1957
THE VICTORY WAS SATISFYING, A BALM FOR PREVIOUS DEFEATS AND REBUFFS, A proof of his capacity to inspire and to persuade. John Diefenbaker had brought to his side many new enthusiasts who sensed in him a zeal, a determination for battle, and a sympathy for the complaints of the common man that had long been missing from the Conservative Party. His election to the leadership was proof that the party could lift itself beyond its old Ontario base. Although he had won with the support of the caucus and the Ontario party, that did not make him their prisoner. He would be no one’s prisoner. In his eyes, they had at last recognized the talents they had long ignored. They had given him his due.
For eight years he had secretly nursed and brooded on a grievance he could not forget. Now, in victory, his thoughts returned to the evening of George Drew’s triumph of 1948. Early in the morning of December 15 he summoned Dalton Camp to his hotel room. There, in the half-light of a winter dawn, the blinds still drawn, Diefenbaker sprawled on a bed in his dressing gown while Olive sat nearby.
Then he began to talk about Drew; my senses were now alerted and I could hear Olive rustling in her chair. He was only interested in the unity of the party, he was saying, and bringing everyone together. It had not been that way with Drew, back in 1948, at the last convention.
Nor was he blaming Mr. Drew, he said, his voice tinged with the memory of his private sorrow; perhaps Drew was not to blame. But after the balloting, at the 1948 convention, he had come to Drew’s suite - right here in this hotel - and knocked upon his door to congratulate him personally and offer him his loyalty and co-operation.
When he stepped into the room, the celebrations had stopped and everyone fell silent. Then he spoke to Drew and left, because he was not invited to stay. And when the door had closed behind him, he heard the room erupt in laughter. Laughter, you see: they were laughing at him, mocking his gesture, his decent gesture to Drew.1
Camp was puzzled by this recollection, and took it to Drew when he saw him later that day.
When I repeated Diefenbaker’s account of the night of the 1948 convention, Drew seemed genuinely shocked. To the contrary, he said, he had made every effort to be conciliatory and had invited Diefenbaker’s company in the evening celebrations, but Diefenbaker had begged off. There certainly had been no scene in the suite as described by Diefenbaker.
Eight years ago it had happened, or not happened. I persuaded myself that perhaps both men were right. A deeply sensitive and defeated man, such as Diefenbaker, could easily be wounded by the mere sight of Drew’s forces in jubilant celebration, and he could as easily have been slighted or ignored by them. Or perhaps Drew, who had changed a good deal during the eight years of his luckless leadership, from the crusading, conquering hero of the Ontario Tories to this presently spent and uncertain man preparing to leave Stornoway - perhaps, eight years ago, he might have affronted the man he had defeated, even without being aware he was doing so.
If none of this had happened, why would Diefenbaker have told me? If he did not believe it himself, why did he want me to believe it? I decided I did not know, but that sometime, later, I might find out.2
This was a strange, private beginning, made more confusing by events of the previous day. After Diefenbaker’s victory, Donald Fleming had visited Diefenbaker’s entertainment suite at the Château to offer congratulations and support to the new leader. “I was accorded a very warm welcome,” Fleming recalled. “Dief hailed my visit as the proof of party unity behind his election. I recognized many of my friends in caucus in the excited throng. Thus the leader’s crown passed to the brow of John Diefenbaker. He had achieved a high goal, one that he had long and ardently and openly pursued. Having succeeded, he turned on those who had denied it to him sooner.”3 Fleming could see no commitment to reconciliation, to “the necessary and urgent task of cementing unity within the party.” Perhaps that would come; or perhaps, for Diefenbaker, reconciliation could only mean loyalty - complete loyalty - to him.
The convention reminded Diefenbaker that he had severe critics in the party. The acting leader, Earl Rowe, and the national president, Léon Balcer, who should both have maintained a scrupulous neutrality among the candidates, had publicly rebuked him. His age, his health, his temperament had been questioned from the platform. There had been a walkout. As the convention adjourned, William Rowe had submitted his resignation as national director of the party. If Diefenbaker’s triumph was tarnished, wasn’t that, in some measure, the fault of his foes? Who now deserved the benefit of the doubt?
“In victory: magnanimity.” This maxim is a practical rule of prudence, a means of restoring trust. Within a political party, with other opponents to fight, it is a double necessity. It makes the real battle possible. Diefenbaker knew that, and he would strive for it as much as he could. But his wounds and his distrust were deep, the products of a lifetime as an outsider, and there would be turmoil as he struggled to overcome them.
Although he had gained the support of much of the parliamentary caucus under Gordon Churchill’s leadership, he was conspicuously opposed by most of the front bench. Diefenbaker made peace with his two challengers, Fleming and Fulton, and assured them they had his trust. He knew them well enough to sense the genuineness of their loyalty. But he could not embrace his other opponents, Earl Rowe, Jim Macdonnell, Dick Bell, Léon Balcer, Roland Michener - and he showed his distaste.4 The feelings of antipathy were mutual. On the night the convention ended, Richard Bell told his wife: “I’m through with politics. If we can do something as evil as that, I don’t want anything further to do with it.” George Drew expressed his private dismay: “The party’s finished,” he told Bell. “It won’t be more than three months before Diefenbaker has lost control. He gets his eye on one thing, and he concentrates on it, and he gets it up and makes a speech on it. Then he goes away for two weeks to recover. The party needs people around to pick up the pieces afterwards.”5 The Globe and Mail reflected editorially on “a stubborn, unreasoning prejudice” against Diefenbaker among Quebec delegates to the convention, “accompanied at its lower levels, by accusations of quite incredible malevolence. All around Ottawa this week, anti-Diefenbaker yarns were circulating which would be funny if they were not so vicious.”6 Some of that talk originated with the party’s Ontario fundraisers, who recognized that Diefenbaker would win the leadership. Dalton Camp quoted one of them: “ ‘If Diefenbaker wants it, let the crazy son of a bitch have it.’ It had become a philosophy for the reconciled -Diefenbaker could not be stopped. Though he would be difficult, if not impossible, as a leader, and a failure, after one election he would retire and the party could find a younger, abler man. Diefenbaker had been around a long time, so let him have it. The Grits would win the next election anyway.”7
That was also the comforting assumption among Liberals. Their view of Diefenbaker, as the Globe’s George Bain noticed, had been transformed. Before the convention, Diefenbaker had been the Liberals’ favourite Tory, the one robbed of the leadership in 1948 by the party machine, someone associated with liberal causes, a man of the people. Now he had become, according to Liberal sources, “indecisive, temperamental, a lone wolf too long accustomed to going his way to get the caucus to pull together and, therefore, not a good leader. Also, he passed his peak, lost much of his appeal to the electorate, and even became a less sought after orator. In fact, between September and December he became pretty much of a dead loss … the Conservatives made a terrible mistake. They aren’t going to win the next election anyway, and for the long pull they want a younger man.”8 Dismissive Liberals said what jaundiced Conservatives thought. Could Diefenbaker prove them wrong?
The new leader had assets as well as liabilities. He had long courted the press and had strong friends in the press gallery: Arthur Blakely of the Montreal Gazette, Patrick Nicholson of Thomson Newspapers, Judith Robinson and Peter Dempson of the Telegram, Charles Lynch of Southam Press, and Richard Jackson of the Ottawa Journal, among others. For everyone in the gallery he was good copy. His popular appeal was proven and it went beyond party. He was the challenger of power, the crusader in good causes who had at last, by sheer determination, faced down and overcome the old guard. With his election as leader the ground had shaken inside the party; it was now his task to transmit those tremors outwards into the country. Sympathetic responses to the opposition campaign on the pipeline, the recovery of the Conservative Party in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Manitoba, and the early signs of a general stirring against the boredom of prosperity and Liberal complacency suggested that the time was ripe.
