Winning the Stanley Cup must be a marvellous feeling. We have all seen the goofy grins on the young players as they hoist the thirty-four-and-a-half-pound trophy over their heads to circle the ice in triumph and later, in various states of sweaty undress, deliriously gurgle beer from the chalice like dishevelled Arthurian knights who have found the Grail. But the next morning, sore from the bruises of battles fought and slightly hungover from booze, pride, and adulation, they rise knowing that they have but a scant while to rest before being tested again and needing to prove that the victory won was truly deserved.

That fourth period, as it were, of reflection and rejuvenation is not afforded the winners of political contests. The celebrations among supporters may be as raucous, and with television, phone cameras, and YouTube having all but erased privacy, they may now be as public. But unlike in hockey, the political champion must swallow the temptation to rejoice too much. Joy and gratitude can be expressed, but dignity must be maintained. And what is more, the morning after the race is won, political victors cannot rest. Rather, they must immediately begin to work even harder than during the contest that brought them to the summit of their ambition. A political victory is not an end but a beginning; it is less a triumph than an invitation.

Bennett’s victory in Winnipeg rendered him leader of the federal Liberal-Conservative Party and also of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. As such, he was a juggler with four balls to keep aloft. First, five men had run against him and at least two others could have launched legitimate campaigns. Those seven each believed that they would have been a better choice, and that opinion was shared by hundreds and perhaps thousands of their political and financial friends, allies, and supporters. Bennett had to convince the seven — and the thousands — that he was worthy of their support and loyalty.

Second, Bennett had a ninety-one-member caucus. There were twelve from Nova Scotia, one from PEI, seven from New Brunswick, only four from Quebec and, forming the core of Conservative power, fifty-three from Ontario. Twelve members called British Columbia home and there was one from the territories. The party’s wasteland was the prairies. Bennett was the only member from Alberta and there was not a single Conservative MP from Manitoba or Saskatchewan. He had to convince all ninety-one current Conservative MPs and those considering a candidacy in the next election that the delegates at Winnipeg had made the right decision.

Third, Bennett knew, as all leaders of parties that are out of office know, that the next federal campaign had already begun. Campaigns, after all, never really end. To wage its next phase meant that he needed to organize the party federally, in each province, and in each riding, so that the electorate would know and support him and the party’s ideas as he would shape them. He needed to persuade people to join him because without grassroots volunteers a political leader is not really a leader at all.

Fourth, Bennett needed to carry out his responsibilities as Opposition leader, holding the government’s feet to the fire in the House and in committees. He needed to ensure that proposed legislation was improved where it could be, supported when it should be, and opposed when it needed to be. In so doing, he would have to differentiate strategy from tactics while on the one hand balancing political with legislative actions and on the other determining what was best for the country, himself, and the party. And he had to make it all look easy.

All of this rested upon one goal more than any other. Bennett needed to convince his caucus, his former rivals and their supporters, the media, and ultimately the Canadian public that he was qualified and ready to be prime minister, and that the people he had around him were a government in waiting.

But the first thing Bennett had to do was get himself to Ottawa. He spent a week cleaning up files in Calgary, passing on active cases, and doing what he could to wrap up cold ones. He left his suites in Calgary’s Palliser Hotel and upon his arrival at the Ottawa train station simply walked across Wellington Street to his new home on the Château Laurier’s second floor.

Within days, a rumour circulated that he was going to purchase a house and in no time he was receiving letters from real estate agents and others who were only too willing to find an appropriate place. There was even pressure exerted on him to live in Hull so as to promote his electoral chances in Quebec.1 Bennett responded politely to each inquiry and offer with the assurance that he would not be purchasing or leasing a home in Ottawa, but the rumours and consequently the solicitations continued for weeks.

PARTY ORGANIZATION

The Conservative Party organization that Bennett inherited was broken and broke. Bennett knew that while there were political junkies out there who would have followed the Winnipeg convention on the radio and in the papers, the vast majority of Canadians would have paid it no mind. He had rebuilding to do that would begin with introducing himself and his progressive message to Canadians. He pulled $500,000 from his personal bank account to offset part of the costs of the convention and to finance a cross-country tour.

Bennett began a back-breaking speaking junket in the Maritimes that would take him eventually to the Pacific. In Ontario alone he made countless stops and delivered twenty-four major addresses. At each city, town, and village he was well received by audiences and the local press. He spoke with Canadians at outdoor picnics and in church basements. He sat in the parlours of the elite and in farm kitchens. He received advice from party leaders, members of Parliament, potential candidates, significant donors, and Canadians from all walks of life. People came to know him, but just as importantly he came to know the country in a deeper and more profound way than he had before. He was off to a good start, but it would not be enough.

In each of the previous four elections, the party had tried to bring a representative to Ottawa from each provincial organization as part of an ad hoc national committee to coordinate efforts. It was a good idea that had never really worked. The Winnipeg delegates had supported a new idea of establishing for the next election a permanent central party organization. It had been decided that to create the necessary structure, a Dominion Council would be established. The process would begin with party representatives from across the country meeting in Ottawa in April 1928 to map out how the new party organization should look and what needed to be done to create and run a modern, national party. These decisions and plans, coupled with Bennett’s energetic tour, were evidence of a party no longer nostalgically yearning for a lost past or speaking only to its shrinking traditional base. Rather, it was vigorously seeking to re-invent itself to serve a new Canada in a new way with a new leader.

At the convention, Bennett had supported the idea of a permanent federal party organization and the notion of the council, but he became quite worried as the Ottawa meeting approached. He was afraid that the council would simply make public the various rifts within the party and publicize the sad state of its organization and finances. Further, he feared that it might lead to the establishment of a structure that would have the power it needed but then grow to assume a larger role.2 In expressing this worry he was sharing a concern that Borden had expressed in Winnipeg. That is, he needed to finely balance the creation of an influential national council to build a party almost from scratch while at the same time ensuring that the council would not emasculate him and future leaders. To allay this fear Bennett saw to it that he would chair the executive council and appoint its members and national party director. The national party director would coordinate provincial associations and report directly to the leader. There was little objection.

Bennett’s first and only choice for national party director was Vancouver MP General A.D. McRae, the richly experienced and adroit lead organizer of the Winnipeg convention. Unfortunately, McRae had slipped on some ice and fractured his skull, which meant he was unable to begin his duties until he had recovered. Valuable weeks were lost. But when he took the reins, he did so with energy and aplomb. McRae hired Redmond Code as the council’s general secretary, and former Winnipeg Telegram journalist Robert Lipset to oversee public relations. He hired secretarial and support staff. He rented space on Ottawa’s Wellington Street, close to Parliament Hill. He also saw that office space was rented and staff hired in nine cities, which established a presence in each province.

McRae and Code then became itinerant teachers. They spent much of the next year on the road. At each stop they met with provincial staff and the volunteers who ran riding associations. At meetings that were large in some places and convened around kitchen tables elsewhere, they spoke of the need and ways to coordinate messages, gather volunteers, and create and spread positive news. In each riding, they visited and evaluated potential candidates. They supported some, dissuaded others, and were quite blunt with both Bennett back in Ottawa and volunteers in some ridings when they believed a particular person should be supported, and when another should be dropped and a replacement sought. They declared some ridings lost causes and suggested that no time or money be wasted upon them.3

Bennett’s biggest challenge was Quebec. Its population afforded it sixty-five ridings, second only to Ontario. However, in the four elections fought from 1917 to 1926, the party had been unable to win more than four. Quebec mattered. The Quebec Organization Committee’s work was closely monitored by both Bennett and McRae. While McRae led the efforts in the affairs of all other provinces, he called on Bennett to intercede directly in Quebec. Bennett’s work there would not be easy. At the Winnipeg convention, interim party leader Hugh Guthrie had advised the delegates, including the Quebec delegation that was seated immediately before the stage, that the party should forget about trying to woo Quebec voters and concentrate instead on the rest of the country and especially the West. This was not a new position for him. Just ten months before, he had stood before the Conservative Business Men’s Club in Toronto and said much the same thing.⁴ The fact that the party had chosen to hold its convention in Winnipeg was seen as confirmation by some Quebecers, including Montreal’s Charles Cahan, that the party elite was following Guthrie’s advice and abandoning the province.⁵

Bennett disagreed with Guthrie. He believed that the party could and must win the support of Quebecers and that Quebec had to play a role in Canada’s future if that future was to be one in which the country was united and strong. In his acceptance speech, Bennett bluntly announced his rejection of the Guthrie strategy and reached out not only to Quebec but to new Canadians as well.

Bennett claimed to friends that he did not understand the province but he nonetheless set out to win Quebec.6 He knew that he faced five major challenges. First, he was the leader of a party that had been rejected by Quebecers after the enormously unpopular decisions of Macdonald, Tupper, and Borden. Second, he knew that in Winnipeg the vast majority of the Quebec delegation had voted for native son Cahan on both the first and second ballots and that out of the four hundred Quebec delegates he had won only seventy-seven votes. Third, as part of the Borden government he had promoted the notion of conscription and then his work with the National Service Board had seen the registration of thousands of Quebec’s young men. Fourth, he had made it clear in speech after speech that he was a firm believer in the emotional, military, and economic ties between Canada and the British Empire and that his hopes for the future saw those ancestral ties growing stronger. Finally, the ragtag Conservative Party in Quebec was split into rival factions based on personalities and tensions between leaders in Quebec City and Montreal, and between urban and rural riding associations.

After a great deal of consultation, Bennett decided upon a plan. Its implementation began with his appointing Montreal business executive and former MP Joseph Rainville to lead a provincial committee to oversee provincewide organizing. Rainville proved himself quite effective in establishing and running the federal office in Montreal. He was skilful too in hiring Thomas Mahar to run the party’s Quebec City office, then carefully managing and coordinating his efforts. Mahar often bristled at the restrictions put on his activities from Montreal and Ottawa but never for long and never publicly. Mahar and Rainville worked well in papering over the many hard feelings that had previously hampered the party’s efforts to organize in the province.

With these appointments made and beginning to pay dividends, Bennett began to impose his leadership upon the province in quite a wise fashion. He could have led from the front, as an orchestra leader instructing each player. However, he chose to lead from behind, as a cowboy, slowly and patiently nudging the herd toward a destination of his choosing. With McRae and Rainville in place, Bennett moved behind the scenes. He allowed events to play themselves out, knowing that both sides in any familial split often want reconciliation and that clumsy, active intervention only slows and complicates that process.7

He spoke in Quebec only three times between the end of the convention and the beginning of the next parliamentary session on January 26, 1928. On each occasion he charmed his audiences with warm speeches about national reconciliation and unified purposes. He studiously avoided mentioning partisan politics or the party’s rift in the province. In all three cases, he peppered his speeches with French that he could manage if he read it carefully. He was introducing himself and letting the elite and the grassroots come to him.

