CHAPTER 13

A Leader at Bay

1963-1966

THE TELEGRAM was unrelenting. THE DAY AFTER DIEFENBAKER’S TRIUMPH in caucus, the lead editorial accused the prime minister of putting his own interest above that of the party: “John Diefenbaker yesterday decided that the sacrifice of his personal position as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, and Prime Minister until April 8, was too great a price to pay to save his party, and perhaps his Government.”

The political magic and force of personality that had once swayed thousands was strong enough to win support for his position from his party’s caucus and his cabinet colleagues. But the Conservative Party, including many of the members who yesterday pledged their support mingling cheers with tears, will pay dearly for this decision.

The party, as a political entity, is split as never before. The members will pay their account on election day as many of them undoubtedly must realize even now. The Prime Minister will lead his party into his fourth campaign, and has the satisfaction of knowing that no cabinet colleague was strong enough to unseat him, and only one had the courage to leave him.

It is impossible to say what price will be paid for this leadership and this satisfaction of Mr. Diefenbaker, but it will be huge in terms of political currency.¹

The prime minister, said the Telegram, had no reasonable policies for electors to judge: “no budget … no Government defense policy … no long range economic plans; no tax reforms; no … trade policies since Britain’s failure to enter the Common Market … no comprehensive role for Canada in world affairs.” He had just two lines of attack: “First, United States interference in Canadian political matters and, secondly, that the opposition parties obstructed the business of Parliament. The Telegram believes that Canadians will not accept either premise as a sound basis for returning the Government to office.” The Chief’s resignation would have been far better, offered now, “still in office, and thereby giving his party a fighting chance under new leadership, than later, shattered at the polls and reviled by the unforgiving and the unremembering.”

Next day the Globe and Mail took different but equally deadly aim in its lead editorial, “A Matter of Morality.” Its targets were George Nowlan, George Hees, and Wallace McCutcheon, the ministers who had come out of caucus denying any revolt in cabinet against the prime minister’s leadership. They were lying.

It is a matter of fact that some Ministers of the Crown who on Wednesday declared their allegiance to the great leader had, only two days before, their resignations ready in their pockets. It was to be the Prime Minister’s resignation or theirs.

Today the Prime Minister is still in office and the rebels, having deserted their cause, are still in the Cabinet. They have purchased their jobs, for a few weeks, doubtless to “preserve” the party.

So now these men lead their tattered party into the election with lies on their lips and a dual standard of morality in their hearts. They have one set of morals for churchgoing and for the children’s hour, and another for the smoke-filled rooms.

Nor is this the full extent of their dishonor. They have abandoned the one among them who had the courage to resign, Defense Minister Douglas Harkness, and left at the caucus door all the support and admiration which they gave him in the hour of his decision. And they have attempted to place the blame for their own failings on others. They have said that all the reports of revolt in the Cabinet are mere press speculation, utter newspaper fiction.²

One day ministers spoke in confidence to the press; the next they accused it of falsehood in reporting their unattributed stories. “We want no more of these treacherous confidences,” the editorial thundered. Ministers should be frank in admitting that the cabinet had been “in a turmoil, in a paralysis of indecision, for months. One of the basic problems of Mr. Diefenbaker’s leadership has been his preoccupation with treason. He has been so busy seeking out conspiracies and suspecting everyone he has had little time for anything else.” That was the reason for the prime minister’s inability to govern, and for the Globes call for his resignation. Now that ministers had failed “to re-examine and re-assert their ideals,” they stood before the electorate in the wreckage of their government. “The caucus settled nothing. The Prime Minister does not trust his Ministers; they do not trust him. There can be nothing among them now but more turmoil, backbiting and suspicion. Such is the sort of leadership they are asking the public to endorse.” This was the bitter public testimony of former friends. The Globe was challenging the dissident ministers to come clean.

Wallace McCutcheon had privately established the conditions of his loyalty. After the caucus meeting, where he had opposed a campaign based on attacking the Americans, he wrote to Diefenbaker.

You heard what I said this morning.

I do not retract from that and I assumed when you shook my hand when I stood up at Caucus and announced that I was going to the country with you that you accepted my position.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, I think I should now say that any statements which I regard as anti-American I will disassociate myself with publicly.

I am prepared to defend your defence policy – with which you know I agree only as a matter of Cabinet solidarity.

However, if the Secretary of State for External Affairs does not proceed expeditiously with the negotiations that you announced were under way then I will have to review my position.³

Eddie Goodman, too, had settled his conscience. On February 5, before the Commons vote, he had written to Diefenbaker tendering his resignation from the Ontario organization committee of the party. The job had taken a “crippling amount” of his time. “To these personal reasons for my desire to retire,” he wrote, “there is now added the overriding and decisive consideration which is our strong disagreement on what is the proper defence policy for Canada. My views in this matter are clear to you as we have discussed them at length during the past few weeks.”⁴ He expected his friend George Hees to leave cabinet as he had boasted he would, and was astounded to hear radio reports of the caucus reconciliation. Goodman and Edward Dunlop (Hees’s brother-in-law) flew at once to Ottawa and confronted the minister, who explained that he had been “swept away by the pleadings” of caucus and by Diefenbaker’s fresh, though vague, commitments. “The truth of the matter,” Goodman recalled, “was he’s a warm emotional fellow, and with everybody, all his friends in the caucus and people whom he’d worked with for all these years, pleading with him not to destroy the party, he gave in, which is easily understandable.” Goodman told him he “was an ass,” and left Hees stewing.⁵

For two days, as he reflected on the challenges from Goodman, Dunlop, John Bassett, and the Telegram and Globe editorials, Hees attended cabinet meetings preparing for the election campaign. Pierre Sévigny, too, had agonized over the nuclear conflict and Diefenbaker’s faltering leadership, but apparently expected to be promoted from associate minister to minister of defence after Harkness’s resignation. Diefenbaker made no move during the week of crisis. On Friday evening, Sévigny and Hees decided to offer their belated resignations the next morning, and to persuade Léon Balcer to join them – still vainly hoping that a walkout would persuade Diefenbaker to retire. Balcer was summoned from Three Rivers for another late-night discussion at Hees’s apartment, but he refused to resign. Early on Saturday morning, while the latest round of rumours busied the telephone lines to Sussex Drive, Hees and Sévigny arrived at the door carrying their letters of resignation. Diefenbaker was still upstairs in his dressing gown, so Burt Richardson led them to the library and chatted while the prime minister dressed.⁶ Diefenbaker made his brief record of the interview a few days later.

On Saturday my wife informed me about 9.15 a.m. as I was up in my room, that Hees and Sevigny had arrived. I said as they had not phoned this was rather surprising.

I dressed and came down to the library and they were both standing and both smiling.

Hees said: “I am here to reason.”

I said: “I am not going to listen.”

He laid his resignation on the little table.

Sevigny said: “I too will have to resign,” and then produced his.

I said: “Won’t you wait?” and they said “No,” so I said: “That is the end,” and they left me.⁷

Richardson thought that “the prime minister was thunderstruck. He took the resignations but he was practically speechless about this because it was so much of a surprise.” The ministers still in Ottawa for the weekend were summoned to Sussex Drive for the latest emergency consultations. About a dozen turned up, and they in turn used the telephones to seek assurances of loyalty from those who were absent. By lunchtime it seemed clear there would be no more resignations, and Diefenbaker agreed that the vacant posts should be filled at once.⁸

“Olive has had a very hard and trying time,” Diefenbaker wrote to his brother on February 8, “but there has never been anything but words of encouragement uttered by her.”⁹ He did not repeat to Elmer his earlier claim that she had counselled his resignation. Friends whose loyalties were personal and disinterested quickly rallied round. Helen Brunt telephoned and wrote:

A phone call is so unsatisfactory. My purpose in calling as in this note is simply to say that I have the utmost faith in Our Prime Minister. I know he is doing what he believes best for Canada. And who are we to know better, who do not know anything of the matters at hand.

Oh Olive I know the heartache when they hurt your man. It will heal but the scar is always there. And you know who your real friends are after it’s over…

…I’m glad Bill isn’t here. It would break his heart but then he would have been happy if he could have helped – whatever John did Bill went along with. They battled but if the P.M. was adamant Bill accepted it and that was the end.

If I can be of any help any time, call me. I will do anything anytime.¹⁰

Diefenbaker seemed genuinely puzzled by the cabinet defections. “We will … face the sniping that goes on from those who left,” he told Elmer. “I cannot understand Mr. Harkness. He agreed to the statement I made in the House of Commons on Defence, shook my hand after I delivered it, and then he went against me. Mr. Hees of course is another of those who through history reached out for the leadership too soon. He thought he was more powerful than he was. I did much for him but he continued to get himself into difficulties … It seems impossible to fathom the mentality of such as Harkness, Sevigny and Hees.” But he was determined to fight on: “Elections are not won except in the last week. I am the underdog now and that means that the fight must be strongly waged.”¹¹ The role was familiar and liberating. It meant “hard work on the part of your supporters. Hard work spells victory.”¹² Diefenbaker thought he could see beyond the Bassetts, the Dalgleishs, the Goodmans, the Heeses and Sévignys – those of little faith and ulterior purpose – to the voters who admired and rallied to the underdog, to those ordinary Canadians who understood his quest as his betrayers could not.

Besides, there were others still loyally committed to the cause. In January, when Allister Grosart gave up the national directorship of the party, Diefenbaker announced the appointment of Dalton Camp to replace him, with the mutually agreed title of chairman of the national organization committee. He was prepared to act without salary as Diefenbaker’s “personal representative to the organization at large,” because “I have for you a personal affection and simple loyalty that has, since you assumed the leadership … no reservations or limitations short of my personal mental and physical limits.” With an election bound to come soon, Camp reflected: “What is required, then, is fresh energy, enthusiasm and new direction to the organization. Enthusiasm must be rekindled, a tenacious will to win must become pervasive in the party. New techniques must be developed and applied and we obviously must [be] ready for battle. To all that, I offer to apply myself without stint or reservation and with optimism and confidence.”¹³ Camp, like Diefenbaker, enjoyed fighting the Grits. He reminded his leader that, since 1952, he had been involved in twenty-three federal and provincial election campaigns on behalf of the Tory party. Once the campaign had begun, he was rejoined in managing it by Allister Grosart.

On February 20 another prodigal returned. George Hogan – who had started the public phase of the party controversy over nuclear arms – wrote to Diefenbaker offering his full support in the election “both for the Party and for you personally.” He had not changed his mind about accepting nuclear weapons, but conceded that “we are in an election campaign and the alternatives are either to reject the Party’s whole programme because of one disagreement or to accept the whole programme in spite of one disagreement.” Since all parties were internally divided on the nuclear issue, he said, “I can see no reason why the Conservative Party should be called upon to suffer for its nuclear differences while the other parties are allowed to profit from theirs. As I see it, the essential difference between the Conservatives and the Liberals on this question is that while our approach is to adopt no policy until May, theirs is to adopt two policies until April.” He wished Diefenbaker success in the campaign.¹⁴ The new premier of Ontario, John Robarts, pledged his organization’s aid as well.

Despite this evidence of renewed support from members of the party in Toronto, Diefenbaker was determined to see his struggle from what was, for him, a traditional perspective. On the platform, he was fighting not only the Grits and the Kennedys but also his old antagonists “the Bay Street and St. James Street Tories” who had inspired “the desertions and insurrections” of the previous weeks.¹⁵ When he addressed a large joint meeting of the Empire and Canadian Clubs and the Toronto Board of Trade in mid-February, he joked that “Daniel in the lion’s den was an amateur performer compared to me.”¹⁶ And some of the enemy, he suspected, remained within. On February 11 he appointed Wallace McCutcheon to George Hees’s vacant portfolio of Trade and Commerce in the hope that he “might help to still some of the storms surrounding us” – and because “our circumstances had not allowed me the luxury of firing him.” But McCutcheon, he later wrote, “spent the entire election threatening to resign, with appropriate media fanfare, if I treated forthrightly the major issues of the campaign … I thought him the biggest political double-crosser I had ever known.”¹⁷

While McCutcheon cautioned Diefenbaker against an anti-American campaign, Newsweek magazine provided the prime minister with a safe target of attack for its February 18 cover feature on “Canada’s Diefenbaker: Decline and Fall.” Diefenbaker’s dark and scowling face, brows furrowed, lips pursed, jowls almost shaking, hair flying into the title line, dramatically lighted from below to emphasize every crease, landed on the newsstands in the first week of the Canadian campaign.¹⁸ Inside, the story described the political crisis for American readers in terms familiar to Canadians, but included a few tendentious sentences describing that extraordinary face on the cover.

Diefenbaker in full oratorical flight is a sight not soon to be forgotten: the India-rubber features twist and contort in grotesque and gargoyle-like grimaces; beneath the electric gray V of the hairline, the eyebrows beat up and down like bats’ wings; the agate-blue eyes blaze forth cold fire. Elderly female Tory supporters find Diefenbaker’s face rugged, kind, pleasant, and even soothing; his enemies insist that it is sufficient grounds for barring Tory rallies to children under sixteen.¹⁹

Dalton Camp seized the initiative by photocopying the Newsweek feature and sending it immediately to all Conservative constituency presidents. “Although the target of this derogatory tirade, the Prime Minister, has made no comment,” Camp wrote, “I believe the members of this organization will condemn it in the strongest terms. The article not only attacks the person of the Prime Minister, but the office as well, and is obviously calculated to overtly inflame public opinion. It is difficult to recall any American publication making a more abusive and inflammatory attack on the head of any state, friendly or otherwise.”²⁰ The prime minister saw conspiracy at work. He told his audiences, and repeated the charge in his memoirs: “Who, among those who voted in 1963, will ever forget the Kennedy-conceived message conveyed to the Canadian electors by the cover and contents of the 18 February issue of Newsweek: its editor was President’s Kennedy’s close friend.”²¹ Ben Bradlee, it was true, was one of the president’s intimates, and Diefenbaker was not in Kennedy’s good books. But the notion that the cover article was “Kennedy-inspired” was no more than a hunch, an expression of Diefenbaker’s heightened sense that his enemies were uniting and closing in. If damage really was intended, Washington must have been disappointed. The mischievous cover picture probably assisted more than it harmed the Diefenbaker campaign. Diefenbaker’s response of theatrical indignation was both calculated and genuine, the reaction of a professional performer with a thin skin. His audiences could sense, and sympathize with, his anguish while they also relished the performance.

Publicly, the policy of the Kennedy administration was to remain strictly neutral after the flareup of January 30. It would not comment on the Canadian election. Privately, there was outspoken distaste for Diefenbaker in the White House and the State Department, which was echoed in dispatches to Washington from the American Embassy in Ottawa. In a long telegram on February 3 commenting on the consequences of the State Department press release, Walton Butterworth offered a withering assessment of the Canadian cabinet and its policies, and an encouraging prospect of better times ahead. Butterworth was in no mood for tempered judgment. For six years, he reported, the United States had tolerated Canadian “foot dragging” in continental defence and “pretentious posturing” in other areas of foreign policy, until “our sudden dose of cold water” produced an “immediate cry of shock and outrage.” But the “traditional psychopathic accusations of unwarranted US interference in domestic Canadian affairs” were rapidly subsiding as Canadians began to face the “hard realities, as set forth in the Departmental release.”

Preponderance of evidence available – news media, editorial comment, private citizens expressions of views – indicate shift of public attention from US statement to clear recognition Diefenbaker indecisiveness, with frequent and widespread reaffirmation of identity of US and Canadian interests and explicit acknowledgment that Canada has somehow gone astray. Department will recall this was basic aim of exercise … i.e. to bring Canadian thinking back to state of relevance to hard realities of world situation. Defense policy, particularly nuclear weapons issue, was key element this psychological problem, and its resolution will have profound bearing on Canadian attitude toward other less important foreign policy questions.

