse that Canada didn't know what it was letting itself into," he said. "It is unfair to give our military forces tasks to do and then leave them unable to carry out these tasks. It is also not part of the Canadian character to renege on an agreement." Conservative spokesmen belittled the Norstad revelations by pointing out that as a retired general, he had "no more official standing than any other American tourist." But if the Cuban crisis had revealed the Diefenbaker government's defence policy to be unworkable, the Norstad visit had branded it as not entirely fair, since international commitments had been accepted and left unfulfilled. In acquiring the CF-101B, the Bomarc, the Honest John, and the CF-104 and then refusing to arm them, Canada under John Diefenbaker's management had spent $685 millions for the most impressive collection of blank cartridges in the history of military science. TWENTY FOUR The Coup d'Etat BY THE AUTUMN of 1962 many influential Conservatives had come to the conclusion that his indecisiveness, particularly during the Cuban crisis, had transformed John Diefenbaker-the greatest vote-getter the Party had ever had - into a political liability. At first, there was no organized movement to force the Prime Minister's resignation. The discontent was the end result of a searching analysis of the Party's position, made independently by a handful of cabinet ministers. Then, over post-luncheon cigars and cigarillos and amid the chatter of the cocktail circuit, they began to test each other's conclusions and compare each other's ambitions. The reasoning used most often during this period of initial groping was that the real source of the Prime Minister's political power, as distinguished from his constitutional authority, was the effective control he was able to exercise over his own followers. The insurgents believed John Diefenbaker might be persuaded to retire, if they could demonstrate to him that he had forfeited the loyalty of vital sectors of his party organization and that he was therefore bound to lose the forthcoming election campaign. In making this assumption, the anti-Diefenbaker ministers seemed to be ignoring the fact that under the parliamentary system a prime minister can be removed by 464 The Coup d'Etat 465 undercover intrigue among his ministers, only if it culminates in a sudden, unpredicted coup d'&at. The takeover must be so swift and so ruthless that by the time it flares up into the open around the cabinet table, the power struggle has been resolved and the prime minister's resignation becomes only its final ritual. In his authoritative study of the coup d'&at in modern history, Major D. J. Goodspeed of the Canadian Army Historical Section began with this admonition: "There is a story of a dying Corsican condottiere who whispered to a young retainer standing by his bedside: 'I have no money with which to reward your services. But I will give you advice to last you a lifetime-your thumb on the blade and strike upwards.' All who hope to overthrow a government by the sudden violence of a coup d'Etat may take this counsel for a motto, since shortened steel and the thrust upwards to the heart of authority are exactly the two characteristics most likely to bring success to their schemes."* The ministers who attempted to overthrow John Diefenbaker neglected this counsel and ended up by losing their own political heads. Prelude to the coup was a series of confidential meetings held at the home of Patrick Nicholson, a friend of the Diefenbaker regime who was Ottawa Bureau Chief for the Thomson newspaper chain. The purpose of these gather- ings, which began during the second week of November, was to provide an informal forum to bring together Robert Thompson, the national leader of the Social Credit Party, with leading Conservatives, who were anxious to determine what the terms might be for the long-term support of their minority government by the thirty Social Credit m.p.'s. The meetings were attended at various times by Senator Gunnar Thorvaldson, Senator Wallace * The Conspirators: A StudY of'the coup d'&at. Macmillan Company of Canada, 1962. 466 Twilight of Power McCutcheon, Pierre S6vigny, Uon Balcer, and once each by Gordon Churchill and George Nowlan. The subject of dumping Diefenbaker was not discussed, but the principle on which the coup d'&at would eventually turn - allowing the Social Credit leader to demand a price for his support - was established. Thompson's demands during these initial conversations were not extravagant. He asked that a budget be brought down quickly and that monetary policy should be eased, but he did not attempt to make the bargaining impractica- ble by insisting that the Conservative government implement any of the monetary mysticism of Social Credit theories. When these conversations were reported to Diefenbaker, he didn't turn down Thompson's requests. But neither did he accept them. Diefenbaker had made a few preliminary sallies for Social Credit support on his own. He had asked Gilles Gregoire, Social Credit m.p. for Lapointe, to submit suggestions for bringing about more effective Canadian biculturalism and had discussed the problem personally with him. Approaches had also been made to R6al Caouette, the Deputy Leader of the Social Credit Party and its chief firebrand. These involved promises to "clean up" the CBCs French network, which had been effectively poking fun at Social Credit, in return for Caouette's voting support in the Commons. While Parliament was in session, the Conservative Party's chief "behind the curtains" negotiator with Social Credit was George Nowlan. When some Tories from Alberta, con- cerned about Social Credit opposition in their own ridings, challenged the Socred philosophy on the floor of the House, Nowlan berated them in caucus as "stupid traitors. " The choices that Diefenbaker would have had to make in order to gain the voting support of Social Credit were lost in the limbo of pathetic indecisiveness that characterized the Prime Minister's behaviour after the 1962 elec- The Coup d'Etat 467 tion. Diefenbaker had formed a cabinet budget committee consisting of Immigration Minister Richard Bell, Gordon Churchill, Wallace McCutcheon, Secretary of State Ernest Halpenny, and George Nowlan, who had replaced Donald Fleming as Minister of Finance in the cabinet shuffle of August 9, 1962. But the committee was unable to get any policy decisions from the full cabinet, and their enterprise gradually lost its momentum. Following the Cuban crisis, another group of ministers had become involved in nego- tiations with the United States for the Canadian acquisition of nuclear warheads. But here, too, there were no decisions passed down from the top, and the talks eventually exhausted themselves. ALL OF THIS PROCRASTINATION was tearing the Conservative Party apart. Tory backbenchers, feeling that Diefenbaker's mismanagement might cost them re-election, began to voice their criticism openly. When a group of western m.P's tried to organize a presentation for Diefenbaker on December 14, to mark the sixth anniversary of his election to the Conservative leadership, it had to be cancelled because not enough non-Prairie members would attend. At the last minute a small reception was held in his office, and Diefenbaker was presented with a pair of snowshoes to mark the occasion. A loosely constituted rump of ten cabinet ministers gradually began to emerge as the moving force behind the idea that "the leadership problem" would have to be solved before the next election campaigry. George Hees did his best to implant the idea that he was the Party's crown prince and Diefenbaker's most likely successor. On November 25, a Sunday, Diefenbaker called a meeting of his ministers at Sussex Drive. They discussed reports that motions demanding a change of leadership would be put from the floor at the Party's annual meeting, scheduled to be held in Ottawa, on January 18 and ig, 1963. The Prime Minister was also upset about an article 468 Twilight of Power in the Globe and Mail by Bruce Macdonald, stating that Duff Roblin, the Premier of Manitoba, was regarded as an early contender for the federal Tory leadership. Diefenbaker wondered what was behind the story, and muttered angrily: "If you want me to go, you better say so." The ministers all assured him that he should stay. But following this meeting, George Hees started quietly to sound out some leading Conservatives on the idea of dumping the Prince Albert politician. When word of these approaches reached Gordon Churchill early in December, he summoned a meeting in his parliamentary office of those ministers he considered to be Diefenbaker's most loyal supporters. It was attended, among others, by Alvin Hamilton, Jay Waldo Monteith, Michael Starr, Angus MacLean, and Walter Dinsdale. The ministers reaffirmed their devotion to John Diefenbaker. Hamilton and Starr even went so far as to pledge their resignations, rather than serve under Hees. Word of their decision was sent to Diefenbaker by the Honourable William Earl Rowe, the 68-year-old Tory M.P. for Dufferin-Simcoe and the last minister of the R. B. Bennett administration still active in politics. Although Rowe had been totally ignored by Diefenbaker, who thought of him as a hopelessly dated right-winger, the loyal ministers picked him to carry their message, because they felt his presence would reassure the Prime Minister that at least part of the traditional element in the Party was still behind him. Rowe took the assignment, mainly because during his four decades of intimate association with Conservative politics he had become aware of how often internal dissension had ruined the Party's electoral chances. (Diefenbaker was touched by the elder statesman's intervention, and a few months later named him Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario.) Having expressed their loyalty to the Prime Minister and received his support in return, the loyal ministers decided to confront George Hees. When Hees found out The Coup d'Etat 469 about their intentions through E. A. Goodman, the Ontario Conservative organizer, he immediately went to see Churchill. He refused to confirm that he had been secretly campaigning for the leadership, but promised to make a clear-cut statement to the press in support of "the Chief." On December 17, Hees told a specially convened press conference that he, along with the Party as a whole, was solidly behind John Diefenbaker. But Ottawa continued to buzz with rumours that motions demanding a change in leadership would be put at the Party's annual meeting. In November George Hogan, the Party's national Vice-President and a close firiend of Diefenbaker's, made a speech in Toronto condemning the Prime Minister's procrastination during the Cuban crisis. The Hees leadership apparatus was officially dead, but delegates were still being recruited to advocate an immediate leadership convention at the annual meeting. Montreal's Le Devoir quoted "a source who occupies an important post in the Progressive Conservative Party organization" as stating that not a minister had replied when Diefenbaker had asked a full meeting of his cabinet if they would support him against any non-confidence motions that might be introduced at the annual meeting. The Montreal daily also reported that three cabinet ministers had been delegated by their colleagues to demand the Prime Minister's resignation, because the ministry had become so exasperated by his indecision. These stories, which were inaccurate, were vigorously denied by Gordon Churchill, and at the Party's annual meeting Diefenbaker's position never became a subject of debate. Instead, the Tory convention gave the Prime Minister its confidence, and even defeated a strongly supported motion urging the acquisition of nuclear warheads by the end of 1963, unless world disarmament negotiations had begun to show positive results. If George Hees had ever regarded the annual Conserva- 470 Twilight of Power tive meeting as his springboard to the prime ministership of Canada, his antics at the convention were hardly designed to bolster the nation's confidence in the seriousness of his intent. At one breakfast meeting he did some exuberant setting-up exercises on top of a banquet table in the company of a chesty blonde from Montreal, and the next day he appeared in full Highland regalia to warble. "The Eddystone Light" in front of a caucus of Maritime Tories. Later he joined in the refrains of such ditties as "Who Put the Safety Pin in the Bubble Dancer's Bubble?" PARLIAMENT RECONVEINED ON JANUARY 21, two days after the Conservative Party meeting ended, and the Diefenbaker government returned to face the awkward situation into which it had manoeuvred itself No new budget had been tabled in the fall, and only one supply motion, on November 2, had been allowed. Since the estimates of no department had been voted on, the Commons was financing the government's operations through interim supply. A new vote was required to pay the Treasury's February bills, but to vote yet another interim supply would have meant that eleven-twelfths of the government's 1962-63 budget would have been passed without parliamentary perusal. After that, interim supply could not be requested again. Just three hours before the Commons was due to convene, Gordon Churchill, the Conservative House leader, called into his office the House leaders of the other three parties to suggest a method of breaking this log jam. Instead of presenting the five supply motions needed to clear up the estimates, he suggested the government should be given unanimous consent of the Commons to wrap all of the outstanding departmental estimates into one jumbo supply motion, covering more than $6 billions in government spending. Churchill cautioned the three house leaders - Lionel Chevrier of the Liberals, Stanley Knowles of the NDP, and A. B. Patterson of the Social The Coup d'Etat 471 Credit -to absolute secrecy on his proposal, and asked them to report their parties' decisions to him within two days. George Nowlan, who was also attending the meeting, promised that if the parties agreed to Churchill's plan he would bring down an early budget. He also announced that he intended to ask the House for new interim supply on the following Thursday. But that afternoon in the Commons, Diefenbaker scuttled both schemes. He broke Churchill's admonition for secrecy by admitting that the meeting with the House leaders had been held, and contradicted Nowlan's interim supply plans by scheduling an external affairs debate for the next Thursday and Friday. The Prime Minister's move killed any small final chance there might have been for cooperation from the Opposition. Social Credit Leader Robert Thompson, who had voted with the Conservative government through the fall, now realized that his continued support would only maintain in power a government so inept and torn by internal difficulties that it could not even agree on its order of legislative business - in short, a government that had ceased to govern. LATE IN THE AFTERNOON of Friday, January 25, John Diefenbaker rose from his place in the Commons to participate in the external affairs debate: his subject, the government's defence policy. Diefenbaker revealed that nego- tiations with the United States had been going on "for two or three months or more," to acquire nuclear warheads for Canada's armed forces, "so that ... in case of need, nuclear warheads will be made readily available." He confirmed that deliveries of the CF-104 Starfighter were being made to Canada's NATO air contingent, but declared that their "strike-reconnaissance role has been placed in doubt by the recent Nassau declaration concerning nuclear arms, as well as other developments both technical and political in the defence field." He pledged his government to undertake "a clarification of our role in 472 Twilight of Power NATO defence plans" at the Ottawa meeting Of NATO ministers scheduled for May. The sentence in Diefenbaker's speech which caught the attention of the newspaper headline-writers, however, was this one: "More and more the nuclear deterrent is becoming of such a nature that more nuclear arms will add nothing material to our defence." Here was a clear hint that the Prime Minister was about to scrap the $685 millions' worth of nuclear-carrying equipment purchased by this administration. Diefenbaker's ended his speech with a moving appeal to higher authority for a way out of his defence dilemma. "My prayer," he said, "is that we will be directed in this matter. Some may ridicule that belief on my part. I believe that the western world has been directed by God in the last few years, or