CHAPTER 6

The Big Fish

1951-1956

JOHN DIEFENBAKER DID NOT RETURN TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS UNTIL April 1951, when he made a brief appearance for the budget debate. During March he paid the British Columbia bar admission fee of $1500 and took his provincial bar exam in Vancouver - which proved to be a pro-forma, two-question oral. Diefenbaker then appeared for Jack Atherton at his preliminary hearing for manslaughter in Prince George, BC, and early in May he returned for the trial. For him the case was emblematic. The defence of a common man, possibly victimized by authority, was something uniquely suited to his instincts. For the prosecution he faced the deputy attorney general of the province, an ex-colonel in whom the defence attorney sensed hints of a haughty military manner. Here was something to be exploited.

Diefenbaker was by now well briefed in the intricacies of railway telegraphy and was assisted at the defence table by his partner Roy Hall. In the courtroom he had a watcher, the son of his House colleague George Pearkes, playing the role so often filled by Edna: listening and reporting on lay reactions to the evidence as a way into the minds of jurors.¹

Despite his preparation for the case, Diefenbaker was still distracted and suffering deeply. Hall recalled that “he was in a state of shock at the preliminary hearing,” and at the trial “he seemed at times to be in a trance … he was acting from instinct rather than through normal concentration.”² Nevertheless, his old courtroom guile remained. He had decided to call no evidence or witnesses. He knew that there had been a heavy snowfall the night before the crash, which might have left traces of snow on the telegraph wires. He claimed to have found one precedent for a broken telegraphic transmission, when a seagull had dropped a fish on snow-covered lines and interrupted a message. “This example was not well authenticated,” he wrote, “but it was all I had… I hammered home my one example of the bird and the fish.”³

Diefenbaker’s other, more telling approach was calculatedly subversive. The charge concerned the death of a railwayman, not any of the soldiers. But he was determined to plant a germ of doubt about the railway company’s indifference and irresponsibility towards its passengers in the accident. So when a CNR official took the stand to testify on technical matters, Diefenbaker asked: “I suppose the reason you put these soldiers in wooden cars with steel cars on either end was so that no matter what they might subsequently find in Korea, they’d always be able to say, ‘Well, we had worse than that in Canada.’ ” Crown counsel objected; the judge said it was a statement rather than a question; and Diefenbaker responded with sarcasm: “My Lord, it was made clear by the elevation of my voice at the end of the sentence that there was a great big question mark on it. This man is an intelligent man. Right up at the top of the hierarchy. It’s a long question, but it won’t be difficult for him. He’ll be able to break it down.”⁴

The judge debated whether the comment was admissible, until the impatient crown attorney fell into Diefenbaker’s trap: “I want to make it clear,” he told the court, “that in this case we’re not concerned about the death of a few privates going to Korea.” As Diefenbaker could see, what he meant was that the specific charge related to a railwayman rather than to the soldiers. But his words conveyed an attitude, and Diefenbaker would not spare him. There were murmurs on the jury benches. “Oh,” said Diefenbaker, “you’re not concerned about the killing of a few privates? Oh, Colonel!”

According to the mischievous account in his memoirs, for the rest of the trial Diefenbaker feigned deafness. “It did not matter what question the Colonel asked, whether favourable to me or to him, I would say, ‘I didn’t quite hear you, Colonel.’ Every time I said ‘Colonel,’ the reaction of the jury was not such as would have been judged entirely warm towards the Crown or its case. The jury acquitted after a very short consideration of the case.”⁵ Diefenbaker had won a popular victory, redeemed his promise to Edna, and endeared himself for life to Jack Atherton and his fellow railway workers. The case was celebrated in the press and became one of his major political assets.

THE LIBERAL GOVERNMENT RETURNED IN 1949 TO ITS CENTRALIST, NATION-BUILDING mission with a fresh assurance edging towards arrogance, confident that the Canadian public would grant it an indefinite mandate. A chastened George Drew faced the inevitable press speculation about his retirement, and still deeper reservations in the caucus; but he proved his mettle by leading the party steadily and courageously in the new House, and quickly put the leadership issue to rest.⁶ By the end of May 1950 the opposition had been cheered by three by-election victories in Ontario, restoring J.M. Macdonnell to the front bench and bringing in George Hees and Ellen Fairclough. A year later there were four more Conservative gains, and in 1952, another four. Hees was a handsome businessman, athlete, and veteran with a brash and exuberant manner; Fairclough was a former Hamilton city councillor. Tory morale was recovering for the next electoral assault, but Liberal self-confidence was barely dented.

The year 1950 saw the outbreak of the Korean War, the beginning of rearmament, and a vastly increased defence budget. The cabinet’s annual measures extending transitional emergency powers year by year since 1945 had now brought it to a new period of wartime crisis justifying further emergency legislation. With the creation of the Department of Defence Production in 1951, those powers centred more and more distinctly in the hands of one minister, Clarence Decatur Howe. Howe relished his power, was impatient of criticism in the House, and could easily be roused to fury by the taunts of George Drew, Donald Fleming, Howard Green, or John Diefenbaker. He gradually gave his opponents a dictionary of pithy lines to quote against him. “If we wanted to get away with it,” he replied on one occasion to Howard Green, “who would stop us?”⁷ Even the charming Louis St Laurent, in his complacency, could turn short tempered when faced with these troublesome critics across the centre aisle.⁸ In the end they could not defeat the government’s measures, but they made mighty nuisances of themselves in debates that the Liberals seemed to regard as time-consuming distractions.

Through this parliament, Diefenbaker retained chairmanship of the Conservative caucus justice committee, but his leadership was erratic. The indefatigable Donald Fleming filled in for him during these lapses. When revisions to the Combines Investigation Act were introduced in 1952, Fleming noted that “I carried the lead at all stages. Diefenbaker took no part in the proceedings at any stage.”⁹

He was in limbo. His role in opposition now stretched over twelve years, two failed leadership contests, and two general election defeats for the party. The Conservatives were little stronger in the House than they had been when he entered the chamber in 1940. George Drew was secure in the leadership, at least until another electoral disaster. Diefenbaker was not close to Drew, although he believed he had his respect, and he remained distant from many of his caucus colleagues. Several younger MPs threatened his predominant place as a parliamentary critic. His Liberal opponents treated him with undoubted caution, but seemed less fearful of him than in the early years. He was unusually thin-skinned for a politician: “morbidly sensitive,” in the journalist Blair Fraser’s phrase. And his wife was gone.¹⁰

Diefenbaker’s sense of destiny wavered. He toyed with the prospect of abandoning politics and returning to legal practice in Ontario.¹¹ Yet he was conspicuous, a favourite of the press, and the party’s most sought-after public speaker. He craved the limelight and took on more speaking engagements away from Ottawa. He was especially buoyed by the adulation of the minority communities whose rights and interests he promoted -Jehovah’s Witnesses, Ukrainians, Jews, Indians, all those English-speaking Canadians who felt themselves to be outside the old British Canadian mainstream. For them he held a beacon that justified his quest.¹²

Above all he revelled in the contest of politics. If he was briefly indecisive about a future in opposition, he would surely rise to a challenge. The 1952 redistribution of parliamentary seats gave him that challenge.¹³ Saskatchewan’s dwindling population (it had lost 64,000 residents in the decade since 1941) meant that the province would lose seats. The Liberal government proposed to amend the Constitution to limit the extent of that loss, but in the end the province would have one less member than in the existing House. Redistribution was still conducted by self-interested wrangling in parliamentary committees with Liberal majorities, with the boundaries finally confirmed in a Redistribution Act. For the prairies, the job was again managed by the unrelenting partisan Jimmy Gardiner.

