On th second of January 1935, approximately 800,000 Canadians had finished their dinner, hustled their kids off to bed, and settled down with their radios. It had been widely advertised that the prime minister had something to say. Newspaper and radio reports and Conservative Party mailings and phone calls had ensured that people knew this would be the first of five important speeches, all well worth hearing. At nine o’clock an announcer introduced the prime minister. Bennett’s voice was familiar. While to many his message was welcome, to some it was jarring. To others it was blasphemy. Taken together, the five speeches announced what came to be called Bennett’s New Deal.

Much was made of what Mackenzie King dubbed Bennett’s “deathbed conversion” to the political left, and of the urgent, populist tone, and of the speeches’ radical content. The speeches were certainly at odds with the image of Bennett that, after nearly five years in office, had become cemented in the public’s mind. Was Bennett not, after all, the millionaire bachelor and staunch defender of capitalism and big-business interests? Was he not the conservative who believed that government should do little while waiting for the market to correct itself? Was he not “Iron Heel” Bennett with no conscience, concern, or understanding of working peoples’ problems? If so, then who could believe the man suddenly pretending to be Franklin Roosevelt?

Yet there he was, boldly announcing that capitalism was broken, that corporate Canada had let the country down, and that radical reform was needed to put things right. To those who had accepted the stereotype, Bennett appeared to have torn off the ideological clothes of a conservative, sped past the wardrobe offered by liberalism, and dressed himself as a democratic socialist. Perhaps it was all just a cynical political prank. Maybe he meant not a word and was only doing whatever he could to redeem himself, after years of failure, in a daring and reckless attempt to retain power.

However, the accusations of political gamesmanship made by opponents and commentators then, and many historians later, were dead wrong. All that Bennett said in his radio addresses was consistent with the Tory principles he had espoused throughout his political career. The five speeches were a conversation, not a conversion. They expressed determination, not desperation. And they encouraged purpose, not panic.

Bill Herridge is, and was at the time, credited with persuading Bennett to make the radio addresses. Herridge had been in Washington from the last days of the Hoover administration and saw first-hand the new vitality that gripped the city when Roosevelt arrived. As seen in 1960–61 with John F. Kennedy, and again in 2008–09 with Barack Obama, the months between FDR’s election and inauguration were electrified with the sincere belief that things were about to change for the better. Seldom does such emotionally charged positive anticipation survive the arrival of the event, but in FDR’s case his administrations’ energy and daring exceeded expectations. From Roosevelt on, all American presidents, and to a lesser degree Canadian prime ministers, are measured by what they accomplish in their first hundred days.

FDR had suggested in his March 1933 inaugural address that an activist government was essential to address the country’s economic ills. Roosevelt’s first hundred days brought a bank holiday followed by the Emergency Bank Act that restored America’s faith in their banks and financial system. It brought the end of Prohibition and the start of relief for those hardest hit by the Depression. From March to June 1933, thirteen substantive pieces of legislation were passed and their implementation began to be felt. The regenerative, restorative, optimistic feeling came from the new belief that simply by taking action things were going to get better. Perhaps the new president had been right in suggesting that fear was indeed the only thing Americans had to fear.

Herridge had become friends with many of those close to FDR. In his chats around dinner tables, and even more informal settings, he came to recognize that Roosevelt and his people were far more similar to Bennett than Hoover and his crowd had been. He explained that while Bennett led a party called Conservative, his administration believed in a robust, activist government and his reaction to the Depression had been like FDR’s in first providing immediate relief, then long-term structural change. He was proud that Bennett was as courageous as Roosevelt in his willingness to try just about anything, to risk alienating his party, and to be called a traitor by those who believed he was in office to speak only to and for their interests.

But Herridge’s many conversations and keen political sense led him to a conclusion. Because he was so well attuned to feelings in both capitals, he knew that Roosevelt was reaching people less on an intellectual and more on an emotional level. Due to the trust and respect upon which their relationship had come to be based, Herridge felt confident in sharing this observation with the prime minister. In April 1934, he wrote to Bennett: “The spirit of the New Deal is what has really mattered . . . the hope and promise of a new heaven and a new earth remain . . . the Canadian people must be persuaded that they also have a New Deal, and that that New Deal will do everything for them in fact which the New Deal here has done in fancy.” [italics his]1

Herridge went on to argue that for a Canadian New Deal to work, the Canadian people must believe in their hearts that Bennett was the one who could lead them from what he called “the wilderness of the depression.” He recommended that Bennett need not lay out the specifics of a program but rather just sell the idea of a viable and vigorous package of reforms. He wrote, “The leader could promise all things — a new system, regulation, control, and so forth — and ask for a mandate to bring them about. But under no circumstances say how you propose to achieve the new order of society, don’t be specific or definite. Stick to generalities.”²

Herridge’s numerous and often long-winded letters to Bennett suggested how and why to sell the ideas to Canadians while making it clear that the product to be sold was consistent with Bennett’s long-held beliefs about government’s role in the economy. In laying out his case for the Conservative Party to remain on the ideological left of the political spectrum, Herridge was preaching to the converted; he was making a point that Bennett had been making throughout his public career. Channelling the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, Herridge wrote, “I do believe that the days of laissez-faire are over. I do believe that the capitalist or profit system can never work again as it once worked. I believe that government is in business to stay.”3

Bennett was initially cool to the idea of wrapping all the new legislative ideas that he was contemplating into a single bundle. While he respected Roosevelt’s political skills, he believed that his New Deal was a hodgepodge of half-formed ideas. He told trusted personal aide Rod Finlayson that the American New Deal was the work of “fanatics and crackpots.”⁴ However, Bennett was also aware that his government was, despite all that it had done and was doing, still being blamed for doing too little to combat the Depression. He knew too that his leadership was being quietly challenged by caucus members, and that Stevens was publicly undermining him, the party, and the government. These considerations led Bennett to allow Herridge’s notions of a Canadian New Deal more consideration than might otherwise have been the case.

Both Finlayson and Herridge continued to pressure Bennett to accept the necessity of a new strategy to regain the political initiative. Only through the success of such an effort, they told him, could he possibly continue to make the substantive changes to Canada’s political economy that he envisioned as essential to building a secure prosperity. Bennett finally agreed. He asked Finlayson and Herridge to draft speeches that would put the strategy into motion. The principles and policies were to be those on which he had based his entire career, but they would be repackaged in a more saleable way.

The speeches were written over a matter of months. Herridge and Finlayson began in the summer of 1934. At a long weekend retreat at the Herridge family cottage on the shores of the picturesque Harrington Lake, the two consulted a host of books and Bennett’s old speeches and engaged in spirited debates and discussions that ranged well into the night. By the time the outlines of the speeches were ready, Herridge had to be back to Washington, so it fell to Finlayson to carry on with their preparation.

That the work was being done became widely known in the government’s inner circles and many weighed in on the arguments. All opinions were considered. For weeks, every lunchtime in the Château Laurier’s cafeteria became the site of a makeshift, ad hoc study group whose members constantly changed but whose topic of discussion remained the same: the speeches and what should be in them. Finlayson kept Bennett apprised of the debates and progress and took his input back to the fluid group.

Meanwhile, Bennett was continuing to do as he had done for years. He not only pursued aggressive legislative reform in the House, but also used speaking engagements as opportunities to tout reform as essential to ending the Depression and the need to permanently restructure the economy to avoid another. In a speech to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York State, for instance, Bennett spoke of reforms that would have made Keynes proud. He also undertook a short tour in which, without saying so, he previewed much of what he would soon be telling all Canadians. He was received well in Halifax, Montreal, Brockville, Toronto, and back in Ottawa.

In October 1934, Bennett brought nuance to the ideas he had been expressing for years before. He spoke of the need to save capitalism from two enemies. One was the socialists who sought to increase the power of government in order to destroy it. He said that socialism was dangerous, for the will of the state was encouraged to supersede the desires of individuals. The other enemy was the corporate elite who sought to negate the power of government in order to preserve their own, but then manipulated the levers of government when such manoeuvring was to their advantage. He saw this concentrated and intelligent corporate power as more dangerous than socialism. He warned of “. . . the Empire of finance outside the realm of Government which threatens to make individuals mere cogs in a machine.”5

Herridge also played a role in preparing Canadians for the speeches that he and Bennett knew, and in fact hoped, would be somewhat startling. In December, he addressed the Canadian Club in Ottawa and laid out the skeleton of what Bennett and he had decided would be five separate radio speeches. In his audience were reporters, cabinet members, and MPs, but also Mackenzie King, Supreme Court Chief Justice Lyman Duff, Borden, Quebec premier Taschereau, and Bennett himself. Using the rhetorical style and flourish of his preacher father, Herridge enthusiastically presented the reform package. Presaging the words and evangelical tone that he and others were writing for Bennett, he assessed capitalism’s ability to meet the current crisis. He said,

If we looked more to spiritual leadership and less to capitalist leadership; if we made business less our religion and religion more our business; if we proclaimed by deeds the eternal truths of the Christian faith, we might find that this system did not work so badly after all . . . the form is unimportant so long as it responds to the one true test of its effectiveness: the greatest good of the people as a whole.6

Bennett’s speeches and Herridge’s Canadian Club remarks were all widely reported upon. Even the New York Times picked up the story with a December 23 article entitled “Cry for New Deal Rising in Canada.” Canadian newspapers noted the decidedly reformist and, some said, radical nature of much of what the prime minister and his closest adviser were saying. If anyone failed to predict what was coming, they were not really listening.

The five half-hour radio broadcasts were entitled The Premier Speaks to the People. Bennett spoke from CRCO in Ottawa and was linked to thirty-eight stations across the country on the CRBC radio network that his administration had created — an interesting fact that is overlooked by those claiming that the speeches were a sudden shift to the left. Approximately 800,000 heard the first speech, with each subsequent speech earning a greater audience. The five broadcasts cost $11,000 and Bennett paid the bill out of his own pocket.

The addresses aired on the second, fourth, seventh, ninth and eleventh of January. They were carefully structured as one long narrative. Bennett began by stating the problem in broad and explosive terms. The old system was discredited and gone, he argued, and radical changes were needed to create a new system in its place. He explained actions his government had already taken, based upon that premise and goal, and then moved on to outline an extension of his reform program intended to focus on Canada’s short- and long-term economic difficulties. He pre-empted criticism of the actions that he was proposing by criticizing the Opposition for having nothing better to offer. The final broadcast ended with Bennett issuing a challenge to his own party, Canadian citizens, and business, farm, and labour leaders to support his ideas.

To understand Bennett’s message and Canadians’ reaction to it, one must consider his actual words at some length. In the first broadcast, which set the stage for all that would follow, Bennett said,

The time has come when I must speak to you with the utmost frankness about our national affairs for your understanding of them is essential to your welfare. . . . In the last five years, great changes have taken place in the world. The old order is gone. It will not return. We are living amidst conditions which are new and strange to us. Your prosperity demands corrections in the old system, so that, in these new conditions that old system may adequately serve you. The right time to bring about these changes has come. Further progress without them is improbable.7

Bennett went on to say that the purpose of the speeches was to fully explain the program of reform that he believed was needed to address Canada’s many problems. He wanted Canadians to have plenty of time to consider it before they voted in the next election. He was then blunt in outlining the philosophical underpinning of the reforms. He suggested that the Canadian people, through their government, could act or continue to be acted upon. While avoiding ideological labels, he argued that only an adoption and adaptation of the Tory principles, in which he had always believed, would bring about long-term prosperity in a fair and just society. While not mentioning his name, he laid out a case that supported Keynesian interventionism. His government had always been about this kind of change and now more change was needed. All that was new was the incendiary language, passion, and urgency. He said,

And in my mind reform means government intervention. It means government control and regulation. It means the end of laissez faire. Reform heralds certain recovery. There can be no permanent recovery without reform. Reform or no reform! I raise that issue squarely. I nail the flag of progress to the masthead. I summon the power of the State to its support. . . . And when the system is reformed and in full operation again, there will be work for all. We can then do away with relief measures. We can then put behind us the dangers of the dole. . . . If we cannot abolish the dole, we should abolish the system.⁸

Bennett’s words and message were remarkable. No Canadian prime minister, before or since, has been so bold in stating, in such nuanced detail, his assessment of current problems or proposed solutions. The complexity in what he said paid Canadians the compliment of assuming that they had the attention span to listen and the intelligence to understand. No prime minister, before or since, has through his passionate espousal of his beliefs appeared so naked before the Canadian people and so willingly placed his reputation and political future squarely in their hands.

