John Diefenbaker

 

John Diefenbaker and the True North

(13^th)

Date Elected to Parliament:	March 26, 1940
Date of Maiden Speech:	June 13, 1940
Date Sworn In:	June 21, 1957
Date Left Office:	April 21, 1963

It was while in law school at the University of Toronto in 1956 that I began to observe John Diefenbaker more closely on TV, a tall, strangely compelling man with weird jerky mannerisms, chortling voice and stiff, upright, almost military bearing who surprised and astounded all – the experts and the polls, Liberals and Conservatives alike, when he defeated the Liberals under the amiable leadership of Louis St. Laurent, and provoked St. Laurent’s quick resignation in 1957. Liberals were suddenly in disarray especially the Liberal Party activists and its elites now led by ‘Mike’ Pearson, newly anointed and unsure as a freshly minted political leader in 1958.

Until 1957, the Liberals were the longest governing party in Canada in any democratic country in the first part of the 20^th century. Led by the likeable, modest, competent, Quebec corporate lawyer, Louis St. Laurent dressed in immaculate double-breasted suits, stiff collared white shirt and dark tie – ‘Uncle Louis’ – fluently bilingual, comfortable at the helm. St. Laurent went down to disastrous defeat in 1957 as Diefenbaker formed a surprising minority government. Only Quebec, the Liberal firewall, kept Diefenbaker from gaining a majority in Parliament. St. Laurent, the gentleman that he was, quickly and gracefully resigned, gave the nod to ‘Mike’ Pearson to pick up the reins of the leadership of the Liberal Party and asked Pearson, then Minister of External Affairs, to draft the press release of his resignation.

In a leadership convention that followed, Pearson gained an impressive majority of Liberal Party support.

After St. Laurent’s bruising defeat, the Diefenbaker ‘vision’, delivered by the Diefenbaker rants, were hard for Liberals to swallow. Liberals considered Diefenbaker an outsider, erratic, unfit for leadership, and an aberration. Despite the advice of his inside advisors that the Liberals were not ready, Pearson followed senior elected Liberals like Jack Pickersgill and made an arrogant fumble, forcing a premature vote of confidence in Parliament only to be drowned by the Diefenbaker election sweep of 1958 who won with the largest majority in Parliament in Canadian political history. To be fair, the economy took a tumble after 1957, and the public wanted to give Diefenbaker a chance. The public was as tired of the Liberals as the Liberals were of themselves. The Liberal establishment had grown stale in office and at the grass roots.

John Diefenbaker broke every mold. He was more than a flashy populist. A leader of a different kind, in name, demeanor, and humble origins in Saskatchewan,66 far from the mainstreams of power, his unorthodox victory surprised friend and foe alike. Until 1957, he had been a serial loser with nine tries before he became a Member of Parliament and twice for Conservative leadership.67

In public, Diefenbaker relished the role of prosecuting attorney with an accusatory pointed finger, blaming the Liberals for the stumbling economy, the corruption surrounding the TransCanada pipeline and most of all, for neglecting the ‘average’ working Canadian.

All this I witnessed while attending law school in Toronto at the time. As an instinctive believer in the underdog with a law student’s growing interest in a Charter of Rights, I was astounded when the Diefenbaker government kept its promise and in 1960 passed Charter of Rights legislation. For the first time, rights, lifted and messaged by centuries old common law precedent, were modernized and legislated into the laws of Canada. Though limited to the federal sphere, by separation of powers between provinces and federal governments under the British North American Act,⁶⁸ this modest reform measure, effecting the federal sphere, set a new tone and direction of governance and established a platform that culminated in Pierre Trudeau’s legacy legislation: the repartition of the Constitution to Canada, wrestling sovereignty from England decades later in 1982. In the process, Trudeau established the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom to apply to both federal and provincial spheres in Canada. Diefenbaker could claim legitimacy as a godfather of this stunning idea in parliamentary democracy – rights which till then were steeped and stirred in the common law’s languid changing case by case precedent. The legal establishment, judges, lawyers, and academics alike, brought up in the common law tradition, were skeptical and critical. The step-by-step case-by-case common law experience was preferred, they argued. They were marinated and comfortable in the common law tradition. Rights carved in legislation was too much in the American and French traditions. The unwritten Constitution of U.K. based on case-by-case common law precedent was the softer, slower, surer Canadian legacy, the legal elites believed.

Diefenbaker, early in his tenure, had instructed his key legal advisor, his Minister of Justice, Davy Fulton to seek an amending formula as the first step to change the British North American (BNA) via the Fulton Formula that never carried. The Fulton Formula under Diefenbaker later became known as the Fulton-Favreau formula, amended by Pearson’s Minister of Justice Guy Favreau. Yet, constitutional change continued to lag and flail from inertia and lack of provincial approval until Pierre Trudeau invested all his political capital and cut the ‘Gordian’ knot in the early ‘80s with his Charter of Rights and Freedoms and repatriation of the Constitution, ripped away from British oversight, to Canadian sovereignty.

