The 1920s are often seen through the prism of the prosperity that by mid-decade most regions of the country enjoyed. They are recalled as an exciting time of new technological wizardry, of bush planes and automobiles that opened wilderness to tourists, and of rollicking popular culture through which Canadians were outraged by flappers, amused by Charlie Chaplin, and later enthralled by talkies. Canadians cheered at their radios as the Ottawa Senators won yet another Stanley Cup. They cheered again as province after province revoked prohibition laws, allowing them to hoist their first legal pint in years. Of course, the American Constitution still dictated thirst, so many adventurous maritime fishermen ran rum down the coast, earning more in a night with their booty of booze than in a year with their nets. Samuel Bronfman continued to bootleg his way to wealth and the Seagram’s empire. Al Capone was apparently in tunnels beneath Moose Jaw, although when asked about Canada he claimed to not even know what street it was on.

But not far beneath the veneer of exciting times, the country was splintering. The First World War had been devastating. Just over 60,000 of Canada’s young men lay slaughtered on the fields of France and Belgium. Their bravery on every field of battle, coupled finally with the genius of their own generals at Vimy Ridge, had earned respect among both allies and enemies and caused Canadian chests to swell in a way they had never done before — with patriotism that was not British but Canadian. Even beyond the loss of so many from that generation who were killed or suffered physical or emotional wounds from which they would never recover, the country had been torn by the decision to enact conscription. Thousands mourned the loss of loved ones taken by the flu. The country had surrendered to the devil’s call of racism and nativism and imprisoned thousands of loyal Ukrainian and German Canadians who were suddenly deemed enemy aliens. Further, like every other country involved in the war, a decision had been made to turn away from long-established economic practices and gold-standard rules in order to allow inflation and debt to pay for it all. Everyone would worry about costs later. But then later arrived.

So the postwar years began as if the country were waking up with a hangover from a party it had not really enjoyed. Income tax had been implemented as a temporary measure to deal with the shortage of revenue, but the initiative did not take effect until 1920. Even then the amount was so low as to be a nuisance rather than a source of substantial government income. Like every other country that had involved itself in the war, Canada slid into a postwar recession as it adjusted to changes and challenges none had ever known.

The economic hard times and readjustments were felt to different degrees and in different ways in various regions of the country, but none was untouched. The angst that challenge and change were visiting upon people was at the heart of the violent 1919 Winnipeg General Strike and the dramatic rise in the size and power of labour unions everywhere from British Columbia’s lumber camps to Ontario’s manufacturing Golden Horseshoe to Cape Breton’s coal mines. With the emergent influence of organized labour came new political parties that sought to speak for the growing working class. The Communist Party of Canada was born in a Guelph, Ontario, barn in 1921, but soon its power would be seen in the sway it held in a number of industrial unions. Its leader, the charismatic and irascible Tim Buck, would become a household name. And from the hardscrabble streets of Winnipeg’s north end came Methodist minister J.S. Woodsworth and labour organizer A.A. Heaps, who as Labour Party candidates running under the banner “Human Needs Before Property Rights,” were elected to federal office that same year.

The West was especially hard hit. While he continued to increase his wealth, Bennett noted the difficult time fellow westerners were experiencing. In a 1922 Christmas letter to Beaverbrook’s secretary he called the situation on the prairies “. . . the worst it has ever been in the history of this country.”1 Bennett reported that the population of Calgary and Alberta was actually shrinking, that the province was $40 million in debt, and that the city of Calgary’s debt had topped $25 million. There were crop failures causing troubled times to the point of starvation in some rural areas. He wrote of reports that cattle were being shot because they could not be fed. The postwar recession was the prime motivating factor in the creation of cooperative movements such as the Alberta Wheat Pool. In 1923, under the leadership of the charismatic Henry Wise Wood, it sold one-dollar shares to farmers who were pleased to be taking control of their livelihood after years of what they saw as eastern and corporate greed.

Proving that the war’s Union government had truly broken the traditional parties’ hold on Canadians, the United Farmers of Ontario formed the country’s largest provincial government under the leadership of Ernest (E.C.) Drury in 1919. Then in 1922, proving that that success was not a regional fluke, John Bracken led the United Farmers of Manitoba to victory and formed another province’s government. Meanwhile, upset by what he believed was the Borden government’s unwillingness to adequately address agrarian issues, Minister of Agriculture Thomas Crerar split from both the Union government and the Liberals. He returned to Winnipeg, and in 1920 became the first leader of the Progressive Party. In the 1921 federal election, the new party sent sixty-nine MPs to Ottawa not only from the west but also from Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia.

The 1920s were roaring all right. They roared with widows, orphans, and the shattered minds and bodies of veterans. They roared with economic instability, violent strikes, and the redrawing of the political map in ways that left nothing that could be safely predicted. At least Chaplin was funny.

1925 ELECTION

It was in this mixed-up and topsy-turvy milieu in which everyone seemed to be changing his or her mind about something that Richard Bennett changed his. With no apparent consultation with anyone, and certainly no explanation, Bennett reconsidered Meighen’s repeated and insistent invitations to run. He decided to end his declared retirement from public life and offer himself in the 1925 federal election.

Prime Minister Mackenzie King began the campaign with a confident slogan that spoke to people’s growing unease and desire for stability: “Unity — Moderation — Progress.” Like so many of his speeches the slogan hinted at a promise of something while actually saying nothing. While the smaller parties did what they could to attract attention to their particular areas of concern, Mackenzie King and Meighen seemed content to ignore the cleavages of class, gender, and race and argue the old issues of taxation, tariffs, railways, and immigration.2 In so doing, they sought votes by asking people to join them on a journey with their eyes not on the horizon before them but on the dust behind.

As the campaign began, the theme that emerged in the West and was soon felt throughout the country was anti-Americanism. In 1922, the American Congress had passed, and President Harding had signed, the Fordney-McCumber Act. The new legislation had raised tariffs on a host of goods from around the world including products that Canadian companies had been selling over the southern border. Most important among them were the essential staples upon which the Canadian economy relied — wheat, lumber, and fish. National political leaders stumbled over one another in criticizing the protectionist action and in making pledges to address it with retaliatory actions of their own. World tariffs and non-tariff barriers began to rise.

The Fordney-McCumber Act was among the first major steps world governments took to win votes at home by enacting protectionist policies that pretended to guard domestic jobs but in the end resulted in destroying those jobs by slowing international trade and commerce. By the decade’s end, protectionist trade policies and practices played a major role in turning what could have been a minor challenge into a devastating global disaster.

Bennett had won his West Calgary nomination by acclamation. Meanwhile, Joseph Shaw, the Labour candidate who had defeated Bennett in the controversial 1921 contest, had proven unspectacular as a member of Parliament and constituency man. Further, the Progressive Party was in trouble. Its leader had resigned and a number of Alberta and Saskatchewan members had become Liberals as Mackenzie King deftly stole Progressive policies and thus the party’s raison d’être. Further, like a dog that had finally caught the car it had been chasing, the United Farmers of Alberta was imploding due to internal party squabbling.

Bennett was quick and effective in exploiting the political problems of those around him. He focused primarily on his Liberal opponent. Confident in the support of the business community and Calgary’s urban working class, with which he had spent the last year re-establishing himself, he spent a good deal of time in the rural townships west of the city. He stirred the anti-American pot, although he was always careful to speak of the American government or American polices and not Americans themselves. He was the only candidate to speak against the growing resentment that many Albertans were expressing about eastern Canadians. Then as now, there was a perception among many westerners that Ottawa unfairly catered to Ontario’s needs due to its being the country’s financial capital and its containing more House of Commons seats than any other province. Just as he would not play to religious or racial cleavages, Bennett did not and never played to regional divisions to win votes.

Two days before Halloween the votes were cast. Bennett earned 10,256 votes to Shaw’s second-place 6,040. He had easily won the city and his work in the rural areas had paid off handsomely with 55 per cent of the farm vote. He had spent his own money on posters and newspaper ads. He had knocked on doors. He had organized volunteers to pull the vote. He had promised little and sold his experience as his greatest asset. He had simply outworked the other candidates and earned his victory.

Canadians awoke on October 30 to find surprising results in a national campaign that had seemed to promise no surprises at all. Meighen’s Conservatives had rebounded from only 50 seats in the last Parliament to win 116. The Liberals won 101 and the fading Progressives 25. Woodsworth and Heaps returned as members of the Labour Party and the venerable Henri Bourassa was back in the House as one of four independents. The election was doubly disappointing for Mackenzie King in that not only had his government been defeated but he had also lost his own riding. The Conservatives had won, and for the second time since Confederation, Canadians had created a minority government.

Then the fun began. The Conservatives had elected more members and so Canadians assumed that they had elected Meighen as their prime minister. But in the Canadian democratic system voters do not choose a government, they assemble a parliament. It is the members of that parliament who decide which party or coalition of parties commands the confidence of the House and thus which can form the government.