The result was that Lake Centre constituency, in the middle of the province, was shorn of ninety townships possessing an overall Diefenbaker majority. The remnant was merged with Moose Jaw and parts of Regina to produce a constituency with strong Liberal and CCF voting strength. “The riding,” Hees protested to the House, “has been literally mutilated … For all practical purposes one can say that it has been obliterated.”¹⁴ The mutilation was deliberate and defiant. The Liberal majority sought to rid the House of an annoying antagonist.

For many Saskatchewan voters that was too much. Diefenbaker’s supporters urged him to fight on wherever he had the best prospect of election, and a plan soon emerged to fashion a non-partisan nomination for him in Prince Albert. Diefenbaker’s own story is that the project was inspired and proposed by two Prince Albert political opponents, Fred Hadley (a Liberal) and Tommy Martin (a Social Crediter), during a fishing trip with him to Lac La Ronge in July 1952 - to which Diefenbaker’s response was “Oh, the idea is ridiculous.”¹⁵ The truth seems to be that the idea originated among Conservatives, who tacitly approved a non-partisan front as a means of strengthening Diefenbaker’s chances. His political friend George Whitter, a former Conservative candidate in Prince Albert, recalled that he first proposed to Diefenbaker that he should run in his home town. The MP took some time to respond, but Whitter remembered that during a fishing trip to Lake Waskesiu “after quite a talk you gave me the go-ahead to start the ball rolling. This was to try and repeat Lake Centre, by getting people of all political beliefs to pull together.”¹⁶ Whitter then arranged a private meeting of Prince Albert Tories, “to set the stage and then disappear to the back ground ranks. We wanted new blood, new faces and above all people from other parties who were friends of yours. I was delegated to see Fred Hadley as he was a known Liberal and Kiwanian.”¹⁷

From this point the cover story was played out, Diefenbaker acting the innocent. Hadley invited him north for another fishing trip, and one evening while the party listened on radio to Adlai Stevenson’s acceptance of the Democratic nomination for president, Hadley asked: “Why don’t you run in Prince Albert?” Diefenbaker feigned surprise, “spent the next couple of days fishing, and very little more was said about my contesting Prince Albert.” For the record, Diefenbaker insisted that he had agreed only to think about the request after his return to Ottawa. But his brother, Elmer, who was present, wrote triumphantly to their mother on a postcard from Lac La Ronge: “We’re just going back to Waskesiu & John has enjoyed himself as much as I. This is a great spot & we got the big fish. Fred Hadley has a fine cabin here.”¹⁸

Diefenbaker showed his usual caution in an uncertain situation. He allowed preparations to go ahead in Prince Albert, but consulted supporters in his old constituency about the chances there. He agreed with Bill Brunt that Elmer should tour Qu’Appelle riding to survey prospects in that district. The outlook seemed best in Prince Albert, but nothing was guaranteed.¹⁹

While Diefenbaker claimed ignorance, Hadley and his mostly non-Conservative associates worked diligently to prepare the way for “the big fish” in Prince Albert. The regular Conservative organization faded out of sight as Whitter had proposed, an all-party executive appeared, and “Diefenbaker Clubs” sprang up throughout Prince Albert constituency during the autumn. The MP returned home at Christmas, and again at Easter, to face what he called “one of the most extraordinary examples of citizenship in action that I have ever known.” But he had still not made up his mind and he worried over his dilemma without resolution until the end of April 1953. In February, one of the organizers in Prince Albert wrote to Diefenbaker projecting a local majority and urging “that you should declare yourself anytime now - to be fair to us - and to the other constituencies which you are considering.”²⁰ Diefenbaker spun it out for another three months. Finally, after addressing an enthusiastic mass meeting at the Orpheum Theatre in Prince Albert on April 23, he let himself be convinced, accepting nomination at an overflow convention in May.²¹ The forces of destiny - with suitably discreet nudges -were at work again. Local enthusiasm for him was genuine, and once the issue was settled he responded with fresh zest for the battle. But in private he was typically pessimistic. He wrote to Olive Palmer: “I am a long faced, dour, melancholy person every time I think of getting into the P.A. fight, but being in I must get out and work. There is quite a lot of encouraging support but it wouldn’t bring a win at this time. I have to take 3,000 votes from each of the other parties. What a menacing picture. However, a faint heart never won an election either.”²²

In December 1952 Conservative MPs believed they had been handed a winning election issue with publication of the Currie Report on irregularities in domestic military spending. The report confirmed more than one hundred improprieties, the result of inept administration and minor fraud, which had gone uncorrected despite repeated internal complaints since 1949. For the press and the opposition, the most colourful claim of fraud was that “horses were hired by army personnel and placed on the payroll.” The assertion stuck in the public mind, despite the prime minister’s subsequent denials and the investigator’s equivocal insistence that horses were indeed being paid “under the names of non-existent labourers.”²³

Whether horses or wraiths, the government was embarrassed. When the House resumed after Christmas, the prime minister proposed the creation of a select committee to examine military spending since 1950 - a diversion, Diefenbaker claimed in response to the motion, intended to produce a whitewash. Donald Fleming, Douglas Harkness, J.R. Macdonnell, and Davie Fulton added their protests, but the government’s majority held. Fleming observed caustically that the Conservatives needed someone on the select committee “who was tough, a fighter, a lawyer with experience in cross-examination, a sense of tactics, and a knowledge of the rules. The need was tailored precisely to the specifications of John Diefenbaker, but John was not responsive where a tedious committee job was involved.” Fleming took the place that Diefenbaker declined, and as expected, the Liberal majority produced an innocuous report in May under Conservative protest.²⁴ The issue died without arousing more than mild public amusement and a faint echo in the next election campaign.