John Diefenbaker, thin, ramrod straight, broad shouldered, over six feet tall, a raspy gulping voice of many octaves, immaculately tailored double-breasted suits, with big burning coals of dark eyes buried in dark circles, and with grey streaked, dark, curly, wiry hair in an old-fashioned middle part neatly coiffured that was both memorable and oddly disconcerting. He had a saturnine almost Hollywood look of devilish demeanor with his devil’s peak, parted in the middle and arched saturnine dark eyebrows. While television was in its infancy in the late ‘50s, Diefenbaker was magnetic and mesmerizing. Words tumbled out in a jumble, in a torrent, but Canadians connected to his drift and his passion. St. Laurent’s TV appearances were staid, low key, passionless, much like a corporate president reading an annual report!

The 1957 federal campaign had been launched hurriedly without finesse and was rushed out into the raw rough tumble politics at the grass roots. There was a mood of change. The Liberals had run out of ideas and were out of touch. The Liberals offered more of the same, mostly sound economic management. Politics remains Canada’s ‘blood’ sport and rarely are the Marquess of Queensbury rules followed and so it was under the lashing tongue of Diefenbaker. Politics is not for gentlemen or gentlewomen I learned, and Diefenbaker was an authentic natural at this rough house game. Too often, he had been on the receiving end of scorn and ridicule in his long career. Now it was his turn to turn his ‘fire and brimstone’ rhetoric on his Liberal opponents.

Diefenbaker emerged as the arch disruptor of the comfortable Liberal-laced Ottawa establishment headed by the graceful soft-spoken Louis St. Laurent who governed his Cabinet and the public as if he were the Chairman of the Board of a large corporation. Diefenbaker optimized disruption – a whirlwind of change. Pointing an accusatory finger in his speeches, the image lingered in the mind of the electorate. He slavered, he roared (at times incoherently) with unfinished sentences, he whispered, realtering every inch of the public agenda in Parliament and then on to the campaign trail. A gifted, at times witty, storyteller, he could spin yarns that ended with a whiplash bite. He was relentless, a volcano of energy and worked seven days a week without respite on the campaign trail. Of course, Diefenbaker was handed a prime target, the low hanging fruit of the TransCanada Pipeline debacle – C.D. Howe’s prize attempt to quickly build a pipeline across Canada to connect the oil rich west with the oil poor provinces in the east. The corruption uncovered along the way added to the ripeness of the political target. It was Bay Street, and it was the business establishment, the all-powerful self-satisfied men who felt comfort with the Liberal centre and the Liberal right personified by the powerful C.D. Howe, the American born economic czar to whom St. Laurent ceded power, while St. Laurent acted almost as a watchful observer.

Louis St. Laurent was graceful, likeable, and steady, but grew out of touch with the changing Canadian dynamic. Canada gained an appetite for change. Howe dared to push the TransCanada Pipeline Project quickly through Parliament, convincing St. Laurent and his Cabinet to invoke closure and limit debate to a few days of cramped Parliament time. Liberals were then caught openly influencing the Liberal appointed Speaker of the Commons to do the Liberals’ bidding, overnight changing the Speaker’s ruling that initially favoured the Opposition in its request for extended debate. Pearson, whose reputation was steeped in diplomacy, gave a furious out of character defence in the House of the Pipeline imbroglio attempting to highlight his leadership ambitions and the qualities he and his advisors deemed necessary for the consumption in domestic arena in Parliament. Pearson attempted to show he was ready for leadership in the rough and tumble of Parliament to convince those that his honed international diplomatic skills could be adapted to the raw bare-knuckle fights in the domestic political arena.

Diefenbaker barely spoke French and when he did, it was fractured and incomprehensible. He chortled when he spoke from a surreptitious whisper to booming thunder at a second’s notice as he slayed and lacerated his political opponents on all sides with zest and delight. The media could not make up its mind, or better didn’t know what to make of his populist rants while puzzled by his public performances, they welcomed the contrast to the steady as they go Liberals. The media hungered for ‘new’ news and Diefenbaker satisfied their craving. The House of Commons was composed of the two major parties, Liberals and Conservatives, and three minor parties, the Social Credit in the West allied with the Socreds in Quebec on the right and the CCF on the left. Diefenbaker enjoyed the cut and thrust of Parliament and even more felt less constrained on the campaign trail where he sensed the crowds were with him and reveled in public applause.69 Meanwhile Pearson, once leader, seemed unsure of himself, failed to gain his groove or traction seemingly unable to arouse passion and acted like a reluctant unsure suitor for power. Diefenbaker regularly outshone and bested Pearson in Parliamentary debate skirmishes and both knew it.

As leader, Diefenbaker came early under the tutelage by Allister Grosart, a suave lawyer turned journalist turned ad man and who later became a Senator and then Speaker of the Senate. Grosart enlisted American pollsters to test and freshen the Progressive Conservative message. Grosart’s polling told him the Liberals vulnerabilities. The country had grown tired of the Liberals boring, almost arrogant exterior. The country was ripe and ready to give change a chance, he found. The economy was sputtering. The Liberal team looked and acted tired lacking passion without a dynamic plan for the future.