there would have been no survival. I believe that will continue. My prayer is that we shall so live as to maintain not only the integrity of Canada and its high reputation by carrying out our responsi- bilities, but at the same time that we will be right, that the Canadian people will be able to say that, whatever decision is made, it was made with every consideration being given to all those moral and psychological things that form one's make-up." At the end of his address, Douglas Harkness, the Minister of National Defence, who had become increasingly restive about the Prime Minister's indecision on nuclear warheads, came over to Diefenbaker and said that the speech satisfied him. Later, asked by reporters how he had interpreted the Prime Minister's remarks, Harkness replied that to him they had amounted to a clear pledge that Canada would accept a nuclear role, immediately after it had been reviewed by the May NATO meeting. When most newspaper reports instead stressed Diefenbaker's hint that Canada's nuclear weapons would be scrapped, Harkness issued a press release "clarifying" the Prime Minister's speech. In it, he emphasized that the Prime Minister had come out for, not against, the acquisi- The Coup d'Etat 473 tion of the warheads. On Monday, January 28, when Tommy Douglas, the Leader of the New Democratic Party, asked Diefenbaker in the Commons about the Harkness interpretation of his speech, Diefenbaker snapped back: "My speech was very clear, very direct and very comprehensive. I do not think it requires any interpretation." That same day, a group of Tory ministers, including Harkness, met in Gordon Churchill's parliamentary office. The Defence Minister warned his colleagues that he might resign if the Conservative platform in the next election campaign did not include a clear commitment by the Conservative Party for the acquisition of nuclear warheads. His comment was greeted with silence and the downturned eyes of his friends among the cabinet. A blunt, almost dispassionate man who had served with distinction as a lieutenant-colonel in Italy and northwestern Europe during World War 11, Harkness had never hidden his feelings about the need for Canada to get nuclear weapons. On October 12, 196o, the day after he was transferred out of the Agriculture portfolio to National Defence, he told Vic Mackie of the Winnipeg Free Press: "In the modern world, if you're going to be efficiently armed there seems to be no question that you've got to have nuclear arms." Ever since, Harkness had been trying to get Diefenbaker to make up his mind on the question. At first, the Prime Minister seemed to agree with him, but the anti-nuclear policies of Howard Green eventually won out, and by the beginning of 1963, Harkness seemed to realize that his point of view would not prevail. His final hope was that Diefenbaker would in fact accept the weapons for NATO following the ministerial meeting in May. In his own contribution to the defence debate, on the evening of January 3 1, Harkness made what he considered to be a forceful reiteration of his pro-nuclear position. But few of his listeners agreed. "Mr. Harkness saved 474 Twilight of Power his job," wrote Charles Lynch of Southarn News Services, "by manfully mouthing his way through one of the least distinguished speeches he has ever made." At a cabinet meeting on Friday, February I, Harkness again brought up the nuclear question, but it became clear that he would not be able to reach an agreement with the Prime Minister. He now believed that Diefenbaker's promise to take the warheads after the May NATO conference was only a ploy and that the Prime Minister in fact never intended to arm the weapons at all. George Nowlan, Davie Fulton, Uon Balcer, Wallace McCutcheon, Hugh John Flemming, Richard Bell, and Ernest Halpenny spent much of the afternoon in Harkness's office trying to persuade him to back the Prime Minister, at least until after the May NATO meeting. The Minister of National Defence still hesitated about an open break. DURING THE WEEKEND THAT FOLLOWED, cabinet members met in small groups in various Ottawa homes to consider what might be done. Several of the strongly-proDiefenbaker ministers, particularly Alvin Hamilton and Gordon Churchill, were urging Diefenbaker to dissolve parliament immediately, on the pretext that the Liberals (and Americans) were holding up the implementation of the Conservative government's National Development Policy. The showdown came late in the morning of Sunday, February 3, when the members of the Diefenbaker ministry met in informal session at the Prime Minister's official residence. It was one of the most extraordinary cabinet sessions in Canadian political history. The meeting had been called at the insistence of George Hees. As soon as the ministers were seated, Diefenbaker began to harangue them as "a nest of traitors." He said that he knew all about what was going on behind his back and that he was aware of who the traitors were. George Hees pleaded with Diefenbaker to come for- The Coup d'Etat 475 ward with a clear statement on defence. He was shouted down by the cabinet's anti-nuclear wing. Then Douglas Harkness, his patience finally spent, rose to deliver a scathing attack against the Prime Minister. He declared that not only he himself, but the entire cabinet had no confidence in Diefenbaker, that the Party was no longer behind the Prime Minister, and that, in fact, the entire country had lost respect for him and confidence in his leadership. Diefenbaker looked menacingly at Harkness and branded him a traitor. He pounded the table and demanded that all his supporters stand up. When nine ministers remained seated, he was stunned. Then he turned away, muttering: "I resign ... I'm going to resign ... Donald [Heming] I name you as my successor." Alvin Hamilton, Gordon Churchill, and Michael Starr walked out behind him. It was Howard Green, ashen-faced and trembling, who finally restored a semblance of order. He said that they were all personal friends and that they should bear no personal recriminations. Harkness volunteered that fol- lowing his statement about the Prime Minister he would, naturally, resign. He then left the meeting. Other ministers drifted away from Sussex Drive, and the stormy cabinet session thus dissolved into an inconclusive shambles. Harkness's letter of resignation -a long, searing indictment of Diefenbaker's indecisiveness in defence matters -arrived at the Prime Minister's residence, via military messenger, at 5:45 p.m. Diefenbaker asked Davie Fulton, George Hees, and Wallace McCutcheon to visit Harkness and attempt to persuade him to change his mind. After Harkness had refused, Fulton and Hees had supper together at Hees's apartment. Hees then telephoned Diefenbaker to ask whether he wanted a report on their talk with Harkness. Diefenbaker asked the two ministers to come right over. When they arrived, Howard Green and Gordon Churchill were conferring with the Prime 476 Twilight of Power Minister, who was in a morose mood. With even the outward appearance of solidarity in his cabinet about to be shattered, he told Hees and Fulton that he would probably resign. Green and Churchill only barely managed to persuade him to meet his cabinet and his caucus once more. THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Harkness released his revised resignation letter to the press. It read: My Dear Prime Minister: For over two years you have been aware that I believed nuclear warheads should be supplied to thefiour weapons systems we have acquired which are adapted to their use. Throughout this period I believed that they would be authorized at the appropri . ate ti . me. During the past Iwo weeks particularl ' y I have made absolutel v clear what I considered the minimum position I could accept, and several times have offered to resign, unless it was agreed to. It has become quite obvious during the last jew da - vs that your views and mine as to the course we should pursuejbr the acquisition of nuclear weaponsjbr our armedfi)rces are not capable of reconciliation. Thus it is with a great deal (y'regret that I no", find I must tender my resignation as Minister of National Do~fence. Until the last jew weeks I enjoyed in - vfive and a half years as a member of your Government and trust I have made some contribution to it and to Canada. Yours regretfully DOUGLAS S. HARKNESS It had taken Douglas Harkness, a man with little imagination but great courage and integrity, to expose the true extent of the Prime Minister's indecision. " I differ from the Prime Minister, in this way," Harkness told the Commons in explaining his resignation letter: "that I believed we should have nuclear warheads The Coup d'Etat 477 for our weapons carriers as soon as the latter were ready. I thought throughout that by remaining in the cabinet I could better achieve this purpose than by taking the easier course of resigning.... I resigned on a matter of principle. The point was finally reached when I considered that my honour and integrity required that I take this step." In reply, Diefenbaker tabled a letter to Harkness accepting the resignation, in which he pointed out that he was at a loss to understand how the Minister's view on defence differed from his own. (It was the first time a minister had resigned on a question of principle since J. L. Ralston and C. G. Power had quit the Mackenzie King cabinet in 1944 over the conscription issue.) At a press conference following his appearance in the Commons, Harkness explained that as late as the previous Thursday he felt the Prime Minister had agreed with his stand on nuclear warheads. "Subsequent discussions," he added, "convinced me that this was not so." He reiterated that in his view, the Canadian government had definite commitments to accept the weapons. "It comes down, gentlemen," he concluded, "to whether you are prepared to make a decision or not." IT WAS JUST CONCEIVABLE that Diefenbaker might have had time to reconcile the differences in his cabinet, but for the fact that during the four days it took for Harkness to finally decide to leave the Diefenbaker cabinet, the nation's attention had been focused on another manifestation of the nuclear warheads dispute. At 6:15 P.m. on Thursday, January 3o, Lincoln White, the American State Department's chief press liaison officer, handed Canadian reporters in Washington a 450word press release which challenged nearly all of the * Douglas Harkness ran in the April 8, 196_3, election as a Conservative and was returned with a 6,58o-vote margin in his home riding of Calgary North. 478 Twilight of Power "facts" on which Diefenbaker had built his defence policy speech of January 25. Diefenbaker had maintained that Canada was in a position "where nuclear weapons would be secured in the event circumstances made such a course necessary," The United States note flatly countered this claim, by stating: "The Canadian Government has not yet proposed any arrangement sufficiently practical to contribute effectively to North American defence." It also disagreed with Diefenbaker's statements about the effectiveness of the Bomarcs, and took him to task for breaking the secrecy that he himself had requested with regard to the negotiations over warheads then going on between the two countries. But the central point of the United States note - and the main reason it had been published -was its denial of Diefenbaker's claim that the Nassau talks of December 21 between President John Kennedy and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had "placed under doubt" the RCAF'S nuclear role. "The agreements made in Nassau have been fully published," declared the American State Department. "They raise no question of the appropriateness of nuclear weapons for Canadian forces in fulfilling their NATO Or NORAD obligations." The bluntly worded release had not been read by Kennedy before being made public, but it had been approved by McGeorge Bundy, one of his senior White House aides. The Americans had decided to take this severe step -unprecedented in their relations with Canada - not so much because they wanted to strike a blow at Diefenbaker's government, but to correct their own position, which the Canadian Prime Minister had misrepresented in his defence statement. Diefenbaker's references to the Kennedy-Macmillan Nassau meetings, which he had attended only as a luncheon guest on the final day, had given the NATO countries the impression that instead of merely talking about their The Coup d'Etat 479 mutual defence problems, such as the fate of the Skybolt missile, the two leaders had discussed radical changes in the military posture of the entire western alliance. Diefenbaker had said that the Nassau agreement "represents a change in the philosophy of defence; a change in the views Of NATO.... [If the Nassau concept is carried into effect] all our planning to date, or most of it, will be of little or no consequence." "What confronted the State Department," wrote Bruce Hutchison in the Winnipeg Free Press, "as it read Mr Diefenbaker's words in Parliament was not a breach of manners or even a clear breach of confidence, but a grave threat to the solidarity of the free world alliance. If the European allies, including France and Germany, believed Mr Diefenbaker, they would conclude that at Nassau President Kennedy and Mr Macmillan were planning a basic revision of defence strategy without consulting them. After all, Mr Diefenbaker had talked privately to the American and British leaders immediately after their conference. The State Department decided that it must remove any possible suspicion among the Europeans without a moment's delay. Hence the decision to issue a correction of Mr Diefenbaker's speech. The correction was not intended to damage the Canadian government's prospects in the election and certainly the State Department did not foresee the government's defeat in Parliament or the break-up of the cabinet. Washington spoke to Ottawa but the intended audience was in Europe." President Charles de Gaulle of France did, in fact, use the Diefenbaker disclosure at a press conference as an excuse to attack "the Anglo-Saxon Nassau conspiracy." In his reply to the American State Department note, delivered at the beginning of the Commons' sitting on Thursday, January 3 1, Diefenbaker declared that his government would not be pushed around "or accept external domination or interference in the making of its decisions. Canada is determined to remain a firm ally, but that does 480 Twilight of Power not mean that she should be a satellite." When Speaker Marcel Lambert, the Conservative M.P. for Edmonton West, decided that the subject of the United States note did not meet the rules for a special debate, his ruling was appealed. He then proclaimed that his ruling could not be appealed, but Paul Martin of the Liberals challenged that decision, and the three opposition parties voted together to overrule the Speaker. It was the first time in the 26th Parliament that the opposition had united against the government. To retaliate against the Americans Diefenbaker had recalled Charles S. Ritchie, the Canadian Ambassador in Washington. This step, which in the hierarchy of international protests ranks just behind the breaking off of diplomatic relations, was unprecedented in Canadian-American relations. Ottawa had been shocked by the rudeness of the United States statement and the manner of its release. At a press conference in Washington on Friday, February I, Dean Rusk, the American Secretary of State, came close to apologizing. "We regret it if any words of ours have been so phrased as to give offence, but the need to make some clarifying statement arose from a situation not of our making." THE BREAKDOWN IN AMERICAN-CANADIAN RELATIONS, plus the tabling of Harkness's letter of resignation, prompted the conspirators to move more boldly. They began to hold their strategy meetings in the Parliament Buildings, where one of the dissident ministers had rigged up a concealed bar.