For the Conservatives, the other contentious issue of 1953 was the government’s annual proposal to extend special emergency powers for one further year - a measure that delegated wide discretionary authority to the government. The Conservatives’ front-bench team of Drew, Green, Diefenbaker, Fulton, and Fleming hammered away on the perennial complaint that the Liberal Party preferred rule by decree to normal parliamentary government. The Liberal majority seemed unaffected. The session ended early to allow a substantial delegation of MPs to attend the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, and in mid-June parliament was dissolved for a summer election.

The government felt confident enough to campaign without any visible program. Drew responded with a sixteen-point manifesto, but emphasized that, if victorious, he would reduce taxes immediately by $500 million. In the existing atmosphere of prosperity and political apathy, that was rash. The Liberal Party suggested that the Conservative leader was irresponsible, and demanded to know what helpful programs - such as the universal old age pension adopted in 1950 with all-party agreement - he would eliminate to achieve his goal. Drew and all his candidates remained on the defensive for the rest of the campaign. The government, after all, was Liberal, practical, benign, and all-wise. It was foolish to imagine that any ragtag bunch of inexperienced critics, however scrappy, could improve on that blessed regime and its smoothly integrated public bureaucracy. Conservative candidates in 1953 were up against the divine order of things.²⁵

Diefenbaker declined his invitation to the coronation in order to begin the Prince Albert campaign. “Experience,” he wrote, “should have taught me that the only thing a Conservative candidate could expect there approached extinction.”²⁶ But he had a new all-party team of enthusiasts headed by Fred Hadley, and he threw himself frantically into the summer campaign. He began by instructing the Conservative national office that all advertising in Saskatchewan would require his personal approval. In Saskatchewan this would be his, rather than the Conservative Party’s, election campaign.²⁷

Diefenbaker’s drivers took him over dusty roads to every point in the constituency, to Weirdale, Snowden, Big River, Torch River, Nipawin, Shellbrook, Codette, and Canwood, returning late at night to Prince Albert while Diefenbaker slept in the back seat. At Canwood, Diefenbaker’s companion and driver George Whitter recalled that the candidate promised “to kiss a couple of old ladies … if you won the election.” At Big River there was a restless meeting dominated by “a huge drunk lumber jack,” but by the end of the evening “he was with us instead of against us.” Finally, there was a meeting in Nipawin and another drive home. “It was fair night in P.A. and we must have passed hundreds of cars in the dust coming back … You were exhausted and sound asleep, but just as always when we hit the steel planks on the P.A. bridge you woke up.”²⁸

Four times in July Diefenbaker campaigned nationally for the Conservative Party, in Ontario, British Columbia, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, flying overnight and catching his rest where he could between banquets and fairground meetings. But when he returned to Prince Albert he professed no connection to the party. Among his colleagues in the House, only Davie Fulton spoke in the constituency, drawing large French-speaking crowds in Albertville and Devil’s Lake in enthusiastic support for Diefenbaker.²⁹

The candidate for Prince Albert was by now an accomplished stump orator who played the crowd with ease, his voice resonating tremulously as he mocked his opponents, jowls shaking, eyes piercing, an outstretched arm delivering lightning bolts, his denunciations ending with jaws fixed in righteous self-satisfaction. He covered the essential Conservative themes of Liberal arrogance, extravagance, and indifference to parliament. But above all he offered himself as the tribune of his people. The crowds listened in awe and admiration to this Saskatchewan prophet who stood beyond party. For them it seemed a matter of indifference whether the Conservatives formed a government, but he had to be in parliament.

Diefenbaker had campaigned at a merciless pace, and on voting day his organization toiled from dawn to deliver his voters to the polls. When the counting ended, he had won Prince Albert with a majority of three thousand and one. “This was a stunning home-town victory,” wrote Dick Spencer, “for the man who had, until this night, been rejected by the very people whose love and loyalty he wanted most.”³⁰ But nationally - as everyone expected - the Liberals retained an overwhelming majority against marginal opposition gains. Thirty-three of the Progressive Conservatives’ fifty-one seats were in Ontario, with only six in the prairies and four in Quebec. Diefenbaker was once more the sole Conservative MP from Saskatchewan. On August 11 the Calgary Herald reflected editorially: “The Conservative Party may now realize, at long last, that it made a grievous error at the Ottawa convention in 1948. It chose the wrong man for its leader!”³¹

DIEFENBAKER HAD RENEWED HIS YOUTHFUL FRIENDSHIP WITH OLIVE FREEMAN Palmer, now widowed and a senior civil servant with the Ontario Ministry of Education in Toronto. After Edna’s death, John’s weekend trips to Toronto grew frequent, although he kept his meetings with Olive discreetly quiet. Even his close friend and adviser Bill Brunt took months to discover the identity of Diefenbaker’s Toronto friend. But David and Bunty Walker were in on the secret, conspiring in good humour with John and Olive to contain knowledge of the courtship. In 1952 the couple became engaged. Olive slipped naturally into the role of counsellor, comforter, and family correspondent, with frequent chatty letters to John’s mother and brother. In December 1953 John and Olive were quietly married in a Baptist church ceremony in Toronto.³²

Olive Diefenbaker, like Edna, was a supporter and protector of her husband - although in very different ways. Where Edna had softened his stiffness and self-importance, and eased his relations with clients, voters, the press, and politicians, Olive sustained him with her complete loyalty, dignity, strong will, and sense of propriety. Edna had encouraged John’s mischievous and irreverent side, as did some of his secretaries, but Olive did not. She was “a stern Baptist” and a teetotaller who took herself seriously and lacked her husband’s impish sense of fun. She was not, like Edna, simply resigned to John’s ambition. She joined him late in his career, helped to revive it, and dedicated herself to its fulfilment. She reinforced his grievances, his suspicions, and his sense of destiny. She was a formidable aide to her husband for the rest of her life. John was devoted to her - perhaps even intimidated by her - and as sensitive to her pride as to his own.³³

John’s mother was now over eighty and demanding more attention from her two sons than ever. Olive understood the family balance and gave Mary her constant, flattering attention. John’s visits to Saskatoon continued, often with the supporting presence of his wife.

John’s brother, Elmer, had returned to the family home from Prince Albert in the late 1940s, drifted through a variety of travelling sales ventures that never amounted to much (including an agency for “lovelight perfume lamps”), and came to rest as an organizer for the Saskatchewan Retail Merchants’ Association. In the Diefenbaker family there was room for only one vocation. On his travels throughout the province, Elmer soaked up political gossip and transmitted every scrap of trivia, prejudice, lore, and misinformation to his brother in a never-ending flow of meandering reportage. John encouraged the correspondence, and Elmer gradually assumed the role of disciple and devoted assistant. The traveller’s job seemed more and more a front for his amateur intelligence service.