Diefenbaker’s campaign propaganda team, as devised by Grosart, focused on Diefenbaker, ‘the man’, and his ‘vision’ while the Liberals, reacted indifferently, and became upset, riled, and angry without a tangible alternate offering in people, policy or messaging for the future.70 Diefenbaker was all about the promise of the future, while the Liberals rested on their past record. The skilled criminal lawyer that he was, Diefenbaker could make any compelling case with ease, throwing darts quickly at easy soft targets to the cheers of his supporters, especially in the ignored West and the Maritimes who felt left out of the Ontario/Quebec political radar screen. Diefenbaker targeted farmers, lumbermen, fishermen, steel workers, coal miners, vets, pensioners, recent immigrants, and struggling small businessmen – the working classes – the ‘forgotten’ Canadians. They all felt they had been ignored by the Liberals while elites on Bay Street and in Montreal held visible sway, ignoring their household needs. Television made a crucial difference. Diefenbaker was explosive and electric on TV.⁷¹ His eyes flashed with ‘fire and brimstone’ as he lacerated the Liberals. Pearson was uncomfortable, understated, and undramatic by comparison. Pearson had a high wavering voice with a slight lisp that rose in decibels as he lamely attempted to demonstrate passion.

In 1957, Diefenbaker won an uphill victory to the astonishment of both parties, the mainstream media and public. It was the ‘outsider’ against the ‘establishment’ – ‘Main Street against Bay Street’. His publicists touted him as the ‘man from Prince Albert’ to emphasize his small-town origins. The intellectuals, skewed academics, and bureaucrats allied with the Bay Street businessmen who believed they knew what was best for them and so for the rest of Canada. They queried how a prairie upstart with such a weird Germanic name could dare to run and gain power over the schooled experienced eastern elite governing party. Diefenbaker who had failed repeatedly before he was elected to Parliament and never even received a senior position in his own caucus until he became a leader was a surprise. “Inexperienced”, “inept”, “dangerous”, “upstart”, and “not fit for office”, they murmured. Diefenbaker was at best a ‘rabble rouser’. His tirades against the establishment and United States was encapsulated in his theme ‘Canada First’ and his subtle, not so understated sub-theme ‘Main Street, not Bay Street’. The business establishment with its deep financial and policy ties to the Liberal Party was exposed.

When Louis St. Laurent quickly and gracefully stepped down, Mike Pearson, the modest political leader soundly defeated Paul Martin Senior, the most well-rounded experienced politician in the St. Laurent Cabinet at the Liberal Party leadership convention. Liberals felt they had an upper hand with Pearson, the recent 1956 Nobel Prize for Peace winning diplomat and world acclaimed Foreign Minister, comfortable in the international corridors at the UN and the Commonwealth. No one was more likeable than Mike Pearson. When your first met him, he was quiet, rational, sensible, vulnerable, and warm in all his personal relationships. In 1958, Pearson, based on the advice of Jack Pickersgill and other former Ministers, called for a quick vote of confidence on Diefenbaker’s minority government insisting it was time for a Liberal government to return quickly to power again before Diefenbaker ruined the Canadian economy and antagonized our staunch American ally. They fell into Diefenbaker’s trap. It was an act of reckless judgement that Pearson immediately regretted. The 1958 federal Diefenbaker team drowned the Liberal Party. Experienced formidable ministers like C.D. Howe in Ontario, Jimmy Sinclair in British Columbia72 and Robert Winters in Nova Scotia went down like ten pins. Liberals were in shock and so were the Canadian elites.

Diefenbaker, the unknown and quirky leader became Prime Minister, while Pearson who had won worldwide accolades at the UN for his international leadership leading to the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the Suez Crisis was shut out and the Liberal Party left in the worst shape in modern history. The Liberal Party officials and the grass roots had grown old and lazy. The media was in shock. And so was I. Diefenbaker’s sleazy attacks first on St. Laurent’s record, a politician I admired, and then Pearson were questionable, but Diefenbaker hit the soft targets. Pearson’s leadership style, hesitant, thoughtful and reasonable, was the polar opposite of John Diefenbaker in all aspects. Who could fail to admire Mike Pearson? Pearson, a graduate of University of Toronto, then Oxford, a World War I vet, a fanatic sports fan, a university sports coach, an excellent hockey, baseball, lacrosse and tennis player, a well-liked history professor and who, later through the years, had been groomed by Mackenzie King himself first as a young public servant, then senior bureaucrat, then diplomat and then Member of Parliament then Minister of External Affairs for leadership from the outset on his career. Pearson, a son and grandson of Methodist pastors, was comfortable with Toronto-Ottawa elites, attracted to public life, experienced businessmen, lawyers, former public servants – the best of the best – like Robert Winters who easily gained well paid jobs in the private sector when he was first defeated or Walter Gordon, a top business consultant and government advisor who became Pearson’s Campaign Chairman and others like them.

Pearson was not a joyful warrior in public. He was a joyful, witty, warm companion in private. Diefenbaker relished public performances. He could enthrall even those who were not his admirers. Pearson shrunk from public displays of emotion. Diefenbaker easily attracted the ‘average’ Canadian who felt left out of the Liberal establishment radar which had ignored them.

