Captain David Stiles must have been a hell of a man. A bit of a rogue and raconteur, he spun grand tales of his life as a sea captain whose adventures took him around the world. And if this were not enough, he regaled those who would listen with fascinating stories of his family having fought the French at the battle of Louisburg and again on the Plains of Abraham. The captain often surrendered to the siren song of the sea. But when the winds managed to blow him home it was to Albert County on the picturesque Bay of Fundy. It must have been something to have heard the yarns. Among those who did was the captain’s grandson Richard.
Richard Bedford Bennett was born on July 3, 1870, to Captain Stiles’s daughter, the sprightly Henrietta. Henrietta welcomed her new son in the bedroom of her parents’ modest wooden frame house at Hopewell Hill, just a short walk up from her and her husband’s home in Hopewell Cape. The town is minutes from what is now New Brunswick’s much photographed and scampered-upon Hopewell Rocks. At the time of Richard’s birth, Hopewell Cape was a town of about five hundred souls. It boasted shops, a stone courthouse, a small school, and tidy, comfortable, brightly coloured frame houses. The endless rhythm of forty-five-foot tides saw the three-mile-wide Petitcodiac River regularly surrender to reveal glistening adobe-red mud flats.
The town was also home to a large, stone Methodist church that played an important role in the lives of Henrietta Bennett and her growing family. She gave up her teaching career with Richard’s arrival and two years later gave birth to Henry, who died only four years later. Evelyn was born in 1874, then Ronald in 1876, George in 1881, and finally Mildred in 1889. All of Henrietta’s children attended church once, and sometimes twice, each Sunday. Under her strict guidance they were taught to adhere to its stern Wesleyan beliefs. Gambling, drinking, and smoking were to be avoided in lives guided by the often-discussed virtues of honesty, hard work, tolerance, and generosity. Like all Henrietta’s children, Richard soaked in everything that came from the pulpit and which was reinforced by his mother. Avoiding temptation and maintaining strict self-discipline in all matters in one’s life became a source of pride from his days as a tall, freckled child onward. Henrietta would have been pleased with the degree to which her oldest son internalized those teachings.
As Richard grew up, the small town remained home to hard-working folks who fished, farmed, or worked in the local shipbuilding industry. Unfortunately for Henrietta, the work ethic exhibited by nearly all around her was largely lost on her husband. Henry Bennett married Henrietta on January 22, 1869. Like the Stiles family, the Bennetts were proud of their British heritage. The first Bennett to find his way to the New World was Samuel, who arrived in Massachusetts in 1635. The late 1750s saw the embers of discontent fanned to flames by pamphleteers, rebels, and opportunists. Samuel’s son Zadoc was loyal to the king and wise enough to read the writing on the wall, and so he came north from Lyme, Connecticut, to Nova Scotia in 1759. King George II showed his gratitude to the Connecticut Loyalists by issuing 500-acre land grants to the head of each family.
By the time the American Revolution ended in 1783, fifty-to-sixty thousand loyalists had fled north, and about thirty thousand had found their way to the Maritimes. The hardscrabble farmers of the Annapolis Valley and the independently minded fishermen and entrepreneurs of the growing towns of Halifax and Lunenburg warily welcomed the newcomers. They saw their colony’s population suddenly double. Towns became infused with upper- and middle-class families used to hard work but accustomed as well to the deference owed to those whose efforts had won them a particular rank in society. Established Methodist communities soon found themselves in the minority as predominately Anglican Loyalists assumed prominent civil society positions. The construction of grand churches announced the newcomers’ wealth and permanence.
Soon after the Loyalists’ thunderous arrival in the early 1780s, an application was made to split Nova Scotia into two colonies in order that the twelve thousand Loyalists who had settled among the twenty-five hundred British settlers and fifteen hundred Acadians in territory west of the peninsula could have their own government. Still reeling from the world war that had resulted in the loss of lives, treasure, status, and the American colonies, the British government quickly approved the division. The idea was to keep the Canadian colonies small, divided, and weak. The king certainly did not want another troublesome powerhouse such as Virginia. And so New Brunswick was created in 1784.
It was in this climate of opportunity, challenge, and change that the industrious Zadoc Bennett bought and sold land until his death in 1810 at age seventy-seven. His estate saw his twelve children share an impressive inheritance. His son Benjamin shared his father’s skill at real estate investment and at his death at age one hundred he left tracts of land to each of his children. Shipbuilding was an integral part of the nineteenthcentury Maritime economy. Benjamin’s second child, Nathan, worked his inherited land wealth into a new shipbuilding venture at Hopewell Cape. His enterprising spirit turned the Bennett shipyards into a stunning success. The first ship produced was Albert, a 56-foot schooner, and the second a 127-footer called the Alice Bentley. By the 1850s, the company had become quite prosperous and then famous for having sold a Bennett clipper ship, named the Emma, to the White Star Line, later notorious for its unsinkable Titanic. Bennett ships were sailing the world’s oceans and the Emma was delivering the mail between Britain and Australia. It was knowledge of his family’s shipbuilding heritage that made Prime Minister Bennett’s chest swell with pride when in October 1930, the good people of Lunenburg cheered as the champagne bottle crashed and a fishing schooner christened the R.B. Bennett slid into the bay’s choppy waters for her maiden voyage.
Henry Bennett was born in 1842. He inherited the family business when its best days were already behind it. Henry earned a reputation as an honest man and for years he served with distinction as the county’s justice of the peace and Hopewell Cape’s port warden. But he could not save the company from its slow downward spiral — owed partly to the replacement of wood and sails by steel and steam, but also to the fact that he loved a good laugh and a strong drink more than a full day’s work. More affable than ambitious and more forgiving than firm, Henry was eventually to find part-time work as a blacksmith and that, plus the sale of vegetables from his small farm, became the family’s main source of income.
Henry’s eldest son, Richard, consequently, was raised in a household with tales of wealth and adventure but little money and fewer prospects. He grew up learning that good times can be won but never taken for granted, that hard work is rewarded and sloth punished, that drink is a thief, and piety its own reward. He later told a friend, “I’ll always remember the pit from which I was [dug] and the long uphill road I had to travel. I’ll never forget one step.”1
Young Richard, or Dick as he was called by all, was a shy, quiet, and introspective child who did not like or often participate in the games of childhood, preferring instead the solitude of the garden or a book and the company of his protective mother. He could always be relied upon to do his chores, which consisted mostly of the daily milking and leading the small herd from one field to another for pasture. The Methodist church was a source of both spiritual sustenance and community fellowship where he enjoyed and participated joyfully in socials, festivals, and teas.
Richard worked well at school and Henrietta drilled him again at home each evening. He did all right but did not excel. Nonetheless, at twelve years of age his scholastic achievements were adequate to earn him a spot at Fredericton’s Provincial Normal School for teacher training. He coasted through courses, relying mostly on a prodigious memory that revealed itself early in his life and would serve him well through to its end. In the days of rote learning he found that while others struggled he was easily able to commit to memory long poems and large passages of prose. Also noteworthy, and something which would forever both serve and hinder him, was a natural verbal acuity and willingness to exploit that ability for gain. Schoolmates wrote a small poem about him that captured his proficiency and personality and perhaps an early shimmering of arrogance:
First there came Bennett, conceited and young,
Who never knew quite when to hold his quick tongue.2
By the age of fifteen Bennett had graduated with a second-class certificate. He accepted a position teaching elementary school at Irishtown, near Moncton. He worked hard, lived frugally, and saved his money.
The summer after his first year of teaching provided Bennett with his first taste of politics. In the 1887 federal election he volunteered with the Liberal-Conservative Party that was trying to send Richard Weldon to Ottawa.3 Bennett began by stuffing envelopes but Weldon quickly recognized that his young volunteer was capable of much more and soon Bennett was delivering speeches for the candidate. The verbal gifts Bennett had shown in school were transferred easily to the stump and he found that despite being only seventeen he could hold his own not only in delivering a political message but also in handling the rough and tumble of the inevitable hecklers.4 Weldon won his seat and Bennett won a mentor.
Meanwhile, Bennett had been completing courses that in 1888 earned him a first-class teaching certification, allowing him to apply for administrative positions and affording him a much-needed raise. The certification and his talents led to an appointment as school principal in Douglastown, on the Miramichi River’s north bank. Only eighteen, he was responsible for four teachers, in four different schools, ministering to 159 children.
Personality traits that would inform his maturing character were seen in his prudent and skilful handling of such an enormous responsibility. His officiousness and unwillingness to suffer fools were clear in the stern manner in which he ran his charge. Discipline was strict, and staff and students were expected to work diligently. He demanded respect and expected obedience and zeal, but employed persuasion rather than corporal punishment for miscreants. At the time, his must have been the only principal’s office in the land without a well-worn leather strap. An Inspector of Schools report stated that Bennett was doing splendid work and that his ideas regarding the revision of courses for improving instruction in secondary schools were well received.5
He was doing fine but he was impatient. Bennett was seldom satisfied with things as they were and constantly sought not comfort but challenge and improvement. This habit, as well as a bold, perhaps haughty, self-confidence, coupled with a youthful inability to differentiate honesty from insult, was revealed in a letter the nineteen-year-old Bennett wrote to school board trustees:
During a stay of nearly two years in this place, I have come to the conclusion that the material is not lacking here to produce pupils of more than ordinary ability but while I feel that such is the case I cannot but remark that unless the parents are aroused and awakened from the apathy with which they now view all matters connected with the school work, the fine abilities of their children will never be shown.
I would remark that the school officers are sadly deficient in their duties. During my stay here I have not been favoured by a visit from one of the trustees.6
Meanwhile, Bennett’s staid, fastidious lifestyle allowed him to save more than half his annual five-hundred-dollar principal’s salary. For recreation, and for the stipend allowance attached, he joined the local militia. However, the non-athletic young man proved himself a rather inept soldier. He was eventually assigned to the paymaster’s office. He sometimes inadvertently found himself in places where drinking and dancing took place but was quite proud of his yielding to neither temptation.7
Bennett was often seen in the company of young women and enjoyed a number of relationships of various lengths and emotional depths. He showed particular romantic interest in Frances Snowball, the daughter of a New Brunswick senator, and then later in a nurse in Calgary known only as Miss Knight. Evelyn Windsor, the daughter of a Montreal rector, once turned his thoughts to romance, and later he even asked Edith Cochrane’s father, a minister in Borden’s government, for his daughter’s hand. But, for reasons unknown, it was denied.
The woman that most people believed would someday become Bennett’s wife was the witty and vivacious Jennie Shirreff, whom he met when he was a twenty-three-year-old lawyer in Chatham, New Brunswick. The warm relationship peaked at friendship, however, when Jennie left the province for Quebec to marry prominent industrialist Ezra Eddy; everybody called him E.B. After the death of her husband, in February 1906, the friendship was renewed as Bennett helped the widow with inheritance, business, and legal issues, and was rewarded with company stock, a directorship, and warm personal letters. When Bennett was in Ottawa, the two often found time to dine and to enjoy each other’s company. Jennie died in 1921. Bennett died a bachelor.
A rumour that was later to grow more salacious with each telling was that Bennett remained unmarried due to a health problem. It was whispered that he had phimosis, which is a tight foreskin resulting in intensely painful erections.8 Another is that he suffered from Peyronie’s disease, which involves a thickening of the penile shaft resulting in painful and misshapen erections.9 Despite the popularity and persistence of the rumours, and another that he had had his problem dealt with through surgery in London, there is no evidence that Bennett ever mentioned either disease or that any of the women with whom he was romantically inclined discussed it with anyone.
From his first days as a teacher to his term as principal, Bennett maintained his austere lifestyle in one modest boarding house or another. Landlords noticed that his worldly possessions were crammed into one small black trunk and that its contents were nearly all books. Reading, that most detached and solitary of pursuits, was his only form of recreation and even then he read to be informed rather than entertained. He saw novels as a waste of time, preferring political biography and history. His Bible was always at his bedside and he read from it every night. Not yet having grown out of the young man’s urge to show off, he was a little too eager to demonstrate his ability to accurately quote chapter and verse. He would never be attracted to a hobby or sport, either as spectator or participant. He avoided exercise, believing that a short walk on Sunday afternoon was sufficient. He preferred to walk with only his thoughts for company.