Diefenbaker remained senior partner in his Prince Albert law firm through the mid-1950s, sharing in the company’s profits but contributing only intermittently to the firm’s work. The other partners, Jack Cuelenaere, Roy Hall, and Clyne Harradence, were initially prepared to put up with the imbalance because the Diefenbaker name drew business through the door. But Diefenbaker’s absence in Ottawa, and his congenital disorganization, meant that files often went astray. The papers that he moved back and forth between Prince Albert and Ottawa, recalled Harradence, “weren’t packed, they were just dumped” in boxes. “Armfuls of correspondence, some of the legal files that he had been working on … we never saw again.” Diefenbaker wrote to Hall in 1953 to complain over the office’s neglect of one estate that “I am getting in wrong over this … This is a large estate and will do me irreparable harm unless it is looked after. I cannot understand what has happened about it.” On another occasion Diefenbaker lost a bank draft. Secretaries were periodically directed to clean out and sort the disordered drawers in Diefenbaker’s office desk of clippings, correspondence, bus tickets, stamps, and refuse, but chaos soon returned. The staff knew that when Diefenbaker swept up the morning’s incoming mail, it might disappear forever. Hall remarked to Harradence in the early 1950s: “Could you ever imagine this man being prime minister of the country? He can’t even run a four-man law office.”

In the words of his secretary Bunny Pound, Diefenbaker would regularly fail to bill the “funny little people with hats in their hands” who came to seek his advice. Eventually Cuelenaere took over the work of collections. Diefenbaker used the law firm as his constituency office, and he expected the partners to perform routine personal chores for him. In the spring of 1954 he instructed Harradence to have the Diefenbaker garage cleaned out and the garden prepared and planted with “an assortment of vegetables - carrots, peas, beans, etc., and tomato plants when the season is ready … Olive wanted to do this but she won’t be back in time so it will be quite a surprise if you can arrange to have it done.”

By 1955 relations among the partners were strained. Diefenbaker’s name attracted fewer clients, yet he seemed determined to involve himself marginally in as many files as possible in order to maintain his claim on the profits. Although Harradence appeared on the firm’s letterhead, he could not clarify his status as a partner or his share of the profits with Diefenbaker, and eventually left the firm in frustration. In 1957 Cuelenaere - who had carried the burden of the company’s business for more than a decade - also chose to leave the firm after an unresolved dispute over the distribution of profits.³⁴ One pillar of Diefenbaker’s career appeared to be crumbling.

A few months earlier, Diefenbaker had taken on another high-profile murder defence - “almost without a fee,” he wrote to the accused’s father, “because I feel that a grave injustice was being done.”³⁵ Donald Keith Cathro had previously been convicted of murder, along with three companions, in the killing of a convenience store proprietor during a robbery in Vancouver. Cathro’s conviction was sustained on appeal, but the Supreme Court of Canada ordered a retrial on a legal technicality. Diefenbaker was engaged as defence counsel for the new trial in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, where he appeared in January 1956 before Mr Justice J. V. Clyne and a jury.

The evidence suggested that Cathro and a second assailant, Chow Bew, had shared in strangling the victim, Ah Wing, in the course of robbing his store. But Diefenbaker asked the jury to convict his client of robbery rather than murder. The judge recalled Diefenbaker’s summation:

With little or no evidence to support his case, he tried to persuade the jury that Cathro had come to rob but not to participate in any act of violence. He pictured a scene in which Cathro, seeing Chow Bew attacking Ah Wing, rushed between them to separate them and to save Ah Wing from injury. In the ensuing struggle Ah Wing was supposed to fall, causing Cathro to fall on top of him with Cathro’s knee striking and breaking Ah Wing’s voice box, resulting in his death. Diefenbaker produced a very tense moment in court when he said, “And now, gentlemen of the jury, I shall show you how it happened.” With his gown flying in the air the future prime minister of Canada rushed across the court and threw himself on the floor in front of the jury box and almost under the counsel’s table.

The assize room in the old court house was a large room, and it was crowded during this trial. The judge’s bench stood quite high above the counsel’s table and the rest of the courtroom, so that, in fact, Diefenbaker had practically disappeared from my sight. There was dead silence in the room. I, of course, could not allow this sort of nonsense in my courtroom, so I said, “Mr. Diefenbaker, if you will come out from underneath the table I will be able to follow your argument more clearly.” The courtroom burst into laughter and Diefenbaker concluded his address somewhat sheepishly.³⁶

Clyne noticed that, although the accused was twenty-six years old, Diefenbaker appealed to the jury’s sympathy by referring to him throughout as “this boy.” In his charge to the jury, the judge emphasized the lack of evidence supporting Diefenbaker’s theory. He told them that, in law, the charge of murder could not be reduced to one of robbery as Diefenbaker had proposed. He concluded that Cathro had intended to commit robbery and, in doing so, had inflicted grievous bodily harm that “was likely to cause death.” The jury returned a verdict of guilty. Clyne sentenced Cathro to death, with a recommendation for clemency since he may not have intended to kill and had no previous record. The sentence was eventually commuted. Clyne wrote that Diefenbaker “was very eloquent before juries and could present a persuasive argument, but in my opinion he was not a very good lawyer.”³⁷

GEORGE DREW’S SECOND GENERAL ELECTION DEFEAT AS LEADER OF THE PARTY WAS followed inevitably by speculation in the press about his retirement.³⁸ Drew hoped to remain, and his supporters knew that he would need renewed endorsement to maintain his authority in the caucus. Planning began for a national meeting of the Progressive Conservative Association in the autumn of 1953 to give him that support. Suspicions of disloyalty centred on John Diefenbaker; Drew’s advocates (and Diefenbaker’s opponents) were determined to turn the issue into one of loyalty. “To deserve loyalty on the part of others,” Fleming later wrote, “a leader must have proven himself loyal as a follower … I hoped that my loyalty would never become suspect as Diefenbaker’s was in these grim circumstances.”³⁹

Diefenbaker knew the dangers of disloyalty and was careful to offer Drew no overt challenge, so Drew’s immediate problem was to stifle the rumblings rather than to put down revolt. The party meeting was orchestrated to that end. Diefenbaker’s Saskatchewan associate - and once-competitor - Murdoch McPherson was recruited as keynote speaker, opening the meeting with an appeal for renewed confidence in the leader. The loyalists were cued to rise in ovation for Drew, and did so enthusiastically. “Even those opposed to George’s continuance were too embarrassed to remain in their seats under the direct observation of those of us who were standing and applauding. The whole audience was on its feet, none daring to appear not to applaud. This was accepted by the press and by the meeting itself as a rousing and unanimous endorsement of George Drew’s leadership. Our strategy had succeeded beyond our hopes. To all outward appearances George was securely confirmed in the leadership: at least the known opposition to him had been driven underground for the time being.”⁴⁰