Then Bennett spoke in the House in favour of the federal government’s funding of improvements to the Quebec City harbour, the importance of bilingualism in immigration matters, and the necessity of saving the country from being swamped by American business interests and cheap agricultural products. These stances were not just political expediency, they were consistent with beliefs he had held for years and ideas and priorities upon which he would later base policies when in power. However, he ensured that his articulation of those beliefs was widely reported in Quebec. They were quite well received and added substance to his charm.

Among the first stops on Bennett’s national speaking tour were Quebec’s Eastern Townships. McRae and Rainville worked together and well to advance the tour, and Bennett found hundreds at some events and thousands at others. The first took place at La Prairie’s Kempton Park Racetrack. Four thousand supporters applauded as he entered from the back and slowly made his way through the crowd. He smiled, shook hands, and slapped backs while offering greetings and small talk. Signs proclaiming “Vive Bennett” and “Bennett is the Farmer’s Friend” fluttered among Canadian Red Ensign and Quebec fleur-de-lis flags and the red, white, and blue bunting. He delivered a rousing speech extolling Quebec pride, national unity, and patriotism, tinged with that old Canadian standby, anti-Americanism.

Bennett skilfully moved from parish to parish in a way that demonstrated that he understood the province better than past Conservative leaders and much better than he had tried to have others believe that he understood it. At each stop he spoke with local organizers and potential candidates and attempted to inspire them with his knowledge of their particular challenges. He left them convinced that their work was essential for the party’s success and that through their efforts the party would win.

All of these activities, when coupled with McRae’s propaganda campaign, were effective at moving the party organization out from the cities and into the large rural ridings. In so doing, the efforts were helping to heal the rift in the party. Bennett was simply going around those who had caused and were perpetuating it. He made his final attempt to address the schisms by announcing in speeches throughout the tour that he would not employ the traditional tactic of designating a Quebec lieutenant. There would be no Cartier to his Macdonald. He believed the practice to be divisive.8 By removing the prize for which many Quebec politicians were salivating, he stole one of the reasons for the factionalism. Bennett then appointed members to a new Quebec Organization Committee whose mandate was to oversee preparations for the upcoming election. He carefully selected representatives from both factions and then wrote letters and met personally with each of them, essentially ordering them to play nice. But they were not quite ready to share their toys.

The first conference of the Quebec Organization Committee was held in Montreal in May 1929 and nearly fell apart in rancorous infighting. It took Bennett’s personal intervention to fix it. He said nothing until the shouting and insults subsided. Then he spoke to the delegates in hushed tones and quietly called for repose and dignity. He reminded them of why they were there and of their shared beliefs and goals. Things calmed and productive work was eventually done. The lines between the factions were still evident but they were beginning to blur.

Bennett made an unfortunate and avoidable misstep when in July 1929 he ignored Rainville’s advice and involved himself in the selection of a new provincial party leader. Bennett believed that University of Montreal professor Edouard Montpetit was best suited for the job and made his views known. He was quickly embarrassed when Montpetit announced that he did not want the job but, more devastatingly, that he was a Liberal. Bennett’s error angered Camillien Houde, the charismatic and bombastic mayor of Montreal, who had been coveting and eventually won the position. Houde could have been an ally but instead was embittered. He declared privately to supporters that he would ensure that neither he nor provincial Conservatives in Quebec would lift a finger to help elect Bennett or his federal candidates. Fortunately, the good work that Bennett, McRae, Rainville, Mahar, and others had done, and the alliances that had been forged, more than made up for Houde’s destructive intentions.

Bennett’s patience, charm, tact, and political adroitness had laid the foundation for rebuilding the party in Quebec. The manner and success with which he had intervened had made the organization tighter and the party stronger, and increased its chances of success in the upcoming election. In all that he had cleverly done and not done he had created for himself a bastion of strength and authority, and unquestionably established himself as leader.

While all of that determined effort in Quebec had been going on, of course, Bennett had also been dealing with the rest of the country. Quebec had 65 seats in the House, but Ontario had 82. The other seven provinces had only 98 among them. That arithmetic meant that Ontario was of special importance. Fortunately for Bennett, Conservative Howard Ferguson was the very popular premier of the province and he had built and carefully nurtured a robust political organization. It was split into regions, then into carefully supervised riding associations. William Clysdale had demonstrated exceptional talent as a full-time party organizer working with two influential cabinet ministers to ensure that volunteers were plentiful, engaged, and happy, and that money was sufficient and being spent when and where it would do the most good. Just as Ontario premier Bill Davis would four decades later lend his “Big Blue Machine” to the federal Conservative Party, Ferguson promised to offer up his mailing and volunteer lists to his old friend Bennett.

Bennett supported McRae’s decision to have Clysdale work in the federal wing of the party as well. In choosing potential federal candidates, for instance, McRae worked through Clysdale and he, in turn, consulted Ferguson about every decision. This arrangement meant that Bennett merely signed the papers of the candidates whom Ferguson had approved.9 Ferguson’s loyalty, efforts, and organization left Bennett with scant preparatory work to do in Canada’s most populous province. Ferguson’s popularity and the power of his machine was shown in October 1929 when 57 per cent of Ontarians returned him to the premier’s office.

The 1926 federal election had sent twelve Conservative MPs to Ottawa from British Columbia’s fourteen ridings, so it was another province of special interest. As a Vancouver MP, McRae knew the province well. He was disheartened, though, by the fact that BC’s Conservative government under Premier Simon Fraser Tolmie, which had been elected in a landslide in July 1928, was drawing criticism for incompetence. British Columbia had already become notorious for electing colourful premiers. The reputation was established with its first, an enigmatic Nova Scotian named Bill Smith, who, after working as a photographer in the California gold rush, moved to Vancouver, opened a virulently racist newspaper, and changed his name to Amor De Cosmos — lover of the universe. At least Tolmie kept his own name. But in mishandling one issue after another, he was becoming something of a joke and threatening to take the party down with his sinking ship.

Despite Tolmie’s bumbling, however, the province’s federal party organization was sound. It benefited from the popularity of Harry Stevens and McRae himself. While Bennett had learned from the Ontario experience that the federal party could profit from forging closer ties with a Conservative premier, he demonstrated his flexibility as a tactician in expressing his understanding that in BC the party would benefit from distancing itself from Tolmie. Ever blunt in his communications, Bennett wrote to Tolmie, stating, “Today, if the Liberal Party were in power in the Province the fortunes of our Party federally would be brighter than they are now.”10

The situation in New Brunswick was similar in that having a Conservative government in office did not help Bennett’s efforts. Premier John Baxter was cool to the opening of a federal office in Fredericton and offered little assistance when asked to coordinate his provincial organization with the barely existent federal one. After unsuccessful meetings with the premier and with party leaders in a number of ridings, McRae wrote to Bennett stating that he would need to rely upon his personal connections to pull volunteers and money from the hinterlands when election time came.

In Nova Scotia, on the other hand, Conservative premier Edgar Rhodes believed in the efficacy of a good political organization. Following the near defeat of his government in October 1928, he had led a drive to bring structure to the provincial party. When McRae arrived in Halifax he found much of his work already done. He opened and staffed a federal office but worked with Rhodes to coordinate the two organizations so that they supported each other, much as in Ontario.

In June 1929, the Saskatchewan Conservatives had usurped the Liberals and struck a strategic alliance with the Progressives in a number of ridings. The combination of their shared efforts — and desire among the people for change after years of a tired and corrupt provincial Liberal administration — had placed a Conservative government in Regina. McRae’s challenge in Saskatchewan was to build on the advantage of Conservatives controlling patronage in the province while extracting the party from its ties to the Progressives, who had made it clear that they would not support Conservatives in a federal election.

At the same time, Bennett had to rely upon many Saskatchewan volunteers who had helped the party win based partly on its support of anti-Catholic sentiments, while simultaneously selling them on the notion that such ideas would doom the party in vast, vote-rich regions of the country. The problem was made trickier by the fact that the provincial Conservatives had been so venomous in their anti-Catholic pronouncements that even the Ku Klux Klan had publicly supported Conservative candidates. Bennett had spoken passionately against the Klan and the vile bigotry for which it stood. He did all that he could to ensure that it played no role in the party. Despite his efforts, there were persistent rumours about the KKK’s strength in the party’s Saskatchewan wing.

With that flurry of activity demanding attention, McRae also had to create organizations in provinces without a Conservative government. His visits to PEI convinced him that Charlottetown’s federal office could essentially organize the whole island without attempting to create structures in each of the four tiny ridings. Money flowed to the office from Ottawa and some staff were shared with Halifax. In many parts of Alberta and Manitoba, Bennett and McRae found it virtually impossible to create riding associations, while in others the quality of the people who were willing to stand as candidates was somewhat abysmal. Despite the opening of offices in Charlottetown, Calgary, and Winnipeg, and progress in a number of ridings, Bennett held little hope for an electoral turnaround in PEI, Alberta, and Manitoba.11

Meanwhile, the Ottawa office had become a hectic hub of activity. From only four employees when it began, it had grown so that by February 1930 it employed twenty-seven full-time people. The activity was good but it cost money, while each provincial office needed money too. Rainville had predicted that it would take $65,000 a year for his Quebec offices and expenses.12 As the party’s operations grew, McRae, J.D. Chaplin, Sir George Perley, and Bennett himself each dug into their own pockets to defray costs. Bennett donated $2,500 a month to keep the central office and its operations running.¹³ Despite Perley’s fundraising efforts, the costly organization was constantly short of resources. Beyond his monthly stipend, Bennett often had to make large cash advances to keep it all afloat. In May 1930, for instance, he wrote a personal cheque to the party for $50,000.¹⁴

SHAPING THE MESSAGE

While McRae and often Bennett were on the road creating offices, spreading and trying to raise money and interest, Robert Lipset was in the Ottawa office doing work that revealed him to be a political genius. He met often with Bennett and the two grew so close that Lipset became one of the very few who called him Dick. As the director of the newly established Research and Publicity Bureau, Lipset understood that the key to political organization is information. The party needed to control information both coming in and going out. He set to work to create systems whereby the party would have access to accurate information from each of the ridings as well as detailed research on issues of the day. He also created a way to bypass newspapers and radio and disseminate information directly to party supporters.

To begin, Lipset had Redmond Code conduct interviews with each member of the Conservative caucus and stress to each the importance of his project. He asked them to provide detailed information about their ridings that was to include the newspapers and radio stations, with the political bent of each, plus a summary of the riding’s history, economic and social conditions, and finally a list of voters that included names, addresses, party affiliation or voting habits, and influential organizations to which each belonged. When some MPs were slow in getting him the information, follow-up letters were written and phone calls made. Bennett personally nudged those who still did not respond. Soon, reams of paper were being analyzed in Code’s office. He and Lipset came to understand each riding as they had never been understood before. They established a mailing list of over 160,000 names.15

But Lipset and Code were not done. Code had read about a machine called an addressograph. It had been invented in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1896. It allowed addresses to be printed on envelopes, letters, pamphlets, or printed matter of any kind. American businesses had been using them for years and in the 1928 presidential election that had just placed Herbert Hoover in the White House, the Republican Party became the first to use the machine in politics. Lipset purchased an addressograph.