There was an overwhelming reaction to the first speech. Bennett received dozens of congratulatory letters and telegrams. Many came from businesses big and small. Many noted agreement with his aims and ideas and several stated that Bennett had taken an important step toward re-election. Some, such as the one from Stephen Leacock, were from opponents or critics who until that point had found precious little good to say about Bennett or his government. Leacock is better known today as a humorist, but he was also the founding head of McGill’s Department of Political Economy. To Leacock, Bennett replied that he had received many letters and telegrams but included a more personal note. He wrote, “. . . I write you very frankly that I appreciate none of them more than your own kind message of good-will. I realize that my declaration involves me in much hard work and that I am no longer young. Nevertheless, I propose to go forward with my proposals to the fullest extent of my ability.”9

Bennett also received a good amount of mail condemning all that he had said. The most commonly expressed criticism was that he was moving toward the CCF in proposing socialist solutions to the country’s ills. Prime Minister Trudeau was accused of the same thing with his attempts to use government’s power to combat the economic challenges of the 1970s. At the time of Bennett’s speeches, FDR was fending off the same accusations for the same reasons. Many of Bennett’s correspondents in 1935 could have been writing to Roosevelt in 1934 or Trudeau in 1975 in expressing their fear that, while regulation was a part of the capitalist system, he was actually advocating a move toward dictatorial government regimentation. One correspondent called Bennett’s ideas “decapitalisation.” The Montreal Gazette, for instance, opined in its editorial that Canada was not prepared “… to fly the flag of Socialism, side by side with the historic banner under which Conservatism heretofore has always made its appeal to sober-minded Canadians.”¹⁰

Bennett answered each letter in much the same way. He explained that his actions were far from the goals of socialists or communists in that he wished to save and strengthen the very capitalist system that they sought to destroy.11 To many other correspondents he attempted to encourage historical and international perspective. He stated that even if the government were to carry out all of the social reforms that he mentioned in the speech, and more that would be explained in subsequent speeches, Canada would still be far behind Britain with respect to its social policies.¹² Bennett drew attention to Britain’s Widows’, Orphans’, and Old Age Contributory Pensions Act of 1925 and the Royal Commission on Unemployment. The latter led to the passage of the Unemployment Act of 1934, which had moved the country toward a national unemployment insurance program.

While thousands of Canadians heard the first speech, the leader of the Opposition did not. Mackenzie King was home at Laurier House that night but decided not to tune in. He had spent part of the afternoon reading a staff report on the speech based on an advance copy that Bennett had provided Opposition party leaders. The speech inspired a rant in his diary. He wrote, “In its egotism it is nauseating. . . . if the country stands for this kind of bombast, I feel like dropping out of its public life — but I have no doubt as to the reception it will get.”¹³ That night Mackenzie King dreamt of “politics and interference” and in the morning he read a book which referred to a Bible passage about being wary of doctrine. This led him to pick up a pen and write down his thoughts on the value of laissez-faire economics.¹⁴

But Mackenzie King’s political instincts were keen. He recognized that Bennett was doing again what he had been doing since becoming his party’s leader: establishing the Conservatives securely to the left of the Liberals. Mackenzie King’s reaction indicated his understanding that in the coming election he would be going to the people supporting right-wing laissez-faire attitudes and policies while Bennett would be attacking him from the left. It would be 1930 all over again.

The second speech was delivered a week later. Even more Canadians tuned in as the first speech had become the talk of the nation. Folks heard their prime minister speak passionately of the abomination of child labour, inhuman conditions in sweatshops, the hardships of long workdays and weeks, and the vast difference in income between producers and workers. Something had to be and would be done, he promised, to fight these scourges of Canada’s modern capitalist society.

These were hardly new issues. In fact, it was Macdonald’s Liberal-Conservative government that had first presented legislation to address them. The issues had been the subject of debate in Britain for some time as well, and parties of all stripes had sought to take them in hand. Similarly, Theodore Roosevelt had supported the Progressive reform movement in enacting legislation to deal with the issues at the turn of the century. Later, his cousin Franklin had dealt with them through much of his New Deal legislation, programs, and agencies. From its inception in Calgary in 1932, and throughout the fiery rhetoric of its Regina Manifesto, Canada’s CCF had made it clear that these issues were at the core of its mission. Bennett referred a number of times to the Price Spreads Commission’s work of the previous year that had brought the issues again to the fore. The social policy ideas that Bennett was proposing were clearly less radical than humane.

The second speech also spoke of the ravaging social and personal effects of unemployment that stole bread from supper tables while robbing people of their dignity and pride. Bennett quickly reviewed all that his government had done to help those who, through no fault of their own, had lost their jobs. He spoke of some of the actions taken to try to create employment. But, he said, unemployment remained a problem and the government needed to do more to end it and to help those victimized by it. He stated that a national systematic program of unemployment insurance had to be created. He warned that the program would not reward laziness but rather offer a bridge to those who wanted to work but temporarily had no work to do. He said, “. . . no man must be left to the uncertainties of private charity or to the humiliation of government gratuity. . . . As a member of our economic society, he should have security, provided always that he is willing to work. . . . This security will be provided by means of unemployment insurance. For this reason, I believe in unemployment insurance, not as a means of bolstering up a faulty system, but as an element in establishing a sound modern one. . . .”15 He went on to link the same moral and economic logic to his government’s Old Age Pensions Act. Then, long before Tommy Douglas took power in Saskatchewan and three decades before Prime Minister Pearson would introduce Medicare, he said, “Likewise, health insurance and accident and sickness insurance must be developed in the same way.”16

The third speech focused on fairness. He spoke of the necessity of fairness in the farm credit system and returned to the work done by the Price Spreads Commission. He argued that better systems for economic statistical analysis were needed and proposed the establishment of the Economic Council of Canada to oversee them. He then went on to explain and defend the Marketing Act and the Natural Products Marketing Act as needed to promote economic activity while encouraging fairness in that activity.

In an attempt to cut off critics who might argue that he was acting too quickly or too late, he explained that it would have been folly to contemplate such reform measures while the country was suffering through the worst of the Depression. There was a need for immediate relief and the restoration of a measure of stability before restructuring. He then said, “I say that, as a matter of fact, there is no haste at all, either in thought or action. There is urgency, but that is another matter. This is the right time for reform.”¹⁷

The fourth speech dealt with finance. Bennett outlined all that he had done in creating the Bank of Canada and called it “. . . an instrument of social justice.”¹⁸ He explained that with his Dominion Companies Act, corporations that sought investments from Canadians needed to provide full and transparent financial information to ensure that informed investment decisions could be made. He said tricky accounting processes designed to deceive and hide toxic debt and manipulate stock prices had to stop. He anticipated the quarters from which criticism would come, revealing his understanding that the greatest opponents of change are always those with the most to lose. Bennett said,

Selfish men, and this country is not without them, — men whose mounting bank rolls loom larger than your happiness, corporations without souls and without virtue — these, fearful that this Government might impinge on what they have grown to regard as their immemorial right of exploitation, will whisper against us. They will call us radicals. They will say that this is the first step on the road to socialism. We fear them not.¹⁹

The fifth and final speech was political and philosophical. Bennett pre-empted the partisan attack that was to come and, in fact, had already begun. He painted himself as the leader of action and the Liberals as apologists for inertia, big business, and a failed system. Bennett could not have been blunter:

If you are satisfied with conditions as they are, support Liberalism. If you want no changes in the capitalist system, declare yourself for that party. If you are against reform, back Liberalism with all your might. For Liberalism, as you see, has no intention of interfering with big business. For Liberalism stands for laissez faire and the unrestricted operation of the profit system and the complete freedom of capitalism to do as it thinks right or to do as it thinks wrong. So, if you believe in a Party of inaction; if you desire a Party which supports reaction; back Liberalism. . . . For my Party . . . stands for the freedom of the individual and private initiative and sound business, but it stands with equal certainty for permanent and better relationships between the people and those instruments of commerce and finance which are set up to serve them. It stands not for traditions which are outworn or practices which belong to another age or for economic faiths which, if pursued now, mean economic hardships. My party stands simply for the greatest good for the greatest number of people. And it shapes and will continue to shape its policy of reform to make that sure.20

While the speeches were heard by Canadians from coast to coast, and each sparked front-page coverage and editorial commentary, Bennett had already planned to ensure that all could read and carefully ponder his words. All five speeches were printed in book form. The book’s foreword was written by Stephen Leacock. Echoing what he had written to Bennett after the first speech, Leacock stated that Bennett’s speeches had “. . . quickened the spirit of the country to a new life and a renewed energy.”²¹ He went on to praise Bennett, saying that all Canadians had been doing their bit in the struggle against the Depression but that, “. . . none of us [has] shown better heart in this struggle than the members of the government of Canada, and above all, the Prime Minister . . . by widening the channels of Empire trade he has sought to alleviate the ill fortune it was not yet possible to remove. Through all of this time Mr. Bennett has never uttered a word that was not full of hope and ultimate confidence in the future.”22

There was a fascinating reaction to Bennett’s speeches. A great deal of it was positive. Many letters of congratulation poured in from Conservatives. Among those Bennett received was one from an ambitious Saskatchewan lawyer named John Diefenbaker who reported that the speeches were enthusiastically received throughout his province.²³

Not surprisingly, since much of what Bennett had said was consistent with his beliefs and those that formed the core of the recommendations of his Price Spreads Commission, Harry Stevens also expressed support. He told the Globe that he welcomed the prime minister’s words. The speeches made it clear, Stevens said, that Bennett understood the problems facing Canada.²⁴

Much of the press reaction, however, was negative. Most that were critical had been surprised by the program’s ideas, but even more by Bennett’s blunt assessment of the capitalist system. For instance, Wilfrid Heighington wrote in Saturday Night, “The great asset of the Conservative Party . . . has been that of reliability. The moment that the Rt. Hon. Mr. Bennett took the microphone for those all-shattering speeches in January 1935 . . . that priceless attribute disappeared in a veritable cloud of confusion, doubt, and despair. The staunchest of party workers was blanched, the normally Conservative voter was dismayed, and the great body of silent and unbiased electors wagged their heads.”²⁵ That assessment seemed to sum up the media consensus.

A number of newspapers were critical of the speeches in a way that helped to create an impression of Bennett that was far removed from the facts. It was erroneously argued that the left-wing ideological thrust of the speeches represented a mad swing away from all that Bennett had ever advocated in a desperate attempt to position himself for the upcoming election. Their interpretation echoed Mackenzie King’s contention in the House on January 21 that the “death-bed conversion” was simply a pre-election ploy.²⁶ The Winnipeg Free Press claimed that Bennett had “suddenly” discovered that the capitalist system had flaws and asked, “. . . how does it happen that Mr. Bennett finds out this interesting fact on the eve of a general election?”²⁷ The Montreal Gazette, which normally supported the Conservative Party but was also the voice of the St. James Street corporate elite, wondered the same thing. Its January 30 editorial stated, “If there exists a confusion of thought throughout Canada as to what all this is about, and what it actually portends, the origin of that confusion is to be found in the programme which Mr. Bennett has been discussing, if it can be called a programme.”28 Saturday Night magazine stated more bluntly that “Consistency, it has been stated, is the bugbear of little minds, and no one can accuse Mr. Bennett of consistency. His mind is not made that way. His thoughts are continually active and in politics, continually erratic.”²⁹

It is understandable why partisan enemies would want to characterize the speeches as representing a dramatic shift in Bennett’s beliefs and policies. In politics, after all, the accusation of changing one’s mind on an issue, of flip-flopping, is often fatal. Pierre Trudeau learned that lesson when he campaigned against wage and price controls in 1974 only to implement them when in office. The “flip-flop” was used as a powerful weapon against him in the next election and was one of the factors that resulted in his losing in 1979. Few survive as Brian Mulroney did when he railed against free trade with the United States before later becoming its champion. The fact — and it is a fact — that the New Deal radio addresses represented ideas that were consistent not only with what Bennett had been saying since entering public life before the First World War and the bills that he had brought to the House since becoming prime minister in 1930, was simply ignored by his critics.