Canadians had built a parliament that gave Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s Liberals fifteen fewer MPs than Meighen’s Conservatives. But as was his right he refused to step down. He told Governor General Baron Byng of Vimy that he could, even with his diminished numbers in the House, and even with leading from the curtains behind the benches, form a government and that that government could enjoy the confidence of the House.

Byng was no fool. He was a well-read, intelligent man with an Eton education. He was a blue-blooded English aristocrat and an experienced military man, the heel at Gallipoli but the hero of Ypres and Vimy, who was used to straight talk and holding men at their word. It was Byng’s wife, by the way, who upon seeing her first hockey game, recoiled at the brutality and offered a trophy in her name to the most gentlemanly player. Byng shook Mackenzie King’s hand when his prime minister offered to meet Parliament and prove that he could govern. He assumed Mackenzie King meant that he would resign and Meighen would become prime minister, based on the election just held, if the confidence of the House was lost. Mackenzie King, on the other hand, assumed that Byng understood he had really meant that if he lost the confidence of the House he could, as prime minister, ask for dissolution and be granted another election. This sincere misunderstanding or ruthless ploy, depending on whether one believes Mackenzie King or Byng, led to the constitutional crisis that was to ensue.

Like most Canadians, Bennett had assumed that Meighen would be forming a government and that he himself would soon be at the cabinet table, but Byng’s decision foiled those dreams and plans. Bennett had not re-entered the political arena to languish in Opposition. Compared to the challenge of his many business interests, a stint in Opposition held little appeal. Those interests had, in fact, been growing steadily more complex and lucrative. In Bennett’s day, politicians were not expected to surrender their financial holdings through sales, resignations, or blind trusts. If there was trust at all, it was that they would make decisions based upon the desires of their constituents, the good of the country, and the dictates of their conscience, rather than considerations of personal benefit. It was naive perhaps, but until politicians were paid a decent salary for their efforts, and that was decades away, Bennett, like his contemporaries, would continue to sit on boards, collect dividends, and make investments as a private citizen. And with respect to business, Bennett was better at it than most.

In 1924, Bennett’s position as a major shareholder and influential board member at E.B. Eddy allowed him to oversee a major corporate expansion. The complex initiative led to $3 million in capital improvements to the Hull facilities and a 50 per cent increase in the workforce so that the company came to employ over 1,400 people. In May 1926, Jennie Eddy’s brother, J.T. (Harry) Shirreff, unexpectedly died. He and Bennett had made a deal whereby the first to die would bequeath his Eddy shares to the other, and so with J.T.’s death Bennett won ownership of another 1,007 shares, which were then valued at $1,500 each. The inheritance meant that Bennett came to own 1,508 of Eddy’s 3,000 shares at a value of $2.2 million.

An annoyance at the time came in the actions of Jennie’s sister Edith Richardson, who convinced herself that Bennett had done something illegal and swindled her family out of capital stock. She threatened a lawsuit. But soon she showed her true colours in demanding through her lawyer that she would go away for a lump sum payment from Bennett of $250,000. Jennie had already set her up with a $375,000 trust fund that was paying her $19,000 a year, but it was apparently not enough. Bennett hired a lawyer who quickly dealt with the matter and with not a penny paid. The avaricious Mrs. Richardson disappeared from the scene.

By this time, Bennett’s success in running businesses, land speculation, and financial entrepreneurialism, coupled with his nationally known and respected name, earned through principled political activity, had resulted in his being invited to join a number of boards, including Canadian General Electric and Metropolitan Life. Beaverbrook had introduced Bennett to the Royal Bank’s president, Sir Herbert Holt, who already knew Bennett through his work on the Rex v. Royal Bank case. Bennett was invited to join the board of the Royal Bank of Canada. Meanwhile, he still owned a substantial number of shares in a number of successful businesses, was seeing great success in his stock market investments, and was reaping growing profits from his law firm. In 1924, he had sold the Alberta Pacific Grain Company to a British firm, affording him a capital gain of $1.35 million.3 Meanwhile, he remained president of Calgary Power, which was still supplying electricity to Alberta’s major cities. He was also president of Canada Cement, which had grown even more successful after winning the contract to help rebuild Halifax after the tragic December 1917 explosion in which two ships had collided in the harbour. The ensuing blast flattened the city and took the lives of 1,900 people, while leaving 4,000 injured and 6,000 homeless. Bennett had been doing quite well for years, but by the mid-1920s he had moved from rich to wealthy.

With business interests and political affairs duelling for his attention, Bennett boarded the train in Calgary and was off to Ottawa and his old suites at the Château Club. He quickly settled into his new east wing office, met his staff, and established routines. Every night he left Parliament Hill after dark and walked to his rooms, where he pored over briefing books until midnight. He continued to eat too much, work too much, and read too much, while exercising too little. He still loved his chocolate.

While as an Opposition backbencher Bennett had little power to influence legislation, it is interesting to examine the questions that he raised and the proposals he made to the shaky Mackenzie King minority government. They indicate that his fundamental beliefs about government’s positive role in society were becoming more finely honed and persuasively articulated. His very first question was perhaps most prescient of all. He queried the interior minister about unemployment insurance, wondering about the amounts that the provinces and the federal government had pledged for relief. He feigned surprise and disappointment in the minister’s declaration that unemployment relief was a provincial matter and that the federal government had no role to play.⁴ Bennett ridiculed the minister, insisting that a commitment to a federal relief plan was essential for the well-being of Canadians. Later, in a linked matter, he brought attention to the problems of farmers. He asked about the amount of help being offered to those in need not only in the West but across the country. Again he attacked the government for what he said was an inadequate response to growing problems on the prairies.

On another day he noted that it was under the Borden government that the Canadian National Railway Corporation was created but that no allowance had been made for a meeting of the shareholders as is the standard practice for all corporations. He suggested that a representative from each of the nine provinces should be assembled as a board of directors. He suggested that the board could act independently of Parliament in protecting the investment that Canadians had made as the corporation’s owners. The idea was not Bennett’s — it had its origins in Borden’s 1907 Halifax Platform — but it was the first time it had been brought to the House. In airing the idea, Bennett was once again stating his support for more transparency in the affairs of an activist state.

Bennett also asked about the idea of old age pensions. In a speech regarding the issue, he demonstrated that he was among those who, even in the 1920s, were coming to accept the fundamental assumptions that would decades later form the basis of Canada’s present Canada Pension Plan (and similar plan in Quebec) and the notion of tax incentives for retirement savings.5

In bringing the idea to light he also showed his wisdom in warning about two problems that are present with all of today’s social programs. First, he advocated the ideas without abandoning his core belief in the need for people to be self-reliant. Pensions, he said, should deal with the tragedy of people working their entire lives only to find themselves struggling in retirement against the wolf of poverty. But they should never be interpreted as replacing personal sacrifice, investments, and savings, lest the government create a culture of dependency. He said,

I want to see in this country a system for providing for . . . [an] old age pension. But in this new country, with its resources untouched and undeveloped, where we are endeavouring to develop a hardy spirit of enterprise on the part of our citizens, where we want them to look upon the government as an instrument for their well-being and not something on which they are to depend for sustenance.⁶

Bennett’s second warning, couched within his advocacy of helping Canadians to face retirement with financial security and dignity, is one that all past and present provincial premiers would applaud. For example, since the 1980s, provincial governments have had to shoulder a greater and greater percentage of health care costs. The federal government, which had at the outset of the program in the 1960s promised to provide 50 per cent of needed funds, sought to balance its books partly by reducing that percentage on the backs of provincial taxpayers. As if seeing this trick coming, Bennett warned the Liberal finance minister, and those in his caucus who shared his enthusiasm for unemployment and retirement support ideas, that once the federal government enacted the national scheme, it would be on the hook for it and must never shirk its fiduciary responsibility. He said, “Once you enact a law and place it on the statute book, and once you incur financial responsibility, you cannot lightly shake it off, as you would an overcoat.”7 Premiers from Mike Harris on the right to Bob Rae on the left and all in between would agree.

KING, BYNG, AND THE END OF MEIGHEN

While Bennett and his colleagues worked to bring ideas to the House through proposals, questions, and committee work, Prime Minister Mackenzie King watched nervously from behind the government benches. He knew there was a trap waiting for him and his government in the simmering scandal regarding the customs ministry. He waited for the trap to be sprung.

It was really Henry Ford’s fault. The Customs scandal had its genesis in the growing number of automobiles in Canada and the United States, resulting in more goods crossing the border on roads rather than solely through ports or rail stations. As is always the case when technological advances move faster than legislation and bureaucratic processes, it was a free-for-all. As the amount of smuggled goods increased and as illegal booze became a bigger and bigger part of that aggregate amount, some customs officials scrambled to react while others cashed in.

Before the 1925 election, some Opposition members had raised questions about the Mackenzie King government’s involvement in the manufacture, transport, and illicit sale of liquor involving Canada, the West Indies, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, and the United States. The minister in charge, the hapless Jacques Bureau, was, according to popular opinion, either corrupt or incompetent. Mackenzie King had tried to stop the questions by promoting him to the Senate and replacing him with Quebec’s George Boivin, but his expectation that a new minister would change the subject was soon dashed. The questions and accusations continued.

