It was a sad sight, really. To walk the streets of London in the shadow of the Second World War was to be moved by the broken buildings, mounds of rubble, and too many widows attempting but not quite mustering the stiff upper lip of the newsreel propaganda. But the particularly piteous sight that afternoon was not the ruins of a city ravaged by madness; it was a man. He would have stood out. He was a big man, just over six feet tall and well over 200 pounds. A bowler hat topped a large head on which once-proud features were lined now with age and worry, and high cheekbones sagged to jowls. The bright, brown eyes had faded to grey. But the clothes told the tale of a still fiercely independent and well-to-do gentleman. The pinstriped suit with high-waisted pants, swallowtail jacket falling to tails, stiff collar, and bold tie spoke of another era. Londoners would no doubt have noticed him. But they would likely have passed him by with nary a glance, not sure if he was from the House of Lords — which he was.
A Canadian, on the other hand, would have recognized him in an instant. For here on a London afternoon, leaving one theatre and on his way to another, was a man who less than a dozen years before had been the prime minister of Canada. Richard Bedford Bennett, now Viscount Bennett of Mickleham, Calgary, and Hopewell, and permanent resident of the posh Juniper Hill estate, had led his country through the most treacherously dangerous period of its short, eighty-year history. He had been welcomed by presidents and kings and toasted by his countrymen. He had been lauded for his stunning intelligence, polymath prowess, and boundless generosity. But now here he was — a gloomy anachronism.
Like any man’s, Bennett’s life had many chapters. He was a teacher, a principal, and a lawyer. He was a naturally gifted businessman who enjoyed success in land speculation and clever investments while playing a leading role in merging small businesses into large corporations. He was the president of several companies and on the boards of even more. His business acumen, connections, and sheer good luck rendered him a multi-millionaire who hobnobbed with Canada’s economic elite. But from his early days in New Brunswick to his adulthood in Alberta, he had yearned to serve. He was a town alderman, territorial representative, provincial party leader, and member of Parliament, and he held several federal cabinet posts. He did all of that and more before he became leader of the Conservative Party in 1927 and prime minister three years later.
To understand Bennett’s five years as prime minister one must understand the Depression, for it shaped every decision he made throughout his term in office and, in turn, shaped his legacy. The Depression was an era of dizzying paradox. Men left home to save their families. Farmers who had helped feed the world went hungry, and police committed criminal acts while criminals became folk heroes. It was a time when, for millions of people, every morning presented a new struggle to survive while every evening offered Hollywood glamour and Busby Berkeley musicals. Suddenly, the rules seemed to have changed and all that had been certain was up for grabs. The Depression was a time when quintuplets born to a dirt-poor Ontario mother were a miracle ruined by a greedy provincial government that transformed them into a freak show. And just when many came to be inspired by the decency of a man of the earth named Grey Owl, he was revealed as a fraud. One could rely on nothing.
In the last year of the Dirty Thirties, Toto invited Dorothy to look behind the curtain and see the truth. Her glance revealed that everything she and her three companions had believed to be real was a sham and all their heroic efforts a waste. The Wizard of Oz was well received because everyone understood it. The Depression invited Canadians to peek behind the curtain and see that the country’s social, political, and economic superstructure was nothing more than the puffing, flaming face of a false wizard. The Depression had been caused by overproduction, insane speculation, unsustainable debt, and insatiable avarice, and then brought to its knees by collapsing commodity prices and financial paralysis.
Canadians ached for a return to stability, prosperity, and predictability. They did not want handouts; they wanted fairness. They did not want bromides; they wanted the truth. They wanted the dignity of work and the pride of independence. They did not demand a perfect government but expected empathy and a state that would allow them to do their best with at least an even chance at success. People were eager to work and willing to sacrifice, but they needed to be helped out of the morass into which the false wizard had led and then abandoned them. They needed someone to show them the way home. In the summer of 1930, with everything sliding into chaos, but the worst of times not yet visited upon the land, Canadians turned to R.B. Bennett as that leader.