Even the reluctant comfortable conservative business establishment from Ontario began to rally to Diefenbaker’s banner led by the Ontario Progressive Conservatives especially the astute, successful and popular Premier of Ontario, Leslie Frost, who was early convinced Diefenbaker could gain power and would then cooperate with Ontario to help fill its growing economic needs. War vets and men of business experience like George Hees joined Diefenbaker’s bandwagon as did others. John Bassett Sr., another leading Tory, threw his Toronto newspaper The Telegram, behind him.73 Later John McCutcheon, a Bay Street baron and partner of the business titans, E.P. Taylor and George Montaque Black Jr.,74 was added as a Senator. Pierre Sevigny from Quebec, a bemedalled war veteran who lost a limb in World War II, joined the Diefenbaker banner.

Pearson and Diefenbaker had polar opposite leadership styles as Prime Ministers. Diefenbaker relished conflicts in his Cabinet, while Pearson was a quiet consensus builder who abhorred conflicts. Pearson believed in careful thought and reform step by step while Diefenbaker gushed, gulped and rushed at reform. He relied on his instincts as he had when he had overcome adversity throughout his long career climbing up the ‘greasy’ pole to power.

Diefenbaker stormed the government in 1958 when he gained the largest majority in history – with 208 seats in the Commons to the amazement and dismay of the Liberal stalwarts. The bureaucracy was in the hands of Liberal mandarins who believe it was in the ‘national interest’ and theirs to undermine Diefenbaker’s policies and leadership directives that flooded their desks.

Diefenbaker’s key political architect was Allister Grosart, a quick-witted lawyer but now amicable newsman, who had turned his skills in advertising to assist George Drew as Conservative Leader in Ottawa. When George Drew withdrew from the Conservative leadership, Grosart became Diefenbaker’s first loyal senior Ontario political operative. Grosart was Diefenbaker’s image maker. Allister never budged and remained loyal to Diefenbaker to the very end. Grosart felt the tired Tory Party brand had to pivot to focus on ‘Diefenbaker the Man’ to gain wider support beyond the narrow hardcore Tory support. The focus on ‘The Man’ rather than ‘the Party’ was a first in modern Canadian elections, now geared by the electronic media that began to relish ‘celebrity’. Pearson and the Liberal team were left behind. Diefenbaker, the unknown, became the ‘celebrity’. Pearson, already a recognized widely respected international celebrity, shunned ‘celebrity’.

Diefenbaker’s government’s first year in office in 1957 unleashed a torrent of legislation and regulatory changes: increased price supports for agricultural products (butter and turkeys); raises for federal employees; aid to veterans; grain supports; tax cuts for lower and middle-classes; increases in old age pensions; assistance to coal miners and fishermen; low cost home loans; winter work projects to stoke seasonal unemployment; hospital insurance; higher unemployment benefits – all passed with breathtaking speed - and all transformational. There were ‘giveaways’ to every alienated hard-working sector of the economy – the ‘average’ Canadian.

Diefenbaker relished diversity in his caucus and Cabinet appointing Michael Starr, a Canadian of Ukrainian descent, and Ellen Fairclough, the first female Cabinet Minister. He enlisted iconoclastic ministers like Alvin Hamilton, a bright Saskatchewan farmer in 1957 who became Minister of Northern Affairs and in turn gathered about him a brilliant group of young advisors led by Roy Faibish.75 This talented youthful team galvanized by Roy attempted to give substance to Diefenbaker’s electoral promise of ‘vision’ that had caught the public imagination. ‘Roads to Resources’ and the promise of development of Canada’s North, neglected by Liberals, captured the Canadian imagination. The contrast to the tired worn out Liberals was palpable.76

In 1960, Hamilton was shifted to Minister of Agriculture. Roy was asked to advise Diefenbaker and write speeches, policy papers, and invited Brian Mulroney, a young Conservative activist from Quebec, to join Hamilton’s staff for a summer stint to replace him temporarily. Hamilton quickly introduced more decisive steps to enhance the struggling agricultural sector. His breakthrough was the large wheat sale to drought-stricken China, a first for Canada and its western allies. Roy Faibish, a China expert, led on the wheat deal.⁷⁷ This upset the Americans, especially President Kennedy, who were trying to place a frame around Communist China and Soviet Russia as enemies of American ‘democratic’ interests. Roy became the sparkling ‘idea man’ and phrase maker for both the Hamilton and Diefenbaker teams.

Another spark plug in the Diefenbaker Cabinet was Davie Fulton, an ambitious Rhodes Scholar from Kamloops, BC whose family predecessors were amongst the political elite of that province and included judges, well-respected ministers, and senior public officials. Diefenbaker quickly appointed him to the prestigious Minister of Justice.

Fulton too attracted a bright circle of young advisors with an intellectual bent, Michael Pitfield of the Montreal establishment family (later to be the senior bureaucratic advisor to Pierre Trudeau)78 and Marc Lalonde (a talented well-schooled brilliant French Canadian who also went on to become a key advisor to Mr. Pearson, then Mr. Trudeau and then in turn became Minister of Energy and later Finance). Fulton and his team drafted the groundbreaking federal ‘Bill of Rights’ legislation pushed by Diefenbaker that ultimately led to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Constitutional Repatriation decades later in the early ‘80s under Pierre Trudeau. Fulton and his team organized federal and provincial constitutional conferences as they ceaselessly sought to gain an agreement on an amending formula necessary to gain provincial approval, a first step to patriate the Canadian Constitution. The Fulton Formula under Diefenbaker followed by the Fulton-Favreau formula under Pearson, never gained the necessary provincial traction to success.