Meighen saw an opportunity to sting the government and appointed Vancouver’s Harry Stevens to lead the Conservative Party’s investigation into the Customs Department scandal. Stevens was a tall, fit, handsome man with thinning and greying hair and round frameless glasses. Having sharpened his skills in the tough and taxing world of Vancouver municipal politics, he had been elected to federal office in 1911 and had quickly earned respect on both sides of the aisle as a hard-working parliamentarian. During Stevens’s first session in Ottawa, Bennett was happy to share with him both an office and a Commons desk. It was as a respected colleague, and with a nod to his experience as an investigative attorney, that Stevens chose Bennett to work with him on his customs committee. At that point, neither man could have guessed what their relationship would later turn into and the nationally significant consequences of that turning. But that’s for later.

Stevens and Bennett unearthed so much damning evidence so quickly that they surprised even themselves. On February 2, Stevens rose in the House, with Mackenzie King squirming impotently from behind the curtains, and in a five-hour tirade laid out in excruciating detail fact after sordid fact. The blatantly corrupt activities and the depth of the sleaze was such that had not been seen since the Pacific Scandal that had brought down the venerable Sir John A. The Liberal government did the only thing it could and called for the formation of a Select Committee of the House to conduct a full investigation. Stevens and Bennett were among the four Conservative members of the committee, serving with four Liberals and Progressive Donald Kennedy as the chair.

From February until June 1926 the committee heard from 225 witnesses. The evidence demonstrated that, as Bennett and Stevens had suspected, there had indeed been a complex system of bribes paid to Liberal hacks and to the Liberal Party itself in return for department officials turning a blind eye to the illegal international liquor trade. At one point Customs Minister Jacques Bureau had even used his influence to try to pressure a judge to go easy on one of the convicted rumrunners, who had close ties to the Liberal Party.

Throughout the 115 days of proceedings, Bennett acquitted himself quite well. His ability to synthesize a mass of facts and boil them to their essence allowed him to unravel devastating lines of questioning that led witnesses far down incriminating roads before realizing they had even begun a journey. Admissions and confessions were inadvertently made as a result of Bennett’s tactical cleverness and acuity with a phrase.

Bennett was again gaining national attention and once again his ability to speak intelligently, fluidly, and without notes was being observed. The Montreal Evening Standard, for instance, wrote of admiration for his oratorical skill but, as a Liberal paper, could not help taking a swipe. The article described him as “. . . the most gifted of Canadian orators, but his speeches seldom have any strain of humour in them. . . . They are purely and simply rhetorical, and are delivered with great rapidity of utterance.”8

To review Hansard, the official record of all that is said in the House of Commons, is to be amazed with Bennett’s ability. It is common to find three single-spaced double-columned pages filled with his blistering oratory. Bennett spoke off the top of his head better than most professional writers can compose with time on their hands. His speaking notes often consisted of four or five scribbled points that he planned to cover. Such a skill is needed and widely admired in any democracy and one that can help a great deal in the pursuit of political goals.

Mackenzie King had won a by-election in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan and was back in the House. Canadians, of course, carried on with their lives and, as is the case today, mostly ignored the backroom machinations on Parliament Hill. But in Ottawa and among the chattering class there was Christmas Eve-like quivering anticipation regarding the customs committee’s findings. On June 18, 1926, it reported to the House. It found that the former Customs Bureau minister had spectacularly failed in his duties and that there was a great deal that other members of cabinet, including the prime minister, should have known and should have stopped. The minister primarily responsible was gone but the committee report suggested that legal action against him should be contemplated.

But this was Ottawa, where everything is always political, and so the Opposition was less interested in seeing a minister’s backside in court than in seeing their own on the government benches. On the twenty-second, the political fight began as Stevens moved beyond what the report had suggested and led the Conservative push to have it amended so as to censure the prime minister for both what he had done and what he had failed to do. Stevens demanded that the government resign. For two days, one procedural amendment after another was presented and defeated. Party whips worked overtime as alliances between the parties were forged, then broken.

Knowing that he did not have the votes to keep the fight going for long but ever the brilliant tactician, Mackenzie King went to the Governor General and asked for the dissolution of Parliament before the Stevens amendment was called. Byng refused. Mackenzie King could not believe his ears. No Governor General had ever refused the request of a prime minister to dissolve Parliament and set an election date. Byng was an intelligent and proud man who had been following the circus in the House closely. He knew both his constitutional powers and the agreement he believed he had made with Mackenzie King just months before. He dismissed Mackenzie King and summoned Meighen, who, after all, had more members in the House than the Liberals. He asked Meighen to form a government.

Meighen had options before him, but the one he chose and how he chose to operationalize it ended his career as prime minister and Conservative party leader while yawning open the door of opportunity for Bennett. After the 1925 election Bennett had quickly become one of Meighen’s closest and most trusted advisers and the deputy leader of the Opposition. But Meighen was unable to discuss this critical decision with Bennett, for at that moment Bennett was home in Calgary, having accepted an invitation from Alberta Conservative leader and old friend Alexander McGillivary to help in the provincial election. The Alberta Conservatives did not have a snowball’s chance of forming the government, but, like everyone else, Meighen had not seen the political tsunami coming and had given Bennett permission to go.

Bennett was immediately contacted and began to make arrangements to return to Ottawa, but the whole thing was over so fast that he ended up missing the entire affair. Meighen later told a friend that this happenstance was important, for he believed that if Bennett had been present in the House with his tough talk, shrewd mind, and fighting spirit, things might have worked out differently.9 If Meighen’s assessment was correct, then Bennett’s absence changed Canadian history.

Meighen decided to form a government and was dutifully sworn in as prime minister. He could have then adjourned the House and gone to the country as prime minister, probably acquitting himself quite well against the corruption-tainted Liberals. Instead, he decided to renew the session in order to pass the Stevens amendment, thereby smearing the tar of censure on Mackenzie King and his government. That was his fatal error.

At that time, any sitting member who was appointed to cabinet had to resign his seat and run in a by-election, presumably so that his constituents could decide if they wanted to share his time between them and the country. Knowing that if he allowed the resignation of so many Conservative members his government would not have the votes to survive until lunch the first day, Meighen asked the Governor General to appoint five of his caucus as acting ministers to handle the administrative duties of the entire cabinet. His understanding was that as acting ministers they would not need to resign their seats.

As he could no longer be in the House, Meighen needed a strong House leader. Bennett was best suited for the job but could not get back to Ottawa in time. Stevens declined the honour. Meighen was left with his third choice and appointed the long-serving Sir Henry Drayton. After a weekend of behind-the-scenes political intrigue, the likes of which the country, or for that matter, no Commonwealth dominion had ever known, a new government was ready to govern. By Monday evening Canada had a new prime minister, again watching from behind the House of Commons curtains, for he had resigned, and a new, although small and quite inexperienced, cabinet. In his absence, Bennett had been appointed acting minister of justice.

Mackenzie King was too smart and ruthless for all that chicanery. The House met on Tuesday and took up the debate about the Customs scandal as if nothing had happened. The same votes went up and down as before the major parties had switched sides of the House. Mackenzie King then feinted by moving that the House consider tariff policy. The motion went nowhere but it did as he had hoped, and split the Progressives. Even better than he had hoped, the gambit played a role in leading to the resignation of their leader, ex-Liberal Robert Forke. The strategy was brilliant. But the real show had yet to begin.

On Wednesday evening, now June 30, Mackenzie King rose and began to ask a series of seemingly innocuous questions. In a quiet voice, he asked whether Drayton had taken the oath of office. Meighen stood behind the curtain at the back of the government benches and saw what was about to happen but was unable to stop it. Drayton said no. Mackenzie King then repeated his question to each of the acting ministers — Harry Stevens, Hugh Guthrie, Sir George Perley, and Robert Manion — and each dutifully admitted to not having taken an oath. As members came running into the House from offices and smoke- and gin-filled lounges, every Conservative member protested loudly, but the jig was up. As Mackenzie King droned on in a detailed review of the remarkable events that had brought them to that point, Meighen watched his infant government die. It was painted as illegitimate and unconstitutional. The Customs scandal that had begun it all no longer mattered.

At two o’clock in the morning a vote was finally called to decide the future of the Meighen government. The Conservative Party whip had met with his Liberal counterpart and told him that Bennett was still in Calgary and would miss the vote. Following a parliamentary tradition called twinning, the Progressive whip agreed that he would choose a member to miss the vote as well. When the vote was called, it was obvious that the double-cross was in, for there sat the Progressive Party’s Reverend Thomas Bird. Bird had been twinned with Bennett and should have absented himself, but there he was. Conservative members howled protests, to no avail. The Conservatives lost the confidence motion by Bird’s single vote: 96 to 95. Meighen was left with no option but to ask the Governor General for dissolution. This time Byng acceded. The election would be held on September 14. It was the first time that a Canadian government had fallen on a confidence motion. Meighen’s government had lasted just three days.