Perhaps his monastic lifestyle and yearning for privacy were expressions of his shyness. However, Bennett could also roar with an infectious laugh, enjoy funny stories, and even participate in practical jokes. As prime minister he once called Alice Millar, his personal secretary, and disguising his voice, tried every tactic he could imagine to secure an interview with himself. On another occasion he worked a stenographer late into the evening, then called her at home to ask her to return early the next morning for more work. When she agreed, he laughed and told her that he was only joking and had just wanted to thank her for her dedication.
Bennett had but one lifelong friend. In 1879, Max Aitken was born in Maple, Ontario, but the next year his minister-father moved his young family to the Presbyterian manse in Newcastle, New Brunswick. Max would later become a lawyer, businessman, and owner of several newspapers and other businesses in Canada and England. He would serve in Britain’s House of Commons and in the cabinet of Prime Minister David Lloyd George. In 1916, he became Lord Beaverbrook and took his place in the House of Lords and in Churchill’s cabinet, where he continued to wield considerable influence in business, politics, and the arts until the end of his long and meritorious life in 1964.
In the spring of 1889, the two met on a wharf, awaiting the six-mile steamship journey down the Miramichi River from Douglastown to Aitken’s Newcastle home. The precocious ten-year-old Aitken was taken by the nineteen-year-old Bennett, standing there in his banker’s suit and banker’s hat, and he boldly introduced himself. Bennett was amused then fascinated by the boy, who looked no more than seven or eight, and so engaged him where other, older boys might have simply walked away. One acted older than he was and the other was trying to look older than he was and both were quickly as enthralled with each other as they were with themselves. They chatted amiably during the trip and agreed to meet again. The two became close friends and confidants. Bennett was a regular dinner guest at the Aitken home, which was always filled with lively, informed conversation and the energy and laughter of nine children.
In 1959, Lord Beaverbrook wrote a slim volume that chronicled his business dealings with Bennett, from which both benefited, and their political principles, which were nearly always identical. The book told of a deep and enduring friendship in such simpering, sycophantic terms that it would most probably have mightily embarrassed Bennett. The hero-worshipping idolization of his older friend was such that as a young man Aitken adopted Bennett’s speaking patterns, many of his favourite phrases, and even altered his handwriting to ape that of his friend/mentor/idol. He wrote, for instance, of a visit Bennett paid to him in Halifax over the Christmas holidays of 1904, at which Bennett stayed at his flat: “I saw him off by train at ten the next night, heartened by his visit and saddened by his departure. How I liked and admired him.”10
The picture Aitken paints of his close friend reveals the degree to which Bennett consciously and successfully reinvented himself. Aitken noted that Bennett had a mercurial temper but that when the storm passed he would remonstrate that his mother had warned him that he would not amount to much if he could not learn to control his emotions. He wrote that the young Bennett worked to be polite but that sometimes it reached the point where he flattered those around him so much that he appeared insincere. He took pride in his memory but sometimes could not avoid showing off, often quoting from Scripture, poetry, or the words of men he admired. Aitken rather interestingly recalled that one time he looked up a Disraeli quote that Bennett had ostentatiously pronounced and found that his friend had botched a line or two. He revealed perhaps more than he intended in defending Bennett’s sometimes casual relationship with accuracy, observing, “Bennett never deceived others. He sometimes deceived himself.”11
The dapper appearance that had first caught young Aitken’s attention was a part of Bennett’s conscious reinvention of himself and something in which he took great pride. He was tall and thin, with bright auburn hair, which he often had cut twice a week. In public he was always in a three-piece suit and wore a bowler hat when first it appeared presumptuous on such a young man and then long after the style had fallen from fashion. In his early twenties he began to eat three sumptuous and fatladen meals a day in a determined effort to gain weight. He explained to Aitken that he believed he could present a more impressive appearance if he were larger. He was successful in attaining the girth for which he yearned and later, when gravity and a slowing metabolism found him, he significantly reduced his daily caloric intake. Neither his love of fine food nor his waistline followed the trend. Perhaps it was the pound or so of chocolate that he enjoyed each evening that was his undoing.
Bennett enjoyed his time as a school principal in Douglastown. While jealously protecting his privacy and still enjoying solitary pursuits he was nonetheless part of the social scene, and occasionally took pleasure in wagon rides with young women. He also involved himself in church and community affairs. The temperance movement was sweeping the Maritimes and was something for which he had a natural affinity. He joined the local Sons of Temperance Lodge and spoke at a number of meetings, extolling the virtues of an alcohol-free life for individuals and the benefits of an alcohol-free society. Pledges were signed and many proudly wore a blue ribbon indicating their dedication to abstinence. He also continued to work with the local Conservative riding association making speeches on behalf of Weldon and the party.
Bennett was a good educator and careful administrator but he grew somewhat bored with the prospect of repeating the same routines year after year. Even as a boy he had told a teacher that he wanted someday to become a lawyer. Among the many people he had met in Douglastown was Lemuel John Tweedie, who had established a thriving law practice in nearby Chatham. Bennett impressed Tweedie to the point that he offered the ambitious young man a chance to clerk in his office. Every weekend Bennett would take the ferry to Chatham, stay with the Tweedie family, and article in the office until returning to his school duties each Monday morning. Despite this harried schedule, Bennett still found time each week to teach Sunday school, get elected as a church trustee, and serve as the Sunday School Committee secretary. His reading turned exclusively to the law. This punishing pace showed the determination, drive, and indefatigable capacity for work that all of Canada would later come to know.
In 1890, Bennett left the teaching profession and entered Dalhousie University in Halifax to study law. Old friend and Albert County member of Parliament Dr. Richard Weldon had founded and was the dean of the Dalhousie Law School. It was through his good graces that Bennett was appointed law school librarian — an early lesson in the value of favours earned and loyalty respected. The library post enabled the twenty-year-old voracious reader to be surrounded by his beloved books while also earning some much-needed money.
Like many others who find secondary school tedious, Bennett excelled in university. Not surprisingly, he played no sports and joined no clubs. He read, he studied, and he worked. He spent summers articling with Tweedie and saving money. Upon graduation in 1893, Bennett moved to Chatham and became the junior partner in the law firm Tweedie and Bennett. He took his old room in Tweedie’s large home. Tweedie left many of the day-to-day activities of the practice to young Bennett, as he was increasingly active in the Conservative Party. His political work would later lead to his becoming the premier of New Brunswick and still later its lieutenant-governor, rendering him yet another well-placed friend for the ambitious Bennett.
Tweedie was helpful in introducing his determined young protegé to people who would help him to realize his political ambitions. Helpful as well was Aitken who, inspired by Bennett, had registered as a law student in the provincial capital, passed oral exams, and was articling at Tweedie and Bennett. Aitken was also showing an uncanny ability to make money. While fulfilling his duties at the law office he was also an insurance salesman and wrote articles for newspapers across the province, with some placed as far afield as the Montreal Star. If Tweedie was Bennett’s new mentor, then Aitken remained his cheerleader.
When in 1896 Chatham received its charter as a town, Bennett convinced himself that he could be successful in a run for the position of alderman. Tweedie offered his advice but Aitken gave his heart to the campaign. Aitken, only seventeen years old but already an old hand at ingratiating himself with those who could prove to be advantageous, had become friends with J.L. Stewart, who owned the Chatham World newspaper. He persuaded Stewart to run a series of articles lauding Bennett’s virtues and qualifications. Leaflets were printed and Aitken and Bennett took turns on the candidate’s bicycle until every door in town had been knocked upon and a leaflet shoved into every hand.
There were also public meetings. The boy who had shown his ability with words in school was now a young man finding new ways to stir a crowd. He had for years been attending political meetings and noting oratorical tricks that worked well and he now adapted them for his presentations. Aitken heard all of Bennett’s speeches and later wrote, “. . . he would speak for an hour or more with fire and fury. My efforts to record these speeches in shorthand failed entirely. So thrilled was I by his oratory and so excited by his domination over his audience that my notes were forgotten.”12
The election saw Bennett win by only one vote; but he had won. Rather than a glorious blastoff into public life, however, Bennett’s time as alderman was as unspectacular as his margin of victory. Municipal politics is unique in that people are governed by their neighbours. Municipal leaders make decisions and then see the results of those decisions quickly, such as a sidewalk being laid or a road paved. So too, municipal politicians are few in number and often long serving in a transparent arena where personalities, family ties, tradition, and unwritten rules can win the day. Bennett was new and seemed unwilling to acknowledge the delicate web of feelings and understandings. He quickly gained a reputation for stepping on toes and hurting himself by commenting on every issue whether big or small. He became unpopular with fellow aldermen and a feud developed, as none would support actions that Bennett wanted and he would support none of his fellow aldermen’s ideas. Only three months into his two-year term he resigned his seat. No tears were shed.
His short and unsuccessful foray into politics portended issues of personality that would be seen throughout both his public and private careers. He was either a man who did his homework, determined the best road forward, and did what he could to bring to fruition the best available option, or he was bullheadedly arrogant; maybe he was both. Regardless, his brief appearance on the public stage was the first step on a long and circuitous path that would take him to the prime minister’s office. Even while poring over staff reports regarding problems and opportunities affecting only the people of Chatham, New Brunswick, it seems clear that young Bennett had his eye on that prize.
There is a fascinating sculpture in downtown Saskatoon, marking the occasion in 1910 when a ten-year-old newspaper boy named John Diefenbaker met Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier. According to the speech Laurier delivered later that evening, the young Diefenbaker had told him categorically that someday he too would be prime minister. Although there was no such meeting in Bennett’s life, his goal and determination to attain it were as unambiguous as those of his prairie compatriot. One of the teachers that he supervised as principal later told the story that she and the eighteen-year-old Bennett had shared a wagon ride with a Mr. Brown and that she listened quietly as the two engaged in a heated discussion about religion. Later on the journey, Bennett entertained them with a recitation of Marc Antony’s funeral piece from Julius Caesar. Impressed with his debating skill and memory, she told Bennett that he should consider a career in public life. He responded: “Some day I’m going to be Prime Minister of Canada.”13
That his boyhood expression of political ambition was not just a brash teenager’s attempt to impress a girl is seen in the fact that he repeated his audacious goal to others. While at Dalhousie, for example, Bennett and a classmate named W.H. Trueman, who would later become a member of the Manitoba Court of Appeal, took a horse-and-buggy ride to a public meeting to hear Sir John A. Macdonald. On the way home Bennett told his companion that one day he too would be prime minister.14 That Bennett had told his friend Aitken about his political ambitions is made evident by the fact that voters in the Chatham municipal election were told by Aitken that they should support the young lawyer, for one day he would be prime minister.
When does healthy ambition became rapaciousness? When does a dream become a plan? Does any person become the leader of his country without the burning determination to do so lodged at the centre of his being? When does the story of Diefenbaker’s encounter with Laurier or Bennett’s much less public declarations to Brown, Trueman, or Aitken move from cute to interesting to egotistical? In 1930, Trueman visited Prime Minister Bennett in his Winnipeg hotel room and asked with a smile if he remembered the night he swore he would become prime minister. Bennett appeared hurt at Trueman’s jocular tone and replied flatly, “I said I would, didn’t I?”15
CALGARY
As the cool autumn evenings of 1896 were turning New Brunswick hardwoods to impressionist art, a visitor arrived at Chatham from faraway Calgary. For some time Calgary had been little more than a fur trading mounted police outpost with an attitude. It was named by Colonel James McLeod as a nod to his Scottish highland home and existed only because Kicking Horse Pass, with its gradient more forgiving than its alternative, had won the day among Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) engineers and, consequently, the line had swung north. The fort perched precariously at the confluence of the Elbow and Bow rivers got lucky. The rails had arrived in 1883 and with them the town burst with energy and potential. By 1896 it was an ambitious young man’s dream with a growing population of about 4,000 and surrounded by prosperous farms and ranches run by hard-working adventurers who had come from eastern Canada and western Europe seeking land, freedom, and opportunity. The town was soon shipping wheat and beef to the East, and more of what Interior Minister Clifford Sifton had dubbed “stalwart peasants in sheep skin coats” were arriving every day. Since the great fire of 1886, more and more buildings were being constructed of sandstone and brick, so the city was slowly developing a statelier look and feel. But much of Calgary still had the appearance of every cowboy town we have come to know in every western movie we have ever seen: horses, mostly dirt streets and wooden sidewalks, and wooden two-storey buildings.