They soon found that in the little office on Wellington Street they could transfer the names and addresses from the lists the caucus had helped to develop to multi-graph plates. They could then print 250,000 personally addressed pamphlets every three days. In the 1930 election, the machine allowed them to hear about a mass mailing the Liberals were preparing, write a response, print it, and have it in the hands of Conservative supporters before the Liberal mailing even arrived.

Lipset then turned his attention to content. He had research material arriving on a regular basis. It was combined with the information gleaned from Conservative MPs and senators who informed him exactly what parts of what ridings would be most receptive to hearing about particular issues. He hired a team of writers and established the National News Service. Every week saw articles written and then mailed to specific groups in a particular riding or even to particular individuals. Articles were printed in a number of languages in an appeal to immigrant communities.

The National News Service also sent full articles to ninety-nine newspapers every week. Simultaneously, it blanketed the country with letters to the editor and other short political pieces sent to 165 newspapers a week. Lipset also targeted specific articles to particular papers. By 1930, there were 645 newspapers receiving free articles from the service, which translated to a national readership of approximately 750,000.¹⁶ Newspaper editors, especially small-town editors, were happy to receive the space-filling articles. Even free editorial cartoons were provided. Many editors wrote the National News Service asking for more copy. Lipset bragged to Bennett that he was especially proud of the articles that were written in a way that was pro-Conservative but appeared non-partisan so that no editor seemed to catch on to the fact that they were from the party. Lipset told Bennett of the mountain of thank-you notes he had on file from grateful editors.17 The operation was of paramount importance given that in that era of blatantly partisan papers, only eleven could be counted as Conservative.¹⁸

In addition to the newspaper work, the National News Service also produced a small magazine called The Canadian. Published nine times before and during the 1930 election, it was sent to candidates and important Conservative supporters and used to explain party policies and offer tips for responding to criticism.

A bonus for the party was that because the whole National News Service operation did not need to show a profit, and with much of the work done by volunteers, it cost only about $6,000 a month. Lipset reported that a privately run organization of a similar size and complexity would easily have cost $20,000 a month.¹⁹ It was a steal.

While Lipset and Code were working their magic, Bennett took other actions to try to shape the coverage of him and his party. Bennett would later become notorious for his unwillingness or inability to hide the contempt he felt for journalists. He often insulted and bullied them and once even threatened to jail a roomful of them. John Bassett Sr. once remarked, “Mr. Bennett likes the radio better than newspapers because the radio cannot talk back.”²⁰ Despite his obvious lack of respect for reporters, Bennett understood the power of the newspapers that employed them. It had been part of the reason he had tried to buy control of the Calgary Herald so many years before.

It was Bennett’s appreciation of the power of the press that led him to again use his personal wealth to buy the party a foothold into the near monopoly of Liberal-friendly papers. In 1928, he signed as the guarantor of a $2,500 loan to back Port Hope, Ontario’s, Canada News. He also arranged a list of 20,000 Conservative Party supporters to be forwarded to the newspaper’s office to begin its search for subscribers. The weekly began on Dominion Day 1928 and every issue was, not surprisingly, effusive in its support of Bennett and the party and scathing in its criticism of Mackenzie King’s Liberals. Unfortunately for the party and for Bennett’s bank balance, the paper folded after a year.

But Bennett was not done. In order to gain traction in vote-poor Saskatchewan he directly invested $344,000 of his own money to bankroll the creation of the Regina Daily Star.21 It hit newsstands in July 1928 and stood in stark contrast to the city’s other blatantly pro-Liberal papers. Its readership grew quickly as the paper was distributed free of charge. Bennett was convinced that the Regina Daily Star played a significant role in the defeat of Saskatchewan’s Liberal government in 1929.

In December 1919, Quebec City Conservative Party organizer Thomas Mahar had made a bold move and created a new weekly paper that he called Le Journal. By the late 1920s, it boasted a circulation of 22,000 and was an unapologetic voice for the party. It printed many flattering photographs and stories about Bennett and prominent Quebec Conservatives, and scathing stories about Mackenzie King’s government. Despite growing readership, and the fact that Mahar and two friends continued to pour revenue and their own money into it, by early 1930 Le Journal was losing money every week. Finally, when it was clear that Bennett would not approve party funds to support the paper nor cough up his own, Mahar allowed it to flounder and fail. It was an opportunity lost.

Another unfortunate decision was made in Rainville’s arranging for the party to financially support Montreal’s Le Miroir, Le Chameau, and Goglu. The moves made sense as all three were anti-Liberal, and for a time the Conservative Party drew benefit from their editorial slants. However, it became increasingly clear that all three were fascist and racist.

Adrien Arcand published the papers. Arcand was a young, failed journalism student who had dropped out of McGill University. He admired Adolf Hitler. He believed that Quebec should adopt legislation to create a pure French-Catholic society with all non-French speaking, non-Catholics forced to leave the province. Arcand’s papers reflected and spoke to the anti-Semitism that had found a home in the hearts of a disturbing number of Quebecers who looked with favour upon the supposed advantages of creating a society populated solely by those who were “pure wool.”²²

There is no evidence that Bennett knew of the racist editorial stands of the papers. There is a great deal of evidence, however, that Bennett held no racist views and that he was personally opposed to such views in BC, Saskatchewan, and Quebec. In response to a series of anti-Catholic articles and editorials in the Regina Daily Star, for instance, Bennett wrote, “Nothing could be more injurious to this country than that religious differences should become the line of division between political parties!”23 Bennett later severed ties with Arcand. The loss of the little papers was barely felt, for the party’s direct action to provide research-based content, coupled with the good press that Bennett was creating with his many tours and speeches, was influencing what Canadians were hearing about the old party and the new leader.

Directly linked to Bennett’s efforts at rebuilding the party were his responsibilities in Parliament. As the leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, it was ostensibly Bennett’s job to hold the government’s feet to the fire, ensuring that all legislation passed was as good as it could be. In reality, of course, his job was to prick and prod the government’s front benches, seek weaknesses in their programs, contradictions in their arguments, holes in their research, hints of scandal or wrongdoing, or anything else that could be used to embarrass the government in order to, by extension, enhance the reputation of him and his party.

As when Bennett had been posing questions to Mackenzie King’s previous government, the underlying theme to his questions as Opposition leader supported greater intervention by the federal government into the economy to improve the lives of Canadians. He asked about pensions, about unemployment insurance, about creating federally sponsored research facilities, and about greater federal support for education, farmers, and fishermen. In all that he said it was clear that his elevation to party leader had not shaken his belief in the federal government existing as a force for good. His concomitant conviction was that the good it could be doing was being squandered by a prime minister who often appeared more of a squeamish manager than an audacious leader. Despite his frustration with Mackenzie King, Bennett was consistently positive in his interactions in the House. He seldom downshifted to mere partisanship and, somewhat uncharacteristically given his nature in the past, brought a refreshing balance of wit and good cheer to debates.²⁴

Bennett’s first sustained attack focused on government estimates. These are the figures brought to the House to provide details regarding spending. Bennett came to the Opposition leader’s role with an already firmly established reputation as a quick study, powerful speaker, and nimble debater. His relentless criticism of the estimates built upon that reputation as he drew on his business expertise to find holes and contradictions in many of the numbers and percentages. In a trend that would continue throughout his time as leader, Bennett was on his feet nearly every day and he dominated his party’s portion of question period and debates. Everything seemed to be going well. Then everything changed.

THE CRASH

Stock markets are motivated by fear and greed and operate much like a teeter-totter: when one motivating factor goes up, the other goes down. Greed breeds bulls and fear breeds bears. By the middle of the 1920s, it had become evident to prudent professional investors that the drunken party of greed they had been enjoying was coming to an end. In this way, the 1920s were like the 1980s leading to the crash of 1987, or the decade preceding the 2008 crash. Former American Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan summarized all three eras well in explaining the 1990s as a time of irrational exuberance. Conditions and attitudes created a situation in which insatiable greed led normally intelligent and moderate investors to be seduced by easy money and skyrocketing share and asset values into believing that nearly anything was possible and that rules no longer mattered.25 When the greed end of the teeter-totter smashes to the ground, the impact and spiralling fear reverberate for years.

As was the case in 1987 and 2008, the 1929 stock market crash was more a symptom of the economic woes than a cause. Hindsight indicates that throughout the 1920s many sectors of the economy had based their projections and investments on the idea that growth would be steady and permanent. Credit became too easy to get and corporations and individuals borrowed to buy and build, and to purchase stocks on margin. All bet that loans would be paid by the profits and rising commodity and property values that for years had seemed too simple and simply certain. The overconfidence and oversupply of easy money led to overproduction. For instance, by the late 1920s the Canadian automotive industry was producing 400,000 cars a year, despite the fact that over a million were already on the road and that the most that had ever been sold in a year was 260,000.²⁶

After the postwar recession had ended and before growing protectionist barriers had begun, Canadian farmers had joined in the party. Much of Europe had been devastated by war and revolution and was slow to recover from both, creating an unprecedented need for Canadian grain and wheat. For a brief period, and it was brief indeed, farmers planted fencerow to fencerow, enjoying prices and returns that had never been as high. The old Canadian staples of iron ore, lumber, fish, and pulp and paper were all along for the ride. The railways kept building more lines to take everything to markets that could not seem to get enough of Canada’s stuff. The new movies, lively jazz, and outrageous flappers in notoriously sinful Montreal, the enthusiastic flouting of prohibition laws and old-fashioned decorum, all seemed to reflect good times that, like all good parties and periods of prosperity, appeared to be asking no price and promising no end.

There had been trouble in the spring of 1929. Stock prices began to bounce wildly for reasons that few could explain. As Europe recovered and a glut of wheat flooded the world market, the price for it and other commodities had begun to drop. Manufacturers began to feel the pinch caused by tariff policies that were rendering their products more expensive in world markets. Companies responded by reducing production and laying off workers. Many also issued more and more increasingly questionable stock to raise revenue, protect profit margins, and please shareholders. It was the beginning of a circle of rational and irrational reactions that effectively wound an ever-tightening noose around the necks of businesses big and small. It couldn’t last. It didn’t.

Wall Street laid an egg on the twenty-ninth of October 1929. While stories of New York speculators throwing themselves from high buildings were apocryphal, the shock of the sudden evaporation of wealth was certainly real and widely felt. The crash actually occurred over three days — October 24, 28, and 29. There was a brief and exciting rally four days later but then a slow slide that lasted a full month. On the crash’s first day, $4 billion in American investment vanished. Canadian markets collapsed as well. While estimates vary, it is generally agreed that by the end of 1929 Canada saw about five billion dollars simply disappear. By early the next year, the top fifty companies in the country saw their worth devalued by 50 per cent.27

Through the winter of 1929–30, the Canadian corporate and political elite made only minor adjustments to long-term plans, hoping to get by on hoping for the best. Many experts believed that the crash was just a temporary adjustment and that the fundamentals of the Canadian economy in general and Canadian businesses in particular were such that it had created a brief storm that would be easily weathered. The Canadian Bankers Association, for instance, published an article in its January 1930 journal arguing that the economic problems would perhaps affect the sale of luxury items but that the growing unemployment that was beginning to be seen particularly in the West was a seasonal thing that would quickly right itself. The article predicted little more than a slight and short recession.28 That same month, Toronto’s Globe published an op-ed piece by the highly respected Sir Edward Beatty, who, from his position as president of the Canadian Pacific Railway, wrote that the current challenges were merely a necessary economic adjustment that would prove to be short lived and result quite soon in a stronger economy benefiting all.²⁹

Prime Minister Mackenzie King chose to listen to those whose economic predictions matched what he needed to be true just months before he would go to the people. That he missed the significance of the stock market crash is indicated by the fact that on the day of and following the calamity heard round the world, his diary speaks only of his trip to the West.³⁰ Not a mention is made of the twentieth century’s most significant economic event.