Diefenbaker appointed a Royal Commission to renovate Canada’s outmoded tax system. He rampaged and proposed radical changes on every front.

At times, Diefenbaker appeared clairvoyant. Wednesday evenings in Ottawa featured the ‘Late Show’ after his loss of the Prime Ministership. The Commons held an evening session after dinner. Political staff joined a skeleton press gallery to audit these late evening speeches. It was my regular habit to observe from the government gallery when I served as John Turner’s Chief of Staff called, in those days, the more modest ‘Executive Assistant’. Diefenbaker was always in attendance in the House.

Most members of the Commons were slightly in their ‘cups’ and glowing with camaraderie looked forward to fun after a nice dinner and well lubricated in the Members dining room. Most had been assigned evening house attendance. The mood was warm and friendly on all sides as each designated speaker rose first on the government side to be gently heckled or questioned by the Opposition and then when the Opposition spoke to receive equally witty interjections. It was great fun.

One evening, Bryce Mackasey, a jovial Liberal Irish Quebecer from the Riding of Verdun in Quebec City, rose unsteadily to speak, obviously under the ‘influence’. Bryce was the Liberal Minister of Labour under Mr. Pearson. Bryce, starting from humble beginnings as an electrician on the CN Railway, rose in the ranks to become a union activist and then Member of Parliament. Bryce spoke easily in street chatter in both languages, at times with earthy language propelled by an endearing lisp. Who could not fail to like Bryce? He held a number of portfolios, first as Labour with Mr. Pearson, then Manpower and Immigration under Trudeau. Mr. Turner later appointed him to become Ambassador to Portugal.

By the time Brian Mulroney, himself from Irish working class stock from Quebec, became Leader of the Opposition, Mulroney attacked Turner for Bryce’s diplomatic appointment as he ranted at another blatant example of Liberal patronage. Mulroney, phrase maker that he was, crafted these memorable words – “There is no whore like an old whore.” When Mulroney won the election as Prime Minister, true to form, he cancelled Bryce’s appointment and then quickly and artfully appointed Lloyd Francis, a disenchanted Liberal and former Speaker to replace Bryce as Ambassador to Portugal. Ah, patronage never ceases to flow in many directions like a fountain.

In any event, back to this one memorable Wednesday evening in Parliament. Bryce was Minister of Labour and ‘under the weather’, as they say. He rose unsteadily on his feet to speak in the House, red-faced, standing swaying from side to side, and called for a controversial position on a current Labour issue in Quebec. Diefenbaker religiously attended these lively evening sessions surrounded with his clippings and notes piled on his desk, as he listened to the debates as he read. Suddenly Diefenbaker rose and said, “The Honourable Member says one thing tonight in this House, but last night he was saying something quite different in Quebec” and sat down. Bryce was flummoxed, mumbling some reply, finished his speech, visibly shaken.

Curious, I went downstairs to the Government Caucus room behind the Government side in the Commons. Bryce was slouched in a big red leather chair, stunned and more florid. “Are you all right? What happened, Bryce?” I asked. Bryce murmured, “I don’t believe it. Last night I had drinks with two close friends, confided to them about my own position that was different from the Government’s position which I took tonight. How did Diefenbaker know that?” I left Bryce but remained curious about Diefenbaker’s clairvoyance. Much later I discovered that one of the men Bryce met in Montreal that night was Bill Wilson of the Montreal Star who Bryce would leak stories to and who he considered a friend. It seems that Bill, a respected member of the Press Gallery, also kept in regular contact with John Diefenbaker. Diefenbaker always paid attention and curried favour from his preferred sources in the media. He developed a remarkable network of information and advice from favoured journalists. Some newsmen who had come to loath the Liberals arrogance loved Diefenbaker’s underdog stance. Politics is a great teacher about human nature.

Diefenbaker was a practicing Baptist, a teetotaler or so he presented himself! I was told that he and Paul Martin Senior, both not revered by their party elites, respected and liked each other. Both, when they spent private time together, would imbibe a glass or two of wine as they shared experiences and friendship.

Wives are important to the success of any leader. Olive Diefenbaker, Diefenbaker’s second wife, was inseparable. She was constantly at his side, calming him and directing him. He felt lost without her as they campaigned and travelled together. Diefenbaker would glance at her to seek her approval when he spoke. It was lovely to watch the true love, admiration, and friendship these two held for each other, especially when they looked at each other.

The Israel and the Mid-East turmoil in the ‘60s and ‘70s continued as a constant almost irritating sore that wouldn’t heal. Diefenbaker always felt a visceral connection to the plight of Jews starting with the episodic anti-Semitic outbreaks in Western Canada in the ‘30s, during World War II and later directed to the State of Israel. In 1960, Diefenbaker appointed a senior diplomat, Margaret Meagher. Until then the one diplomat headed by both Greece and Israel embassies together. Diefenbaker decided to separate these two diplomatic posts. Meagher became the Canadian Ambassador to Israel alone for the first time. In 1973, I had made my first visit to Israel. I was invited to join a small group of Torontonians led by my university school chum, David Dennis and businessman Jimmy Kay, who had arranged for John Diefenbaker to inaugurate the John Diefenbaker Forest planted on a desolate piece of the land outside Jerusalem and the John Diefenbaker Parkway leading to Jerusalem. The trip was organized by the Jewish National Fund79 in Canada.