Still in Calgary, Bennett received a wire telling him to stay there as another campaign was on. Mackenzie King was brilliant in the battle that followed. With 14 per cent of the electorate having voted in the last election for splinter party candidates or independents, he knew that moving those voters to the Liberals was the key to electoral success. He had already stolen or adopted all the Progressive Party policy ideas that he could possibly cram under the Liberal tent. The Progressives seemed to sense that their time was up and did all they could to help their new Liberal allies. In many strong Conservative ridings, for instance, they did not run a candidate so as to avoid vote splitting. In Manitoba, not a single riding saw a Liberal compete with a Progressive and in many Ontario and Maritime ridings candidates ran as Liberal Progressives.

Meighen presented no new policy ideas, having opted to run instead on the issue of Liberal corruption. Mackenzie King decided that the constitutional question was key. He argued that Canada needed to be independent of the Governor General — a British-appointed peer of the realm who had ignored the will of the people in saying no to a prime minister — and also that the scandal had proven Meighen to be a powerhungry scoundrel who could not be trusted. Only near the campaign’s end did Meighen seem to realize that his message was failing to resonate and begin talking about the constitutional issues that had put him before the people in the first place. Not since Confederation, and not again until the 1970s, would the Constitution be the primary issue in a national campaign.

When the counting was over it was clear that Mackenzie King had sensed the mood of the country faster and better. He had outcampaigned Meighen as decidedly on the hustings as he had outfoxed him in the House. Despite having won 83,051 fewer votes, the Liberals won 118 seats. Meighen’s Conservatives limped over the finish line with only ninety-one. The party had been completely shut out of Saskatchewan and Manitoba and Meighen had even lost his own Portage la Prairie riding. It was the second election in a row in which a sitting prime minister was left without a seat. Mackenzie King had defeated the thirty-year-old John Diefenbaker to win in Prince Albert.

In Alberta, the United Farmers of Alberta had rallied and won eleven seats while the Conservatives took only one riding — Bennett’s West Calgary. Bennett had again run an enthusiastic campaign and had again financed it with his own money. He won both the city and the townships and decisively defeated Liberal Harry Lunney by 2,449 votes. The plurality was less than the year before, but a win is a win and he was soon on an eastbound train heading back to his Château Club suite and a desk on the Opposition side of the House.

Bennett had gone to the people believing that the Customs scandal and Mackenzie King’s constitutional game playing would anger voters and lead to a Conservative victory, but he had misread the mood of the country.10 Bennett confided to friends that he blamed himself for much of the constitutional and electoral morass into which Meighen had allowed himself to slide. He later explained that if he had been in Ottawa, he would have advised Meighen to refuse Byng’s offer to form a government.¹¹ This was despite the fact that Meighen later said that he based his decision to accept the Governor General’s offer on his belief that had he declined, Canada would have been without a government. Further, if he had said no to Byng, the Governor General would have been left with the alternatives of either humiliatingly begging Mackenzie King to reconsider or perhaps offering Woodsworth or the Progressives a chance to tape together a coalition. In Meighen’s mind, either option would have irreparably harmed Byng, which mattered a little; the office of the Governor General, which mattered more; and the entire concept of a constitutional monarchy, which mattered most of all. Bennett might have avoided the trap into which Sir Henry Drayton inadvertently waltzed. But given Meighen’s desire to protect the monarch’s voice and dignity in Canada, no matter how indirect, it is by no means certain that Bennett could have changed his leader’s mind and kept him from accepting the offer to form a government.

Grant Dexter of the Winnipeg Free Press later asked Bennett what he would have done differently had he been in Ottawa at the time. Bennett explained that as a competent House of Commons man he would have allowed Mackenzie King to pose his queries but would have refused to answer them. Instead, Bennett claimed, he would have turned the debate back to the Customs scandal or perhaps to the tariff questions that were at that time splitting the Progressives and scattering the independents. Dexter wrote, “I am a good Liberal, but I am very much inclined to think he was right. He was exactly the kind of debater that could have done this.”¹²

Until the victory in 1926, Mackenzie King’s hold on the Liberal leadership was tenuous at best. At the beginning of the campaign there had been open talk among the Liberal rank and file about his paling in comparison to Laurier and about a mistake having been made in placing him in a position of leadership. Charles Dunning, the nattily dressed, ruggedly handsome, moustached former farmer, was being touted by many as a suitable successor. Those planning the palace coup had even set up Ernest Lapointe to act as Dunning’s Quebec lieutenant, reminiscent of the old Macdonald-Cartier ministry.13 But their plans evaporated when the conspirators found that Mackenzie King’s parliamentary manoeuvrings had worked and he had become a much improved campaigner. When Mackenzie King was introducing his cabinet to the new Governor General he did so secure in the knowledge that his leadership of the party was unchallenged.

Whether Mackenzie King had reacted to unpredicted events cleverly or had set the elaborate scheme up from the beginning mattered little to Meighen after the election. Meighen was devastated by how everything that he had worked so long and so hard for had unravelled so quickly and in so unexpected a fashion. His leadership and party were in tatters. There was really only one decision left for him to make. He was only fifty-two years old and in bracingly good health. He could have found a new seat and carried on. But sometimes the writing on the wall is too vivid for anyone to ignore. There were no public calls for his resignation, but also, even more important in such a circumstance, there were few for him to stay. At a lunch meeting at the Ottawa Club he announced that he would immediately step down as leader. A career noted more for its potential than its accomplishment appeared to be over.

LEADERSHIP

The Conservative Party’s disgraced leader was leaving. It had been rejected at the polls. It had new rebellious parties and movements competing for voter support and it faced a re-invigorated Liberal Party and leader who had earned loyalty and legitimacy. The party had little money and few immediate prospects. It needed to rebuild itself quickly or risk sinking beneath the political waves as the Progressive Party was in the midst of doing and other parties in the past had done. There is, after all, nothing in Canada’s political culture that guarantees that a party will last forever. Ask the Union Nationale, the CCF, the Social Credit, or the Reform Party. Something dramatic needed to be done to save the party of Macdonald.

In the meantime, the party also needed to deal with the spring session of Parliament. Mackenzie King presented his new government’s budget to the House in early February 1927. The humbled Meighen said little in response, leaving Bennett to lead the Conservatives through the ensuing debate. Bennett avoided attacking what had been proposed and instead chose to ignore the Liberal plan and advance one of his own. After consulting with caucus colleagues, he delivered a speech in which he presented a number of what at the time were novel ideas. Most interesting among them was his argument that Canadian businesses would be better able to compete internationally, sell less expensive products domestically, and thereby create more employment, if certain taxes were removed from businesses and instead paid by consumers on things they purchased — a national sales tax.14 He had presaged the Good and Services Tax (GST) — which Canadians hate but which helps businesses and thus the economy — by more than sixty years. While his tax ideas and other notions went nowhere, they received significant national attention.

Bennett also garnered a good deal of ink for his attack on a Liberal private member’s bill supporting the extension of a charter to a conglomerate intent on pushing forward with the creation of the Georgian Bay Canal Project. The idea was to build a series of canals linking Lake Huron to Montreal. Different combinations of business people had been trying to put together public and private financing to start construction since 1894. Bennett criticized extending the charter, as the canal scheme would bring enormous costs with little benefit. He was also aghast that Clifford and Arthur Sifton were part of the new Montreal, Ottawa, and Georgian Bay Canal Company that was seeking government largess. The plan was eventually killed and for the role he played in its death, Bennett was again seen as a powerful and articulate spokesperson for his party.

The short spring session ended in late April, allowing Bennett to travel to England. Once again he enjoyed the company of his sister Mildred on the long cruise over and back. He was able to spend time with Beaverbrook at his friend’s luxurious estate and, through his good graces, to meet with many of Britain’s political and business leaders. It was a rare year that Bennett did not make England part of his travel plans. Alice Millar, Bennett’s secretary and personal assistant, either accompanied him on his many trips or stayed home tending his offices. Either way he was, through her, in constant contact with his businesses. The mammoth flow of correspondence makes clear that even when on vacation, Bennett’s mind was never far from work.

*

The long parliamentary recess allowed Conservative Party leaders to plan. Throughout the summer, uncoordinated discussions were held among party brass and large donors and at the grassroots. Many ideas were floated. Finally, at a party caucus held in Ottawa on October 11, 1927, it was decided that the widely respected Guelph MP Hugh Guthrie would act as interim leader. Guthrie was a man of fierce intelligence with rugged, leading-man good looks. He had begun his career as a Liberal but came to the Union government and then became a Conservative. He was among those who supported a brave and risky decision: new party policies and a new party leader would be chosen at a national convention.