Perhaps the negative reaction had less to do with the bogus charge that Bennett was somehow veering madly off a course on which he had been set for decades, and more to do with people being scared by the notion of a Canadian New Deal. It was a poker metaphor. It promised a new start, a do-over. The metaphor was Roosevelt’s, of course, and its promise of new opportunity coupled with the frantic activity of his government’s first hundred days was embraced by most Americans. In Canada, however, perhaps the metaphor was frightening because it did not soothe but challenge; it did not promise but demand. Perhaps, too, it rankled because it was American and so was automatically suspect. Further, because the label was FDR’s, it suggested that Bennett’s ideas must be stolen as well as foreign. It is important to note, however, that not a single time in any of the speeches leading up to the radio addresses, nor in any of the five, did Bennett call his ideas or policies a New Deal — not once. The phrase “Bennett’s New Deal” was the invention of the media and his political opponents.

Of more immediate importance for Bennett than the reactions of newspapers and partisan critics were those of his cabinet and caucus colleagues. And in managing that reaction, Bennett erred. He had consulted neither caucus nor cabinet before the first speech and he did not meet with them until the fifth had been broadcast. Some, nonetheless, supported all that Bennett had said. Manion was most important and positive among Bennett’s supporters. Many cabinet members were incensed by what Bennett had said, but all were by the fact that he had not brought them into his confidence so they could properly react to questions. Bennett tried to joke his way through the first caucus meeting following the speeches. As he entered the room he hung his arm over Sir George Perley’s shoulder and called him comrade. Few laughed.

The most vocal cabinet critic was, not surprisingly, that old free marketer Charles Cahan. Cahan told all who would listen that Bennett’s proposed legislation would ruin the party’s chances in Quebec; it was so close to socialism that the Catholic Church would be forced to stand against it. The Church had already demonstrated its willingness to involve itself in Canadian politics. On the pope’s directive it had organized pulpits throughout the country to demand that no one consider voting for the CCF. It was stated in churches on Sunday mornings that one could not simultaneously be a good Catholic and a good socialist.30 Cahan threatened to resign over the speeches although he later reconsidered and stayed on.

Cahan’s reaction could have been predicted. Most of the corporate and business community to which he gave voice in cabinet agreed with his dismay at the prime minister’s attack on laissez-faire capitalism. But there were many others in the Canadian business community who saw merit in Bennett’s appraisal and approach. Despite what the speeches said about capitalism and, by extension, their role in it, many business people wrote to indicate their support for what he had said and how directly he had said it.³¹

WORKING THE PLAN

With the speeches delivered, Bennett set out on the next phase of the plan that he, Bill Herridge, and Rod Finlayson had discussed for nearly a year and signed off on the previous November. According to the plan, the radio addresses would be followed by the reconvening of Parliament and a Throne Speech. The Throne Speech would echo the reformist tone and rhetoric of the radio addresses. Bennett would cast himself in the role of reformer. He would leave Mackenzie King to play the part of defender of laissez-faire inaction and corporate interests which the Price Spreads Commission had so effectively savaged and Bennett’s speeches had promised to put right. Bennett would then call an election for April and cruise to victory on the great ship of reform.32 It was a worthy plan, but the mighty ship quickly smashed against some hefty rocks.

The first rock was hit as Bennett sat for a number of meetings with Finlayson and Herridge. He became increasingly upset with his brother-in-law, Bill Herridge, whose growing arrogance was becoming grating even for those who had for years known and liked him. At one point the three were working on a speech and Bennett was demanding wholesale changes to the draft. A frustrated Herridge hissed that Bennett should leave the speech to him and Finlayson, for without them Bennett could never write a good speech on his own. Bennett snapped. His temper darkened the room. Herridge was subjected to a long and explosive tirade and told to leave the office. He never came back.

From Washington, Herridge wrote a number of increasingly pitiful letters. First he offered advice and pretended the split had not happened. Then he asked forgiveness. Bennett did not answer a single one. In Bennett’s rigidly compartmentalized mind, Herridge had simply ceased to exist. Bennett and Mildred had seen less and less of each other since her marriage and move to the United States, and the tiff with Herridge made things worse. In the last years of his life Bennett acquired a yappy little dog that followed him everywhere. He named the dog Bill.

Herridge’s departure robbed Bennett of his most skilled speech writer and, along with Finlayson, a clever, nimble, and able political adviser. Herridge understood the hurly-burly of Parliament and the difference between goals, strategies, and tactics. To lose such an important adviser with a politically hazardous session of Parliament and election both on the horizon was an injury from which Bennett would not recover. Most tragic was that the injury was self-inflicted; his temper had caused the rift and his pride maintained it.

The rock was hit but the ship moved on. The sixth and final session of Parliament convened on January 17, 1935. The Speech from the Throne used less provocative language than Bennett’s five radio addresses, but the points raised were the same. The Governor General’s monotone listed six programs that the speeches had introduced, including legislation to bring about unemployment insurance, minimum wages, old-age pensions, workplace reform, and changes to regulate companies and to help farmers sell their products. In the Throne Speech debate, Bennett responded to Opposition members who called the ideas radical. He reminded them of the seriousness of the economic and political challenges that Canada still faced and of the need for the government to take full responsibility for addressing them. He rhetorically asked if Opposition members really believed that when Canadians were facing hardships on so many fronts, the government should do nothing. The strategy seemed to be working out perfectly; but the second rock loomed.

For Bennett’s plan to work as envisioned, Mackenzie King needed to play his part. He needed to take the Throne Speech’s bait, vote against it, and allow Bennett to call an election. But Mackenzie King was too adroit for that. He and his caucus made critical comments but refused to vote against the government. Unable to engineer the pulling down of his own government to fit the timetable he preferred, Bennett was left with no option but to move to implement the policy statements that he had presented to the Canadian people. Mackenzie King was rather proud of himself for seeing through Bennett’s trick and in his diary wrote, “I thought the thing to do would be to call the bluff on the address . . . not let Bennett get away with promises this time — demand performance, & at once.”33

NEW DEAL LEGISLATION

With the House still unexpectedly in session, Bennett was forced to present a budget and bills to put meat on the skeleton he had presented to Canadians, but that he had hoped to first troop around the country in a campaign. Some bills were ready because they had been worked on in the months before the January speeches, but others were rushed to the House. Like under-rehearsed plays, some of the legislation suffered from the speed at which it was brought to the stage.

The first bill of significance sought to create a system of unemployment insurance. The idea was not new and so none should have been surprised. In fact, Bennett had ordered Finlayson and Deputy Finance Minister Clifford Clark to develop an unemployment insurance plan shortly after he took office. He had brought the notion to the January 1931 federal-provincial conference, but premiers could not agree among themselves, let alone with Bennett, as to how it should be financed. Three months later Bennett had stated in the House that establishing a national system whereby employers and employees contributed to an unemployment insurance fund remained a goal of his government. In the fall of 1934, Bennett again set Finance Department officials to work on drafting a scheme along the lines that he had been discussing for years. They had the outline of the bill ready before Christmas and it was presented to the House in late January 1935.

The Employment and Social Insurance Act proposed a system whereby employers, employees, and the federal government would contribute to a fund that would enable the federal government to support those who were forced from their jobs due to the economic circumstances of their employers. The act was a statement as clear as the July prairie sun that the government should care for and about the welfare of the governed. There were strict rules and restrictions regarding eligibility, but the legislation was a bold step forward and much as unions and others who supported such legislation had been advocating for some time.

In Bennett’s speech presenting the bill, he reminded the House of the economic and social costs of unemployment and stated his belief that the government owed it to the people of Canada to assist those who were suffering through no fault of their own. He noted that in bringing forward a scheme of compulsory unemployment insurance, Canada was following the lead of many countries that had already instituted similar legislation, including Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Great Britain, Northern Ireland, the Irish Free State, Italy, Poland, Australia, and Switzerland. Many of those unemployment insurance systems, he explained, had been put in place even before the Depression. He went into great detail explaining the manner in which the British government came to the decision to implement a similar policy and how it worked.34 He sold the legislation as good economic policy while also morally correct in a compassionate, democratic society.

The unemployment insurance bill reflected Bennett’s final step away from the federal government providing direct relief to Canadians. In one of Bennett’s first acts as prime minister, he had allocated $20 million for direct relief and the 1931–32 budget had set aside another $50 million. He had said at the time that the program was temporary and the funds would end when the economy recovered. The relief programs were problematic from the start since the money was inadequate to meet the need and because of the financial and administrative strain they placed on provincial governments. Further, the enormous price tag was helping to push an already high deficit even higher. The unemployment insurance scheme would relieve the pressure on the provinces, and with 80 per cent of the costs coming from premiums, reduce the burden on the federal budget.

Bennett had planned his presentation so as to leave no obvious targets at which the Liberals could aim an attack. But Mackenzie King did not need targets in order to triangulate fire. In a demonstration of his absolute mastery of the House, he had already asked two innocuous-sounding questions that revealed the manner in which he would criticize the unemployment insurance bill and, in a broader way, focus his attack on Bennett in the next election. First, in the debate following the Throne Speech, he wondered how secure services for the people would be if the foundations of Canada’s democratic government were being shaken by the manner in which the reform messages had been brought forward. The question made it apparent that Mackenzie King would attack Bennett for having brought the New Deal ideas to Canadians directly through the radio addresses rather than through Parliament. Bennett’s attempt to be honest and direct with Canadians through the radio speeches would be used as trumped-up evidence of his disdain for democracy and Parliament in his continuing to run a one-man, dictatorial government.

Mackenzie King’s second question came during the debate on the unemployment insurance bill. It began when former justice minister and attorney general Ernest Lapointe asked if Bennett had taken the plan to the provinces. Bennett replied that he had discussed it with them at the federal-provincial conference the previous year but that jurisdictional problems had arisen and so it had gone no further.35 If Lapointe was the left jab then Mackenzie King was the right cross. He asked if Bennett had submitted this proposal or any others that the Throne Speech had mentioned to the Supreme Court to test whether they were within the constitutional purview of the federal government.³⁶ Bennett replied that he had not and did not plan on doing so, for he was confident that the legislation was within what he called the “competence” of the federal government.

Bennett instantly recognized the trap. He explained at some length that he’d based his constitutional opinion on three facts. First, the federal government had signed the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919, and one of its provisions, Article 23, stated that governments must do what they can to assist labour and fight unemployment. Second, and tied to that signing, was that Section 132 of the BNA Act assigned the federal government the responsibility of seeing that treaty obligations were fulfilled. Third, Bennett noted that in a recent challenge to radio and aviation legislation, Britain’s Judicial Committee of the Privy Council had ruled that the residual clause of the BNA Act should be broadly interpreted in terms of federal power and that this precedent afforded judicial support to all of his social legislation.³⁷ In other words, the legislation was well researched and indeed within the constitutional purview of the federal government.

Bennett’s response was masterful but wasted. The exchange revealed to those paying attention that Mackenzie King’s second campaign strategy would be to argue that the New Deal legislation was unconstitutional. The impending campaign would be 1926 all over again, with the constitution playing a major role. As a bonus, Mackenzie King would be able to use Bennett’s apparent disregard for the constitution as yet another example of his dictatorial rule. Throughout the rest of the parliamentary session, Mackenzie King kept hammering the same two points, linking them with Bennett’s leadership style, and biding his time.

Days later, after having brought forward the Employment and Social Insurance Act, Bennett rose to introduce its companion piece, the Minimum Wages Act. The act was relatively modest in scope but nonetheless offered to set wages for a number of trades. It passed through the House with a minimum of debate.