* The anti-Diefenbaker sentiment now polarized in a Cabinet group that included George Hees, Wallace McCutcheon, L&on Balcer, Ernest Halpenny, Davie Fulton, and Pierre S6vigny - though the strength of * It was ironical that the liquor in this particular minister's office was kept hidden in a compartment whose door was camouflaged with a photograph of the Honourable J. M. Macdonnell, the Party's most respected figure. A great deal of after-hours drinking went on in the The Coup d'Etat 481 their feelings against Diefenbaker's leadership varied considerably in intensity. The conspirators had come to share a common objective: they would attempt to obtain the backing of Social Credit in the Commons by fulfilling the demands Robert Thompson had made during the November meetings with Tory ministers, try to force Diefenbaker's resignation, adjourn Parliament, install Finance Minister George Nowlan as a caretaker prime minister for a hundred days, then hold a Party leadership convention. (Nowlan had undertaken that he himself would not be a candidate.) With a new leader and time in which to give the nation the kind of decisive government which had become impossible under Diefenbaker, the dissident ministers hoped that the voters would give them a majority mandate. In the Commons on Monday, February 4, Lester Pearson moved a supply motion which read: "That this government because of lack of leadership, the breakdown of unity in the cabinet, and confusion and indecision in dealing with national and international problems, does not have the confidence of the Canadian people." This was a sentiment that could be supported by all opposition parties. The life of the Conservative administration now hung on the Social Credit Party's willingness to bargain. Robert Thompson called a Socred caucus on Monday noon, to determine the price of his support. Shortly before i:oo p.m., he made his terms public: in return for parliamentary support until the fall of 1963, the Conservative minority government would have to make a clear-cut statement of defence policy immediately; table Parliament Buildings during the hectic final days of the session. While there was no way to measure the alcoholic intake of the m.p.'s. it was a fact that their consumption of ice cubes, presumably removed from water coolers and plopped into glasses, went up 30 per cent to 3,800 pounds per day during this period. 482 Twilight of Power 1963-64 estimates within two weeks; bring down a new budget within four weeks; and introduce "a positive program of follow-up action" after that. Thompson sent a copy of his demands to Diefenbaker through Michael Wardell, the publisher of the Atlantic Advocate and a mutual friend, but there was no reply. Only Gordon Churchill telephoned agreeing to all of Thompson's demands, except the statement on defence which, he said, would have to come from the Prime Minister. Diefenbaker sat in the House, unyielding and silent. As the dinner approached, Thompson was on his feet and it appeared that he would, after all, save the government. "An election precipitated at this time," he said, "and carrying anti-American overtones, would be a tragedy to Canada." During the dinner hour, however, Thompson performed a turnabout. He had received no reply from Diefenbaker about his demands. The previous Wednesday and Thursday, Thompson had spent considerable time with Premier E. C. Manning, the Social Credit Premier of Alberta and patron of the western wing of Thompson's party, who had been in Ottawa attending a federal-provincial conference on rail abandonment. It was under pressure from Manning that Thompson now added another item to his terms of supporting the Conservative government: John Diefenbaker's head. Manning seemed to have two main reasons for demanding the Prime Minister's resignation. He must have felt that the anti-American election campaign that was bound to come under Diefenbaker would seriously hurt the economy of Alberta. He was also known to believe that as long as Diefenbaker remained head of the Conservative Party, Social Credit could not significantly increase its Prairie representation in Ottawa. After the dinner recess Thompson returned to the Commons in a much tougher mood. He introduced a subamendment to Pearson's supply motion which read: The Coup d'Etat 483 "This government has failed up to this time to give a clear statement of policy respecting Canada's national defence, and has failed to organize the business of the House so that the 1963-64 estimates and budget could be introduced, and has failed to outline a positive program of follow-up action respecting many things for which this parliament and previous parliaments have already given authority, and does not have the confidence of the Cana- dian people." Since the motion did not invite its own defeat by referring to the voodoo of Social Credit theory, the amendment could be freely supported by both the Liberals and New Democrats. "We have failed the electorate which put us here," Thompson concluded. "I believe that the only way in which we can possibly correct this situation is to go back to the people and ask them for a new mandate." When the House adjourned for the day Thompson, accompanied by R6al Caouette, his deputy leader, and David Wilson, a member of his self-proclaimed "backroom brains trust," went to call on Hees to state their new terms. Although he had already tabled a motion which would bring down the government, Thompson hinted that he might vote against his own sub-amendment, if John Diefenbaker had by then been replaced as prime minister. THE PLOT TO REMOVE JOHN DIEFENBAKER had now reached its ftnal, crucial phase. There was no time left for humane considerations now; no further hesitation was possible. Promptly at 8:30 the following morning, George Hees appeared at 24 Sussex Drive to confront the Prime Minister with a desperate proposal. If he agreed to resign immediately, thus saving the government, the new Tory leader would appoint Diefenbaker Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.* Diefenbaker recoiled at the suggestion, * The Honourable Patrick Kerwin, the Supreme Court ChiefJustice, had 484 Twilight of Power but asked Hees to wait. He went to another room and telephoned Gordon Churchill, to tell him of the offer. Churchill suggested Diefenbaker tell Hees to go to hell. Diefenbaker did. Hees then rushed back to the Parliament Buildings for consultation with McCutcheon, Balcer, Hugh John Flemming, Halpenny, Bell, and S6vigny.t They talked again to Thompson, but he remained adamant: He would rescue the Conservative government only after Diefenbaker had handed his resignation to the Governor General. It wasn't until this gathering in Hees's parliamentary office that news of the coup d' &at attempt reached correspondents in the Parliamentary Press Gallery. As the plotters opened the door to leave Hees's office, they ran into a phalanx of excited reporters. Was it true that John Diefenbaker was about to be replaced by George Nowlan? "Well," replied Hees, "George will be damned surprised to know that. Why, we were just discussing tonight's vote in the House." What had been decided? "Hell, you know the Argos don't tell the Tigers what their strategy is." Other rebels had less ingenious stories. Senator McCutcheon explained he'd just dropped into Hees's office for a few drinks: "The sun's over the yard-arm, and I was saluting the afternoon." Another group of reporters had gathered outside 24 Sussex Drive, where the Prime Minister was closeted with his faithful colleagues, Allister Grosart and David Walker. When Diefenbaker emerged to leave for the Commons, he looked drawn, and for once, had nothing to say. At 11:30 a.m., B. I Richardson, the Prime Minister's special assistant, had telephoned the CBC to request a half-hour of died the previous weekend and was to be buried at noon of the day Flees made his proposal. t George Nowlan had also been invited to attend, but he had to be at a previously arranged Bank of Canada meeting; Davie Fulton and Donald Fleming were at Chief Justice Kerwin's funeral. The Coup d'Etat 485 national network time that evening for the Prime Minister's resignation statement. But in the Parliament Buildings, the pendulum of power was swinging back toward Diefenbaker. The rebels could find no lever with which to force the Prime Minister's resignation, and until they had that, they could not bargain further with the Social Credit. The man who rescued John Diefenbaker at this point was Alvin Hamilton. Ignored by the plotters who considered him to be either too loyal to the Chief or too naYve to know what was going on, Hamilton had found out about the imminent coup on a transistor radio that he kept in his office. Hamilton rushed over to see Gordon Churchill, who had just been handed a typed list of the ministers meeting in Hees's office by a reporter. Hamilton then ran back to his own quarters and instructed several Western m.p.'s to fan out through the building and bring as many backbenchers as possible back to his office. When the m.p.'s arrived, Hamilton asked them to pledge their loyalty to Diefenbaker "in his battle against Bay Street," and warned that those who didn't would find Alvin himself campaigning against them in their home constituencies. The threat was not necessary. The caucus was still solidly behind its leader. Hamilton suggested that to show their support, the m.p.'s should cheer Diefenbaker in the government lobby that afternoon. By this time, Diefenbaker himself had begun to fight back. He called two Tory m.p.'s - his old friend R. L. Hanbidge and Dr Orville Phillips (a RE.I. dentist and m.p. for Prince) out of a Senate Speaker's luncheon they were attending, and named Hanbidge Lieutenant-Governor of Saskatchewan and Phillips a Senator.* He told them of the * Twenty-two of the thirty-seven appointments John Diefenbaker made to the Senate went to sitting or former Tory wp.'s. 486 Twilight of Power plot against him, and urged them to spread the news among loyal backbenchers. While Diefenbaker was gaining in his battle for personal survival, the fate of his government was being sealed. Social Credit held another caucus and decided to stand pat on its decision to move non-confidence in the govern- ment. The New Democratic Party emerged from its caucus at 12:50 p.m. and announced that it would support both the Social Credit and Liberal motions. "Ours is not a vendetta against Diefenbaker or anyone else," NDP leader Tommy Douglas declared. "The Government has failed to grapple with the issues of the day." At Rideau Hall, Governor General Georges Vanier abruptly decided to cancel a trip he'd been planning that day to Toronto. By 2:30 P.m. the Parliament Buildings were jammed with Ottawa residents waiting to crowd into the public galleries of the Commons. Olive Diefenbaker came to see her husband defend his government, and heard the Tory backbenchers cheer as he entered the Government lobby, fingers crossed for luck. On the floor of the Commons, a burly Tory m.p. from Alberta sidled up to George Hees and whispered, "If I don't see you banging your desk after the Chief speaks, I'll tear your arm off." After the question period and a vigorous attack on the government by Paul Hellyer, the Liberal defence critic, Diefenbaker rose to deliver what was one of the best speeches of his political life. He was interrupted thirty-five times by the applause of his own backbenchers. The only ministers who refrained from showing their approval were Uon Balcer and Pierre S6vigny; Hees banged his desk like a schoolboy on the last day of term. Referring to his violent reaction to the American State Department note, Diefenbaker made this moving reply: "I cannot accept the fears of those who believe we must be subservient in order to be a good ally of any country in the world. Macdonald fought this battle. The great merchants in the city of Montreal in those days - not the French The Coup d'Etat 487 Canadians - had their views on this subject, that after all Canada would be that much stronger if it were joined with the United States. That was not Macdonald's view. That idea comes in with almost every generation.... When I hear some saying that the fact that one dares to speak out will endanger Canada's economy, I wonder what the future of this country would be if those who have such fears and those who are of little faith held office in our country. I believe in co-operation, in the closest co-operation, but not in the absorption of our viewpoint by any other nation. I believe in the maintenance in spirit and in fact of Canada's identity, with the right to determine her own policy without extramural assistance in determining that policy." He vowed that estimates would be introduced in one week, a budget in four weeks. "I ask this House for a vote of confidence, for an opportunity to do the things we want to do. . . . " But he was far too late. Even as he was making his final appeal, the 25th Parliament was already doomed. At 8:03 p.m., the Commons reassembled, galleries packed. Tommy Douglas of the NDP ended his appeal for better government, with the benediction: "The hour of decision has come. Let the people decide." At 8:15, Speaker Lambert began to read the text of the Social Credit non-confidence sub-amendment. While the division bells were ringing, Diefenbaker was whispering urgently to Howard Green. He was asked to step into the government lobby. There, Alvin Hamilton's cheering section gave him three loud hurrahs and a "tiger." Then the Prime Minister was hoisted on a table and serenaded with "He's a Jolly Good Fellow." By 8:41 p.m., Gordon Dubroy, the second clerk assistant to the Commons, was calling off the vote. Former Defence Minister Harkness and Art Smith, Conservative m.p. for Calgary South, were not in their seats. Edmund Morris, a Halifax Tory, refrained from voting. All other Conservatives stood up to support Diefenbaker. Two NDP 488 Twilight of Power members, H. W. Herridge and Colin Cameron, voted with the government. The final vote on both motions was 142 to i i i. The Diefenbaker administration had been toppled.* John Diefenbaker promised to advise the Governor General of the vote, then he moved the adjournment of the House. Alone he walked out of the Chamber to his small office on the main floor of the Centre Block, where he knew his wife would be waiting. Precisely at this moment, in the Quebec City Coliseum, an announcer cut into his comments on the hockey playoff, to shout: "The Diefenbaker government has fallen." The crowd was hushed for a moment, then stood up and cheered. JOHN DIEFENBAKER WAS NOW THE HEAD of a government that no longer had the confidence of Parliament. This gave him an apparent vulnerability which tempted the rebels to their final push. Senator Wallace McCutcheon, whose continued presence in the cabinet represented the only remaining link between Diefenbaker and the nation's business community, had spent much of the Tuesday evening with Senator Grattan O'Learyt being persuaded by that erudite gentleman that he should not resign. McCutcheon had by this time become totally disillusioned with Diefenbaker. He considered the Prime Minister to be irresponsible, and felt that he could not associate himself with the anti-American * The only Canadian prime minister previously defeated in a Commons vote had been Arthur Meighen whose Conservative administration fell on July 2, 1926, when a Liberal motion was passed 96 to 95. t A former editor of the Ottawa Journal, Grattan O'Leary had been appointed by Diefenbaker to head the Royal Commission on Publications. He was summoned to the Senate on September 24, 1962. The Coup d'Etat 489 election campaign which he feared was about to start. O'Leary, one of the country's great philosophical Tories, appealed to McCutcheon, for the good of the Party, not to go. A cabinet meeting had been scheduled for 9:oo a.m. the next morning, and a final caucus for i i:oo a.m. Hees planned to confront Diefenbaker at cabinet with a demand that he resign, then come before the caucus, with the coup d'&at already completed and have ratified by the members whatever new arrangements had been ham- mered out in cabinet. Even now, the rebels might have succeeded in their coup d'&at but for the fact that the government had already been defeated in the Commons. With Parliament no longer in session and the general election looming ahead, it simply no longer made political sense to change leaders. Besides, the mutineers had once again discounted Alvin Hamilton. The Agriculture Minister realized that Diefenbaker would probably be called upon to resign at the cabinet meeting on Wednesday morning. With the hard core of Diefenbaker support now reduced to Gordon Churchill, Howard Green, Michael Starr, Jay Waldo Monteith, Walter Dinsdale, Raymond O'Hurley, Angus MacLean, and Donald Fleming, Hamilton was also aware that the rebels would outnumber the loyalists, and there would be no western backbenchers in the cabinet room to exert pressure on behalf of the Prime Minister. Hamilton therefore suggested to Diefenbaker that he switch the times of the caucus and cabinet. The Prime Minister agreed. It was this change in timing which finally defeated the coup d'&at and allowed Diefenbaker to retain the Party leadership. 