Conventions were a relatively novel phenomenon in Canada. After a few provincial conventions, the Liberals held the first federal convention in 1893 and then another to choose Mackenzie King in 1919. Ontario Conservatives had just staged a convention to choose Howard Ferguson as their new leader. But for the federal Conservative Party a convention would be new.

There were dangers. As the backroom doors were flung open, those who led and those who bankrolled the party would surrender much of their control in choosing both the platform and leader. But there were advantages too. A convention could stir interest at the riding level across the country and, in grabbing national headlines, stimulate political discussions that could invigorate interest in the Liberal-Conservative brand, while affording the legitimacy of democratic selection to a new leader. It was deemed worth the risk.

Major General A.D. McRae was chosen to work closely with Guthrie and oversee the meeting’s organization. He had distinguished himself as the quartermaster general for the Canadian expeditionary force in Europe during the First World War and been loaned to the British to work as the assistant minister of information, where he learned to generate, disseminate, and appreciate propaganda. Once home, he entered public life, won a Vancouver seat, and quickly earned respect on both sides of the aisle as a wise member, a sympathetic but firm House whip, and a good constituency man. He was a man who could get things done.

A number of Conservative clubs wrote to Guthrie and McRae explaining why their city was best suited to host the convention. Finally, it was decided that it would be held in the centre of the country — in Winnipeg. A number of organizing committees were struck, delegates were chosen, people appointed, and procedures established. It was decided that delegates would need to pay the approximately $200 it took to attend the conference on their own, without party funding, effectively limiting the delegates according to class. It was also decided that delegate numbers would be allocated according to population, which spoke to the importance of region.

In a nod to gender, it was determined that at least 25 per cent of the delegates had to be women. The goal was not reached, but not for a lack of trying. Guthrie’s first job was to form a thirty-six-person organizing committee based on representation by population. He determined that with the advances that women had been making in Canada — as seen most directly in the winning of the right to vote in federal elections that was legislated in 1919 — this committee must include women from every province. Some provinces were quick to appoint women to the list. Ontario, for instance, without prodding, had included Mrs. Fallis of Peterborough and Mrs. Edwards of London. Other provinces were less receptive to the idea of women at the convention at all, let alone on such an important committee, which forced Guthrie to write repeatedly to some, insisting on female representation. New Brunswick was especially intransigent until finally delegation chair George Jones surrendered and included Mrs. Price on the province’s list. Mildred Bennett became involved in the convention. With Bennett’s approval she met with McRae and was put to work encouraging women to participate fully in the planning of the convention and then later in the convention itself. In the end, nine of the thirty-six members of the organizing committee were women — a good start. The committee established as one of its goals the seeking of powerful, independently minded women to attend the convention.

On the morning of Monday, October 10, 1927, Winnipeg’s Amphitheatre Rink prepared itself to host and witness three days of political theatre. The rink was a large, boxy, three-storey building that was decorated with Arabian-style red-and-white bunting, which was popular at the time. As delegates entered, they were given identification cards to carry and badges to wear. Each bore a picture of Sir John A. Macdonald.

The stage was far from the made-for-television set pieces that a modern eye would recognize. It was a simple affair, crowded with dark wooden tables and chairs that would have been at home in an old public library. But the platform party was chosen to impress. There were two former prime ministers; three Conservative provincial premiers representing Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick; nine provincial party leaders; and six former lieutenant-governors, as well as former cabinet ministers, including Bennett. In all, thirty-one people were seated on the stage. Most of the time, however, the platform chairs rested empty.

Hugh Guthrie brought down the gavel to begin the proceedings at eleven o’clock. Despite months of careful preparations meant to appease all and offend few, the very first words from his mouth welcomed the delegates to the Liberal Party convention. Red faced and engulfed by shouts and laughter, he quickly recovered, began again, and welcomed the 1,700 delegates to the Liberal-Conservative convention. The Lord’s Prayer was recited in English, then again in French, followed by the singing of “God Save the King” and then “O Canada” — but only in English.

The honour of the convention’s first major speech went to Sir Robert Borden. Always a charming man with a self-deprecating sense of humour, Borden was warmly received. His full shock of thick grey hair was carefully combed and his long grey moustaches tried but failed to hide a beaming smile. It was a speech short on nostalgia and long on advice for the future. Borden emphasized that the creation of a party platform was important but that the selection of a party leader was more important by far. With more than a hint to the memories of those who had left him after the conscription and Union government decisions, as well as to those who left Meighen for decisions of less significance, Borden said, “Select your leader, and after you have selected him, stand by him. Being human, he may not always be right. Perhaps it would be well for you sometimes to remember that you are also human, and that occasionally when you think he is wrong he may be right.”15

After lunch and some housekeeping issues, Arthur Meighen was given a chance to make a departing speech. Oddly, and sadly, instead of choosing to fade from view and leave gracefully, he used his allotted time to defend an old stance. In 1925, in Hamilton, Ontario, Meighen had made an ill-advised speech in which he had proposed that the only way a government should be able take the country to war in the future should be to dissolve Parliament and hold an election on the issue. The notion was a bald gesture toward Quebec voters, many of whom had defied the urgings of Laurier and the church and had opposed Canada’s following Britain to war in 1914. Meighen’s idea was boneheaded not only because it would lose more support across the country than it would win in Quebec, but also because it was improbable, impractical, and constitutionally unwarranted. The speech had been roundly criticized at the time by Liberals, Conservatives, and the media, and should have been forgotten. But there he was in Winnipeg, before Conservative delegates and the country, reiterating and defending all he had said. As the stunned audience listened, Meighen went on to dismiss Mackenzie King’s actions at, and the issues emanating from, the 1923 Imperial Conference. This attack was blunder number two, for those actions had been widely celebrated in Canada as another step toward political maturity as all Britain’s dominions had been promised constitutional independence.

As delegates, many of whom had hoped that Meighen might save the day and succeed himself as leader, sat in stunned silence, the proud but foolish man appeared to commit political suicide. Several times the hall erupted in applause, but as he went on and on the audience fell silent. Things grew worse as some began to heckle. Meighen went on. He responded with an angry monotone and the cold “death stare” for which he had become known. Then things got even worse.16

Behind him, in the front row of the platform party, sat Ontario premier Howard Ferguson. Ferguson was a short, soft, chubby man with cropped hair, who peered at the world through small eyes and large, round wireframed glasses. He was seen by many to be an excellent choice as leader and one who might just win a majority of delegates if he played his cards intelligently. Ferguson had sat with Meighen before he had delivered his Hamilton remarks in 1925 and had tried to talk him out of it. He saw the idea as wrong-headed, constitutionally unnecessary, with the potential to split the country and negatively affect Canada’s ability to carry out foreign policy efficiently in times of crisis. Further, he had argued that Meighen’s idea would hurt the party, especially in Quebec, where it would be dismissed as a cynical ploy, and, among imperialists in the rest of the country, as akin to treason. Ferguson had said after the 1925 election that the Hamilton speech had cost the party at least twenty seats and thus the government. And now, to his shock and horror, Meighen was delivering and defending the speech again!

Several times Ferguson left his chair and joined the hecklers in shouting at Meighen. When Meighen finally concluded, Ferguson abruptly commandeered the microphone and delivered a rough, impulsive attack on the former leader and the ideas he had presented. Ferguson told the delegates how two years before he had privately begged Meighen not to deliver the Hamilton speech. Now he literally shouted his objections. As he fumed on, he was interrupted by hisses, boos, catcalls, and shouts to sit down and shut up. Twice was heard three cheers for Meighen. Undaunted, Ferguson continued. When he finally took his seat it was clear that his chances at taking up the mantle of leadership had vanished. Further, where and when the cheers had come in reaction to Borden, Meighen, and Ferguson had made it clear that the party was regionally divided. Today we can see the incident as a demonstration of a time when politics was more spontaneous rather than stage-managed for television. But to Conservatives at the time it was a terrible start to what all had hoped would be a show of promise and unity.