Bennett’s fiery speeches, bold ideas, and audacious confidence had inspired Canadians and won their support. But winning office mainly on the promise to fix an economy in turmoil does not guarantee long-term public support. Bennett was soon blamed for causing the Depression that he had inherited. He was condemned for failing to quickly turn things around. What had been seen as intelligence morphed into apparent arrogance. His personal wealth came to be seen as a reflection of his ignorance of the tribulations of the common man. Farmers removed engines from old cars they could no longer afford, hitched them to horses, and called them Bennett buggies. Homeless people pulled newspapers over themselves to ward off the night’s chills and called them Bennett blankets. A bitter, ersatz brew of wheat or barley was dubbed Bennett coffee. Shantytowns housing the transient unemployed were called Bennett boroughs.
Despite the storms of criticism and a near absence of credit, Prime Minster Bennett did a great deal of good. With the American market shrinking due to its own problems and its self-defeating protectionist legislation, Bennett initiated international conferences and other actions that increased trade. Later, with a vigorous new president hinting at a promise of new openness, he did what he could to move Canadian products over the southern border. He created the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (later the CBC) and the Bank of Canada, both of which immediately played indispensable social and economic roles. He advanced negotiations that led to Canada’s growing independence from Britain and hastened the building of the St. Lawrence Seaway. He saved the national railway system. He helped the unemployed with emergency relief and then a massive infrastructure program. He helped urban workers, who were assisted through the institution of a higher minimum wage and regulated hours of work. He made farm credit easier to attain and created systems that stabilized the price and sale of wheat and grain. He presented legislation to vastly improve old-age pensions and unemployment insurance. In the last year of his mandate, he outlined a daring new plan that was prescient in how it promised to restructure the relationship between the government, the people, and the economy with social and economic assistance and regulatory programs that Canadians would later claim as their birthright. The plan’s boldness was such that it initiated constitutional reform that led to the independence of Canada’s Supreme Court and the ability of the federal government to do much that Canadians came to expect of it.
But there was more. A leader’s effectiveness is measured not only by what he does but also by what he avoids. The global Depression had led the people of some countries to turn in desperation to fascism, communism, socialism, or strong men claiming to be one thing or another but similar only in their race to ruination. Canada had its share of those willing to promote, others eager to exploit, and still others ready to try just about any political option imaginable. Canada avoided extremism as enormous demands were met by a strong, determined, and resilient people. It all could have gone another way.
Regardless of everything that had been avoided and accomplished, and of the recovery that was finally being felt in most parts of the land, just five years after Canadians had greeted Bennett as a hero, they could not wait to vote against him. He was attacked from the political left and right. Critics said he was a dictator and ran a one-man government. An old friend and trusted cabinet colleague had abandoned him, formed his own populist party, and spoke of Bennett’s betraying core principles. He was dubbed “Iron Heel” by those who said he either ordered or allowed the RCMP to trample the rights of workers and then the workers themselves. They said he instigated riots and cavalierly jailed or deported those with whom he disagreed. He was pilloried for succumbing to a red scare. He was criticized for ignoring the United States when trying to foster greater trade with Britain and other Commonwealth countries, but then attacked for attempting to create new American markets for Canadian goods. Many in the business community condemned him for creating more regulation to control greed and malfeasance in Canada’s banks and financial institutions. In the last months of his administration, he was ridiculed as a cynical opportunist for five radio addresses in which he used incendiary rhetoric in an attempt to explain problems and present solutions. Those who called the program of reform and restructuring Bennett’s New Deal did so as a form of derision.
In the fall of 1935, the good people of West Calgary returned Bennett to Ottawa, but as the leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. His majority government had been defeated. His caucus had been demolished. Most of his cabinet had been turfed. The voters returned to the prime minister’s office the same man whom Bennett had replaced five years before, a man no one really understood or liked, the wily William Lyon Mackenzie King. All Mackenzie King had needed to do to win was not be Bennett.
Just three years after Canadians had rejected him, Bennett turned his back on Canadians. He purchased a large estate in Great Britain, next door to Lord Beaverbrook, another expatriate Canadian and lifelong friend. He did good and valuable work during the war. He accepted his peerage. As a member of the House of Lords, he made valuable contributions to the war effort, played a hand in the creation of Britain’s postwar social welfare state, and, due to his work in the aviation industry, was offered the chairmanship of BOAC Through it all, he made tremendously generous donations to individuals, to a great number of schools, and to a host of charitable causes. Other than brief visits, he never returned home. He was not missed. He is the only Canadian prime minister whose grave lies outside the country.