Diefenbaker’s position of isolation within the caucus was reinforced. While he believed that Drew’s “palace guard” intended to freeze him out of any preferment, he professed satisfaction that Drew sometimes invited him to lead in debate for the party, to attend conferences, or to take speaking engagements on the leader’s behalf.⁴¹ Drew certainly made no effort to bring Diefenbaker into his inner circle; he was never a member of what became known as the “Five O’Clock Club” of Drew’s intimates, who met regularly in the leader’s office for drinks and gossip.⁴² But Diefenbaker’s aloofness in caucus was above all a matter of his own style and his own suspicions. Behind the facade of civility he disliked and resented Drew, and remained ill at ease among his colleagues. As Dalton Camp, the party’s new director of publicity, recalled: “He rarely attended caucus, was not usually available to the Whip’s Office when it was attempting to organize the schedule of opposition speakers, and beyond the call of the duty roster for attendance in the House.” The party’s office staff dealt with him cautiously, using Davie Fulton as intermediary when they wished to make contact. For Camp, Diefenbaker was an enigma: a popular public figure always distant from his own associates.⁴³ Diefenbaker remained lonely and insecure. He did not trust people, and was rarely confident that they trusted him.

The Progressive Conservative Party, which remained the formal vehicle of Diefenbaker’s ambition despite his distance from its centre, was in flux. The national president, George Nowlan, was replaced after 1953 by another young MP, the flamboyant and equally ambitious George Hees. Fearing that Hees would install his own national director after the retirement of Richard Bell, Drew’s inner circle persuaded Earl Rowe’s son William to take that job. The younger Rowe set about to modernize the national office by developing its advertising, publicity, and research activities, but the organization depended, inevitably, on the leader’s inspiration and popular appeal. Although Drew had the superficial confidence of his party, there was widespread feeling that he could never win a national election. His platform manner and appearance -double-breasted, upright, stiff - had stereotyped him indelibly and unfairly as a patrician snob. The Ontario provincial party of his successor, Leslie Frost, kept aloof from the national party, and elsewhere Drew was regarded indifferently by local Conservatives. The new and promising provincial leaders of the party - Hugh John Flemming in New Brunswick, Robert Stanfield in Nova Scotia, Duff Roblin in Manitoba - were never close to him. In British Columbia, Drew was in open conflict with the provincial leader, Dean Finlayson, by 1955. Whatever others might do to revive the party’s national fortunes seemed blocked by the limitations of the leader and his image.⁴⁴

Meanwhile, the Liberal government of Louis St Laurent was beginning to stumble. By 1955 St Laurent himself was tiring of the political game and deferring regularly to the domineering ways of his “minister of everything,” CD. Howe. The Liberal journalist Bruce Hutchison commented on “the tired look of the government and its leader.” “The Old Man,” he wrote in April, “is really through and the sooner a new one is found … the better. The boys in Ottawa may not realize it, but St. Laurent has just quietly faded out of the picture in the last six months.”⁴⁵ In June 1955, when Howe introduced a bill to extend his special powers without time limit under the Defence Production Act, the Tories seized the moment to filibuster and arouse popular complaint. After extended, acrimonious debate, the prime minister finally took advantage of Howe’s absence from Ottawa in July to amend the bill and impose a time limit. This was a signal victory for the Conservatives and a tangible boost to party morale in the House. But Hutchison observed that “the fact undoubtedly is that the country has lost all interest in national politics at the moment, being sated with prosperity. No government can easily defeat itself, however it tries, under these conditions.”⁴⁶ He missed the slowly percolating undercurrents of popular discontent.⁴⁷

So did Howe, who was now promoting the rapid construction of a natural gas pipeline from Alberta to the east after years of delay. For the minister, this would be his last great national project, matching the Canadian Pacific Railway in its nation-building potential, bringing cheap prairie energy to the industries and homes of central Canada. The great industrial expansion of the early 1950s had created an urgent energy shortage in southern Ontario; for Howe, the challenge required a dramatic response. The government’s settled policy was that the line should be built entirely within Canada, sweeping north of Lake Superior through the hard rock of the Canadian Shield. Howe agreed with the American owners, Trans-Canada Pipe Lines Limited, that the government should finance construction on the prairies with a loan of $80 million and that a crown corporation should build the northern Ontario section of the line. The company, in addition, would be permitted to export surplus gas to the US market on a Manitoba branch line. The cabinet had previously delayed Howe’s efforts to get the project under way. Now, under his intense pressure, it agreed that the enabling legislation should be introduced under closure in May 1956 to permit construction to begin by July 1. The use of closure to limit debate was unusual; its introduction before any discussion was unprecedented. Howe was determined to defy the opposition and revenge his parliamentary humiliation of the previous year - all in the service of his national vision.⁴⁸

The Conservative caucus - heartened by its success in the last session and sensing public suspicion of both government aid to an American corporation and Howe’s contempt for parliament - determined to resist his effort to stifle parliamentary debate on the bill. This time the Tories had the support of the CCF caucus as well, and Davie Fulton coordinated parliamentary tactics with Stanley Knowles to assure maximum damage to the government’s tight timetable and good reputation.⁴⁹ The result, over five weeks of turbulence in the House of Commons, was a stunning embarrassment to the ministry. The prime minister, dejected, disspirited, and silent, seemed to have lost control of his government. The pipeline legislation was finally passed under closure a few days beyond the cabinet’s self-imposed deadline on June 7, but only after an unprecedented series of upsets and noisy disruptions in the Commons. Howe had his bill, but he and his colleagues had been shamed by their display of impatience and ruthless indifference to democratic forms and the popular will.

The Conservative attack on Howe and the government was led with ingenious panache by George Drew, Davie Fulton, and Donald Fleming. It concentrated on procedural issues and came to focus on the role of the Speaker; the substance of the government’s measure was scarcely discussed. On May 25 there was an extraordinary incident when Fleming was suspended from the day’s sitting by formal vote for having attempted to speak to a point of privilege in face of the Speaker’s denial. As Fleming walked down the central aisle of the chamber to withdraw through the main south door, the Conservative and CCF members were on their feet applauding the martyr; and when he reached Diefenbaker’s desk, the Saskatchewan member cried out “Farewell, John Hampden!”⁵⁰ In Fleming’s absence, Ellen Fairclough draped a Union Jack over his vacant desk. This was high political theatre, conducted with instinctive skill by an opposition confident that it had both propriety and public support on its side.⁵¹

Surprisingly, Diefenbaker played only a secondary role in the opposition’s tenacious fight to protest and delay passage of the pipeline legislation. He was in the House for most of the extended debate, voted with his party, and spoke in debate on May 17. He was well informed about the history of Trans-Canada Pipe Lines and its extended negotiations with the federal government. He was contemptuous of the pipeline promoter, the Texan millionaire Clint Murchison; questioned the monopoly privileges of Trans-Canada; ridiculed the domineering manner of the minister, C.D. Howe, and the silence of the prime minister; condemned the improper use of closure before debate had begun; and asked that a parliamentary committee should examine all aspects of the pipeline issue. But the point of his speech remained strangely vague. Partly, that reflected Conservative difficulty in framing an alternative to the government’s policy; partly, it indicated that Diefenbaker was uncertain about his own party’s tactics.⁵²