For past four or five years we have – doubtless correctly – tolerated essentially neurotic Canadian view of world and of Canadian role. We have done so in hope Canadians themselves would make gradual natural adjustment to more realistic understanding…

Inconclusive outcome last June’s general elections … fumbling and indecision during Cuban crisis, continued … evasiveness on vital defense matters suggested reappraisal necessary…

In effect we have now forced issue and outcome depends on basic common sense of Canadian electorate. Our faith in their good judgment is based on our reading that public has been way ahead of political leadership of all parties … In short we think Canadian public is with us, even though some liberal politicians have been afraid we have handed Diefenbaker an issue he can use against them and US. We think Canadians will no longer accept irresponsible nonsense which political leaders all parties, but particularly progressive-conservatives under Diefenbaker, have got away with for several years.

If our appraisal is sound and if trend continues, we face transitional period uncertainty, probably until general elections return a new government with an absolute majority and thus a clear mandate … World has changed and Canadian people know it. Polls show strong Canadian majority support for acquisition nuclear warheads and for close cooperation with us. Cuban crisis last October evoked widespread evidence public unhappiness with Foreign Minister Green’s moralizing and Diefenbaker’s flexible inaction…

We should not be unduly disturbed at steam of resentment which first blew off upon publication of Department’s release. Diefenbaker’s reaction was expected. He is undependable, unscrupulous political animal at bay and we are ones who boxed him in … Let us also face fact that we are forcing Pearson to go faster and further than he desires in the direction we favor … We have reached point where our relations must be based on something more solid than accommodation to neurotic Canadian view of us and world…

As this appraisal indicates, we see grounds for optimism that over the long run this exercise will prove to have been highly beneficial and will substantially advance our interests. We have introduced element of realism which no government, whether progressive-conservative or liberal, will be able to ignore.

One thing which could bring it all to naught would be backing away from our present stand … On maintenance of this stance depends framework of our future relations with Canada.²²

Whether or not there was the conspiracy of forces that Diefenbaker saw in his darkest moments, or hinted at from the platform, there was no doubt that the Kennedy administration looked forward to a new Canadian government not led by John G. Diefenbaker. As the campaign opened, Washington kept its powder dry and watched events to the north with unusual care.

Butterworth reminded Washington on February 2 that the Rostow memorandum was still “hanging over our heads, and Diefenbaker or someone else may decide to try to make political hay of it at any time. It is probably a good thing that he doubtless knows that the Liberals are aware of his possession of it and the manner of his acquisition since, in essence, failure to return to such an invited guest a personal, confidential paper would be difficult for Diefenbaker to explain to the Canadian public.”²³ Embassy officers reported discussion of the memorandum in their presence by Grattan O’Leary and the Liberal editor of the Winnipeg Free Press, Shane McKay, at the end of January, as evidence that its existence must have been fairly widely known.²⁴ But Butterworth implied that if the memo was still hanging over Kennedy’s head, it was also hanging over Diefenbaker’s. The prime minister knew the risks of using it.

Before his second winter campaign could begin, Diefenbaker flew to London for three days in late February to be invested as an honorary freeman of the City of London, the first Canadian prime minister to receive this honour. He enjoyed the interlude as a brief escape from political turmoil, a soothing balm for his bruised ego – and a burst of glowing and uncritical publicity that could not have been better timed. On Sunday, February 23, he read the lesson at the City Temple, paid a short visit to Sir Winston Churchill, and met Harold Macmillan for the first time since the collapse of Britain’s negotiations to enter the Common Market. Next day, he and Olive rode in a royal landau, under escort by mounted outriders of the RCMP, to the Guildhall to receive the freedom of the city before an appreciative audience of 1100 guests. The Lord Mayor good-naturedly referred to Diefenbaker’s three Indian chieftainships in wishing him “the sharp eyes of the eagle, the wariness and strength of the walking buffalo, and the joyous speed and abandon of the many spotted horses” during the coming election campaign. Diefenbaker responded gratefully for “the greatest civic distinction to which any man or woman can aspire … To be of London is to share in a stream of history that has enriched a quarter of the world’s population within the Commonwealth and free men everywhere.” Afterwards, the Diefenbakers were honoured guests at a Mansion House banquet featuring nine wines. “He raised a glass to his lips to respond to the frequent toasts,” wrote Charles King of Southam Press, “but apparently enjoyed the hospitality less than other guests.” The party returned overnight to a chilly Ottawa dawn.²⁵

“Somebody up there doesn’t like us”

The Chief had been unsettled by jokes and gossip about his strained appearance and shaking hands, and in a gesture reminiscent of Dwight Eisenhower’s 1956 campaign, he released a medical certificate at the end of February signed by two Toronto physicians testifying that he was in excellent health. “At no time,” they affirmed, “during this or at past examinations has there been evidence of any chronic illness.” The Winnipeg Free Press, among other papers, published a photograph of the medical certificate.²⁶

“The 1963 election campaign,” Diefenbaker recalled, “was one of the more uplifting experiences of my life … There was no question that everyone was against me but the people, and that unless I could find a way to get the message across, I would be lost.”²⁷ So – inspired by Harry Truman’s 1948 “Give ’em hell!” campaign – he decided to conduct a whistle-stop election, travelling as much as possible by train, stopping briefly at the little towns to mingle with the crowds that appeared in bitter cold to greet him. At Capreol, Ontario, on February 28, Diefenbaker spent twenty minutes on the station platform as the temperature hovered at −22F. When his train arrived in Prince Albert on March 2 – delayed by unscheduled stops at Hague, Rosthern, and Duck Lake – Diefenbaker descended to a home town welcome from the mayor and five hundred citizens. The more sedate and “prime ministerial” speaking style of 1962 was discarded for the evangelist’s tones of 1958, mingling nostalgia, scorn, and humour with hints of paradise and hellfire. The ridicule was mostly reserved for Mike Pearson and the Liberals, since Diefenbaker knew that Wallace McCutcheon and the State Department were measuring every speech for signs of excessive or provocative outbursts of anti-Americanism.²⁸

The prime minister felt alone on the campaign trail – and most of the time he was alone. Davie Fulton had gone to British Columbia; Donald Fleming was not running, although he stayed in Ottawa to manage cabinet business until April 8; Douglas Harkness was running, but at odds with his leader; George Hees had retired and departed the country for the duration; Pierre Sévigny fought the election as an independent Conservative; Ernest Halpenny had retired; and other ministers were tied down in tight contests in their own constituencies.

As usual, Diefenbaker had one speech – with infinite variations of order, emphasis, and anecdote – for six weeks of campaigning. It was fully elaborated at his Prince Albert nominating meeting on March 2 before an audience of a thousand. He recalled elections from his youth at Fort Carlton, when candidates of both parties travelled together to speak from the same platform – and the occasion, perhaps apocryphal, when the Conservative fell ill and the Liberal delivered both speeches. (The story was familiar, so applause and laughter smothered the punch line.) He spoke to those in his audience “whose fathers and mothers came to this country, came here as pioneers, came here to build a Canada, came here to join with all the races of men. One of my reasons for being in public life and I’ve said it from the earliest days, was the opportunity to be able to do something in order to bring about in this nation without regard to racial origin, while preserving the constitutional rights of the initial and primary races of this country … equality of opportunity, to remove discrimination whatever one’s racial origin may be, to give to Canadians as a whole a pride of being Canadians, to remove that stigma that in the past existed that blood count constituted something in the nature of citizenship.”

In the last election, the Liberals had claimed that Canada “was on the road to ruin … They downgraded Canada. They undermined Canada. They did it deliberately in order to destroy.” In doing so, he said, they provoked the foreign exchange crisis that the Diefenbaker government had acted decisively to overcome. “And today Canada, as a result of our action, has the largest foreign exchange amount it has ever had in the history of this nation.” His government had enriched prairie farmers by selling grain to China on credit, and China had repaid its debts on time.

Diefenbaker explained his defence policy as one that changed to suit rapidly changing circumstances. Why should he be criticized for that when Britain and the United States followed the same shifting policy? When Canada agreed to accept two Bomarc missile units, the United States planned to build thirty or forty launching sites to protect their Strategic Air Command bases. Now there were only six: two in Canada and four in the United States.

We thought at the time the Bomarc was established, was set, that we’d meet the problem of the bomber. However, more and more it’s becoming known and apparent that such a system is no longer effective.

The people of Canada are being fooled, or an attempt is being made to fool them, by the Opposition…

And the other day, the other day, the Secretary of Defense of the United States, Mr. McNamara, said, well, we’re keeping these Bomarcs, in effect not because they are any good, but after all, we paid for them. Ah … I wonder why it is these facts are concealed from the people. Mr. Pearson says: Well, we have commitments. I say to him, there are no commitments that this Government has failed to carry out. Agreements entered into when one state of fact exists, are they to be maintained regardless of changing conditions?

What did Mr. Pearson say? He said – Oh… I wish the Government would be consistent. These are his words, and I am quoting you. “In my view we should get out of the whole Bomarc operation.” That’s two years and a half ago. “The Bomarc operation … not only do we not think it is an effective weapon; our objection is the kind of defense it is, that kind of defense strategy it represents which we do not think will be effective, however effective the weapon may be.” Work that out; play that on your ukulele!

First he says it is no good, and then he says however good it is and however effective, we don’t believe in it. And then he went on to say this – just like in the old crown and anchor game, you pay your money and you take your choice. (Laughter) All right…(laughter). “If the United States wishes to continue that kind of protection with the Bomarc, let the United States do so and let us withdraw from that kind of continental defense.” Now he says, “Canadians, we never break our commitments.” I agree with that. We never have…

This is another one. I simply use his quotations to support the stand that we have consistently taken…

…“The Ottawa Government should end its evasion of responsibility by discharging its commitments. It can only do this by accepting nuclear warheads.” Well, he told us all the time not to do that … Then he really came out with one…“You can only do this by accepting nuclear warheads,” I said to myself, that sentence can’t finish there. Because I know him. (Laughter.) I know him…“We would accept them. Then having accepted them, we would re-examine at once the whole basis of the Canadian defense policy so as to make it more realistic and effective for Canada than the present one.” (Laughter.)

…They shouldn’t be playing politics such as Mr. Pearson’s been playing with an issue such as that, that affects the lives, the hopes, and the future of mankind. (Applause.)

That’s the view we take … We’re going to set out in detail at the earliest opportunity this whole question in simple form…

Insofar as Canadian soil is concerned, I set this forth before and I again set it forth. We shall place ourselves in a position, by agreement with the United States, so that if war does come, or emergency takes place, we shall have available to us readily accessible nuclear weapons. But in the meantime we shall not have Canada used as a storage dump for nuclear weapons. (Applause … Hear! Hear!)²⁹

If the government’s policy was confusing, Diefenbaker had demonstrated – to the delight of his partisan audience – that the Liberal policy was equally if not more confusing. Both Diefenbaker and Pearson were hapless dancing puppets in this game. The grand folly of nuclear deterrence meant, for Canada, a defence that could be no defence, and a policy that defied logic. There was no more sense to be made of it.

Diefenbaker disposed easily of Robert Thompson. The Social Credit leader, he suggested, wanted to get rid of him because Thompson knew there were no Social Credit votes in the west as long as he remained prime minister.

Diefenbaker was exhilarated by the fight. “You know,” he told his Prince Albert audience, “in nineteen hundred and forty-eight they said of Harry Truman, he had no chance in the election. All the press said that, or at least 90%. All the Gallup polls said that. Only one person believed that Harry Truman would win and that was his wife. I have my wife and an awful lot of others across Canada!”³⁰ As his train arrived in Winnipeg, the Free Press reported that the prime minister’s weekend in Saskatchewan had been “a tonic” for him. “The two days of uncritical acclaim from the people in ‘small-town Saskatchewan’ unquestionably has strengthened him for the campaign which he gets underway in earnest in a Winnipeg rally tonight.”³¹

Only four major newspapers supported the Conservatives in 1963: the Ottawa Journal, the Winnipeg Tribune, the Victoria Colonist, and Beaverbrook’s Fredericton Gleaner. But as Diefenbaker moved slowly through the small towns to rallies in the big cities, he grew more and more convinced that “the people” were indeed on his side. The crowds were big and enthusiastic and laughing with him. Mike Pearson and his team – despite their appearance of solidity and efficiency, and the promise of an activist government and reconciliation with the United States – could not ignite the same passions. And in mid-March they made a damaging error. Diefenbaker put it down to “the Liberal high command,” who “seemed to mistake our country for the United States”:

Their Madison Avenue techniques came a cropper with their colouring books, white pigeons that flew off never to be seen again, and that never-to-be-forgotten “truth squad.” Poor Judy LaMarsh! I had much fun with her in Moncton and Halifax. She had a specially designated table right down at the front of the hall so she could hear everything. Although the people thought she was a great joke, they also were offended by the impudence of those who had sent her to challenge the truth of my every statement. The Liberals quickly got the message and ended the Truth Squad in two days. Had they kept her on, however, we might well have picked up several extra constituencies.³²

For Diefenbaker, mistaking Canada for the United States meant introducing too-slick electoral techniques, turning politics into a professionally managed game, and paying more attention to opinion in the big cities and the Oval Office than in Duck Lake. The Chief himself, as a keen student of American electoral politics, had made his own contributions in earlier years to the shift in campaign techniques, and this time he had no hesitation in comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman. His real objection was not to American models and American influences, but to American influences of a certain kind: too much eastern sophistication, too much comfort with power, too many displays of arrogance, too close an association with the Kennedys and the eastern liberal establishment. The trouble for him was – as the polls showed – that John Kennedy was a real and powerful competitor for the allegiance of Canadians, and the beneficiary in this election was bound to be the Liberal Party.³³

But Diefenbaker’s emotional campaign, coupled with the general confusion about nuclear weapons and the American relationship, had stopped the Liberals cold. Their support in the polls fell, while Conservative strength held steady and Créditiste sentiment grew in rural Quebec.³⁴ Liberal expectations of a parliamentary majority faded. In desperation, Keith Davey and Walter Gordon persuaded Pearson to promise that a new Liberal government would begin its term with “sixty days of decision.” Pearson was worn out, ill, and depressed, and by the end of March he wondered whether he could finish the campaign.³⁵ Diefenbaker gained renewal in his own exhausting journeys, soaking up strength from his audiences as he played endlessly on his simple themes.

President Kennedy did not want to assist Diefenbaker’s re-election, but in what Theodore Draper described as “the almost chaotic state of the leadership circles in Washington,” the right hand often did not know what the left hand was doing. At the end of March, the US Defense Department offered Diefenbaker a gift by releasing the transcript of secret testimony that Defense Secretary McNamara had given earlier in the month to the House Appropriations Subcommittee. In it, McNamara imprudently declared that the remaining Bomarc missile sites were expensive and ineffective, but once established, could be maintained at little cost. “At the very least,” he testified, “they could cause the Soviets to target missiles against them and thereby increase their missile requirements or draw missiles onto these Bomarc targets that would otherwise be available for other targets.” Too late, the White House ordered a clarification explaining that the statement did not refer to the two dispersed Canadian sites – but the damage was done. Diefenbaker pounced: “The Liberal party would have us put nuclear warheads on something that’s hardly worth scrapping. What’s it for? To attract the fire of the intercontinental missiles. North Bay – knocked out. La Macaza – knocked out. Never, never, never, never has there been a revelation equal to this. The whole bottom fell out of the Liberal program today. The Liberal policy is to make Canada a decoy for intercontinental missiles.”³⁶

While the White House sought to maintain its public show of neutrality throughout the Canadian election, Kennedy could not restrain his private feelings. After the January 30 press release, Pearson remained fearful that another ill-considered effort to help him might backfire, and his fears were well founded. In late March, while Pearson was addressing a Canadian Legion meeting in Edmonton, he received a message on the platform that there was a telephone call for him from the White House. Pearson’s press spokesman Richard O’Hagan called back on the janitor’s telephone to discover that the messenger was Max Freedman, the Washington correspondent of the Winnipeg Free Press and a close friend of the president. He had just had a private dinner with Kennedy, and he insisted that he must speak to Pearson. O’Hagan brought the demand onstage to Pearson. Knowlton Nash recounts the story:

Mystified and alarmed, knowing what Diefenbaker might do with such information, Pearson followed the janitor to a basement office. Nervously, he picked up the phone. They spoke for fifteen minutes, with Freedman enjoying his role as middleman between Kennedy and Pearson, passing on the highlights of his conversation with the president that night and some of Kennedy’s suggestions. “For God’s sake, tell the president not to say anything,” Pearson said. “I don’t want any help from him. This would be awful.”…

“This was a narrow escape,” Pearson later said, “since I knew there were people abroad in this land who would … insist that it was a deep dark American plot to take over the country via Pearson and the Liberals. To my relief, it never was reported; the janitor said nothing about the call.”³⁷

With Pearson’s fresh warning (and the McNamara testimony) in mind, Kennedy’s national security adviser McGeorge Bundy took renewed precautions on April 1 in a memorandum to the secretary of state and the secretary of defense:

During this climactic week of the Canadian election campaign it is likely that intensified efforts will be made to implicate the United States in one way or another, especially by accusing us of trying to influence the outcome. The President wishes to avoid any appearance of interference, even by responding to what may appear to be untruthful, distorted, or unethical statements or actions.