Diefenbaker’s very limitations as a party man might now be his political strengths. That seemed immediately obvious in Prince Albert, home of the Diefenbaker Clubs, where he and Olive returned to an all-party victory banquet on December 28. Eight hundred celebrants dined with the Diefenbakers in the Armouries under the chairmanship of Liberal mayor Dave Steuart, who offered the new leader a silver key to the city. Diefenbaker accepted the honour of this “family gathering” with pride still touched by disbelief. “As on the night of his first election victory in Prince Albert in 1953,” wrote one observer, “eager, happy supporters approached him with affection, yet with a kind of deference and reserve. They did not grab him or slap him on the back. They shook his hand and tried to say something polite and timely. ‘You’ll be prime minister, John.’ ‘This is only the beginning.’ ”9
But inside the party, in December 1956, the results of his triumph were anything but clear. The new leader remained suspicious of staff in the party’s national office, despite William Rowe’s early departure as national director.10 Diefenbaker muddled for weeks over a successor while Allister Grosart, Gordon Churchill, and Dalton Camp separately attempted to manage the party offices and protect their long-serving occupants. George Hees hovered in the background, also hoping for a leading organizational role. At the end of January 1957 Grosart, Churchill, and Camp signed a temporary agreement assigning duties among the triumvirate and giving Churchill effective dominance. Camp began planning for an election campaign but met frustration. “Churchill dithered. He could not be prodded from his House of Commons office. To Gordon a discussion of a problem was indistinguishable from a decision; memoranda became plans in progress; a private understanding was immediately assumed to be a wide consensus; he would not answer mail, all communication was verbal. Gordon spent his days confronting his problems and considering the possibilities; at the end of the day, nothing had been untouched and everything had come under the close scrutiny and the intense, frowning gaze. Yet nothing was decided, nothing achieved.”11
After three weeks, Camp wrote to Churchill setting out his comprehensive thoughts on an election campaign, suggesting an urgent need for decisions on funding, advertising, platform, and timetable. Shortly afterwards, Diefenbaker announced that Churchill would take charge of Tory headquarters and organization, while George Hees would tour the country to prepare for the national campaign. The arrangement lasted a few days, until Churchill gave up his role without warning, apparently to be replaced by Allister Grosart. This prompted Camp’s resignation as director of publicity. Diefenbaker, who had not spoken to Camp since the convention three months earlier, met him three days later, by accident, at the annual press gallery dinner, embraced him, and demanded: “What is this?…What is that letter all about?…I have not read it, you understand? I have not received it. It does not exist … Now, I want you with me. Do you understand? I want you with me, and that’s all there is to it!” Out of the confusion, Grosart emerged as national campaign manager while Camp took charge of national advertising and campaign control in the Atlantic provinces.12 This chaos, eventually given shape by nervous energy, a convincing cause, the leader’s inspiration, and public sympathy, somehow produced a powerful national campaign.
Across the country, party nominations went forward for a spring election. Conservatives attended their constituency conventions in untypical numbers, with fresh convictions and new glimmerings of hope. From Ottawa, Diefenbaker sought out a few leading candidates on his own - three of them unsuccessfully. Eugene Forsey, the feisty research director of the Canadian Labour Congress and connoisseur of the rules of parliament, who had fought the 1948 by-election for the CCF against George Drew, declined the leader’s invitation on personal grounds. Charlotte Whitton, the equally feisty mayor of Ottawa, seemed to want into the race but could not decide on a suitable constituency; and when she engaged a city councillor in a mild fistfight she killed her chances.13 Pierre Sévigny, the party’s contact with Premier Duplessis, pleaded to Diefenbaker that he was already overworked and underappreciated as an organizer in Quebec, could not find a winning constituency, and “would much prefer to run in a by-election sometime after the June balloting.”14
Before the vote there was one more session of parliament. It would be short, commencing in early January. The Liberal government remained confident despite its mauling over the pipeline. Louis St Laurent courteously informed the new leader of the opposition in February that he would dissolve the House in April for a general election on June 10. The government had a minimal program for the session: finance minister Walter Harris’s budget, a modest scheme of hospital insurance, and legislation to create the Canada Council, which would be endowed with the windfall proceeds of $100 million from two large estates. The Harris budget was a cautious affair, predicting continued growth in the economy, holding the line on taxes, projecting a surplus of $152 million, and offering a modest increase of $6 a month (to $46) for old age pensioners.15
Confident and unflamboyant leadership, the assumption of federal predominance, a gradually emerging scheme of social welfare, a respected place in international councils: these were the marks of the postwar Liberal regime. They were familiar, generally satisfying, and unexciting. By 1957 they were tinged indelibly with complacency. The party had ceased to generate policy, and its electoral organization had withered. Members of the government - and many, even, among the observant public - judged that the Liberal Party, with its inheritance of Mackenzie King’s genius for caution and sound administration, had found the keys to everlasting power. Comfortable administration seemed to have replaced politics. Few Liberals believed that Canadians would be so foolish as to turn them out. Yet the pipeline debate had left its residue of unease, not so much over policy as over the government’s heavy-handedness. The regime’s self-assurance was troubling, and the Conservative message that Liberal cabinets had usurped the House’s powers - and thus, perhaps, the country’s liberties - struck popular chords.
In 1957 John George Diefenbaker was the ideal person to exploit the country’s unease, to revive the national political duel. After years of calm, the voters were ready for some turbulence, some stirring of the blood. Diefenbaker was soon being referred to familiarly as “Dief” and “Dief the Chief”: the formerly private nicknames quickly took their place as icons beside the image of “Uncle Louis,” which now seemed old-fashioned, quaint, decrepit, tired like the man. Besides affectionate informality, Diefenbaker’s nicknames came to symbolize the evangelistic reformer thundering from the platform as from the pulpit, decrying the sin of pride, offering leadership on the way to the promised land. His excitement was electric. In the early winter of 1957 he crisscrossed the country testing and refining his message.
During this short session Diefenbaker spent less time than usual in the House. After a brief respite over New Year’s at Lord Beaverbrook’s home in the Bahamas, he was back in parliament to speak in the opening debate in January.16 He moved a Conservative amendment on supply in February. He attacked the Liberal budget in March for its overtaxation, its lack of generosity to pensioners, and its failure to assist the poorer provinces. He embarrassed the government by supporting proposals in the preliminary report of the Gordon Commission on Canada’s economic prospects to limit the effects of foreign investment. He lectured the cabinet on its indifference to farmers. Above all - with an election approaching - he gave Conservative MPs fresh energy and confidence, sustaining the initiative that had built up during the pipeline debate of the previous year.
Diefenbaker’s performance in the House was practised and melodramatic. When parliament met in January, the country faced a national railway strike that gave the new leader his theme: the country was drifting under a government that was tired and smug. Patrick Nicholson described the scene.
He had pushed aside his chair in his familiar gesture, clearing a little space of floor between desks and chairs. In this corral he paced like a caged lion while he denounced the government, now angry, now hectoring, now pleading and now questioning. With right hand on hip, in his familiar stance holding back the imagined counsel’s gown, he asked innocently: “What does the government do?” Then the accusing forefinger shot out towards the Prime Minister, and he charged: “It continues its policy of being resolute in irresolution.” When the Prime Minister smiled at his words, he snarled back: “The Prime Minister smiles regarding a problem that affects the hearts and purses of Canadians everywhere, that affects the economy of this country.”
The assault continued for forty minutes, as “his scathing and sarcastic words rang nasally round the Commons Chamber like a trumpet call of a Guardian Angel,” ending in a motion that accused the government of “indifference, inertia and lack of leadership … and disregard of the rights of Parliament.” Members of the cabinet shifted uneasily, knowing there was truth in his words.17
THE MOST DISTURBING POLITICAL EVENT OF THE SESSION OCCURRED ON APRIL 4, 1957, when the Canadian ambassador to Egypt, E.H. Norman, jumped to his death from the roof of the embassy building in Cairo. Norman had entered the Canadian foreign service in 1940 with a distinguished academic record in Japanese studies from the University of British Columbia, Cambridge, and Columbia. His initial posting in Japan was followed during the Second World War by intelligence work in Ottawa; and in 1945 he was reposted to General MacArthur’s headquarters in Tokyo to assist the occupation administration. In 1950 he was recalled to Ottawa for an intensive security review that resulted in his formal clearance. In 1951 and later, his name featured in testimony before the US Senate internal security subcommittee as a possible Soviet agent, and in mid-March 1957 Norman’s purported record was raised again. The legal counsel to the subcommittee, Robert Morris, read into the record excerpts from an “executive agency security report” casting doubt on Norman’s activities, and transcripts of the hearings were released to the press. By this time Norman occupied the sensitive role of Canadian ambassador to Egypt, where he had arrived just before the outbreak of the Suez war in 1956.