With the first two bills working their way through the parliamentary process, Bennett dealt with a number of big and small decisions that are part of executive power, prepared the next bills in his legislative agenda, and set out to continue to sell his ideas to Canadians. He established a gruelling schedule where he would rise early to deal with correspondence and meetings all morning, appear for important debates and question period until the late afternoon, and meet with cabinet and staff to direct the preparation of the next pieces of legislation. On Friday afternoons he would catch a train to deliver an out-of-town speech or two, then immediately return to do it all again the next week. Late into each evening in his hotel suite or on the train he dealt with telegrams, letters, briefings, and phone calls. It was a punishing pace.

In January, he spoke three times in Montreal: on the fifteenth to the Young Conservatives Club, on the twenty-third to the board of trade, and then to the Canadian Construction Association on the twenty-sixth. He spoke to the Toronto Board of Trade on the twenty-ninth. On February 16, he spoke to New York City’s Canadian Society and then in Kingston, Ontario, on the nineteenth. He travelled to Toronto on the twenty-third, where he was scheduled to address the Young Conservatives Club, but that afternoon he fell ill and had to cancel. He spent that day, night, and next morning in the hotel. He was attended by a doctor and advised to rest. The next morning he returned to Ottawa.

Back at the Château Laurier, the prime minister skipped his morning massage, left correspondence unanswered, and missed his morning appointments. He was examined by his doctor that afternoon. Bennett was diagnosed with an acute respiratory infection and sent to bed. The illness was disturbing personally but disastrous politically. At the very moment that he most needed to be speaking with Canadians, he was silenced. For the remainder of February and the first week of March he took crucial calls and dealt with urgent correspondence, but for all intents and purposes he vanished.

Bennett’s absence left cabinet members scrambling. They were in the midst of writing the budget and preparing and shepherding through the House the most ambitious package of reform legislation that Parliament had ever seen and they were suddenly without their leader. Not only that, but Bennett had delegated little in terms of crafting the various pieces of legislation or in planning for their passage. Acting Prime Minister Sir George Perley took a number of actions that kept the cabinet and caucus together but it was well known that he did not support many of the New Deal initiatives or the political philosophy at their core. Further, he was getting old and his effectiveness as a leader in the House was waning. Manion was among many who believed that Perley was letting Bennett down by not being more vigorous in his promotion of the New Deal legislation.38 Perley’s ineffectiveness resulted in Rod Finlayson stepping to the fore. He coached the cabinet and later individual ministers as to the best way forward.³⁹

Under such trying circumstances, the cabinet did an admirable job. Finance Minister Rhodes worked furiously with Finlayson and his staff to create a budget. The final wording was completed just the evening before it was presented in the House. The budget contained more promises than substantive change, but it did as Bennett had pledged and raised taxes on the richest Canadians by hiking corporate taxes by 1 per cent and imposing new surtaxes on investment incomes of over $5,000. It reflected Bennett’s belief that a period of economic crisis is not a time to worry about balancing the government’s books in that it allowed another deficit. The deficit was projected to be the highest in the Bennett years: $17 million.

The cabinet then worked to bring forward the reform bills that Bennett had only sketched out in principle. The Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act promised to create an advisory board that would investigate, then recommend, ways to help farmers whose land had been devastated by the drought. Another relief bill added more funding to the program created in 1934. The Relief and Public Works Construction Act offered funding to more federal, provincial, and municipal infrastructure projects. In deference to the deficit, and because Bennett was not able to personally push for more, the amount offered was only $30 million. Finally, the Economic Council of Canada was established. It would conduct research and provide advice to the prime minister and cabinet regarding economic and social changes affecting Canadians.

The budget and each piece of legislation was met by insipid responses and general support from the Liberals. They were disciplined in following their leader’s orders to do nothing disruptive in the House while preparing to fight in the election.⁴⁰ Bennett, meanwhile, was forced to merely listen to reports from Finlayson, guess at Opposition strategy, and send instructions back to colleagues. Things were bad but they were about to get worse.

On the morning of March 7, 1935, Prime Minister Bennett suffered a heart attack. For years he had been overworked, overstressed, overtired, and overweight. All of this, when coupled with his lack of exercise and terrible diet, meant that his abstinence from drinking and smoking were good but not enough. He had for some time been a heart attack waiting to happen. His last complete physical examination had been in Calgary by Dr. R.S. Stevenson in August 1934. The electrocardiogram had indicated that Bennett had an irregular heart rhythm with a particular problem in the left ventricle, or in medical terms, “auricular fibrillation, left ventricular preponderance.”41 The doctor had, for some reason, prescribed no medicine nor recommended any change in lifestyle. It is unlikely that Bennett would have listened anyway. Now, however, his doctors ordered complete bedrest.

Bennett had been out of the public eye, but at least directing things from behind the scenes, since the twenty-third of February. But with the heart attack he was totally out of the picture for another three weeks. Finlayson and the cabinet were left completely on their own. By mid-March, Bennett was again dealing with some matters of state from his suite, but to the public he was still the invisible man. As he slowly recovered, he was able to do more work but he tired easily. He was capable of no public appearances. He could not appear in the House.

The government continued to manage the nation’s affairs. On March 14, only one week after his heart attack, another of Bennett’s reform bills, the Weekly Day of Rest Act, was introduced. It stated that workers were owed one day off a week and that day should normally be Sunday. It set fines for companies that violated the act by forcing employees to work seven days a week. Bennett was kept up to date with daily briefings, and made suggestions throughout the act’s drafting and introduction, but said nothing to the press. The act passed with little debate.

On April 16, Bennett invited a group of reporters whom he had grown to trust a little more than others to his suite and undertook a press conference. It had been nearly two months since he had spoken to a reporter or since he had been seen or heard from by Canadians. In the short chat, he expressed full support for all the government had been doing in the House, but he said little of consequence. The purpose was simply to demonstrate to the Canadian people, and perhaps to those in his party, that while he was a little thinner, a little paler, and that his eyes showed strain, he had recovered and was still the leader.

Beginning that afternoon, people were introduced to a different, less guarded Bennett. Perhaps it was that he had just stared death in the face. Perhaps he was feeling the reflective calm that moving through one’s sixty-sixth year allows. Or perhaps he was predicting that his days as prime minister were over. There is no evidence as to his sharing his thoughts on the cause of his change in demeanour, but the change was nonetheless evident. He was less combative and more relaxed. He pondered questions more thoughtfully and spoke with less urgency. Even political foes noticed a change. Bruce Hutchison, for instance, who was by no means a fan, wrote an editorial in the Calgary Herald in which he observed, “The fire is still there, but it is no longer a consuming flame, which often burned friend and enemy alike and all but consumed Mr. Bennett himself.”42

Two days later, Bennett left for New York on his way to King George V’s silver jubilee in London. While leaving Canada at such a critical juncture was risky, he had never made a secret of his love of the monarchy and of all things British. Plus, protocol demanded the presence of the prime minister of the Commonwealth’s largest dominion and not a surrogate. And, the trip offered more time to regain his strength.

Bennett enjoyed the trip immensely. One of his proudest moments came on a gloriously sunny spring morning when he rode through the streets of London with Prime Minister Hertzog of South Africa in the long royal procession’s second car, just behind the king himself. The celebrations included a service at St. Paul’s Cathedral in which Bennett was seated in a place of honour near the front. It also included a weekend at Windsor Castle with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the royal family. He spent time alone with the king. One can only imagine the thoughts of the boy from Hopewell Cape as he laid himself down to sleep in the Edward III Tower. In a letter of thanks to the king that he wrote from his London hotel before departing for home, one can sense his being nearly overwhelmed by all he had experienced. He wrote,

Perhaps you would permit me to add that I valued very highly the opportunity so freely given to discuss with my Sovereign matters of concern. I state the simple truth when I write that I came away from the Castle with an even deeper feeling of affection and devotion for my King and Queen, and I shall continue to aspire more earnestly to serve the Crown to the best of my ability, sustained by the conviction that my Royal Master expects His servants to do the best within them.43

Mildred was with him in London as was Alice Millar and a small group of staff that again included Pearson. Bennett stole some time for sightseeing and shopping with Mildred. He also spent time with Beaverbrook, who arranged for his friend to see his personal physician.

Bennett found the days travelling over the Atlantic and back aboard the French liner Paris to be especially pleasant. While dealing with work in the mornings and evenings, he whiled away afternoons speaking with other passengers and with staff about things other than the challenges of governing. It was while aboard the Paris that Bennett worked on yet another expression of the Canadian tie to Britain. Before the trip, he had decided to reinstate the practice of submitting names to the Crown for the bestowal of Royal Honours as a way to recognize achievement. Bennett had asked his cabinet to submit suggestions for those who should be honoured first. In quiet moments in his cabin he pared it down to a final list. He then invited a rather seasick Pearson to look over his decisions. The nauseous young man was surprised to find his name among the nominees. Despite his illness, Pearson remained sufficiently shrewd to notice that his boss, Oscar Skelton, was not on the list, so he asked that his own name be removed. Those who finally received Royal Honours included Frederick Banting (scientist), Ernest Macmillan (musician), Arthur Beauchesne (House of Commons clerk), Lyman Duff (chief justice of the Supreme Court), Charles Saunders (scientist who invented a new hybrid wheat, allowing the West to boom), and Charlotte Whitton (Alberta social worker and later long-time Ottawa mayor).

The trip back offered Pearson another surprise when a pleasant afternoon was spent on deck with a French gentleman who engaged the prime minister in a long and rather detailed discussion about wine. Despite the fact that Bennett had always eschewed any type of liquor, including wine, he was a polymath who impressed all with his meticulous knowledge of the fine liquid in which he himself had never indulged.44 But soon, probably sooner than all would have liked, it was back to Canada and the political firestorm that waited.

Bennett’s illness, then the heart attack, and then the silver jubilee, had effectively removed him from the public eye from late February until late May. Without Bennett travelling the country and selling his program, the political high ground had been abandoned to the Liberals. The Canadian Annual Review noted: “That had given his opponents ample time to undermine his social reform platform. Just so, in 1911, had Sir Wilfrid Laurier lost the Reciprocity Election by attending King George’s Coronation, thus giving the Conservatives six months in which to fight the trade compacts with Washington.”⁴⁵

When he returned first from his sickbed and then from London, he was feeling tired and lethargic. He was honest with reporters about his health. In a May press conference in Ottawa he confided to reporters, “I saw two specialists in London and they reported that my heart was organically sound. It was, however, a tired heart. Just what it will be capable of accomplishing remains to be seen.”⁴⁶ Two weeks later, Bennett was even more direct in a letter to old friend Howard Ferguson in which he admitted, “I really should not be at work. . . . I doubt very much whether I will be able to go on. If I get half a chance to rest for six months, I will be all right, but as there is an election before that time, it looks to me as though I might have to retire. I will know definitely before prorogation.”⁴⁷

On May 20, there was thunderous applause from both sides of the House when the prime minister took his seat. Parliament had been recessed for nearly five weeks. With Bennett back at work and directing cabinet, another flurry of reform legislation found its way to the House.

On May 23, Guthrie introduced the Criminal Code Amendment Act. Based upon recommendations from the Price Spreads Commission, it stated that companies could not engage in false advertising, or set salaries lower than the legislated minimum wage, or set the prices of their products such that they were designed only to harm or eliminate competition. Penalties were high. The predatory pricing provision, for instance, promised fines of up to $5,000 and a month’s jail time.

Two weeks later, Bennett rose to introduce legislation to create the Canadian Wheat Board. The act augmented the Wheat Board Act passed the year before, but this time proposed that the government take control of all grain elevators to further control the purchase and distribution and, consequently, the price of prairie wheat and grain. It established headquarters in Winnipeg. The board would determine how much of each product should be grown or extracted while establishing standards for quality. The act promised greater government power in the economy with the proviso that it could move to handle more products, such as barley, oats, and rye, if deemed advantageous to producers and consumers. Bennett argued that the act was really just creating in name what had been operating for over two years under the brilliant leadership of John McFarland.