Will you, therefore, please insure that no one in your Departments, in Washington or in the field, says anything publicly about Canada until after the election without first clearing with the White House. This applies to all contacts with the press regardless of the degree of non-attribution.³⁸

Bundy must have been thinking of at least two provocative incidents. One concerned the suspicious opening of an American diplomatic pouch in the Ottawa post office.³⁹ The other involved that familiar hot potato, the Rostow memorandum. On March 27 Charles Lynch of Southam Press reported in the Vancouver Province and the Ottawa Citizen that Prime Minister Diefenbaker had in his possession an uncomplimentary presidential briefing document from President Kennedy’s 1961 visit to Ottawa.⁴⁰ By the time the Citizen used the story, two paragraphs had been added quoting Diefenbaker in Kelowna, British Columbia, as saying that the story was “completely false … I don’t know where that story came from … I have to repudiate it.”⁴¹ The State Department informed the American Embassy in Ottawa that it should respond to inquiries with a standard line: “We do not intend to comment on any speculative newspaper stories during a Canadian election campaign,” but it was watching every move with care.⁴²

On April 1 Lynch published a second story on the document, indicating that Diefenbaker had confirmed its existence. “Sources” added that he was unlikely to use it in the closing days of the election campaign. On the White House copy of this report, there is a handwritten note to McGeorge Bundy: “Pretty clear use of the ‘push’ document without ‘using’ it.”⁴³ That view was confirmed in a dispatch from Butterworth the next day, reporting that Lynch had indicated that his source was Diefenbaker himself.⁴⁴ Butterworth wondered why there had been no editorial comment in Canada, and concluded that “this is simply too hot a story to handle since it involves question good faith in personal relations between Canadian Prime Minister and Chief of State of Canada’s major ally.” As a result, the public had been left with an impression that there had been an American threat to “bring economic pressure on Canada in effort get nuclear warheads on Canadian soil. Moreover no one has publicly asked why … there has not been explanation how document acquired or why it was not promptly returned. We are now getting worst of both worlds.”

The State Department commented to Bundy that Butterworth wanted consideration of an American response. But State’s inclination was to do nothing “unless Mr. Diefenbaker makes use of it in the next three days.” Any American statement “would have to be very carefully weighed at the highest level, since any action would cause a sensation in Canada, with unpredictable results.”⁴⁵ Over the next few days the White House considered several possibilities: publication of the full document, continuing refusal to comment, or a conditional “no comment at this time,” which might imply a clarification after the election. Bundy’s White House aide considered that Diefenbaker’s most likely move on his “crooked path” would be to make selective references to part of the document on the evening of Friday, April 5. They would likely be sufficiently misleading to confirm the impression that the memo referred to pressures on Canada to accept nuclear weapons for storage. To respond in time, Washington would have to intervene before the Saturday morning newspapers went to press. The “tentatively agreed policy of this government” was to release the document from the White House “with a very brief comment designed to note in low key the unethical conduct of the Canadian Government in retaining and then disclosing the document,” but the author urged instead a policy of “no comment at this time.” Even a “gently chiding” release might be counterproductive in Canada, while a temporary “no comment” would confirm American neutrality in the election and also create “an air of mystery, as though we had a load of dynamite which we could easily detonate if we were not so determined to stay out of the campaign, especially in its closing hours.”⁴⁶ By this time all the variations on Washington’s “non-intervention” were being weighed as forms of intervention, calculated not to assist Diefenbaker and not to harm Pearson. For the moment, the White House simply waited.

Diefenbaker made no mention of the document on April 5, but by Saturday morning the story was blossoming. Peter Trueman of the Montreal Star and George Bain of the Toronto Globe and Mail both reported from Washington that the document had been written by Walt Rostow for the president and that it “contained at least one pencilled notation in the margin in the president’s own hand.” Bain identified the comment as: “What are we to say to the … on this point?” while Trueman quoted the words as: “What do we do with the … now?” (Both papers politely excised the epithet.) Bain said that the document contained no threats, and that “the Canadian government’s purpose in retaining the document seems to have been to use it as a diplomatic lever.” Washington’s complaint was that there had been “a serious breach of diplomatic courtesy … in making use of a mislaid private document.” The existence of the memorandum, he said, “did enter into diplomatic communications, perhaps through the United States ambassador having been informed.”⁴⁷

After these reports, the White House adopted another line of response: selective but full confidential briefings for a few correspondents, but no public statements. The first result was a dispatch by the New York Times’s James Reston, published in the Montreal Star (but not in the Times) on election day, April 8. It reported that Washington “is full of rumors that the prime minister’s staff has been using a secret United States document as an instrument in his campaign for re-election.” Reston said that a Washington Post reporter had told his paper that the missing phrase from Saturday’s stories (supposedly in the president’s handwriting) was “S.O.B.” But “the report of Presidential anger seems to most observers here to be unlikely,” since Washington’s annoyance with Diefenbaker had arisen only recently over the issue of nuclear arms. That subject “was not in controversy then.” “Besides,” Reston added, “if anybody in Canada can read President Kennedy’s handwriting, it is more than anybody in Washington has been able to do. In this city, most people find it almost impossible even to decipher his signature.” What was true was that “Canadian-American relations have been poisoned by one incident after another.” And “the very fact that Mr. Diefenbaker could have threatened to use the working paper in the 1962 election has inevitably entered into estimates here of the working relations between the two governments.” Diefenbaker’s office had refused to comment to the New York Times about any marginal comments on the memo by the president. In Washington, Reston judged, there was only one general conclusion: “The document should, as a matter of diplomatic courtesy, have been returned to the State Department.”⁴⁸

In the end, it seemed, the prime minister’s surreptitious use of the Rostow memorandum in the last week of the election campaign was of no noticeable benefit to him. Washington, in its response by proxy, managed to make its effective point that Diefenbaker was the one who had committed the diplomatic offence. For those who noticed, the contretemps probably served to harden existing political commitments, both for and against the prime minister. He was either a courageous white knight or a blackguard. And Kennedy had not used the expletive deleted.⁴⁹

On the last weekend of the campaign another unusual incident caused disturbance for Walton Butterworth and Mike Pearson, but it came too late to make any impact on the vote. On April 6 the Vancouver Sun published a story by the Southam reporter Bruce Phillips suggesting that “the Conservatives have a document so hot even they are afraid to use it, a document purporting to be a letter from American Ambassador Walton Butterworth to Liberal chieftain Pearson telling him the Conservatives are unfit to govern Canada.” The party, Phillips said, had had the letter for “about two weeks,” but had been “uneasy about using it because they did not know where the splinters would hit when the explosion came.” The letter, dated January 14, offered congratulations to Pearson for his speech advocating the acceptance of nuclear warheads for Canadian weapons. Butterworth, he said, had learned of the existence of the letter and had called the cabinet secretary, Robert Bryce, to deny having written it. Pearson, too, vehemently denied its authenticity. Phillips reported that the letter “came into the hands” of George Drew in London, who forwarded it to Canada, but he explained nothing more about its provenance.⁵⁰ The case looked suspiciously like that of the Rostow memorandum. Had the government provided this document, too, to a friendly reporter for use without attribution?

What made the incident more outrageous for Butterworth was that the letter was a forgery. Using it was a kind of dirty trick unfamiliar in Canadian politics or in the recent history of Canadian-American relations. Butterworth asked the State Department to pursue the issue with Canada, but in the aftermath of the election, Washington decided to let the matter rest “and hopefully disappear with other flotsam and jetsam cast up by the campaign.” Butterworth accepted the decision but protested to the State Department that it was mistaken: “What concerns me … is lest this be an indication that the Department is reverting to its old ways of treating Canada like a problem child for whom there was always at the ready a cheek for the turning … I do hope that in future we will deal with Canada with considered care and courtesy but in a more normal, matter-of-fact manner, and with due regard to the importance of obtaining quids for quos.”⁵¹

Diefenbaker’s account of the incident was disingenuous. Afterwards, in the memoirs, he wrote as though the letter had not been used in the campaign, and regretted that “not using it constituted a major political error.” He claimed to have “confidential knowledge, which will be revealed in due course, that it was a true copy,” but there appears to be no documentary evidence for the claim. Diefenbaker reproduced the entire letter in the memoirs and noted that after receiving it in late March he consulted Howard Green and Gordon Churchill about establishing its authenticity. Since there was no time to establish whether or not it was a forgery, he reported an honourable decision not to use it.⁵²

The record, all of it available to Diefenbaker, looks less edifying. The letter, in photostat and postmarked March 20, 1963, was originally mailed to George Drew in London from an English address. Drew called Grattan O’Leary to warn him he had a “hot document,” and dispatched it that day to Diefenbaker. Soon afterwards the prime minister met O’Leary and urged him to publish it in the Ottawa Journal. Drew had warned Diefenbaker that the letter “could be of vital importance if its authenticity were verified, and it could be extremely dangerous if by any chance it is an attempt to plant something which could obviously boomerang very badly.” O’Leary thought it was a forgery and refused to publish it; Camp shared his scepticism. Diefenbaker kept the letter and discussed it with Allister Grosart, who passed on the story to the publisher of the Winnipeg Tribune, Ross Munro. Munro called Butterworth, who called Bryce to make his denial. And Bryce relayed the report back to Diefenbaker on his campaign train in western Canada.

Meanwhile, Diefenbaker had brought Howard Green and Gordon Churchill into his secret. He proposed to Green that he should return to Ottawa to “call in the Ambassador and ask him who wrote the letter. Howard was disturbed by the suggestion. I then suggested that he secure examples of signatures of the Ambassador, to which he replied that that would arouse suspicion.” Another dead end. Diefenbaker “thus turned the investigation over” to Gordon Churchill. Formally, Diefenbaker had taken his distance. What followed was publication in a small Manitoba newspaper, from which Bruce Phillips picked up the story for Southam News.

Later the RCMP examined the copy and determined that there were no typewriters in Butterworth’s office to match the one used in the letter. There were other anomalies, too. Diefenbaker believed that the RCMP commissioner had given Butterworth sufficient notice of his search to remove the incriminating machine, and he continued to insist that the letter was genuine. The point of this insistence, in face of the evidence, is obscure, unless Diefenbaker felt an unacknowledged responsibility for use of the letter – and an inability to admit he could have been wrong.⁵³

The Diefenbakers returned as usual to home ground in Prince Albert for election day, while the Pearsons remained in Ottawa. As the count moved westwards that evening, Liberal hopes for a majority were raised and then lowered. Newfoundland delivered all seven of its seats to Pearson, but Diefenbaker held his ground in the Maritime provinces. In Quebec the Créditistes retained twenty seats, while the Liberals gained only twelve and the Conservatives lost six. In Ontario the Liberals picked up eight ridings from the Tories – not an overwhelming shift. At the Manitoba border Pearson had 119 seats (only thirteen short of an absolute majority), but there his bandwagon stalled. In seventy western and northern races, he won only ten, while Diefenbaker took forty-seven (for a loss of only two seats). At the final count Diefenbaker had 95 seats to Pearson’s 129. Social Credit and the NDP held the balance, with twenty-four and nineteen seats, respectively. The Liberal Party had consolidated its strength in the cities, while Diefenbaker’s Tory party settled more firmly into its rural and western strongholds. Only Quebec broke the national pattern, where Social Credit lost some areas of rural strength but achieved 15 percent infiltration into Montreal in several working-class neighbourhoods.⁵⁴

Diefenbaker told a television interviewer on election night that the result reminded him of 1925, when Prime Minister King had lost by a plurality to Arthur Meighen’s Conservatives, but “had decided, as was his right, to meet Parliament on the basis that no party had a majority.”⁵⁵ That seemed only a bit of mischievous talk designed to keep the Liberals on edge. By the next day Churchill, Hamilton, Grosart, McCutcheon, Frost, and others were urging the government’s resignation, and Diefenbaker accepted the choice. He was ready to face the Liberals as opposition leader, and nursed his resentments for later use. As he prepared for his flight to Ottawa on April 10, he told a Saskatchewan friend: “I went down there to see what I could do for the common people and the big people finished me – the most powerful interests.” But he made no public statement about his intentions, beyond indicating that he would “watch eventualities.”⁵⁶

On April 12, in mysterious circumstances, six Créditiste MPs delivered a sworn affidavit to the governor general and to Mike Pearson declaring that the Liberal Party had the right to form the next government and promising their voting support to that government. Pearson had his absolute majority. Diefenbaker concluded that “there were no further eventualities for me to wait upon,” and arranged to meet Pearson to agree upon the transfer of power. At noon on Monday, April 22, John G. Diefenbaker was succeeded as prime minister by Lester Bowles Pearson.⁵⁷

FOR THE NEXT FEW WEEKS JOHN AND OLIVE WERE PREOCCUPIED WITH THE MOVE from 24 Sussex Drive to Stornoway, the house provided for the leader of the opposition, taking two of their household staff with them. On the evening before their move, Diefenbaker told his brother, “Olive made a discovery. We thought we had emptied every drawer and for some reason she looked at the desk in my room on which the TV was placed and found two extra drawers in the back of the desk which I had completely forgotten about which revealed quite a number of letters which would not have been fitting for our successors to read.”⁵⁸ The move was trying. Diefenbaker wrote: “I am hoping we can go West because there is quite a bit of furniture that should be shipped down here as ‘Stornoway’ is anything but equipped. We have had to buy a washing machine, dryer and all the kitchen equipment and there will be about $1000.00 in odds and ends of furniture that we will have to purchase. The only room that is properly equipped is my office and library which Olive has fixed up most attractively … It is almost six years since I had my hands on the wheel of a car so I will have to take some lessons before I get a license. I simply can’t exist by depending on taxis.” Within a few weeks, Olive had taken her driving test and acquired a licence, “so we will be able to get around a lot easier than we have since moving,” but in July “she was fortunate that she wasn’t injured when the car went over the sidewalk into a plate glass window. She was very calm about it.” Subsequently, the Diefenbakers were provided with a chauffeur, who took delivery of their new Buick Wildcat from General Motors in Oshawa on October 4. “It is a Canadian-made car,” John told Elmer, “and while we would have preferred a better Buick felt that we must not purchase a car manufactured outside Canada.”⁵⁹

The Diefenbakers returned from a short trip to Saskatoon and Prince Albert in mid-May to find their surroundings more comfortable. “While we were away,” John wrote, “the staff at the house worked very hard and got everything in readiness. As soon as some of the furnishings that we had shipped from Prince Albert arrive here it will become very homelike.” Ten days later he was still adjusting to the life of an ordinary citizen: “Olive is still working on the house. Some of the furniture came from Prince Albert although the cost was very high. The freight on the bedroom suite was $400.00 and the cost of moving from 24 Sussex to our present address was over $650. A third-rate plumber did some work for us and charged us at the rate of $4.50 per hour. All these charges are far beyond anything that could have been imagined a few years ago.” Diefenbaker paid them out of his own pocket.⁶⁰

The adjustment of routine was substantial but less trying. “It is far less work being Leader of the Opposition than Prime Minister,” he wrote on May 24, “and I am getting a great deal of rest and also more reading done than has been possible.”⁶¹ Diefenbaker observed the NATO ministerial meeting in Ottawa in May with resentment. “We invited them but the new Government does the entertaining and is receiving the applause. Lord Home went out of his way yesterday to build up Mr. Pearson by saying, in effect, that he became Prime Minister because he wanted Canada to be a good ally. Several of my colleagues are most annoyed at this because I refrained at all times from making political speeches in London that would criticize the Government or assist the Opposition.”⁶²