On March 14, 1957, in the House, the new leader of the opposition asked the secretary of state for external affairs, Lester Pearson, “whether, if it is found that there is no justification for these allegations, the strongest possible protest will be made to the United States against this attack which is detrimental not only to the Canadian diplomat but to Canadian international relations.”18 The minister replied that the subcommittee had improperly released its record without previously informing the Canadian government. The transcript, he said, “contains a great many innuendoes and insinuations that Mr. Norman was a Communist.” These claims were previously known, and Norman had been cleared years before in “a special and exhaustive security check.” Pearson praised Norman as “a devoted, efficient and loyal official… who is doing extremely important work at a very difficult post in a way which commanded my wholehearted admiration and deserves my full support.” The subcommittee’s “slanders and unsupported insinuations” should be regarded with contempt, and the Canadian government would be making strong protests to the United States for this treatment of a senior Canadian diplomat.19 For the moment Pearson’s statement and Diefenbaker’s support seemed to end the incident. Two weeks later Pearson wrote to Diefenbaker: “Our Ambassador in Cairo, Herbert Norman, has written to me to say that the reaction in the House of Commons to the renewed allegations against him in the United States Senate Subcommittee has increased his pride in and devotion to our institutions and our sense of fair play. Mr. Norman asked if I would pass on to you the expression of his sincere appreciation for the thoughtful and considerate manner in which you introduced the subject in the House on March 15th. This I am very glad to do.”20
When Norman fell to his death four days later after carefully preparing several suicide notes, Pearson told the House that Norman had been “deeply and understandably distressed by the resurrection … in Washington of certain old charges affecting his loyalty and which were disposed of years ago after a careful investigation … There will be much sorrow in America as in Canada at this terrible consequence of the Committee’s recklessness.” Diefenbaker added his own strong words. “I am shocked to learn of the death of Herbert Norman. Canada will be the poorer without the special knowledge of Asian affairs possessed by this devoted public servant. His tragic death seems to be attributable to the witch-hunting proclivities of certain congressional inquisitors in Washington who, lacking local targets, felt impelled to malign and condemn Canadian public servants as well. Desirable as it is to preserve our freedom against communism, this is but further evidence that trial by suspicion and conviction by innuendo have terrible results in the lives of those subjected to it.”21 From across the aisle, Pearson wrote a brief note of gratitude: “John - I have been deeply touched by your words - and I want to thank you very sincerely for them - as not only Norman’s chief - but as his old and close friend. Mike Pearson.”22
The Canadian and American press echoed the parliamentary condemnations. For the next few days Diefenbaker maintained his common front with the government, while rumours circulated in Washington that Pearson too was under suspicion by congressional investigators.23 To one critic who warned Diefenbaker of the dangers of communist subversion he replied:
The Secretary of State for External Affairs, on behalf of the Government, has made it perfectly clear on several occasions in recent years that a very thorough investigation of Mr. Norman under Canadian security procedures failed to show any justification for the charges which were levied against him by certain persons in the United States. If we are to indulge in the sort of trial by slander and conviction by innuendo, which is one of the principal badges of communism where it is in power, I do not see how we can pretend to have a better system of government than that existing behind the Iron Curtain. My remarks in the House of Commons last week on Mr. Norman’s death related wholly to our traditions of freedom and justice - traditions which do not exist under communism.24
A whirlwind of rumour, accusation, and denunciation followed Norman’s death. In Canada, comment focused on the US Senate subcommittee’s reckless disregard for the rights of a Canadian citizen in publicizing secret and unsubstantiated claims. But in Washington it emerged that the State Department had authorized release of the subcommmittee’s testimony. The issues - of suicide, secret intelligence, and the Cold War - were grist for the gossip mills and tempting subjects for political conflict. Yet Canadian politicians were restrained by decency in a personal tragedy, by solidarity with the government on subjects of national security, and by reluctance to strain relations with the United States. Diefenbaker shared these attitudes, and chose - like the minister - to focus his complaints on the irresponsibility of American congressional committees. On April 9 he asked Pearson whether Canada had lodged its protest “against the extra-judicial investigations of Canadians by congressional committees.” The next day Pearson made a formal statement to the House in reply. He read the Canadian letter of protest and the American response, which noted the independence of Congress and insisted that “any derogatory information developed during the hearings of the Subcommittee was introduced into the record by the Subcommittee on its own responsibility.”
In an effort, apparently, to limit the scope of Canadian criticism, Pearson then entered dangerous ground. He read the text of a new diplomatic note to Washington asking for assurances that “in the reciprocal exchange of security information” between the two countries, the US government would not pass such information to any body beyond executive control “without the express consent of the Canadian Government in each case.” Without such assurances, Canada threatened to withhold future security information dealing with Canadian citizens.25
The opposition’s initial response was to commend Pearson for the government’s directness. But as the implications of his words took hold, two disturbing possibilities emerged. The new request to the US suggested that the original source of the “executive agency security report” read to the subcommittee might be the RCMP security service; and if so, that in turn suggested that the reports about Norman’s early communist associations were believed to be accurate by the Canadian government. Pearson had previously suggested the opposite. For Diefenbaker, the potential issue was now political and demanded pursuit. Had Pearson misled the House? On April 12 Diefenbaker asked: “In order to clear up the matter once and for all, will the Minister say that the allegations and statements made before the Subcommittee of the United States Senate … specifically were untrue, unjustified and had no basis in fact?”26
Later in the day, Pearson responded with a further statement, in which he conceded for the first time that Norman was known to have had communist associations as a university student. Nevertheless, the minister insisted, the Canadian government’s security review had found him “a loyal Canadian in whom we could trust, and the decision was made to retain him … His loyal and devoted and most valuable service over the years in positions of increasing importance have never given us any cause to regret that decision.” But he did not answer Diefenbaker’s question about the accuracy of the subcommittee’s record on Norman.27
Diefenbaker replied that Pearson’s statement was “equivocal,” and added that if no Canadian security information had passed to the Senate subcommittee, the government’s latest protest to the United States was meaningless. He asked: “Did any portion of the information transmitted by Canadian security bodies find improper use in the records of the United States Senate Committee?” In an extended and intricate round of debate, Pearson denied that any American security agency had misused Canadian intelligence, but was unclear about the source of the subcommittee’s information on Norman. Diefenbaker complained that Pearson had “either spoken too much or too little.” CCF and Social Credit spokesmen agreed, and the discussion ended in confusion.28
The episode exposed unexpected weaknesses in the political skills of Lester Pearson: he seemed to have walked into a morass, and in his distress to have dug himself in deeper. The House was left feeling that it had been deceived, that the government was floundering, that the truth remained hidden.