When Ferguson retook his seat, the man he sat beside was R.B. Bennett. He had been visibly upset by Meighen’s speech and had applauded Ferguson. Bennett had been told beforehand that Meighen was to speak and he had opposed it. When he heard the topic of the speech, he’d opposed it even more fervently and sent a message to Meighen asking him to reconsider. Meighen’s ignoring his advice ended a feeble relationship that had started as rivals in ambition and had turned to allies in expediency. There was nothing left that either could do for or to the other. When the convention was over, Meighen sat in his Toronto office and penned a warm letter of congratulations to Bennett. It went unanswered.17

Meighen’s unfortunate speech and Ferguson’s tempestuous reaction had effectively removed them as viable leadership candidates. On the top of the list of others left to be considered was Harry Stevens. He was forty-eight years old, talented, articulate, had served in two cabinet posts, and led the customs committee that had brought the scandal to Canadians’ attention and precipitated the King-Byng two-step. However, he had told any who would listen that he was not interested, and his sincerity was demonstrated by his not organizing support before or at the convention. Not widely known at the time was that his personal finances had suffered through the bankruptcy of the Manufacturer’s Finance Company in which he had been heavily invested. He believed that he might soon have to leave politics to make some money.18

When the first-ballot voting began, there were six men from whom the delegates had to choose. Later, Bennett stated rather disingenuously in a note to Beaverbrook that he had not really sought the nomination, but that it had been thrust upon him by friends within the party.¹⁹ Bennett’s white lie was consistent with the traditions of the day. Neither he nor any of the six leadership candidates could be seen to be degrading themselves or the office by shamelessly campaigning for it. All six, however, were active behind the scenes. Ferguson worked tirelessly on Bennett’s behalf as did McRae. Both spoke from the podium and twisted arms on the floor and in hotel rooms. Perhaps even more important, Stevens spoke to delegate after delegate promoting Bennett as the party’s best choice. When it was all over Bennett said to Stevens, “Harry, I owe this entirely to you. You are the one that put me here.”²⁰

Seven men were nominated but declined to accept: Stevens, Perley, Currie, Rhodes, Baxter, Meighen, and Ferguson. Six allowed their names to stand, but among Bennett’s five opponents two were of little consequence. Sir Henry Drayton had served in the cabinet under Borden and Meighen but was blamed by many for not stopping Mackenzie King’s questioning that led to the fall of the Conservative government while he was House leader. He further doomed his candidacy by arriving in Winnipeg having done little in preparation for the convention and then doing very little to gather support while there. Manitoba’s Robert Rogers was another of Borden’s cabinet ministers. His credibility was tainted by the fact that he had resigned from cabinet in 1917, then, after sitting out the next election, was defeated in both 1921 and 1926. He came to Winnipeg without a seat or financial backing.

While Bennett could safely ignore Drayton and Rogers, he could not dismiss the appeal or potential of Dr. Robert J. Manion, Charles Cahan, or Hugh Guthrie. R.J. Manion wore a look of constant good cheer and appeared younger than his years with baby fat still filling his cheeks and a teenager’s unruly dark curls. Manion was a doctor and decorated First World War veteran with a command of French. As the Liberal MP from Fort William, he had served in the Union government as the minister of soldiers’ civil re-establishment, and then, having switched to the Conservative Party, was Meighen’s Postmaster General. Manion was a charismatic man and an effective debater and stump speaker. But he was the youngest of the candidates, and his youth was emphasized by his often appearing somewhat tempestuous and injudicious in some of his pronouncements. He was also without personal wealth or substantial financial backers. Further, Manion was late in organizing in preparation for and then later at the convention. He saw his expected Quebec base taken by Cahan, and the support he had assumed was his from Ontario stolen by Bennett.

After leading the Nova Scotia Conservative Party while editor of the Halifax Herald, Charles Cahan had joined a prestigious law firm in Montreal. He thrived as a corporate lawyer and made many strong business connections in the city. He had worked hard as the chair of Quebec’s convention committee in gathering delegates from every constituency in the province and, in so doing, winning votes for his candidacy. He was smart and well respected. He was the oldest of the candidates and yet he was relatively new, having only entered Parliament in 1925. He was popular with those pleased that he could bring dollars to the party, but others worried that before winning his seat he had lost three elections in a row. His past should have allowed him to draw support from two provinces, but as the convention began there seemed to be no tide toward him from either. Solidly built with a square jaw and dark eyes, he looked like the no-nonsense man that he was. Cahan did not help his cause with a weak speech delivered in a faltering and often cracking voice.

Hugh Guthrie had served the Borden government as Solicitor General and later was Minister of Militia and Defence with both Borden and Meighen. He had become nationally known when appointed interim party leader after Meighen’s resignation. He had impressed many with his gentle nature but firm stand on a number of issues. He had first been elected in the Ontario riding of South Wellington in 1900 and no opponent had come close to him in any subsequent contest. He was unable, however, to recover from his opening gaffe in welcoming delegates to the Liberal convention. Many would have forgiven him if not for the fact that for the first seventeen years of his political career he had been a Liberal. He also hurt his cause by arguing too many times that the country could be won without Quebec, which reminded people of Meighen’s inability to make inroads in that populous province that seated so many MPs in the House.

In Manion, Cahan, Guthrie, and Bennett, the delegates had four viable candidates. Despite the strengths and weaknesses each presented, at an open convention anything can happen and so all had a chance to win. All were careful in whom they chose both to nominate them and to second that nomination. Bennett chose New Brunswick member of Parliament Leonard Tilley. Tilley was an old friend with whom Bennett had attended elementary school and university. Tilley’s presence allowed Bennett to emphasize his Maritime roots but, more than that, it afforded a vicarious connection to Macdonald, as Tilley’s grandfather had been at the table in Charlottetown back in 1864 when, between the grand balls and consumption of gallons of liquor, he and the other Fathers of Confederation forged the deal that led to the creation of Canada. Tilley was an inspired orator whose message to those who yearned to see the party back in power was blunt. He said, “I nominate a gentleman whom, I believe, will be a winner.”21

Bennett chose Alberta MLA Alexander McGillivary as his seconder. Tilley and McGillivary symbolized Bennett’s ties to both the Maritimes and western Canada. In their speeches both emphasized Bennett’s political experience and support for farmers and working people. Appealing to the Conservative base, they also spoke highly of his legal background and success in business.

Bennett accepted the nomination with a strong and stirring speech. He reviewed the history of the Conservative Party and noted that the genius of Confederation was in the uniting of regions and peoples. He presented himself as a Macdonald-style uniter, noting of the Fathers of Confederation that “They realised that Federation, the Constitution, is a great federal pact — a great treaty between men and women of diverse races, religions and creeds, coming together under a federal union, respecting one another’s races, religions and customs — conserving by adequate and complete legislation the supremacy of the rights of minorities and majorities.”²²

Of all who spoke that day, Bennett was, unsurprisingly, the most effective in both style and substance. With the speeches done, the slow process of voting began. The votes cast in the first and second ballots showed that Bennett had been the man to beat from the outset, and further, that he was the second choice of those gathered in the overheated hall. Needing 777 votes for a majority and a win, the first ballot gave him 594, which was 249 more than second-place Guthrie and more than enough to destroy the hopes of all the others. Between the first and second ballots McRae, Stevens, and Ferguson visited every provincial delegation and worked to sell their man. Unlike in later conventions, the last-place finisher, Drayton, was allowed to stay in the contest, so the race was on to have all those who saw Bennett as their second choice abandon their candidate and come to his camp. Ferguson was able to swing many of the Ontario votes. Rogers, Drayton, and McRae were inadvertently effective in drawing Quebec votes from Cahan.

On the second ballot every other candidate lost support, allowing Bennett to sneak over the top with 780 votes. Bennett was fifty-seven years of age, the second-youngest of the leadership candidates; his victory represented a significant step up the ladder to the prime minister’s office that, decades before, he had identified as his ultimate goal.

	First Ballot	Second Ballot
Bennett	594	780
Guthrie	345	320
Manion	170	148
Rogers	114	37
Drayton	31	3
	1,564	1,55423

The chair had not finished reading the full results when the stage filled with people all trying to shake Bennett’s hand. Uproarious applause met each candidate who worked, one by one, to get to the microphone to withdraw in the old tradition of making the vote unanimous. Even greater applause washed over Bennett as he slowly weaved his way through the people and heavy tables and chairs to the front of the crowded platform to accept his prize. He shook every hand until he finally stood in the cramped space between the tables and the crowded floor. He beamed out at the cheering crowd from behind a large pie-plate-sized microphone that was hooked up to transmit his words to a national radio audience. There was no lectern.

With the stage finally brought back to order and the delegates hushed, Bennett began by reading quietly from papers he held in his hands. He humbly accepted the decision of the delegates. Like all great orators he began slowly, haltingly, earning the crowd’s attention through volume, pace, and pauses. He even offered a lame joke, stating, “One night, not long ago, I had a dream (and I don’t believe particularly in dreams because they usually represent just bad digestion) . . .”24 But then he warmed to his main message. Even reading it today invites one to hear the tempo quickening, the pitch rising, and the volume increasing. He called for work and sacrifice. He told the delegates and radio audience that democracy would not succeed and their party would not succeed if people of goodwill did not work, and organize, and put forth sincere effort. He argued that a political party is merely an instrument designed to accomplish a purpose. He said that that purpose must be “. . . the health, the happiness, the prosperity of the Canadian people. Measures of social justice, measures of fiscal reform, measures that will make for the interest and happiness of all the people that call themselves Canadians. . . .”²⁵

At the end of his speech, he returned to the importance of sacrifice, noting that he was personally putting aside much that would materially benefit him in order to serve the party and the country. He then roared to his conclusion with powerful and sweeping images and phrases, exclaiming,

Promise here and now, as you walk out of yonder door, that you will be missionaries for the great cause, missionaries for the great party to which we belong, missionaries from the greatest political convention ever held in the Dominion of Canada — and if you are missionaries your efforts will be crowned with success, and you will have a government, at Ottawa, reflecting your principles, your convictions, hopes and aspirations.²⁶