490 Twilight of Power ALVIN'S BACKBENCHER CHORus began the next morning's caucus with yet another rousing demonstration for their Prime Minister. Then, at last forced out into the open, George Hees made his appeal for support. In a prepared speech which he read for most of an hour, he argued against Diefenbaker's intention to wage an anti-American campaign. He told the caucus that his department had done a survey to determine the results of such an election on Canadian exports to the United States and that he discovered "Washington had some bills in the hopper" which could severely harm the Canadian economy. He also condemned Diefenbaker's shilly-shallying on defence. "Unless these platforms are altered," Hees said, "I can't in honour stay here." The Trade Minister had begun his oration bravely enough, but Diefenbaker kept heckling him. What, he wanted to know, had been discussed in Hees's parliamentary office that Tuesday noon? "Tell them what you told me yesterday morning, George. Is Bay Street behind all this?" With such interruptions and the wall of hostile M.P.'s in front of him, Hees turned for comfort toward McCutcheon, unaware of that Senator's conversion by O'Leary the previous night. There was no visible support there. Feeling alone and very much betrayed, Hees sat down. Diefenbaker took the floor and offered his resignation. The Western M.P.'s shouted their protests; Senators O'Leary and Alfred Brooks* and Fisheries Minister Angus MacLean followed with rousing appeals on behalf of Diefenbaker. The three speakers brought the entire caucus to its feet with their fervent plea for Party unity. O'Leary's speech was particularly moving and effective. Senator *A veteran Tory m.p. from Sussex, New Brunswick, who served as Diefenbaker's Minister of Veterans Affairs, and was appointed to the Senate on September 12, ig6o. The Coup d'Etat 491 Allister Grosart then assured the members that under Diefenbaker's leadership, the Party could win at least 170 seats in the forthcoming campaign. Diefenbaker spoke again about how he had always been for "the little man and against privilege and wealth"; he indicated that some kind of compromise could be reached with his rebellious ministers, and asked them, one by one, to declare their intentions. They rose in their places, and although at least six had drafts of their resignations with them, they parroted their loyalty. "Are you with me, Mr Halpenny?" the Prime Minister demanded. "Yes. 11 "Mr Nowlan? Mr Bell? Senator McCutcheon?-Mr S6vigny? Mr Balcer? Are you with me?" "Yes. Yes. Yes," were the replies. "Mr Hees?" The Minister of Trade and Commerce, tears in his eyes, declared that he, too, was loyal. Harry Jones, the Tory M.P. for Saskatoon, moved in to help Hees and Diefenbaker shake hands. The caucus broke up and the cabinet walked out to meet the press. "You tell 'em, George," Diefenbaker instructed. Hees took his cue with characteristic enthusiasm: "Best caucus we've ever had ... we're hitting the road and we'll lick the hell out of the Grits!" Others followed suit. "Everybody's happy. There's full unity," said Halpenny. "Nothing but a hallelujah chorus," said McCutcheon. JOHN DIEFENBAKER SPENT MOST OF THE DAY following the caucus in private consultation with his political strategists. George Hees declared he was available "to anybody who wants me to campaign for him," and was promptly signed up for appearances by thirty-one m.P's. There were rumours that John Bassett, the publisher of 492 Twilight of Power the Toronto Telegram, had been supporting Hees's antiDiefenbaker efforts, since he was a loyal Conservative and felt his party could not afford another election campaign under the Prince Albert politician's leadership. Now, it was whispered, Bassett, or his emissary E. A. Goodman, had come to Ottawa for a confrontation with Hees to discover why he had so suddenly, as the nasty gossip put it, become "a Diefenbuddy again." Pierre S6vigny was having problems of his own. Following Harkness's resignation, he had been named Acting Minister of National Defence. To test his strength he ordered an army press release to be issued under his authority, and referred to himself as the Minister of National Defence. Asked if he had approved the promotion, Diefenbaker told a reporter that he certainly had not. The following morning the Globe and Hail turned its anger on the would-be conspirators, particularly on the enthusiastic pro-Diefenbaker comments they had made at the close of the Wednesday caucus. "These men," the paper editorialized, "were not telling the truth. It is a matter of fact that some Ministers of the Crown who on Wednesday declared their allegiance to the great leader had, only two days before, their resignations ready in their pockets. Today the Prime Minister is still in office and the rebels, having deserted their cause, are still in the Cabinet. They have purchased their jobs, for a few weeks, doubtless to 'preserve' the party. So now these men lead their tattered party into the election with lies on their lips and a dual standard of morality in their hearts, They have one set of morals for church-going and for the children's hour, and another for the smoke-filled rooms." Cabinet met that morning to discuss election strategy. Diefenbaker informed his ministers that he and he alone would be responsible for the Party's defence pronouncements. He said that his tactics would be pro-Canadian, not anti-American. But he did remind his colleagues how Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Robert Borden had swept The Coup d'Etat 493 the country with anti-American campaigns. Flees and McCutcheon warned that they'd resign in mid-campaign if the Prime Minister indulged in his anti-Americanism. Hees left the meeting sporting a raccoon coat (a gift from George Pearkes) which, he announced, would become the campaign costume in which he'd "wow the ladies." THEN, AT 4:00 P.m., Hees suddenly ordered Mel Jack, his executive assistant, to cancel all of his election commitments. He was joined at his Trade and Commerce Department office an hour later by Pierre S6vigny. The Acting Defence Minister was fed up with John Diefenbaker's posturing on defence. "I left one leg in France," he told Hees, tapping his imitation limb, "and I'll be goddamned if I'm going to hobble around on my other one after this guy and his silly policies. I can't stand it any longer, I'm getting out." The two men went to the Rideau Club for drinks, then joined their wives at Hees's private suite at the Chateau Laurier Hotel for dinner. There they were met by Mel Jack and later the party adjourned to Hees's home at the Sandringham Apartments. Hees expressed the hope that they would take many of the former rebels with them when they resigned. Telephone calls were placed to Senator McCutcheon in Toronto, George Nowlan in Halifax, Donald Fleming in Ottawa, and Uon Balcer, who had fled to the privacy of his home constituency of Three Rivers, Quebec. None would join the walkout. Nowlan, Fleming, and McCutcheon telephoned Dielenbaker to appeal for a change in his defence policies so that the two Ministers might not resign, but to no avail. Early the next morning Hees went back to his office to write out his resignation. The first draft was a four-page summary of his grievances. Later it was cut to one page. He telephoned the president of his constituency association in Toronto to announce his decision, then together 494 Twilight of Power with S6vigny he drove out to see Diefenbaker in a National Defence staff car. Hees said they had come with their resignations, not as representatives of a rebel faction, but on their own. "I don't have to listen to you," the Prime Minister shot back. "You represent Bay Street. I represent the common man." "I came here to reason intelligently," said Hees. "It's impossible. I'm going." "Me too," said S6vigny. "Stop," Diefenbaker exclaimed. "You'll meet the Liberal press and tell them. It's now ten-twenty-five. Hold up your announcement until one o'clock." The two men walked out. An hour later George Nowlan telephoned and made one final and futile attempt to dissuade them. Me] Jack informed B. T. Richardson in the Prime Minister's office that the requested voo p.m. release date would be honoured. But just before noon Mrs S&vlgny phoned a friend in Montreal who owned a radio station and the news leaked out early. As soon as it had, the remainder of the Conservative cabinet converged on 24 Sussex to offer Diefenbaker pledges of their continued support. "The Party's fighting mad now. We've got rid of the riffraff," Alvin Hamilton remarked to a reporter. This was the text of the two resignation letters: Dear Mr Prime Minister: As you know, I have been extremely concerned.1br some time about our detence policy and our relations with the United States. I have outlined to You, to my colleagues, and to the caucus of the Conservative Part ' y why I consider that our present defence policy does not eitherfultil our international commitments or providefor the securit ' v of our country. I have also stated clearly that I consider the present attitude of the government cannot but lead to a deterioration of our relations with the United States. The Coup d'Etat 495 I had hoped that the views which I expressed would lead to changes in policy which would permit me to remain a member of the government. However, since that time there has been no indication of such change. I feel these matters to be of vital importance to the welfare and security q(our country, and therefore I have no alternative but to tender mY resignation as a member of your Cabinet. I do not propose to be a candidate in theforthcoming election. Yours sincereb, GEORGE HEES Dear Mr Prime Minister: I have been deep~v troubled by the situation in which wefind ourselves as a result of the ambiguous position of our government on matters oftlefence. I cannot accept your opinions concerning our senior service officers. The ' v are able, experienced men who are dedicated to the cause ofpeace through the medium o(a strong dej~nce and the - v deserve our respect and support. Our government has commitments towards NATO and NORAD. I share the views of our.16rmer colleague, Hon. Douglas Harkness, on this matter and have said so. I believed that I could give to our Canadian people a sound explanation ofour dejence policy but it became clear to me, in the /astj6v da ' vs, that this would be impossible under the present attitude. I am first andforemost a Canadian. MY'familY has a long and honourable tradition ofservice to Canada. During the last war, I served in the armed.forces and I shared their pride in Canada ~ contribution. It was onl ' v natural, in view of m - v constant interest in dej~nce matters, to aspire to the post of'Minister of National D&nce. But such a post I would accept only if our policies met with our commitments and the principles in wh ich I believe. Th is is impossible under present 496 Twilight of Power conditions and I cannot support what I consider to be an obscure course of action. Nor am I prepared to lend myself to a wholly unwarranted attack upon the government of aftiend and ally who has expressed an honest and sincere apology,fi)r any embarrassment caused us by recent incidents. An ' v so-called pro- Canadian policy based on this event onl ' y be interpreted as anti-Americanisin and manupetured electoral propaganda. Action of this sort will be ruinous.for Canada economically and could seriously impair the unitY of thefree world in matters of af~fence. Under these conditions, it is clear that I cannot carn' on as a member of your government and I have no choice but to resign./rom your cabinet. Yourssincerely, PIERRE SI~VIGNY WHY GEORGE FLEES SO SUDDENLY changed his mind about staying with Diefenbaker is not clear. Certainly, following his declaration of loyalty at the Wednesday caucus, there must have been pressure on him to resign from the group of anti-Diefenbaker Toronto Conservatives who had been supporting his attempted coup d'&al. It was also probably true that he realized he could not win his Toronto-Broadview seat in the circumstances. (During the 1962 campaign, his previous 8,626-vote margin had been cut to 1,271 by Liberal D. G. Hahn.) Hees's own explanation was more complex. In an interview with Richard Jackson, parliamentary correspondent of the Ottawa Journal, he claimed that during the Wednesday caucus, following his speech, Diefenbaker had leaned over and whispered: "George, we've got this election and you and I are going to fight it together. I've got to have you beside me. I'll change my defence policy better to suit you fellows' views." "I was so excited," Hees confided to Jackson, "that I jumped up on my feet, and I was crying -tears in my The Coup d'Etat 497 eyes - I figured here we are at last, in with a defence policy that meant something. Then, on Friday I asked the Prime Minister when he was going to announce the defence policy change, and he said 'What defence policy changeT I reminded him of his undertaking in caucus, and he told me he had never given it. What can you do with a thing like that? I'd had enough -that was it -I quit." Hees's concern over defence dated back to World War 11, when he had been revolted by the conscription attitude of Mackenzie King. He had gone into politics to protest King's policy of playing politics with defence. Now eighteen years later, he was leaving politics, because Diefenbaker was doing the same thing. Hees's leavetaking prompted no further cabinet resignations, but it left the Toronto wing of the Conservative party shattered and uncertain where to turn. Joseph Sedgwick, Q.c., a leading Toronto lawyer and a man who had been a faithful Tory for nearly half a century best expressed this dismay in a letter to the Globe and Afail: ... the heart-searching question for all old Tories is, what do we do now? For my part, I could not in conscience sup- port a Diefenbaker candidate, because I would not know (and he could not know) what he stood for. But I could support, and hope to be able to, one who carries the Conservative label and stands where Douglas Harkness stands, and where George Hees (late, but better so than never) stands. In short, we need now a meeting of Conservatives to select good candidates who profess Conservative principles~ candidates who are concerned to see that Canada keeps its selfrespect, and honours its commitments to its allies and its friends. Candidates who will work to keep Canada not merely in the British Commonwealth, but of it. Candidates who will strive to bring some order out of our present financial chaos. I can have no part of a campaign based on such slogans as "Canada si: Yanqui no." Those slogans may be left to Castro who originated them. We need honest candi- 498 Twilight of Power dates and an honest campaign-, instead of distributing copies of the Bill of Rights in this election, some of the candidates might consider distributing the Statute of Frauds. I have supported the Tory Party in power and in opposition ever since 19 17 when I first voted, and I have never cast other than a Tory vote, although there were times when I knew I was throwing it away. I want to vote Tory this time, and intend to if I can find a Tory to vote for... The reaction outside Canada to the fall of the Diefenbaker government ranged from gleeful to ecstatic. Robert Estabrook, the editorial page director of the Washington Post, wrote from London: "It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that fewer tears were shed over the fall of Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker than over the upset of any major Commonwealth political figure, since Oliver Cromwell." No epitaph could have hurt the Tory chieftain more. TWENTY FIVE The Dikes of Power Burst T SEEMED SUCH A SHORT TIME since that glorious spring Of 1957 when the man from Prince Albert had first soared into the heady reaches of power, inflated with his proud ambition, and buoyed up by the people's trust. Yet less than six years later, in the crueller springtime of 1963, the Conservative ministry was collapsing like a defective balloon at a spoiled child's birthday party. John Diefenbaker was being criticized on all sides, derided by his onetime disciples, abandoned by his closest colleagues. At home, newspapers that once sanctified his every idiosyncrasy were calling for his resignation. Abroad, usually circumspect statesmen were gently leaking the word that Diefenbaker's defeat would be highly desirable. As he pushed into his tenth federal election campaign, he seemed to stand almost as alone as he had more than two decades before, when he had first come out of the West. But John Diefenbaker had always felt that he stood alone. He had fought his way to the Party leadership by himself, tried to govern the country