The visitor to Chatham that day was frontier lawyer James Lougheed. He had been born in Brampton, Ontario, but followed the steel rail west, literally encamping in Medicine Hat and running his first law office from beneath a canvas ceiling. Two events encouraged him to move his practice to Calgary in 1883 and contributed to his quick success. First, he encountered a rattlesnake in his tent, and he hated snakes. Second, he married well. Isabella (Belle) Hardisty was from a powerful Métis family; her father had been the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Chief Factor. One of her uncles was Donald Smith, who later became Lord Strathcona. Smith was a man of wealth and influence who sat on a number of boards, held a significant number of shares in Canada’s most important companies, and enjoyed political and business ties to the country’s power elites. In Smith’s impressive portfolio were shares of the CPR and many of the companies upon which it depended. It was Lougheed’s connection to Smith that enabled him to secure an appointment with the CPR’s president, William Van Horne. Lougheed left the meeting as the railway’s lawyer. From that retainer he established his Calgary practice and watched it, along with his profits from land speculation, grow at the same breakneck pace as his newly adopted city.
Another of Isabella’s uncles was Richard Hardisty, one of the Northwest Territories’ wealthiest men and its senator. When the senator died in 1889, Sir John appointed Lougheed to succeed him. His responsibilities in Ottawa grew just as his firm was becoming a substantial power in Calgary, with more clients and lucrative opportunities in land speculation. He needed help. Lougheed had contacted his old friend, Dalhousie’s Dean Weldon, to see if there were any young lawyers that he could recommend as a partner to take some of the pressure from his shoulders. Weldon knew just the young man. Lougheed took the train from Ottawa to Chatham and met with Bennett.
After less than an hour of conversation, Lougheed was sufficiently impressed that he offered Bennett a partnership. But the young man demurred, and from a position of no strength whatsoever he summoned the temerity to negotiate. Lougheed was impressed again. As a result of the deal to which they eventually agreed, Lougheed Bennett would see the junior partner earn 20 per cent of the firm’s income for the first $3,750 and 30 per cent on each additional dollar. The deal was sweetened by 5 per cent in the second year. There were many other law firms in Calgary at the time, so competition for cases and clients would be fierce, but Bennett was assured that since Lougheed had already bagged the biggest elephant in town with his CPR deal, more corporate clients could be won. Further, Lougheed promised that Bennett would have great sway in the affairs of the firm, as his political responsibilities in Calgary and Ottawa would often have him absent from the office. It was an offer much too good for the motivated young man to refuse.
Bennett quickly wrapped up his business dealings in Chatham and spent Christmas back with his family in Hopewell Cape. The first days of 1897 found him aboard a CPR train for the long journey to the Northwest Territories and to a city and country he had never seen. He was twenty-six years old.
It was late January. Bennett’s train was scheduled to arrive at three a.m., but a storm delayed it until eight o’clock. It was dark. It was forty below zero. One freezing hand held tight to a coat that was too light and the other to a grip that was too heavy. He lurched his way to the platform and asked for a cab but a porter laughed and told him that there were no such conveniences in Calgary. He left to slowly shuffle his way through the cold and snow, and past empty lots piled with freezing horse manure, horses tethered in the numerous livery stables, and finally a motley collection of stone, brick, and ramshackle wooden buildings that were struggling to form themselves into a downtown.
The Alberta Hotel’s small lobby must have seemed like an oasis of warmth and welcome. As he was at the desk checking into the third floor rooms that Lougheed had arranged, Bennett met more Calgarians. According to an often-regaled story, a roughly dressed man approached and offered to warm the young stranger with a drink but was told that he did not drink. Another offered him a cigar but was informed he did not smoke. A third reportedly snorted, “Boy oh boy, there’s a guy who’s got no future in this man’s town.”16
That evening, Lougheed took Bennett to the Calgary Opera House where Madam Albani performed. It was so cold even inside that a patron helped the shivering singer by placing his coat over her shoulders so that she could continue. The next morning Bennett set out and on the street asked the location of the nearest church. As he made his way through the bitter cold he heard one woman say to another, “Poor boy, he won’t keep that up.”17 He had to fight an urge to scamper back to New Brunswick.
In no time, however, Bennett had established a routine that he would maintain for years. He would be up and to work early and arrive back at his rented rooms late. When not lunching at his office desk he took all three meals at the hotel dining room. He continued his habit of gorging himself and was becoming increasingly successful in his quest to gain weight. Two years later, in 1899, he moved to a Fourth Street rooming house kept by a pair of widows. But he continued, as a young man observing an older man’s habits, to take his meals at his favourite corner table at the Alberta Hotel.
The Methodist church again became the centre of his social life. It offered fellowship and through contacts in the congregation he quickly built a social network in the bustling city. He became active in the church’s support for Prohibition. He also renewed his membership with the Masonic lodge, which was something he had begun through following his father’s footsteps back in Hopewell Cape. Through the church, the lodge, the firm, and Lougheed’s active introductions, he quickly established a range of friends and acquaintances and was a regular in Calgary’s small but growing social scene. But he showed little interest in women and spent most evenings alone with his work or books.
In Lougheed Bennett’s Clarence Block second-floor offices, just down the street from his hotel, Bennett continued to make an impression on his partner and others with his work ethic, ability to synthesize large volumes of facts, and his remarkable memory. As cases came his way and were dispatched quickly and successfully, Bennett’s workload increased, but it was never onerous. He impressed judges and other lawyers with his abilities and also with what was seen as a burning desire to win. He employed the arsenal of his memory and ability to think quickly on his feet and to speak in eloquent full paragraphs to his advantage, but these were often still undisciplined weapons used sometimes merely to harangue witnesses, juries, and opponents. One lawyer was so incensed by Bennett’s badgering that he leapt over a table and physically attacked him. Bennett was humiliated when he was knocked to the ground by the much smaller man, but, while he lost the fight, he won the case.
His cockiness was on public display one evening at a political meeting at which the keynote speaker was Edmonton Liberal Member of Parliament Frank Oliver. Bennett heckled and interrupted Oliver to the point where members of the audience began to taunt Bennett. People suggested that if he truly believed that he could do better than Oliver, then he should stand and speak. Bennett did just that and, with detailed and witty extemporaneous remarks, quickly bested the carefully prepared Oliver. He was rude, but he was smart, and he was becoming well respected by some and well known by many.
As his notoriety increased, Bennett was mocked by a local entertainer at a fundraising dinner. Some men might have been amused and perhaps flattered, but Bennett endured the show in silent rage. In the professions of law and politics it is often said that one benefits from developing the skin of a rhinoceros. But Bennett never did. He was and would always be sensitive to even a perceived slight. Despite the importance he placed and the pride that he took in controlling his human urges, Bennett never really learned to turn the other cheek. A beast of a temper always seemed to lurk within him. Aitken observed that even as a young man, “He would burst out in angry indignation against slights and injustice, fancied or real, using tough and tiresome language.”18 And he did so that night, controlling himself during the performances but later in his hotel exploding in a thunderous rage.
Also haunting the shadows of his character, and a cousin to his arrogance, was a stubborn refusal to admit error. In 1935, Bennett’s secretary, Andrew MacLean, wrote a charming little book that was obviously meant to extol his boss’s virtues for a public that would soon be going to the polls. Even so, MacLean could not help but make a point often made by others regarding that quirk. MacLean observed, “Like many others of unusual powers, he is intellectually vain. He would rather do almost anything than admit he was wrong. He will twist and wriggle endlessly in order to becloud the fact that he has made a mistake.”19
RETURN TO POLITICS
Only a year after bidding his friend goodbye, in the spring of 1898, Max Aitken found his prospects too limited in Chatham, and law school too tedious in Saint John. He purchased a train ticket and followed Bennett to Calgary. The two friends met each other with a joyful reunion. Aitken set to work helping in the law office, writing articles for newspapers, speculating in real estate and small businesses, and again demonstrating the greatest key to his success: his ability to curry favour with others. He was pleased with how quickly Bennett had become a part of Calgary’s business, social, and political life. He attended speeches that Bennett was making both in the city and surrounding communities in support of a Wesleyan Methodist lifestyle based on self-denial and, most specifically, an abstinence from tobacco and alcohol. He noted how his friend’s already terrific speaking ability had improved.
Bennett’s ambition was having a tough time locating opportunity, but the two would soon meet. At that moment, the politics and governance structure of the territory was in flux. The Northwest Territories had been Rupert’s Land, then the property of the Canadian government, then from 1875 a legal territory of the Dominion. It was ruled by a legislative assembly, which met in Regina. The government worked under the not inconsiderable influence of the lieutenant-governor with a council that he appointed. It operated much like a municipal council in terms of the limited powers it possessed and in that it was ostensibly without political parties while roiling with partisanship that gurgled just beneath the surface. The territory’s political structure was as unsustainable as Calgary’s potential was unstoppable.
A territorial election was scheduled for November 1898. Bennett consulted Aitken who, not surprisingly, encouraged his candidacy for one of Calgary’s seats and pledged assistance in running the campaign. Lougheed also enthusiastically supported his partner. He promised to use his substantial influence in the local Conservative Party to do all he could to help. At that time the Conservatives had yet to recover from Sir John A. Macdonald’s 1891 death and the sad parade of intelligent, well-meaning but ineffective leaders that followed — Abbott, Thompson, Bowell, and Tupper. The party was especially weak on the western frontier, with Lougheed nearly single-handedly holding it together from his seat in the Senate and through the force of his personality. Bennett’s party membership and election to office could only help Lougheed’s organizational efforts. But his support was also based on a sincere appreciation for Bennett and his potential. In 1910, Lougheed wrote of Bennett’s political skills and made a prescient prediction:
Bennett can solve any problem he puts his mind to. No man is quicker to strip a problem of unnecessary verbiage and translate it into a simple and understandable language. Some day Bennett will be called upon to solve the greatest problems in Canada. Some day Canada will turn to him to get the country out of its difficulties.20
Bennett paid the hundred-dollar candidacy fee in August for the November election and worked hard throughout the long campaign. He promised to bring greater prosperity to his city and to turn the territory into a province with Calgary, rather than Regina, as its capital. These were bold promises boldly pronounced, but few heard them: his first public meeting drew only seven people. His next, although widely advertised, drew the same seven people. It was not a propitious start. Newspapers were at best lukewarm to Bennett’s candidacy. Some stories noted that he had lived in the city for less than two years while others wondered if he was simply being foisted upon the people as a mouthpiece for the CPR. Still others warned about the possibility of too much political power resting in the law offices of Lougheed Bennett.21
His opponents were all much older, better known, and more experienced men: W.W. Stuart, James Muir, and James Riley. Few believed Bennett stood much of a chance. But his campaign caught fire during a debate in the town of Olds. Bennett lashed out at what he called the tired old men who had been ruling the territory and were running against him. He turned the criticism of his youth and inexperience to his advantage by proposing that new ideas and new people were needed to move the territory forward. Muir was in the audience and rose to defend not only himself but the others of his generation who had been and were continuing to provide service to the public. Bennett would have none of it and carried on his boisterous assault. The spontaneous debate became so raucous that RCMP officers intervened and warned Bennett that they would need to take drastic action if tempers did not cool. Bennett threw gas on the fire by accusing the police of overstepping their bounds and all but daring them to arrest him. Muir shouted that he was willing to end the debate by taking Bennett outside and giving him the beating he deserved. The audience loved it. The papers reported it. Bennett had succeeded in not only injecting excitement into what had been a moribund campaign, but, more important, he had established its narrative. Bennett’s 1898 territorial campaign began as a contest about ideas and issues but ended up being about people’s desire for political and generational change and the power of personality.
The fourth of November dawned frighteningly cold in Calgary. The snow was already piling up. It was Election Day and the results were far from certain. Bennett sat nervously but with quiet confidence in the Alberta Hotel’s telegraph office, encamped with Aitken and others from his law office, including George Tempest, George Cloakey, and his secretary, Miss Cameron, all of whom had helped in the campaign. Early results came slowly to the intrepid group and they appeared positive. The city seemed to be going to Bennett. It soon became clear that even rural areas were supporting the young newcomer.
The final tally saw Bennett win 291 votes to Stuart’s 205, Muir’s 169, and Riley’s disappointing 47. After only twenty-four months in Calgary, Bennett was a well-known, successful, and respected partner in the city’s largest firm and its member in the Territorial Assembly.