As the new Pearson government adjusted to office, settled its commitment to take nuclear warheads for Canadian weapons, appointed the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, stumbled through its first budget debate, and confronted a disturbing wave of terrorist bombings in Montreal, Diefenbaker was preoccupied with his own position in the party and the country. Pearson regarded his opponent with distaste: “There is certainly going to be lots of unpleasantness in the House,” he wrote to his son on May 26. “D. is very nasty and cannot conceal his frustrations. He misses the pomp and prestige of office greatly and obviously.”⁶³ Diefenbaker’s former newspaper supporters kept up their complaints. At the end of May he told Elmer: “The ‘Globe & Mail’ and ‘Telegram,’ and to a lesser extent until today, the ‘Gazette,’ are spending their time in personal criticism, for certain of the big interests have determined that there must be a change of the leadership of the Conservative Party.” Diefenbaker saw this criticism as a continuation of the winter conspiracy: “It is more than a coincidence that Davie Fulton was here on Monday and this is the third time that such a visit has been followed by an article by Arthur Blakely. However, I have got no intention whatsoever of falling in line with their plans and schemes. They should have learned that many years ago.”⁶⁴ A week later he reported further: “Dave Walker gave a dinner on Wednesday night for the Conservative members of the Senate and the House of Commons and he made a typically frank speech except he told them they would not have been there if it had not been for me, much to my embarrassment. However, when speaking I pointed out that I had no intention of falling in line with the desires of the Liberal Party to get me out of the leadership with an assist from a few of my former colleagues.”⁶⁵

During the next six months there were frequent calls in the party – centred in Ontario and Quebec – for a leadership review. Diefenbaker put them down at first to the inspiration of Davie Fulton who, he believed, “is doing his best to bring about a Convention – under cover work by him always seems to come to light! “Just before a meeting of the Conservative executive in October, Diefenbaker received reports that George Hees’s aide, Mel Jack, was coordinating efforts to remove him from the leadership by the spring of 1964, while “Fulton and his people” continued their activities. “I am more definitely set than ever before against resigning no matter what they may do,” he told Elmer. “It is going to be a big fight and when these great and powerful financial interests determine a course of action they exert a tremendous influence. I beat them before and intend to do so again.” In November the Chief commented publicly that “you don’t have leadership conventions unless there is a vacancy. I am the leader and there is no vacancy.” Within the organization, he strengthened his own position by installing Gordon Churchill as national director and the former MP Richard Thrasher as national secretary.⁶⁶

Dalton Camp told the party executive in October: “I supported the Conservative Party and its Leader, Mr. Diefenbaker, because I believed them to be right in all the issues vital to the country. Indeed, the greater the issue, the more right they were. Far from apologizing for my personal stand, I exult in it. In fact, I celebrate it with each passing day.” The leader had distinguished himself in the campaign. “Men in adversity do not always react the same. Thus, one of the prime qualities of leadership is personal courage. Those of us who saw Mr. Diefenbaker at close range during the campaign could not help but admire his courage, and could not help but be inspired by it. From the time he set out, we at Headquarters heard from him neither complaint, nor criticism, nor any discouragement. Even had he been wrong in what he stood for, it would have been a distinct privilege to have been associated with such courage.”

Now Camp declared that the party, “singularly blessed by the remarkable incompetence of those who succeeded us in office,” must seize its chances. That meant, paradoxically, engaging in “free expression and fresh thought within the Party itself … In the process of making a god of our Leader, we made sheep of ourselves … A healthy candor and a free exchange of thoughts are needed – should be encouraged – and must, in my opinion, be the purging influence resolving our present unresolved business. But I am not prepared to listen to those who would speak on Friday and leave us on Saturday, unless we do as we’re told.” This was a call to the faithful as skilfully ambiguous as one from Diefenbaker himself. The Chief took particular note of one paragraph, in which Camp called on the executive “to reunite this Party in mind and spirit. Surely, there must be more inviting targets on which to fix our aim than on one another. I would rather fight Grits than Tories … it is only self-inflicted wounds that are slow to heal and that can be mortal.”⁶⁷

For two weeks in September Olive and John travelled to Italy, Egypt, and Israel, with brief stopovers in Greece and Switzerland, enjoying the privileges of an elder statesman and opposition leader. They were accompanied by Diefenbaker’s Commons colleague and physician, Dr P.B. Rynard. The trip was refreshing, and the leader returned to Ottawa for the reopening of parliament determined to confront both Liberal and Conservative opponents. Two provincial elections offered him mixed signals about the state of the party. In Ontario, John Robarts’s Conservatives received an overwhelming mandate despite the active participation of federal Liberal ministers in the campaign, while in British Columbia Davie Fulton’s Tories faced what Diefenbaker called “a frightful defeat” at the hands of W.A.C. Bennett’s Social Credit Party, winning no seats and only 11 percent of the popular vote. In Diefenbaker’s view that left Fulton with idle hands, which he would undoubtedly turn to the fight against the federal party leader. Diefenbaker thought he could handle that. The Ontario result, along with his own large correspondence, gave him hope that there was “a widely felt antagonism” to the Pearson government. The Chief planned to recommence war on two fronts, with speaking engagements across the country leading up to the annual meeting of the party in Ottawa in January 1964.⁶⁸

At the end of October, Peter C. Newman’s book Renegade in Power: The Diefenbaker Years was published to widespread publicity and immediately became a bestseller. Diefenbaker denied having read it, but told Elmer on October 31 that the book was “a terrible piece of muckraking and slander. I am considering commencing action for libel. It is full of falsehoods. I am told that some wealthy people in high places provided the finances for its publication and there is some evidence to support this fact.”⁶⁹ Two advisers provided him with commentaries on the book, both emphasizing the inappropriate depiction of Diefenbaker as a “renegade” – by definition, “one who has deserted party or principles.” “In the case of the Right Honourable Leader of the Opposition,” one declared, “his principles have followed a strong, clear line from his first entry into politics until now. There has been no deviation. The title is part of the Liberal Party policy followed in the case of every Conservative Leader, of character assassination.” But the other saw advantage in the name: “The book publishers – McClelland and Stewart – have added the title for box office purposes … As ‘renegade’ is a fighting word, the Conservatives will get all the benefit from having their supporters worked up to anger. In short, John Diefenbaker will enjoy a fresh windfall of sympathy votes … The immediate advantage to the Conservative Party is that Newman’s book has brought John Diefenbaker to front page attention on a scale far beyond anything that could be contrived.” The critic noted that – although the book contained “pure inventions of the kind dreamed up in after-hours drinking in the press gallery” – it portrayed Diefenbaker as “an extremely human person, a vivid and alive personality, and the recognizable hero of the Canadian scene.” The story made him “the true Alger-series hero – poor, decent origins; family long associated with Canadian history; lost in the blizzard with Uncle Ed!…it is the legendary material that will get into the school books of future generations of Canadians.” The legislative record was impressive, and the claim that Diefenbaker was indecisive merely showed that Newman “does not understand the process of decision in a parliamentary democracy.” The public, the commentator thought, would absorb the legend and reject the author’s bias; the book was based on “hearsay and guesswork, and … backstairs gossip”; its claims were unsubstantiated.⁷⁰

Diefenbaker, too, was offended by the title. “Never has such an epithet been used in connection with one who has occupied the position of Prime Minister,” he wrote in his random speech notes. “I leave the judgement of my course and my actions to the Canadian people. They will decide – you will decide whether that epithet ‘renegade’ is one that can fittingly be applied to one who has devoted his life without thought of reward to the service of this country. Like George Washington I say that my only regret is that I have only one life to give to my country. But my reputation I have always preserved intact … Sometimes these things hurt.”⁷¹ Elmer comforted him with lashing insults against Newman, and reported that he was spreading the word against the author. While visiting the University Hospital in Saskatoon, he had told a woman who wanted the book that it was “published by the Liberal Party as vile propaganda and the proceeds are to be used as campaign funds for the Liberal Party. I don’t want you to waste your money.” The woman had replied: “I am so glad you told me that.” Elmer judged that “a person might as well fight back all the way.” A week later he added: “We’ll have to see that a decent book is written in your favor. I have quite a few notes – I jot them down when I think about them. These notes are not in order, but when I get them to-gether, I’ll send you some more material.”⁷²

Diefenbaker consulted David Walker about whether he might have a case for libel, but decided instead to maintain his public silence and let his friends fight the battle of publicity. He was most satisfied by Michael Wardell’s long “Reply to Newman” in the Fredericton Daily Gleaner. “The book is a sparkling affair that is already a best seller, and deservedly,” wrote Wardell, “but it seems, in a way, an exercise in schizophrenia. Between the first part of the book and the rest of it there is a marked disconnection of thought and expression. The first part is a masterful historical summary of the formative years of Diefenbaker, from his beginnings as a small-town lawyer … to his becoming Prime Minister of Canada in 1957. The remainder of the book is a tirade of denunciation, execration and scarification. There are no contrasts of lights and shades; only bitter unrelieved black … The result is so patently biased, so unfair, and so reckless as to defeat its own ends, and bring sympathy to the subject rather than censure.” Wardell shared the Chief’s conviction that reporters, including Newman, and the CBC had seen the Conservative government through the eyes of the Liberal Party, and had thus been engaged, in Newman’s words, in “an unpatriotic conspiracy, probably Liberal-inspired.” Despite them all, Diefenbaker’s policies had proved to be “good, solid, common sense.” Wardell concluded with a call for loyalty: “If I were a Conservative politician, which I am not, I would stake my faith in Diefenbaker. I would expel the traitors from my Party, I would turn my back on the faint hearts, and I would go forward with my trust in the only man who can hope to lead my Party to victory. And I would bring these great issues to the test next spring.”⁷³

Renegade in Power was the first and most successful of a new Canadian genre, the journalist’s dramatic summary of a political era. As much as anything Diefenbaker himself could do, the book helped to create the legend of a Canadian folk hero.

George Grant gave philosophic weight to the Diefenbaker legend when he published his Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism in the spring of 1965. In counterpoint to Creighton’s Macdonald, which had celebrated Canada’s beginning, Grant lamented its end. For Grant, the dream of a North American alternative to American liberal, corporate society had been impossible. Diefenbaker was the nation’s last, half-blind defender, an inadequate tragic hero acting with courage and instinctive wisdom in a hopeless cause. Paradoxically, Lament for a Nation made Diefenbaker a historical figure of consequence and – perhaps surprisingly – gave inspiration to a new generation of intellectual nationalists who made their influence felt in all three national parties during the decade that followed. In Grant’s prose the legend had taken wing.

As he was mythologized, so he was demonized. In 1964, wrote John Saywell, Canada was a country divided over language and regionalism, in which traditions, loyalties, and views of the nation were in conflict. Parliament was wounded and, in the eyes of many, antiquated; and yet, puzzlingly, the men in it “were of an unusually high calibre. To resolve the paradox many observers were forced to conclude that the political and parliamentary process lay at the mercy of one man, whose natural desire to return to office and whose simplistic view of the nation’s problems threatened to do irreparable damage to his party, if not to his country.”⁷⁴

As the year began, Diefenbaker toured the country denouncing Liberal approaches to national unity, pleading that Canada was one nation, not two. An element in that campaign was his effort to silence Conservative critics of his own leadership before the annual meeting of the party association at the beginning of February. In mid-January a Quebec constituency association circulated a letter to all constituency associations urging support for a leadership convention in 1964; and in Toronto, John Bassett and others promoted a vote of confidence in the leader to be conducted by secret ballot at the annual meeting. Diefenbaker’s approach to criticism was almost the same as it had always been. He expected loyalty. He did not engage in extended negotiation with his opponents, but appealed beyond them to the broader party he had created, talking in vague terms of “the Toronto clique,” or “the financial interests,” or “the Warwicks of the Conservative Party” who opposed him. He did not attempt to organize or direct his own campaign of support, beyond falling in with one crucial encounter arranged by David Walker and Ted Rogers. Just before Christmas in 1963 he accepted an invitation to dinner at the Rogers home, where John Bassett would also be present. He told Elmer that “I am not looking forward to it in sweet contemplation. However, if I see him and there is no change in his attitude I will feel that I have done everything possible.” That meeting led to another, private one in early January, which Diefenbaker thought had “turned out very well … Time will tell but I am hopeful that after the Annual Meeting the Telegram may decide to come back to the Progressive Conservative party. If it does that will be beneficial.”⁷⁵

The meeting apparently resulted in a real and crucial compromise. When Diefenbaker addressed the annual meeting on February 4, 1964, and called for the expected vote of confidence in his leadership, he told delegates that he was ready to accept a secret ballot if that was what they wished. The same day the lead editorial in the Telegram, titled “Day of Decision,” called for an overwhelming vote of confidence in Diefenbaker – “whether it is a standing show of hands or a secret ballot.”⁷⁶ Those two changes of position weakened the opposition to Diefenbaker. The motion for a secret ballot was defeated by three to one, and the motion of confidence, in an open vote, carried almost unanimously. About thirty opponents, including Douglas Harkness and J.M. Macdonnell, stood prominently together to register their dissent amid taunts from the leader’s supporters. More abstained from voting. Diefenbaker thought he had disposed of the challenge for good, but that was clearly wishful thinking. “We cannot believe,” commented the Globe and Mail, “that it is the end of the story, that a great party has really resigned itself to go into the next election behind a man who has proved he cannot lead.” Even the Telegram remained sceptical of a leader who still failed to appreciate that “the job of restoring the party’s fortunes demands conciliatory gestures on both sides.” But Michael Wardell’s Fredericton Gleaner judged that the endorsement of Diefenbaker was a “big decision, a noble, correct and triumphant one.”⁷⁷

To avoid damaging defections from the Quebec wing of the party, Diefenbaker attended a meeting of the Quebec caucus the next day and endorsed Léon Balcer as his Quebec lieutenant and “provincial leader of the federal party in Quebec.” Balcer, he roundly declared, was a modern George-Etienne Cartier to his own Macdonald, and he would live in history. When the House of Commons opened two weeks later, Diefenbaker had rearranged the party’s seating to place Balcer beside him on the front bench. But he denied that Balcer held the position of deputy leader or chief lieutenant. Balcer expressed his puzzlement to reporters.⁷⁸

As a further symbol of reconciliation, the annual meeting elected Dalton Camp as the new president of the party, succeeding Diefenbaker’s critic Egan Chambers. In his acceptance speech, Camp declared that the national association must be “in the service of the Parliamentary Party. Their policy must be our policy. And their leadership is ours, to be sustained and championed, supported and upheld.” That was, precisely, the view of John Diefenbaker, who knew that his strongest supporters were in the parliamentary caucus.⁷⁹ But under Camp’s inspiration the party was also thinking ahead, planning for renewed communication between party and leader – which he promised would be “cordial … confidential … candid” – and for a policy conference modelled on the Liberal Party’s 1960 Kingston conference.

Paralleling Diefenbaker’s political activity, the legend-making proceeded. In March the CBC presented Douglas Leiterman’s hour-long profile The Chief, an engagingly sympathetic portrait of Diefenbaker in his home-town surroundings of Prince Albert, or fishing in deerstalker cap and dufflecoat, wry, witty, and unpretentious, the man of the people he had always declared himself to be. The film was an early and outstanding example of the techniques of cinema vérité then being pioneered by Canadian filmmakers with their new, lightweight cameras, telephoto lenses, and compact sound equipment. Leiterman said that the image of Diefenbaker had “the ring of truth,” and his audiences believed it. The image contrasted vividly with the picture of attractive but bumbling incompetence and disorder conveyed by D.A. Pennebaker’s film Mr. Pearson, which was temporarily withheld from showing on the CBC later in the year amid accusations of improper news management against the Liberal government.⁸⁰

Prime Minister Pearson opened the 1964 session of parliament with emphasis on his party’s plans for parliamentary reform, cooperation with the provinces, and “full partnership” among English- and French-speaking Canadians. Diefenbaker criticized the cabinet for irresolution, incoherence, and creeping centralization.⁸¹ On February 25 the government scraped through a vote on a Conservative amendment by a vote of 128 to 120, when three Social Crediters and two New Democrats gave the cabinet its slight margin. For two months the House occupied itself with petty and raucous debate on interim supply, the estimates, and an unexciting budget, with repeated conflict over the timetable. The press blamed both the government for poor management and the opposition leader for persistent obstruction – which Diefenbaker denied as “a baseless and empty alibi.”⁸² He was enjoying the combat and hoping to defeat the government.