alone, and now he faced the political climax of his life, still alone and still fighting. Many of the nation's editorial writers wondered why, when the odds seemed to be so heavily stacked against him, Diefenbaker still insisted on clinging to the prime 499 500 Twilight of Power ministership, thus risking not only his own humiliation but permanent damage to his Party. The answer lay buried deep in the complexities of the man's character. No matter who or what conspired against him, Diefenbaker adhered with scarcely diminished faith to the sacredness of his own mission. He felt that he was bound to win the 1963 election campaign, because he was somehow meant to have power. In planning their campaign strategy, the primary concern of the Conservative leader's chief political advisors, Dalton Camp and Roy Faibish, was to revive that mystic bond between Diefenbaker and "the average Canadian," which had been forged in the 1957 and 1958 campaigns. This meant that the Prime Minister's claim for re-election would have to be based, not on the authority of his office, as had been attempted in 196 2, but on a direct, emotional appeal to the people. In the campaign's initial stages Camp and Faibish were more concerned with the effect the crowds would have on Diefenbaker than with the impression he might make on his audiences. They wanted Diefenbaker to come face to face again with the voters' yearning for leadership, which had awakened in him the charismatic qualities that had inspired the triumphs of his first two campaigns. To achieve this rapport, Diefenbaker's first tour of the campaign was scheduled as a whistle-stop journey through the Prairies. His train pulled out of Ottawa's Union Station, shortly after midnight on February 28. The next morning, at his first trainboard press conference, he was asked: "Have you given any thought to appearing on television with your competitors?" Diefenbaker glared at his inquisitor, and replied: "I have no competitors." It was a bold beginning for a politician who only three weeks before had very nearly been overthrown by his own followers. Between Winnipeg and Saskatoon, Diefenbaker was scheduled to leave his train only at Melville, Watrous, and The Dikes of Power Burst 501 Semans, where local Tory organizers were set to produce sizable advance crowds. But the timetable had to be changed when word of his tour got around, and people began spontaneously to gather on station platforms at Ituna, Nokomis, and other flag stops. The local station agents advised the campaign caravan of the crowds, asking Diefenbaker at least to wave as his train went by. Instead, the Prime Minister ordered the train to halt at every stop. The inhabitants of the flat, sad little towns turned out by the hundreds in the March chill to pay deference to their champion. As Diefenbaker strode the station platforms, shaking hands and patting shoulders, a scramble of adoring children followed his every move. During his six years in office, John Diefenbaker had been discredited by most of the people who could be said to belong to Canada's Establishment. But he knew no matter how the nation might pretend it had become a great trading force or an arbiter of significance in the cold war, that the real source of political power in Canada still lay close to the soil. Let the dwellers in the sophisticated world of the cities and suburbs deride him. Now, he was coming home to the people he understood and who understood him. When he told a cluster of his supporters, as he did at Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, "They say I've made mistakes, you know. But they've been mistakes of the heart," his audience knew exactly what he meant. "I'm going across this nation," he told them, "and I'm going to look into the face of Canada, to meet the people, to carry a message of hope.... The last time, I flew over the people. This time, I'm down on the ground with you. I'm not asking for the support of the powerful, the strong, and the mighty, but of the average Canadian, the group to which I belong." DIEFENBAKER'S STRATEGY was a revelation of himself Although he had governed Canada since 1957, he all but 502 Twilight of Power ignored his own record in office. At a Winnipeg press conference, following his first Prairie tour, when asked to name the main issue of the campaign, he replied: "The record of the Opposition, the falsification by the Opposition, that's the issue as I see it." Diefenbaker came at the people like some mythological deity - a heroic figure, tantalizing the voters with the suggestion that by keeping him in power, they could make a political miracle come true. "I see, as I climb the hill - and oh, it's a long hill -I see the dawning of a new day," he whispered to a hushed rally at Moncton, New Brunswick, in the early stages of the campaign. The Conservative leader gradually took on the air of an earthly representative of some extraterrestrial agency. "I don't know why it is," he confided to an audience of two thousand in Halifax, "but during this election, whenever I hear'O Canada' sung, it has a special meaning. I have an appointment with the Canadian people to carry on." His anger with the Liberals was frequently expressed in the biblical cadence of an Old Testament prophet: "By their words ye shall judge them" (Winnipeg, March 4); "Their tight hand knoweth not what the left hand is doing" (Ottawa, March i i); "For while the light holds forth to burn, the greatest sinners may return" (Moncton, New Brunswick, March 13). To the crowds that erupted everywhere his train halted, Diefenbaker was desperately anxious to impart this urgent message: that during his term in office he had tried his mightiest to improve the lot of the average Canadian. If he had failed, it had not been because of his own shortcom- ings, but because he had been thwarted by those neverdefined forces of evil which he lumped together bitterly as they. "They say of me," he told a Winnipeg rally, "I'm too much concerned with the common man. My friends, my friends, I know the condition of the average Canadian." He ranted against the Liberals in Parliament ("They did not try to co-operaW they sat; they sneered") against The Dikes of Power Burst 503 Newsweek Magazine, which had written a devastatingly unfavourable article about him ("They planned that. They awaited that") and even against his own advisers ("Last time they were telling me, take an aeroplane . . . "). The wind-worn faces of his rural listeners glowed in understanding as he struck out at "they" - the conglomeration of powerful influences which had frustrated their own lives. At the conclusion of his speeches, Diefenbaker would lean into the microphone and confide: "There are great interests against me - national and international. Everyone is against me, but the people." Diefenbaker built up this underdog image by the use of every imaginable pretext, including his appearance ("They're making fun of my face. But it's the only face I have"), his background ("How much easier it would have been to climb to be prime minister, if my name had been Campbell-Bannerman"); his income ("You know, when I have finished my long years of public service, I will get a pension Of $2,9oo a year. Think of that. In other parts of the world they make provision . . . "); his enemies ("They ridiculed, they reviled, they lampooned. Every form of vituperation that can be used has been used against me"); his grandson* ("My little grandson is five and a half years old. Somebody showed him a picture of the Prime Minister of Canada on the front page of Newsweek. He said, 'That's not like my grandpa and I know because I've slept with him several times' "). In nearly every speech he attacked "the great interests" and "the powerful forces abroad" which were trumpeting his downfall. At least some of the undecided voters who turned out to hear him must have questioned the justification of his appeal. The prime minister, after all, is the most powerful man in Canada, and this particular Prime Minister had ruled with the largest parliamentary majority ever accorded a Canadian politician. * The boy born to Olive Diefenbaker's daughter by her first marriage. 504 Twilight of Power When Diefenbaker's speeches were not dripping with melancholy self-pity, he was attacking the Liberals in a way that curved and bent the facts to his own design. The burden of his case was that the Liberals had obstructed his every effort to push favourable legislation through the 25th Parliament. While it was true that the Liberals had deliberately prolonged some debates, it was also true that they had twice offered to speed up the business of the Commons, and had been rebuffed by Diefenbaker. But the Conservative Leader tried to blame the indecisiveness and inaction of his entire term of officeincluding the four years when he enjoyed the largest majority in Canadian history - on the parliamentary obstruction of the Liberals. "I love Parliament," he proclaimed at Guelph, Ontario, on March 7. "When a few power-hungry men decide they are not going to allow it to act, it is something for the people to consider." In the same speech he accused the Liberals of having delayed pay boosts to postal workers that had been recommended by the Civil Service Commission. (The Commission's report on suggested raises was actually not due to be published until the end of March and, even at that, no parliamentary approval was required to alter the pay scales.) In Peterborough, a few days later, he said the Liberals had prevented his government from introducing portable pension legislation. "They wouldn't let us bring it in," he charged. (There had actually been no portable pension legislation to obstruct. No bills had been introduced and no steps were taken to call the federal-provincial conference required as a preliminary move for the proposal.) At his Winnipeg rally, Diefenbaker produced "the budget ,they wouldn't let us bring in." He outlined a galaxy of favourable measures, including cuts in personal income tax, and damned the Liberals for depriving Canadians of them. (A budget could have been introduced at any time by Diefenbaker's minority government, and all Opposition parties had in fact been clamouring for one.) The Dikes of Power Burst 505 When the nation's newspapers and magazines began to document the inconsistencies in Diefenbaker's position, he switched the emphasis of his pronouncements to national defence and Canadian-United States relations. Once again, he represented the Liberals as the satanic influences obstructing his strivings on behalf of Canada. "No matter what you bring in," he complained, "they say it's wrong if it's made in Canada." Throughout the campaign, Lester Pearson was portrayed by Diefenbaker as a bumbling internationalist, while he himself behaved like the messianic apostle of a nationalism so narrow that it bordered on provincialism. The Toronto Star accused him of talking "like some alcoholic patriot in a tavern." "I want Canada to be in control on Canadian soil. Now if that's an offence, I want the people of Canada to say so," he declared over and over again, hitting back at "some invisible incognito in Washington" who was supposed to be plotting against him. Alvin Hamilton took this attack one step further. "I say this to our friends across the border: 'Don't push us around churn!' " he told a Montreal press conference on March 7, then explained that the United States note on Canada's nuclear position had been issued "because they don't even know we're a sovereign country up here. They think we're a Guatemala or something." In his public wrath against the USA, Diefenbaker made use of the same document, but he expanded his target by blaming the Liberals and the Pentagon for having formed a partnership designed to turn Canada into what he called 11 a nuclear dump" - implying that a vote for the Liberals was a vote for atomic war. "It would have been easy for me to say: certainly we'll make Canada a nuclear dump," he said at Renfrew, Ontario, on March 18. "But the civil authority must always be paramount over the military authority." Diefenbaker constantly alluded to undefined pressures, forcing Canada into "the nuclear club." 506 Twilight of Power The Conservative leader insisted that his government had lived up to every one of its military commitments, although this point of view had been publicly contradicted by his own Minister and Associate Minister of National Defence, who had resigned over the issue, as well as General Lauris Norstad of TIATo, and General Charles Foulkes, the former chairman of the Canadian Chiefs of Staff, who had negotiated the agreements. (Just a few days before the start of the campaign on January 25, Diefenbaker himself had said in the Commons: " . .. we undertook to equip our squadrons assigned to NATO for a strike reconnaissance role, which role would include the mission of delivering nuclear weapons. No one was under any misunderstanding in that connection.") Diefenbaker attempted to resolve these nuclear contradictions by claiming that such weapons as the Bomarc missile could be armed either with conventional or nuclear warheads, so that their adoption by Canada had not really committed the nation to an atomic role. To substantiate this claim, he produced a 196 1 North American Air Defence Command press release, which stated: "Bomarcs can be equipped with either high explosive or nuclear warheads." NORAD officials promptly pointed out that this had specifically referred to an experimental nonnuclear warhead tested for the "A" model of the Bomarc, and that it would cost more than $30 millions and take at least three years to design a high explosive warhead for the "B" models acquired by Canada. When he was asked whether, in view of this new statement, he still thought the Bomarc could marry a conventional load, Diefenbaker smiled mysteriously and answered: "Ah, but I have the press release." The glut of words on defence being heaped on the electorate by all parties eventually became so confusing that the subject took on a faintly comic air. At a rally in Dominion City, Manitoba, Walter Dinsdale, the Conservative Minister of Northern Affairs, confessed that he could The Dikes of Power Burst 507 not understand why his government was being accused of not having a firm defence policy. "The resignation of Defence Minister Douglas Harkness is a clear indication of the Prime Minister's stand," he explained. The NDP's Tommy Douglas exploited the issue in his own peculiar way. "At my age," he told his small but loyal audiences, "dying in a nuclear war is no great tragedy. But I have a three-and-a-half-year-old grandson, and I want him to walk proudly through life. We have a responsibility that our children get that opportunity. How you cast your ballot in this election will decide whether or not Canada joins the nuclear club." THE MOOD OF THE DEFENCE DEBATE changed abruptly on March 29, just seven campaigning days before the election. In Edmonton the previous evening, Lester Pearson had emphasized his willingness to honour the nuclear commitments made by Diefenbaker. He also promised to visit President Kennedy as soon as he was elected, so that friendly relations between the two nations could be restored. The next morning, the Kennedy administration kicked the Liberal leader in the teeth. R. L. Michaels, a congressional staff officer attached to the Pentagon, chose that day to release the edited transcript of hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, which had been held on February 6, more than a month before. The testimony included this edited passage, in which the American legislators had questioned Robert McNamara, the United States Secretary of Defense, on the value of the Bomarc: MR MINSHALL - No hearings of this subcommittee would be complete unless I at least mentioned in passing the word "Bomarc." MR FLOOD - You are speaking of the woman I love. MR MINSHALL - I notice on page 55 of your statement 508 Twilight of Power you pointed out: As I pointed out last year, the Air Force's Bomarc missile suffered from essentially the same defects as manned interceptors- Nevertheless, we plan to continue the Bomarc force-, since the large initial investment costs are already behind us. If I remember correctly, including the Cost Of SAGE and the Bomarc missile itself, all the research and development, we put somewhere between $3 billions and $4 billions into this program. I just wonder if it is as ineffective as you now agree it is, why we even put any money into the operational cost of this weapon when it is so useless. SECRETARY McNAMARA - The operational costs are really not extensive. Since we have put such a heavy investment in the weapons