Bennett was moved by the outpouring of support, and from some, genuine affection. He later wrote to Beaverbrook, “What ever may be the result of my efforts, I will always have at least the memories of hundreds of wonderful messages of good will from men and women of every shade of political opinion and from all parts of Canada and beyond.”27

McRae had assured good press coverage through the radio broadcast and by having the party pick up the transportation and accommodation costs for one reporter from every newspaper in the country. Coverage of Bennett’s victory was generally positive. The staunchly Conservative Globe was, perhaps not unexpectedly, especially effusive in its praise: “Mr. Bennett has an abundance of energy. . . . His legal acumen and his business ability are of a high order. He has had long experience in legislative halls.”²⁸ Saturday Night magazine, most often in the Liberals’ corner, recognized the ideological underpinnings of Bennett’s actions and applauded him for his political courage. An article said, “In his political philosophy Bennett is a Tory of the Left. . . . His whole record shows that he reverences tradition, but that he is not afraid to break new ground when met with new conditions.”²⁹

The Vancouver Sun, however, touched on a note of caution that was seen in many other papers. Its article the next day wondered,

Has this rich autocratic bachelor the qualities that would ever permit him to assume leadership of the Canadian people? There are snobbish elements that would welcome his elevation to such a post. There are financial interests that might find profit in raising him to political power. But the mass of Canadians, in east or west, will never find in this cold, aloof intellectual the sympathies and sincerity essential in the Prime Minister of Canada.³⁰

After the last hand was shaken and the last thank-you note signed, Bennett needed to get to work to unite the party, raise some money, and organize both for the House and for the next election. The job would not be an easy one; like after every convention, there was healing to be done and bruised egos to soothe. But the party had a rich history and there was an invigorated base from which to build. The question was, What was he building and what was he leading?

THE PARTY

Sociologists and political scientists have for years argued about the purpose and, in fact, the very definition of a political party. In his seminal 1915 book entitled Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, sociologist Robert Michels argues that political parties exist to organize people and groups so as to attain political power and that an oligarchy ultimately controls what the party does and the ideas for which it stands. The notion that a party exists simply to attain power differentiates parties from movements. By way of illustration, sociologist Leo Zakuta wrote about the western-based Cooperative Commonwealth Federation which was formed in 1932 as a combination of Fabian socialists, trade unionists, farmers, and eastern intellectuals. He contended that it started as a movement that entailed an ideologically based fight to move Canada toward the acceptance of certain ideas. It slowly transformed itself, he argued, into a party interested only in winning office. He wrote that the changes “. . . turned rebels into reformers and prophets into politicians.”31 Zakuta’s thoughtful argument added nuance to Michels’s by positing the following question: Can a political party that exists primarily to attain office remain principled?

The question lends credence to and borrows from the conventional consensus among political scientists and sociologists that political parties grow from and are linked to particular cleavages within a society. Canadian cleavages involve region, ethnicity, language, class, race, and gender. The existence of these cleavages leads to brokerage politics as parties create policies designed to either exploit or heal a particular division. Even the most principled parties thereby become quite pragmatic and studiously avoid taking doctrinaire stances that might restrict their flexibility or place them too far over any divide.³²

Further, political parties, like all organizations, acquire institutional memories. Decisions are influenced by a desire to prolong or recapture what they perceive to be glory days by seeking leaders that remind them of leaders long gone. In the case of the Conservatives, with every change of leader, this tendency led to the seeking of someone akin to the autocratic, decisive charmer Sir John A. Macdonald.³³ And once in place, a party leader must deliver electoral success or be thrown to one side.

Finally, political parties reflect the dominant ideological beliefs of the society from which they spring and which they try to lead. Sir John A. created the Liberal-Conservative Party as an unlikely coalition of moderate Upper Canadian Tories and moderate Quebec Liberals along with others from Montreal’s English business elite. As it evolved, the party seemed to represent ideas more in keeping with those expressed by urban rather than rural people and more with the business than working class. When in office, it tended to support policies that drew more support from English than French and seemed to champion loyalty to Britain and the imperial connection more than surrendering to the social and economic pull of the United States.34

More important, with the creation of the Liberal-Conservative coalition, Macdonald tapped into what socialist Gad Horowitz called the Tory tradition. Horowitz argued that it arrived in Canada with the United Empire Loyalists, who rejected the Jeffersonian liberalism that stressed the power of the individual and suspicion of the state. In fleeing the American Revolution, or in being tarred and feathered and then kicked out, the new un-American Canadians chose a unique brand of British Toryism that placed value in social hierarchy, deference to authority, and a desire for law and order.³⁵ It is this Tory tradition that led to the broad public support for the state’s crackdown in Saskatchewan in 1885, in Winnipeg in 1919, in Regina in 1935, in Montreal in 1970, and in Oka in 1990.

Further, it is this Tory tradition at the heart of Canadian political culture that led to an acceptance of — in fact, a patriotic pride in — governments actively supporting businesses and people who need help, whether it be Macdonald’s CPR or Pearson’s health care initiatives. It is this Tory tinge that has resulted in Canada’s Conservative Party — even when tempted to the right by the Reform Party challenges of the 1990s — still being to the left of most American Democrats. And it keeps Canada a part of the British Commonwealth with the Governor General ensconced in Rideau Hall and the monarch on its coins.

The Canadian constitution and Sir John’s successive Liberal-Conservative administrations put flesh on that skeleton and thus were embodiments of that Tory tradition. They made permanent Canada’s allegiance to the Crown through establishing the queen as Canada’s head of state. They made definite its protection of privilege through the creation of an appointed Senate. They made evident its belief in an activist government through the purchase of the Hudson’s Bay land, which at the time was greater than the size of what was then Canada; the enormity of the government’s investment in the creation of the CPR; and in the National Policy that injected the government into the economy to assist in the development of Canadian business, finance, and trade opportunities. They made certain the dominant power of the central government by affording it the right of disallowance, enabling it to overturn provincial legislation that was deemed ultra vires.

But Macdonald’s treatment of Louis Riel, Charles Tupper’s handling of the Manitoba Schools Question, Laurier’s ascension to the Liberal Party leadership, and Borden’s imposition of conscription and the Union government had combined to rob the Conservative Party of much of its rural and French Quebec bases. With those voting blocs and Macdonald gone, the party’s troubles were inevitable. It experienced dissension in a self-defeating struggle to redefine itself. Borden’s Halifax Platform harked back to the ideals of Conservatives past. In office he remained solidly pro-British, but rendered the relationship with the mother country more nuanced when he moved away from the traditional Tory ties to Britain by ending peerages and demanding greater Canadian autonomy from Britain at both Versailles and the League of Nations.

Meighen did nothing to re-establish the party’s Quebec or rural base or stem its ideological drift. With Meighen, the forces moving it to the right appeared to gain ascendency. The party seemed to lose site of the Tory element that for years had anchored it to the collectivist values that informed much of Canada’s civil society. Whether realizing it or not, Canadian voters sent the party from power to think for a little while, and that’s okay. In a vibrant and healthy democracy, every party needs a good spanking from time to time.

The party’s proud history and recent hardships rendered Bennett’s election in Winnipeg tremendously significant. It was the election of not just another Liberal-Conservative leader but a new Tory leader — a leader in the Macdonald tradition. Bennett’s personal views, as seen in many of his speeches and in the public policy stands he had taken throughout his career, were Tory at their core. The platform that he had helped to create, drawing from the Halifax Platform ideals, and then reshape as prime minister was a reflection of that Toryism — a Red Toryism — a belief in the positive power of government intervention to help people in need, balanced by a fiscal conservatism that respected the vitality of a free market and individual responsibility.

Neither Bennett nor the platform that the convention created was of the left-populist wing of the party that saw corporate power as evil and sought to use the state’s power to assist the little guy through improving his material reality while protecting him from the wrath of big business. That became the constituency of Stevens. Nor were Bennett and the Winnipeg platform of the right laissez-faire wing of the party — a group that saw Canada through the eyes of enlightenment philosopher and political economist Adam Smith and believed that the state acted best when it acted least and that the populace would be helped most when the state allowed them and corporations to pursue their own selfinterests. That became the constituency of Charles Cahan.

Bennett’s middle ground — his Tory grounding — was reflected not only in all that he had already said and done in his political career but also in his Winnipeg convention speeches and again in an article he penned in 1933 in which he observed,

. . . the state regulation of individual activities has been and will continue to be a part of the program of any Conservative Government. It was so with respect to the restriction on hours of labour and against the laissez faire opinions of their opponents. The Conservative party has always taken the view that the order of regulation of individual activity may be of interest to the government as a whole.36

One sees the Tory tradition in all that Bennett did and in the people and policies he opposed. This is not to suggest that he was an ideologue who blindly sought to fit every round peg of a problem into one square ideological hole. He was too smart and too responsible for that. But neither would he abandon his Tory principles or allow events or elections to tempt him to lurch from one point to another on the political spectrum. He was too ethical for that.