The issue that preoccupied the House for most of the year, perturbed the country, and brought fresh disturbance to the Conservative Party was put on the agenda by Pearson in May. He chose the annual convention of the Royal Canadian Legion in Winnipeg to announce that his government would propose a Canadian flag “designed around the Maple Leaf.” Legion members were not appeased by his assurance that the Union Jack would remain as a symbol of the monarchy and membership in the Commonwealth, and they booed him lustily. The press in English-speaking Canada interpreted the prime minister’s decision primarily as a bow to French-speaking sensitivities, either endorsing it as an act of statesmanship or denouncing it as craven pandering. In the face of widespread criticism – including Joey Smallwood’s ultimatum that the Union Jack or the Red Ensign must share equal place as Canada’s second flag – the government introduced two balanced resolutions on May 27: one provided for a maple leaf flag, along with maintenance of the Union Jack as the royal and Commonwealth flag of Canada; the other declared “O Canada” the national anthem and “God Save the Queen” the royal anthem of Canada. That compromise alienated some Quebec members of the Liberal caucus and antagonized the Créditistes, while failing to satisfy traditionalist Tories. The government was probably saved from initial defeat by the Speaker’s decision to split the flag resolution into two separate votes.

The party leaders established their positions in three days of debate in mid-June. Prime Minister Pearson reiterated his faith in a maple leaf design; Diefenbaker denounced the proposal as a source of disunity and a distraction from “the chaos and confusion of the government,” and called for a national referendum; Tommy Douglas appealed for calm and delay; and Real Caouette praised Pearson’s courage and opposed the Union Jack. Diefenbaker and many members of his caucus confirmed their position as die-hard supporters of the Red Ensign, and when debate was resumed in August it was clear that they were prepared for an endless filibuster. Léon Balcer and his Quebec colleagues sought some middle ground, and after a month of futility the parties agreed to refer the issue to a committee of fifteen to report within six weeks. Diefenbaker warned that his party would insist on unlimited debate on the committee’s recommendation unless it reported virtually unanimously – but that seemed impossible because four of its Conservative members were committed to the Red Ensign.⁸³

With the flag debate temporarily sidetracked, the House had a productive autumn, adopting a non-partisan redistribution bill and several major reforms in House of Commons procedure and organization. In October Diefenbaker and his colleague Erik Nielsen – a tough and honest Yukon lawyer who had entered the House in 1957 – led attacks on the government with charges that it had assisted the secret departure from the country of the longshoremen’s union leader Hal Banks (who was being sought on criminal charges), and that Banks had contributed to Liberal campaign funds. The minister of justice and Liberal House leader, Guy Favreau, stumbled in defending the government’s case. At the end of November, once again, Nielsen and Diefenbaker pounced on Favreau. The minister, they said, had failed to consult his legal officers before deciding not to prosecute a senior ministerial staff member for offering a bribe to obtain bail for the Montreal drug dealer Lucien Rivard; and Favreau had not informed Pearson of involvement by his own parliamentary secretary. Nielsen had prepared carefully and informed Favreau of his concerns in advance, in the hope of avoiding a partisan attack on the minister, but Favreau had taken no action. Once questions were asked, Pearson agreed to establish a judicial inquiry and dismissed the persons implicated, but he left Favreau dangling by failing, day after day, to correct a misstatement he had made about when Favreau informed him of the affair. Finally he did so, not in the House, but in a letter to Mr Justice Frédéric Dorion, the chairman of the inquiry.

Simultaneously, the Conservatives and the NDP raised serious charges of impropriety against two more Quebec ministers, René Tremblay and Maurice Lamontagne. They were politically crippled, but Pearson kept them in cabinet for another year. In January 1965 Pearson dismissed Yvon Dupuis, his minister without portfolio, who had been charged with accepting a bribe. The Liberal cabinet was shaken by these repeated indications of scandal and incompetence, all of them implicating Québécois ministers and all of them handled ineptly by Prime Minister Pearson. The leader of the opposition relished the atmosphere of attack, and – in Liberal eyes – enhanced his reputation as an evil genius.⁸⁴

Pearson, who had always disliked the parliamentary battle, was driven to distraction by Diefenbaker’s unyielding pursuit. In discouragement, Pearson let what now seemed to be his hatred of Diefenbaker carry him too far. On December 4, 1964, Diefenbaker received a letter from the prime minister, delivered at home by special messenger. It opened portentously:

In discharge of my constitutional duty as Prime Minister, I am writing this letter to you as a Privy Councillor and former Prime Minister.

I have been much concerned, not only about allegations made recently in a particular case, the Rivard case, but, even more, about an attitude toward the operation of the law that certain evidence in this case discloses. This attitude is not widespread but the Rivard case illustrates the need to take thorough action to remove it.

The problem has not sprung up suddenly. In order to assess the need for corrective action, I have asked for a full report of instances in the last ten years or so in which political intervention was involved in investigations. This information will enable me to see how such matters could and should be dealt with.

One case (the Munsinger case) has given me very grave concern. It affects the security of the country. In 1960-61, a Minister who occupied a position of great responsibility in the Government was involved in a liaison which clearly endangered security.

I have been greatly disturbed by the lack of attention which, insofar as the file indicates, this matter received. The Minister was left in his position of trust.

I have decided that I cannot, in the public interest, let the matter lie where it was left and that I must ask the R.C.M. Police to pursue further enquiries.

I recognize that the file before me may not disclose all the steps that were taken. In view of this, it is my duty to write to you about the matter in case you might be in a position to let me know that the enquiries were pursued and the safeguards that were taken reached further than the materials before me would indicate. That material now indicates that the Minister of Justice brought the matter to your attention and that no action was taken.

Because national security is involved, this is the most serious and disturbing of the matters that have been brought to my attention. But I assure you that all incidents during the last ten years are being thoroughly examined and will be followed up without fear or favour if and when the evidence requires it.

If there is further information you can provide about the Munsinger case, I will be grateful if you will let me know.⁸⁵

Pearson told Bruce Hutchison in February 1965 that he had called in the commissioner of the RCMP and asked to see “all the files you have on every MP since 1956.”⁸⁶ The fishing expedition was a violation of cabinet convention and political decency unprecedented in Canadian history. Diefenbaker’s excesses were matched by this one. Pearson’s letter to Diefenbaker, reporting his discovery of the Munsinger file and his “very grave concern” about the apparent lack of attention Diefenbaker had given it, contained an implied threat that the information might be used against the ex-prime minister. Pearson’s purpose – as he admitted to Hutchison – was “that if he was aware that I knew about the affair he might take it a little easier on us.”⁸⁷ In his memoirs, Diefenbaker characterized the letter accurately as “an attempt to blackmail Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition into silence on the scandals rocking his government.”⁸⁸

Diefenbaker – who was ill in bed when he received the letter – consulted his House leader, Gordon Churchill, about it and decided that he would confront Pearson in person. One week later, on December 11, 1964, he met the prime minister in his East Block office. Pearson recalled: “He rushed over and started to wave his fists at me and said that he had a scandal on me too. That he knew all about my days as a Communist. I laughed in his face and said, ‘Oh, you mean that testimony to the McCarran Committee by that deranged woman in Washington. Well, there’s nothing to that. I remember at the time Dean Acheson sent a man up here to tell me about it and I told him to go ahead and publish it.’ Well Diefenbaker was pretty deflated so I asked him if he’d been involved any further in the matter on which I’d seen the file and he said no. So I said, give it to me in writing. But of course he never has.”⁸⁹

Diefenbaker’s account of the conversation is consistent with Pearson’s, but he describes its ending in scornful terms.

I remember that Pearson got to his feet. He walked over to me and, in his most ingratiating way, said: “We should not talk to each other like this, John.” I rejoined: “I didn’t write the letter that you sent to me, Mike.” I added, “And neither did you.” Mr. Pearson admitted that the letter had been drafted for him. He then added, “You know I am not a politician. I am a diplomat.” I replied that I had heard a diplomat defined “as a person who lies away from home.” I turned to leave and added, “You are no diplomat.” I heard no more about the Munsinger case until January 1966.⁹⁰

The two leaders were engaged in more than parliamentary combat: They were locked in distrust, contempt, and hatred, and that mutual obsession infected their followers and embittered the atmosphere of the House of Commons. For Diefenbaker, his old suspicion and jealousy of the urbane diplomat had deepened after Pearson had displaced him in power. Pearson, he believed, had gained power through an unfair conspiracy and had demonstrated his incompetence in office. He deserved to be removed. In a fair electoral battle, Diefenbaker was confident that Canadian voters would restore him to his rightful place.

Through the autumn the House committee on the Canadian flag conducted its contentious – and sometimes hilarious – proceedings, examining a large number of designs. The Conservative members of the committee, Diefenbaker admitted, were “badly out-manoeuvred.” By the end of October the committee had discarded Pearson’s three-maple-leaf design (Diefenbaker called it the “Pearson pennant”) and opted for George Stanley’s striking single red leaf with red bands. Diefenbaker commented that it was a flag Peruvians would salute. When the report was returned to the House, the opposition leader and his largely English-speaking caucus maintained their refusal to limit debate. Almost three dozen Conservative members wished to record their attitudes in a lost cause. Léon Balcer and the Quebec Conservatives, on the contrary, favoured a new flag without the Red Ensign, and warned that Tory opposition to it would devastate the party in Quebec at the next election. On December 11 he proposed that Pearson should use closure to end the debate, and a few days later the prime minister did so, leaving the Conservative Party deeply riven. Long after midnight on December 15, 1964, the House adopted the flag resolution, as partisans on one side of the House sang “O Canada” and those on the other sang “God Save the Queen.” As the debate concluded, Diefenbaker told Pearson: “You have done more to divide Canada than any other Prime Minister.”⁹¹

The Conservative Party found temporary relief for three days in September 1964, when politicians, academics, and critics of every political stripe gathered for Dalton Camp’s party conference on Canadian goals in Fredericton, New Brunswick. The leader attended briefly to insist upon his friendship for intellectuals; Marshall McLuhan offered cryptic comments on the need for charismatic leadership to match the celebrity of the Beatles; and other participants offered Quebec everything and nothing. The historian W.L. Morton warned Quebeckers that a decision to separate from Canada should be met by “every means including force if necessary,” while Claude Ryan doubted whether that approach would attract support in the province. Davie Fulton proposed constitutional reform to assert the equality of the two language groups; and Montreal lawyer Marc Lalonde believed that a firm commitment to federalism in Ottawa would easily vanquish the separatists and semi-separatists. The conference offered a feast of ideas, but little evidence of a clear direction for the Conservative Party. Diefenbaker congratulated Camp for “one of the most beneficial conferences that have taken place in many years,” and thought that the party should follow up with a new platform. He was disappointed that two caucus committees on policy had produced “very little of a constructive nature.”⁹²

“If he says he’s the Leader of the Opposition, humour him.”

The flag debate typified Conservative woes. In mid-January 1965 the eight-member Quebec caucus, under Léon Balcer’s leadership, met in Montreal to consider its position in the party, and next day Balcer wrote at its direction to Camp asking him “to convene a meeting of the national executive … in order to fix a date for a national convention to decide upon the leadership of the party.” Balcer told Camp that the crisis involved more than the flag.

On every issue touching the taproots of Confederation, the hopes and aspirations of French Canada have been distorted, mis-represented and ignored. The repatriation of our Constitution; the opting-out formula; the B. and B. Commission; federal-provincial relations and even the Canada Pension Plan – each of them have been subjected to narrow, parochial, unreasoning criticism of the kind to which great issues should not be subjected. Our concern is not for criticism, or even opposition, to any of these, but to the disturbing pattern which the across-the-board opposition has revealed.

It is our firm conviction, reached after the most careful consideration, that the Conservative Party can no longer carry on as a great national party under its present leadership and the policies which that leadership have engendered.

Balcer struck at Diefenbaker’s jugular by asserting that the party had adopted policies that were “the direct antithesis of the great work of union wrought by Macdonald and Cartier – the first Canadians to master the art of governing this difficult country of ours.” He called for the executive meeting to be held before the House reconvened on February 16, and noted that the Quebec caucus had already made a public announcement of its request.⁹³

Camp faced what he described to Diefenbaker as “a cruel dilemma.” Everyone he consulted thought that the Liberal government could and should be defeated; but equally everyone was aware of the public division in the Tory party. “All propose one or other ultimate solution to it, involving the leadership, but these taken together are mutually contradictory.”⁹⁴ To confront the dilemma, Camp wrote to members of the national executive enclosing Balcer’s letter, asking them to tell him at once whether they favoured an early meeting to consider Balcer’s request. When 60 percent of the executive indicated their support, Camp called a national executive meeting for Saturday, February 6, 1965.⁹⁵

During the last ten days of January the leader of the opposition was away from Ottawa, first in Prince Albert and then, for four crowded days, in London attending the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill. Camp did not consult Diefenbaker before calling the executive meeting, but explained his decision in a memorandum and an interview with the leader on February 2. Camp noted the extreme divisions between French- and English-speaking elements in the party, “agitation and unrest” among young members, a withdrawal of support for the federal party by the Ontario organization (“including its leadership”), shortages of candidates and funds, and the continued unrelenting opposition of the press. But he thought the executive retained “a strong sense of mutual confidence and solidarity among its non-Parliamentary members” and would not support Balcer’s proposal for a leadership convention. He hoped that it might somehow find a solution that would retain the pride and vitality of the party – without suggesting what it might be. He passed on some harsh personal comments to Diefenbaker: “The most helpful thing I believe I could tell you is that a number in the Party fear what they take to be your ‘political memory’; others admire your courage and your stalwart defense of what you think is right, but they also fear what they take to be an inflexibility of mind and an inflexibility in personal relationships. Someone said to me that ‘the difference in the Conservative Party between loyalty and subservience had never been learned.’ ”⁹⁶ Salvaging the party’s pride, it seemed, would have to involve someone’s resignation. Probably nothing could save party unity.