system itself and in the controls for it, the SAGE controls, it seemed wise to us to continue to deploy it at least as far ahead as we can see. MR MINSHALL - We are trying to cut down at every corner of the budget. These sites take men to man. I am sure it will run into millions of dollars just for operations and maintenance. SECRETARY McNAMARA - Yes, the Bomarc looks to us to cost on the order Of $20 millions a year to operate. MR MINSHALL -That to me is an awful lot of money. SECRETARY McNAMARA - For the protection we get I do not believe it is an unreasonable amount. MR MINSHALL - The protection is practically nil, Mr Secretary, as you said here in your statement. The sites are SOft, SAGE is SOft. SECRETARY McNAMARA - We can correct for some of these deficiencies. We are considering further dispersal of those Bomarcs. The problem with the dispersal alternative is it costs money to disperse. We have a series of alternatives underway that we hope will allow us to increase their effectiveness. In any case, I would hesitate to cancel their deployment if we saved no more than $20 millions a year. MR MINSHALL - You remind me of the story my good father used to tell me about Pat and Mike when they were The Dikes of Power Burst 509 fishing in the Niagara River about a mile above the falls.... Suddenly the rope came untied from the shore and they were caught in the current. Pat excitedly said, "Throw over the anchor." Mike responded, "It ain't got no rope on it." Pat said. "Throw the anchor over anyhow, it might do us some good." That is pretty much the situation here with Bomarc. They might do some good. SECRETARY McNAMARA - At the very least, they would cause the Soviets to target missiles against them and thereby increase their missile requirements or draw missiles onto these Bomarc targets than would otherwise be available for other targets. MR FLOOD - Here is another chance for another McNamara hard decision. SECRETARY McNAMARA - If there were any real amount of money to be saved, I would propose taking them out, but for $20 millions a year I think we are getting our money's worth. MR MINSHALL - In view of the statement you just made, Mr Secretary, why do we not leave the Jupiter missiles in Italy and Turkey? If we have to draw enemy fire, that is a good place to draw it. MR FLOOD - If we scratch Bomarc, we have stuck the Canadians for a whole mess of them and we have another problem on our border. SECRETARY McNAMARA - As they are deployed, they draw more fire than those Jupiter missiles will. MR MINSHALL -All I can say is, these turned out to be very expensive targets. SECRETARY McNAMARA - They did, I agree with you fully. McNamara's replies to the banter of the Congressmen contained a starting proposition. In effect, the Bomarcs were being maintained in Canada not, as American military authorities had originally stated, to protect Canadian cities, or even to protect the United States nuclear deter- 510 Twilight of Power rent, but simply to draw the fire of enemy missiles away from the LISA's home territory. This revelation seemed to give credence to Diefenbaker's anti-Americanism. The Prime Minister was handed the transcript of the McNamara testimony as he strode through the Union Station in Toronto, on his way to a speaking engagement at Kingston, Ontario. He read the news with mounting excitement, then chortled to the reporters clustered around him: "Happy days are here again. McNamara's really put the skids under Pearson. This is a knockout blow." That evening at the Kingston Armouries, he pro- claimed happily: "The Liberal Party would have us put nuclear warheads on something that's hardly worth scrapping. What's it for? To attract the fire of the intercontinental missiles. North Bay - knocked out. La Macaza -knocked out. Never, never, never, never has there been a revelation equal to this. The whole bottom fell out of the Liberal program today. The Liberal policy is to make Canada a decoy for intercontinental missiles." During the final week of the campaign, Diefenbaker built up the McNamara statement into a hysterical condemnation of the Liberals. "Decoys, decoys," he shouted at the Norfolk Theatre in Simcoe, Ontario, on March 30, "that's what Pearson wants. Liberal policy is to make Canada a decoy for ICBm attacks." At Dorion, Quebec, a few days later, he accused Pearson of planning to make "a burnt sacrifice" out of Canada. This ugly turn in Diefenbaker's campaign, taken against the advice of his political advisers, baffled even the most loyal of his followers. How could Pearson be responsible for the Bomarc, when it had been acquired long after the Liberals had left office, and at the personal insistence of John Diefenbaker who wanted the weapon to allay protest over his ditching of the Arrow? Why didn't the Conservatives scrap the Bomarc if it really was useless, and if it was not useless, why would the Russians divert their missiles against North Bay and La Macaza? The Dikes of Power Burst 511 These and other questions prompted many voters, who had been prepared to follow Diefenbaker once more, to step back and re-examine his chief rival for office: Lester Bowles Pearson, the sixth chieftain of the Liberal Party of Canada. THE DIEFENBAKER YEARs had not been kind to the Grit leader. When Pearson won his Party leadership on January 16, 1958, he already had an assured place in history as one of the chief architects of the Western postwar alliances and the best-known diplomat Canada had ever produced. Thus deprived of the politician's basic hunger for immortality, he lacked the zest for glory that must possess effective leaders of parliamentary oppositions. There was in him a feeling of reserve, an unwillingness to place himself in situations where his prestige might be risked in routine encounters. Soon after he took over the Liberal leadership, Pearson confessed to a close friend that he just could not walk up to strangers and pump their hands without being afraid of either invading their privacy or compromising his own dignity. His approach to public life was that of a career diplomat who regarded politics as something if not entirely alien, at least artificially imposed upon his nature. His real feelings were revealed in an anecdote he loved to tell about a Gallup Poll in the United States, which supposedly showed that although nearly ioo per cent of all mothers questioned in one survey wanted their sons to become President, 73 per cent of the same respondents didn't want their offspring to become politicians. Diefenbaker's 1958 electoral sweep had left Pearson with only forty-nine Liberal m.p.'s- the smallest parliamentary representation his party ever had. When the Tory government, in its 1959 Speech from the Throne, proposed new legislation respecting the humane slaughter of animals, Pearson leaned over to a friend and quipped: "I wonder if they'll make that retroactive to the election." 512 Twilight of Power In the House of Commons, Pearson at first floundered before the onslaught of John Diefenbaker. It wasn't easy for him to exercise the urbanity that had been his strength at the United Nations, when making a twenty-minute attack on the government's price-support policy for hogs. Day after day, he had to face a Commons awash with Conservative m.p.'s. His band of Liberals, who could be squeezed into ten taxis, were outnumbered three to one by the Tories, and only half a dozen of his colleagues, notably Jack Pickersgill, Paul Martin and Lionel Chevrier, ever made significant contributions to debate. The Liberal leader had every reason to believe that the acre of mocking Conservative faces in the Commons was a true reflection of the country's mood. During his first three years in Opposition, Pearson changed hardly at all. He still smiled when he got angry, he indulged his predeliction , for doubtful puns, he admired good ideas whatever their source, and in Parlia- ment tried to rationalize his opponents' arguments, mortally weakening his own replies in the process. He had been too long a diplomat suddenly to lose the diplomat's distaste for aggression. What changed Pearson's attitude, though it never altered his personality, was the Coyne affair. The Prime Minister's inept handling of the Bank of Canada Governor's dismissal convinced Pearson for the first time that Diefenbaker's parliamentary majority might not be so invulnerable. It also gave him determination to oust the Tory Prime Minister, whom he now considered a menace to Canadian goodwill and prosperity. Following the Coyne episode Pearson adopted a new philosophy of opposition. When he had first taken over the Liberal leadership, he seemed to regard as his main function the scrutiny of government legislation, so that the Conservatives would constantly have to defend and justify their legislative behaviour. Now, he came to regard the role of the Opposition as a focus for the discontent of The Dikes of Power Burst 513 the electorate, He began to view his job not as merely criticizing government policies, but as the instrument through which the people can throw out the party in power. This was an important change, because in the process Pearson became interested in political organization -a field of activity that in the past he had openly considered boring. On the recommendation of his good friend Walter Gordon, a Toronto chartered accountant who became Pearson's most influential adviser during the Opposition years, the Party organization was placed in the charge of Keith Davey, a 35-year-old Toronto radio station sales manager who had been active in the Ontario Liberal organization. The renaissance of the Liberal Party and its eventual return to power was due more to this appointment than to any other single factor. With skill and charm, Davey resurrected a dormant political movement and recruited the regional catalysts who sparked life back into their organizations: Hugh Martin and John Nichol in British Columbia; Jim Coutts in Alberta; David Anderson, Dan Lang, Royce Frith, Dick Stanbury, and Mike McCabe in Ontario; Maurice Sauv& and Bob Gig0re in Quebec; and Irvine Barrow in the Maritimes. If enthusiasm were enough to win federal elections, Keith Davey could have pushed the Liberals into power all by himself. To produce the ideas which the Liberal Party had so obviously lacked in the 1957 and 1958 campaigns, Pearson, also through Gordon's influence, added to his personal staff Tom Kent, an Oxford graduate and former writer for the Manchester Guardian and the Economist who had first come to Canada as editor of the Winnipeg Free Press. An unusually talented individual with caustic humour and enlightened economic ideas, Kent contributed most of the planks which made up the Liberal platform in the 1962 and 1963 campaigns. As his personal assistant and public relations advisor, Pearson brought to 514 Twilight of Power Ottawa Richard O'Hagan, a bright and bushy-tailed former Toronto newspaperman and advertising executive. With this team behind him, Pearson quickly gained confidence. So much so that during Commons debate on January 23, 1962, when Diefenbaker tried to interrupt, Pearson swatted him down with a disdainful: "Sit down, Mr Prime Minister, sit down!" And a little later: "Be calm, sir." He campaigned poorly in the 1962 election, and by expending all his ammunition in the first week, had run out of things to say and important platforms from which to speak in its home stretch. To avoid this problem of "peaking too soon," as Davey called it, the 1963 campaign was carefully paced toward a climactic national tour of the nation's large cities during the last seven days. Pearson realized that in order to gain a parliamentary majority, he would have to generate in the Canadian people a longing for his leadership that would transcend the self-interest which Diefenbaker was promising to satisfy. This, the Liberal leader never came close to achieving. He flinched from the ultimate commitment to politics that such leadership demanded and continued to be hobbled by the attitude of disengagement that had harmed him in his previous attempts to marshal the people's confidence. "He almost completely lacks ideology, and he possesses nothing that could be called an obsession," wrote Robert Fulford in a campaign profile of Pearson in Maclean~ Magazine. "His beliefs are eclectic, a compound of the best thoughts available." Typical of Pearson's attitude was an off-the-cuff remark he made at an election rally in Kingston, Ontario, on March 27, which also happened to be the evening of a National Hockey League playoff game. I want to watch the hockey game on television as much as everyone else," he told the delighted crowd, as he cut short his speech. But on the same night, in Port Credit, Ontario, John Diefenbaker was delivering a marathon address, in which he The Dikes of Power Burst 515 solemnly thanked the audience for "taking your responsibilities seriously enough to give up the NHL playoff for a political rally." Pearson's campaign was also harmed by the contributions of some over-enthusiastic organizers. Just before he was to speak at London, Ontario, local Liberals shipped a dozen homing pigeons to Montreal, hoping they'd arrive back at the same time as Pearson. The birds promptly disappeared. A Montreal team of Liberals designed a colouring-book satirizing Diefenbaker, which was neither funny nor in good taste. Then, on March 12, the Liberal party appointed Judy La Marsh, m.p. for Niagara Falls; Fred Belaire, Pearson's research consultant-, and Jack Macbeth, a journalist; to form a "truth squad" which would follow Diefenbaker around the country, cataloguing any inaccuracies in his speeches. The technique came to grief the first night, when Diefenbaker laughed the "truth squad" out of a hall in Moncton, N.B. The Tory leader capitalized on the Liberal gimmickry with such appeals as this one made at Renfrew, Ontario: "The Liberals have chosen to regard Canadians as juveniles, with their comic books, pigeons, and truth squads. But we need men and women with destiny in their hearts. Work for your own destiny! That's the message I place before you tonight." Weakened by these self-inflicted wounds, Pearson was placed on the defensive throughout the first half of the campaign. But slowly people began to respond to him, particularly to his appeal for a "stable government." The sections of Pearson's speeches which drew the most violent reaction were his pronouncements on defence. Outside the Hamilton Forum, his effigy was stoned to death; in Vancouver, police dogs had to be used against the surging crowd-, and in Kingston, Ontario, he was howled into silence. The reason for all this was the Liberal leader's pre-campaign conversion to a pro-nuclear Canadian defence policy. During most of his time in Opposi- 516 Twilight of Power tion, Pearson had maintained that military considerations did not require Canada to accept nuclear weapons. He urged a strengthening of Canada's conventionally armed contributions to NATo, but he wanted to cancel the attack function of the CF-104 for the air division, unless its nuclear weapons came under NATo rather than United States control. At home he wanted to establish a nonnuclear and highly mobile army brigade, fully air-transportable either for U.N. or other international service. During the j962 campaign, Pearson's defence policy came through in such meaningless statements as this one, made on May i, at a rally in Victoria, British Columbia: "I say bluntly that a new Liberal government will not hesitate to adapt its defence policy to changing conditions." But this ambiguous line was hardened by two events: the Cuban crisis, and the Ottawa Visit Of NATo General Lauris Norstad. Pearson's personal aversion to the acquisition of nuclear warheads was outbalanced by his conviction that international commitments, once pledged, must be discharged. Four days after the Norstad visit, Pearson quietly slipped away from Ottawa for a week's vacation in New York. He took with him a transcript of the Norstad press conference and a file folder of suggestions for a revision of his own Party's uncertain defence policy. Early in the morning of January 9, 1963, while pacing his room at the Sheraton-East Hotel, the Liberal leader made his decision. He immediately began to work on the address which he was to deliver, six drafts later, at the luncheon meeting of the York-Scarborough Liberal Association in Toronto, on January 12: "The Ottawa government should end its evasion of responsibility by discharging its commitments. It can only do this by accepting nuclear warheads." The Conservatives tried hard to discredit Pearson's stand. Diefenbaker made effective fun of the Liberals' policy switch and talked about the