A brief backstory to my unexpected relations with John Diefenbaker. In 1965, when I arrived in Ottawa as the Executive Assistant to John Turner for my first stint in public service, I was anxious and green. While politically active and familiar with Mr. Pearson, most of the Liberal Cabinet and their senior appointed political staff, Parliament itself, the bureaucracy and how a government really worked was a mystery to me. I sought advice from Alistair Fraser, a knowledgeable Ottawa hand and top assistant to the irrepressible Jack Pickersgill. John Turner had been appointed to the Cabinet as an Associate Minister to Pickersgill, who dominated the Cabinet and held the powerful Minister of Transport, considered the all-knowing political guru. Alistair later became Clerk of the House of Commons, a chunky, short man from the Maritimes; he was the ‘go-to guy’ about the workings of everything in government. He gave me a long precise lecture with a list of ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ as a political assistant, especially my relations with the senior bureaucrats and their aides who looked on all political staff as inferior and irritating. Ottawa under Pearson, himself in former Mandarin, was influenced by the mandarin class of seasoned deputy ministers, their hand-picked associate deputy ministers and senior staff. Politicians and especially their politically appointed staff were seen as irritating distractions from good governance.

It was a closed elite bureaucratic circle that ran our government in the ‘60s rather than the elected officials to my surprise and bewilderment. “You had better learn to go along to get along”, Alistair admonished me.

Alistair then suggested I go and seek advice from John Diefenbaker who loved Parliament and knew the workings of government better than most and would give me a contrarian perspective as well as anyone. I was surprised. Though Diefenbaker was Leader of the Opposition, he was the avowed Liberal political nemesis. The Liberals had demonized him in the last two federal elections that gave birth to Pearson’s first Liberal minority in 1962. Now as Leader of the Opposition, the ‘Chief’ had time on his hands. “Don’t worry”, Alistair advised, “He would surely meet with you. Make sure you speak to his right side. He is slightly deaf in the left ear and it upsets him if he can’t hear you.”

I called Diefenbaker’s office on the Hill and immediately got his secretary and heard ‘Dief ’ growl in the background demanding who was on the line. She shouted my name and I could hear him say, “Well, tell him to come right over.” I was astonished. Timidly I entered his quiet outer office and was immediately ushered into his large inner sanction. His large desk was a jumbled mess covered with clippings and notes. He waved me to sit down and asked what I wanted. “Alistair Fraser had suggested that I ask you for advice”, I blurted out.

John Diefenbaker, a tall ramrod straight broad-shouldered angular man, filled the room with his piercing fiery eyes that glowed like burning coals from deep dark sockets. He wore a dark bespoke double-breasted suit, with a crisp white shirt, dark tie, and a carefully folded white starched hankie. His manner of speaking surprised me – softer, familiar, friendly, confidential, less raspy, with a flashing wit. His tone was a deep, quiet, resonant baritone. Most convivial, he quickly put me at ease. “I know who you are. You work for John Turner and you worked for The Truth Squad led by that Judy LaMarsh that flopped”, he chortled. Indeed, Keith Davey had asked me to do some research for his idea – The Truth Squad – led by Judy LaMarsh which briefly followed Diefenbaker on the 1962 campaign trail across Canada. It was set up to correct Dief’s factual errors or mistakes about Diefenbaker’s record and his allegations against the Liberal governments, past and present. Keith’s colourful idea had flopped quickly as ‘Dief’ laughed it out of business. Keith tried comic books and the ‘Diefenbuck’ or ‘Diefendollar’ when Diefenbaker had devalued the Canadian dollar to 92.5 cents, who knows to what effect. Still the Liberals won a minority government under Mr. Pearson, so maybe these stunts had some effect.

In any event, ‘Dief ’ proceeded to give me a long list of ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ with quick, quirky anecdotes about most of the Pearson Cabinet Ministers except Paul Martin Senior whom he held in high esteem. Later I found out why.80 After praising John Turner as a ‘comer’ who he respected as a politician, especially for Turner’s fervent belief in the primacy of Parliament, a belief ‘Dief’ shared. I had held a grudging admiration for Diefenbaker as a law student when in 1957, he had introduced the first Bill of Rights Act that applied to the federal spheres of power in his first government. Turner respected him too. Later I discovered that Pierre Trudeau also admired Diefenbaker for his Bill of Rights, passed in 1957 creating Canada’s first Bill of Rights, an oversight law that applied to the federal jurisdiction and for his eloquent and passionate stand on ‘One Canada’, a belief Trudeau shared. Diefenbaker, in his farewell address to the 1967 Conservative Leadership Convention, where he posted a poor sixth place showing, to lose to Robert Stanfield, railed against ‘extremism’ and the ‘Two Nation’ theory, then a growing analogue to the ‘separatist’ movement that was spiking in political popularity in Quebec to the frustration of all federal parties, as if the ‘Two Nation’ theory would somehow better unite a divisive Quebec with the rest of Canada.