Meanwhile, unemployment was growing as plant gates closed and unsold wheat rotted. All economic indicators were beginning to coalesce into a consensus of doom. Canadians were coping with the crisis largely on their own as there was no social safety net to catch those falling from prosperity to despair. There was no national unemployment insurance, or health care, no maternity leaves, or child care benefits, or welfare, and old-age pensions and relief were spotty and inadequate.

Day after day, Bennett and Woodsworth hammered the government in the House with demands for action, but Mackenzie King continue to smile and weave circuitous responses that said as little as possible. The prime minister had decided, like too many corporate and financial leaders, to do nothing while betting his bottom dollar that the sun would come out tomorrow.

1930 ELECTION

Politics is tough. Intelligently analyzing options, then aligning the most persuasive alternative to a political strategy is one thing. First attaining power and then trying to remain true to one’s principled analysis in the implementation of that strategy is entirely another. For instance, Stephen Harper came from the University of Calgary school of Canadian neo-cons that found big government and deficit spending anathema. In the late 1990s, he was president of the National Citizens Coalition, selling the idea of a balanced-budget constitutional amendment and proudly proclaiming the group’s slogan: More freedom through less government. That was easy. In January 2009, Prime Minister Harper was moved by economic and political events to abandon all in which he had once believed in an effort to save his minority government and deal with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. His budget dramatically jacked up spending and announced an end to the era of surpluses with a planned $85 billion deficit. He and his equally doctrinaire minister of finance Jim Flaherty explained that circumstances allowed them no other option.

Like Harper, Mackenzie King was an intelligent and principled man who had taken the time to carefully develop a thoughtful political philosophy. In 1918 he had published the turgid, largely unreadable, but intellectually important Industry and Humanity. The book analyzed economics from the perspective of the interplay between labour and industry, and promoted social welfare legislation as making economic and moral sense. He had negotiated labour contracts, arbitrated strikes, and cleaned up after messes such as the 1907 Vancouver race riot. He understood economics at a micro and macro level and how corporate, financial, and government action and inaction affected peoples’ lives.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Mackenzie King’s public utterances and actions suggested a baffling inability to comprehend, or perhaps just admit, what was happening. Like Prime Minister Harper in the fall of 2008, Mackenzie King either failed to understand the enormity of the calamity that had befallen the country or was unable, for whatever reason, to be direct with Canadians about it. Author Bob Plamondon wrote, “[Harper] appeared aloof, lacking empathy, and failed to acknowledge the carnage that was taking place.”31 Similarly, in February 1930, Mackenzie King had responded to Bennett’s relentless questions by telling the House that the escalating economic crisis was just “. . . a few temporary circumstances prevailing at the moment . . . in particular localities.”³²

As winter turned to spring and the economy continued to worsen, Mackenzie King continued to ignore or trivialize all that was falling to pieces around him. As American President Herbert Hoover was doing in the White House, he seemed intent on allowing the markets to correct themselves. Like Hoover, he waited patiently for the recovery to arrive from just around the corner, but also like Hoover, he waited and waited as it stubbornly refused to show up. It appeared to more and more Canadians that the prime minister just didn’t get it. One of Mackenzie King’s biographers, the respected Blair Neatby, made two related points in trying to understand the prime minister’s determined inability or unwillingness to act. He argued that despite Mackenzie King’s education, training, and experience, he was rather orthodox and old-fashioned in his thoughts on economic matters, with ideas no more sophisticated than the average Canadian’s. Further, and tied to that point, is that the only time he recognized social or political problems is when they presented themselves to him as political threats or opportunities.33 Bruce Hutchison, an earlier biographer, considered the stubborn refusal to act or to even acknowledge a need to act and postulated, “A student of his life is inclined to conclude that the explanation was really quite simple — King’s timing, for once, was just wrong.”³⁴

No leader could have, at that moment, addressed the calamity in its entirety, but an inability to do everything is never an excuse to do nothing. Bennett attacked Mackenzie King day after day for doing just that — nothing. The prime minister still boasted, with pre-Keynesian pride, that he was a sound keeper of the country’s books, which remained in surplus despite the ever-mounting economic challenges that he still insisted would soon pass. The combination of worsening economic conditions and Mackenzie King’s unwillingness to address, or even admit, their profundity, worked to Bennett’s favour.

After hammering Mackenzie King in the House every week, every Friday afternoon Bennett boarded a train to spend the weekend on his never-ending tour of the country. He was indefatigable. He was relentless. He was intent on demonstrating that, unlike the prime minister, he not only understood the hardships that Canadians were facing, but also that he had solutions to the economic problems that were at the root of those hardships. Most important among those ideas was something in which Bennett had always believed and that had been included in the Conservative’s Winnipeg platform — greater trade with Britain and other Commonwealth countries through the creation of preferential tariff and trade treaties. Bennett was cleverly able to tap into the core of Canadian pride in its British heritage, which in 1930 was still palpable, while accusing Mackenzie King of wanting only to increase trade with the United States, thereby touching that hint of anti-Americanism that is always sellable.

Mackenzie King may have been somewhat confused about Canada’s material reality but he was still a cunning politician. His February 1930 budget laid two yawning, grass-covered holes before Bennett and invited him to go for a stroll. Finance Minister Charles Dunning stood there in his new shoes and read out the government’s intention to seek imperial trade preferences for Canadian manufactured goods, raw materials, and food products. Dunning then boasted that the government intended to raise tariffs on a number of goods that were currently imported from the United States in order to protect Canadian businesses and consumers.

Mackenzie King had opted to try to use the economic woes of Canadians to his narrow partisan advantage. He decided that he would use the budget not so much to deal with the crisis but to force an election. He snidely recorded in his diary: “It will be a real bombshell into the Tory camp.”35 A couple of weeks later he sat late in the evening, alone in his Laurier House study, and wrote, “We must introduce enough ‘free’ [products without tariffs] under Br. preference to make Tories fight us vigorously and that we surely have got [them] this time . . . What will Bennett have left to talk on when trade with Grt. Br. [is] being increased with our proposals & trade with U.S. decreased.”³⁶

On its face, the budget proposals indeed appeared to be the very ideas that Bennett had been proposing on his speaking tours, but he was not about to tumble into the trap. In his dynamic response to the budget, Bennett criticized the government. The proposed imperial tariff was a desperate half measure that would not work, he argued, for it was inconsistent with other existing trade policies. You must change it all, Bennett said, and not simply tinker, as the budget proposal promised to do. To undertake a program of comprehensive trade reform, he continued, a conference was needed at which Britain and the other dominions could develop a mutually beneficial and unified structure of trade preferences. Bennett tore into the Liberal proposal and thundered in the House, “The changes embodied in it are founded upon no consistent economic principle and are a crazy quilt of higher protectionism and freer trade.”37

The prime minister listened to the budget debate and said little, allowing Dunning to respond to all questions, jabs, and insults. He slowly sensed that the post-budget jousting was doing all that he had wanted it to do. He was confident that Bennett had talked himself into a corner by arguing for tariff and trade reform but against the Liberal changes to those policies. The prime minister believed that Bennett would be unable to extricate himself from that corner and even confided to his diary that he felt sorry for the Tory leader.³⁸

Meanwhile, Mackenzie King employed procedural tricks that allowed little substantive debate about unemployment. Of the worsening economic situation felt first in the prairies but spreading like a plague throughout the land, he spoke only of “seasonal slackness.” When pressed by Winnipeg Labour MP Abraham Heaps to at least acknowledge that jobs were being lost throughout the country, Mackenzie King retorted, “There is no evidence in Canada today of an emergency situation.”³⁹

While Bennett was good at bringing the unemployment issue to the fore, James Shaver Woodsworth was masterful. J.S. Woodsworth is among the most fascinating of Canadians. He was born in Ontario but travelled west as a young Methodist minister to do social work in Winnipeg’s hard and tough slums. He wrote bestselling books about the plight of Canada’s forgotten working class and earned credibility when he took employment at a number of difficult jobs, including a stint as a Vancouver longshoreman that saw him lifting and throwing bundles heavier than his slim 130 pounds. His political career had begun as a leader of the ill-fated Winnipeg General Strike, then later as one of two Labour Party MPs to win office in 1921. While he would be among the guiding founders and first leader of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, it was as a highly respected and articulate Labour MP that he refused to allow Mackenzie King to play parliamentary rope-a-dope and say nothing about the growing problem of unemployment. In this determined effort he indirectly helped Bennett.

Standing behind his desk with the unimposing look of the preacher he had been, the slight man with the greying, thinning hair and well-clipped beard demanded that the government explore the viability of instituting a system of unemployment insurance. Mackenzie King had avoided declaring himself on the issue by pronouncing, accurately, that such an undertaking was a provincial matter. But under Woodsworth’s relentless badgering he relented at least a little in saying that if the provinces initiated such a program and then asked the federal government to help coordinate it across the country, he would consider the invitation. It was a line of dominoes with each bearing the word “if.” Finally, in May, with unemployment getting worse and plans for the upcoming election already in place, Mackenzie King pledged to call a conference on unemployment to help his government better understand the issue and to develop policies to address it. But the conference would not take place until after the election. And it would happen only if he won — it was yet another domino in the line.

The unrelenting pressure to do something about unemployment led to one of Mackenzie King’s rare verbal blunders — a slip that may have cost him the election before the writ had even been dropped. The prime minister said,

So far as giving money from this Federal Treasury to the provincial governments is concerned, in relation to the question of unemployment as it exists today, I might be prepared to go a certain length possibly in meeting one or two of the western provinces that have Progressive premiers at the head of their governments . . . but I would not give a single cent to any Tory Government . . .40

The gasps among members on both sides of the House were echoed by those from the public gallery. It is a unique moment indeed when a prime minister makes a statement of such partisan ruthlessness. In a single phrase, Mackenzie King had repainted himself as the leader of the Liberals rather than of all Canadians. Cries of shame and derisive shouts cascaded down upon him from the Opposition benches. He could have retracted or clarified, but with the hole dug he instead began pulling the dirt in upon himself. In direct response to Harry Stevens, who had yelled that the prime minister should be ashamed of himself, Mackenzie King continued and actually upped the ante:

May I repeat what I have said. With regard to giving money out of the Federal Treasury to any Tory government in this country for these alleged unemployment purposes, while these governments are situated as they are today with politics diametrically opposed to this government, I would not give them a five-cent piece.41

The prime minister’s blunder piled upon a gaffe was like Christmas morning for Bennett and the Conservatives. The next week found Mackenzie King on a pre-campaign tour trying to ignore both his recent outrageous remarks and the unemployment issue itself. He quickly found that he could do neither. In Peterborough, he finally conceded that unemployment was a problem. Two days later, in Montreal, he admitted that it was a crisis. He then claimed in Halifax that, despite his “five-cent” remark, he was willing — and in fact had long been anxious — to help any province but that none had asked. His campaign then took another blow when Alberta’s Conservative premier John Brownlee released documents proving that he had indeed been asking for help since February but had been unable to even arrange a meeting with the appropriate federal ministers. The jig was up. Brownlee proved that the five-cent remark was not merely a slip — it was policy.