The Liberals stood against the wheat board with the same argument they had used against the Criminal Code Amendment Act: the government was becoming too powerful and inserting itself too radically into the marketplace. That insertion, however, was exactly the point. The very next day, before Mackenzie King had time to organize the debate, Minister of Trade and Commerce Richard Hanson moved second reading on the Dominion Trade and Industry Commission Act. Taking its inspiration from the Price Spreads Commission, the act afforded more power to the Tariff Board and to the National Research Council. Further, it stated that the Industry Commission would have the power to investigate businesses that were suspected of engaging in unfair practices. It also detailed a Canada standard for goods that companies marketed, thereby establishing the now well-known CSA-approved label for Canadian products. Again, the Liberals were aghast at the government promising to intervene so actively in the marketplace.

Only ten days later, Agriculture Minister Robert Weir introduced the Farmer’s Creditors Arrangement Act. It amended the act passed the previous year so as to help farmers gain the credit they so desperately needed. It gave them more flexibility in negotiating how loans could be repaid and a greater likelihood of securing loans in the first place.

A week later, the furious pace continued with the introduction of Natural Products Marketing Act amendments. Intended to address low and still fluctuating commodity prices, the act expanded similar 1934 legislation by affording the government the power to assist not only farmers but also the forest industry through regulations that allowed the selling of products at more stable and predictable prices. It also brought the pulp and paper industry under the protection of the regulations.

The Dominion Housing Act offered federal money to help banks and prospective first-time homeowners arrange mortgages. The act came from a committee that Bennett had established the year before. It promised $10 million for a program that loaned money at a low 3 per cent interest to builders of a new home if they were able to raise at least 20 per cent of the cost on their own. It was meant to help people to purchase a new home while stimulating job growth in the construction trades. The program was eventually directly responsible for the construction of 5,000 homes and countless jobs for Canadians.

Finally, Bennett introduced the Companies Act Amendment. It was based upon the belief that among the reasons for the Depression had been the tricks played by banks and corporate boards involving accounting practices, stock-price manipulation, and corporate governance. The act provided more transparency for investors by forcing companies to be forthright in reporting shifts from common to preferred shares, and changes in ownership and board membership. It provided that company directors had to emerge from the shadows and that an annual and audited financial statement had to be presented to shareholders with a copy sent to the secretary of state.

Only five months had passed since Bennett’s final radio address. Bennett had fallen ill, suffered a heart attack, and gone to England. Despite all of that, he had overseen the delivery of a Throne Speech and the creation and passage of a budget; juggled the challenges presented by Stevens and the growing relief camp, strike, and trek troubles; directed trade negotiations with the United States; and managed the presentation of fourteen significant pieces of legislation. It was a remarkable achievement.

As the late-spring sun began to warm the land and urge Canadians to shake off memories of yet another cold winter, would it all matter? The Canadian people were about to decide if they wished to change or repeat the decision they had made five years before in choosing Bennett to lead them from the cold chill of the Depression.

PREPARING FOR THE 1935 ELECTION

Every prime minister does his or her best according to their wit, wisdom, and character. Similarly, each worries, when election time nears, as to whether those efforts were good enough to earn the trust of Canadians one more time. Bennett knew that times had been tough, and he was open with many about the degree to which he took responsibility for errors that had been made. To a supporter in Winnipeg, for instance, he had written with pride and humility, “I have given my best to the country during the last five years, and I believe there is written a record of which no one need be ashamed, although it is quite probable that we have made mistakes as all poor human creatures must.”48 It was now up to the voters.

Bennett began the campaign with troubles that no incumbent needed. Important among them was dissension within Conservative ranks. The Stevens affair was the most damaging, but there was trouble with others too. During a warm June afternoon House debate regarding unemployment among veterans, for instance, things were slogging along when R.J. Manion rose and questioned the veracity of a report that had been tabled by Mr. Justice Hyndman. There is nothing wrong with such a question, but it is usual practice to raise such things in caucus or, in this case, in cabinet where the report had already been discussed. When Manion had taken his seat, Bennett leaned over Guthrie, glared at Manion and whispered, but in a voice heard by all, that such remarks by a member of his own government had no place in the House. Manion snapped back that he would express his opinion whenever and wherever he pleased and that if Bennett wanted his resignation, he could have it right then and there. Bennett, of course, should have ended the exchange, but his blood was up. He retorted that if Manion wanted to resign immediately he would accept it. The men slumped back into their chairs like scowling red-faced brothers in a back-seat spat, with Guthrie as the poor sib between to keep them apart.

The confrontation was all over the next day’s papers.⁴⁹ The sparks amounted to nothing, but they had been sufficiently bright to cast light on a government under extreme stress, a splintering cabinet, a proud minister willing to take unfounded criticism from no one, and a prime minister who, despite his age and position, still occasionally let his temper get the best of him. The public fight with Manion, the public criticism against the January speeches from Cahan, and the longer, more significant split with Stevens all revealed that the support Bennett had once enjoyed from his colleagues had been shattered.

On July 5, 1935, Parliament was adjourned. Two days later, Stevens announced the formation of a new political party with himself as its leader. The Reconstruction Party was born. On August 15, Bennett visited Governor General Bessborough and an election was set for October 14.

Bennett had hoped to allow himself time to rest and plan, and for the country to enjoy what was left of the summer. But headlines through the spring and summer of 1935 screamed of discontent. May was the Vancouver Relief Workers Strike, June the On to Ottawa Trek, and July the Regina Riot. If that was not enough, unemployment was still high and optimism was still low. It is hard to imagine a tougher set of circumstances for an incumbent facing the electorate.

But there was even more. When Bennett looked to the party organization that would enable him to take his case to the Canadian people, he found it a shambles. The organization that had been so brilliantly put together using Bennett’s money and McRae’s talents had been taken apart shortly after the 1930 election. All provincial offices had been closed. Most riding associations across the country had stopped meeting. Lists of electors, supporters, and contributors had been allowed to go stale and in many cases were lost. The Canadian, which had been so effective in the 1930 campaign as a means of presenting the Conservative Party view, had printed just one issue after the election and had been allowed to fold. The National News Service, which was so powerful a tool, had been shut down to save money. If that was not sufficiently ill advised, Bennett had also ordered the plates to be broken up so that they would not fall into the wrong hands. The party’s headquarters in Ottawa had closed. The men who had made it and the entire 1930 campaign work — Redmond Code, Robert Lipset, General McRae — had left for the law, the press, and the Senate, respectively.

Good people departing due to an inability to retain even part-time employment with the party was seen everywhere, and everywhere it hurt. A party works on people and structure, and in the early 1930s both had been allowed to fall away. The structure could perhaps have been rebuilt, but once the experienced people were gone, it was difficult to have them surrender the often much better paying positions they had found to return to a party that had proven itself to be nothing but a part-time and disloyal employer.

The organization had died not due to neglect or incompetence but because Bennett had ordered its death. He had decided to dedicate none of his time to party matters as he focused on the affairs of the state. On January 6, 1931, just three months after winning office, Bennett had written a long and blunt letter to the party chief and chief whip in which he explained decisions he had made regarding the party’s central organization. He noted that the only money supporting the organization was coming from his own pocket and that he was ending his personal sponsorship. He offered one month’s expenses to effectively shut the operation down. He further argued that the work of spreading news regarding party policies and government actions could be more effectively and cheaply done through local riding associations.50

Shutting down the central organization did not stop the requests for funds. Bennett continued to receive letters and guests in his office asking that he personally finance their political careers. Bennett responded to all stating that as of June 1930 he had contributed half-a-million dollars to the Conservative Party and that no one should expect him to spend more. To prospective Toronto Conservative candidate T.A. McAuley, for example, Bennett explained, “I have spent more money now, I think, than any other man in the Party and I feel certain my Toronto friends will realize my position.”⁵¹

Bennett had been urged to keep an eye on party affairs. He had been told of the need to keep the offices open, the Canadian in production, the riding associations vibrant, and the voting and donor lists current.⁵² But the letters urging such action stopped when it became clear that Bennett’s mind had been made up. The organization that had played such an enormous role in making him prime minister was gone. In the summer of 1935, with a new election dawning, he realized the mistake he had made. He later wrote, “I gave too much time to the problems of government and too little to the interests of my Party.”⁵³

This is not to say that absolutely nothing had been done about party organization for five years, for indeed there had been some sound and fury. In the fall of 1934, Bennett had asked cabinet ministers Stevens, Manion, and Gordon to establish a committee to plan for the next election. But the committee came to nothing as the three bickered about budget and authority. Gordon quit. Bennett received a series of recommendations from Stevens and Manion, but there is no indication that he did anything with them.

In December 1934, Toronto backbencher Earl Lawson had written to Bennett expressing frustration with the sorry state of the party and offering to become its national organizer. Bennett quickly accepted and the appointment was made. Lawson began in January 1935 by setting up an office in Ottawa and assembling a two-person staff. He hired friend and reporter Fred Edwards as the director of publicity and charged him with the responsibility of reinventing the machine that had proven so effective in 1930. Edwards did what he could, but with old files and little money he was stymied from the start. He managed to produce three new issues of the Canadian and to send copies of Bennett’s New Deal speeches to friendly individuals and groups across the country. The efforts were laudable and better than nothing, but they were ad hoc at best.

More could have been accomplished and in a timelier manner, but there was simply not the money to do so. Lawson had not appointed a fundraiser. Then, as now, money was the grease that allowed a political party’s wheels to turn, and the Conservative party had little. Bennett’s generous donations had been good for the party but had created long-term problems by alleviating the necessity to develop other sustainable sources of revenue. In the late spring of 1935, Lawson and his tiny staff struggled to develop a fundraising plan, but it was far too late in the game for any strategy, no matter how well inspired or intelligently implemented, to gather the necessary funds.

In August, with the dissolution granted, the paper-and-paste organization that Lawson had put together nearly fell apart. He could hardly be blamed. He needed to return to his Toronto riding to fight for his political life and so was seldom in the office or in day-to-day control. He had appointed the talented Lou Golden as party general secretary, and he had instantly become the de facto national party organizer. Late in the summer, however, Golden fell ill with a potentially fatal bone disease and had to leave his post. Lawson scrambled and, just eight weeks before voting day, young Richard Bell was appointed to take over. Bell worked long hours and quickly won Bennett’s respect as he arranged the leader’s tour, oversaw all party communications, attempted to strengthen the ties to and between what had been moribund provincial offices, and saw to the last-minute approval of candidates.

By late September, working with what Golden had begun, Bell assembled a reliable mailing list of 400,000 names. A quarter of those were in Quebec. Mailings went out, reporters’ questions were answered, and an enormous amount of work was done by the tiny but dedicated staff. But communications between hastily appointed provincial directors and the central office suffered during the transition to Bell and never really recovered. Chaos and frustration were heightened as Bennett and Finlayson often ignored Bell’s central office and spoke directly to candidates and provincial directors. Calls to provincial offices and to the national office were often directed elsewhere. Many trivial and some important questions went unanswered. And everyone asked for more money. All were told that there simply was no more.

Bennett had for years rejected many ideas presented to him regarding fundraising. Important among them, for what it says about his integrity as a man and a leader, was the age-old and commonly practised trick of awarding government contracts to those who made contributions to the party. The practice encourages regular and generous contributions from those companies and others wishing to latch on to the patronage teat. But Bennett rejected the whole sordid idea. Shortly after becoming prime minister, for instance, he had been told of a series of contracts to be awarded in Montreal that had the potential to bring significant funds to party hampers.54 Bennett turned the opportunity down. He opened those and all other contracts to a fair and transparent tendering process. Bennett paid a steep price for his integrity.

The Conservative Party’s growing problems were seen in the by-elections it had been losing. The party had held its own in the first two by-elections when it lost Three Rivers-St. Maurice but won in Hamilton-East. In 1932, it broke even again, winning in Alberta’s Athabasca and in New Brunswick’s Royal, but losing contests in Montreal-Maisonneuve and Ontario’s South Huron. But the next year saw the beginning of the swing against Bennett and the Conservatives. There were three by-elections and the party lost them all: in Saskatchewan’s Mackenzie, New Brunswick’s Restigouche-Madawaska, and Quebec’s Yamaska. In 1934 and early 1935, there were six more federal by-elections; the Conservative Party candidates lost all except the one in Toronto East.