Diefenbaker’s staff members Burt Richardson and Tom Van Dusen counselled attack.⁹⁷ Richardson told Diefenbaker that Camp had committed “an act of perfidy” by calling the meeting of the national executive, designed “to assert power within the party, bringing the leader and all elements under the control of this clique.” He suggested a number of countermeasures: a press campaign indicating that “the Chief is on the warpath, ready to strike”; an order to Camp to “recant and denounce the clique”; a meeting of the parliamentary caucus before the executive meeting to declare its support for the leader; a grassroots campaign to launch “a deluge of mail and messages” in his favour; and a public statement by Diefenbaker declaring his intention to fight. Richardson identified the rebels as “the Quebec group” and “the Toronto Turks,” and doubted that they controlled the national executive. In any case, “the real power of the leader lies in the grass roots voters and in the caucus.” The executive should be told by its parliamentary members that “whatever leader the party has, he must have loyalty … Above all, the leader should not resign at this time, as public opinion is beginning to accept the inevitability of John Diefenbaker being Prime Minister again.”⁹⁸

With only four days before the executive meeting, Diefenbaker and his supporters could hardly mount the campaign Richardson called for. But they did arrange a caucus meeting for February 5; and Diefenbaker – who was now receiving signals of a precipitate collapse in support among the faithful – engaged in a frenetic series of telephone conversations and personal encounters to measure his chances and rally his troops. Balcer announced his intention to boycott the caucus meeting, and plans for a motion to expel him from caucus were discussed. But Diefenbaker was also talking once more of his own retirement.⁹⁹

By the time caucus gathered on February 5, Diefenbaker had put those thoughts behind him. He foresaw an early election, and called for a unified campaign aimed at victory. “I am not leading the Conservative Party into the wilderness,” his notes declare. “I intend to lead this party to another task ordered by Canada’s destiny. I am reminded of the motto of Count Frontenac: ‘I will answer the enemy from the mouths of my cannon.’ ” If there was any fighting in the ranks, “it must stop now … Ferment inside a Party is a sign of life. But ferment carried on when the time comes for political battle is something else. It is treachery. I have, therefore, an assignment for those who have been outspoken around the campfires in the bivouac. As the battle approaches, let them make clear where they stand … I myself have caused some ferment in the Party, as rank and file supporter in my time. I have always given the Leader under whom I have served, my complete loyalty and support. I expect no less today as Leader.”¹⁰⁰

The caucus meeting continued for four hours, as supporters and critics had their say. David Walker, Allister Grosart, Erik Nielsen, and Terry Nugent led for the defence. But, as Peter Newman reported, “Diefenbaker, for the first time, was the subject of open laughter in the inner circles of his own party” when his old friend Senator Walker declared: “He’s an honest man who ran an honest government, and I can say that nobody’s ever found John Diefenbaker out.”¹⁰¹ A motion of confidence in Diefenbaker’s parliamentary leadership was adopted by standing vote, and the leader left the meeting in high spirits. Others reported that “about a dozen” members had remained seated.¹⁰²

Next morning, after Diefenbaker and Camp had breakfasted together to discuss the day’s proceedings, 116 members of the national executive met in a warehouse room on the top floor of the party’s new headquarters. Camp explained that Balcer and Diefenbaker would speak before lunch, and that afterwards a questionnaire would be distributed asking for advice on the issues in dispute. Diefenbaker had agreed with Camp that this would allow members to express their opinions, but would leave the secret results available only to the party president and himself. Balcer spoke for a few minutes, simply reading his previous letter to Camp and thanking all those present for attending in such large numbers. Diefenbaker, with Olive close by, spoke for almost an hour and a half. He denounced those who had opposed him in 1956, who had continued, privately and publicly, to oppose him ever since. They were “termites” pursuing their own ambitions. “Those who have ambition,” he said, would have their opportunity in due course, but he recalled that Gladstone had won his last election at eighty-four. “You who have ambitions,” he mocked, “should not be other than hopeful.”

Diefenbaker surveyed his battlefronts and his enemies old and new. President Kennedy, he noted, had attempted to stop Canadian grain shipments to China, had stimulated the exchange crisis of 1962 to aid the Liberals, and had intervened in Canadian affairs in 1963. “The termites” accused Diefenbaker of being anti-Quebec: Was he responsible for the party’s record in Quebec from 1921 to 1940? Was he the one who boycotted caucus? Was he the one now “termiting across the country”? In 1922 he had defended French language education in Saskatchewan in the Boutin case. Was he responsible for the Liberal provincial victory or the separatist tide in Quebec? He believed in one Canada. Had he leaked Davie Fulton’s views on constitutional amendment to the Montreal Gazette?

As for himself, “I have no personal ambition. I have had everything. I don’t care how you vote, but put yourself in my position. If you vote against me you are voting for the pattern of Liberalism. I want to know if you want that … If you want a Convention, have it. Get rid of me … They offered me the Chief Justiceship of Canada” – but he would say more about that another time. He recalled the lamentable records of Manion, Bracken, and Drew in Quebec. He played out his themes, returning again and again to Balcer, to Fulton, defying the meeting to “call your convention … go to work and do some defending and fighting … Do what you will. I don’t come to you as a suppliant.”¹⁰³

When the meeting adjourned for lunch, Diefenbaker emerged to tell reporters that it was a fine meeting and that he had proposed “new ideas to strengthen the party.” (He had called for two new party committees.) Nearly half the delegates left the building for lunch, while Diefenbaker ate sandwiches with those who remained. “In the old days,” reported the Toronto Star, “all the delegates would have stayed to lunch and the chance of a word with The Chief.”¹⁰⁴

Dalton Camp opened the afternoon session by reading the questions proposed for the secret questionnaire: Should there be a leadership convention? Should the leader resign? Should there be a policy advisory committee? Should the party fully accept the new Canadian flag?¹⁰⁵ Diefenbaker “suddenly became very agitated,” whispered to Gordon Churchill, exchanged notes with Olive and with David Walker, and then stood to complain that the national executive was an advisory body that could not pass judgment on the leader. He rejected inclusion of the second question. After a confused debate, five officers of the association withdrew to consider the problem. They returned fifteen minutes later to announce a unanimous decision to let the question stand. Now there was an angry impasse, broken by a motion from Erik Nielsen to delete the second question: a procedural motion that was, in effect, a veiled vote of confidence to be decided by a standing count. This, said the Star, was “the kind of question the rebels feared because some members dared not stand openly against the leader.”

About half of the delegates rose in favor of deleting the resignation question. When those opposed to the deletion stood up, Quebec and Ontario were almost unanimous and even one Saskatchewan delegate surprisingly joined them.

The rebels were so surprised that they omitted to keep count but they accepted later that the margin at most was 55 to 52 and one delegate was sure it was only 53-52.¹⁰⁶

The association’s officers, who had proposed the question, had not voted. Eddie Goodman protested, but Camp insisted that they would not do so. “How can you not vote in favour of your own ballot when you got us here and presented it to us?” Goodman asked. Camp did not answer – and the question was deleted.¹⁰⁷

Before the questionnaires were returned, other members of the executive spoke. Davie Fulton admitted to his ambition on behalf of, and his loyalty to, the party. He recalled that he had remained in the 1963 cabinet until after the election defeat, denied any improper conduct, and asked the executive to look forward, not back, in considering the party’s needs.¹⁰⁸ J.M. Macdonnell, aged eighty-one and still “ramrod proud,” also rose and looked directly at Diefenbaker as he spoke: “It is possible that I qualify for this term ‘termite,’ since a year ago I was among the few who stood up against the leader. But since, in addition to being a termite, I am also an octogenarian, I doubt if I qualify for the leader’s suggestion that all termites are moved by personal ambition.”¹⁰⁹ At the end of debate John Diefenbaker returned to the microphone with a quieter call for party unity in the coming battle against the Grits. The questionnaires were returned to the national president for counting, and the meeting adjourned. Diefenbaker told reporters, “We have been able to bring about a sense of agreement as to the course to be followed in the days and weeks ahead,” and asserted that there had been no challenge to his leadership. “There being no challenge, I didn’t meet it … A national leadership convention is held only when there is a vacancy, and I can tell you there is no vacancy at this time.” Dalton Camp offered more soft soap: “It was a family meeting in an appropriate spirit of the family home … We accomplished a good thing today.” The results of the balloting, he explained, would be conveyed to Mr Diefenbaker in confidence, solely as advice.¹¹⁰

Camp announced the next day that the proposal for a leadership convention had been rejected by the meeting. The Globe reported that “the voting figures were not officially disclosed, but are believed to have been 55-52 …Although the majority was narrow, it probably secures Mr. Diefenbaker’s position for the foreseeable future.” Balcer responded that the announcement “is in conflict with the general trend of yesterday’s meeting,” and asked to see “the complete figures and the voting slips on which they are based.” Newman commented that Diefenbaker had been “cruelly wounded” by the meeting, and could “no longer count on the public affection which nurtured him.” The Toronto Star spoke editorially of his “unshakeable will to power” as leader of a party “confused, divided and without hope.” Many of those who opposed a leadership convention, it judged, had done so “not in support of Mr. Diefenbaker, but in fear that the Liberals would call an election while the Conservative party was helpless in a bitter leadership fight.” Now Diefenbaker would lead the party into another general election against a Liberal government “racked by scandal,” while many good Conservatives stood aside.¹¹¹ A few weeks later one Conservative MP from Quebec, Rémi Paul, left the caucus to sit as an independent; and in April Léon Balcer followed.

On February 17 Diefenbaker spoke to the people on television: “I have been maligned. I have been condemned. No one since the days of Macdonald has gone through the like … They say they want to remove me … I have been told … in the last few days that if I remain as Leader of the Conservative Party, support for the Party by certain interests will end. My friends, they believe they will succeed in this way. I will follow the will of the people. Will it be the will of the People or those that are all powerful?”¹¹²

Despite his bravado, Diefenbaker was worn down by his struggle, and Olive encouraged him to retire. In March he met with a small group of his closest supporters, apparently intent on making a voluntary departure. He told them of his intention to go. But the story was leaked and Diefenbaker – typically torn by conflicting advice – impulsively reversed himself. “I was so aroused by the necessity of denying to the press my decision to retire,” he put it in his memoirs, “that I decided not to retire.”¹¹³ Diefenbaker’s demons would not let him go by his own choice.

The demoralized Conservative Party could do little to hide its disarray except to attack the government, which was in its own state of chaos. Pearson pursued his quest for accommodation with the new Quebec, while his office remained disorganized and his Quebec ministers unusually accident-prone. After long and contentious debate, the Canada Pension Plan and legislation to permit Quebec to opt out of federal social programs were adopted during the winter. While the Dorion inquiry continued, the government faced new embarrassment when the key figure in the scandal, the narcotics dealer Lucien Rivard, escaped from Bordeaux jail by climbing over the wall from the prison yard where he was watering the skating rink on a warm evening in early spring. That permitted Diefenbaker to accuse the cabinet once more of “slack or careless administration of justice and law enforcement.” Although Rivard had been held in a provincial jail, Diefenbaker accused the federal minister of negligence: “such a disregard of political morality on the part of this government as to shock the public conscience.”¹¹⁴

In April the government began a new session of parliament by outlining plans for generous new public assistance programs, inevitably described as the Canadian version of President Johnson’s “Great Society.” Diefenbaker attacked the preview as “a catchall of promises,” renewed his criticisms of the government’s moral laxity, and challenged the proposed Fulton-Favreau formula for constitutional amendment as unworkable. At the very end of the session in June, the cabinet received Judge Dorion’s report, which found that there had been a conspiracy to obstruct the course of justice in the Rivard affair, and that Guy Favreau, as minister, had failed to exercise proper discretion by neglecting to consult his legal officers when he learned of the bribe attempt. The cabinet went through a day of distressed consultation before the prime minister announced that Favreau had resigned as minister of justice but would remain in cabinet in another portfolio. The minister’s prestige was destroyed, and the prime minister’s half-measure gave the leader of the opposition more evidence for his claim that this was a weak and negligent government.¹¹⁵

The Conservative Party’s never-ending domestic strife meant that its popularity in the polls declined steadily during the winter and spring of 1965. Mike Pearson dreamed of a majority government to finish his work of accommodation and social reform; and he dreamed, too, of a time when he would be free of the malign force across the aisle of the House. His advisers urged him to go to the electorate before Diefenbaker retired, both to conquer and to drive him out of politics. But the Rivard report, and a summer railway strike, gave Pearson pause through July and August. Finally, in early September, after polling his cabinet, Pearson announced an election for November 8, 1965, and appealed for a majority government. Diefenbaker echoed widespread editorial sentiment by denouncing the dissolution, but declared in predictable phrases that “we have an appointment with destiny and I say, forward in courage and faith.” His wounded forces, reluctant, fatalistic, or bitterly loyal, gathered round him for one last crusade.

Diefenbaker talked of elections in the language of military campaigns, and he might have imagined himself, in 1965, as Laurence Olivier’s Henry V encouraging his yeoman army on the eve of Agincourt. To his followers, though, he was no Olivier or Henry, the companion leader of the team, but a manic wanderer standing alone and surveying the hostile country beyond, his guides clustered separately behind him in anxious conclave about where he might be leading them. By the autumn of 1965 there was scarcely any national organization left; in Quebec there was hardly a party at any level.

During the first meeting of the Conservative campaign committee, Richard Thrasher took Eddie Goodman aside to ask him if he would run the campaign. Apart from supporting Léon Balcer at the February executive meeting, Goodman had taken no part in politics since the cabinet split of 1963. In Diefenbaker’s eyes he was one of the Toronto conspirators. Goodman was incredulous. “How can you run an election campaign,” he asked, “when the leader doesn’t speak to the campaign chairman? Dief would never agree to this.” Thrasher replied that Diefenbaker, who had been under pressure from Gordon Churchill and Allister Grosart, would accept him. Others had refused the job, and no one else could do it. Goodman reflected, consulted, and accepted, knowing that he was one of only a few – Camp and Brunt had been others – who could stand up to the Chief. He approached their first meeting “with a mixture of amusement and trepidation.” Diefenbaker greeted him coldly, confirming that he had accepted Thrasher’s advice that Goodman was “the best man under the circumstances.” When Goodman asked for Diefenbaker’s “absolute confidence … throughout the campaign, both in my loyalty and my judgment,” Diefenbaker replied, “I have always found you forthright if sometimes mistaken, and I certainly accept your promise to do your best.” But he asked for a delegate at headquarters for the duration. Goodman exploded: “Mr. Diefenbaker, there will be only one person reporting to you at my headquarters. Me. In one breath you tell me you trust me and in the next you ask for a personal agent.” Diefenbaker backed off, then asked for a guarantee that Lowell Murray would not enter headquarters. Goodman agreed, but consulted Murray privately throughout the campaign.¹¹⁶

Diefenbaker then produced a copy of the discredited US Senate committee testimony of the spy Elizabeth Bentley accusing Pearson of wartime Soviet espionage, suggesting that it offered ammunition for the campaign. Goodman told him firmly that “we had quite enough material to make Pearson’s leadership look bad without resorting to this type of scurrilous innuendo.” Diefenbaker dropped the subject.¹¹⁷

Goodman’s objective was to reunite the party and “bring back the dissidents of 1963 and 1964”: to do what the Toronto Star had said could not be done under Diefenbaker’s continuing leadership. The miracle was occurring. George Hees, Davie Fulton, Dalton Camp, and George Hogan were all candidates. The Telegram, too, had renewed its loyalty. The premier of Manitoba, Duff Roblin, was on the point of declaring his candidacy, but refused the final jump when Diefenbaker neglected to encourage him. At national headquarters, Flora MacDonald and James Johnston provided energy and ideas, and a fresh crew of young aides provided muscle.¹¹⁸

There was a lively spirit of gallows humour among the national organizers. Two stories especially became part of Diefenbaker lore. As they patched together the official version of a party program, Allister Grosart and Jim Johnston bantered about a winning election slogan; and a decade later Johnston explained the incident to Diefenbaker.

One afternoon I said to Grosart that we had to answer the query of the public, why had our government lost its 208 seats. We were searching for a concise answer to that one … I said to him … what we should be doing by election day was getting the issue down to one point, “Give the old bugger another chance.”

So there were your friends laughingly treating you with affectionate disrespect.¹¹⁹

Johnston repeated the line to Goodman and others, and it was instantly transmitted across town to the prime minister’s office. “This made me feel very badly,” Johnston told Diefenbaker, “as I hated the thoughts of the Grits laughing at something like this, when it had all been said in good fun at the beginning … But … no offense was meant. It also summed up precisely what we were fighting for – another chance.”¹²⁰

Peter Newman reported the second story, perhaps from an account by Lowell Murray:

On October 2, when the Conservative campaign seemed to be going well and it looked as if Diefenbaker might have a chance of winning, Goodman looked around his subalterns, most of whom had at one time or another opposed the Prince Albert politician, and said: “You know if Dief wins, there’ll be the biggest political bloodbath this country has ever seen, and much of that blood is now running in the veins of those in this hotel room.” The remark was greeted with shrieks of laughter and the assembled company immediately began to plan how they would act on election night following a Diefenbaker victory. It was agreed that Goodman would go on national television (“After all, I’ll be something of an architect”) and apologize to the people of Canada for having played such a monstrous practical joke on them. Then the entire Tory headquarters crew would join hands and leap off the roof of the Chateau Laurier.¹²¹

The party’s electoral program was a patchwork put together by Alvin Hamilton and James Johnston, from speeches of Diefenbaker and Hamilton, vetted by the Union Nationale leader Daniel Johnson. It was an extension of Diefenbaker’s earlier, progressive, and welfarist manifestos, with the added promise of “a great national conference on confederation.” That commitment could not conceal the party’s unresolved constitutional dilemma: How could Diefenbaker’s belief in “one Canada” be reconciled with the recognition of “two founding nations,” one of them represented by a French-speaking province, which was now promoted by the Laurendeau-Dunton (“B & B”) Commission and endorsed by the Pearson government? The program offered the promise of “unity in equality between the two basic races of Canada, with every Canadian, regardless of race or creed, having equality in citizenship and equality of opportunity … The dismantling, piece-by-piece, of our country must stop. Canada cannot exist without Quebec, nor can we visualize Quebec without Canada.” The message was confusing, and did not seem to be aimed at French-speaking voters. It became somewhat less mystifying when the Ontario premier, John Robarts, declared himself in favour of a constitutional conference to discover what it was that all provinces, including Quebec, wanted from a renewed confederation.¹²²

But the party program was an irrelevance. For those who had returned to the fold, the election was an occasion to repair the foundations and prepare for life-after-Diefenbaker. Surely the campaign would be lost, and the leader would accept the final verdict of his jury or be forced to retire. The potential successors would re-establish their credentials and return to the House of Commons. For Diefenbaker, the election became an occasion for nostalgia, justification, historical redemption, and – as the campaign progressed – even for conquest of the Liberal foe. The leader found resonance in two issues, and repeated the themes with his singular passion. Above all he denounced the Liberal scandals: conflict of interest, dubious connections, a weak prime minister who would not confront the rot in his own administration, a cabinet that let criminals water hockey rinks on warm spring evenings. Because the subjects of scandal were almost all Québécois, the scandals blended vaguely into the second theme: national unity and the place of Quebec in Canada. The implication of some ugly racial defect among Pearson’s Quebec ministers lay just below the surface, to be absorbed by Tory audiences outside Quebec. The Pearson government, through Diefenbaker’s eyes, became an undifferentiated “galaxy of wrongdoers” undermining the moral fabric of the country.