He was admired but condemned, and honoured but forgotten. Few really knew him. Bennett was a complex man whose character was defined by his contradictions. To difficult issues he brought his keen intellect and lawyer’s ability to rationally deconstruct complexity and quickly discern pith and substance. His prodigious memory astounded all and served to assist him in the determination of an issue’s core problem and options for solutions. He was sometimes sabotaged by his intelligence, for it was coupled with an impatience with others who seemed unable to keep up. During meetings, he would often have already determined the root of a problem, weighed options, and decided upon the best course while others were still wrestling to understand the issue. He acted as though he was the smartest person in the room because he usually was. Dr. R.J. Manion, who served in the cabinets of Borden, Meighen, and Bennett, and who knew Mackenzie King and Laurier, observed that of all the prime ministers with whom he was acquainted, Bennett was by far the brightest.1
Throughout his life he never mastered the art of patience: of waiting while others caught up. Sometimes that impatience surfaced in an explosive temper that served to make enemies of those who would have been allies, and associates of those who could have been friends. He could be friendly, funny, charitable, and grandiloquently charming. Unfortunately, those stung by rebukes or rebuffed by intransigence were less warmed by his smile than chilled by his glare.
He always worked harder than those around him and so found it difficult to compliment others whom he saw as simply doing their share or their duty. He sought no thanks or praise and was thus stingy about doling it out. He could blast out orders but also consult, listen, admit error, and change his mind. He could rankle by speaking for ministers in the House or ordering their staffers to report first to him. But he also allowed ministers great latitude in running their departments and often suggested that important bills be introduced by others if such a move increased the potential for success.
Bennett was rapaciously ambitious. It was this ambition that rendered him a school principal when he was just slightly older than his students and then led him to seek adventure and fortune in what was at the time Canada’s Wild West. His talent, determination — and timing — made him rich. But he saw wealth and power as a means rather than an end, and public service as a duty. His ambition was fuelled not by greed but rather by both a sincere desire to serve and a philanthropic impulse to help. Together, those motives led him to policies and charitable giving that supported hard-working people who deserved a hand up and a fair deal.
Like all effective leaders, his decisions were informed by an adherence to a core set of principles. His mother would have been proud of his Christian heart that saw money as a tool to help others. His political heroes, such as Benjamin Disraeli, would have applauded his Tory mind. Throughout his long public life, Bennett saw government as a vehicle to responsibly intervene in the marketplace in an effort to counterweight corporate power and thereby advance the common good.
Bennett’s intelligence and the clarity and consistency of his personal values and ideological principles allowed him to do as all great leaders must, and see beyond the issues of the day. Even as a young man he seemed to understand that while others scramble with tactics, a successful person and effective leader must develop and remain focused on long-range strategies by seeing farther and more clearly. This essential element of his character was revealed through nearly all that he said and did. For example, Bennett was one of six leaders who addressed an international audience through an American radio hookup on Remembrance Day 1934. Unlike the others, he did not celebrate the years of peace since the First World War but, rather, issued a prescient warning. Five years before the Second World War — and decades before the terrible events of 9/11 saw Canada allow its citizens to be kidnapped and tortured while freedom-loving Americans casually tossed aside their civil rights for the Patriot Act’s false security and the initiation of a perpetual war against a tactic — Bennett said,
Loss of self-confidence; national regimentation on a scale hitherto unknown; the surrender of liberty for the most ephemeral and makeshift protection — all this is evidence that a great portion of the human family prefers the mere illusion of security to facing the real causes of the world’s present state of fear. But the eternal truth remains that there can be no real security until the spectre of fear is banished from the minds of the great masses of men and women whose social, political, and economic problems are incapable of solution in the international atmosphere of suspicion, doubt and misunderstanding.2
That these words inspire reflection so many decades later suggests that Bennett possessed another essential attribute of leadership: the ability to communicate. His facility with words was legendary. He recognized his talents in this area when in elementary school but then worked hard to hone his abilities. His courtroom experience helped and his steady climb from municipal, to territorial, to provincial, then finally to federal politics meant that by the time he was prime minister his outlier’s mastery of the power of the spoken word was something to behold. He seldom read a speech but rather relied on a single sheet of paper on which were scratched the few points that he wished to make. From those few words he could fashion full and perfect paragraphs. He used his prodigious memory to employ accurate statistics and perfectly rendered quotes. Historian Bruce Hutchison observed that Bennett “. . . could utter 220 words a minute, as registered by a stopwatch, never missing a syllable or misplacing a predicate. Without a note to guide him, his language glowed like a purling brook.”3
His intelligence, work ethic, ambition, values, vision, and oratorical skills were important, but all of it together would have been an empty bag without courage. Bennett demonstrated courage in all aspects of his life. In 1914, for instance, he was a rookie member of Parliament who could have cleverly guarded his chances for advancement by staying quiet about an initiative that he believed was wrong. But rather than take the safer and perhaps smarter route, he stood in the House and spoke against his own government. He was publicly rebuked by the prime minister and the cabinet minister in charge, who was his rival for advancement. He knew that his principled action could end his career in federal politics before it had really begun, but he did it anyway.