In the spring and early summer of 1930, the economy was continuing to spiral downward. Mackenzie King offered no grand vision or even short-term plans for arresting the trend. Given the economic and political circumstances, it is difficult to imagine a worse time to have to call an election. However, Mackenzie King had decided that he needed a new mandate before the Americans raised tariffs yet again, and before the imperial conference planned for the fall. Believing victory would be his, he visited the Governor General, asked that Parliament be dissolved, and that an election be held on July 18, 1930.⁴²

THE CAMPAIGN

Bennett entered the campaign expressing great confidence. All of the work he had been doing to organize the party and to raise his personal profile in the country was about to be tested. Campaigns cost money and he donated another $600,000 of his own to the cause. Beyond this substantial sum, Bennett and his new political machine had begun to prove effective as a fundraiser. His connections with the Bank of Montreal and the CPR helped to secure donations totalling $100,000. His connections with Montreal’s corporate elite helped to win an additional $575,000.43

Mackenzie King realized that Bennett would be a formidable campaigner. All had observed his growth as party leader. Even Sir Robert Borden, certainly no fan, wrote to Beaverbrook just four weeks before the election, “During the past two years Bennett has developed fine qualities of leadership. To a very great extent he has overcome his temperamental handicap; and he has ruled with a firm hand, displaying fine courage on occasions when it was demanded.”⁴⁴

The manner in which Bennett led the 1930 campaign harked back to Macdonald and Laurier in that the leader’s personality outshone the party. Liberal Conservative candidates sold themselves as “Bennett men” and party policies became “Bennett’s ideas.” Charles Gavan “Chubby” Power, who would rise to prominence first in Quebec and then in federal politics, observed, “There is no doubt that Bennett’s high character, his great reputation, his forceful utterances and his eloquence on the hustings had more to do with the victory in 1930 than the allegiance of the electorate to the principles and policies of the Conservative party.”⁴⁵

Bennett returned to the Winnipeg Amphitheatre Rink to kick off the campaign. On June 9, he spoke to seven thousand people and even more over the radio that carried his voice through a trans-Canada hookup to five cities in Ontario, two in Quebec, and four in the Maritimes. The radio audience was estimated to have been one million.⁴⁶ The use of radio was like nothing that had ever been seen in Canadian politics. If Franklin Roosevelt is credited with showing Americans what smart political leaders could do with radio, then Bennett must be given the credit for teaching Canadians. That night he reviewed all that he had been saying in the House and on his speaking tours about the importance of national unity and prosperity as goals, and about imperial trade as a way to pursue them both. He spoke of broad visions for the future greatness of the country, noting his support for more efficiency in the railway system and for the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway that together would take Canadian products to the world.

Remarkably, Bennett delivered over one hundred major speeches. His oratorical skills were in full force and he was something to behold. He still occasionally slid into past bad habits and appeared to become lost in the thundering cadences of his own voice. Reading his speeches today leads one to wonder if Bennett sometimes tested the attention span and political and economic knowledge of his audience. One is also left with the conviction, however, that unlike too many politicians today, he respected the people by never “dumbing down” his message. He explained rather than sold and challenged rather than pandered.

Bennett was honest; he would never be caught in a lie or a politician’s hedging even when shading the truth may have been to his advantage. And he never changed his language or emphasis depending on where he was. Bennett’s stump speech, for instance, that he more or less repeated at each of the stops on his first western swing, spoke proudly of his passion for Britain but also of his patriotic love for Canada. He said, “I give place to no man in my love of Empire. But there is a greater love in my life, and that is my love for Canada. Judge me by this. And those who condemn me for it, withhold your support.”47 He later said the same thing in Quebec.

To western farmers who had since the days of Laurier opposed nearly all tariffs, he bluntly stated that they might not like them but that he and his party believed they were best for the country. In words few politicians ever hear themselves say, Bennett told western audiences that they were wrong. He said, “And although I know you were wrong even then, I agree that perhaps the fault was as much ours, as yours, that we did not make ourselves better understood. . . .”⁴⁸ He then went on to explain that his support for tariff protection was based partly on his desire to protect commodity prices, especially for food and grain products.

It was on this first tour of the West that Bennett uttered a phrase that captured the nation’s attention and invigorated the already animated campaign: “You have been taught to mock at tariffs and applaud Free Trade. Tell me, when did Free Trade fight for you? You say our Tariffs are only for the manufacturers. Now I’ll make them fight for you as well. I’ll use them to blast a way into the markets that have been closed to you.”⁴⁹

Anyone who understood tariffs, and Bennett understood them well, knew that tariffs do not blast one’s way into markets, but rather are most often a blunt instrument for keeping others out of yours. The only way they might wheedle products into a market is by using tariffs not as dynamite sticks but as bargaining chips. An examination of Bennett’s private and public words and the policies he had promoted throughout his public career demonstrates that he understood this fact completely. In a private letter to Winnipeg lawyer H.R. Drummond, for instance, he argued that a new regiment of tariffs and non-tariff barriers based upon a fundamental overhaul of Canada’s trade policy with Britain, the United States, and the world was essential to economic renewal. Accepting the reality of growing American protectionism, he advocated imperial trade preferences as the first step in that process. But he was also realistic enough to know that absolute free trade with Britain and Commonwealth countries would be a difficult goal to make progress toward, impossible to actually obtain, and perhaps not in Canada’s interest. Freer but not free trade must be the goal. He wrote, “. . . it would be quite impossible for this country to maintain its industrial life if we had complete free trade with Great Britain.”50 He was not a political schemer but a true believer.

It was over the issue of tariffs that Bennett experienced another of many periodic spats with his old friend. Beginning in early 1929, Beaverbrook had initiated a campaign that he called the Empire Crusade. It was based largely on the idea of Britain remaining as the central power in the empire and overseeing a system of free trade among it and the dominions as a bulwark against the rising power of the United States. The idea sprang from Beaverbrook’s misty-eyed notions of empire and his visceral mistrust of Americans.⁵¹ He spent a great deal of political capital making speeches, infuriated a number of powerful enemies in promoting and opposing various leaders and candidates, and spilled a good deal of ink in papers promoting his idea. Bennett, on the other hand, had made clear many times that he was an imperialist but a Canadian first and, recognizing the evolving power relationships within the empire, supported a system not of free trade but of preferential trade and tariff agreements that would benefit all while allowing for increased trade with the United States. When asked by a reporter about Beaverbrook’s Empire Crusade, Bennett was blunt. Speaking for the Conservative caucus, he said, “In our opinion Empire Free Trade is neither desirable nor possible, for it would defeat the very purpose we are striving to achieve.”⁵² Beaverbrook reacted by granting interviews with the Globe and Dafoe’s Winnipeg Free Press. In both cases, he spoke of the value of Empire Free Trade and suggested that the views of Mackenzie King’s Liberals appeared to be closest to his own and best for Canadians. For months afterwards, Beaverbrook’s letters to Bennett went unanswered.

In the 1930 campaign Bennett was not advocating tariffs as protectionism, which would destroy trade. Rather, he proposed the more intelligent use of tariffs as a way to increase Canadian and international trade. This more intelligent use of tariffs had been made necessary by America’s protectionist trade legislation, which had spurred countries around the world to erect their own barriers to trade. Bennett was not advocating the creation of similar Canadian barriers; he was presenting a way in which those barriers could be overcome.

The argument was complex, but the phrase resonated with Canadians. “Blasting one’s way” certainly promised dramatic action. The phrase had been suggested to him by adviser Bill Herridge, about whom much more will be said later, and Bennett had decided to include it in his initial address in Winnipeg. When it received a loud and positive reaction, he repeated it at every stop. One does not throw away a good applause line.

The phrase shocked and worried a good number of people, even some of those who supported him and his idea. By July 9, there had been enough questions raised in newspapers by Liberal candidates, and even by Conservatives, that Lipset felt the need to forward a three-page letter to all Conservative candidates and senators clarifying what Bennett meant. He explained that Bennett was proposing a policy that was consistent with the Conservative platform established in Winnipeg in 1927. He further noted that the Ottawa Citizen, which he called Mr. Mackenzie King’s organ, was playing a major role in twisting the truth about Bennett and tariffs and doing all it could to confuse matters. In an attempt to provide Conservative candidates with ammunition to use against those who would attack them on the tariff issue, Lipset argued, as Bennett had, that when Britain eventually realized that preference for Canadian grain, meat, and dairy products would be matched by preferences for their goods, a deal would be struck that would benefit the people of both countries. And this, he wrote, is blasting one’s way to prosperity.53 That the phrase garnered so much press and so much discussion meant that it was a good one: Bennett was setting the agenda and forcing Mackenzie King and the Liberals to react. And in any political campaign, when you start reacting you start losing.

Bennett’s speeches always concluded with five pledges. All were economic and all regarded increasing trade for Canada as a way of addressing the country’s current challenges. He ended with a rhetorical flourish worthy of a circuit-riding evangelist who never failed to bring audiences to their feet:

A land endowed by heaven with incalculable wealth. A people free and brave and strong with the strength that comes from the mountains and the prairies, the rivers and the sea. Both untouched by age. A shrine — this Canada — which holds inviolate those laws of truth, justice and equality brought with us when we ourselves came first to this western world. The three, a trinity of power. The task of government — its great right and privilege — to support this power, to be diligent in the trust you will impose upon it, to achieve, that your labours may not be fruitless, to work, that you may know some leisure, to hold before your eyes the vision that is drawing nearer, the vision built out of a common understanding and a common purpose, with tools forged in the workshops of steadfastness and faith, the vision of the Canada soon to be.54

As the campaign ground on, Bennett honed his speech to state that there were really only three issues at hand. The first was the embarrassing record of Mackenzie King’s government, the second was the conspicuous inadequacy of the 1930 budget, and the third was the difference between the goals of the Liberals and Conservatives for the upcoming Imperial Economic Conference, to be held in London that September.