Was this an issue to be exploited in the forthcoming election? Diefenbaker was under conflicting pressures. He shared the government’s commitment to the Cold War alliance with the United States, and accepted its corollaries of a common defence and pooled systems of intelligence gathering. He understood the need for ministerial discretion and silence in matters of security, and was sympathetic to the personal aspect of the case. He was a committed civil libertarian with a strong sense of fairness. On the other hand, he was attracted by hints of conspiracy, he could see Pearson’s discomfort, he was genuinely offended by the Senate subcommittee’s impudence - and he was now aware, through press reports and his own correspondence, of much more sweeping charges of subversion that vaguely included Pearson himself.29
The daily pressure for debate ended when the House was dissolved on April 12. Diefenbaker had a short time to reflect before the rough and tumble of the election campaign. One supporter wrote to him that reports of his assault on Pearson were “very disturbing … I feel more jolted by your attack than at any other single incident and am doubtful whether the P.C. party is putting expediency ahead of principle … To attempt to belittle Pearson for an apparent political advantage for election purposes is wrong from every point of view. It is bringing Cdn politics down to the U.S. level … In short it is the smear tactics of a U.S. Congressional Committee.” Instead, he urged Diefenbaker to give Pearson proper credit for his protests, but to urge a more independent Canadian foreign policy.30 There were other, similar letters. By early May his own staff cautioned Diefenbaker to put the issue aside on the ground that the subject was in bad taste, and that to pursue it would alienate many “lukewarm Liberals” who were ready to vote Conservative.31 Diefenbaker did so, and the Norman case was virtually unmentioned during the next two months of campaigning. Mike Pearson, alone among Liberal ministers, seemed immune from criticism. But the incident marked the first occasion when Diefenbaker had reason to doubt Pearson’s word, or to perceive his innocence in the parliamentary battle. The politician stored away his suspicions and insights in his capacious memory.32
DONALD CREIGHTON’S MAGNIFICENT TWO-VOLUME BIOGRAPHY OF THE COUNTRY’S first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, was published in 1952 and 1955.33 The biography, with its entrancing picture of a practical and sometimes roguish visionary, found an eager audience among English-speaking Canadians who craved knowledge of and pride in their own history. For the slowly reviving Conservative Party, Creighton’s Macdonald was a timely gift. Members began to recall the party’s historic beginnings in their rhetoric.
On the inspiration of Donald Fleming, Conservative motions in the parliamentary supply debates of 1956 and 1957 urged that “the welfare of the Canadian people requires the adoption of a national development policy which will develop our natural resources for the maximum benefit of all parts of Canada.” The wording was meant to echo John A.’s National Policy, and to assert the party’s forward-looking interest in economic growth.34 But this was mere rhetoric: there was no program to match the aspiration. In November 1956, as the Conservative leadership convention approached, Diefenbaker’s Prince Albert friend Dr Glen Green asked his brother-in-law, Merril W. Menzies, a young economist who had recently completed his doctoral thesis on Canadian wheat policy, to write him with some thoughts on Conservative economic policy. When a bulky forty-three-page reply arrived, Green sent it on to Diefenbaker. Diefenbaker read it and indicated his interest to Green; and in January 1957 Menzies’s wife June - also an economist - followed up with a letter of impassioned political analysis to the new leader. Two weeks later Merril Menzies himself wrote to Diefenbaker, offering six to eight months of service to Diefenbaker in an “intensive study of national economic policies and problems.” The project would be jointly conducted by husband and wife, and Menzies emphasized that their approach “would be one of bringing economic analysis to bear on national problems, while leaving the political analysis to yourself.” “This suggestion,” Menzies noted, “may well be unique in Canadian politics, but if you think that it could make a valuable contribution to the development of a rounded and effective national policy it might be worth experimenting with it for a few months.” Diefenbaker saw the opportunity. After cursory inquiries about Menzies and a personal meeting in Vancouver, he offered Menzies an appointment as his policy adviser during the election campaign. For eight weeks in April, May, and June, Menzies accompanied Diefenbaker on the campaign train, producing a stream of memos as background for Diefenbaker’s election speeches. He became Diefenbaker’s prolific idea man.35 His wife disappeared into the background, though she presumably continued in informal collaboration with her husband on what they had initially seen as a joint venture.
Menzies had worked for the Liberal government, as an executive assistant to justice minister Stuart Garson, until after the 1953 general election. But he had left Garson out of frustration, convinced that the Liberal Party had slipped into a doctrinaire free market policy that left no positive role for the state in economic development. In the years since 1953, he had worked out what he saw as a coherent approach to Canadian economic growth which found its historic basis in Macdonald’s National Policy. Menzies was convinced that development, if left to the market, would shatter the east-west links of the national economy and bring economic integration with the United States. After 1950 the Liberal Party had taken that path, and under the inspiration of C.D. Howe it would not deviate from it. Only a revived Conservative Party, in Menzies’s view, could save the country from disintegration. But under George Drew the party had remained frozen in reaction, blindly committed to “free enterprise,” and lacking any understanding of the historic role of the national government. Menzies told Diefenbaker: “I have been acutely conscious of the emphasis you have been putting on the need to formulate a national development policy … The fact that you as a politician have discerned the necessity of such a policy is greatly encouraging to me after many years of frustration.”36
Menzies’s call for a program of development inspired by Macdonald’s continental policy, aimed particularly at growth in the Atlantic provinces, the west, and the north, and infused with passionate conviction was brilliantly attuned to John Diefenbaker’s mood and intuitions in 1957. Menzies’s approach justified and gave coherence to Diefenbaker’s long-nurtured sense of political grievance by transcending his personal resentments: what he had felt, Menzies seemed to tell him, was not merely personal frustration, but the nation’s forgotten destiny. Diefenbaker had been right to think that both the Liberal and the Conservative parties had neglected, misconceived, and betrayed the country’s interests. He was right to think that under his leadership the nation could rediscover itself. He was an outsider because those at the centre had lacked vision. Now he could give the nation back its purpose and its soul.
Merril Menzies was a scrupulous analyst with a sense of the complexity of the Canadian economy and a scepticism about slogans and stereotypes. But he was moved by an overriding belief in a distinct Canadian existence that might be lost. That conviction reflected the views of other thoughtful Canadians in the 1950s, including many Liberals like the mildly nationalist royal commissioner Walter Gordon and the Montreal Star’s editor, George Ferguson. Menzies alone managed to shape his thoughts into a political and economic framework of justification for the leadership of John Diefenbaker; and once in Diefenbaker’s company, he fed Diefenbaker the phrases and slogans the party leader needed to convey that passionate vision to the country. As never before, Diefenbaker was inspired - and Menzies was his muse. Diefenbaker himself had no talent for coherent economic and social analysis. His political discontents had previously been expressed in sharp but disconnected criticisms of his opponents. Now Menzies - another westerner who viewed the country from outside the Ontario-Quebec heartland - transformed those criticisms, like magic, into a positive vision. As the letters and memos flowed from Menzies in the spring of 1957, the leader took his pencil to them, underlining, making marginal summaries, reshaping Menzies’s thoughts to his own electoral needs.37
“From Confederation until the early 1930’s,” Menzies wrote, “there was a powerful unifying force in the nation - what Bruce Hutchison is fond of calling the national myth. This unifying force was the challenge and the development of the West. It engendered a powerful but not xenophobic nationalism and was made possible and given shape and direction by Macdonald’s National Policy.” That policy had effectively ended in 1930.
Since then we have had no national policy - and we have had no transcending sense of national purpose, no national myth, no unifying force.
Practically throughout the entire course of this period, bankrupt of any sense of national purpose, there has been a Liberal administration in Ottawa. This has been particularly unfortunate since that party has never understood the significance of national policy and the imperative need for a transcending sense of national purpose.
They have been vaguely aware of the vacuum and have attempted to fill it by policies designed to mitigate regional disparities in income and welfare. This was a necessary task but as one actor remarked of another: “He’s a fine chap. There is absolutely nothing wrong with him - except that he has no character!”
Liberal policy has no character, no vision, no purpose - with appalling consequences to our parliamentary system and national unity. Regionalism in many vital respects is growing not diminishing (B.C. for example). The national government is tolerated because its policy is to keep everyone comfortable (more or less) and to “keep the boom going” - but it is not respected. It is undermining parliamentary government and national unity by failing to provide a transcending unifying force - the essential myth - by its deliberate determination to avoid a national policy, by its acceptance of a policy of drift which can have only one conclusion…
Time is running out and only the Conservative party can stem this complacent drift … The present drift can only be stemmed by a new unifying force, a new national policy, a new national myth.