In caucus, Diefenbaker made clear that he did not favour a policy of obstruction or cooperation with the CCF. In his judgment, voters would not support a campaign of obstruction; and he found it difficult to ally himself with his chief political opponents in Saskatchewan. As a matter of habit and pride, he was reluctant to work closely with his own caucus. He shared the interests of prairie producers and voters whose natural gas would at last be available for sale in eastern and American markets. This was also Social Credit’s justification for supporting the government. But Diefenbaker’s political sense, in this case, was wrong. “Fortunately,” said Fulton, “we were right and the press supported us one hundred percent.”⁵³

Three weeks of distracted conflict over the pipeline had upset the government’s financial timetable, and in early June it found itself needing an urgent vote of interim funding. With a renewed filibuster, the opposition could have forced a dissolution of parliament and an early general election. But George Drew baulked, and supply was granted. Diefenbaker, who was absent from the House, protested privately that the opposition, this time, should have obstructed the vote. He was quick to learn the lesson of the pipeline and would never again underestimate the impact of an unrestrained parliamentary struggle. For three weeks, the House had been the centre of national attention, as it had not been for two decades.⁵⁴

The parliamentary session straggled to its end in August. The Liberal government was shaken if still uncomprehending; the Conservative and CCF opposition were revived and newly confident. The Conservative front bench looked forward to renewing the battle when parliament reconvened in the autumn. Then came misfortune. Before the House adjourned, George Drew withdrew in strain and exhaustion, naming Earl Rowe as interim parliamentary leader. In the following weeks his health did not improve. His doctor and his wife urged him to resign; and others close to him, knowing that the party needed vigorous leadership at this crucial time before a general election, counselled withdrawal as well. In late September he offered his resignation, and the party was thrown unexpectedly into a leadership campaign.⁵⁵

Diefenbaker’s candidacy was taken for granted. He was the party’s most celebrated front-bencher, and his ambition for the leadership was well known. He indicated to his friends at once that he intended to run. George Pearkes wrote from Victoria to say that “the Pearkes family is three hundred per cent behind you as the new leader of our Party and the next Prime Minister of Canada,” promising that “this time we will make certain that you carry the convention. We must not let Bay Street get away with any fast work.”⁵⁶ But “Bay Street” was one leap ahead of him. David Walker reported that the party’s Ontario organizer, Harry Willis, had surveyed the province and found Diefenbaker to be the favourite, destined to “win the convention on the 1st ballot.” Willis speculated that Fleming and Hees “will cut one another’s throats,” that Diefenbaker might achieve a unanimous convention, and that the National Executive might even give Diefenbaker the leadership without a convention. The acting leader and pillar of the old caucus establishment, Earl Rowe, was reported to be “almost convinced you are the man.” Walker was awed by this sea change: “What can one believe?”⁵⁷

Well, not quite everything. It was true that Leslie Frost and his chief organizer, Alex McKenzie, who had managed the Ontario delegation for Drew at the 1948 convention, had decided to ride the tide of Diefenbaker’s popularity despite any lingering doubts about his character. It was true that they had persuaded George Hees to abandon his own campaign and throw his support to Diefenbaker.⁵⁸ But Earl Rowe - with his long experience of Diefenbaker in the House - remained unconvinced. As the tide mounted, he met in Ottawa with Léon Balcer, the party president, George Nowlan, J.M. Macdonnell, Grattan O’Leary, Richard Bell, and Donald Fleming to consider a “Stop Diefenbaker” campaign. Fleming agreed with the group that he would withdraw his candidacy if they could persuade Sidney Smith, by then president of the University of Toronto, to enter the race. If Smith would not run, Fleming believed he had their promise of support. Smith declined the approach, Fleming announced his candidacy, and the cabal dissolved without coming to Fleming’s aid. Only Macdonnell, of this group, worked actively for him. “It became obvious,” Fleming concluded, “that even those who were not ready to support Diefenbaker were reluctant to show their colours against him. This was based in some cases on the belief that he was bound to win, in others on fear of his reputed vindictiveness. I doubt if they gained anything from their abstention.” Fleming lamented that Diefenbaker supporters attacked him as the candidate of “the establishment,” while he could never find its members. His sole base of support was in Quebec.⁵⁹

Despite his answer, Smith was approached several times in October and November to reconsider. Each time he refused. Rumours were widespread, and talk of the “Stop Diefenbaker” lobby fed the Diefenbaker organization with fuel for its unnecessary, but convenient, anti-establishment campaign. In mid-November Diefenbaker’s friend Patrick Nicholson wrote of “the Tory party machine controlled by that nebulous group of back-stage string-pullers,” “the Old Guard, desperate to retain its macabre throttle on the jugular vein of the Conservative party … now seeking madly for some other candidate, some other means, to prevent the democratisation of the party under Diefenbaker’s enlightened leadership.” But he recognized that “the machine, that hard core of MPs, Bay Street millionaires and other political string-pullers,” were now hopelessly outnumbered.⁶⁰

The machine, in fact - the new machine - was in Diefenbaker’s hands, although he would not admit it. Once again David Walker and Bill Brunt were his closest advisers, but a national campaign had blossomed instantaneously - and as close to the party establishment as anyone could hope. Diefenbaker had not only Leslie Frost and the Ontario organization, but Robert Stanfield in Nova Scotia, Hugh John Flemming in New Brunswick, Duff Roblin in Manitoba, and Toronto advertising man Allister Grosart, who had been George Drew’s national organizer for the 1953 election campaign. In the House of Commons, to his surprise and pleasure, he had Gordon Churchill and a “large committee” of MPs representing 80 percent of the caucus. He had early campaign promises of $7500 to be raised in Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia, and the expectation of more. Approaches were even under way to assure the discreet support of Premier Maurice Duplessis in Quebec. Such impressive stirrings of national enthusiasm had been unknown in the Conservative Party for twenty-five years.⁶¹

The National Executive of the party called the leadership convention for early December in Ottawa. Once his campaign was rolling, Diefenbaker humbly announced his candidacy:

In the last two weeks I have been deeply moved and encouraged by the messages that have come to me from many of my colleagues in the House of Commons, from a multitude of people in all walks of life, and from one end of Canada to the other, asking that I allow my name to be put in nomination.

I need hardly say that the guiding purpose of my public life has been to serve Canada, to do what I can to restore the Conservative Party to a position where it will best serve all the people, and in so doing to make a prosperous, strong, and united Canada.