Bennett’s energy on the campaign trail was remarkable. For instance, on July 3 he was in Nova Scotia, where he celebrated his sixtieth birthday by acting as a man of far fewer years. He travelled about 250 miles and delivered three major addresses to large and enthusiastic crowds. All three meals involved meetings, questions, and remarks. To the dozens who sent cards and telegrams acknowledging his birthday he personally dictated many and hand wrote many more notes of thanks with the assertion that he and the party were doing quite well. He observed that everywhere he travelled it looked like the Liberals were losing ground. Like many other successful people, Bennett seemed to somehow have available to him more than just twenty-four hours each day.

With the tide perceptively breaking his way, the final weeks of the campaign saw Bennett channel Shakespeare in coming not to praise the Liberal Party but to bury it. He said, “Be fair to Liberalism, and judge it not as it was, [but] by what it has become. You old time faithful Liberals, think of your warring champion of other days, and hide your eyes from the spectacle of its corpse, gibbeted by its sworn leaders. The Conservative Party, pledged to oppose it, would never have decreed for it, so horrible an end.”55 These were the wise words of a politician who was sure of his base. He was now going after the undecideds and disaffected Liberals — and winning them.

Mackenzie King had the advantage of the prime minister’s office and it always helps to go to the people from that position of power. But this time it was an empty weapon. His speaking style had improved, but it was not yet what it would later become and he still stumbled and mumbled through remarks haltingly read to restless crowds. His voice was thin and reedy and in outdoor settings people beyond the first rows had trouble hearing him even when a microphone was present. In Quebec it was a problem that he spoke no French. More than that, however, was the perception among many Canadians that Mackenzie King still did not fully comprehend the hardships with which growing numbers of unemployed people and their families were suffering each day. His apparent last-minute conversion to an imperial trade scheme, his unwillingness to admit that a Depression had gripped the land, his seeming callousness regarding the unemployed, and, of course, what had become known as the five-cent speech, made attacking or dismissing Mackenzie King and the Liberals just too easy.

As if all of that was not enough, shortly after the dropping of the writ, a Liberal scandal hit the papers. With Liberal party coffers empty, party bagmen had approached those in charge of Quebec’s Beauharnois hydroelectric-power plant that was to be constructed on the St. Lawrence River. A deal was made involving campaign contributions, promises of government contracts, and power-rate arrangements. Mackenzie King denied that the deal making had taken place, but when more and more of the principals admitted to what had transpired, he appeared to be either lying or out of touch. Both options were lethal in the middle of a campaign.

Mackenzie King’s life on the campaign trail was made even more miserable by McRae’s decision to send R.J. Manion to shadow his every stop. Manion arrived at every city and town, and spoke at the same venue a day or two after the prime minister had left. Like a one-man truth squad Manion refuted every attack and slammed every idea that Mackenzie King had left behind. Manion’s effectiveness was measured in the ferocity of the Liberal press’s attacks upon him.

Any election involves candidates attempting to frame the question upon which the campaign should be based, and then selling a particular answer to that question. Bennett was clever in stating that the primary question of the day was how to deal with unemployment. He argued that unemployment was not really the problem itself but the symptom of a deeper problem. And that deeper problem was trade. While he sincerely believed in the efficacy of tariffs as a way to address the crisis, as the campaign began to gather support and energy he tended to oversell himself and his ideas. His promise to blast his way into markets that were obviously quite able to withstand any such attempt was not Bennett’s only descent into hyperbole. On a number of platforms, he promised to eliminate unemployment or “perish in the attempt.” With respect to railroads, a guaranteed applause line was “Competition Ever, Amalgamation Never!” He campaigned under the banner “Canada First.” It really did not matter what the slogan meant. It was a Rorschach statement meaning whatever the listener wanted it to mean — as empty and effective as “Just Society” or “Yes We Can.” To Canadians, Bennett’s vigorous, muscular slogans promised action and it was action for which many Canadians yearned.

Bennett’s crowds continued to grow in size and enthusiasm. He mocked Mackenzie King’s wan promise to create a committee to investigate unemployment after Canadians had voted, saying, “Mackenzie King promises you a conference, I promise you action. He promises consideration of the problem of unemployment; I promise to end unemployment. Which plan do you like best?”56 In Vancouver he said, “So I will, when the Government is mine, continue to blast a way through all our troubles and difficulties. What else would I be there for? To cringe with others with soft words and to recoil from each rebuff? That is not Canada’s way. That is not my party’s way.”57

Bennett’s sister Mildred was committed to the campaign and often travelled with him. She met people at rallies and hosted political tea parties. She also visited a Toronto recording studio and made a record extolling her brother’s virtues and those of the Conservative Party. She told what she believed would be endearing stories about her brother in an attempt to somewhat humanize the man whom many were coming to respect but not necessarily to know. Part of the record was also instructional. Mildred told women how to set up political tea parties and the best ways to persuade guests to vote for the local Conservative candidate. The record’s effectiveness is difficult to measure, but many tea parties did indeed take place, especially in small towns across the country.

Before it was over, Bennett would travel 14,000 miles. He would often halt his car to get out and greet even small groups of people. On country roads he would stop and lean over a fence, speaking with a farmer in one of those long, slow conversations that afford rural life its grace. In Katevale, Quebec, while touring the main street on foot, he stopped at a small shop and bought them out of chocolate bars. He then continued his stroll, handing out a treat to every child he saw.

The rigours of the campaign and the enormity of the stakes, however, did not move Bennett away from those things he valued and the man that he was. One Sunday evening, for instance, found Bennett arriving at North Bay, Ontario, for an event the next day. A hundred people had gathered at the train depot to greet him. An aide entered Bennett’s car and informed him that when he emerged, the people would demand a speech. For the good of the campaign, the aide continued, Bennett would need to break his rule against working on the Sabbath and oblige them. Bennett said no. He travelled but never campaigned on Sundays.

He stepped off the train to great applause and began to shake the hands of those who surged forward. Soon there were cries of “Speech!” from the crowd. At first Bennett ignored their behest, but as more and more people joined in he could no longer avoid a response. He raised his hand, the crowd quieted, and he said, “Men and women. Many years ago my mother taught me that no good would come of breaking the Sabbath. I am getting on in years now, but I have never disobeyed my mother’s wish. I hope none of you will ever forget the lessons you learned at your mother’s knee.”58 With that, he waved, the crowd cheered, and he was off to his hotel.

Bennett paid attention to all regions of the country but afforded special consideration to Quebec. Twice he toured through the province and was met both times with good crowds, to whom he spoke in both English and gamely read in his limited French. Quebec’s farmers, its industrial workers, and its James Street business elite were slowly drawing together in an alliance of English-speaking Conservatives and French-speaking nationalists who saw a partner in Bennett.

Mackenzie King often simply had bad luck. Rain plagued his Quebec tour in June, forcing the cancellation of three outdoor rallies. A rally in the Eastern Townships was moved inside but then flopped because the rain on the building’s tin roof made it impossible for his audience to hear him. A month later, July 12 to 15, Bennett was welcomed by blue skies and mild temperatures. Bennett’s second Quebec swing saw him arrive in many towns at the head of a parade of sometimes a hundred cars filled with supporters who had followed him from the last town. His rallies were often attended by thousands and usually more than lived in the host towns. In St. Pierre, as just one example, the town of 12,000 saw 20,000 at the boisterous Conservative rally. At indoor gatherings, loudspeakers were always installed so those unable to get in could hear. And everywhere it could be arranged, Bennett’s voice was also heard live over the radio. It was not quite Trudeaumania, but it was close.

While Bennett was the sun, and everything and everyone else involved with the Conservative campaign merely reflected his heat and light, there were many others who made essential contributions. Stevens worked industriously in British Columbia and the prairies. In Ontario and Quebec, Guthrie and Manion travelled from riding to riding supporting promising candidates, with Manion also dogging Mackenzie King. The Ottawa office continued to spread the word and Perley continued to bring in money.

The final days of the tour found a weary Bennett back in Calgary. He visited his office, dropped in on friends, and delivered two speeches. His riding was in the bag. There was nothing left to do but wait for Canadians to make their decisions.

There were no polls in 1930. Instinct and intuition were the only ways that everyone from voters, to reporters, to party leaders could predict the swaying mood of the country. Still, few were surprised with the results when the vote counting finally ended on July 19. In the 245-seat House, the Conservatives won the majority with 134, followed by the Liberals with 90, and 21 others representing Progressives, Labour, independents, and farm interests. Bennett’s party won seats in every province. He could take pride in the fact that Canadians had decided to send more Conservatives to Ottawa than any time since Macdonald’s last campaign. Further, in 1926, Quebec had sent only four Conservatives to Ottawa; in 1930, it would send twenty-four.

While the results appeared to be a smashing victory for the new Conservative leader, the popular vote told a somewhat more cautionary tale. Despite a gain of 43 seats, the Conservative popular support had risen only from 46.2 per cent to 49.0 per cent. And while the Liberals had lost 26 seats, their popular support had actually gone up slightly from 43.6 per cent to 43.9 per cent. With his advocacy of an activist, engaged government, Bennett had stolen votes from the parties on the fringes of the Canadian left. In 1926, 10.2 per cent of voters supported the left-leaning, smaller parties, whereas in 1930, only 7.1 per cent voted in that way. The Conservatives had won a commanding majority, and Bennett, under the arcane political system that was and is Canada’s, a strong mandate to govern.

Politicians are elected by raising expectations regarding what they can accomplish; but then they must bear the momentous burden of living up to those expectations. Disappointment is almost inevitable. Bennett understood that twist and was open and honest about his thoughts and feelings, especially given the challenging times. He said in the House shortly after taking office: “Next to a battle lost, in my mind the saddest thing is a battle won. There are disappointments of hopes, there are changed conditions, there are other outlooks.”59 With the economy in worse shape at the end of the campaign than at the beginning, and all indicators continuing to head south, it might have been better for Bennett’s career and reputation had he lost. In summing up Mackenzie King’s response to being sent to the political woodshed, where he could sit out the worst of the Depression years, Bruce Hutchison observed that Opposition was the most comfortable residence. But Canadians had tired of Mackenzie King’s immobility and been moved by Bennett’s clarion call for action. If Bennett’s bluster was all a bluff, they were about to call it.

PREPARING TO GOVERN

Bennett tidied up his business and legal affairs in Calgary and patiently answered hundreds of letters from across the country and around the world. With the help of Alice Millar and his staff, he responded to them all with a similar message of thanks. It is a tribute to the man that he answered a handwritten note from a Sudbury miner with the same attention and personal touch or two as from a respected captain of industry.

After a week, he made his way back to Ottawa. Mildred was again at his side and settled into her rooms next to his at the Château Laurier. Bennett’s personal habits did not change. He still rose early in the morning and was at his desk by eight. He still read himself to sleep at midnight. Bennett never exercised except for the short walk from the hotel to the east block and back. He enjoyed a massage every morning to keep his muscles limber and he retained his love of chocolate creams. He seldom listened to music and never tuned in to the popular radio comedies or dramas of the day. He rarely attended plays, movies, or concerts. He read voraciously but nearly always to inform rather than entertain. He pored over political biographies and could not get enough of English statesmen — especially Disraeli. He still neither drank nor smoked. He had his hair cut once a week and he shaved with his straight razor twice a day. His handmade suits were old-fashioned tail coats and he kept a full wardrobe at his office, as he often completely changed his clothes three times a day. He was never seen, even in the most casual of circumstances, without a crisp shirt and firmly affixed tie. He never removed his jacket in his office or at meetings. It was a different time, but even then he was a different sort of man.