That is why I have proposed a new national policy - the NEW FRONTIER POLICY; a new national strategy - that of “Defense in Depth”; a new national myth - the “North” in place of the “West” which “died” a quarter of a century ago.38
Menzies insisted that a Conservative “New Frontier Policy” would be distinct from the passive, piecemeal, pork-barrel approach of the Liberal Party. “The difference between the Liberals and Conservatives is fundamental - it is one of principles - and it is vital for our future that the nation become alive to that difference.” The best way to assure that was “to enunciate a new and striking policy which sums up that difference, and then to dramatize that Policy by a few audaciously far-sighted proposals.”
In his paper for Glen Green, Menzies had linked a series of programs in a national scheme: an export policy that would assure Canadian use of the country’s energy resources; a national electricity grid; power development on the Columbia and Fraser rivers in British Columbia, the Hamilton River in Labrador, and the Bay of Fundy; and construction of the South Saskatchewan dam. Now he focused on the romantic idea of the North with an “audacious proposal.” There should be a new province between the 60th and 65th parallels, including the southern Yukon, the southern Mackenzie Valley, and Great Slave Lake. There, he foresaw that mining and hydroelectric power would provide “the dynamic impulse” - to be followed by agriculture, forestry, the fishery, and a local consumer market. The new province would be Diefenbaker’s new West; its creation and settlement, Menzies hinted, would make Diefenbaker the new nation-builder, the new Macdonald. The proposal was accompanied by a series of detailed suggestions for railway, highway, waterway, hydro power, and public service projects to be planned and financed for the north by the federal government.39
The idea of a new province was too audacious for Diefenbaker, but the inspirational language and many of the projects were not. He incorporated them in his election speeches. He listened more and more to Menzies and was flattered by his adviser’s encouragement. On Menzies’s urging, he disregarded most of the party’s formal efforts to produce policy statements and an electoral program, picking up only those that repeated or reinforced his own and Menzies’s thoughts.40 By mid-April Diefenbaker could already sense that what he said had resonance in the country. Others in the party sensed it too, and they threw themselves energetically into the campaign behind him. What John Diefenbaker said was Conservative policy - and nothing else mattered.
WHEN PARLIAMENT DISSOLVED, THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY WAS READY TO LAUNCH its election campaign under the new leader. Diefenbaker’s parliamentary office was in the efficient hands of Derek Bedson, the former private secretary to George Drew. The party’s research staff under Donald Eldon was working in tandem with Merril Menzies to provide a series of policy statements consistent with Diefenbaker’s views. Allister Grosart was coordinating the national campaign, and fundraising was progressing well. In the key province of Ontario, Diefenbaker had confided local organization to Premier Leslie Frost and his provincial party.41 Dalton Camp’s advertising firm, Locke, Johnson, had produced a campaign slogan that summed up the party’s miraculously transformed character: “It’s time for a Diefenbaker government.”42 The opening rally of the national campaign would take place at Massey Hall in Toronto on April 25, 1957.
Despite these encouraging signs, Diefenbaker doubted his own performance. “I think I will be through the session without too much trouble - altho’ I don’t think I have done at all well and am just getting full control now,” he wrote to his brother on April 11. “It’s a very onerous and trying position as L.O. - no one can really know unless he has the job.”43 His congenital difficulty in organizing his time, his thoughts, and his files had worsened with his new responsibilities. “Tomorrow I shall start on working on my speeches for Newfoundland,” he told Elmer. But three days later he wrote that “I have absolutely nothing ready for Newfoundland at all and will have to put the speech together after I get there.” On top of that, he could not complete his income tax return because he had lost his previous statement, “and I think the best thing to do would be to call on the authorities … and have them help me make it out.” He sent Elmer a memorandum for safekeeping until he could meet officials in Saskatoon to settle the affair.44
As leader of the party, Diefenbaker could devote little time to his own constituency or to family matters. For help and reassurance in both, he depended on Elmer. John’s mother was now bedridden, and after two months of anxiety about nursing assistance at home she was moved to the University Hospital in May.45 At a distance from Prince Albert, Diefenbaker worried, too, that he might lose his own seat. “I wonder how things are going in Prince Albert,” he wrote to Elmer in February, “for the Grits are out to beat me at all costs … Gee it would be my end if I got defeated personally and I would be out for sure.”46 “I hope that the PA situation is in fair shape, although I am worried,” he repeated a few days later. “What they are doing there I do not know but will call Roy Hall in a few minutes.”47 In late March he reported that “the National Organization in Ottawa seems to be operating very well now under AI Grosart but I am naturally concerned about Prince Albert. I think one of these weeks when you are free I wish you would spend some time up there and make a survey of the situation and let me know what you think of things … I could arrange for an advance of $500 and your expenses.”48 When Mary Diefenbaker’s illness kept Elmer at home, John lamented: “I wish you could have gone to Prince Albert as I certainly will need help there.”49 For his only intensive campaign visit to the constituency from April 18 to 24, Diefenbaker hoped “that you will be able to attend all these meetings - you know so much about sound electioneering and get votes which no one else can succeed in getting.”50
The Liberal Party, which had run third to Diefenbaker in Prince Albert in 1953, was determined to recover the seat in 1957. The party appointed a full-time local campaign manager and in early April it held an overflow nomination meeting in the Arcade Hall, preceded by a noisy motor cavalcade. Dr Russ Partridge, a local dentist and former provincial party president, was acclaimed as the Liberal candidate. Diefenbaker’s organizers were briefly worried. They revived the Diefenbaker Clubs of 1953 and renewed their efforts to recruit Liberals and CCFers to the cause.51 For seven days in April John and Olive travelled the riding, attending meetings in Shellbrook, Smeaton, Nipawin, Canwood, Debden, Macdowall, and Choiceland, before flying back to Toronto for the opening of the national campaign. From then on, Prince Albert was out of his hands as he toured the country from east to west and back again.
When the leader flew into Toronto, his schedule was already looking frenetic. “This Pace Can Kill,” the Globe and Mail commented editorially. Diefenbaker’s leadership was “fresh and vigorous,” but the editors doubted it could long remain that way at the existing pace. His campaign managers, they advised, should slow him down for his own sake.52 They didn’t quite understand their man: Diefenbaker was reporting excellent health and an increase in weight.
He reached the platform at Massey Hall that night before a “wildly enthusiastic” audience and stood arm-in-arm with his Ontario candidates before his introduction by Frost as “a great Canadian, a man of the people, and the next Prime Minister of Canada.”53 This was the first of many appearances by the premier in the campaign. He made clear throughout that he was committed to Diefenbaker as someone who could deal fairly with the provinces in tax-sharing, and his Ontario organization provided muscle, both financial and human, to the nationwide campaign.54
Diefenbaker had arrived in Toronto with three draft speeches, prepared for him by Merril Menzies, Rod Finlayson, and Allister Grosart, “so that you could choose between them, or make use of parts of all of them.”55 As they had expected, the address that emerged on stage was his own, its unity emotional rather than logical. His aides knew that once Diefenbaker launched himself before an audience they could have no control over what he said, so their practical advice was limited to a few essentials. “Stress leadership, vision and a positive approach to problems,” Menzies suggested, “rather than being driven by the Liberal campaign to fighting on ground of their choosing -chiefly on negative issues and on criticism.” This was safe, since Diefenbaker had already made that choice of emphasis. His speeches were upbeat and evangelical, looking ahead to an era of bliss. But there was always some balancing reference to Liberal darkness, the loss of national purpose, the extinction of parliamentary government, if Canada could not recover “all the wisdom, all the faith and all the vision” of John A. Macdonald. Diefenbaker did not quite tell his audience he was John A. incarnate, but he insisted on a place in the apostolic succession. And in that succession, his contact was direct. No one stood between the Old Chieftain and the new Chief: an intervening half-century of Conservative leaders had vaporized.