To the many people who are asking what I plan to do, I give my answer in a few simple words: I have not sought for myself and I shall not seek the high honour of leadership. But if Canadians generally believe that I have a contribution to make, if it is their wish that I let my name stand at the leadership convention, I am willing.⁶²

This time the campaign was meticulously, though simply, planned, despite the assurance of a Diefenbaker victory on the first ballot. The candidate had been disappointed too often to take such things for granted. Although Grosart was there to help, the planning committee noted that “no public relations man or press agent is required.” Diefenbaker would make “a few speeches, say nine,” across the country. Drew would be praised. Duplessis’s support would be solicited. Committees in each province would canvass every delegate, pointing out to them “what the man in the street thinks.” Protests would be made against vote rigging at the convention. A Diefenbaker hospitality suite would be booked at the Château Laurier, but with “no liquor to be supplied to delegates.” As Diefenbaker’s train crossed the nation on its way to Ottawa, reception committees would meet it at every stop. The influences from south of the border were unmistakable: this was to be Canada’s first presidential leadership campaign.⁶³

Diefenbaker’s two challengers, Donald Fleming and Davie Fulton, could not match it. Fleming toured the country alone but concentrated his efforts in Quebec where, he believed, Diefenbaker’s campaign under Pierre Sévigny was making no progress.⁶⁴ Fulton, an admirer and long-time supporter of Diefenbaker, was persuaded to run, as Diefenbaker had done in 1942, not to win but “to stake out a claim” for the future.⁶⁵

There was only the appearance of a contest. On November 24 the Gallup Poll of Canada declared that Diefenbaker had the support of 55 percent of Conservative voters, ahead of Fleming with 14 percent, Hees with 5 percent, Smith with 4 percent, and Fulton with 2 percent.⁶⁶ That breakdown seemed roughly to reflect the reports of delegates’ sentiments. But a week later, Gallup offered reassurance to the Liberal government with evidence that its popularity remained at 50 percent - actually three points higher than in August -while Conservative support was frozen at 31 percent.⁶⁷

While Diefenbaker concentrated his energies on the leadership campaign, momentous events were taking place in the larger world. In October the Hungarian revolution raised temporary hopes that the Soviet bloc was in collapse, but in early November Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces brutally crushed the revolt as the West offered no more than rhetorical complaint and began to accept the flood of escaping Hungarian refugees. Simultaneously, Britain, France, and Israel conspired to attack Egypt in a mad effort to restore the recently nationalized Suez Canal to international ownership and to overthrow President Nasser. This plot brought down the ire of the United States, divided the Commonwealth, and faced Canada with the nightmare of a major Anglo-American dispute. Gallup reported that 43 percent of Canadians supported the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt, while 40 percent opposed it. The Canadian interest pointed to some great feat of compromise, and the ingenious secretary of state for external affairs, Mike Pearson, in intimate consultation with John Foster Dulles of the United States and Dag Hammarskjöld of the United Nations, produced a ceasefire, a withdrawal of forces, and the first of many UN peacekeeping operations to hold the fragile line between antagonists.⁶⁸

At the end of November - just two weeks before the Conservative leadership convention - the House of Commons met in special session to debate the Suez and Hungarian crises. As opposition foreign affairs critic and potential leader of his party, John Diefenbaker shared the limelight with Louis St Laurent and Mike Pearson. The government sought formal support for its conciliatory role at the United Nations and its contribution to the peacekeeping force, which was now complicated by Nasser’s objection to participation by the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada.⁶⁹ The Conservative Party, like the Canadian electorate, was torn between its loyalty to Britain and its support for the United Nations. It could hardly oppose the government’s initiative at the United Nations, but neither could it safely condemn the British and French aggression. There was no unity in the caucus. Diefenbaker was forced to walk a narrow and weaving path, and chose to play the statesman in doing it. He emphasized the need to restore “the old alliance between Britain and the Commonwealth, France and the United States” in face of an aggressive Soviet Union and an expansionist Egypt - the two of them aiming, in his fancy, “to take over the Middle East and then, having done that, to take over Africa, to mobilize the people of the Moslem world … There is the blueprint.” This was exaggeration of Churchillian proportion. He took credit for having proposed a UN force in the Middle East eight months earlier, when the government, he said, had denied its usefulness. He objected to the careless words of the prime minister, who had appeared to link Britain, France, and the USSR as common oppressors of the weak. And he criticized the government for having allowed “a thug,” President Nasser, to dictate the personnel, location, and tenure of the UN force.⁷⁰

Diefenbaker concluded by suggesting a new Quebec conference that would bring together the leaders of Britain, France, and the United States, “without malice, without vituperative statements and without words of grandiloquent content, and in that city lay the foundations for once more re-establishing in the free world a unity which, unless it is achieved and achieved immediately, may result in irreparable harm.” That big idea, if it came to fruition, might just surpass Pearson’s recent achievement at the United Nations - which Diefenbaker had managed neither to praise nor to condemn.⁷¹

The idea of a conference was a will-o’-the-wisp, but the speech hit the right political note. Fleming wrote that Diefenbaker “was able to appear as the shining light who avoided smaller issues and idealistically rallied support to the United Nations. His speech was described by the press as a tour de force.” Fleming knew he was beaten.⁷²

On December 10 the Conservative leadership convention assembled in Ottawa, meeting once more in the dreary ambience of the city’s hockey rink -but enjoying relief and refreshment at the Château Laurier. More than thirteen hundred Tory delegates poured into Ottawa for the convention, most of them, according to Dalton Camp, “immediately apprehensive, secretly awed, and aware they are entering enemy territory.”⁷³ Yet among the organizers, there was an insouciant spirit entirely new to the party. Eddie Goodman, who handled the Ontario campaign for Diefenbaker, noticed at once that the Diefenbaker hospitality suite, where liquor was banned on Diefenbaker’s personal order, remained empty, while Fleming’s and Fulton’s rooms, catering copiously to drinking delegates, “were full to the brim.”