Bennett’s first task as prime minister was to choose his cabinet. The job is never easy. Merit is only one, and sometimes a secondary, consideration when making cabinet appointments. In Bennett’s day, race and gender were not on his or any other politician’s radar and besides, the caucus from which he had to choose was all male and all white. However, he needed to consider regional representation and to assuage those who had supported and opposed him in the leadership race that was still for many a fresh and painful memory.

All prime ministers take cabinet construction seriously. Sir John A. was legendary for his ability to create alliances through cabinet appointments and is credited with keeping Nova Scotia in Confederation by appointing and thus silencing the dangerous and impertinent Joseph Howe. That Macdonald was fully aware of his skills in this regard was revealed when at the first Confederation Conference he was asked to record his occupation and he wrote, “cabinet maker.”

In Macdonald’s league was Brian Mulroney who, when he became prime minister, was in a similar situation to Bennett. For him, the most important among his leadership rivals who needed to be brought within the tent was former party leader and prime minister Joe Clark. In his memoirs, Mulroney wrote, “I was determined to work closely with the former prime minister and his key supporters to ensure that any leadership race bitterness was banished and forgotten. My overriding goal was to build a strong united government that could win elections and face challenges at home and abroad in times of crisis.”60 Even when the country turned against him and his popularity was at its nadir, Mulroney’s cabinet and caucus remained steadfastly loyal.⁶¹ Bennett knew what Macdonald and Mulroney knew.

Winnipeg’s Hugh Guthrie had been the party’s interim leader and Winnipeg convention chair and he had come second in the leadership race. He deserved a prominent position and as justice minister he got one. The choice would have surprised no one: Guthrie excelled as an intelligent and skilled administrator and parliamentarian. Another leadership contender had been northern Ontario’s Dr. R.J. Manion. As minister of railways and canals, he would bring to the table experience as a former government whip and service in Meighen’s cabinet. Edgar Rhodes was a former Nova Scotia premier and House of Commons Speaker, so it was with an eye toward his eastern roots and political acumen that he was appointed minister of fisheries. In 1932, Rhodes would become minister of finance. Former Canadian High Commissioner to London Sir George Perley was named minister without portfolio and deputy prime minister. Perley had excelled as an organizer and fundraiser during the campaign and was also an English-speaking Quebecer whose influence in that province was significant. Also from Quebec was Charles Cahan, who became secretary of state. He brought to cabinet his strong connections with the Montreal corporate elite. That took care of the serious leadership contenders.

From the Ontario business community came former Dunlop Tire and Rubber Company president Edmond Ryckman as revenue minister. He had served with distinction in Meighen’s cabinet. The talented and hard-working Robert Weir was new to Ottawa but had served in the Saskatchewan provincial cabinet and would prove a valuable asset as minister of agriculture. There were other ministers, but of lesser consequence. (For a full list of Bennett’s cabinet appointments see the appendix.)

Then there was Harry Stevens. Bennett’s old friend had certainly earned a place in cabinet, but he had been defeated in his Vancouver riding. Bennett nonetheless appointed him to a post that, given the promises of the campaign just ended, would be among the most important: minister of trade and commerce. He then found a safe Conservative riding, persuaded the sitting member to retire, and applauded as Stevens won the hastily called Kootenay East by-election. There was logic in taking such extraordinary measures to gather him into the cabinet. Stevens was hard-working, intelligent, extremely popular in the West, and among the best debaters in the House. His abilities were to prove quite important; other than Bennett himself, Stevens was the only member of the cabinet who could respond to the quick cut and thrust of Parliament in a way that did honour to the government. It was his ability to faithfully and dexterously represent the government that led Bennett to dispatch him to speaking engagements not only in Canada but around the world, and to trust him as he trusted no others. Bennett’s use of Stevens in this way would later come back to bite him.

Bennett raised a few eyebrows when he appointed himself president of the Privy Council, minister of finance, and secretary of state for external affairs. It was not the first time that a prime minister had taken a portfolio for himself, but it was the first time that a prime minister had appointed himself to three posts. It was also the first time that a prime minister had considered himself to be the most qualified member of his caucus and thus become his own minister of finance.

Bennett’s nineteen-member cabinet contained five from Quebec (although only three were French-speaking), seven from Ontario, and one from each of the other seven provinces. As in all cabinets there was talent and there was deadwood.

Howard Ferguson was not a federal member of Parliament, but he deserved to be rewarded for the role he had played in bringing Bennett to power. He was appointed Canada’s High Commissioner to London. The job was a plum but it unfortunately took him far from the muck of Canadian politics that he had such a flare for slogging through. Bennett would have benefited from his counsel closer to home.

Bennett could not seem to do anything for General McRae. McRae had played an essential role as an organizer at the convention, in the reorganization and modernization of the party, and finally in the campaign. But in putting such a mammoth effort into these activities he had ignored his own riding, and his constituents punished him for his oversight by handing him a defeat. McRae was offered the Senate and the High Commissioner’s job in London but turned them both down. The one job he seemed to want was Canadian representative in Washington, but Bennett had already decided to give that post to Bill Herridge. Later, when Bennett made the decision first to scale down, then to all but end the party’s Ottawa office, McRae quit in disgust and returned to the private sector. Bennett and the Canadian people lost a skilled and dedicated public servant.

Bill Herridge would play a major role in Bennett’s administration. Bennett had met him just before the campaign through Mildred, whom Herridge was dating and would later marry. He was born in Ottawa, the son of a Methodist minister. From his father he internalized the precepts of the Social Gospel. As a young man he came to know and, although he was quite a bit younger, form a friendship with Mackenzie King, who was his family’s Gatineau Hills neighbour. After having served in the First World War, he entered public life by forming the Canadian League to help returning veterans. His involvement with veterans brought him into contact with Governor General Byng, who recognized his talent and potential. Despite the difference in their ages, the two became close. It was this friendship that led to his split with Mackenzie King. Herridge believed that his neighbour had mistreated Byng, who had been an honest broker throughout the constitutional flap of 1926.

Herridge used his connections and skills to establish and build a lucrative Ottawa law practice. It was at a party that the young lawyer met Mildred Bennett. After beginning his courtship with Mildred, she recommended his services as a political advisor to her brother. Herridge became close to the Bennett inner circle and finally a role player within it. He impressed Bennett with his quick mind and political acumen. His value increased as the campaign progressed. His advice was sought on a daily basis and he was soon writing at least portions of Bennett’s speeches. The prestigious post as Canada’s minister to the United States was his reward.

Another person in need of a noteworthy position was Arthur Meighen. He was cold and cantankerous and had nearly driven the convention into the ditch on its first afternoon, but he was a former leader and prime minister. Although never close, the two were in regular contact for the first two years of Bennett’s term. In February 1932, Senator and Minister of Labour Gideon Robertson became seriously ill. Bennett gave the labour file to Wesley Gordon and appointed Meighen to the Senate and to the cabinet as a minister without portfolio. Meighen immediately became the Conservative Party’s Senate leader. His appointment was important, for Meighen was able to directly push and punish the three Liberal senators who had been involved in the Beauharnois scandal and thereby guard Bennett’s flank, while later giving him cover for controversial legislation. Meighen’s effectiveness in the Senate, and Bennett’s willingness to allow him his political reins, was seen in the fact that during his term, sixteen bills that originated in the Senate’s Red Chamber came to the floor of the House of Commons — more than during any other administration.

With office won, cabinet and other appointments made, personal advisers in place, and greater economic challenges arising by the day, Bennett set to work. His ability and willingness to work exceptionally hard and long was noted by even his most fervent political enemies. Mackenzie King marvelled at Bennett’s work ethic and ability to accomplish a great deal in a short period of time, calling him a “driving power.”62 Years later, when Stevens had a great deal about which he could be bitter, he still conceded that Bennett was indefatigable.⁶³ Even as he advanced in age, the fourteen-hour workdays that were typical throughout his youth remained the norm. He employed seventeen secretaries who dealt mainly with correspondence, dictation, and other general duties. They took shifts to keep up with him. Arthur Merriam was his private secretary and Andrew MacLean was in charge of correspondence. Bennett’s office was run by the loyal, efficient, and untiring Alice Millar.

Bennett continued to eschew vacations. As he had with his law practice and with all of his business interests, he linked travel with work. His cabinet and caucus colleagues often sought information from Millar regarding Bennett’s travel schedule and ensured that they booked golf games or personal time for days when their boss was away. But they were often called by a prime minister who was still thinking of work no matter where he was. Manion once quipped, “R.B. holidays by getting his teeth fixed at Toronto. What a hell of a holiday.”64

Bennett brought a fascinating and perhaps dangerous mix to the prime minister’s office. Add parsimonious personal habits and the lessons of a lifetime spent creating opportunities for himself to the absence of a family or distraction of hobbies, and toss in a workaholic’s obsession with issues large and small, and you had a man with little room left for others. In this we have the paradox of a man who was by nature a shy loner, driven by the lessons of his stern mother and the dictates of his strict Wesleyan faith to draw strength from his monastic lifestyle, while simultaneously seeing the reaching out to improve the lot of others as a moral imperative.

In his impatient desire to do all that he could in a day, he was often guilty of intruding on ground that under other prime ministers would have, and perhaps in Bennett’s case, should have been left to cabinet ministers. Ministers were often angered but then amazed when they discovered that Bennett knew their files as well or better than they did. But Bennett rankled many a colleague by making decisions that were clearly within the purview of a particular minister without even the courtesy of consulting the man.

Bennett saw the cabinet as akin to a corporate board of directors. He even referred to it as such during debates in the House. He had support for this opinion among his colleagues, many of whom had come from the world of business.⁶⁵ Manion, for instance, later referred to cabinet using a similar metaphor.⁶⁶ If Bennett saw the cabinet as a board of directors, then it followed that he saw himself as chairman of that board. He performed his role as if he were also the majority shareholder. He listened and sought opinion, but in the end, his was the only voice that really mattered.

While Bennett could perhaps be faulted for acting in an authoritarian manner in this regard, it must be acknowledged that he is not the only leader to have done so. Abraham Lincoln once famously called for a vote in his cabinet and noted that every member voted no with his the only yes vote. He solemnly looked up from the ledger on which he had recorded the lopsided tally and, according to legend, said quietly, “Well, gentlemen, the yes side has it.” Bennett would have liked that. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien would have liked it too. In his first political memoir, entitled Straight From the Heart, Chrétien wrote of a humiliating experience that almost ended his career in 1978. He was Pierre Trudeau’s finance minister, but one evening while at his cottage he listened with the same surprise as the rest of Canadians as the prime minister announced a $2 billion cut to federal expenditures. There had been no consultation. Years later, Finance Minister Paul Martin was home on his Eastern Townships farm listening to Rex Murphy’s Cross Country Checkup on CBC radio. He was stunned to hear Murphy announce that Chrétien had fired him from cabinet.67 Again, there had been no communication. These and other examples do not mean that Bennett’s dominant style was polite or the best way to lead — but it was not unique. And it was not without cost.