Bennett’s life is full of similar moments — moments in which he was willing to forgo his career trajectory or the chance for profit before abandoning his principles or surrendering to expediency. To delegates at the 1927 Conservative Party convention that had just elected him their leader, he said, “To hold convictions and principles is more important than power. . . . Power is the last consideration that should influence us except to the extent that power may enable us to realize the instrument we have in our hands and see that our policies grow into fruition, and it matters not whether we achieve power or not in that sense.”4
All of this means that he was an effective leader; it does not mean that he was always a nice guy. In many ways and moments he was not even close. Nor was he immune to silly mistakes or grand misjudgments. He sometimes joked when he should have been serious, lost his temper when he should have remained calm, wavered when he should have been decisive, and was stubborn when he needed only to be strong. He was, in short, as human as the rest of us. But his human foibles do not negate his admirable qualities, the importance of his contributions, or the value of the lessons he offers us still.
In 1935, with the election lost and Bennett in humiliated defeat, Sir Robert Borden, past prime minister and former boss, summarized his thoughts on the man. Borden wrote,
His splendid ability, his keen grasp of general conditions, both national and international, his complete devotion to public duty and to the welfare of our country, the admirable resourcefulness and fine courage with which he has faced the overwhelming difficulties of the past five years, entitle him to the respect, admiration and gratitude of all right thinking Canadians.5
Borden’s words were kind but they do not accurately reflect Bennett’s legacy, and that’s a shame. Historian Jeffrey Simpson was once in a British pub and an elderly patron asked, “What on earth did you Canadians do to R.B. Bennett? You seem to have forced him out, almost as if you wanted to drive him into exile. Why? He was the nicest man imaginable.”6 Why indeed.
The premise of this book is that the consensus about Bennett is fundamentally flawed. That consensus leans upon a false stereotype, a misreading of the depth and consistency of his political principles, and a refusal to acknowledge that he should be celebrated as an outstanding Canadian for his lifetime of daring and enduring accomplishments. That his life and legacy have been afforded short shrift is evidenced by the fact that this book is Bennett’s first comprehensive biography.
The first attempt to examine Bennett was a short 1935 book by his office assistant, Andrew MacLean. In 1959 came a thin volume by his friend Lord Beaverbrook. Both were full of compliments and anecdotes but little analysis. A slim 1963 book by Ernest Watkins skimmed over Bennett’s life and career as a pebble on a pond. In 1992, James Gray and Peter Waite both contributed valuable and insightful works, but neither were complete examinations of the man’s life. The next year, Larry Glassford turned his master’s thesis into a scholarly piece examining the Conservative Party’s policies under Bennett’s leadership. Glassford characterized Bennett’s term as having three phases: implementation of campaign promises, defence of the social order, and an attempt at long-term reform. The book was a serious attempt to wring from an analysis of Bennett the emotion that has too often warped interpretation, but it was still not an examination of the man’s entire life.