Dief’s, like Fraser’s, most pessimistic yet, insightful advice related to the bureaucrats, the Liberal Mandarins, who could slow down or derail any new reforms that they didn’t own. “Make sure they feel they own any Turner reforms and they might have chance”, he advised with a mischievous gleam in his eyes. Then after more than an hour, I left ‘Dief’ thoughtful but invigorated.

During my time as John Turner’s assistant, I would receive the odd hand-written note from Diefenbaker when I sat in the Common’s Gallery listening to Turner deliver a speech that I had helped draft. Diefenbaker always sat in his front seat in the House reading his mail and papers while listening to the Debates, even during the evening Debates, when the House was almost empty. He would send me a note up to the gallery, delivered by a page boy with cryptic comments, “Not bad, Chief of Staff” or “Missed the mark, Chief of Staff”, and he would smile up at me as I read his note and nodded to him as he returned to intently listening to the Debates never stopping to forage through his small heap of notes, clippings, and correspondence cluttering his Parliamentary desk.

Later in 1967 when Diefenbaker ran for Leadership at the Conservative Convention for the last time in Toronto at the Maple Leaf Gardens, I called ‘Fast’ Eddie Goodman, a Conservative stalwart I knew, and a key member of the ‘dump’ Diefenbaker movement led by Dalton Camp for two tickets. Eddy was the Chairman of that convention. He barked at me dismissively over the phone, “No way”, and that was that. I decided to call Diefenbaker’s office. I immediately received two tickets seated several rows behind ‘Dief’ in the Gardens. I attended with Carole. When Eddie spotted me as he raced about the packed audience, he shouted one of his creative expletives, “What the ___ are you doing here?” Diefenbaker, sitting a few rows below overheard Goodman’s loud remarks, stood erect, turned, hands akimbo on his hips and then pointed to us, and then to himself and lipsynched, “They are with me” and smiled to Eddy’s consternation. Nonplussed, Eddie shouted, “Grafstein, you are impossible”, larded with another of his stream of endless expletives. And so was ‘Fast Eddie’, I smiled to myself.

I shared my admiration for Diefenbaker with the late and lamented Doug Fisher, a heavy-set, tall, chunky, lumbering war veteran and lifelong socialist, an astute journalist, hockey fan, and the best political historian on the Hill. Doug had toppled C.D. Howe, the most powerful minister in the St. Laurent cabinet in 1957 and became an CCF (later NDP) M.P. at the Lakehead. He lost in the Diefenbaker landslide in 1958. Later he returned to Toronto to run against a Liberal, my cousin Bobby Kaplan, and was soundly beaten and hence he harboured a lifelong grudge against anything Liberal. It was in Ottawa in 1965 that I first met Doug in Ottawa, often in the West Block Cafeteria, and we became lively sparring partners for the rest of his long storied career as one of Canada’s best read insightful political journalists. He admired Diefenbaker deeply and regaled me with inside stories about him.

When David Dennis, a University chum, a Conservative, and loyal Diefenbaker supporter, wanted a bipartisan group to join the Diefenbaker visit to Israel in 1973 to dedicate a forest and a parkway near Jerusalem in Diefenbaker’s name, no other Liberal agreed to go. ‘Dief’ suggested David call me. David knew I was an active Liberal but he didn’t know of my relationship with ‘Dief’. David called me with some hesitancy and was surprised and pleased that I readily agreed to join the group to travel with ‘Dief’ to Israel. It would be my first visit to Israel. The purpose of the trip was to inaugurate the John Diefenbaker Forest outside Jerusalem. So, we travelled across the breath and width of Israel by bus, from desert settlements to collective farms to Israeli towns to government sponsored events, watching Diefenbaker speak spontaneously to his enraptured audiences from leading politicians to military leaders to settlers (‘Kibbutzniks’) in tiny windswept enclaves or large agricultural communes. He had the common touch. We met the Speaker of Knesset, the pint-sized Yitzhak Shamir, the celebrated underground fighter, who became head of the Mossad, Israel’s secret service and later to become a controversial Prime Minister who hit it off with ‘Dief’ and then privately with Golda Meir, the outgoing Prime Minister who had just resigned who also was an obvious admirer of ‘Dief’, known as a staunch supporter of Israel.81

John Diefenbaker was seen as a staunch friend of Israel who was adored by the Israeli public and the media. In one interview during that trip in 1974, he called for the Canadian recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s eternal capital. Diefenbaker reveled in meeting rabbis, students, farm workers, union leaders, politicos of all stripes, always with genuine warmth and enthusiasm as he listened to them and then responded with a quip or a story. Israelis loved him.

Back to the 1958 campaign which started with a Liberal fumble. Egged on by Jack Pickersgill, Mike Pearson, the newly minted Liberal leader, called for a vote of confidence on the premise that the public would want to return the government to safe Liberals hands. Pearson knew at once that it was the wrong call. Diefenbaker had set a trap.