Bennett sprang to his new duties in Regina with great relish. For two years he worked hard and learned that in politics, as in most professions, the way to get things done is to understand that progress is never a straight road. Those who move forward are those who understand that friends and allies must be nurtured, enemies recognized, and that, while black-and-white rules are important, political success grows only in a great garden of grey. That Bennett understood all of this was seen even before the legislature’s first meeting in early April 1899. He had organized an evening for five fellow MLAs who were scheduled to spend the night in Calgary while en route to Regina. He picked up the tab for a lavish dinner at the Alberta Hotel and then the six retired to Lougheed’s home where everyone except Bennett enjoyed scotch and cigars.
Once in the legislature, however, Bennett reverted to the unfortunate habits he had demonstrated as a Chatham alderman. He ignored the procedures and understandings of the past and immediately demonstrated what some could consider political intelligence, but what others might deem ruthlessness. He did so with a direct attack on Frederick Haultain, who for years had been the de facto premier of the territories. Haultain was born in London to a military family that in 1860 moved to Peterborough, Ontario, when he was three. After earning his law degree, he moved to Fort Macleod to practise. He served in a number of important positions in the territorial government before being appointed president of the Executive Council, or premier, in 1897. Haultain was a slight man with dark, slicked-back hair and a thin moustache. He had won the respect of all with his tireless dedication to the territory that he hoped would someday form a large province that he wanted to call Buffalo. He had no idea that the young rookie from Calgary somehow saw himself as the new sheriff in town.
Haultain had made it his practice to begin each new legislative session by allowing every member to speak and then rising in response to all that had been said, thereby presenting his own remarks as the Speech from the Throne. But this time was different. After each member but Bennett had spoken, Haultain looked to Bennett’s chair and found it was empty. He had no option but to rise and speak. No sooner had he done so than Bennett strolled into the chamber, drew all eyes to himself as he took his place, and then made voluminous notes throughout the speech. When Haultain was finished, Bennett rose to lambaste all that had been said. He saved his most vitriolic language for a personal attack on Haultain and then on his government for lacking vision and refusing to push harder for provincial status.
Bennett’s long and damning speech was widely reported and lavishly praised. The Calgary Herald noted, “After Mr. Haultain had concluded his speech, Mr. Bennett replied in what is conceded to have been one of the most eloquent speeches ever heard in this house.”22 The Regina Leader argued that Bennett was “. . . the most fluent speaker whose voice ever sounded within the walls of the Territorial chamber.”23 The next day the Calgary Herald again wrote of Bennett, opining that he was quickly making a name for himself in Regina but warning that the brash young MLA was being carried away by the “the exuberance of his verbosity.”24 Bennett’s quick wit and silver tongue, although untamed and undisciplined, were rendering him widely known.
But he had not yet learned to pick his battles. Bennett was heard on every issue. Although he could speak extemporaneously, weaving articulate and powerful phrases, he seemed to revel in the satisfaction of defeating an opponent in debate and being the first member on his feet rather than in seeking compromise or allies to move an issue forward. He still seemed to misunderstand the connection between oratory and persuasion or tactics and strategy.25
Bennett’s time in the territorial legislature was important for the degree to which he established himself as a friend of the farmer and working class who would champion their interests over those of the powerful corporate elite. Bennett’s support for those without power remained constant throughout his political career. In his maiden speech, he argued that the main benefit of provincial status would be the ability to raise capital for a competing rail line that would end the CPR’s monopoly and thereby reduce freight rates. In the months that followed, he supported many bills that sought to limit the power of the CPR and to improve the lot of workers, including those who worked for the railway and its subsidiaries.
His acting on the behalf of the people rather than the CPR was interesting given that, at that time, Bennett had moved his law office a block and a half down the road from Lougheed Bennett to the CPR land offices. There, he was overseeing the sectioning off and sale of thousands of acres of CPR land for the benefit of both the company and himself. He made a commission of twenty-five cents for every acre he sold. He also made a practice of purchasing and flipping many sections on his own. Further, he had renegotiated his retainer so that the company was paying him a substantial personal fee of $7,500 a year. At the same time, Lougheed Bennett had secured many other corporate clients. including the Bank of Montreal, the Royal Bank, the Bank of Nova Scotia, Merchants Bank, the Bank of Commerce, Crown Trust, Union Trust, Massey Harris, R.G. Dun, and insurance companies Crown Life and Great West Life. As a private citizen Bennett pocketed money directly and indirectly from the CPR and these major financial corporations. As a public servant he spoke aggressively against corporate power and for the rights of working people.
Bennett did not see a contradiction between his corporate ties and his defence of labour. He explained his belief in a capitalist system that is fair to both the needs of corporations and the working class in his support of the July 1902 carpenters’ union strike. He spoke at a mass meeting of Calgary’s carpenters and fellow tradesmen. He argued with great rhetorical flourishes that he supported capitalism and the right of business people to make a fair profit, but also that all workers deserved the right to organize themselves into unions, set reasonable prices for their labour, and earn a decent living through which they could raise their families. As in all industrialized democracies, Bennett argued, Canadian business and labour needed each other and so the interests of both had to be protected. To the cheering union men he said, “So long as I live I will give my best efforts to any labour organization which endeavours to uphold right causes, make better the homes of the people, and helps to build a strong and reliant race.”26
Over a year and a half, beginning shortly after his arrival at the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly in April 1899, Bennett also demonstrated his concern for the conditions under which working-class people toiled with his efforts as an impassioned legislator. He played a significant role with six pieces of legislation. First, he moved an amendment that sought to restrict miners to eight hours underground during any twenty-four-hour period and to strengthen other provisions to further protect their interests and safety. The amendment was initially defeated but later adopted as part of other legislation. Second, he introduced a private member’s bill that offered compensation for workers injured on the job. It went nowhere, but later he heartily supported a government initiative based on his idea. Third, he proposed a measure that would protect working men and women from having their property confiscated if they were having trouble paying small debts. The bill was debated in the Assembly but died. Fourth, Bennett proposed a law that would have improved workplace safety by making employers liable for unsafe practices, machinery, or buildings. This bill also died a quick death. Fifth, he worked to stop a bill that sought to remove the ability of landowners to sue if the government offered unfair value for land it expropriated. The legislation passed without Bennett’s amendment. Finally, he opposed a bill that sought to give the territory the power to administer newly created villages without first considering the desire of residents for self-government. He argued that too much power was being placed in the hands of government-appointed commissioners and won a partial victory when an amendment reduced their power. The failure of the bills to make substantive changes in the lives of working people is secondary to their importance in illustrating the core political beliefs to which Bennett would remain true.
After two years in the legislature, and with his name known throughout the territory, Bennett wondered about taking the next step with his political career. He consulted with friends and colleagues and then flung his hat into the ring, seeking the nomination as one of four Conservative candidates in the upcoming 1900 federal election.
The campaign was a daunting one, for Bennett had to fight on two fronts. The Conservative Party was in the midst of tearing itself up over a number of issues. Hard feelings hovered regarding whether party power would rest with those in Edmonton or Calgary. Power had been slowly shifting to Edmonton, which threatened to leave Bennett’s candidacy an orphan within his own party as money and attention drifted north. This trend meant that while Bennett was the most well-known Conservative in the race, his nomination fight was ugly. Although he eventually won, there were plenty of wounds that needed to be salved before going outside the party to win votes.
While this internal struggle was playing itself out, Bennett faced a powerful opponent in the well-respected and well-connected Edmonton Liberal Frank Oliver. Oliver was an Ontario-born newspaperman who had learned his craft at the Globe under George Brown. With this experience, and his ownership of the Edmonton Bulletin, Oliver knew well how to use the press to his advantage. He was also an experienced legislator, having served in the Legislative Assembly for nearly fifteen years. Oliver also had the advantage of a well-organized and financed Liberal Party.
Bennett had his work cut out for him. He opened his six-week campaign with a two-hour speech to a packed Calgary Opera House. He then worked tirelessly, delivering speeches to large crowds in big towns while also taking time to chat with farmers over rail fences. He demonstrated once again his uncanny ability to remember names, his bottomless reservoir of energy, and his insatiable desire to win. He spoke of the need for the territory to become a province, but beyond that there were few big issues in the campaign. It was nearly all about personality and character, youth versus experience, and promise versus achievement. Consistent with such a campaign, Liberal newspapers wrote not of policy differences but personal habits. Bennett was criticized for claiming to be a religious man but allowing his campaign staff to work Sundays. Articles wondered about his support of temperance while some of his workers plied potential supporters with alcohol. Bennett fought back and decried not only the individual charges but also the distractions that the charges represented, but the attacks continued. The Calgary Herald supported Bennett but the Alberta Tribune changed ownership and quickly switched sides to support Oliver. The Albertan was also in Oliver’s corner.
Election Day was November 7. There was no polling, of course, but everyone seemed to know what the results would be. None was surprised when the votes were tallied. Oliver won 5,203 votes to Bennett’s 4,029. The brash young lawyer had been handed a devastating loss. His defeat was part of a sweep in which all four territorial seats went to the Liberals.
Bennett had little time to mourn his fate, however, for the by-election that had been made necessary by his resigning to run as a federal candidate was nigh. At first it was not clear that he would contend for his old territorial seat, and so four other Conservative candidates had begun to organize. But once he announced his candidacy, the others immediately withdrew.
What seemed for a moment might be easy quickly turned terribly difficult. The by-election proved to be as bitterly fought as the federal contest had been. Bennett again spoke at meeting after meeting and reminded Calgarians of his record. He spoke of his standing up for the “little guy” and against powerful interests. Premier Haultain played a major role in the campaign, often coming to the riding and speaking against Bennett and for his opponent, the well-known and well-liked C.A. Stuart.
A number of public debates were set up and Bennett approached each as performance theatre. He outdid himself one evening on which he was to debate both Stuart and Haultain. With the hall filled and Stuart, Haultain, and the moderator waiting onstage, Bennett was nowhere to be seen. While the candidates fumed and the crowd murmured, Bennett was outside. He paced the sidewalk, patiently waiting for the perfect moment to make his entrance. And he made them wait longer. Finally, Bennett crashed open the back doors, swept into the hall, and with every gaze upon him, he methodically took his time to shake hands and kibitz with supporters as he inched toward the stage. When the debate finally began, Stuart and Haultain found that every time they spoke, Bennett would laugh, roll his eyes, or interrupt. The tricks lacked class but they were effective; he won the crowd. All of his opponents’ well-honed arguments could not trump Bennett’s bombast and shameless theatrics.
On March 22, 1901, the people of Calgary returned Bennett to Regina. He had increased his margin of victory by winning 562 of the 849 votes cast. Bennett and his exuberant supporters celebrated with a small but boisterous party at the Alberta Hotel, which included the fire brigade band. He would serve the riding for the next four years.
GROWING NOTORIETY
The most important issue facing the territorial government at the turn of the century remained its application to become a province. Without provincial status, control of millions of acres of Crown land and of all natural resources rested with the federal government. Further, the territorial government could not make the infrastructure improvements that it needed, as it could neither charter companies nor borrow money. Haultain had led the government for six years and claimed to see winning provincehood as his first priority. Bennett and nearly all members agreed with that goal, disagreeing only on the pace of that progress and the tactics used to advance it.
Bennett also disagreed with Haultain and the majority of members who argued that partisan interests were a distraction and so parties should have no place in the territorial government. In staking such a position, Haultain and his supporters were advocating a system that had been in place from the beginning of the democratic governance of the territories in 1887 and, it is worth noting, is the system now employed, with a twist, by the territorial government of Nunavut. But to Bennett, the thought of politics without parties was unthinkable. He had weaned himself on the heroic fights of British statesmen such as Benjamin Disraeli, Rudyard Kipling, Cecil Rhodes, and Joseph Chamberlain — Conservatives all. Further, Lougheed had schooled him on the power of patronage while bemoaning the adept manner with which Laurier played the game. Bennett wanted parties in the Regina assembly, but his fight would prove an uphill battle.
The session was important for the degree to which Bennett demonstrated a considerable measure of political maturation. Realizing that his rickety stature as a young member with a minority opinion regarding the two signal issues of the day was a flimsy political base indeed, he for once held his tongue and worked smarter. He remembered the clever moves he had made in Calgary before he had first arrived at the territorial capital, and began to focus his attention on creating a network of allies that would support the idea of a territorial Conservative Party convention. He was finally realizing that the most important decisions made at meetings are often made before the meeting begins, and that a legislature is nothing more than a long and large meeting. He was beginning to think strategically to win larger goals rather than tactically to win points that, in the end, no one ever tallied.