Meanwhile, Conservative governments had been voted out of office in Ontario, Saskatchewan, and New Brunswick. The party had only managed to hold on to Prince Edward Island. But in 1935, that government fell too, with not a single Conservative earning a seat.

Even when money, organization, and support were gathered and focused on a particular project, it did not seem to matter. In Ontario’s South Huron, after all, five cabinet ministers, including the nationally popular Stevens and Manion, had stumped enthusiastically for the local Conservative candidate. Volunteers were plentiful and some of the budget was left in the bank on Election Day — but it was to no avail. The Conservative candidate was trounced. By the late spring and early summer of 1935, four ridings were without representation in Ottawa. Bennett let them sit empty rather than risk more defeats.

In the spring of 1935, when everyone including Bennett knew full well of the challenges the election would hold, a fascinating idea surfaced. In early March, Bennett heard rumblings about the creation of a coalition government, much like the one that Borden had formed to fight the First World War. Toronto Conservative MP Frederick Morrow explained to the prime minister that Liberal stalwart Ernest Lapointe had approached him with the notion that the Liberals and Conservatives should form a national party to combat the Depression. He reported that a number of Liberal MPs were ready to endorse the idea. An unsubstantiated rumour even circulated that if Mackenzie King decided not to involve himself then he could either continue as Liberal leader or room would be made for him as principal of McGill University. Morrow was quick to point out, however, that Lapointe could not really be trusted. He had had shady dealings in the past and was in desperate need of money and so would do just about anything to secure a Senate appointment or jump at any other opportunity that would afford him a steady and reasonable income.55 Bennett did nothing to encourage the idea, not surprisingly, since he had opposed the first unity government so vehemently. The notion went nowhere.

In the end, it was apparent that if Bennett were to win re-election he would need to do it with his record and himself as the only assets on which he could rely. As had been the case throughout most of his political career, he prepared to face the people with little organization, few allies, little money beyond his own, and the odds against him.

THE CAMPAIGN

The Liberals began the campaign by laying a fourteen-point platform before the Canadian people. It was intriguing, for many of the points were from Bennett’s January speeches and the legislation he had subsequently brought to the House. They were simply reworked and made more palatable by divorcing them from their urgent rhetoric. The Liberals promised, for instance, to bring forward a plan for unemployment insurance and public works programs. There was a promise to eliminate unfair trade practices and price-fixing and to extend trade with Britain through a preferential tariff. The Canadian National Railway would be kept separate from the CPR, maintained as a publicly owned railway, and run with greater efficiency. There was even a promise to “create” a central bank. Some of the platform was a veiled attack based on false stereotypes regarding Bennett and his leadership style, such as the promise to end “autocratic powers” and to restore the power of Parliament. Finally, there was a pledge to repeal Section 98 of the Criminal Code. Overall, it was an anemic effort; what was not vague was stolen, and what remained was either misleading or qualified by the phrase “as opportunity offers.”56

A Liberal campaign poster that was also used as a newspaper ad stated that people should vote Liberal for five reasons. Like much of the platform, each played on the negative perception of Bennett’s reputation that the Opposition and critical newspapers had been helping to construct over the previous five years. One said, “You do not want a one-man government.” Another said, “You do not want the ‘iron heel’ of ruthlessness in Canada.”⁵⁷

The Liberals were not alone in inflammatory rhetoric on their campaign posters. A Conservative poster that found its way to the telephone poles of the West exclaimed in an odd use of bold print and capital letters, “Vote for Mr. Bennett in the next election — Save Canada from Annexation and Absolute Destruction — The opposition Leader, Mr. M. King Must be kept out at all costs — All Loyal citizens should uphold Mr. Bennett which means good leadership, law and order, and a prosperous country. The Ottawa Conference was the Greatest Achievement in Canadian History.”58 The gloves had definitely hit the ice.

The sixty-one-year old Mackenzie King entered the campaign well rested and, after months of careful dieting, he had lost forty pounds and was more fit and energetic than he had been in some time. With the baby fat gone from his face and the frenetic, high-pitched voice from his speeches, Mackenzie King appeared to be a new and improved candidate, certainly different from the man Canadians had voted from office five years before. He presented himself as a calm, reliable presence and leader of a strong Liberal team. He repeated in many speeches, “What this country needs is not the fist of the pugilist but the hand of the physician.”⁵⁹

The campaign began in earnest after Labour Day with a series of four radio speeches that Bennett delivered from Toronto. They were unlike the January speeches in tone and quite specific in laying out plans for his next administration. Among the policies he promised to pursue if re-elected was more trade with the United States but higher tariffs to other countries outside the Commonwealth, lower interest rates, easier loans for homeowners, job creation, and the establishment of a mandatory retirement age of sixty. He also promised improved public radio and the creation of a more efficient civil service. He pledged to deal firmly with communists and others who threatened peace, order, and the country’s continued economic recovery.

The opening speech made clear that, if re-elected, Bennett intended to continue to lead from the left of the political spectrum. For instance, he promised to create a commission to look into transportation issues including, most importantly, the railways. He said that if the commission recommended amalgamation or nationalization, he would seriously consider the options but that he would take the ideas to Canadians before proceeding, as they were CN shareholders. Also, he promised that the newly created Economic Council of Canada would investigate the future of energy needs with a specific look at the creation of pipelines. The council would be charged with determining ways that energy needs could be met and make a recommendation to Parliament that would allow the country to “. . . avoid the present competition, the present unprofitable production, the present prices, by devising a scheme of coordination and elimination of duplication.”⁶⁰

Not flinching from attacking his opponents while defending his record, he said, “The Conservative Party stands upon the bedrock of performance; the opposition parties upon the changing sands of political expediency.”61 He then hinted at the array of new political parties that were presenting themselves as political options for Canadians. He sarcastically noted, “Political arguments of the day include the case for capitalism, reformed capitalism, Socialism, Communism, and some rare economic creations for which, perhaps, we cannot find a name.”⁶²

Bennett also responded to Mackenzie King’s accusations of his having run a one-man government: “When he talks in this way, who is he trying to frighten? You? Me? Himself? I really don’t know whom. It is too absurd. It is not even a good joke.”⁶³ He went on to say that there would never be a dictator in Canada as long as Canadians were Canadians and concluded, “So do not let us be childish and talk about things that have no substance, when we all know that there are things of grave importance which should engage our every waking hour.”⁶⁴

Bennett tried to address the schism created by the Stevens affair. He said that Stevens had fought throughout his entire political life for Conservative policies and expressed regret that he had left the party. He then noted that the Reconstruction Party’s objectives were the same as those of the Conservative Party, but that Stevens was advocating untested and impracticable means to pursue them, while at the same time trying to initiate a class war. Bennett argued, “National objectives cannot be obtained by arousing class prejudices and by repudiation and destruction.”⁶⁵

He ended with a list of what he believed to be the most noteworthy accomplishments of his administration: the establishment of the Bank of Canada, the Natural Products Marketing Act, farm loans, the Farmer’s Creditors Arrangement Act, unemployment insurance, minimum wages, the eight-hour day, a day of rest, the Economic Council of Canada, the Dominion Housing Act, the Board of Commerce and Industry, amendments to the Companies Act and the Criminal Code, protections for investors, the abolition of unfair labour and pricing practices, and the creation of the Canadian Wheat Board and the CRBC.⁶⁶

None of this was new and all was consistent with the ideological view that Bennett had held throughout his political career and stated most bluntly with the January speeches. But it was a lot to swallow. He had hit every opponent and anticipated every possible attack. Rather than simplifying his platform into just a few priorities, he had laid out a large and complex set of ideas. Although it was in harmony with his past work, it nonetheless had the appearance of yet another new program — the third in nine months. Further, in outlining so many priorities it appeared that he had none in particular.

On September 19, a cheering crowd of between five and six thousand people met Bennett’s train as it pulled into the Calgary station at 11:30 a.m., forty-five minutes late. A loud ovation rose from the crowd when he appeared, raised his hat, and beamed a large smile. Police formed a cordon around him as he moved slowly through the crowd shaking hands and greeting many people by name. The Native Son’s Band played the national anthem and “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” as he arrived at the Palliser Hotel where hundreds more had gathered to welcome him. After briefly freshening up, he gulped a quick snack, then addressed seven hundred people at a formal luncheon hosted by the Canadian Club. He spoke for an hour and used much of the speech to warn of the dangers that the world presented for Canada. He spoke of the dictators of Europe. He warned of the peril that communism posed for the world. He used this warning to segue into a point he had raised in his campaign’s opening address. He stated that Russian leaders had recently boasted that 90 per cent of the strikes that had occurred recently in Canada had been organized by communists. He made specific reference to the On to Ottawa Trek, stating that it had been part of a communist plan to overthrow Canada’s constitution, institutions, and traditions. He went on to argue that the problems faced by Canada were different from those at Confederation and so constitutional amendments were needed to afford the federal government the power to address those problems.67

On his second day in the city he presented a number of scholarships to deserving secondary school students. At 3:00 p.m., one thousand loyal Conservatives packed the Elks Hall for the perfunctory nomination meeting. Mayor Andrew Davidson was there and among those who spoke were the Conservative candidates for Calgary East, Bow River, and Medicine Hat. Bennett surprised no one when he won the nomination for West Calgary by acclamation. He then delivered yet another one-hour speech.

With victory in his home riding in the bag, he embarked on a tour of the country that would have staggered a younger and healthier man. He showed courage by beginning in Regina. He was pleased with and proud of his reception. He also visited Vancouver, Victoria, and Winnipeg. He then headed back east where he was applauded for speeches in Quebec City and Montreal, much of which he delivered by reading well-practised French. In all he made forty major addresses and visited every province.

Bennett’s rallies were well attended and for the most part the audiences were enthusiastic and well behaved. His speeches were written primarily by Finlayson. Bennett had even acceded to Finlayson’s repeated requests and allowed Bill Herridge to help with the drafts. Bennett himself often significantly reworked them before they were delivered. At every stop he proudly outlined his record of achievement. He noted that since 1930, exports were up and unemployment was down. He explained how the Bank of Canada and the regulations that had been imposed on banks, the stock market, and corporations had greatly reduced the chances of Canada ever seeing another prolonged depression. He listed the many pieces of legislation that had forced businesses to improve wages and working conditions, and policies that had provided jobs and relief to desperate Canadians. He took credit for the Price Spreads Commission and told how much of his recent legislation was based on its recommendations. He bragged about public radio and how Canadians were being brought together to celebrate their culture rather than being swamped by programs from over the border.

Mackenzie King, meanwhile, stuck diligently to his game plan. The Liberal campaign slogan was a simple alliteration: King or Chaos. At every campaign stop he urged audiences to remember the hard times of the Depression and to tag Bennett as having been unable to alleviate them. He attacked what he called Bennett’s “dictatorial style.” He promised to do away with what he said was Bennett’s excessive use of orders-in-council, that he claimed had usurped the power of the House. He spoke of getting rid of the Criminal Code’s Section 98, which, he argued, had the potential to steal the rights of all citizens. He asked Canadians to affix all blame for all problems on the doorstep of his opponent. A favourite line, and similar to one used by presidential candidate Ronald Reagan forty-five years later, was, “You have now had five years of the Bennett government. I wonder if any of you are as well off now as when it started?”68

Mackenzie King offered ideological mush. He spoke of freer trade but not free trade. He promised a balanced budget but no significant tax increases or spending cuts to achieve it. He pledged several programs that had, in fact, already been put in place, and even the creation of a central bank. He knew that the promises were less important than in 1930 because Canadians were already in the mood to toss Bennett out of office. From the outset he planned to use this perception to his advantage by focusing on avoiding gaffes and letting Bennett lose. He had told his caucus in June, “The main thing from now on is to realize that the people vote against, rather than for something and to keep their mind focussed on Bennett and his mismanagement of things.”69 In that way he was like Jean Chrétien running against the despised Conservatives in 1993 or Pierre Trudeau running against the hapless Joe Clark in 1980. As he slid beneath his coat in the back seat of a car that was about to whisk him away, Trudeau had joked that he was The Shadow.