Conservative advertising (for the first time since 1957) emphasized the strength of the team and played down the role of the leader. The provincial Tory premiers, Robert Stanfield, John Robarts, and Duff Roblin, declared their support and provided assistance. But John Diefenbaker inevitably dominated the campaign. He opted once more for a whistle-stop journey by train, crisscrossing the provinces to stop in scores of cities and small towns. His audiences were large and enthusiastic, laughing at his jokes and applauding his denunciations, enjoying the performance of a great political entertainer. Their warmth did not necessarily translate into votes, for they knew his record in office, but the campaign could be savoured for its own professional skill. Ben Malkin of the Montreal Gazette probably expressed the sentiments of many who watched him on that journey.

He remains the very model of an opposition leader on the campaign trail – filled with scorn for the incompetents in government, ready to be charitable toward the malcontents within his own party should they wish to return to the fold, gaily scattering vague jelly-like promises across his campaign trail. He does so well in this role, that I think he is unwise to work so hard to relinquish it in favor of playing a part that has, in the past, proved a little beyond his special gifts.¹²³

When the Diefenbaker train reached the prairies in early October, the leader indulged himself shamelessly in sentiment and nostalgia. With Elmer at his side, he took reporters by car to the homestead near Borden, Saskatchewan, to show them the decaying family shack and relate his stories of prairie fire, deadly blizzards, cheating grain buyers, and visits by the Métis fighter Gabriel Dumont. “I have these views,” he told his companions, “and you’ve got to go back to see where they were formed … They were not always the right views, perhaps, but they were formed of the pioneer tradition.”¹²⁴ Newman wrote that Diefenbaker “moves like a legend over the land … He is the political poet who can evoke the glories of a simpler past when the Red River carts still creaked along the Battleford trail and buffalo bones littered the horizonless prairie … On other occasions, Diefenbaker gives tongue to the sense of affront felt by the inhabitants of the small, flat Prairie towns who feel themselves overwhelmed by the alien world they never made. The mood at these whistle-stops is one of joyful defiance; pride in the fact that this singular politician reflects and champions their lonely way of life.” But the crowds that greeted him, Newman reported, were mostly elderly, and the landscape was changing: “The legend of John Diefenbaker is being tested for the last time.”¹²⁵ For George Bain of the Globe, the Chief seemed “like an old man dreaming dreams.”¹²⁶

Mike Pearson had always been a reluctant campaigner, and this time the effort, for him, was especially repugnant. While Diefenbaker met the voters face to face, Pearson stayed behind in Ottawa, attempting to establish the image of a responsible prime minister occupied with matters of state. (By November there were signs at every Diefenbaker rally declaring: “He cared enough to come.”) Pearson’s campaign was half-hearted and unconvincing, no match for the beguiling storytelling and high spirits of his opponent. The Liberal Party could find no compelling theme; its campaign amounted to an appeal for majority government and a warning against the destructive potential of Diefenbaker in power. In mid-campaign the Liberals were embarrassed by more reports of criminal links in Quebec, and by sensational charges, immediately denied, that J.W. Pickersgill had participated in arranging payoffs for the six Social Crediters who had supported a Pearson government in 1963. The electorate was disinclined to give Pearson his majority, and equally disinclined to think of Diefenbaker’s restoration. The whole exercise, aside from the diverting political theatre, seemed pointless.¹²⁷

While the Montreal Gazette lamented editorially that the public in 1965 were sheep without a shepherd, it praised their mature scepticism in demanding “what they are not being given – competent leadership for the balanced reconciliation of a diverse country.” The Globe and Mail came cautiously back to the Tories through a process of elimination. By 1965, it judged, the Liberals had lost popular respect and the Conservatives had learned from their errors. “The party admitted it needs a leader. The leader has admitted he needs a party. There is, at least, ground for hope.” But not too much. In Saskatchewan, Diefenbaker had the satisfaction of seeing both the Leader Post and the Star-Phoenix abandon their Liberal traditions to support the Conservatives. Elsewhere, there were editorial calls for a Liberal minority government and the departure of both party leaders. Nothing in the campaign pointed to any breakthroughs.¹²⁸ On November 8 the electorate chose the status quo. The cities remained Liberal, the English-speaking countryside remained Conservative. Few ridings changed hands. Pearson picked up only two seats for a total of 131 – still two short of an absolute majority. Diefenbaker held what seemed to be his core support with ninety-seven seats. Excluding Quebec, Diefenbaker held a lead of fourteen seats over Pearson. The voters had delivered their conditioned verdict on both party leaders. Neither one of them could achieve a majority.

WHEN THE NEW PARLIAMENT MET IN JANUARY 1966 THERE WERE FRESH – OR resurrected – faces on both sides of the aisle. The Liberal caucus was bolstered by the presence of the “three wise men” from Quebec – Jean Marchand, Gérard Pelletier, and Pierre Elliott Trudeau – and by the return of Robert Winters. The Diefenbaker front bench was reinforced by Davie Fulton, George Hees, and Richard Bell. Dalton Camp, Richard Thrasher, and George Hogan had all lost their contests. Pearson was demoralized by his failure to achieve a majority, and soon after the election he accepted the resignation of Walter Gordon as minister of finance in penance for the stalemate. Mitchell Sharp replaced Gordon at Finance, and Robert Winters became minister of trade and commerce. The government lost much of its reformist energy. Lamontagne and Tremblay departed to the back benches, and Lucien Cardin, who had replaced Favreau as justice minister the previous July, emerged as the senior Québécois minister. He was the most bitter antagonist of Diefenbaker in Liberal ranks – and thus a primary target of the Chief’s own poisoned barbs.

Soon after the election Cardin made himself vulnerable by admitting on television that a Vancouver postal clerk, George Victor Spencer, had been dismissed from his job on suspicion of spying for the Soviet Union. He had not been charged with any offence, but had lost his pension, had no means of appeal, and would be under RCMP surveillance for the rest of his life. (He was then dying of cancer.) When the new House met, Diefenbaker and the New Democratic Party pressed the government for a public inquiry into what seemed a fundamental abuse of Spencer’s rights. Cardin refused, and the intensity of the opposition’s attacks increased. Pearson, who was both uneasy about the apparent invasion of rights and nervous about his political weakness, agreed to consider an inquiry. But he told the House in February that he had examined the file and decided it was unnecessary. Twice during parliamentary exchanges on the case in January and February, Pearson made veiled allusions to “other security cases” in the past that “might throw light on our security methods generally.” Cardin, too, warned Diefenbaker about neglected security cases during his prime ministership.¹²⁹

On March 4, 1966, the opposition’s demands for an inquiry sharpened, and Diefenbaker extended the range of innuendo. He accused Pearson of creating “a labyrinth of deception” in the Spencer case, and suggested a pattern of impropriety on security matters stretching back to 1944.

Mr. Diefenbaker: Yes, I want to cover that period. I want to see it fully investigated. The Prime Minister laughs, but I want to see as well that we make available to the commission meeting behind closed doors the revelations that have found their way to Washington and have there been placed in evidence that was taken in that body on security. We are not getting the facts.¹³⁰

This was a reference to the old charge that Pearson had been a Soviet agent. By reviving it, Diefenbaker threw Pearson a defiant challenge and recalled their angry interview of December 1964. Each of the leaders felt secure in his own righteousness; each believed the other vulnerable. The combat was not rational. “I ask the government,” Diefenbaker railed, “what are you going to do in this connection? What action are you going to take? Why will you not set up a royal commission now behind closed doors?…The assumption put forward that these things have happened over the years is of primary importance as a basis upon which to demand that there be such a commission.”¹³¹ The minister of justice faced the same withering contempt.

Mr. Diefenbaker: I again impress on the government the need of action. I know the Minister of Justice is not acquainted with these things. He is seldom before the courts at any time, according to what I am told. Yet he is able to tell us that he knows everything has been well done. It is not enough, sir. There has been too much concealment and deception practised on this house in the last few weeks in this connection.¹³²

Lucien Cardin responded in kind. He had “dared to criticize the untouchable one because of his attitude as prime minister” in 1962; and he believed “that every word I said at that time was right.” Today Diefenbaker, “with his vicious attacks on individuals, his irresponsible accusations and insinuations in this house, is proving me to be right day by day.” The leader of the opposition had learned nothing. “He is still blasting his way through paper walls and open doorways. He is blasting himself out of the leadership of his party and out of parliament and maybe, Mr. Chairman, when that is done we will be able to do some work in this chamber.” Cardin asked Diefenbaker whether he believed “that the performance he has put on this afternoon is going to add any dignity or prestige to parliament? This is stirring up hostility in the house far beyond what is normal and necessary in debates.”

I am willing to listen to hon. members on all sides of the house who bring forward criticisms and constructive advice on the difficult problems concerning the administration of security matters. But a while ago the right hon. gentleman was accusing us of hiding the truth, of hiding evidence … Well, I can tell the right hon. gentleman that of all the members of the House of Commons he – I repeat, he – is the very last person in the house who can afford to give advice on the handling of security cases in Canada.

Some hon. Members: Hear, hear.

Mr. Cardin: And I am not kidding.

Some hon. Members: Hear, hear.

Mr. Diefenbaker: And again applause from the Prime Minister. I want that on the record.

Mr. Cardin: I understand the right hon. gentleman said he wants that on the record. Would he want me to go on and give more?

Some hon. Members: Go on. He wants it.

Mr. Cardin: Very well.

Some hon. Members: Hear, hear.

Mr. Cardin: I want the right hon. gentleman to tell the house about his participation in the Monseignor case when he was prime minister of this country.

Some hon. Members: Hear, hear.

Mr. Diefenbaker: I am not worried. Have your commission look into it. Put it on the agenda.¹³³

The incident passed, and Cardin moved on to other matters. But he had set the bait for the public and the press. What was “the Monseignor case”? What was Diefenbaker’s involvement? Cardin stuck to his position that an inquiry in the Spencer case was unacceptable and unnecessary.

Later in the day his defences collapsed. David Lewis of the NDP told the House that he had spoken with Spencer’s solicitor and learned that Spencer wanted an inquiry into “the nature of his dismissal and the unfair deprivation of his benefits.” He closed his remarks with a motion to reduce the ministry’s estimates by $17,000, the same amount as Cardin’s salary, as an indication of lack of confidence in the minister.¹³⁴ Under sudden threat of defeat in the House, Prime Minister Pearson replied that this was the first indication he had had that Spencer was dissatisfied with his treatment, and offered – if he could confirm that claim in a telephone conversation with Spencer – to establish an inquiry into the fairness of the civil servant’s dismissal. Three days later the inquiry was established.¹³⁵

The leader of the opposition could not resist the temptation to taunt the minister. Lucien Cardin had vowed that there would be no inquiry, and had tried to blackmail the opposition. Now “common sense has taken the place of stubborness and absolute stupidity.” The minister had inevitably been embarrassed: “There he stands, naked and unashamed, deprived of every argument he brought before this house.” Diefenbaker assured members, in response to Cardin’s accusation, that there had been no breach of security or danger to national security in any case under his administration.¹³⁶

Pearson’s unexpected reversal in the Spencer case prompted a cabinet crisis and a caucus revolt. Cardin threatened resignation, and Jean Marchand, Léo Cadieux, and J.-J. Côté, fed up with the humiliation of French-speaking ministers, warned Pearson that they would join him if he departed. Desperate manoeuvres went on in caucus to save the government, and at last Cardin agreed to stay. On March 10, acting on his own initiative, he called a press conference to elaborate on his charges against Diefenbaker. The old affair, he suggested, was “in some ways” worse than the Profumo case, which had brought down Prime Minister Macmillan in 1963. Cardin said that “Olga” Munsinger had been a spy before coming to Canada in 1951; that she had created security risks by associating with Conservative ministers; that Diefenbaker and Fulton knew of the case but had not referred it to their legal officers; and that she had left the country and died in East Berlin in 1961. Cardin explained that he was engaged in a dirty war: “There is a working arrangement,” he claimed, “not only between the Prime Minister, myself and the members of the cabinet, but also all the MPs, and what we’re going to do is to fight and fight hard, and, if we have to, use the same methods that are being used and have been used against us for the past three years.”¹³⁷

This outburst brought parliament to the point of breakdown. When the government proposed another judicial inquiry into the minister’s accusations, the Conservatives promised to paralyse House business unless Cardin made specific charges and named the suspect ministers. Otherwise, all of Diefenbaker’s ministers came under suspicion. Within days, Robert Reguly of the Toronto Star had located the mystery woman, alive, in Munich; and she named Pierre Sévigny and George Hees as her former ministerial acquaintances. Press, public, and back-benchers angrily denounced the excesses of political vengefulness in Ottawa, and the leaders themselves drew back with alarmed appeals for restraint and sanity. On March 14 the government proposed a judicial inquiry into all the statements made by the minister of justice regarding the Munsinger affair, the security implications of the case, the actions of ministers, and any other relevant matters, to be conducted by Mr Justice Wishart Spence of the Supreme Court of Canada. A public inquiry now seemed to be the only way of removing the conflict from the House; and by framing it in terms of Cardin’s statements, the cabinet seemed to be partially restoring the balance and putting the minister’s acts under independent scrutiny along with those of the previous government. Reluctantly, all parties agreed to the proposal. But in principle – as Diefenbaker, Fulton, Nielsen, and Douglas made clear in their remarks – a judicial inquiry into the political decisions of ministers undermined the principles of parliamentary government. An investigation arising from a sweep through the confidential records of previous governments was even less tolerable. The political discretion of John Diefenbaker and Davie Fulton was not a proper subject of scrutiny by a justice of the Supreme Court. The fate of politicians lay, properly, in the hands of the voters (and eventually, the historians) – but not the judges. The Globe and Mail commented that the terms of reference of the inquiry were “vague, vengeful, prosecutory … setting a precedent for endless witch-hunts as government succeeds government in Canada. The high office of the Prime Minister itself – that office which Mr. Pearson himself holds – is in the dock.”¹³⁸

As prime minister, Mike Pearson was primarily responsible for this collapse of civility. He had called for the RCMP files, kept them in his possession, informed his justice ministers of their contents, allowed his ministers to use their knowledge to threaten the opposition leader with exposure, made the same threats himself, encouraged Cardin to make his careless charges, kept him in the cabinet after he had done so, and created a Star Chamber inquiry intended to convict and destroy the career of an ex–prime minister. But Pearson had been sorely provoked, over the years since 1958, by an opponent zealous to crush his arch-competitor. The two leaders had jointly poisoned the political atmosphere. After Munsinger, there was not just a political standoff: Diefenbaker and Pearson, in destructive symbiosis, had forever discredited themselves. There were widespread calls for their retirement from public life; and within the parties, there were fresh and more profound tremors of discontent.¹³⁹

After receiving evidence from the RCMP commissioner in a secret hearing without the presence of counsel for any of the Conservatives who were, in effect, on trial by public inquiry, Mr Justice Spence presided over three months of reckless political inquisition. Early in the inquiry he released a “handy document” summarizing the secret RCMP report on Gerda Munsinger, while admitting it was not evidence before the hearing. After two months of hearings, Diefenbaker, Fulton, and their lawyers withdrew from further participation in protest over their restricted access to evidence and over the content of the judge’s warning about what he intended to deal with in his findings. On September 23 the Spence report was published. It pronounced Gerda Munsinger a serious security risk; held that Pierre Sévigny had made himself a security risk by his affair with her, although the judge found “no scintilla of evidence” of disloyalty in his actions; censured Diefenbaker for his failure to dismiss Sévigny and for other lesser offences; and chastised Fulton and Hees for separate indiscretions. The judgments were political rather than legal. Spence found all the actions of Pearson and Cardin affecting the case to be normal and justified. Conservatives and fair-minded observers of all political colours responded in anger that the inquiry had been a politically inspired vendetta designed to bring down the Tory leader. The inquisitor had fulfilled his tainted mandate. The mud was bound to stick. The Globe and Mail judged that – despite general recognition of the commission’s impropriety – Canadians would be left with the belief “that they have, in the handling of the Munsinger affair, been wretchedly served by Mr. Diefenbaker, Mr. Fulton and Mr. Sévigny.”¹⁴⁰

THE CHIEF KNEW THAT THE CHALLENGE TO HIS LEADERSHIP WOULD BE RENEWED before the party’s annual meeting of 1966. In the immediate aftermath of the 1965 election, the meeting of the national executive in January offered him no embarrassments. Diefenbaker favoured an early annual meeting, before his opponents could gather strength; but his supporters in Saskatchewan planned a celebratory dinner in Saskatoon on the March date that was proposed, and refused to yield. The possibility of a spring meeting slipped away.¹⁴¹ Next there was talk of a date in June, but Diefenbaker vetoed that when he found himself embroiled in the Spence inquiry. Eventually a date in mid-November was agreed upon.