Bennett’s work was interrupted by a snap election. Haultain decided upon May 21, 1902, as voting day because he wanted it over in time to attend the coronation of King Edward VII. The campaign would be Bennett’s third in less than two years. He was tiring but he nonetheless revved up the machine one more time. Showing his growing ability to see the political horizon, he publicly stated his support for Premier Haultain and pledged to campaign at his side. Haultain turned Bennett’s brash and transparent offer down but, conspicuously, for once he did not campaign against him. The results were a foregone conclusion. Liberal Riley put up a nominal effort as Bennett’s opponent, but Calgary’s newspapers wrote that the seat might just as well be given to Bennett by acclamation and spoke glowingly of Bennett’s record. It was the first time he enjoyed newspaper support.
Bennett spoke at only two public meetings. In both cases he ignored his opponent and devoted his time to explaining the various advantages that would accrue to the people of Calgary if the territory were to become a province. He argued that provincial status would end the practice of ceding territorial lands to the federal government. He spoke of the day when a new province would be able to control public lands and through that raise funds for public works while also exerting influence over the laying of new rail lines. The two meetings were important not only in clarifying his policy positions but also for the opportunity he took to publicly attack Arthur and Clifford Sifton. The speeches marked the public beginning of a long and bitter battle between him and the powerful Liberal brothers.
The severe and rather humourless Sifton brothers were born in Ontario but moved west in their early twenties to practise law. Arthur was the older of the two and first to enter territorial politics, where he rose quickly to serve in a number of important cabinet-level positions. Clifford also entered public service and would find his place in Laurier’s government where, as interior minister, he was primarily responsible for the policies that filled the West with immigrants in the decades shouldering the turn of the twentieth century. Both were also successful businessmen and owned newspapers that were callously and shamelessly pro-Liberal. Bennett and Arthur first met as opposing counsels in a minor February 1897 trial involving an illegal billiard table. Both fought harder to win than the case deserved and left with a personal dislike for one another. Their mutual enmity spilled into politics as the Liberal brothers and Conservative Bennett seemed to disagree on just about every issue, and every spat turned personal. The Albertan, a Sifton newspaper, was the only paper that railed against both of Bennett’s 1902 campaign speeches. A long fuse was lit in the Bennett-Sifton feud and the sparks would flicker and flare for years.
On Election Day, hundreds of Calgarians trudged through muddy streets, and farmers whipped horses to haul wagons through boglike roads as four days of steady rain turned green to brown and blue to grey. But the foregone conclusion had been foregone indeed. Bennett won 436 votes to Riley’s 172, his most decisive victory to date. He returned to the legislature determined to introduce party politics into public debate and to turn the Northwest Territories into a province.
In September 1902, Bennett met the newly chosen federal Conservative Party leader, Robert Borden. Borden was a tall, handsome man with a shock of unruly greying hair that he parted in the middle. He had dark eyes and a tremendous smile topped by a thick and bushy moustache. He was a fellow Maritimer, having been born in Grand Pré, Nova Scotia. Like Bennett, he had worked as a teacher, later took up the law, and had established a thriving practice. He was first elected to office as an MP for Halifax in 1896, avoiding the Laurier sweep, and became the leader of his party only five years later. Borden would offer Bennett not only his first responsibilities and praise as a federal member of Parliament, but also frustrations that threatened to end Bennett’s political career. The two quite different men would become amicable but never close.
Borden had come west as part of a grand tour meant to introduce himself to western voters and kick to life the dead horse that was the Conservative Party on the prairies. Bennett spent three days with the new leader, visiting Edmonton and surrounding ridings and introducing him to local business people and party loyalists. Borden was quite impressed with Bennett, noting later that he was “overflowing with energy and enthusiasm” and full of “valuable and useful suggestions,” and predicted a great future for the talented thirty-two-year-old.27
In January 1903, as part of a more concerted effort to rejuvenate the party in the West, Borden announced that a series of policy conventions would take place in a number of towns, with a culminating convention in Moose Jaw in March. Bennett worked hard, along with his political and business friends, to organize the Calgary convention. In a series of letters, he promised that Lougheed would take care of transportation costs for men of loyalty and virtue who wished to attend. A week later he published and distributed a circular and another flurry of personal letters. Many concluded with the blunt exhortation “We must make this Convention a success” [underline Bennett’s].28 When the inevitable squabbling began regarding precise policy positions, Bennett sent forth another circular and a third raft of letters that asked all involved to put aside petty disagreements and simply attend with open minds. He pleaded with all to concern themselves only with the ultimate good of the party and territory. He urged his correspondents to do what could be done to arrange for a full delegation from each district to be present at the convention.29
As a grassroots organizer, Bennett grew frustrated with those who would offer their time and talents only with the expectation of rewards. Dedication to party and through it to one’s country must, he believed, be deeper than greed. He expressed his beliefs in this matter in a letter to a wavering party supporter in which he complained, “The country is full of those who are prepared to do work when the party is in power and be on deck when there is a big time [power and its many perks] expected but what is wanted now is men who are prepared to work and fight in the face of strong opposition with very slim chances of reward. . . .”30 The letter, and the effort of which it was a part, is further evidence of the degree to which Bennett’s beliefs in selfless and patriotic effort were well established long before he tasted substantial political success.
Bennett also wrote a number of letters directly to Borden. In some he tried to defuse misunderstandings possibly caused by others who had written to the leader proposing policy positions or wondering about the wisdom of the Moose Jaw convention. In others he explained in careful detail the work that was being done to gather delegates to ensure the convention’s success. He detailed his beliefs regarding the territory and its special needs. In each letter Bennett thanked Borden for his support of the territory and for agreeing to the small conventions leading to the culminating convention. In each letter he adopted a sycophantic tone in praising Borden’s leadership.
Bennett was in British Columbia on business when Borden arrived in Calgary, and it fell to Lougheed to play host. Upon his return, Bennett impressed Borden and his staff with his graciousness, attention to detail, the number of people he knew, and the enthusiasm of his introduction at each of Borden’s speaking engagements.31 In both his introductions and private conversations, Bennett presented the federal leader with his version of why and how the territory should become a province while simultaneously impressing a future boss with his political skills.
The conventions began in late January 1905 at Yorkton. A draft party platform was forged that ratified what had already been understood to be Conservative Party stands. For example, it stated the party’s call for continued support for British foreign policy and for an extension of Macdonald’s old National Policy which would result in higher protective tariffs. With respect to the West, it supported the creation of a western port, the abolition of land grants to railway companies, and the granting of provincial status to the territory. It also stated that candidates should campaign in the next territorial election as a party and that those elected under the party banner should sit as Conservatives. It was everything Bennett had wanted. He played a significant role in the convention and was its keynote speaker. He spoke powerfully in support of a number of concerns and ideas but saved the majority of his time for the issue of provincehood.
A week later, Calgary hosted a second policy convention, and Bennett repeated his keynote remarks. Beyond the well-received speech, Bennett worked the backrooms in bringing supporters to his causes. He also influenced those responsible for choosing delegates who would represent the territories in discussions with Ottawa. He ensured that he and the other three Calgary delegates to the final party convention were cut from the same political cloth.
Finally, the culminating convention began in Moose Jaw on March 26. Bennett was everywhere. He was a presence on the stage and in the backrooms, as a Calgary delegate, member of the Resolutions Committee, on the Alberta Executive Committee, and on the Southern Alberta Organizing Committee. His influence was seen clearly when Haultain arranged for a motion to be brought forward stating that nothing passed by convention delegates could later be brought forward as legislation. It was a cute trick meant to emasculate the entire affair, but Bennett would have none of it. He worked the rooms until he was able to relax after watching the motion defeated on the floor. He noted that if Haultain had been either more popular or more clever the result would have been different.32
The 140 delegates passed thirteen resolutions. Included among them were that the territories should be granted provincehood and that the next territorial election should be contested along partisan lines. Bennett was getting good; he was becoming powerful. Part of that power and his adroit use of it was seen in the fact that he had not delivered a speech from the podium or uttered a word from the floor. Bennett’s silence underscored the degree to which he was coming to understand the fundamentals of political power and effective leadership.
EMERGING ON THE NATIONAL STAGE
Following the convention, Bennett arranged for letters of thanks to be sent to every delegate. He sat for interviews with reporters and wrote a long letter to Borden offering his appraisal of all that had happened. Borden asked Bennett’s opinion on the possible division of constituencies if the Northwest Territories should become a province and Bennett provided a detailed analysis with pre-emptive gerrymandering that promised an increased possibility of a Conservative victory in each of the ridings he proposed.33
The November 1904 federal election returned Laurier and the Liberals to office with another majority. Among the prime minister’s campaign promises had been a vow to create a new western province. Two months before the election, on September 30, Laurier had written to Premier Haultain informing him that he wished to begin negotiations regarding provincehood. Haultain had avoided a debate in the legislature by holding the letter for more than two weeks and announcing it four days after the legislature had been prorogued.
Bennett was saddened that he had been robbed of the opportunity to debate in the legislature and to weigh in on the negotiations that he had played a role in initiating. He was later angered that even before talks had begun, Laurier had been persuaded that the territories were too vast to be made into one province and so divided it into two: Alberta and Saskatchewan. Bennett was also disappointed that the federal government was to maintain control of Crown lands and natural resources. But he and many others saved singular outrage for Clause 16 of the Autonomy Act.
Clause 16 was based on the precedent established at the 1864 Confederation debates and then later applied to Manitoba. That is, religious minorities must be granted the right to create their own separate, religious-based schools. The clause had led to heated debate in the House of Commons and a rift in the Liberal caucus. Clifford Sifton had resigned his post. Laurier remained adamant, knowing that the clause was as much about maintaining the deal between French and English that was at the heart of the Confederation agreement itself than about the Catholics who actually lived in what would become the two new provinces. In this courageous stance, Laurier demonstrated that he could see beyond partisanship and expediency to the broader principles at stake.
Clause 16 brought Bennett to one of the fundamental issues of his country’s very being. It lay at the junction of religion, ethnicity, and prejudice, where tolerance and bigotry battle for ascendancy and where identity and, ultimately, national survival is at stake. With Laurier modelling the thoughts and actions of a principled leader, but with his constituency split, Bennett had a decision to make. He said nothing. The controversy raged, but with Laurier’s firmness and Haultain’s refusal to inflame the issue, it slowly receded. In saying nothing, Bennett had avoided involving himself in an issue that could have scarred him.
But public silence did not mean he was doing nothing. Behind the scenes he was again acting the political organizer and pushing those in the ridings to gather volunteers and consider candidates for the first provincial election. He maintained his contact with Borden and broadened his network of political contacts.
In November, Bennett took ill with flu-like symptoms that a doctor, mistakenly as it turned out, diagnosed as appendicitis. Concerns were sufficiently serious as to necessitate a hospital stay. He was then some weeks recovering at home. The illness was never diagnosed. Even from his sickbed he kept up with correspondence dealing with political, business, and legal matters.
While Bennett was still recovering, a convention was held in Calgary, and Bennett’s name was placed in nomination as a candidate for the upcoming provincial election. Bennett had not sought the nomination and stated that the demands of his business were such that he had to decline the honour. He nonetheless promised to continue to devote what time he could to work for the party’s success.
That Bennett’s refusal to accept the nomination could not be interpreted as a turning of his back on politics was seen in the fact that he took time out while visiting his mother for Christmas to sit with a reporter from the Saint John Star. He used a statement he prepared for the paper to break his silence on the matter that was gripping much of the country. He bemoaned the fact that important legislation was being slowed or ignored due to the controversy surrounding the Catholic- and French-school question. He then criticized the federal government for taking up the language-in-schools issue at all when education was clearly a provincial responsibility.
Taking advantage of his being east, federal party strategists invited Bennett to participate in two Ontario by-elections. In both campaigns, with the anti-Catholic Orange Lodge still a powerful presence, the controversy surrounding separate schools was playing a considerable part. Laurier had reworded the more controversial provisions of the legislation to render them more vague without actually changing their intent. The feint was successful in that opposition waned and the Liberal rift was repaired. Sifton rejoined the caucus, although not the cabinet.