The Opposition and newspapers quickly recognized the power that Bennett felt comfortable in drawing to himself and some were critical of his forming what they called a one-man government. Maclean’s magazine, for instance, noted in 1933, “He is still the government taking upon himself the work of his Ministers or of many of them, trying to be in a dozen places and to do a dozen things at the same time.”⁶⁸ A January 1931 editorial cartoon in the unapologetically Liberal Winnipeg Free Press by the famously anti-Bennett scribbler Arch Dale showed a cabinet room where every man at the table was Bennett, as were two assistants and even the portraits on the wall. The cartoon was reprinted in papers across the country. A joke that also became nationally known and was spun into many versions went something like this: A group of tourists was walking on Parliament Hill when they saw a lone man pass quickly by, muttering to himself. “Is that man all right?” one tourist asked. “He’s fine,” said the guide. “That’s just Prime Minister Bennett conducting a cabinet meeting.”

The accusation of running a dictatorial, one-man government would stick and be used against Bennett many times in the press, in the House, and to devastating effect in the 1935 election. While the stereotype had traction, however, like all stereotypes it was only acquainted with the truth. Bennett’s cabinet ministers worked hard and were consulted frequently. Sometimes cabinet meetings lasted for hours on end and sometimes all day long as details were debated fully and by all. Deputy ministers and their staffs were worked ragged as more information was demanded and more reports ordered. Throughout his time in office the full cabinet met, on average, eighteen times per month. With respect to the Senate, Meighen later wrote, “To the credit of Mr. Bennett, I want to add that no man ever gave another freer scope than he gave me; no Prime Minister ever before committed to the Senate constructive work of such consequence or accepted from it with so good a grace a formidable catalogue of amendments to legislation initiated in the House of Commons.”69

Nonetheless, in the House it was Bennett’s voice that was heard more than any other. Due to his holding three important cabinet portfolios as well as the prime ministership, it was natural that Bennett would find himself on his feet a great deal. However, during question period and debate, Bennett quite often rose when questions could, and, under most other prime ministers, would, have been deferred to appropriate cabinet ministers. As the trend turned to standard operating procedure, few could help being impressed as day after day and regarding issue after issue Bennett spoke without notes about intricate details of policies and initiatives that fell within the purview of any and all departments.⁷⁰ If his domineering nature frustrated some in his caucus, it infuriated many on the opposite side of the aisle. Chubby Power, later an influential Liberal cabinet minister and senator, was both awed and appalled with Bennett and told a reporter, “In this house he often exhibits the manners of a Chicago policeman and the temperament of a Hollywood actor.”⁷¹

Important to note — and with a nod to the point made regarding the loyalty that Mulroney maintained despite hard times — is that nearly all of Bennett’s nineteen ministers remained in their original posts throughout the full five years of the administration. Most of the changes involved those necessitated by illness, such as the moves involving Ryckman and Robertson, and when Bennett himself surrendered the finance ministry to Rhodes in 1932. No one crossed the aisle. Ironically, it was only Harry Stevens, the man whom Bennett had known the longest, most intimately, and trusted the most, who would leave the cabinet under a cloud of anger.

Bennett also had to deal with his caucus. The caucus is always a tough group. It comprises ambitious and talented people who want to serve their constituents while doing right for the country but at the same time believe that they deserve a cabinet seat. Caucus meetings, consequently, are partly gladiator games in which members struggle to impress the boss as issues are debated. Prime ministers lead both the government and their party, and this dual role means that they must be constantly thinking about the long-term needs of the country and short-term political, partisan considerations. If ever one outweighs the other in the minds of caucus members, there can be hell to pay. The prime minister must persuade and cajole, slap backs and twist arms, all the while mustering the range of political skills that brought him to the apex of power in the first place. Losing the loyalty of those in the caucus room is the first step to losing it all.

A problem was that Bennett had risen to power based more upon impressing those around him with his intellect, prodigious memory, and oral abilities than through his charm. People had always come to him, not the other way around. He was an introvert forced to play a team sport — as player, coach, captain, and cheerleader. It would have been unfair to expect the man to suddenly adjust the core of what he was to become the smiling herder of caucus cats that a prime minister must be to keep members happy and unified, who, by their nature, are unruly and needy. Bennett cared about pursuing goals and accomplishing tasks related to the vision he held for the country and was willing to sacrifice his time, fortune, and health in that pursuit. He had little sympathy and even less empathy for those who were not similarly passionate and driven. Those around him who needed the emotional sustenance offered by a backslapping, head-patting boss were out of luck; Bennett simply did not have the aptitude, time, or desire.

Many prime ministers have been accused of ignoring the feelings of others while drawing too much power to themselves, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Among the chorus of those accusing Harper of the same tendency for which Bennett was criticized was retired Justice John Gomery who said, “We have a government where one man seems to have an ever-increasing influence upon what government policy is going to be. If you look back historically at prime ministers in the past, I don’t think they had the same hold over their party and Parliament that the present prime minister has.”72 Historian Bob Plamondon agreed, arguing that Harpers’s “. . . inclinations were to motivate through intimidation, fear and raw intellectual power.”⁷³

While the image of Bennett as a one-man band was not completely accurate, it was based on certain truths. He held all those portfolios. He dominated caucus meetings as he dominated cabinet meetings, and as he dominated the House. He may have listened carefully to cabinet and caucus colleagues but he sometimes found doing so troublesome, time- consuming, and unworthy of concerted effort. Three incidents tell the tale.

First, he carefully prepared for caucus meetings, and when members were speaking he often took voluminous notes. He cared what MPs had to say as it was a valuable source of information. Once, however, it became evident that the content of caucus discussions, which are always supposed to be in camera, was making its way into the press. Bennett berated the caucus and then suspended meetings for a matter of weeks. He did not miss them. Second, a stenographer’s error once led Bennett to sign a letter to a Conservative backbencher’s wife in which he expressed condolences over the death of her husband. The still very much alive MP was understandably miffed that the prime minister had not even noticed him in the House or at the caucus meeting earlier that day. Third, and most significantly, francophone MPs grew increasingly unhappy with the fact that caucus meetings were held exclusively in English. Many Quebec MPs came to see this tradition, when coupled with there only being three francophone cabinet ministers (Minister of Marine Alfred Duranleau, Solicitor General Maurice Dupré, and Post Master General Arthur Sauvé), as Bennett’s failing to value Quebec opinion.⁷⁴

In treating backbenchers as there to simply vote and do the cabinet’s bidding on committees, Bennett evidently saw MPs as Trudeau did, nobodies when only yards from Parliament Hill. This perception led Bennett, like Trudeau, to miss a tremendous opportunity to exploit the talent that rested in his caucus while using MPs to hear and more thoroughly understand the thoughts and fears of Canadians.

Among the enormous powers of the prime minister is that of making appointments to Canada’s bureaucracy. Those appointed to high-level positions in the many departments that comprise that sprawling organization know that a change of government often means a change in employment. A prime minister, after all, is naturally inclined to want to surround himself with senior civil servants who are not only highly skilled and efficient administrators, but who also share his vision — and whose loyalty both to him and that vision can be relied upon. It was Macdonald who once turned an associate down for a post when the man promised to support him when he thought he was right. Macdonald insisted that he needed men who would support him even when he was wrong. Those elite bureaucratic positions can also offer an effective way for a prime minister, who is also the party leader, to reward service.

Bennett was no different than any other new prime minister in that a number of political and personal appointments were made. Bill Herridge’s appointment to serve as Canada’s minister to the United States was, for instance, a blatant act of nepotism. Many years later, of course, Prime Minister Chrétien determined that his nephew Raymond was the best man for that coveted ambassadorship. It should be noted that both Herridge and Chrétien served with distinction.

But Bennett was not a blind partisan, filling every position with loyal Conservatives. He was quite willing to keep meritorious senior civil servants even if they had been appointed by the previous Liberal administration. An example can be seen in Bennett’s decision to keep Oscar Skelton as undersecretary of state. Knocks against Skelton included first that he was a Liberal and second that he had been appointed by Mackenzie King. Skelton was, nonetheless, a well-respected scholar and was a Queen’s University politics and economics professor when in 1925 he had become the undersecretary of state for external affairs. The post rendered him second in power only to the minister and he had served with distinction. Bennett later told Lester Pearson that he had intended to replace Skelton, but that after just a few weeks he had shown himself to be exceptionally capable and indispensable to the new administration. He had overlooked those other considerations and left him at his post.75 Skelton served admirably until his death in 1941.

Pearson had left his position as a University of Toronto history professor to accept an appointment at the tiny Ministry of External Affairs in 1927. A small, fastidious, witty, highly intelligent man, Pearson, like Bennett, impressed those with whom he worked with his attention to detail, capacity for work, and ability to analyze and synthesize complex material. His mind was such that, much later, he won President John Kennedy’s confidence with his encyclopedic knowledge of arcane baseball names and statistics. Pearson’s time at External Affairs was a storied one, capped with a Nobel Peace Prize for his involvement in averting a third world war over the Suez Canal in 1956.

Pearson’s position at External in the 1930s led him to work closely with both Mackenzie King and Bennett. This experience, coupled with his notorious integrity, renders him a credible judge of their characters and the manner in which they handled those in the bureaucracy. Pearson found Bennett good, and Mackenzie King a difficult man with whom to work. He reported that Mackenzie King would seldom be honest with those bringing him news he did not like and left civil servants unsure of themselves, their performance, or their security. Bennett, on the other hand, Pearson came to like as a man and trust as a prime minister. In his memoirs, Pearson related the story of Bennett once calling him to his office quite upset that the young bureaucrat had been responsible for the insertion of information in the Royal Commission on Grain Futures Report that was both inaccurate and politically embarrassing. Bennett’s famous temper was momentarily on display as he berated the young man for his error. When Pearson explained the situation and suggested somewhat bravely that the prime minister was wrong, Bennett heard him out, then immediately apologized. The two moved on.

Pearson was impressed by Bennett’s intelligence, directness, and willingness to admit error and to beg forgiveness from a subordinate. One of the tenets of strong leadership, after all, is to deflect all praise and absorb all blame. Pearson observed, “I got to know Bennett better than I had known Mr. King. . . . He was also an easier man to get to know. He was more out-going, more straight forward. . . . His storms were rough, but they were usually of short duration and often cleared the air . . . [Bennett] was a man of wide ranging interests, confident, and catholic in his expertise.”76 The two got on famously and Bennett had Pearson along on many of his foreign trips, allowing the two to enjoy each other’s company on the long voyages across the Atlantic.

Bennett had his government — and that is what he called it: not “the” government but “his” government — in place. From childhood he had dreamt of being prime minister and now the dream had come true, but in the worst economic nightmare in the country’s history. It was time for the action he had promised Canadians and for which he had been preparing his entire life.