I am of those who believe that this Party has a sacred trust, a trust in accordance with the traditions of Macdonald. It has an appointment with destiny, to plan and to build for a greater Canada. It has a sacred trust handed down to us in the tradition of Macdonald to bring about that Canada which is founded on a spirit of brotherhood, vision and faith - one Canada, with equality of opportunity for every citizen and equality for every province from the Atlantic to the Pacific.56
The new leader promised to place before the country, “not a policy of criticism alone, but one based on the needs of the present, the building of one Canada.” In that Canada, the provinces and Ottawa would share revenues in “a healthy division and balance … in a spirit of unity and amity, with mutual tolerance and respect.” All would benefit equally from a great new initiative.
We intend to launch a National Policy of development in the Northern areas which may be called the New Frontier Policy. Macdonald was concerned with the opening of the West. We are concerned with developments in the Provinces with provincial cooperation, and in our Northern Frontier in particular. The North, with all its vast resources of hidden wealth - the wonder and the challenge of the North must become our national consciousness. All that is needed, as I see it today, is an imaginative policy that will open its doors to Canadian initiative and enterprise. We believe in a positive National Policy of development, in contrast with the negative and haphazard one of today. We believe that the welfare of Canada demands the adoption of such a policy, which will develop our Natural Resources for the maximum benefit of all parts of Canada.
What is more, a new government would preserve and increase Canadian ownership of industry and resources, reduce taxes to eliminate surplus budgets, begin a vast and humane immigration program, provide farmers with fair prices, assist small business, end government monopolies in air transport and television broadcasting, restore parliamentary freedom, increase old age pensions, and resist communism at home and abroad. The party would take the country “back to the vision and the idealism of Canada’s first Nation Builder … My purpose and my aim with my colleagues on this platform will be to bring to Canada and to Canadians a faith in their fellow Canadians, faith in the future in the destiny of this country.”
The message was positive, generous, Utopian, a dreamscape for a people who “ask for a lift in heart.” Diefenbaker gave it to them. If there was contradiction, obscurity, imprecision, and wild hyperbole, so be it. What Diefenbaker offered first was faith. The rest could be left for another day, for without faith there would be no victory. The audience responded to his extraordinary gleaming eyes, his undulating voice and shaking jowls, his dashes of self-mockery and sarcasm, his assertion of that enticing northern vision. After Massey Hall, heartbeats quickened. Something was in the air that the Liberals could not manage. With variations of anecdote and local colour, the Massey Hall speech became the model for the entire campaign.57
From Toronto, Diefenbaker began a six-week odyssey, travelling twenty thousand miles by special railway car, air, and auto to every province.58 On the train, he was accompanied by Olive and a personal staff of six: George Hogan as train manager, Derek Bedson as private secretary, Merril Menzies as research assistant, Fred Davis as personal photographer, and two secretaries.59 A small group of reporters, usually only five or six, accompanied the tour, to be joined by local and regional correspondents at every stop. By later standards, the entourage and camp followers were a distinctly modest company.
As the campaign progressed, their mood changed from uncertainty to slightly disbelieving hope. The country was responding.60 Friendly headlines in the Globe and Mail traced the leader’s progress across the country: “Ontario Enthusiasm Moving East” (April 29), “Ontario Premier’s Aid Could Help Turn Tide” (May 4), “Crowd of 1500 at Guelph Welcomes PC Chieftain” (May 14), “Diefenbaker Finds Trend Toward PCs” (May 16), “Liberals Are Worried PC Party Tells West Audiences” (May 20), “Diefenbaker Hailed by 3800 in Victoria” (May 22), “Diefenbaker Receives His Greatest Acclaim in Vancouver Overflow” (May 24), “Liberals in Panic: Groundswell for PCs Noted by Diefenbaker” (May 30), “PC Leader’s Campaign Likened to a Crusade” (June 1).
Diefenbaker’s choice was a whistle-stop campaign that made room for endless brief stops, handshaking, and repetitious speeches. In mid-May the Globe still complained that his pace was too hectic and fatiguing, his message too ill-focused. “He is making dozens of minor addresses which draw purely local attention, when he ought to be making a handful of major ones which forcibly impress themselves - and himself - upon the situation.”61 The American Embassy, reporting the campaign to Washington, made a similar judgment: “Indications at the present time are that the opposition parties, led by the Progressive Conservatives, have thus far failed to develop issues which might capture and fire the imagination of voters across Canada… Mr. Diefenbaker, while an earnest and capable orator and possessed of a zeal that can arouse audiences thus far seems to lack the political appeal necessary to draw a large enough following to defeat the Liberals.”62
While Liberal candidates played on the party’s authority and experience, Diefenbaker stressed his links with local communities and the common people, and his interest in their needs. He cared, he had roots, he was one of them. Wherever he could claim them, his ties were personal. In Toronto he recalled that he had first seen the City Hall as a child in 1900 when the Boer War veterans returned; in Greenwood he spoke of his happy school days; in Scarborough he remembered his early years; in Saskatoon and Prince Albert he had come home.63 Olive - despite a painful and recurrent slipped disk -was always with him on the platform, smiling regally and passing him reassuring notes and reminders.64 By now she was his closest and most trusted counsellor, a calm presence as he raced across the country. The frenetic schedule let up only on Sundays; John Meisel calculated that Diefenbaker campaigned actively for thirty-nine days (as compared with Louis St Laurent’s twenty-eight) and made personal appeals in 130 constituencies (as opposed to fewer than 120 for St Laurent).65
What the Globe and Mail missed in its editorial comments on his lack of focus was the way Diefenbaker “forcibly impressed” himself on his audiences. His impact was made not by extended discussion of complex issues, but by his urgency and zeal, his appeals to national greatness and common sacrifice, his promise of deliverance. As Meisel noted, his imagery “was highly evocative to anyone reared in the Christian faith … The voter needed only to vote for the Diefenbaker party and he would at once become allied to those who were creating a dazzlingly bright and promising future. Each voter could, so Mr. Diefenbaker seemed to say, participate in an effort which would make his own dreams come true.”66 By contrast, Prime Minister St Laurent was the dignified corporate chairman dryly reporting another successful year. “He seemed,” commented the Winnipeg Free Press, “hardly to recognize the existence of a dissident group of shareholders demanding a change in the management. ” 67
John Diefenbaker tapped the country’s discontents. The mood and the momentum of the campaign were increasingly with him and his party. His audiences grew larger, his appeals more confident, his jokes and anecdotes more relaxed and perfectly timed. Flattering pictures from his tour photographer blanketed the national press. Louis St Laurent, on his side, grew more irritable and aggressive. While the Conservative campaign had a vital centre and a target of attack, the Liberal campaign seemed listless, inflexible, and insensitive. As the mood turned against them, Liberal candidates squabbled publicly and made headlines by offending their audiences. The most vivid incident occurred at the prime minister’s rally in Maple Leaf Gardens, when a protesting youth was pushed roughly from the platform.68 The party’s insistent criticism of the Conservative slogan “It’s time for a Diefenbaker government” played into the opposition’s hands. For the Conservatives, every mention of it was free publicity; and it suggested that Liberals too could vote for Diefenbaker without becoming Tories. In 1957 Diefenbaker could not be discredited - even when, at the last moment, he falsely accused the prime minister of impropriety in seeking Liberal votes from members of the armed forces. In the circumstances, this seemed no more than normal electoral exaggeration.69
The leader of the opposition kept up his breathless pace of whistle-stopping and overnight flights into early June, speaking half a dozen times or more each day. Diefenbaker had exhausted the handful of national reporters who kept with him through the campaign and showed signs of strain himself. The Globe’s Clark Davey recalled: “At the end of the day he was wiped out … We did not know how he did it. Near the end, he was in Edmonton and he made a speech that was absolutely incomprehensible. It was gibberish.” The crowds didn’t care; they just cheered.70
Diefenbaker knew that the tide was with him, but a lifetime of political defeat had taught him caution. A Conservative majority would require gains of more than eighty-two seats - and no one was predicting that. The country had forgotten about political landslides. Gallup showed growing Conservative support, but a comfortable Liberal lead in popularity. Members of the press travelling with the Conservative leader - a few of whom were unblushing enthusiasts - talked of thirty or thirty-five gains. When Peter Dempson asked Diefenbaker on June 1 for his prediction, Diefenbaker was confident enough to respond, off the record, that he expected to win ninety-seven seats - but that was still thirty-six short of a majority. “I couldn’t believe he was serious,” wrote Dempson. “I decided it must have been wishful thinking on his part.”71
In retrospect, critics suggested that Diefenbaker had ignored or abandoned any appeal to Quebec in 1957. The basis for this claim was two strategy documents written by Gordon Churchill after the 1953 election, pointing out that disproportionate campaign spending in Quebec in 1953 (and earlier) had failed to produce results. To form a government, Churchill concluded, the party should distribute its electoral funds equitably across the country, with special attention to reinforcing strength in Ontario, the west, and the Atlantic provinces.72
When Churchill’s first paper was publicized by the Toronto Telegram’s Judith Robinson in 1954, the Financial Post accused him of saying that “time spent wooing support in Quebec is wasted.” Members of the caucus were displeased, and Churchill “subsided into a discreet silence.” Diefenbaker alone, among his colleagues, told Churchill that “those articles of Judith Robinson’s were good. You were right.” In January 1956, when Léon Balcer became president of the party and publicly forecast twenty-five Quebec seats for the party in 1957, Churchill fumed.