However, Laurier’s tinkering allowed Bennett to take to the stump in Ontario and claim with some validity that the Conservatives had stood up to the Liberals in this important manner and forced Laurier to finally acknowledge the importance of provincial rights. Bennett argued that his party had also forced Laurier to recognize the legitimacy of the Protestant majority in determining the type of society in which they wished to live while still allowing for minority rights. In Bennett’s mind, the issue had become simply a legal question regarding the constitutional division of powers and would only be put to rest when religion was removed from the equation.34 This perceived inability of some people to divorce passion from reason would irritate Bennett throughout his life.
Bennett’s Ontario speeches were insignificant in themselves. In fact, the ridings in which he spoke all voted Liberal. But they were important in signalling that the federal Conservative Party brass recognized the potential of the young westerner and, further, that his name was becoming known in yet another province. Borden continued to write and seek his opinion on western matters and Bennett was forthright in dictating long and detailed letters regarding policies he might pursue or even topics that he might address in the House.35
On March 10, 1905, Bennett’s father died. He was only sixty-three. It was a short illness and he suffered little. There is little evidence of the two having being especially close, but Bennett returned to New Brunswick where for nearly a month he acted the family patriarch in dealing with the funeral and the legalities of the will. Except for his sister Mildred, with whom Bennett shared a special love, the family tragedy did nothing to change the cordial but never warm relationships with his other siblings. The death did, however, fortify the already strong bond with his mother. Bennett allowed himself very little time to grieve. By month’s end he was back in Calgary and working the fourteen-hour days and living the monastic life that had become, for him, normal.
ALBERTA
Alberta became a province in September 1905. Bennett again witnessed the power that power allowed when Laurier appointed Liberal George H.V. Bulyea as the province’s first lieutenant-governor and he, in turn, asked Liberal stalwart Alexander Rutherford to form a government. Constituency lines were drawn to the advantage of Liberal candidates and an election was set for November 9.
Meanwhile, with the help of Lougheed’s influence, the firm’s money, and a decided lack of passion among Alberta Conservatives, a convention in Red Deer had chosen Bennett as the new province’s first Conservative Party leader. He really had no competition as neither Haultain nor anyone else of consequence wanted the job. It was a significant honour but a pyrrhic victory, for the party existed more in name than reality. There was little time, less money, and trifling interest in doing much about the problems the party faced before the impending election. With the creation of two provinces out of the old territory, Conservatives had lost the most important issue around which they had rallied. Haultain, who had become a Conservative, although either party would have welcomed him, was not helping matters by wavering not only on whether he would again run for office, but also in what riding, and even in which province. Meanwhile, both infant provinces were suddenly awash in new Liberal money and new Liberal projects that were being showered upon them through partisan largess. Further, the whole country was enjoying yet another year of what many newspapers had taken to calling the Laurier prosperity. Bennett’s uphill road was more like a vertical cliff.
As the fall campaign began, however, Bennett remained confident in his party’s prospects. He also felt good about his chances to retain his seat. He was pleased with his reception wherever he went and bolstered by the number of known Liberals who not only listened during his speeches but actually shook his hand afterwards with expressions of support.36
While Bennett had to travel the province speaking at small gatherings and nomination meetings in attempts to lend his name and talents to lesser and often unknown candidates, his Liberal opponent, prominent businessman and former Calgary mayor William Cushing, was at home in Calgary working. He tirelessly canvassed the streets and knocked on doors in the best retail politics tradition. Every day, Cushing reminded Calgarians that while he and Laurier stood for the building of a second transcontinental line, Bennett’s connections with the CPR prevented him from ever supporting such a policy. Cushing ignored the fact that Bennett had supported the Conservative Party platform plank that advocated ending the CPR’s monopoly and its tax-free status. Cushing was sure, however, to remind listeners of his opponent’s large retainer and of the fact that just two months before, Bennett had been in British Columbia as the CPR’s lawyer, negotiating the purchase of one-and-a-half million acres of land on Vancouver Island for the extension of a railway line from Nanaimo. Cushing also spoke of Bennett’s investments in and legal involvement with a number of other powerful Calgary corporations. He ignored Bennett’s promise to resign all his corporate directorships if he became premier. Despite Bennett’s history of supporting unions and legislation that sought to help working people while standing against unbridled corporate power, the label of big-business lackey that had been foisted on Bennett before and that Cushing was ruthlessly exploiting seemed to resonate with reporters and voters. Then, as now, perception mattered more than fact, and negative campaigning seemed to work.
Bennett continued to work hard throughout the campaign, delivering speech after speech, but he found himself speaking to dwindling crowds. Things became even worse when a Labour candidate entered the race. Now his support was buffeted not only by Cushing’s attacks but by the splitting of the labour vote. The religious-schools question grew in importance as the effectiveness of Bennett’s constitutional argument faded. He was appealing to logic as the crowds increasingly reacted with emotion. The wheels were falling off the campaign.
There was no party organization from which to draw support or advice, and Bennett had either inadequate time or inclination to delegate authority or seek proper help. He was acting as party leader, local and provincial campaign director, candidate, and, through his chequebook, fundraiser. Further, he was also maintaining obligations at his law practice. It was a punishing pace for anyone, even someone of Bennett’s prodigious energy.
It was a Liberal landslide. The Conservatives returned members in only Rosebud and High River. Bennett lost his own seat. Despite all that was stacked against him and all the advantages of the Liberal candidate, the Calgary numbers were surprisingly close. Cushing won 906 votes to Bennett’s 890. The Labour candidate, A.D. Macdonald, won 354. There were 300 spoiled ballots. If the Labour candidate had not entered the race, Bennett would most certainly have carried the day. Because the results were so close and due to the unprecedented number of spoiled ballots, a recount was automatically undertaken. The effort only changed the margin of Cushing’s victory, which rose from 16 to 37.
Borden wrote to console Bennett and received a response that was typical of the man. He expressed no regret for having entered the battle and having fought the good fight but grumbled that the Liberals played dirty, spent outrageous amounts of money, and that the people of Alberta had made a choice that they would soon regret.37 The contradictory emotions of humble resignation and bitter anger were rolled into a ball and hurled with the urgency of his disappointment at the painful defeat. A similar self-destructive ball would be thrown at every loss with which he was presented.
But there was one more letter. Bennett informed Borden that he was quitting politics — and he did. He returned to his law office and complex business involvements with what appeared to be a shooting star of a political career destined to be a mere footnote for his resumé. He was to spend the next four years in the political wilderness.
Losing a contest is seldom a tragedy for a man of confidence, principle, and faith. Such men recognize the difference between battles and wars. And in that recognition a loss can become a teacher, offering the redemptive development of one’s character and a healthy reconsideration of the tactics needed to pursue a goal still firmly envisioned. In Bennett’s case, this development was coupled with his prideful refusal to accept defeat. Together, the two greased the wheels of his return.
But his return would have to wait. The voracious reader continued to use mail order to purchase an impressive number of books from England and Toronto. He even began to occasionally read novels. He sometimes teared up reading the novels of Robert Louis Stevenson.38 Bennett also maintained his practice of quiet generosity. He heard, for instance, about a high school football team doing well and so sent them an unsolicited $10.39 He mailed another $10 to a church in need of repair in the tiny town of Bowden.40 He sent $10 to a church in Olds, which earlier in the year he had helped to incorporate as a town.41
All the while, despite a small fire in the law office that destroyed many important documents, he continued to build his firm and professional reputation. His intelligence, vision, luck, connections, alliance with Max Aitken, and his fourteen-hour days had combined with Calgary’s boom years to make Lougheed Bennett the most prosperous law firm in the city. In July 1904, he boasted in a letter to Aitken that of the twenty-four cases on the June docket, his firm had twenty and had lost but one.42 The CPR remained the firm’s premier client and Bennett’s personal retainer had climbed to what at that time was a staggering $10,000 a year. This connection led to the winning of other clients of note, which, beyond the banks and insurance companies already mentioned, included the Canadian Pacific’s Western Division and the British Columbia Land and Irrigation departments. Bennett and Lougheed had also renegotiated the terms of their partnership so that the senior partner, who was spending precious little time on the firm’s affairs, received an annual payment of $3,000 a year while the rest of the proceeds went to Bennett. As the firm continued to expand, Bennett hired H.A. Allison in 1902, W.T. Taylor in 1905, and W.H. McLaws in 1907.
Aitken and Bennett were shrewd businessmen and financial entrepreneurs. They were ideal partners. Aitken was terrific at making friends and finding investors. Bennett was adept at seeing opportunities and recognizing potential in new or small companies. Both were able to see where amalgamations would create economic synergy. This marriage of skills led to a successful pattern. Bennett and Aitken would negotiate the deals, and then Aitken would sell stocks and bonds to eastern and British business people, with Bennett personally overseeing the growth of the ideas and new companies. They would then share the profits. There were always profits.
There were many deals, but three of special significance involved Canada Cement, Calgary Power, and Alberta Pacific Grain Company. All were wildly successful as Bennett and Aitken were outliers in the perfect place at the perfect time and at the perfect age to cash in on the explosion of economic activity that had gripped the prairies in the first decades of the twentieth century. Bennett served as legal counsel for Calgary Cement and for a time the company president. Besides his salary and fees, he earned an annual dividend of $33,000. For ten years Bennett was president of the Calgary Power Company, which began as a small electrical-generating plant on the Bow River, supplying power to a Calgary Cement plant. Under Bennett’s leadership, it grew so that it was providing electricity to most of the city. The success of the Alberta Pacific Grain Company cashed in on the enormous increase in wheat and grain production that the influx of immigrants had brought to the prairies beginning in 1897. Its success can be measured by the fact that when the company was sold to Britain’s Spillers Milling and Associated Industries in 1924, Bennett earned a capital gain of $1.35 million.43
In these and other business arrangements with which the two were involved, Bennett’s hands remained clean and his reputation unsullied, while the Canadian and later the British business community’s opinion of Aitken grew increasingly suspect. The merger that created Canada Cement, for instance, was a complex and nasty affair that began with Sir Sandford Fleming, the CPR, and the Bank of Montreal seeking to take advantage of Aitken, but ended with him cleverly besting them all and winning an overwhelming stake in the lucrative Canadian industry. The stock and bond issue that created the new company was the largest Canada had seen to that point.44 He was terrific at ingratiating himself with older and more powerful men, but equally adept at making enemies. Aitken would suffer the indignity of being seen by many in the business and political elite as a clever usurper, casual with the truth, seldom to be trusted, and always out for the next big deal. H.G. Wells once quipped, “When Max dies, he will be kicked out of paradise for trying to set up a merger between heaven and hell.”45 Through it all, Bennett remained a father figure for Aitken and the greatest influence in his life.46 But, much to Bennett’s consternation, although Aitken benefitted from their many deals, he never included his friend as a full partner.
An initiative that did not work out was Bennett’s attempt to do as many of his political rivals had done, most notably Clifford Sifton, and purchase a newspaper. With Lougheed, Bennett bought 46 per cent of Calgary’s Albertan. On seeing what the two Conservatives were up to, however, Liberal W.M. Davidson, who was the editor of the paper, put together a group that held on to the remaining shares. Bennett later had to suffer the indignity of a newspaper in which he was heavily invested trashing him in its editorials and affording lavish coverage of his Liberal opponents. Bennett told a friend, “No dividend for me ever came out of ‘The Albertan’ except curses.”47 Bennett was later able to divest himself of the Albertan shares and purchase a controlling interest in the Regina Star. Although this created a Conservative mouthpiece in Saskatchewan, it was another poor investment. Bennett tried for years to dump the stock and finally sold it in 1939 at a loss that he estimated at approximately $100,000.48
Despite occasional disappointments, his law practice, land deals, and business activities meant that by 1911 Bennett was rich. He was collecting about $50,000 a year in dividends while earning legal fees, retainers, and income from his directorships. At forty-one, he no longer needed to worry about making a living and so was able to concern himself with matters beyond his personal well-being. And the only matters that interested him were political. Bennett made no secret of the fact that he wished to someday return to politics. While tending to business activities, he also took actions that demonstrated his desire to take more control of the manner in which the press portrayed him. This effort was seen in his seeking out a relationship with an important Calgary opinion maker, Bob Edwards.
Edwards was a short, hard-drinking, plain-spoken newspaperman who had brought from his native Scotland both a rolling brogue on his tongue and a thick chip on his shoulder. His Eye Opener was modelled on the scurrilous yellow journals that were popular in Britain at the time and still command a wide readership through selling titillating tales of the rich and famous.