The other parties spoke mostly to their limited constituencies, and they all struggled with small staffs and very little money. Led by the universally respected J.S. Woodsworth, the CCF took its 1932 Regina Manifesto to the hustings and promised to eradicate capitalism through the nationalization of businesses such as banks and insurance companies, and to end the contradictions of a government that it said was claiming to want to help people with relief but then attacked them with the RCMP and legislation such as Section 98. The Social Credit Party earned its reputation as the “funny money party” by pledging to mail a twenty-five-dollar cheque to every Canadian every month. They could not really explain where they would get the money and how the scheme would not devalue the currency, but those details did not seem to matter. Ex-radio preacher and Social Credit leader “Bible Bill” Aberhart had ridden his populist message to the premiership of Alberta and so was removed from the campaign, but he lent his persuasive voice to radio addresses that were especially attractive to a good number of Depression-scarred westerners. The Social Credit Party would govern Alberta until 1971. Stevens’s Reconstruction Party played the populist card by attacking big business and promising a program based to a large degree on the findings of the Price Spreads Commission. It nominated candidates in ridings across the country but few were well qualified. Many were strangers even in their hometowns. A host of small labour parties and the communists also fielded candidates.

The CCF, Social Credit, and Reconstruction parties had some appeal across the country, and pockets of substantial support among socialist intellectuals, working-class Canadians, and alienated western farmers. All were similar in that they offered programs to the left of the political spectrum. With Bennett’s personal convictions, the 1927 Winnipeg convention, the record of his administration, and most blatantly with his words and legislation of 1935, Bennett had also situated the Conservative Party on the crowded ideological left. All Canadians who saw value in such a political point of view, and the programs that view inspired, had a host of electoral choices. Meanwhile, Mackenzie King had for years been inching the Liberals to the centre-right. The 1935 election, therefore, saw the Liberals alone in drawing support from the right and centre, with the Conservatives scrambling for votes on the splintered left. This fact made the wisdom of Mackenzie King’s shadow campaign seem wiser still.

Most campaigns see cabinet ministers and provincial premiers travelling to ridings deemed important because a belief develops that they can be won or that a particular candidate deserves support. Such trips help the local candidate, bring prestige to the minister and premier, and take pressure off the leader who, after all, cannot be everywhere at once. No such relief came in 1935. Despite requests and later pleas from Finlayson, and sometimes from Bennett himself, ministers stuck to their own ridings. They declared that they could not afford a day away if they hoped to hold their hotly contested seats. Further, cabinet ministers Rhodes, Macdonald, Sauvé, Duranleau, Guthrie, and Matthews had decided not to seek re-election. They had gone back to private life or to patronage appointments and all sat out the campaign. The recently appointed ministers who had replaced them had no national profiles and so would be no help; besides, like the others in the caucus, they had their own seats to worry about. Bennett even asked Meighen to help, but the former prime minister claimed that as a senator he should not be involved in the partisan race. Bennett was on his own.

The necessity of his appearing alone at campaign events played into Mackenzie King’s portrayal of the prime minister running a one-man government. Mackenzie King, on the other hand, promised a strong Liberal team. To hammer the point home he ensured that he was surrounded by prominent Liberals at every campaign stop. At a large rally at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens, for example, he was introduced via a radio hookup by eight Liberal premiers. He spoke of the Liberal team taking on the one-man government of the autocratic R.B. Bennett.

The one-man-show notion had dogged Bennett from the beginning of his administration, and Mackenzie King had presaged in a series of 1934 speeches that he would try to exploit it for electoral advantage. At a time when the world was trembling with the realization that Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin were imposing ruthless totalitarian dictatorships upon their peoples and threatening the world with violence and death, Mackenzie King’s decision to link Bennett to the word “dictator” was cynical indeed. But in April, Mackenzie King had spoken in Toronto and said, “We have in Canada to make our choice; we must decide whether we want a dictatorship or whether we want to carry on the old system of Parliamentary representation.”70 The next day he went further still in his outrageous claims, saying that Bennett’s policies were geared to getting rid of Parliament altogether and that he was even attempting to craft a bill that would do away with the need for elections.⁷¹ Months later he was still at it. The Ottawa Citizen ran portions of Mackenzie King’s September 17 speech in which he said, “The great struggle today is between democracy and dictatorship. . . . During these past four years in Canada the free institution of parliament has gradually been subjected to a change which permitted many of the abuses rampant in dictatorship.”⁷² More such messages were repeated throughout the 1935 campaign.

An unfortunate decision by Fred Edwards back in the messy and scrambling national party headquarters in Ottawa, meanwhile, had handed Mackenzie King a gift to help with his message. The August issue of the revived Canadian had contained a cartoon by A. Racey that showed Bennett wearing rain gear and a smug grin, alone on a ship, hands firmly on the wheel, with a hurricane-like storm raging behind him. The caption read, “Stand By Canada.” The same cartoon, with variations on the caption, became a party ad in newspapers and magazines, the cover of candidate speaker’s notes, and a feature of campaign literature. Unfortunately, there was no one on the ship but Bennett. It was clear inside and outside the party that the election was to be based on Bennett as leader. Mackenzie King’s message of a one-man government was thus afforded resonance.

Meanwhile, the radio was used in the 1935 campaign as it had never been used before. Every party leader delivered nationally aired half-hour speeches. Edwards went further and had a six-part radio drama carefully and cleverly scripted and then performed by professional actors. They portrayed small-town folks who had previously voted Liberal but with the help of a “Mr. Sage” were switching to Bennett and the Conservatives. The radio plays were as clever as they were cruel. They were ostensibly non-partisan, quite articulate, and used value-laden language and issues of the heart to attack Mackenzie King while linking support for Bennett with intelligence, confidence, loyalty, and patriotism. The first two plays aired in September in vote-rich Ontario and Quebec. Their terrific popularity led to the last four being nationally broadcast. A short excerpt from one of the plays is indicative of them all. At one point Sage told his friend Bill that he had been staying with his brother-in-law in Quebec and had heard of Liberal tactics during the war. He explained, “Mr. King’s henchmen used to call up the farmers and their wives in the early hours of the morning and tell them their sons would be conscripted for war if they voted against King.” Sage then went on to show disgust over the Beauharnois scandal. “Yes, Bill — over $700,000 — and that’s from the man who wants to be Prime Minister of Canada. Can you beat it?”73

Never during any of the broadcasts was it mentioned that the plays were produced by and for the Conservative Party. Mackenzie King’s anger with the Mr. Sage dramas led him to redraw the mandate of the CRBC and turn it into the CBC in 1936. One of the new rules banned political dramatizations but allowed time for free political broadcasts for all parties with the proviso that the party affiliation be clearly stated at the end of each segment.⁷⁴

But while radio was important, it was also expensive and neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives had the money that they had employed in 1930. As the campaigns progressed, however, both parties managed to raise not the funds they would have liked but at least the funds they needed.⁷⁵ While Bennett spent some of his own money in the campaign, he did not lay out anywhere near what he had five years previously. Of the dollars he did take from his own pocket most went to his own riding and to the ridings of other Alberta candidates.⁷⁶

That there was money available, however, did not mean that the Conservative Party efficiently used it.⁷⁷ Provincial directors still complained about bad communications and a lack of funds. In the latter stages of the campaign some Conservative radio spots were cancelled, some ads pulled, and two mailings stopped due to a lack of money.

In the campaign’s last two weeks, with running for office and running the government competing for Bennett’s focus, world events intruded. Throughout his term, Bennett had acted as his own external affairs minister and essentially left most day-to-day operations to the very capable O.D. Skelton and his small but able staff. This arrangement was a reasonable reflection of the fact that Canada’s foreign service was tiny and its foreign policy still largely determined by Britain. Even this degree of independent Canadian action on the world stage was more than many of Bennett’s cabinet colleagues wanted when in 1930 they had pressured him to do away with the External Affairs department altogether. Bennett had insisted that it remain and had prevailed.78

The first major international crisis with which Bennett had to deal was Japan’s 1931 invasion of Manchuria. The blatant expression of Japan’s desire to create a Pacific empire represented the real first shots of the Second World War. If one abandons a Eurocentric view of that epic struggle, then it was already eight years old by the time Hitler’s blitzkrieg swept into Poland. Japan’s attack on China led directly to Pearl Harbor, the fall of Hong Kong, and eventually to the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan’s initial aggressiveness posed a problem for the League of Nations, for both it and China were members and there was a reluctance to antagonize either. There was subtle pressure exerted by member states in a futile effort to have Japan withdraw, but it was ignored.

At that point, a consensus began to develop for imposing economic sanctions on Japan. Skelton supported sanctions but Bennett had said no. He wanted Britain to take the lead and have Canada follow. In December 1931, Secretary of State Cahan spoke at the League on behalf of Canada and echoed the empty words of the British and all other delegations in saying that Japan had no desire to permanently occupy Manchuria, and that the League’s interfering would only complicate matters and possibly prolong Japan’s presence there. The League dithered. Weak sanctions were eventually imposed but to no effect. Japan moved on Manchuria and later the world slept as Nanking was raped.

Bennett’s second major international crisis came in early October 1935, just days before the Canadian election. The League of Nations, and through it Canada, was again asked to stand up to aggression. Benito Mussolini, a barrel-chested former teacher and newspaperman, had swaggered his way to power in Rome in 1922. It was he who had established fascism as an ideology based on fear and constant warfare against seen and unseen foreign and domestic enemies. He had even given it its name. Mussolini’s foreign adventures were partly an attempt to regain the glory of ancient Rome with the establishment of a new Italian empire, and partly an expression of his elephantine ego. Italy invaded Ethiopia, then called Abyssinia. Ragtag Ethiopians, armed with nothing but spears, antiquated rifles, and a faith in their emperor, the charismatic Haile Selassie, charged 400,000 Italian infantry, supported by modern tanks and aircraft. Their bold attempts at defence were as brave as they were foolhardy. They didn’t have a chance. Mussolini had gambled that the League of Nations, and through it the world community, would talk but do nothing. He was right.

Howard Ferguson, Canada’s head of the High Commission in London, and Dr. W.A. Riddell, Canada’s representative at the League, both cabled Ottawa asking for direction. The League was contemplating sanctions against Italy that would have ended their supply of oil and thus the war. They needed to know how Canada was to vote. Mackenzie King expressed a lack of trust in Canada’s representatives at the League and said they should agree to nothing until Parliament could decide. Bennett agreed and so instructed Skelton, who notified Ferguson and Riddell. The problem was that the prime minister and cabinet were engaged in the election campaign and Parliament had been dissolved.

Riddell quite accurately predicted that Hungary and Austria would probably abstain but that all others would support the imposition of sanctions. Riddell also predicted that Canada would be asked to sit on a committee to investigate and advise the League on questions related to sanctions. Skelton summarized Riddell’s report in a cable to Bennett and advised that Canada should not support sanctions or become a member of the committee. Bennett initially disagreed, believing the timid response to Japanese aggression in 1931 had been wrong, and that the world needed to finally and firmly stand up to a bully. But he relented, and accepted Skelton’s advice. With the election less than a week away, Bennett ordered Riddell to essentially stall for time until a new Canadian parliament had been sworn in. Canada should serve on the committee if asked but not actively seek membership. Then, whether on the committee or not, Riddell was to simply refuse to vote, or abstain, or do anything else he could to avoid establishing a Canadian position regarding sanctions.79

Canada was indeed offered membership on one of two committees and Riddell, frustrated by Bennett’s refusal to support the sanctions he believed necessary, somewhat disingenuously reported that there was no longer an option but to become a member of the sanctions committee. The committee moved quickly to explore the possibility of imposing oil sanctions on Italy and lifting the arms embargo that had been imposed on Ethiopia. Again Riddell cabled Ottawa, and, in a somewhat more insistent tone, asked for direction. He was again told to stall.