horrors of atomic war, as if Pearson were about to start one. "The day the strike The Dikes of Power Burst 517 takes place, eighteen million people in North America will die in the first two hours, four million of them in Canada. Mr Pearson shouldn't play politics with four million dead Canadians." Alvin Hamilton described Pearson's attitude as similar "to marrying a girl at night and kicking her out of bed in the morning." Immigration Minister Richard Bell mimicked the Liberal leader's lisp. It was not until the very end of the campaign, when the Conservative leader became obsessed with the McNamara Congressional testimony on the Bomarc, that Pearson's campaign really caught fire. "If Mr Diefenbaker thinks the Bomarc is nothing but a decoy," Pearson had told a group of supporters at Nanaimo, British Columbia, "why doesn't he scrap it? I've heard a lot of drivel in the campaign, but I've never heard of anything so drivelish. What would you think of a commander who sent a company of men into the front-line trenches with guns, but said: 'We're not going to give you the bullets, or you'll be decoys.' " Mike Pearson had become angry at last. JOHN DIEFENBAKER COULD NEVER UNDERSTAND how a man with Lester Pearson's obvious political liabilities could ever best him, and out of this incomprehension grew a pique that at times bordered on unmanageable animosity Frustrated by Pearson's reputation as a world statesman, Diefenbaker seemed to resent the fact that he had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and failed to attend the bipartisan parliamentary dinner given in December of 1957 to honour Pearson, when he was about to leave for the Oslo presentation. As the 1963 election proceeded to its climax, Diefenbaker still felt certain that the people could not be persuaded to support Pearson's brand of politics. He spent the final hectic days of the campaign in a whirlwind tour of the central Ontario seats his Party desperately needed to win. He wound up his appeal to the voters on the 518 Twilight of Power evening of April 6, in the Briarwood Community Centre at Sarnia, Ontario. That day his train had made thirteen whistle stops, and on each occasion, the Prime Minister lashed out at "the big newspapers" for turning against him. When his chartered plane left London, Ontario, late that night for Prince Albert, the Conservative leader had travelled nearly fourteen thousand miles in a campaign that should have been totally exhausting for a politician half his age. He had made three swings through the Prairies, traversed Ontario three times, Quebec twice, and crossed the Maritimes and British Columbia once. He had taken his Party, which had seemed demoralized beyond redemption at the start of the campaign, to a position of realistic hope for re-election. And he had achieved this entirely by himself. Most of his senior lieutenants had deserted him - besides the Harkness, Hees, and S6vigny resignations, three other ministers had resigned during the campaign: Davie Fulton to lead the Conservative Party of British Columbia, Donald Fleming "for personal reasons," and Ernest Halpenny "for health reasons." With the exception of Alvin Hamilton, the surviving ministers had been far too occupied with fighting for political survival in their own ridings to help in the national campaign. Whatever the outcome of the 196 3 campaign - triumph or disaster -it would be John Diefenbaker's alone. The Prime Minister's aircraft landed in Prince Albert at 6:oo a.m. on April 7, in a rain storm. A drenched huddle of fifty supporters turned up to wish him well. That evening Diefenbaker attended the First Baptist Church and heard the Reverend C. M. Ramsay preach a sermon dealing with Christ's ordeal on the cross, titled: "It is Finished." Then, accompanied by Mrs Diefenbaker, Mrs William Brunt (the Senator's widow), and Allister Grosart, he retired to his private railway car on a siding at the Prince The Dikes of Power Burst 519 Albert railway station. The regimented anguish of the campaign had at last come to an end. ON APRIL 8 - POLLING DAY - gusts of icy rain beat down on the railway carriage as Diefenbaker left to vote at the home of Christopher Sotos, a Prince Albert popcorn vendor. Tramping through the mud to cast his ballot, the Prime Minister gave some friendly advice to reporters splashing along behind him, still employing the biblical style of his campaign: "The heed that you walk circumspectly." The first result flashed over radio and television that night came from Sable Island, the desolate sandbar off Halifax, where Conservative returns in 1957 had heralded the fall of the Liberal government. This time, Sable Island turned against the Tories, eleven ballots to six. The shift did not hold true across the nation, however. Out of a total Of 7.9 million voters only 275,880 fewer cast their ballots Diefenbaker than had done so in the 1962 campaign. This left the Tories with 33 per cent of the popular vote and ninety-five seats in the Commons. Six cabinet ministers - Howard Green, Ellen Fairclough, Raymond O'Hurley, Frank McGee, Richard Bell, and Martial Asselin - were defeated. The Liberals, who managed to raise their popular vote to 41 per cent from 37 per cent in 1962, won 129 seats - enough to form a minority government under Lester Pearson. The NDP, despite the valiant campaign of Tommy Douglas, remained static at 14 per cent of the popular vote. The Social Credit representation, its Quebec strength exhausted by the extravagant fanaticism of Redl Caouette, dropped to twenty-four from thirty seats. The voting pattern also revealed some trends that would significantly influence the future of all parties. By aiming his appeal at the anti-Establishment non-urban sector of the population, John Diefenbaker had balkan- 520 Twilight of Power ized Canadian politics. West had been turned against East, Quebec against English-speaking Canada, and the city dwellers against the farmers. Only one Tory had been elected in the thirty-nine constituencies of Montreal and Toronto. Only eight of Quebec's seventy-five seats had gone Conservative. Forty-one of the forty-eight Prairie ridings, on the other hand, had remained loyal to Diefenbaker and Alvin, as had most of the rural seats in the rest of the country.* But among the well heeled, the well born, and the well educated, Conservative support collapsed. The 1963 election had indelibly stamped Diefenbaker's personality on Canadian Conservatism. The pre-election cabinet revolt left the Party bitterly divided and warring within itself. The results of the campaign rudely shifted the base of its traditional support. Instead of being able to speak for the industrialized and growing urban centres of the nation, Diefenbaker had turned the movement into the voice of the narrow and declining world of rural Canada. But if he had altered the nature of Canadian Conservatism as it had been known since 1867, John Diefenbaker had also saved his Party from the humiliation of a rout at the polls. Although he had not been able to win the election, few impartial observers could deny that he had won the campaign. The Conservative leader's failure to rally enough voters behind him in his passionate crusade against American interference probably meant that the majority of Canadians had at least subconsciously accepted their country's destiny as an economic dependency of the United States. *By delaying the redistribution which should have followed the ig6i census, the Conservatives were able to gain the maximum number of seats from their rural strength. By the spring of 1963, only 12 per cent of voting-age citizens still lived on farms, yet nearly 6o per cent of the nation's federal constituencies were dominated by rural voters. Acknowledgements SINCE NEARLY ALL OF THE INTERVIEWS that made Renegade in Power possible were "off the record," acknowledgement of my collaborators by name is not possible. But in reading this volume, they will recognize the generosity of their contributions and come to appreciate the magnitude of my debt. Professor Paul Fox of the Political Economy Department at the University of Toronto was kind enough to read the manuscript and make many helpful suggestions. Martin Lynch, assistant news editor of the Toronto Globe and Mail, has been an invaluable friend and editor. I am grateful to Ken Lefolii and Gerry Brander, the editor and publisher of Maclean ~, for allowing me to use as part of my research, material originally gathered for them. I wish to thank the following publishers for generously allowing me to quote brief excerpts from their books: The University of Toronto Press (The Government of Canada by R. MacGregor Dawson, The Canadian General Election of 1957 by John Meisel, and The Mackenzie King Record by J. W. Pickersgill); The Macmillan Company of Canada (Scotchman ~ Return and Other Essays by Hugh MacLennan, and The Conspirators by D. J. Goodspeed); The Ryerson Press, Toronto (The Economists Versus The Bank of Canada by H. Scott Gordon). My greatest obligation is to Christina McCall for the judgements she offered and the encouragement she gave. This book owes its existence to many people; only the responsibility for its imperfections is fully my own. P.C.N. Index Abbott, Hon. Douglas, 68, Asselin, Hon. Martial, 389, 398 519 Accra, Ghana, 322 Atherton, John, 57 Adams, Sherman, 102 Atlantic Advocate, 482 Adenauer, Konrad, 242, 337 Agricultural Rehabilitation & Balcer, Hon. Uon, 79, 143, Development Act (ARDA), 146, 377, 381 - 2, 387, 432, 196, 203 466, 474, 480, 486 Aiken, Gordon, 144 Baldwin, G. W, 144 Aitken, Kate, 242 Bandaranaike, S. W. R. D., Aldred, Joel, 87 338 Allard, Maurice, 292 Bank of Canada, 108, 273, Allen, Ralph, 352 391-423 Amory, Derick Heathcoat, Bank of England, 288 359 Bannerman, Mary Florence, Anderson, David, 190, 5 13 42-45 Barber, Clarence, 277 Anderson, J. T M., 32, 51 Barkway, Michael, 36, 70 - 7 1, Anglo-Newfoundland 409 Development Co., 164 Barrette, Hon. Antonio, 372 Apartheid, 346 - 7 Barrow, Irwin, 513 Arcand, Adrien, 254 Bassett, John, 49 1 - 2 Argue, Hazen, 2o6 Bay Street, 15, 66, 77, 254, Argus Corporation, 267 266,490 Arm River, Sask., 32, 52, 53 Beaubien, Claude, 321 Aroutunian, Amasasp, 235 Beaudoin, Hon. R6n6, 74 - 76 Arrow, 454 - 6Beaverbrook, Lord, 105 Aseltine, Hon. Walter, i8q Bedson, Derek, 128 - 9 Index 523 Belaire, Fred, 515 Bushnell, Ernest, 318, 319, Bell, Hon. Richard, 8o, 144, 320 467, 474, 517, 519 Butterfield, Vernon T., 292 Bell, Thomas, 144 Bennett, Rt. Hon. R. B., 31, Cabinet, role of, 139 - 15 1 36, 55, 58, 63, 196, 214, 237, Cabinet Defence Committee, 361,371,377,397,468 450 Bennett, Hon. W. A. C., 81, California Standard 172 - 3, 276, 327 Company, 299 Berton, Pierre, 428 Cameron, Colin, 73, 75, Bill of Rights, 55, 89, 162, 108-9, 488 249, 304 - 13, 385 Cameron, Harold, 284 Binks, Kenneth, 79 Camp, Dalton, 230, 236, 500 Bird, John, 281Campbell, Norman, 67 Bluestein, Max, 307 Campney, Hon. Ralph, 91, 97, Borden, Henry, 81 104,454 Borden, Sir Robert, 178,492 Canada Evidence Act, 179 Boti, ReginO, 352 Canada First Policy, 88 Bourque, John, 370 Canada Gazette, 407 Bowles, Richard S., 309 Canada-U.S. Defence Bracken, Hon. John, 32, 56, Committee, 452 58,218,256 Canadair Limited, 453 Brander, Gerry, 521 Canadian Bar Association, B.C. Electric Company, 276 ioi, 16o, 179, 309 Brigstocke, Hilary, 321 - 2 Canadian Broadcasting British Guiana, 381 Corporation, 317 - 20, British North America Act, 328 - 9, 385, 466, 484 5 2, 74, 13 5, 310. 311, 312, Canadian Forum, 65, 265 328 Canadian Institute of Public British United Press, 325 Opinion, 93, 1 19 Brooks, Hon. Alfred, 143, Canadian Jewish Congress, 167,490 309 Broome, Ernest, 144 Canadian National Railways, Browne, J. Ferguson, 144 395 Browne, Hon. William, 143, Canadian Pacific Airlines, 94 167Canadian Press, 118, 239, 318, Bruce, Herbert, 56 380 Brunt, Hon. William, i M Canadian Vessel Construction 131, 145, 237, 438 Act, 105 Bryden, John, 4o6, 4o8 Canetti, Elias, 127 Bundy, McGeorge, 478 Caouette, R&al, 389, 466, 483 Burns, Gen. E. L. M., 345 Cardiff, L. E., 158 524 Index Cardin Lucien, 338, 346 Claxton, Hon. Brooke, 68 Cardinal, Mario, 383 Clement, J. A., 381 Cardona, Jose Miro, 352 Coates, Charles, 77 Carnegie, Dale, 242 Coldwell, M. J., 74, 1 18, 197 Carroll, Nicholas, 364 Colombo Plan, 335 Cartier, Sir Georges-Etienne, Columbia River, I 10, 17 2 - 3 82,390,402Combines legislation, 57, 16 1 Cartier, Jacques, 102 Communist Party of Canada, Casselman, A. Clair, 2 16 - 7 56 Castro, Fidel, 221, 344, 352, Comtois, Hon. Paul, 146, 377, 497 379,387 Cathers, C. A., 414 Conversion load, 282 - 4, 399 Cavell, Nik, 338 Cook, Prof. Ramsay, 265 Census, 375 - 6"Cooking" theory, 458 - 9 Central Mortgage Bank, 394 Cooperative Commonwealth Central Mortgage & Housing Federation, i 18 Corp., 103Courtemanche, Hon. Henri, Chambers, Egan, 144 143, 378-9 Champagne, Gilbert, 128 Coutts, James, 513 Charisma, 1' 3 - 115 Couve de Murville, Maurice, Chariton, John, 144 343 Chertkoff, Gary, 149 Coyne, Mr Justice J. B., 393 Chevrier, Hon. Lionel, Coyne, James Elliott, 148, 2 16 - 7, 440, 470 179, 283, 284 - 7, 336, Childs, Marquis, 445 - 6 391- 423 China, 148, 195, 221, 227, 352 Coyne, Mrs J. E., 421 Chown, Gordon, 144 Crawford, Neil, 129 Christ, Jesus, 113 Creaghan, William, 144 Christian Science Monitor,. Crest Explorations Ltd299 326 Criminal Code, 105 Chrysler Corp. of Canada, 39 Croll, David, 68, 414, 42 1 Church, Thomas, 2 12 Cromwell, Oliver, 33 Churchill, Hon. Gordon, 8o, Crop Insurance, 203 104, 143, 149 - 50, 213, 215, Crosbie, George, 409 359,386, 388, 466, 467, 469, Cross, Austin, 179 473,474,475,482 Crouse, Lloyd, 144 Churchill, Sir Winston, 18, Cuba crisis, 440 - 9 100,242Cuelenaere, John, 53 - 54 Civil Service Commission, Cuggie, Dawn, 128 504 Curtis, L. R., 165 Clark, Col. Hugh, 177 Clark, Robert, 327 Dafoe, John W, 375, 393 Index 525 Daily Mail, iooDominion-Provincial Daily Telegraph, 437 Conferences, 104 Danielson, Herman, 53 Dominion Steel & Coal Dartmouth College, 101, 350 Corporation, 266 Davey, Clark, 322 - 3, 324, Dorion, Hon. Noel, 143, I89~ 332 382-3, 389 Davey, Keith, 5 13 Dostie, Fernand, 370 Davis, Hon. T. C., 49, 50 Douglas, Hon. T. C., 63, 18 1, Dawson, R. MacGregor, 139, 473,487 521 Downing, Dorothy, 238 Day, Ralph, 212 Drew, Fiorenza, 97 Deacey, M. J., 128, 370 Drew, Hon. George, 10, 30, Dean, J. D., 279 3 2, 5 6, 6o, 6 1, 64, 66, 76, Deane, Philip, 325 79 - 8o, 86, 97, 117, 128, 142, Debt-free money, 440 159, 178, 228 - 9, 359, 363 - 4 Defence policies, 437 - 63 Drolet, Antonio, 189 Defence Production Act, Drouin, Hon. Mark, 79 - 8o, 69 378 -70 Dubroy, Gordon, 487 De Gaulle, Charles, 18, 337, Duffy, Robert, 384 365,479Dulles, John Foster, 452, 454 Denis, Hon. Azellus, 377 Duncan, James, 8 1 Devaluation, 204 - 5, 220, Dunlop, E. A., 218 433-4 Dunning, Hon. C. A., 398 Dexter, Grant, 76 - 77, 391 Duplessis, Hon. Maurice, 37 1, Diefenbaker, Edna, 62, 16o 372,373,385,387 Diefenbaker, Edward, 43, 44, Dupuis, Yvon, 414 46 Diefenbaker, Elmer, 38 - 39, Earle, Tom, 3 16 - 7 43,45,434 Eastman, H. C., 403 Diefenbaker, George, 42 Eaton, Cyrus, 16o Diefenbaker, Olive, 30, 38, Eccles, Sir David, 359 62 - 63, 97, 100, 105, Fconornist, 513 237- 245 Ecuador, 381 Diefenbaker, William Edmonton Journal, 33 1 Thomas, 42 - 44 Eichmann, Adolf, 416 Dinsdale, Hon. Walter, Eisenhower, President 17 - 18, 143, 302, 489, 5o6-7 Dwight, 34, 38, 62, 102, 127, Disraeli, Benjamin, 82 172 Dobson, Christopher, 154 Eldorado Mining & Refining Dollar devaluation, 183, Ltd., 268 287- 289Election Of 1957, 85 - 98 526 Index Election of 1958, 1 o - i i, Fleming, Stuart, 144 21 - 2, 99 - 119 Flemming, Hon. Hugh John, Election of 1962, 21 - 2, 35, 81, 142, 171, 474 424-36 Flynn, Hon. Jacques, 143, Election of j 963, 499 - 5 20 189,377,380 Elizabeth 11, 103 Fockler, Ewart, 178 Eskimos, 302 - 3 Forbes, Kenneth, 329 Estabrook, Robert, 498 Forsey, Dr Eugene. 