Most historians have dealt with Bennett only tangentially, and few have been kind. Some are blunt in their assessment, such as Blair Neatby who, in 1972, wrote, “As a politician he was a failure.”7 Some appear almost gleeful in their attacks. Michael Bliss, for instance, wrote in 2004 that Bennett was “. . . a plutocrat of plutocrats [possessing] either a messiah complex or horrible judgement, perhaps both.”8 Not yet done, Bliss went on to call him “. . . bombastic, pompous, a near tragic figure . . . Bennett was rich, fat, self-satisfied, and, in some of his policies, apparently uncaring.”9 Perhaps Gordon Donaldson hit the mark when he concluded that the problem with Canadians then, and many historians later, was that Bennett’s wealth, personality, and even his style of dress made him too tempting a target. Donaldson observed in 1994, “Bennett was the perfect cartoon capitalist — a top-hatted, carnationed exploiter of the masses — a Marxist’s dream villain.”10 This is not to suggest that Bennett’s policies and actions are not fair game. Jim Struthers, for instance, labelled Bennett’s actions regarding unemployment and relief deeply flawed due mostly to policy inconsistencies.11 His analysis, and those like it, is valuable because, like Glassford, he avoided character assassination and the disparagement of motives.
Most Canadians are introduced to Bennett in school. Many secondary school textbooks present negative interpretations based on misleading ideas or utterly demonstrable falsehoods. Secondary school students given the textbook Canada: A North American Nation, for instance, read that Mackenzie King and Bennett both adopted laissez-faire attitudes toward the Depression and that Bennett was unaware of the consequences of his actions — neither is true. These students probably passed tests by aping the text’s assertion that Bennett was indifferent to the needs of Canadians and did nothing for much of his time in office until his last year — also not true.12 Students instead reading The North Americans could not be blamed for believing that Bennett was essentially asleep for the first four years of his administration. It reports, “Finally in January of 1935, the prime minister decided to act.”13 According to the text, Mackenzie King was responsible for increasing the power of the central government and for creating the Bank of Canada and the CBC — more falsehoods. While students may learn little of the man and some of what they do learn may be wrong, all seem to emerge from secondary school history courses knowing exactly what a Bennett buggy was.
Bennett came back into focus in the fall of 2008. The skyrocketing price of oil and the actions of a greedy few led to a worldwide financial, then economic, collapse. Canadians were awed by the degree to which all that was once certain suddenly vanished. Venerable corporations that produced goods and provided jobs that had helped define the country for generations threatened to disappear. The economic and political assumptions that had long guided decisions made in Parliament, boardrooms, and around kitchen tables were gone. Beginning in 2009, Canadians set out to play a new game with rules that had yet to be written. Canadians came to know a little about how 1930 felt.
Pundits and politicians stumbled over themselves in comparing current challenges to the Great Depression. Some journalists fell back to the old misinformed stereotypes, but others demonstrated a clearer understanding of what Bennett and his administration had truly been about. In October 2008, for example, Thomas Walkom wrote in the Toronto Star, “In popular mythology, Bennett is remembered as an apostle of laissez-faire, a well-heeled lawyer who could only shrug as the poor starved. In fact, he was one of the most interventionist prime ministers the country has seen. Somewhat of a Red Tory (he approved of old-age pensions), Bennett was compelled by events to become more radical over time and, in the end, to redefine government’s economic role.”14
There is more to Bennett than the Bennett buggy. He was more than the stereotype and more than a straw man available for those of the far right or left, both at the time and later, to tear asunder in lazily making a point. Throughout his political career he stood as a rebel with views that were often divorced from the priorities, policies, and commonly held beliefs of the day. His success in business was similarly owed mostly to his being able to see opportunities others were too blind to see or too timid to exploit. Bennett’s bold vision regarding the manner in which the country could evolve, and his fierce passion that inspired him to urge others to share that vision, led to a remarkable life and career in which he challenged and changed Canada. He was a rebel in that he stood against conventional thinking of the day as a successful businessman, engaged citizen, and courageous leader.
Bennett is among Canada’s most intriguing citizens and influential prime ministers, with a great deal of value to teach us all. Exploring his life affords a better understanding of the country that Canadians enjoy today and of challenges to be conquered tomorrow. R.B. Bennett is a case study in political leadership during a time of national and global crisis. He is whispering to us through time. We owe it to ourselves to listen.