I knew something had to be done. The Diefenbakers’ personal suite in the Chateau Laurier was next to the hospitality suite. I moved them to a corner suite beside my own bedroom and away from the din. I then called a meeting of the campaign committee, which only I attended, as no one else had been notified, and passed an amendment to the no-drinking rule. The result: a full hospitality suite. I did not fool Diefenbaker - one seldom did - but he bowed without comment to political necessity.⁷⁴

The delegates gathered on the first afternoon to hear Grattan O’Leary’s silver-tongued homage to George Drew, and Drew’s own graceful retirement speech - written for him by Grattan O’Leary.⁷⁵ That evening they assembled again for Robert Stanfield’s keynote address. This quiet man told the clan that Drew had left his party “united, strong and in good spirit. Whoever succeeds George Drew will do well to maintain and stimulate this unity, for without it we are unworthy and incapable of success.” Stanfield appealed for national policies to assist the poorer regions, to overcome poverty, to aid the sick, “to uplift and elevate the state of mankind in this society.” When finished, he slipped unobtrusively out of the Coliseum and returned by air to Halifax.⁷⁶

Beyond the discreet and efficient management of the Diefenbaker campaign by Gordon Churchill, George Hees, and the agents of Leslie Frost’s Ontario party, the most significant elements in his organization at the convention were young Conservatives, rallied by the students Ted Rogers, Hal Jackman, Tom Bell, Brian Mulroney, and other enthusiasts. They were nicknamed “Rogers’ Raiders” and provided “a spirited presence and muscle that is unique to the convention,” spurred by Diefenbaker’s own suspicions of an old guard that might still deprive him of the prize.⁷⁷ Camp noticed that there was “a peculiar hostility” among the Diefenbaker forces, “an undercurrent of malice, a sense of an impending blood-letting, in which the victorious would all avenge the past.”⁷⁸

Diefenbaker himself revealed the primary source of that undercurrent on the day before the convention opened, when he encountered the co-chairman Richard Bell on the platform arranging with carpenters to raise the low podium. Bell told Diefenbaker: “John, these crazy people have put the platform podium away down there. It is no good for you or for me.” Diefenbaker responded: “Ho … You are building it for Fleming, eh? - up to your old tricks.” Bell did not take this as a jest.⁷⁹

There would be no drama in the convention’s outcome; reporters and critics found its substitute in a conflict over the choice of Diefenbaker’s nominator and seconder. Diefenbaker had selected an easterner, Hugh John Flemming of New Brunswick, to nominate him; and a westerner, his House colleague George Pearkes, to second the nomination. But Pierre Sévigny, Diefenbaker’s new advocate in Quebec, had expected to be his seconder. When he discovered Diefenbaker’s choice, he took his complaint to party president Léon Balcer and to Gordon Churchill - and Balcer took it to the press. Balcer, who had managed the appointment of most Quebec delegates to support Donald Fleming, claimed the authority of a party tradition that “dated back from the previous convention” calling for one English and one French nominator. A stream of supplicants offered their advice. George Hees, Duff Roblin, and Dalton Camp sympathized with Balcer and Sévigny, while Gordon Churchill regarded the issue as a crucial test of Diefenbaker’s firm resolve. The English-speaking doubters saw the issue as symbolic and little related to delegate votes. Could Diefenbaker signal his sensitivity to Quebec? Flemming and Pearkes both offered to step down, but Diefenbaker was intransigent. There were few delegates to be swayed in Quebec; he probably had a majority without them; and Canada was one unhyphenated country. When Sévigny met him in his hotel suite, Diefenbaker exploded in rage “and started to harangue me in a loud almost screaming voice … he went on for what seemed to be a very long time. His face was pale, his head shaking, his dress was in complete disarray, and the strange pale blue eyes were literally blazing with anger. His flow of temper ended as quickly as it started.” Diefenbaker stuck with Flemming and Pearkes. The affair left a residue of unease that close observers preferred, for the moment, not to analyse. At the very moment that power fell into his hands, Diefenbaker had begun to sow distrust and confusion around him.⁸⁰

That evening in the Coliseum, the candidates were nominated. For this first television convention, the campaign committees produced copious placards, banners, badges, balloons, and noisy displays. The dominant Diefenbaker forces did their best to shield their opponents’ signs from the television cameras - in Fleming’s eyes, a “shabby, contemptible trick.” Diefenbaker’s old rival Murdoch MacPherson of Saskatchewan nominated Davie Fulton, emphasizing Fulton’s youth and that of other eminent leaders past and present, in unspoken contrast to Diefenbaker, now sixty-one. James Maloney of Ontario nominated Donald Fleming and sharpened the warning: “I suggest to you with great respect that we should now choose a man who not only has great ability but who is old enough and yet not too old, one who is strong and healthy and who is of a disposition and temperament that he can stand up to the grave responsibilities and discharge the tasks that lie ahead.” The words would change no votes, but they gave unsubtle testimony to the whispered doubts about Diefenbaker’s health and mental balance.⁸¹

Fleming and Fulton each produced seconders from Quebec and made forgettable speeches. Diefenbaker, after stumbling awkwardly through an apology for his English-speaking nominators, and two excruciating sentences in French, made a better show - perhaps because he could sense that the audience was already with him. For the reporter J.B. McGeachy, “the Diefenbaker effort was emotion undiluted.” Sévigny was overcome by this man transformed: “The voice was clear, the phrasing beautiful, and the thoughts strong and inspiring. The interruptions were numerous, the applause at times deafening. And as he proceeded, the magnetism of the man, the hypnotic qualities which were to entrance a whole nation came to the fore. He spoke with an obvious sincerity and an inspired fervour … the vast audience became subdued, silent and enthralled.” Diefenbaker sang his old themes of equality, fairness, freedom, and Canadian revival - and pledged his devotion: “I have one love … Canada; one purpose … Canada’s greatness; one aim … Canadian unity from the Atlantic to the Pacific.” He urged the party to banish defeatism and, with him, “not to win the election after the next election or the next election after the next but … the next election.” Such faith, such heart-on-the-sleeve pleading was unfamiliar to Canadians bred in the calm rationalism of postwar Liberalism. The audience roared.⁸²

Despite Diefenbaker’s explanation that his nominators represented Canada from east to west, many Quebec delegates remained offended by his rebuff. Before voting the next day, they met in insulted conclave. As balloting began, Sévigny and others worried about a violent display on the floor, but nothing occurred. The vote confirmed a decisive first ballot victory: 774 votes for Diefenbaker, 393 for Fleming, 117 for Fulton. Fleming and Fulton rushed to Diefenbaker’s side, took him by the hands, and led him to the podium, where Fleming moved that the election be made unanimous. As the rafters rang, a body of Quebec delegates led by Léon Balcer rose in a spontaneous, and at first unnoticed, wave and left the auditorium. When silence came, the new leader thanked the audience, appealed for party unity from sea to sea, and prophesied that “I will make mistakes, but I hope it will be said of me … he wasn’t always right, sometimes he was on the wrong side, but never on the side of wrong.” The meaning was obscure, but the sentiment was conciliatory. He promised to work for victory “not for victory itself, but on behalf of the people of Canada,” and recalled “in all humility” the words of R.B. Bennett at the leadership convention of 1927: “This will be my attitude, this will be the stand that I shall take, ‘Whosoever of you will be the chiefest shall be servant of all.’ ” Olive too - sporting a giant turban out of the Arabian nights - joined her husband on the platform to beam serenely upon the audience and to promise she would improve her French. The triumph was undoubted, though for Diefenbaker it was tinged with embarrassment.⁸³