Like many of his readers, Edwards was repulsed by the power of the CPR that allowed it to set freight rates and own or control so much land. Edwards attacked the corporation whenever and however he could, including through sketches and horrid details of every train accident he could find, especially those that took place at dangerous CPR crossings that bisected downtown Calgary. When a week went by without an accident, he would make that the blaring headline. Edwards often personally attacked Bennett as the company’s most well-known spokesperson. One front page had a picture of a train mishap in downtown Calgary and beside it a photograph of Bennett. The caption under the accident photo was “A Train Wreck” and under the picture of Bennett was “Another Train Wreck.”
Always sensitive to the slightest slight, Bennett was enraged to find his name being not only slandered in columns but also in the derogatory cartoons that sometimes made their way to the front page. Bennett forbade the paper from being sold on CPR property and Edwards found himself to be the only newspaperman in Alberta without a free CPR rail pass. Following these actions, Edwards focused even more vitriolic attacks on Bennett as the face of the otherwise faceless CPR. Bennett had not yet learned the lesson of the truism that one should never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.
After his slim defeat in 1905, however, Bennett pondered the degree to which the Eye Opener had soured public opinion on his candidacy. He decided to do something about it in a way that his younger self would not have contemplated. He asked good friend and prominent Conservative Paddy Nolan to go to the Sunday-morning Salvation Army service that Edwards was known to attend and invite the newspaperman to lunch at the Alberta Hotel. Edwards arrived to find not only Nolan and Bennett but several of Bennett’s business and political friends already dug in and waiting. Handshakes and jovial introductions brought Edwards into the circle. He demonstrated his quick wit in responding to Bennett’s invitation to say grace by clearing his throat and whispering, “Mr. Chairman, I’d prefer that the good Lord didn’t know I was here.”49 Great laughter greeted Edwards’s quip. The mood remained light as the luncheon proceeded with Bennett and his cronies relating a number of self-deprecating anecdotes. Bennett told a story of Paddy Nolan refusing to take a case in which a farmer wanted to sue the CPR after a train had run down several of his horses. Nolan explained that if the man’s horses could not outrun a CPR train then he was better to be rid of them.
Although Bennett touched not a drop, the gin, scotch, and wine flowed with the stories and by the end of the long and sumptuous meal a corner had been turned. After that day, the Eye Opener printed not a single damning story about Bennett. In fact, when Bennett returned to the political arena, Bob Edwards was one of his staunchest supporters. He even worked on his campaigns. Much later, Bennett was the executor of Edwards’s will.
Bennett’s growing political maturity bred a wisdom that spawned caution. And it was this caution that led him to refuse offers to become a candidate in the 1908 federal election. The time was not right. Business demands were too heavy, he explained, plus the chances for victory were slim. He also resisted pressure to resume his position as Alberta’s Conservative Party leader.
Finally, in February 1909, with his business affairs in order and after having satisfied himself that he had a reasonable chance for victory, he accepted the nomination of his party as a candidate in the upcoming provincial election. At that time, two members represented each riding and so Dr. T.H. Blow became his Conservative running mate. Bennett campaigned vigorously but seemed resigned to a poor showing for his party overall. His speeches often asked voters to return more Conservatives to Edmonton in order to form a more potent opposition to what he conceded would be yet another Rutherford Liberal administration. He criticized the Liberals for favouring Edmonton over Calgary and, again ignoring his work for the CPR, for doing little to combat outrageous railway rate hikes.
When the votes were counted in March 1909, the Liberals had won thirty-two seats in the province, with one independent, and only two Conservatives. Bennett was one of the two. His somewhat surprising support cut across class lines and across the urban-rural cleavage. He won 2,579 votes, only 153 behind first-place finisher and incumbent Liberal W.H. Cushing. Bennett became the junior member for Calgary and in February 1910 took his seat in the provincial legislature. His political career was back on track.
BACK IN THE ARENA
Bennett had no sooner made his way up to Edmonton when a great scandal erupted that provided an opportunity for him to demonstrate his emergent political skills. The Alberta and Great Waterways Railway had been created by the Rutherford government in the previous session. It was meant to fill gaps in service left by the CPR, Grand Trunk, and Canadian Northern, none of which saw the value in extending lines into the province’s sparsely populated southern plains. While Rutherford’s idea was fine, problems arose when it came to light that the syndicate created to carry out the financing and construction of the lines was tied to a Liberal member from Peace River, that businessmen from Kansas stood to make outrageous profits, and further, that the province had waived the usual provision that a company must meet proscribed financial limits in terms of credit and cash on hand in order to offer shares. Ironically, a Liberal member began it all with seemingly innocuous questions that surprisingly led to the embarrassed premier literally fleeing the House.
All legislative activity screeched to a halt as the Opposition tore into the government. Bennett bided his time. Then word went out that the great orator was planning to speak. The galleries filled and an overflow crowd gathered outside the legislature building. As he walked to his seat, he was welcomed by a standing ovation from the boisterous galleries that ignored the speaker’s pleas for order.
When he was recognized and rose to begin, the House dramatically fell silent. Bennett then demonstrated the beauty and power that oratory can wield when style meets substance. He began quietly, slowly, reviewing the facts of the case that were then known. He meticulously built detail upon detail, arguing that the scandal was merely one example of the shady manner in which the Rutherford government conducted all of the people’s business. Then, demonstrating the well-honed prosecutorial style he had developed, and the articulate phrasing with which he had seemingly been born, he tore into the government with example after example of corruption and graft. He savaged cabinet members involved in the scheme not only for their insalubrious, if not illegal, deal making, but also for the unfulfilled contracts that had rendered obscenely high and yet fully paid fees. He laid out evidence proving that the deal had left the province holding all of the risk while able to reap few of the potential rewards.
Bennett then returned to the theme of broader corruption. He went up and down the government benches relating sordid tales about one redfaced member after another. He scolded Liberal MLA Jack Hopkins, for instance, for having demanded from the Calgary business community a $12,000 donation to the Liberal Party as the price for his government paying the cost of staffing a telephone switchboard system which was then being contemplated for the city.
Bennett was interrupted many times for applause. There were many shouts and taunts from the government benches but he pressed relentlessly on until finally, five hours after he had begun, he took his seat to the sound of thunderous and sustained applause from his benches and the public galleries. A government had been shamed. A star had been born.
The Calgary Herald reported the next day, “When Bennett finished his wonderful speech, he had torn the contract and agreement to shreds.”50 The Edmonton Journal wrote, “Never before had the members of the legislature and those who crowded into every nook of the building witnessed such a display of forensic eloquence as was given in the afternoon and evening session . . . in the splendour of the diction and the physical endurance of the orator it established a high water mark for Parliamentary debate in Alberta . . . He held his listeners spellbound from start to finish.”51
Although the government was rocked, it reacted with the old trick of appointing a commission to steal the heat and light from the legislature and front pages. The commission was charged with investigating the legality of the contracts and the probity of the ministers involved in their negotiation. The premier and cabinet ministers were able to avoid sticky questions by asking for patience as the commission did its work. Four months of government bobbing and weaving ended when Lieutenant-Governor Bulyea appeared unexpectedly in the House one afternoon and announced that he had accepted Rutherford’s resignation. Several cabinet ministers had quit as well. Arthur Sifton was asked to form a government and the House was immediately prorogued. Newspapers printed condemnations of the actions and Conservatives screamed. But as the media and parties learned in late 2008 and again in 2010 when another leader on the run used prorogation to buy time and escape political peril, there was nothing that could be done.
The three-person commission took its time and eventually reported that while many members of the government had been incompetent, none had been criminal. As apparently ironclad as Bennett’s case had seemed, and as brilliant as his speech had been, when the House finally reconvened in late November he was unable to move sufficient votes to carry the Opposition’s motion that would have effectively ended the government. And so it limped on.
The episode was crucial to Bennett’s career for the role it played in introducing so many more Canadians to him and his talents while acting as yet another learning opportunity for the young politician. Bennett was improving and was impressive, but his handling of the scandal demonstrated that he was still suffering from a malady that is common among those with a keen wit, an extraordinary memory, and dexterity with language. That is, they are sometimes perceived by others to be more concerned with displaying their skills than committed to the content of their argument. The Herald made that very point after the government had saved itself by salvaging enough support to survive crucial confidence votes. In its summary of another torrid week in the House, it reported,
Bennett had a handicap, which is granted to few men in debate. His ability is recognized to such an extent that even when he lays a problem bare, talking in language that any man can understand, the rank and file of the remaining Government supporters, though they can see the picture of what he painted as clearly as if it stood before them, refused to be influenced by him because they feared his cleverness was simply twisting things to appear his way.52
It is a burden to be respected for one’s intelligence and eloquence while not being trusted due to those very same qualities. But another of Bennett’s qualities was soon to be demonstrated: his steely determination to see justice done, as he perceived it, and his stubborn refusal to accept defeat until all options had been fully played out.
While the assembly was prorogued, Premier Arthur Sifton had made a fateful decision. He noticed that the $7.4 million that had been raised for the then defunct Alberta and Great Waterways Railway project was still resting as cash in three Edmonton banks while also sitting as debt on the province’s books. He decided that the money could be used for whatever purpose his cabinet deemed appropriate. Consequently, at the first session of the new assembly he proposed a bill to allow the expenditure of the money, and his Liberal majority saw it quickly passed. The next day, representatives from the government appeared at three banks to collect the booty. All three had already consulted lawyers and determined that the government was acting illegally, and so they refused to release the funds. Having anticipated the banks’ refusal to fork over the cash, the government had already filed a statement of claim with the Alberta Supreme Court naming the Royal Bank of Canada, the largest of the three, as the defendant. It was the first time a province had sued a bank.
Bennett took the lead in the Conservative Party’s response to this newest twist in the now months-old scandal. He also offered himself and was quickly accepted by the Royal Bank to appear as its lead counsel. His detailed and impassioned case before Mr. Justice Stuart was based upon two arguments. First, he maintained that the original payment from investors on the bonds in question technically still resided with the investor’s bank, the Bank of Montreal in Quebec, and so the Royal Bank was quite within its rights to refuse to forward money that it did not have to the government. Second, and more politically and legally damning, was that Sifton’s government was acting beyond its constitutional powers in passing a bill that demanded that the bank transfer funds to the province’s general revenue fund. The law constituted a rewriting of banking rules and procedures, and banking was a federal responsibility.
The trial that ensued allowed Bennett to shine yet again, but this time he managed to do so by sticking to facts and avoiding rhetorical flourishes. He picked the government’s arguments apart. The scandal became even tawdrier as it was revealed that the railway company had done many things that Rutherford and Sifton had claimed it had not done, most significantly, submitting plans directly to the government regarding lines to be constructed and kickbacks to be paid. The embarrassed Rutherford squirmed when it was shown that his government had indeed received the documents but that they had been mislaid, only to be found months later crammed under the Speaker’s chair. But revelations such as this and many others were political, not legal, and the legality of the case was Judge Stuart’s only concern. He decided that both of Bennett’s arguments were without merit and so he found for the government. His judgment even provided for interest on the funds that had been tied up since the case had begun.
Bennett was appalled, but he would not surrender, and so continued the fight for years. He prepared an appeal that took some time to be heard until finally, in April 1912, three judges unanimously dismissed Bennett’s arguments. At that point the Royal Bank could have cut its losses and saved more legal bills, but Bennett encouraged one last move — an application to what at that time was Canada’s court of last resort, Westminster’s Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
In the late winter of 1912 Bennett was in England arguing the case once again, but this time before Privy Council justices who were far removed in terms of distance, time, and experience from the messy partisanship of Alberta politics. Bennett was victorious. In the case of Rex v. Royal Bank, Lord Chancellor Haldane handed down a unanimous verdict that vindicated Bennett. Haldane’s January 1913 ruling stated that the money that had been invested was for one specific purpose, that the funds legally lay with the bank in Montreal, and that when the venture for which the funds had been raised and invested had ended, the government had lost all claim to those funds. The decision stated that the Alberta government’s bill was unconstitutional as it attempted to rewrite federal Bank Act rules to allow the moving of funds from one bank to another and then to its own accounts. Its actions, in short, constituted an attempt to illegally and unconstitutionally steal money, just as Bennett had contended from the start.
Bennett’s victory had taken steadfast patience, legal skill, and years, but it was absolute. The corruption in the government had been revealed and the company had been exposed for the fraud it had always been. The Alberta and Great Waterways Railway Company later defaulted on $7.4 million of its bonds, leaving taxpayers to pick up the sordid pieces.