I was annoyed but kept silent. Once again, I thought, we will place the main emphasis on Quebec; once again funds will flow to that province; once again the other areas of Canada will be taken for granted or be neglected. How long and how often would the Conservative Party, in good faith of course, and with the best of motives, immolate itself in a vain attempt to achieve the impossible? To me it was the negation of practical politics. A party exists and struggles in the hope that it will eventually form the government. Its major effort must be in those areas in which it has strength, with the hope that the less favorable areas will not be entirely unproductive.73
Churchill proceeded to write his second paper, “Conservative Strategy for the Next Election,” but revealed it to no one until he had committed himself to Diefenbaker’s leadership. He showed it to the candidate shortly before the convention, and Diefenbaker took note. “The success of the Conservatives in the general election of 1957,” Churchill later wrote, “was not the direct result of my strategy paper of 1956. No such claim has ever been advanced. I had simply set down on paper for the first time a realistic view of politics. By great good fortune an equitable distribution of funds was made in 1957; no area was deprived of attention, the leader had no illusions as to where support could be expected. Quebec was not neglected. The final results, again by good fortune, corresponded with my forecast.”74
This was astute politics. In 1957 the party allocated national campaign funds to provincial organizations in strict proportion to the number of seats, at $3000 per constituency. Quebec, like the rest, received its share, but other regions benefited from a fair distribution as compared with 1953.75 Diefenbaker visited the province three times during the campaign, struggled through one campaign speech in his execrable French, and questioned why his bilingual colleague Donald Fleming could manage only three major speeches in Quebec.76 But in a notable display of prudence, the Quebec campaign was left primarily to Léon Balcer, Pierre Sévigny, Paul Lafontaine, William Hamilton, and the low-key efforts of Maurice Duplessis and the Union Nationale machine. The party’s Quebec forces were divided uneasily between Balcer, with his Duplessiste links, and an ineffective “Comité des Bleus” inspired by Paul Lafontaine, which boasted among its members “the sons of three former ministers in the federal cabinet(s)” of Borden, Meighen, and Bennett.77 The Comité looked backward rather than forward.
As the campaign closed, the Globe and Mail rose above its doubts and pitched enthusiastically for change. “Mr. Diefenbaker is fully competent to become Prime Minister … This is the man, this is the party, Canadians should vote for on Monday,” the editors wrote on June 8.78 On election day the paper spoke to Canadians in Diefenbaker’s own terms:
They can improve their nation, they can improve their own status in it, by getting out and electing a Conservative government headed by Mr. John Diefenbaker.
Mr. Diefenbaker has conducted a most courageous and convincing campaign. He has persuaded countless thousands of Canadians that with him as their leader they can enjoy greater freedom, greater progress, and greater security in both.79
But doubt remained widespread that the Tories could win. On June 8 Maclean’s magazine went to press assuming a Liberal victory. Reporters for three Conservative-inclined newspapers, political scientist Murray Beck observed, “perceived many of the signs of political upheaval, but … generally interpreted them to mean no more than insubstantial losses for the Liberals.”80 The last Gallup Poll before the election gave the Liberals 48 percent of the vote and the Conservatives 34 percent, without any breakdown of seats.81 The American ambassador, Livingston Merchant, cabled Washington that the Liberals would probably win a clear majority with slight losses, commenting that the campaign was “thus far marked by absence of clear national issues and apathy among voters in many sections of Canada. Several Cabinet Ministers including Pearson experiencing tough fight but favored [to] be re-elected.”82
Diefenbaker’s own travelling campaign manager, George Hogan, wrote out his predictions on the last weekend before the poll and handed them to the leader in an envelope. “Not less than 75; not more than 111,” he guessed.
| Lib | 150 |
| Tory | 82 |
| CCF | 20 |
| Socred | 7 |
| Others | 6 |
| 265 |
Hogan saw the campaign as a preliminary: “We have destroyed the outer defences of Liberal power, and now, for the first time in a quarter of a century, are in a position to attack the fortress itself.” All credit for this achievement, he believed, lay with John Diefenbaker: “not only because of an oratorical marathon that has aroused the nation, but for a political shrewdness that has squeezed the last ounce of advantage from our party’s limited opportunities and limited resources.”83
The campaign’s Ontario manager, Eddie Goodman, was slightly more hopeful. He told Diefenbaker that the party would win between ninety and a hundred seats and would deprive the Liberals of a majority. “If we could win a few in Quebec,” he added, “we could beat them.” Diefenbaker, he recalled, “pierced me with his magnetic gaze and said slowly and deliberately, ‘No, I am going to win. I am going to get the largest block of seats in the House. I feel it every place I go, and while I know that other leaders have believed this in the past, I am sure that the support I am getting from people who are not Conservatives will project itself into seats.’ ”84
“It has been a tremendous fight and I am still in wonderful shape physically - truly amazing,” John wrote to Elmer on June 4.85 He was at his peak as the marathon ended with a mass meeting in Hamilton on June 7. On Saturday, June 8, John and Olive flew overnight from Toronto to Saskatoon (their third overnight flight during the long campaign), arriving for the early morning drive to Prince Albert, where they would await returns at home. But even now - recalling old failures and humiliations - the leader worried over his own seat, so for him the campaign was incomplete. He gave last minute instructions to Elmer:
Naturally my worry is P.A. You can vote at the advance poll in Saskatoon as you will be absent as a traveller - and then be in P.A. on Election day.
(1) I’ll arrive in Saskatoon on Saturday morning flight June 8th at 6.30 am (Tell Svoboda so he can arrange Radio or T.V.).
(2) Then to PA for Sat and Sunday after seeing Mother if it can be arranged as we leave Saskatoon by car at 8 am…
(3) Be sure that all the polls are carefully scrutineered and if a school for scrutineers could be held to go over their rights and duties it would help an awful lot. (Ask Art Pearson re this)
(4) Art phoned that they would have a reception on Sat. (that’s fine) -do they want me to make a rapid run through the Constituency - if so it should be put over Radio showing time when I will be at each place. (This is just a suggestion - It might be better for me to be on Central Avenue on Saturday afternoon.)
(5) Every vote will count so be sure that cars will be picking up all those people on North side of River before 7.15 am - so that Clyne H. and his friends won’t beat us to the draw. I have told Art P about this. Tell him to excuse repetition…
…I am feeling fine.
Give Miss Pound and all in the Committee Room my best.
