An iconic national leader had mysterious ways.
HEADY TIMES
William Lyon Mackenzie King served longer than any other prime minister. During his 22 years in office, King guided Canada through World War II, working as a key partner with Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. He set up the British Commonwealth Air Traning Program, which trained more than 130,000 air crewmen in Canada for the Allied war effort. He introduced Canada’s system for old age pensions, and established unemployment insurance and welfare programs. After he died in 1950, the public learned of some of his unusual policy-making methods. His papers and diary revealed that he was a spiritualist.
MAKING THE MAN
A devout Christian, King suffered great personal losses in a short period—his sister Bella died in 1915, followed by his father in 1916, his mother in 1917 and his brother Max, in 1922. After visiting his brother on his deathbed, King wrote in his diary: “I spoke of love being stronger than all else and of my belief in immortal life.” His brother told him that the two of them would be together always. In a 1925 consultation with a medium King saw the spirits of his mother and his brother. He also learned that he would win a hard-fought election campaign.
In the 1930s, King attended a few séances and was thrilled to “communicate” with mother, father, grandfather, brother, and sister. He wrote in his diary, “There can be no doubt whatsoever that the persons I have been talking with were the loved ones and others I have known and who have passed away. It was the spirits of the departed.” And they were good for tips. He journaled on his grandfather’s birthday, “My actions today and utterances have been in large part the result of our talk together last night.”
In 1945 he was unsure how to proceed with a Russian espionage case, so he asked his long-dead brother, as well as the recently deceased Franklin Roosevelt. As his interest in communicating with spirits grew, he sought advice from Leonardo da Vinci, President Theodore Roosevelt, and former Canadian Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier.
“Brin bag” is a Newfoundland term for a burlap sack.
Not entirely surprisingly, King was superstitious. He believed numbers 7 and 17 were lucky He also habitually talked with his dogs—shooting the breeze with his Irish terrier, Pat, and tapping him for political advice as well.
King found significance in formations in his shaving cream; he would read the shapes like tea leaves, which—go figure—he also consulted.
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DREAM WEAVERS
Jayne Gackenbach at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton has a dream job—literally. She explores dreams and their relationships to modern media use, including video games and social media. Gackenbach describes dreams as the “gold standard” for presence or the sense of “being there” in video games. According to Gackenbach’s research, most video gamers report the same level of this feeling of being there while playing video games as they do while dreaming.
Gackenbach’s theory, which has been proven to be true in more than one study, is that video gamers do not experience nightmares as often as others, which Gackenbach theorizes could be for several reasons. First, playing video games is considered a kind of therapeutic experience in which gamers can act out their defense against an attacker. Gackenbach has also discovered that frequent gamers cite the ability to control their dreams, much like they control their avatars in games. Gamers also frequently call their nightmares “exciting” rather than “scary.” And her research found that gamers tend to have better spatial skills and are less likely to get motion sickness. All of this is evidence that playing video games does have a few advantages.
Some rural Ontario couples have a combined stag party called “a buck and doe.”