The day before Canadians were to go to the polls Bennett changed his mind. He ordered that Riddell be cabled in Geneva and that when the issue came to a vote, Canada should support sanctions.⁸⁰ It was the lawyer as much as the diplomat in Bennett who had finally reasoned that Canada had signed the covenant that had created the League of Nations in the first place and that since Italy, another signatory, was clearly in violation of that covenant, it was incumbent upon Canada to take a role in punishing Italy.

The next day, Bennett’s Conservatives were defeated. Ferguson resigned and Riddell was told that there would be no further instructions coming from Ottawa. The government’s defeat put Riddell in an impossible position. He was feeling enormous pressure at Geneva and had to do something. He operated according to his last instructions, which had been to support sanctions. Riddell decided, quite on his own, to propose to the committee that the League’s cutting off Italy’s oil would be the most effective economic punishment. The idea was adopted and dubbed the “Canadian proposal.”

Upon taking office, Mackenzie King had the option of maintaining support for the League and the Canadian proposal that Bennett had encouraged and Riddell had created. But he looked at the Catholic-based support that Italy enjoyed in Quebec and the divided public opinion in the rest of the country and decided that politics mattered more than principle. With political advice from Quebec’s respected Ernest Lapointe, and with a somewhat one-sided memo from Skelton, the prime minister announced a change in Canada’s policy. He publicly and internationally embarrassed Riddell and Canada by stating that Canada’s spokesperson had acted without instruction and so Canada was rescinding its support for sanctions.81 The decision was another small nail in the League of Nations’ coffin.

Months later, Mackenzie King went to Geneva and in a speech at the League of Nations stated that it was Canada’s belief that the organization should only ever seek to mediate world problems and should never take actions that punished members. Mackenzie King’s words, along with the League’s feckless response to Mussolini, demonstrated that the League was doomed. The noble idea at its core would rise again in San Francisco with the birth of the United Nations. It was an idea that Bennett tried — too late and with too little, but at least finally — to support.

But this was in the future. Even while consulting with Finlayson, Skelton, and Riddell, and deciding Canadian policy regarding Italy and the League, Bennett had maintained a punishing pace on the hustings. At the campaign’s end, a tired Bennett offered a nonetheless typically roaring speech at a large and well-attended rally at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens. His last speech of the campaign took place in Belleville. With that the work was over. There was nothing left to do but board the train for Ottawa to rest and await the verdict.

ELECTION DAY

Election Day dawned with good weather almost everywhere. Seventy-five per cent of eligible voters found their way to the polls. Bennett listened to the radio in his East Block office. There were no reporters. There were no cameras. He was accompanied only by Mildred, whose husband the diplomat diplomatically stayed in Washington. The results arrived one time zone at a time. They were dispiriting. Before Manitoba results were announced, and with British Columbians still voting, the verdict was unequivocal. Bennett’s Liberal-Conservatives had been demolished and Mackenzie King’s Liberals would win a majority.

Bennett kept track of the results at his desk and noted that twelve of eighteen Conservative cabinet ministers had lost their seats. He was pleased to notch his own riding in the win column but chagrined that Stevens had won his seat as well. The only positive in that victory, for Bennett, was that Stevens was the only successful Reconstruction Party candidate.

When all the counting was done, the magnitude of Bennett’s loss began to sink in. Mackenzie King’s Liberals had won 173 seats, which was up from 90 in 1930, while Bennett’s Conservatives had their count shrink from 134 to only 39. Most of the party’s support came from British Columbia, southern Ontario, and the English-speaking parts of Montreal. The party had won only one seat in New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, and Bennett’s in Alberta. The party was skunked in PEI and Nova Scotia. The weakness in support among francophones that had been felt throughout Bennett’s administration was reflected in his party’s not winning a single contest in a predominantly French-speaking riding. The party lost popular support in both urban and rural ridings. By any measure, it was the worst defeat in the party’s history. It would not be outdone until Kim Campbell led the party to only two seats in 1993.

1935 Election — Seat Results

Liberal	173
Liberal Conservative	39
Social Credit	17
CCF	7
Independent Liberal	5
Liberal Progressive	2
Reconstruction	1
Independent Conservative	1

The seat numbers were one thing, but, as is often the case, the popular vote told a different story. The Conservative Party’s popular vote had crashed from 49 per cent in 1930 to 29.8 per cent. However, the Liberals’ popular vote in 1930 had been 43.9 per cent and in 1935 the party captured only 44.4 per cent. These figures make it clear that while voters did indeed abandon Bennett, they had not moved to Mackenzie King. A full 25.8 per cent of the Canadian electorate had placed their X beside a candidate from one of the small protest parties — more than in 1930. The CCF had captured 8.9 per cent of the popular vote, quite impressive when one considers that it was but two years old. The other parties were in the single digits. In total, 56 per cent of Canadians had voted for the Conservatives or another party of the left. The ideas did not lose — Bennett’s Conservatives did.

But seats dictate power in Ottawa, and Mackenzie King had won a majority. He was anything but magnanimous in victory and, in fact, continued to sell his campaign theme with overblown hyperbole. He called the election a “victory for democracy” and “an end to one-man government, mistaken policies and autocratic leadership . . . it proclaims the end of the superman idea.”82 It was junk, of course, but it didn’t matter. The only thing worse than a sore loser is a sore winner.

Bennett had worked exceptionally hard throughout the campaign. At each event he spoke powerfully and well. He met hecklers everywhere he went but he swatted them like flies, drawing applause for his quick wit and good humour. The positive fighting spirit that Bennett brought to the campaign and maintained even in the face of such monstrous adversity was noted by all.

But while he kept his spirits high and campaigned magnificently, he had seen the writing on the wall. The anti-Conservative and anti-Bennett feelings in the country were palpable. He felt them, but had trouble understanding them. Late in the campaign, Bennett had found himself back home in Calgary and took time to enjoy a leisurely dinner at the Palliser Hotel. He bumped into an old friend named Frank Holloway who naturally asked how the campaign was going. Bennett looked down and in a nearly inaudible voice had whispered, “I wouldn’t say this to anyone, Frank, but I think we’ve lost. And one man has crucified the party: Stevens.”⁸³ In case one might conclude that it was the dark opinion of a man understandably tired and commenting from the depths of the exhausting rigours of the gruelling campaign, one is left to consider a letter Bennett wrote a full year later, after having had time to rest and reflect. He wrote of Stevens, “Perhaps one might be able to use the words of Balfour regarding Peel: ‘He committed the unforgivable sin; he broke up his party.’”⁸⁴

Bennett was not alone in that assessment. Howard Ferguson wrote to Beaverbrook that he too blamed Stevens for the loss. He estimated that Stevens and his Reconstruction candidates stole between 75 to 100 seats.85

A careful analysis, however, supports neither Ferguson nor Bennett. In offering Canadians his Reconstruction Party candidates, Stevens no doubt siphoned votes that might well have gone to the Conservatives. However, even if every single Reconstruction vote is added to the Conservative total, the two add up to less than the number won by the Liberals. Of course in the “first past the post” Canadian electoral system it is the individual riding numbers that count. The numbers indicate that in twenty-five Ontario ridings, seven in Quebec, five in Nova Scotia, three in New Brunswick, three more in BC, and one in Saskatchewan, a combined Conservative and Reconstruction vote would have defeated Liberal candidates. These ridings would have added another 48 seats to the Conservative total, bringing it to 88, which is significant. But if the 48 is added to the Conservatives and subtracted from the Liberals, the Liberals would still have won 123 seats. If everything else had remained equal, the Liberals would still have formed the government. Bennett still would have lost.

Perhaps a better assessment of Stevens’s effect on Bennett and the Conservatives’ defeat would be in terms of factors that cannot be empirically measured. One can consider the effects of the split in the Conservative Party in terms of people’s perception of the party as a unified organization existing to give voice to their needs and concerns. If the party could not run itself, some must have asked, how can we trust it to run the country? Further, one must take into account the number of grassroots volunteers and contributions of money and goodwill that were drawn from the party by the Bennett-Stevens rift. And given the state of the Conservative Party organization, this siphoning was something that was ill afforded.

Bennett was not blind to these numbers and ideas. Neither was he so bitter as to refuse to see nuance. He was, in fact, willing to shoulder some of the responsibility for the loss. As he confided to former Conservative MP Brigadier-General A.E. Ross three years after the election, “I am not unaware of my own limitations. I have made many mistakes, but I served this country as disinterestedly as any man who ever occupied public office, and I never expected more than loyalty from those with whom I was associated. That I did not receive it may perhaps be a criticism of myself.”86

The Ross letter reveals that beyond the myriad problems he faced when entering the campaign, and even when factoring Stevens into the mix, there was another electoral factor — Bennett himself. Every Canadian knew the “Iron Heel” he had shown the On to Ottawa trekkers and knew of those he had imprisoned and deported with Section 98. All knew the cartoon image of Bennett as the voice of big business despite all that belied it. Mackenzie King had kept the canard of the one-man government alive. And perhaps most damning of all, Canadians knew what Bennett buggies were, and Bennett blankets, and Bennett coffee, and more, and more. After sweeping into power with promises to “end unemployment or perish” and to “blast” his way into world markets and thus back to prosperity, the five years in which he had been prime minister were harder than anyone could ever remember. Statistics showed that by the fall of 1935 things were getting better, but like all recoveries the process was long and slow with many areas of the country yet to feel its warm rays. Employment is a lagging indicator in any economic recovery and where jobs remain absent, a respect for political leaders is seldom present. In hard times, the leader is always blamed; and Bennett was. Perhaps it was not even Bennett’s Conservatives that had lost. Perhaps it was just Bennett himself, who, in a similarly unfair Mulroney-like fashion, had come to personify all that Canadians found wrong with the government, politics, and the country in general.

Bennett understood his role in the defeat. In a reflective letter he wrote to G.H. Clarke, a Queen’s University professor, only a month after the election, he explained people voting against him as the only way that they had available to express their anger at the general conditions of the day. He was willing, he suggested, to be the country’s punching bag, and proud that he had not taken the coward’s way out and left the leadership before the election.⁸⁷

But even after time granted him the gift of distance and reflection and with his willingness to at least shoulder a portion of the blame for his party’s defeat, Bennett retained a belief that Stevens was the villain of the piece. He went to his grave convinced that, had members of the party stood up to Stevens, the party would have been in much better shape going into the 1935 election and quite possibly would have won. He insisted to many that he saw Stevens’s actions, as not a betrayal of him personally but of the party itself. The election was lost because the party was wrecked by Stevens’s actions, and that destruction was the fault not only of him but also of those party members who encouraged or at least allowed him to undertake his devastating moves.88

A fascinating “what if” in Canadian history is to ponder whether the Conservatives would have fared better had Bennett resigned in 1934. Stevens no doubt would have ascended to the leadership, the party split would not have happened and so all that the Reconstruction experiment took from the Conservatives would have remained in that camp. With Stevens as the leader, however, the party would have no doubt moved even further from the Tory left to the populist left and perhaps caused a split with Cahan and those on the right wing of the party. The election would have seen the same crowded field on the ideological left, with Mackenzie King still allowed that open right lane to victory. If Stevens had started to organize the party in late 1934 it is by no means certain that he would have had enough time. Further, and perhaps most importantly, even with Bennett gone the Conservatives might still have borne the brunt of the blame for the five worst years of the long Depression. Or, perhaps Stevens would have united the Canadian left — as Peter MacKay and Stephen Harper later united the right — and under his fresh leadership kept votes from shifting to the small parties that shared so many of his party’s ideas. Perhaps.

But all of this speculation is moot. Not only did Bennett not resign, he was proud of the fact that he had remained at the helm. Shortly after the election he wrote to Robert Borden, “I will be responsible for the disaster that has overtaken our Party. I went down with the ship and did not seek to evade punishment.”⁸⁹

And punished he was. Richard Bedford Bennett had dreamt his whole life of being the prime minister, and the Canadian people, in their ultimate wisdom, had taken that dream from him. Bennett was sixty-five years old. What was a man, who had reached retirement age and accomplished every dream he had ever dreamt, to do next?