75, 77 Estonia, 348Fort Eric Letter RevieW, 253 European Economic Foulkes, Gen. Charles, 452 Community, 33, 194, 22 1, Fournier, Edgar, 226 29 1, 322 - 5, 36 1 - 5 Fox, Paul, 65, 521 Export Credits Insurance Act, Fraser, Alistair, 414 105 Fraser, Blair, 56, 71 Export-Import Bank, 288 Fraser, H. J., 5 1 Export Trade Promotion Fredericton Gleaner, 332 Conference, 219 - 20 Freeman, Dr C. B., 240 External Affairs Department, Frith, Royce, 5 13 131, 339 Frobisher Bay, 297 External relations, 335 - 65 Frost, Hon. Leslie, 81, 86, 96, 18q, 229 Faibish, Roy, 269 - 70, 296, Fulford. Robert, 514 500 Fullerton, Douglas, 282 Fairclough, Hon. Ellen, 75, Fulton, E. Davie, 23, 73, 74, 143, 148 - 9, 267, 519 8o - 1, 142, 143, 150, Family Allowances Act, 56 152 - 174, 190, 261, 267, 3o6, Farm Credit Act, 203 341, 381, 439, 474, 480, 518 Farm Credit Corporation, 268 Fulton, Fred, 156 Ferguson, George V, 334, 393 Financial POSt, 203 Gainsford, Mrs Isabella, iog Financial Times, 409 Gardiner, Rt. Hon. James, 32, Financial Times (London), 5 1, j 18, 204 277 Garson, Hon. Stuart, 56, 95, Fisher, Douglas, 92, 112, 153, 104, 271 252 Gauthier, Claude, 128 Fisher, John, 38, 129, 274, 33 1 George 1, 124 Fleming, Hon. Donald M., Gig0re, Robert, 513 74 - 75, 105, 159, 171, Gillis, Hugh, 319 175 - 191, 205, 267, 287 - 9, Gladstone, Hon. James, 150 291, 292, 322-4, 341, 351, Globe ana'Afail, 322 - 3, 325, 361, 362 - 4, 378, 391 - 423, 326, 332, 333, 384, 422, 468, 439, 452, 475, 489, 5 18 492, 497 Index 527 Goodman, E. A., 215, 492 Hamilton, Hon. William, 23, Goodspeed, Major D. J. 465, 143, 148, 387 521 Hampden, John, 75 Gordon, Crawford, 266, 455 Hanbidge, R. L., 5 1 - 2, Gordon, Donald, 394 58-9,485 Gordon, H. Scott, 403, 521 Hansell, E. G., 73 Gordon, Hon. Walter, 427 Hanson, R. B., 59 Gouzenko, Igor, 415 "Happy," 242 Governor General, 102, 109, Harkness, Hon. Douglas, 143, 125,132,170153, 201, 440, 472 - 7, 492, Graydon, Gordon, 32, 59, 63, 497,507 218 Harris, Lou, 357 Green, Glen, 271 Harris, Hon. Walter. 74 - 5, Green, Hon. Howard, 23, 55, 90, 92, 93, 94, 104, io6, io8, 58, 69, 82, 142, 147, 149, 150,181, 398 291, 340 - 1, 349, 363, 440, Harvard University, 228 442, 444, 461, 475 - 6, 489, Hatton, William, 93 519 Hayes, Saul, 309 Gregg, Hon. Milton, 104 Heath, Edward, 362, 363 Gregoire, Gilles, 466 Hedlin, Ralph, 274 Griffen, Harold, 307 Hees, Hon. George, 23, 70, Grosart, Hon. Allister, 8o, 86, 80, 143, 150, 153, 208 - 22, 105, 118, 145, 223 - 36, 237, 267, 322 - 3, 324 - 5, 352, 328, 428, 430, 484, 491 363, 443, 467 - 70, 475 - 6, Groulx, J. P L., 414 480, 483 - 4, 493 - 7 Gruenther, Gen. Alfred, 450 Hellyer, Hon. Paul, 443, 486 Guest, Gowan, 129 Henderson, William, 223 Guilbault, Dr Claude, 370 Henty, G. A., 44 Guizot, Franqois, 12 Herridge, H. W, 379, 443, 488 Herter, Christian, 343 Hill, C. Bruce, 409 Hahn, D. G., 496 Hitler, Adolf, 113, 394 Hales, Alfred, 144 Hodgetts, J. E., 68 Halpenny, Hon. Ernest, 143, Hodgson, Clayton, 414 144, 467, 474, 491, 5 18 Hogan, George, 331, 469 Hamilton, Hon. Alvin, 23, Howe, Rt. Hon. C. D., 55, 142, 150, 153, 192 - 207, 265, 67 - 77, 92 - 3, 95, 98, 104, 268 - 9, 295 - 6, 298, 351, 1 o6, 117, 149, 2 17 363, 435, 446, 468, 474, 475, Howe, Marvin W, 144 487, 489, 490, 5 17, 5 18, 520 Hudson Bay Route, 296 - 7 Hamilton, Grey, 322 Hugessen, Hon. Adrian, Hamilton, John B., 8 1, 144 416-7 528 Index Hume, Alex, 67 Keynes, John Maynard Hutchison, Bruce, 85, 234, (Lord), t8i 479 Khrushchov, Nikita, 79, Hyde Park agreement, 394 235 - 6, 347 - 8, 349, 429 Kindt, Lawrence, 225 Ilsley, Rt. Hon. James, 57, 395King, Charles, 33 1 - 2 Industrial Development Bank, King, Rt. Hon. Mackenzie, z6824, 25, 40, 42, 49, 50, 54, 64, International Conference on 66, 68, 126, 152, 157, 237, the Law of the Sea, 200 244, 263, 269, 335, 341, 374, International Postal Union, 394,417,477,497 to[ Knights of Columbus, 243 International Wheat Knowles, Stanley, 73, 74, 137, Agreement, 274 470 International Woodworkers of Kohaly, Robert, t98 America, 164 Korean War, 279 Immigration, 149, 279 Ku Klux Klan, 32, 51, 52, Israel, 78 384-5 Izvestia, 348, 358 Lac la Ronge, 62, 97, 130 Jack, Melville, 2 17 - 8, 3 2 2,Ladner, Leon, 37 493,494 Lake Centre, 31, 53, 54 Jackson, Richard, 496 Lalonde, Marc, 154 LaMarsh, Hon. Judy, 515 Janzen, Elizabeth, 214 Lambert, Hon. Marcel, 48o, Jennings, Charles, 318, 319 Johnston, Donald M., 19q, 487 200,226,270,296 Lamontagne, Hon. Maurice, Johnston, Fred 101, 131, 427 ,54 Lang, Dan, 513 Johnston, George, 321 Lapointe, Hugues, 104 Jones, Harry, 144, 180, 491 Latvia, 348 Jorgenson, Warner, 144 Laurendeau, Andr~, 377 Jung, Douglas, 26o Laurier, Henri, 242 Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, 24, 25, Kauk, Jack, 30740, 44, 45, 60, 242, 371 Kelly, William, 53 Leadership Convention (Pc, Kennedy, President John, 290, 1956),229 -30 291, 337, 349, 353 - 8, 440, Lederman, W. R., 309 478-9 Le Devoir, 146, 377, 383, 469 Kent, Tom, 65, 427, 513 Lefolii, Ken, 521 Kerwin, Hon, Patrick, 133, Lesage, Jean, 370, 372, 373 - 4 483-4 Lever Brothers, 305 Index 529 Liebling, Otto, 38 Maclean ~ Magazine, 15, 56, Lincoln, Abraham, 328 68, 71, 95, 352, 374, 514, 521 Lippman, Walter, 23 MacLellan, Robert, 144 Lloyd, Selwyn, 30 MacLennan, Hugh, 68, 113, Locke, Jeannine, 38, 45 115,521 London Free Press, 343 Macmillan, Rt. Hon. Harold, London School of Economics, 30, 100, 242, 3 16 - 7, 337, 271 348,362,478,479 Lord Home, 343Macnaughton, Hon. Alan, Lord Rosebery, 124 184 Lord Selkirk, 42 MacPherson, Murdo, 58 Loucks, W, J., 196 Macquarrie, Heath, 145 Louw, Eric, 347MacTavish, Hon. Duncan, Low, Solon, i 18 414 Luce, Henry, 227, 321 Maffre, John, 356 Lynch, Charles, 135, 326, 356, Magna Carta, 3 10 474 Maharao of Kotakh, 338 Lynch, Martin, 521 Maloney, Arthur, 145 Lyon, Peyton, 339 Manchester Guardian, 513 Manion, R. J., 55, 57, 218 Manning, Hon. E. C., 482 Macaluso, Joseph, 149 Markovich, Robert, 349 Macdonald, Hon. Angus L., Marler, Hon. George, 104, 55 118 Macdonald, Charles, 50 Martin, Hugh, 513 Macdonald, H. W. Ross, 414, Martin, Hon. Paul, 104, io6, 423135 - 6, 223, 410, 4 16, 444, Macdonald, Sir John A., io, 480 24, 25, 37, 40, 82, 100, 109, Martineau, Hon. Paul, 143, 1 1 1, 1 19, 124, 242, 250, 3o6 256 - 9, 272, 296, 304, 350, Massey Hall, 87 388, 390, 402, 486 - 7, 492 Massey, Rt. Hon. Vincent, Macdonnell, Hon. J. M., 70, log 143, 148, 480Matheson, John, 148, 305 MacDougall, Fraser, 410 Matthews, Maj.-Gen. A. B., Machiavelli, Niccolo, 145, 224 223 Mackenzie. Alexander, 300 McBeth, Jack, 515 Mackenzie, Bruce, 92 McCabe, M. J., 5 13 Mackenzie, Hon. Ian, 157 McCann, Hon. James, 104, Mackie, Victor, 473 117 MacLean, Hon. Angus, 142, McCarthy, Joseph, 55 147,489 McCartney, Gordon, 131 530 Index McCleave, Robert, 145 Monteith, Hon. J. Waldo, McCutcheon, Hon. Wallace, 143,147,267,332,468,489 148, 266 - 7, 439, 465 - 6, Montreal Gazette, 326, 333 467,474,475,480 Montreal Star, 207, 315, 334, McElroy, Neil, 452 356,360,370,393 McGee, D'ArcY, 37 Moose Jam, Times, 52 McGee, Hon. Frank, 144, 519 Morris, Ed, I 14 McGill Law School, 31 1 Morton, Douglas, 145 McIntosh, Jack, 145 Morton, Dr W. L., 3 18 - 9 McKim Advertising Ltd., 228, Muckle, Father William, 261 283 Mulroney, Brian, 376 McKim's Barber Shop, 97 Murray, Lowell, 154 McMaster University, 251 - 2 McMillan, W. H., 432 Nasserden, Ed, 145, 26o McNamara, Robert, 507 - 10, National Development Corp., 517 McNaughton, Gen. A. G. L., 144,404 211 -2National development policy, Meighen, Rt. Hon. Arthur, 200 - 1, 264 - 5, 272 National Economic 31, 57, 58, 73, 488 Development Board, 439 Meisel, John, 88, 521 National Energy Board, 201, Memorial University, 30 351 Mennonites, 43National Hockey League, Menzies, Dr Merril, 199, 200, 514-5 295-6National Hospital Insurance, Menzies, Rt. Hon. Robert, 104 242 National Housing Act, 105, Merchant, Livingston, 355 - 6, 268 440-1National Liberal Federation, Mexico, 63 223,414 Michaels, R. L., 507 National Parole Board, 163 Michener, Norah, 238 National Policy, 258, 272 Michener, Hon. Roland, National Review, 262 134-5 National Unity Party, 254 Miller, Air Chief Marshal National Young Pc's, i io Frank, 442 - 3Nehru, Jawaharlal, 100, 242, Milner, Ray, 58 321 Mitchell Group, 301 Nelson, James, 325 Moker, George, 47 Nesbitt, Wallace, 145 Monetary Policy, 391 -423 New Da ' VS, 26o Mont Tremblant, Que., 36o New York Times, 326, 343 Index 531 Newfoundland Brotherhood Ottawa West Conservative of Woods Workers, 165 Association, 221 Newman, Christina McCall, Ouimet, Alphonse, 3 18, 319 521 Oxford University, 156, 393 Newsweek, 333, 503 Nichol, John, 5 13 Padlock Law, 385 Nicholson, L. H., 163 - 70 Parliamentary Press Gallery, Nicholson, Patrick, 465 136, 314, 410, 422, 423, 484 Nisbet, Rev. James, 48 Parsons, A. W, 165 - 6 Nixon, Richard, 29 Patterson, A. B., 470 Nobel Peace Prize, 428, 5 17 Patterson, William, 53 NORAD, 441 - 6, 447, 449, 5o6 Pearkes, Hon. George, 6o, 77, Norstad, General Lauris, 452, 81, 82, 142, 167, 340, 452, 46 1 - 3, 5o6 454,493 North Atlantic Treaty Pearson, Rt. Hon. Lester B., Organization, 316, 335, 337 33, 78, 104, io6, i io, 116, Northwest Territories, 296, 117, 148, 190, 193, 234, 317, 297,351327-8, 332, 335, 391, 410, Nowlan, Hon. George, 23, 80, 441, 449, 454, 481, 505, 510, 81, 142, 143, 147, t67, 171, 511 -7 190, 319 - 20, 466, 481 Peers, Frank, 318 Penitentiary Act, 162 Peter Bawden Drilling Ltd., Oastler, James, 315, 370 300 Observer, 365Peterborough Examiner, 378 O'Connell, H. J., 370 Petrie, Dr J. R., 402 O'Hagan, Richard, 514 Phillips, Hon. Orville, 485 O'Hurley, Hon. Raymond, Pickersgill, Hon. J. W, 36, 64, 143, 377, 38o, 489, 519 66, 9 1, 94, 104, 1 o6, 128, 134, Old Age Assistance, 104 148, 274, V4, 422, 521 O'Leary, Hon. Grattan, 321, Pigeon, Louis-Joseph, 145 488,490 Pipeline debate, 70 - 8 O'Neill, T J., 156 Pitfield, Michael, 154 Ontario Motor League, 133 Pitman, Walter, 133 Organization of American Planning, economic, 290 States, 443 Playfair, Col., 37 Orpheurn Theatre, 50, 424 Plumptre, A. E W, 4 12 Ottawa Citizen, 67, 179, 323 Poland, 343, 394 Ottawa Journal, 75, 168, 332, Polymer Corp., 268 496 Pope John XXIII, 337 - 8 Ottawa Philharmonic, 2 10 Pope, Sir Joseph, 258 Ottawa Rough Riders, 133 Popovic, Koca, 349 - 50 532 Index Pouliot, Jean-Franqois, 68 Ricard, Th6og&ne, 266, 388, Pound, Margueretta 389 ("Bunny"), 128Richardson, B. T., 484, 494 Power, Hon. C. G., 68, 477 Richardson, C. H., 414 Pratt, John, 145 Rideau Club, 83 "Preview Commentary," Riel, Louis, 384 317-20Rio Tinto Mining Co., 104 Prince Albert Herald, 49, 326 Ritchie, Charles, 48o Prince Albert National Park, Roads to Resources, 201 436 Roberts, Brig. James, 218 Prince Edward Island Robertson, Gordon, 303 causeway, 432 - 3 Robertson, Norman, 339 Privy Council Chamber, 37 Robinson, A. L., 46 Procter & Gamble, Ltd., 402 Roblin, Hon. Duff, 81, 129, Progressive Conservatives 468 Women's Association, 238 Rodfigue, Msgr Louis, 370 Progressive PartY, 50 Roe, A. V, Canada Limited, Public Archives of Canada, 266, 455-6 354 Rondeau, Guy, 380 Pyper, Ian, 154 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 30 Roosevelt, Franklin, 250, 266 Quebec CitY, 30 Rostow, Walt, 355 Quebec City Coliseum, 488 Rowe, Hon. Earl, 63, 8o, 468 Quebec Liquor Police, 382 - 3 Roy, J. S., 384 Queen Anne, 124 Roy, Most Rev. Maurice, 386 Queen's Printer, 305 Royal Canadian Air Force Association, 448 Ralston, Hon. James, 55, 152, Royal Canadian Mounted 393,477 Police, 163 - 70, 2 10 Ramsay, C. M., 518 Royal Commission on Rand, Dean Ivan, 310 Energy, 104 Rankin Inlet Nickel Mines Royal Commission on Ltd., 299Government Organization, Rasminsky, Louis, 422 266 Rebellion Of 1837, 42 Royal Commission on Price Rebrin, Irene, 3o8 Spreads, 105 Red River ColonY, 43 Royal Commission on Regnier, Laurier, 258 - 9 Publications, 255-6, 32 1, Resources for Tomorrow 328 Conference, 201 Royal Commission on Restrictive Trade Practices Taxation, 201 Commission, 266 Royal Commissions, 127 Index 533 Royal Military College, Smith, Arthur, 145 210- ]1 Smith, Heber, 145 Rusk, Dean, 480Smith, 1. Norman, 168, 170 Smith, Sidney, 81, 142, 150, Sable Island, 94 316,340,452,453,455 St. Laurent, Jeanne, 237 - 8 Social Credit, 118, 389, 390, St Laurent, Rt. Hon. Louis, 481-3 32, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 75, 77,Social justice, 263 - 4 86, 90,~94, 95, 96, 99, io6, Sotos, Christopher, 519 1' 7, 126, 158, 159, 261 - 2, South Africa, 346 - 7 274,454Spaak, Paul-Henri, 316, 343 St Lawrence Seaway, 2 16 Speaker of the Commons, Sandys, Duncan, 365 134-5 Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, Speaker of the Senate, 125, 2o6 135 Saskatoon Star-PhoeniX, 214 Stalin, Joseph, 373 Saturday Night, 3o6 Stanbury, Richard, 513 Saunders, Cameron, Ltd., 283 Standing Orders, 76 Sauv6, Maurice, 513 Stanfield, Robert, 81, 266 Sauv6, Hon. Paul, 8 1, 369 - 72Star R~ekl ' V, 38 Sauv~, Pierre, 369 Starr, Hon. Michael, 142, Scott, E R., 3 1 1 147 - 8, 468, 475 Scott Mission, 430 Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, 102 Sears, Val, 34, 332 Stevens, H. H., 58 Sedgwick, Joseph, Q.C., Stevenson, Adlai, 29 497-8 Stewart, Alistair, 34 S&vigny, Hon. Pierre, 8j, 142,Stewart, Frances, 243 363, 378, 38o - 1, 389, 429, Stykolt, Stefan, 403 46 1, 46 2, 466, 480, 486, Suez crisis, 78 - 9, 335, 340, 492-6, 518 342 Shakespeare, William, 234 Sullivan, Hon. Joseph, 261 Sharp, Hon. Mitchell, io8, Sunday Times, 364 190,427Supreme Court, 54, 3o8, 483 Shaw, Walter, 330 Sweden, 278 Shevchenko, TaraS, 26o Sinclair, Hon. James, 97, 104, Taylor, E.P, 266, 267 109, 118, 158, 176 - 7, 212 Taylor Kenneth, 4o6, 412 Skybolt missile, 479 Taylor, Robert, 358 Slemon, Air Marshal Roy, Thatcher, Ross, 61 442,443,454Thomas, Aurel, 292 - 3 Smallwood, Hon. Joey, 22, 94, Thompson, Robert, 465 - 6, 165,224,431 471,481-3 534 Index Thomson, Roy, 243 Ukrainsky ViSti, 261 Thorneycroft, Peter, 36o Unemployment, cause of, Thorvaldson, Hon. Gunnar, 293-4 421,465 Unemployment, cure for, Tight money, 399 89-go Time, 321 Unemployment Insurance Times of London, 321 Act, 104 Tin Ke-chien, 202 Union Nationale, 143, 370, Topping, Edward, 54 372,388 Toronto Argonauts, 209, 211 United Nations, 104, 123, 335, Toronto Star, 34, 136, 228, 342,343,345,428 281,326,332,358,505 U.S. Air Force, 450 Toronto Telegram, 67, 129, U.S. Atomic Energy Act, 457 153, 185, 326, 332, 492 U.S. election campaigns, 29 Towers, Graham, 395, 407, U.S. Federal Reserve System, 417 288 Trade diversion, 89, 3 16 - 7, U.S. State Department, 358-61 477-80 Trade Expansion Act, 290, U.S. Strategic Air Command, 364 445,450 Trans-Canada Air Lines, 61, University of Manitoba, 277 69, 77, 97, 102, 143 University of Saskatchewan, Trans-Canada Highway, 372 45,240 Trans-Canada Pipe Lines, University of Toronto Press, 70-8, 28o 521 Trans Mountain Pipelines Ltd., 280Van Horne, Charles, 226 Treasury Board, 184 Vanier, Georges, 232, 378, Treaty o.r Rome, 290 461,486 Tremblay, Jean-Noel, 384 Vashedchenko, Vladimir, 358 Trotter, Bernard, 319 Victoria Colonist, 332 Trotter, Graham, 410 Victoria Times, 234 Trudeau, Pierre-Elliott, 14, Vision, I I I - 3, 295 - 303 376-7 Trueman, Peter, 356 Wagner, Marion, 128 Turgeon Royal Commission, Walker, Hon. David, 17, 22, 393 58,6o, 142, 145, 146-7, 148, Turgeon, W E A., 49 185, 261, 290, 3o8, 320, 484 TurkeY,343Walker, H. G., 3 18, 319 Underhill, Frank, 136 Walpole, Sir Robert, 124 Ungava, 28oWar Measures Act, 254, 311 Ukrainian Centre, 349 War of 1812, 354 Index 535 War Veterans Allowances Act, Young Progressive 104 Conservatives, 159 Wardell, Michael, 482 Yukon, 296-9, 300, 351 Wartime Prices & Trade Board, 394Zorin, Valerian, 348 Washington Post, 446, 498 Waterloo Review, 70 Weber, Max, 113 Westcoast Transmission Pipelines, 280 Western Minerals Ltd., 300 W~stern W~,ekl ' r Reports, 48 White, Harry, 428 White, Ivan, 440 White, Lincoln, 477 White Paper onEmployment and Income, 273 White, T. H., 16 Williams, Bruce, 322 Williams, W E., 402 Willoughby, Dr Charles, 156 Wilson, David, 483 Wilson, Helen Davey, 170 Wilson, W. A., 207 Wilson, Woodrow, 125 Winnipeg Free Press, 53, 65, 76,391,473,479 Winnipeg Tribune, 332 Winters, Hon. Robert, 94, 104 Witnesses of Jehovah, 385 Women's Conservative Association of Toronto, 259 Woodsworth, J. S., 152 Woolliams, Eldon, 428 World War ii conscription, 385 World War ill, 449 World's Fair, 140 - I Wren, Sir Christopher, 436 Yellowknife, 299 Young, Christopher, 323, 324 About the Author PETER C. NEWMAN is the author of a dozen best-selling books that have pioneered new directions in the study of power - how it is used and abused within Canadian society. Born in Vienna and educated at Upper Canada College, he holds a master's degree in economics from the University of Toronto. Newman has lectured at York, McMaster, and Victoria universities. He served as a governor of the University of Toronto and of the Shaw Festival. A Captain in the Royal Canadian Navy (Reserve), he has also worked underground as a gold miner in northern Quebec and, briefly, as a magician in Eaton's Toytown. Canada's premier journalist, he is the recipient of a score of the most coveted awards in North American journalism, has been editor-in-chief of the country's largest newspaper, the Toronto Star, and most influential magazine, Maclean ~. In the spring Of 1982, after successfully transforming the magazine into the country's first newsweekly, he resigned from the editorial chair but continues to write a weekly column about business and politics. The Montreal Gazette has called Newman "simply the best writer on national affairs in the country," while novelist Hugh MacLennan declared: "This is not journalism; this is art."