Bennett’s Tory ideas led him to do as Borden had suggested and reshape some of the planks that comprised the party platform while ignoring others. Twenty-two resolutions were presented, debated, and ultimately adopted. A 150-member resolutions committee was formed and split into various subcommittees. Each resolution was evaluated, rewritten, or amalgamated into others. While this sounds impressive on its face, the process was actually quite chaotic. At one point, for instance, A.D. McRae was seen sitting in his messy, crowded, and smoke-filled hotel room, reading resolution after resolution that had been submitted by riding associations and simply throwing the ones he did not like into the wastebasket.37 Committees worked past midnight and into the twilight hours fuelled by too much coffee, bad food, and alcohol.

When most resolutions came to the convention floor they were read to a half-empty hall with few delegates actually listening. Most were then passed with little explanation or discussion. Many resolutions had been vetted through so many people that they seemed to have been drained of their lifeblood. One such anemic resolution was entitled Party Policy. It claimed to express exactly what the party stood for but said,

The Liberal Conservative Party whose founders have brought about Confederation and cemented its Provinces into an harmonious political whole, based upon common interest, common ideas, and mutual respect and affection of all its elements, stands everlastingly pledged to a policy which will at all times bring prosperity, contentment, and peace to all its citizens irrespective of boundaries and of origins.³⁸

Despite the slapdash process and the political pabulum that passed for policy, the committees and delegates actually created a platform that was startlingly prophetic. Many of the ideas presented addressed issues that were to be at the heart of Canada’s national conversation for decades to come. Prime Minister Trudeau, for instance, would have smiled and Alberta premier Peter Lougheed would have grimaced to notice a resolution supporting the need for a “national fuel policy.” Sir John would have approved but Mulroney squirmed at the support given to national tariffs as a way to protect manufacturing. St. Laurent would have liked and Lévesque puffed himself into a tizzy when delegates voted to create a system of canals on the St. Lawrence to be owned and operated solely by the federal government. Socialists from the CCF’s Woodsworth to the NDP’s Layton would have applauded the platform’s support for more worker rights, an eight-hour workday, the end to child labour, and equal pay for work of equal value for women. So too would they have cheered the party’s tepid but nonetheless clearly stated support for federally controlled pensions and what was called “social legislation” to alleviate the worst problems associated with illness, unemployment, and alcohol abuse.

The two resolutions that caused the most furious debates on the floor also presaged arguments that would rattle Canadians in the future. Those of the old Reform Party would have loved in one way, and those of the Parti Québécois welcomed in another, the arguments revolving around the idea that all Canadians should declare their loyalty to the Union Jack and the English language. The resolution was eventually allowed to die.

A resolution that was unfortunately not dropped involved immigration and race. Somewhat ironically, in that the Conservative Party delegates were in a province that had been built upon the backs of immigrants, the resolution came to the floor warning of the dangers of letting too many people and too many of the “wrong” people into Canada. The resolution had eight parts. The second stated that Canada’s immigration policy must have the attraction of an increased percentage of British immigrants as its goal. The eighth part had only two words: “Oriental exclusion.”39

There was furious debate. Sir George Foster was the first on his feet, moving that the eighth part should be sent back for further consideration. Tilley came to the microphone to explain that the committee had devoted three hours to arguing over those two words and that sending it back would change nothing. He also said that the only delegation that asked for its inclusion and would veto its being dropped or softened was British Columbia. There ensued a long and heated debate in which a number of blatantly racist and anti-Oriental opinions smudged the air.

Among the most vehement in his support of part eight was Harry Stevens. He argued that to remove it would jeopardize every Conservative seat in British Columbia. Stevens knew that from the first arrival of Asian immigrants, attracted by the Fraser Valley gold rush, anti-Asian racism had been central to British Columbia’s political culture. The province had seen municipalities pass racist bylaws and the provincial government enact racist legislation and then pressure the federal government, sometimes successfully, to enact racist immigration policies and procedures. Vancouver and Victoria had suffered race riots. Stevens himself, despite the fact that few whispered about it in Winnipeg that fall, had been one of the founders and leaders of the blatantly racist Oriental Exclusion League. His speeches had been among those that had sparked a 1907 rampage by a white mob that had torn through Vancouver’s Chinese district. The party seemed intent on ignoring all of this, just as there was no mention made of the fact that Prime Minister Borden had once approved as the party slogan in BC “White Power.”40

The vote was taken and Oriental exclusion was adopted as party policy. The blatantly racist clause was the elephant in the living room that betrayed the party’s otherwise progressive and inclusive social policy platform. Those who voted for it were those who would support Mackenzie King’s locking up innocent Japanese Canadians only a few years hence. But Pierre Trudeau and all those who would later support a multicultural and non-racist Canada would have shuddered when the plank was nailed down. Bennett chose to pick his fights carefully and so ignored it.

Meanwhile, in a Canada that still spoke of French and English as two races, there was an attempt to reach out to Quebec. It was determined that all proceedings would be recorded in both languages, that the Lord’s Prayer that opened the convention would be recited in both French and English, and that the co-chairs would be Anglophone Nova Scotia premier Edgar Rhodes and francophone senator Charles Beaubien.

In the end, the twisting of arms and raising of hands created a policy document that reflected the sometimes contradictory beliefs of the delegates, the big-tent party in which they found a political home, and the ideas that they hoped would be supported by an adequate number of Canadians to turn their resolutions to votes. For a news release that many newspapers reprinted verbatim, the platform was condensed and summarized into eight pledges:

1. We pledge ourselves to a policy of protection for Canadians in the development of our national resources, our agriculture and industrial life, and our consumers from exploitation.
2. We pledge ourselves to foster and develop agriculture and the livestock and dairy industries now so sadly neglected.
3. We pledge ourselves to the stabilization of economic conditions and to the continuity of trade and freedom from the manipulation of home and foreign tariffs.
4. We pledge ourselves to the development of inter-provincial trade, and of a Canadian fuel policy and the development of a foreign market.
5. We pledge ourselves to the improvement of the whole scheme of Canadian transportation and to the establishment of a national highway system.
6. We pledge ourselves to foster and support a plan for greater Empire trade based on mutual advantage.
7. We pledge ourselves to a national Old Age Pensions scheme.
8. We pledge ourselves to such compensation adjustment as will ensure the benefit of the above policies to every Canadian of every part.41

Bennett approved the wording of the eight points. They reflected not only the most significant platform planks that had been approved by the delegates but also his personal and political beliefs and priorities. Demonstrating that he disapproved of the racist elements of the party platform, he ensured that the anti-Oriental immigration clauses were not stated in the summary. It is interesting to read the eight. Many are anachronisms stuck in the issues of their times, but many more are marvellously visionary and would find themselves reflected in policies enacted by both Liberal and Conservative governments of the future.

However, Bennett had for years and in many circumstances proven himself to be a principled but also pragmatic politician. There were realists present who reminded delegates even before they had left the hall that while the platform was important, the ideas of the leader were more significant still. The platform would be there to inform him of the party’s beliefs but not to restrict his ability to intelligently react to changing times and circumstances. The point was brought home by the widely respected old chieftain Robert Borden, who rose early in their deliberations to patiently urge, “You must not forestall too much, a leader who will be responsible to you, to parliament, and to the country, for the policy which is put before the people.”⁴² That Bennett agreed with Borden’s assessment was seen in an Ottawa Journal interview published only three months later in January 1928. The still-new party leader made the point that while the Winnipeg resolutions were important, the details of the party policies would be shaped through consultations between the leader and caucus members.43 With Borden’s blessing, Bennett would pull the party toward his Red Tory vision.

As the Amphitheatre Rink’s floors were being swept and train cars filled with tired delegates chugged east and west from Winnipeg, Bennett was left with the fierce burden of the prize he had so long cherished and just won. As he sat resting back home at his Palliser Hotel suites, answering each letter of congratulations with similar messages and phrases, he faced a challenge like none he had known before. He was used to being the boss, to holding all power and thus being obeyed. But political power is dependent more upon consent than coercion. Political power is not demanded from above but temporarily offered from below. Its fleeting nature makes it less a bookstore than a library.

Like all party leaders, he had supporters who would turn on him with the first decision that threatened a favourite hobby horse or mistake that allowed an opening through which they could advance their own careers. He had reporters, especially those in the Liberal newspapers, anxiously waiting to pounce. It is a naive politician, and one in for a short and trying career, who treats reporters as anything other than jackals there to seek, then feed on, political weakness. He had the cunning Mackenzie King, whose diary entries reveal that his respect for the new leader was growing, but who also knew that his success depended partly on Bennett’s failure and would do what he could to bring it to fruition. President Harry Truman once said that if you want a friend in politics you should buy a dog.

And so there he was as fall turned to winter in 1927. Bennett’s job was to find his way through the dangerous maze of those who temporarily wished him well and those who would always wish him ill. If he could do that, he might just persuade Canadians to concern themselves with the things about which he had always cared so much.