Meanwhile the Chief was consolidating his strength in the national office. Richard Thrasher had departed for his losing election bid, and Eddie Goodman had returned to Toronto after the campaign. James Johnston stayed on, and gradually, on the leader’s urging, took on the duties of national director. By spring he was given the title. Johnston had few personal contacts in the party, except through Diefenbaker.¹⁴² In April, as part of his effort to assert full control on behalf of the leader, Johnston dismissed Flora MacDonald from headquarters, where she had assumed more and more general duties since her original appointment as a typist in 1957. In 1966 she was an influential member of the organization, with especially strong ties among progressive, and mostly anti-Diefenbaker, elements across the country. The firing preoccupied the Conservative caucus meeting the next day. At the end of a heated debate dominated by George Hees and several Maritime and prairie members, caucus appointed a special committee to review the decision. Diefenbaker told them that he had full confidence in Johnston and would not reverse his decision; and the committee – with no means of controlling party headquarters – concurred in the decision. For critics of the leader, Johnston’s appointment and MacDonald’s departure marked another hardening of the lines between Diefenbaker loyalists and rebels.¹⁴³

The party president, Dalton Camp, had performed his domestic peacekeeping role adroitly for sixteen months. Camp’s ability to sense the moods of the national party was unsurpassed, and in the aftermath of the 1965 election he knew that the “gathering restlessness” would soon bring “conspiracies of Catilinian proportions.” He suggested delicately to Diefenbaker in November that it would be reasonable to consider “at his leisure … the appropriate time for the party to choose a successor” sometime before the next general election. Diefenbaker responded predictably.

Ah – the leader sighs, after not so long a pause – but you see there are no successors. He would illustrate by example. Fulton? Fulton had ditched himself, against all advice, by accepting the provincial leadership in British Columbia. He had no judgement. Fulton could never lead this party.

Hees? Hees had been like a son to him. But he had destroyed himself, running off with Bassett in 1963. Had he stood fast, he would be the next leader of this party. But not now. Not ever.

McCutcheon? A snort for McCutcheon’s qualifications.

Who is there? The premiers? He had asked all of them – Robarts, Roblin, Stanfield – asked each of them to come and take their place in Parliament. He had even told Roblin, before the last election, there would be possibilities for him if he would come in – that was as far as he could go, you see – but, no, none of them would come forward.

There is no one, the leader says, sorrow in his voice, because, you see, no one can lead this party until he has sat in Parliament.¹⁴⁴

When Camp next met Diefenbaker at the leader’s call in March 1966, he found himself, unaccountably, in the presence of Richard Jackson of the Ottawa Journal. As the party leaders tore at each other daily in the House, Diefenbaker wished to initiate the party president into some secrets. From a bottom drawer he pulled a file containing the congressional committee testimony of Elizabeth Bentley about Pearson’s wartime associations in Washington, and passed it across the desk. Camp read, and waited to learn the meaning of the occasion. Diefenbaker told Camp that he had a duty to remain leader just as long as Pearson was prime minister of Canada.¹⁴⁵

There was clearly nothing Camp could do to persuade Diefenbaker to make a gracious and voluntary exit at a time of his own choosing. So in May 1966 – knowing the explosive content of the leadership issue – he spoke to a private meeting of Tories at the Albany Club in Toronto to propose an ingenious means of defusing the timebomb. The party, he believed, must have a new leader before the next election, which meant a convention by the spring of 1968. To reach that point, Camp suggested a procedural reform in the party to give its members a regular means of reassessing the leadership. The next annual meeting after an election in which the party had not gained power, he proposed, should face an automatic ballot on whether or not to hold a leadership convention. For 1966, Camp intended to soften any direct challenge to Diefenbaker by making leadership review the issue in his own contest for re-election as party president. Over the summer he found widespread support for his approach, and on September 20 he made it public in an address to the Toronto Junior Board of Trade. While Camp argued his case in general terms and did not attack Diefenbaker directly, his target and his objective were obvious. “Where the leader does not know the limits of his power,” he argued, “he must be taught, and when he is indifferent to the interest of his party, he must be reminded.” Canadian parties could no longer remain “huddled about obsolete political platforms, debating the past, divided on their leadership and leaving their future to the fate of accident.” The Globe and Mail applauded Camp’s courage, but the Telegram – while admitting he was “a doughty fighter” – considered him “badly overmatched” in another contest with the Chief and imprudent in his timing: “This is no time for Mr. Camp to lead a new rebellion. Mr. Diefenbaker has earned the right to decide for himself when he should step down.”¹⁴⁶

Two days before Camp’s speech, Diefenbaker had shown his own confidence at a seventy-first birthday party in his parliamentary offices by reminding reporters of John A. Macdonald’s last campaign at the age of seventy-six. In one year, he boasted, he would again occupy the prime minister’s office on the floor below. Afterwards, he asked his aide Greg Guthrie: “Do you think I overdid it? Do you think I rubbed it in enough?”¹⁴⁷

For six weeks Camp engaged in a national campaign for leadership review as the first stage in renewing the party system for a more democratic age. Beyond the call for review, his prescriptions were vague, but leadership was the compelling issue. Provincial party associations in Prince Edward Island, Quebec, and British Columbia voted in favour of reassessment; a ginger group of a dozen Conservative MPs declared themselves in support of Camp; and an editorial review of Canadian newspapers large and small, prepared in October for Diefenbaker, revealed fifty-nine in favour of a leadership review and only ten opposed.¹⁴⁸

When Diefenbaker addressed a closed Conservative meeting at the Albany Club soon after Camp had launched his public campaign, he was challenged by an Ontario minister, Allan Lawrence, who suggested that a leadership convention might unite the party. Jim Johnston worried that this kind of “blunt impertinence” was wearing Diefenbaker down; he was “losing his genius for wisecracks and good repartee.” A battle of resolutions swept party meetings across the country, as Camp, Diefenbaker, and their respective advocates manoeuvred for strength at the annual meeting. Frequently, Camp and Johnston – both noticeably balding – were mistaken for one another, sometimes under threat of violence from their own supporters. Erik Nielsen matched Diefenbaker’s rhetoric in his defence by describing Camp’s supporters as the Bay Street barons and crown princes of privilege, “petty little men” intent on disembowelling a great national party. Diefenbaker’s loyalists – who included up to seventy members of the parliamentary caucus – arranged for the Toronto lawyer and former MP Arthur Maloney to contest the party presidency against Camp; and Johnston issued an agenda for the annual meeting without consulting Camp or other members of the national executive. It called for elections on the final day of meetings instead of the first day, in the expectation that a voice-vote declaration of confidence in Diefenbaker on the first day would dispose of the leadership issue. But at the executive meeting on the eve of the annual meeting, Camp’s supporters overruled the Johnston agenda and restored the election of officers to a place before the leadership vote. By this time the dissidents included the two leading officers of the Ontario party association, Elmer Bell and Eddie Goodman; Senator McCutcheon, who had performed invaluable fundraising for the party during the 1965 election; and, it appeared, the three Tory premiers Robert Stanfield, John Robarts, and Duff Roblin.¹⁴⁹

John Diefenbaker remained intransigent. He wanted to see Dalton Camp defeated, and he refused any efforts of compromise. When Johnston offered him a draft statement for delivery to the Ontario party meetings at the end of October which promised his retirement once the centennial celebrations of 1967 had ended, he baulked. “I can’t read that,” he insisted. “It’s fine, but I can’t read it. I told them that we would not discuss leadership. Besides, I can’t make myself a lame-duck leader over such a long period.” When Johnston spoke once on the telephone to Camp about reconciliation over the agenda, Diefenbaker pronounced the conversation a grievous error. While the leader still dreamed of defeating the government and leading another victorious campaign before centennial year, Johnston saw disaster ahead. Aside from Diefenbaker himself, he sensed, the loyalists in the House were growing weary of the battle. In the last days before the annual meeting, the infighting came down to a war of tactical advantage between Camp’s allies in the association and Johnston’s staff in the national office. Camp’s forces won all the preliminary battles.¹⁵⁰

As Diefenbaker prepared for his opening speech on November 14, he was advised by staff and friends to take all possible positions: to promise retirement, to fight on, to call for an immediate leadership convention, to ask for an immediate vote of confidence. Johnston pleaded with him not to provoke his opponents with any more mention of Gladstone and Macdonald hanging on in their old age, to which the Chief retorted with a glare: “I’ll talk about Sir John if I like … Don’t give me any of that stuff.”¹⁵¹

Two hours before the convention opened in the ballroom of the Chateau Laurier hotel, the front rows of seats were occupied, mostly but not entirely by young supporters of Dalton Camp. Soon the room was overflowing. Diefenbaker deferred his arrival until the preliminary speeches were finished, taking his seat onstage in what had become a “continual roar” of voices. As Joel Aldred rose to introduce the leader, Johnston revealed to Camp that the timing was perfect: he had secretly arranged with the CBC to begin a direct television broadcast at that moment. The result turned out bittersweet for the loyalists. “It was this manoeuvre – although we could not have anticipated its importance at the time – which took that dreadful evening into Canadian living-rooms. It let the nation see, as no one could ever describe it, the method by which the old Chief was attacked. From coast to coast, they saw it while it was happening, live, in their capital city.”¹⁵²

Diefenbaker – the acknowledged master of his crowds – spoke in desperation to a cold and mostly silent audience. “Throughout his address,” Arthur Blakely wrote in the Montreal Gazette, “they were well-mannered, aloof, and hostile. They sat on their hands whenever one of the chiefs infrequent sallies started a round of applause. They converted into utter fiascos, by the simple device of doing nothing, the attempts to give Mr. Diefenbaker standing ovations at the beginning and end of his speech.”¹⁵³ As Diefenbaker turned in anger on Dalton Camp, seated nearby on the platform beside him, demanding to know when and why Camp had betrayed his loyalty to the party leader, there were boos and cries of derision. Diefenbaker was shaken. The audience was not listening; he had no hope of controlling it. “Is this a Conservative meeting?” he cried in anguish. “No leader can stand if he has to turn around to find who’s tripping him from behind.” He cut short his words and turned from the rostrum, his face inflamed and his eyes darting wildly in distress. Johnston was quickly at his side, while the room broke into uproar and members of the platform party fled in disorder and embarrassment. “I’ll quit tomorrow morning,” he told the national director. “I’ll resign in the morning. I told you what I would do if there was any widespread showing against me … I’m getting out.” As they struggled out of the ballroom to the elevators, Diefenbaker was surrounded by delegates who had failed to get into the auditorium, most of them his supporters. They cheered him and wished him well.¹⁵⁴

Diefenbaker’s team spent a late night calculating how to break up the party, leaving a small rump of dissident MPs behind while the loyalists regrouped in a new party. Next day, as delegates continued to flow into Ottawa, the Diefenbaker forces took heart that the previous night’s display would boomerang against Camp. Registration continued during the day in increasingly chaotic and uncertain conditions, in which both sides could register delegates without proper checking of credentials. Diefenbaker stayed away, only later slipping in a side door to meet groups of delegates privately.

The crucial vote on the party presidency came that afternoon. Camp and Maloney delivered their campaign speeches to a chastened audience. The most memorable lines were uttered by the challenger:

I have no obligation to our national leader, I have no obligation to him whatsoever except one, which by reason I suppose of my Renfrew County upbringing is really to me, terribly important. And that is the single obligation that we all owe, each and every one of us to the man we picked as leader, loyalty and respect.

That means among other things that in regard to the Right Honourable John George Diefenbaker, sometime Prime Minister of Canada, present leader of the opposition and the national leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, when he enters a room, Arthur Maloney stands up! When the day comes that he decides to lay down the mantle of leadership which we gave him, he will do so in a blaze of glory.¹⁵⁵

Afterwards delegates dispersed to their provincial meeting rooms to cast their votes for president, and early that evening the result was conveyed to John and Olive by telephone. Camp had won, by a vote of 564 to 502. And in added rebuke, delegates had elected Flora MacDonald as national secretary of the party.¹⁵⁶

After four years of scattered combat, Diefenbaker’s legions had at last been outnumbered. But he had one final redoubt. The loyal core of his caucus gathered that evening in the parliamentary office of the whip, Eric Winkler, to demonstrate their support for Diefenbaker. The fantasy of a new party had faded, but seventy-one MPs signed a declaration of loyalty requesting Diefenbaker to remain as leader of the party. The signatories included seven ex-ministers, among them George Hees. A week later the caucus purged six of its members – who had not signed the pledge – from the party’s national executive. The Tories, Bruce Hutchison commented in the Winnipeg Free Press, were performing “high tragedy reduced to low farce.”¹⁵⁷

With Maloney’s defeat in the vote for president, Johnston and his national office staff abandoned management of the annual meeting and left its direction to Camp and Goodman. Diefenbaker’s supporters lost interest in the proceedings, and when delegates straggled into the hall on November 16, no one was clear what would happen. Goodman introduced debate on the leadership resolutions – which, it was easily agreed, would be decided by secret ballot. As the discussion began, Diefenbaker arrived in the Château lobby, where his supporters mobbed him noisily. “I saw none of those people,” Diefenbaker recalled, “who had jeered me down so short a time before.” He did not enter the meeting hall, but encouraged his friends with the stoic lines of the Scots ballad: “Fight on, my men./ I am wounded but I am not slain./ I’ll lay me down and bleed awhile/ and then I’ll rise and fight again.”¹⁵⁸ Inside the meeting, the dissidents were now in a majority on the floor, and the simple motion of confidence in the leader proposed earlier by Goodman’s resolutions committee was amended to read: “That this party expresses its support of the Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker, its national leader, and acknowledges its wholehearted appreciation of his universally recognized services to the party; and in view of the current situation in the party, directs the National Executive, after consultation with the national leader, to call a leadership convention at a suitable time before January 1, 1968.” The resolution was adopted by a resounding vote of 563 to 186.¹⁵⁹