Bennett’s notoriety had increased again and this time through a national and then international victory. He took pride in the triumph and great satisfaction from a note he received from Lord Macnaghten, who was among the most learned and respected members of the Privy Council. Macnaghten wrote, “May I take the liberty of congratulating you on your appearance before this P.C. this afternoon. I thought you argued your point extremely well — and I may add we all thought so.”53 From his speech in the House to his arguments two years later in London, Bennett had been like a pit bull with a bone in its mighty jaws. That tenacity would prove to be both a strength and weakness as his career proceeded.
TO OTTAWA
As the railway scandal and its court challenges were playing themselves out, Calgary boomed. Still based on the wealth of the farming community that surrounded it and the financial, manufacturing, and railway interests that supported it, the city boasted a population of around 47,000. More of its streets were paved and more of the old wooden structures were gone, replaced by many of the multi-storey brick and sandstone buildings that remain today. Even its social scene was improving, with more plays, operas, and vaudeville shows making their way to small venues and to the new 1,500-seat Sherman Grand Theatre. But it was still a western town. Its heart was in the rodeos and related outdoor shows that would later become the famous Stampede.
The vibrancy of the young city stirred plans and dreams within those who were fuelling its spectacular development, and among them was Bennett. The Great Waterways Railway scandal had brought his name to the headlines and his court challenges were keeping it there. As the 1911 federal election drew near, he was a viable federal candidate. Bennett was ready to seek the challenge of federal politics. He had grown tired of serving as the head of an Alberta Conservative Party that had no real prospects of ever forming a government.54
Beyond personal ambition, the issue that spurred his desire to run in the federal election — and one that would remain a motivating factor in his political career — was his concern about the continental pull of the United States. He saw it as a negative force that was drawing Canada away from its historical and familial ties to Britain and the economic and military security of the Empire. Bennett made the necessary moves to have himself nominated as the federal Conservative candidate for his West Calgary riding.
The 1911 campaign became a referendum on Prime Minister Laurier’s support for the free trade agreement that he had negotiated with the United States. In April, a special session of the American Congress had been convened to ratify the reciprocity agreement. The deal had aroused fears in many Canadians who wondered if Canada could withstand the onslaught of unfettered American imports. Union Jacks were unfurled as arguments were heard about the reciprocity agreement tying the country too closely to its southern neighbour while turning its back on mother Britain. This was a time, it must be recalled, when British Canadians grew from childhood hearing stories at home and at school about British heroes, studied British history, read British literature, and pledged loyalty to the British royal family. Bennett was among those who came to maturity at a time when the British Empire was number one in the world, with no apparent or significant competition. The tales of Rudyard Kipling and the notions of the “white man’s burden” did not induce the uncomfortable squirming they do today, but rather a swelling in the breast of those proud to count themselves among a people so powerful and noble.
It was from this emotional core at the centre of Canada’s dominant political and social culture that was heard the contention that the free trade agreement was nothing but a giant step toward annexation and a repudiation of all things British and thus all things good. President Taft had hurt Laurier’s and free trade’s cause by remarking that reciprocity would “. . . make Canada only an adjunct of the United States.”55 In case any had missed the president’s remarks, Conservative papers delighted in printing the comments of House of Representatives Speaker Champ Clarke who said, “We are preparing to annex Canada.”56
The Liberal Party disintegrated as Clifford Sifton led eighteen MPs to sign a manifesto condemning the free trade agreement. Further, Laurier’s Naval Service Act angered some supporters. In pledging that Britain could employ Canada’s tiny navy in times of trouble it promised too much, while not providing the cash to build dreadnoughts, as Westminster had requested, led others to argue that it did too little. In Quebec, the Liberal’s electoral stronghold, Henri Bourassa and his nationalists were successfully encouraging Quebecers to dismiss Laurier and the Liberals as acting against the interests of the province.
Bennett did not need instruction from his party to oppose reciprocity and closer ties to the United States. His campaign allowed him to bring to the fore his lifelong support for an increased Canadian role in the British Empire and his visceral beliefs about the importance of Canada’s links to the mother country. Bennett believed as a young man, and maintained throughout his life, that Canada’s future in foreign affairs, including international trade, should be forged as a strong and independent Dominion within a strong and united Empire. In this belief he found inspiration and leadership from British statesmen such as influential Tory Joseph Chamberlain. In 1903, Chamberlain had summarized his party’s notions on the subject as “Commercial Union on the basis of preferences between Britain and the Dominions and Colonies.”57 Upon reading of the Tory’s renewed emphasis on developing imperial ties, Bennett wrote a personal letter of support to Chamberlain. Aitken later observed, “Bennett believed fervently that Canada’s future lay with the Founderland across the ocean. He, too, looked East and turned his eyes away from the dazzling prospects held out by the nation to the South — the United States.”58
Bennett was not anti-American but rather pro-Canadian. He saw the maintenance of British ties as the only way Canada could survive, given the enormity of American economic and social might. His desire to forge greater links to Britain reflected neither an overweening, blind love for the Empire nor visceral hatred of the United States, but rather his Canadian nationalism and patriotic pride.
In private letters written throughout his life, Bennett explained his unflinching belief in protecting and enhancing Canada’s future through the development of imperial commercial ties. On November 13, 1910, for instance, he argued,
If the Empire is to endure, the self-governing nations which compose it must in some way be federated. I believe that Canada awaits the coming of a man with a vision, a statesman with a revelation, one who sees our destiny and who will arouse the latent patriotism and pride of our race and by appealing to all that is best within us lead us to an Imperial Federation where among the nations that comprise the Union Canada must take a foremost place and in time direct the larger destinies of our world-wide Empire.59
In the spring of 1911, with Laurier’s reciprocity negotiations under way but the election yet to be called, Aitken had written a series of letters to Bennett encouraging him to initiate negotiations with Borden regarding the creation of an Imperial Preference Party. He argued that the party would do some good in promoting the idea among Canadians but that even if it was not altogether successful, “. . . we can subsequently retire from the Canadian Parliament and be welcomed in England. . . . This is a great chance to carry on the fight and force England’s hand.”60 Bennett rejected this idea but the exchanges left little doubt as to his fealty to the notion of an imperial commercial union. It was as a proponent of that idea, and fervent opponent of Laurier’s continentalist vision, that he entered the 1911 contest and through it became a voice on the federal stage. It was also one of the many instances in which the notion of moving to England played in his mind.
Despite significant reservations about and opposition to Laurier’s reciprocity agreement in most parts of the country, Bennett’s stand against it was a politically courageous one for an Alberta politician. The West was at the time, and for decades would remain, very much an agrarian society. And farmers were generally pleased with Laurier’s reciprocity deal. It would see their wheat open to the great American market a hundred miles south rather than having to suffer what many believed were criminally unfair freight rates that ate their profits when they shipped their crops over a thousand miles east. In Alberta’s farming communities, this economic consideration was at war with the spiritual ties to Britain. The spiritual tug remained strong across the vast prairie that, despite the waves of European settlers Clifford Sifton had directed west, was still predominately British and Protestant. Discussions that took place in newspapers, barbershops, and over farm fences weighed the power of money against this sentimental yearning. Liberal politicians were advocating head over heart while Bennett tried to link the two. His goal was to challenge voters to see the congruity between maintaining emotional ties to Britain while addressing Canada’s trade concerns through the adoption of imperial trade preferences that would open more markets to Canadian commodities. It would be a trick, for in the West his was a brave but lonely voice.
Laurier was sixty-nine years old but still energetic and charismatic and many were moved by his invitation to, according to his campaign slogan, follow his white plume. But Henri Bourassa’s actions in Quebec, the fears about reciprocity nearly everywhere, and the novelty of Robert Borden’s relatively new presence on the national stage were more than the old leader and tired Liberals, who after all had been in power for fifteen years, could handle. One could sense a shift in the public mood.
That shift could be felt in Calgary. Bennett had worked hard to win the support of the city’s press and had been successful in doing so. He was amused by a backhanded compliment afforded him by the Eye Opener, which continued to enjoy influence that belied the size of its readership or the quality of its writing. On August 12, the paper’s subscribers read,
The storms of political conflict have gentled him and he is not the uproarious, dictatorial, flamboyant individual of the old days. It may be putting it crudely, but nevertheless truthfully, to say that Bennett is psychologically ready for the job. . . . Were we to be asked what is Bennett’s chief qualification to represent a western constituency in the Dominion parliament, we should say that it was his clear discernment of popular rights and his gift of fighting eloquence. This is a powerful combination.61
Bennett’s campaign also benefited from the ridiculously one-sided reporting of the anti-free trade Calgary Herald. Bennett’s speeches were reprinted on the front page while his opponents were ignored. His events were advertised beforehand, then lavishly praised afterwards. Meanwhile, the paper would run only paid Liberal ads; other than that, it was as if the Liberal Party did not exist. Only the Albertan maintained its staunch anti-Bennett stance.
Bennett ran against Liberal candidate I.S.G. Van Wart, a successful Calgary businessman and president of the chamber of commerce. He was able to compete with Bennett in winning business supporters while also rallying pro-reciprocity farmers to his candidacy. However, Van Wart was unimpressive as a speaker and clumsy in his personal politicking. Bennett campaigned assiduously. He often spoke at two or more events a day. His mainstreeting techniques were well honed and his uncanny ability to remember names helped him to connect with voters. His speeches were often interrupted by hecklers but his fiery passion, faultless memory, and ruthless wit often rendered the interjections the highlights of his events. Those who doubted Bennett’s version of the facts were bombarded with statistics. Questions regarding his patriotic devotion were turned aside with detailed explanations of his being a fourth generation and proud Canadian. Taunts about his wealth and corporate connections invited long reviews of the legislation he had championed and actions he had taken in support of working people. A nickname he had acquired in the 1898 territorial election, and that had surfaced from time to time over the years, returned — Bonfire Bennett. And many a heckler was burned.
So much interest was aroused by the campaign that on voting day a thousand people blocked traffic as they huddled before a large up-to-the-minute-results board erected by the Calgary Herald. By six o’clock the individual poll tallies were not all in but the verdict was clear. Bennett had crushed his Liberal rival. In the end he won with a plurality of 2,500 votes.
Bennett was cheered as he made his way down Centre Street to the Herald office. Another cheer rose as a second-floor window opened and Bennett leaned out to deliver an unscripted victory speech. He ended with an invitation to the crowd to join him on a ten-block walk to a celebratory party at the Sherman Rink. Bennett rode most of the way on the shoulders of joyous supporters who stepped along to the refrains of a band that played jaunty tunes through the night.
While Bennett celebrated in Calgary, Conservatives across the country were also able to smile. One hundred and thirty-three ridings had elected Conservative members and there were only eighty-eight Liberals. Canadians did not trust the free trade deal and seemed to be as tired of Laurier as he had looked throughout the campaign. For other voters, the Liberals had simply been in power for too long and it was time for a change. Benefiting from the Canadian habit of kicking a government out as much as voting a new one in, the Conservative Party recovered from the slide it had been on since the death of the iconic Sir John A. Macdonald in 1891.
Bennett had reason to be proud of his West Calgary win, for the Alberta Conservative Party was indeed a shabby beast on which to latch one’s political wagon. Many of the province’s constituencies did not even have viable riding associations. Bennett had personally financed his entire campaign. He was the only successful Conservative candidate in the province.
While wise enough never to express the opinion in public, Bennett and his supporters were confident that his political, business, and legal experience, personal ties to Borden, and, perhaps more important, the political need to assuage Alberta would result in a cabinet appointment. But Borden had other plans. Senator James Lougheed was appointed minister without portfolio. He had been the Conservative leader of the Senate and the appointment rendered him the first Alberta Conservative to serve as a member of a federal cabinet. He retained his leadership role in the Senate and his cabinet post until the Conservatives were voted from office in 1921.
So while Bennett was happy to be travelling to Ottawa to take the next step in his political career, he went hurt and resentful. He needed to swallow that negative emotion so as to remain respectful to his leader while also appearing pleased for his friend and business partner. He also needed to maintain a wariness of other young men whose ambitions burned as fervently as his own. In Ottawa, the Opposition is the known enemy and thus one against which an easy defence can be made. The more dangerous foes are those in one’s own caucus whose aspirations render them at once both voting sheep and Machiavellian jackals. A smile is often more dangerous than a sneer.