John86
Despite the candidate’s anxieties, the local campaign seemed well in hand. The city was saturated in politics, perhaps slightly bored, and ready for a decision. After some routine mainstreeting on Saturday in company with a retinue of political friends, Diefenbaker, looking “drawn and tired,” set out for a final meeting in Nipawin. There he predicted victory in public for the first time: “On Monday,” he told his friendly audience, “I’ll be prime minister.”87
LIKE HIS CAMPAIGN WORKERS, DIEFENBAKER WAS UP EARLY ON ELECTION DAY. THE weather was wet and cool. John and Olive voted early at a poll three blocks from the house, and then the local boy mainstreeted down the hill from home for most of the morning. “He walked the length of the main part of Central Avenue and back, shaking hands and greeting old friends, tossing off a quip to one, an inquiry to another, and of course never at a loss for a name.”88 In the afternoon he slept, to be awakened only with the early returns from the Atlantic provinces.
In the company of Allister Grosart, Elmer, Olive, and the Connells, Diefenbaker received the early results at home on CBC radio in a mood of growing exultation. Twenty-one seats in the Atlantic provinces - a gain of fifteen; nine in Quebec - a gain of five; sixty-one in Ontario - a stunning gain of twenty-eight. By the time the count reached the Ontario-Manitoba border, eight ministers - including the giant C.D. Howe - had lost their seats and an unbelievable Conservative victory looked likely. At home in Prince Albert, Diefenbaker took his lead in the first poll reporting and never looked back. By the end of the count he had a 6500-vote advantage over the second-place CCF candidate. The Chief and his entourage trooped downtown to the campaign committee rooms in the Lincoln Hotel as first reports from western Canada began to cascade in. There, too, the Liberals trailed, but prairie and British Columbia victories were shared three ways among Conservatives, CCFers, and Social Crediters. The Liberals stalled at 105, and the Conservatives moved ahead, though still short of an overall majority. As local and national results were chalked up on tarpaper panels in the Lincoln Hotel basement, the room vibrated with whoops and cheers.89 In the back rooms the whiskey bottles were broken out.
But John Diefenbaker was not present for most of this local drama. In 1957 Prince Albert had no direct link to network television, so the leader had agreed to fly to Regina to appear on CBC television. From the Lincoln Hotel, Diefenbaker was driven to Prince Albert airport for the ninety-minute flight to the south. In the Canadian Pacific aircraft he sat with a few journalists, receiving the latest returns from the pilot’s radio and quietly studying the draft text of his prepared remarks.90 These had been typed on two pages of Diefenbaker letterhead, subsequently torn in half to produce four sheets, and embellished in his own sweeping handwriting. There were originally two variations of the speech, a winner and a loser, but by flight time Diefenbaker had discarded the loser’s paragraph and stroked out the alternative second-paragraph heading, “If Conservatives Win.” That great “if had dissolved in certainty, and Diefenbaker would later deny that he had ever prepared a substitute.91 (The opening and closing paragraphs fitted either victory or loss.) Sometime that evening he added another few handwritten sentences, both impulsive and humble, to his winner’s declaration.
In Regina, confident now that he had won a plurality of seats, Diefenbaker was led to a barren TV studio for the victory address to the nation. This was his public dedication. He faced the camera directly.
My fellow Canadians:
This is a moment not for elation but dedication. The complete results are not yet known but I feel that at this time I must express my deep gratitude and appreciation to all of those whose votes today were cast on behalf of the Party which I have the honour to lead. In joining with me and the Conservative party in our crusade for a new awakening of the spirit of parliamentary democracy, they have shown beyond doubt that ours is a cause in which millions of Canadians fervently believe without regard to party. I acknowledge with warmest thanks the hours of hard work, the good wishes and the devotion of so many of my fellow Canadians to the Conservative Party and myself.
This is a great day for our Party and I believe for Canadian democracy. As for our responsibilities to our fellow citizens we shall accept them I can assure you with the greatest humility. This is not the time to attempt to restate the issues of the campaign. We believe that the stand we have taken on many issues was the only one possible in the light of the facts. We are naturally deeply gratified that we have been endorsed by the people of Canada, but we are not unmindful of the great responsibility which has been placed upon us.
Diefenbaker turned his text slowly to the handwritten page.
I shall honor the trust you the Canadian people have given me.
I shall keep the faith - and maintain the spiritual things without which political parties as with individuals cannot lead a full life. I ask your prayers. With God’s help I shall do my best. “He who would be chiefest among you shall be servant of all.”
He paused to gaze deeply into the camera’s eye, and continued with the last page of typescript.
I now give you my pledge that we shall stand by the principles which we have enunciated during this election campaign. Our task is not finished. In many respects it has only just begun. I am sure that you will agree with me that conservatism has risen once again to the challenge of a great moment in our nation’s history. In answering that challenge we have done our best to express in word and action what we believe to be the will of millions of Canadians from the Atlantic to the Pacific.92
Prince Albert was exultant. In the leader’s absence, his committee rooms had overflowed. A local radio station urged citizens to drive to the airport for “the new prime minister’s” return at midnight. Dick Spencer described the scene:
A dizzying feeling of victory was sweeping the downtown as Central Avenue and the business core filled up with cars and horn-honking drivers. A steady stream of cars moved north over the railway bridge and turned east along the river road to the airport half a mile out of town. Local police constables were despatched by Chief Reg Brooman to help with parking at the airport. A sound car from the committee rooms, driven by Ed Jackson, swept ahead. “John’ll wanna make a speech,” Jackson explained.
An estimated fifteen hundred to three thousand people watched the plane land and taxi to a stop … Flash bulbs popped and a huge cheer went up as John Diefenbaker stepped out of the plane onto the ramp that had been wheeled out. He was dressed in a light grey raincoat. He doffed and waved his grey homburg and beamed a huge smile of victory. He feigned disbelief at the size of the crowd, raised his arms, shook his head and pressed into a sea of noisy well-wishers.93
Diefenbaker vainly shouted some words from his television address to the cheering crowd, then “tumbled into the lead car for a tumultuous cavalcade back into town” and was swallowed up in the Lincoln Hotel mob. A speech was impossible as well-wishers engulfed him, and he was soon rescued through a back door for the short drive home.94
On Tuesday morning Louis St Laurent telephoned. For the prime minister’s first call, Diefenbaker was absent in town, relaxing for a haircut at McKim’s two-chair barber shop, behind the cigar store and newsstand.95 Eventually St Laurent reached Diefenbaker at home, offering his congratulations and indicating that he expected, after a cabinet meeting, to give his resignation to Governor General Vincent Massey. Overnight the results had stabilized, and there was no doubt about winners and losers. The Conservatives had won 112 seats, the Liberals 105, the CCF 25, Social Credit 19, and independents 4. M.J. Coldwell and Solon Low, the two minor party leaders, had indicated their readiness to cooperate with a new government. St Laurent seemed eager to go.
While the congratulations poured in, Diefenbaker drove to Saskatoon to visit his mother at the University Hospital. This was his private dedication. Mary Diefenbaker, his lifelong goad, admonished John once more. “Do not forget the poor and afflicted,” he recalled her saying. “Do the best you can as long as you can.” Diefenbaker’s memory of the occasion was equivocal and perhaps resentful. “And that was the last time,” he wrote, “that she, with her Highland ancestry and their refusal to exult, ever said anything about the fact that I had become Prime Minister of my country.”96
The next day he flew off to Lac La Ronge on a fishing expedition with Fred Hadley, Tommy Martin, Harry Houghton, Duff Roblin, brother Elmer, and three reporters. Dressed casually in plaid shirt and Cowichan sweater, he perhaps caught three pickerel but was photographed with the whole team’s catch of eight. None of Diefenbaker’s fish, reported Peter Dempson, was large.
As he was leaving the boat at the end of the day, one of his friends jokingly said as he was exhibiting his catch:
“Not much of a fish you caught there, eh?”
“No,” replied Diefenbaker, a grin spreading across his face, “I caught the big one yesterday.”97
Diefenbaker was in an expansive mood. “It was the happiest time in his life,” Clark Davey remembered. “He was full of stories and anecdotes and boasted that Donald Fleming and Alvin Hamilton could have any portfolios they wanted.”98 After two days on the northern waters, the prime minister-elect was ready for Ottawa.