Diefenbaker immediately launched into the campaign and never stopped a day! Anxious to pour substance into his ‘version’ for developing Canada’s north, Diefenbaker worked to match Sir John A. MacDonald’s promise of expanding Canada across the west. Diefenbaker wanted to brand his legacy with expanding Canada to the north. He wanted his policy plans to match his ‘vision’. He knew, as did his key advisors, the untapped riches across the North from minerals to energy. Diefenbaker’s team called on Alvin Hamilton, young idea men, Roy Faibish and Don Johnson, to give the ‘vision’ substance. How? By building roads, ‘Roads to Resources’, improving the northern sea routes, calling for self-government for the Yukon and Northwest Territories to dilute this northern fiefdom of the federal bureaucracy.

‘Canada of the North’ became a campaign slogan to add flesh to the skeleton of his ‘vision’. How to shift focus to the untapped North? While Diefenbaker’s actual policies were, as some critics said ‘feeble’, starts were made in the fulfillment of ‘vision’. The second TransCanada Highway was started. Still the north’s promise remained unfinished.

Today, northern development remains a slow work in progress. While oil was discovered along the Arctic coast before the ‘oil’ bust in the ‘90s, the vast riches of Ontario – the ‘Ring of Fire’, and ‘Quebec Nord’ still remain untapped on the planning tables of bureaucrats waiting for roads and rails, the promise of a northern sea passage and the political will to monetize Canada’s hidden treasures. The ‘True North, strong and free’, remains on the drawing tables waiting for new political will to exploit Canada’s hidden riches. Still, it was Diefenbaker’s vision of the north that opened new, exciting, hopeful vistas and lifted the scope and reach of Canada’s future for the first time.

Diefenbaker was the first Prime Minister to constantly use the telephone to network and keep apprised of politics at the grass roots levels. He sought out reactions and ideas from more than his inner circle. He wanted to keep in touch. He reached out regularly across country to young comers like Brian Mulroney, Joe Clark, Ted Rogers, and local newspaper editors, to gossip, which he loved. He would entertain them, confide in them, seek their advice about what was going on across the country, build bonds of loyalty but mostly to demonstrate he knew more than his peers, and even more than his staff. The phone was Diefenbaker’s focus group.

Brian Mulroney also loved the phone to reach out and keep in touch first as a political activist, then lawyer, then businessman, and finally as a politician. Mulroney was the best telephone network operator of any modern Prime Minister. He used the network to keep in touch, to gossip, to offer assistance and gain information. Most politicians like Paul Martin Sr. had a regular list of contacts that he phoned. I was on that list. Martin would call every two weeks or so and ask to be brought up to speed on local politics. The conversation was always a one-way street with Martin. You talked briefly, then he took over for the rest of the conversation and then signed off. To be in touch with power was enough to attract supporters. Mulroney succeeded because he deployed his telephone network as a two-way street. He bonded, got information, ideas, but also helped out members of his network and members of their family if needed. Mulroney was reputed to be a good listener. Pearson and Trudeau were reluctant telephone users. They preferred one-to-one contact. Diefenbaker, however, remains the pioneer of regular telephone contact by Canadian political leaders.82

Rarely in the usual quarrelsome debates between party leaders has there been so much vitriol and mutual demonization observed and practiced between Diefenbaker and Pearson. It was a sterile embrace. Pearson, who loathed to hate anyone, hated Diefenbaker. It was this public discourse spewing vitriol between two very different leaders that I observed when I first joined politics as an ardent fan of Mr. Pearson. Peter Newman, the chronicler of this venomous period, placed the responsibility on Diefenbaker in the ‘Renegade in Power’. At the time I thought Peter’s book, a best seller, hit the target. Later on, when I became better acquainted with Mr. Diefenbaker, my first Liberal tribal impressions changed. Diefenbaker was by instincts a ‘progressive’. So, I dug back into the history of the party starting with Mr. King and came to perceive a different set of circumstances. John Diefenbaker was an unusual politician a different breed who started with a weird Germanic name as a self-made crusading criminal lawyer who saved men from the gallows and who lost nine elections before he gained a seat in Parliament.

My astute mentor and friend Roy Faibish who had travelled across the political spectrum from communist or at least an early sympathizer to avid Conservative felt that Diefenbaker with all his patent flaws was an honest contrarian who took on unpopular causes including defending Roy’s father who was attacked by some rowdy anti-Semitic rednecks after they sought to hang him in a large hemp wheat bag upside down, sought them out and beat them, was defended by Mr. Diefenbaker successfully or so Roy told me. Or the fact that Diefenbaker defended murderers and became a life-long capital abolitionist, an action that endeared him to me and ‘abolitionists’ like Arthur Maloney (a friend and one of the leading criminal lawyers in Canada and one time Member of Parliament), and more so when he passed the first federal Bill of Rights as Prime Minister. In the late ‘50s, his courageous wheat deal sale to China was again a first. The deal helped western farmers as it opened up China to trade with Canada that Roy helped engineer as the erstwhile assistant to Alvin Hamilton, the Minister of Agriculture. Or in the ‘Northern Vision’ speeches and the ‘Roads to Resources’ speeches that Roy helped craft based on phrases he helped coin that became part of the Canadian political lexicon.

It was Mr. Diefenbaker’s northern development speeches and policies that reoriented the Canadian public to think of Canada from coast-to-coast to northern coast. These visionary speeches lifted Canadian eyes to our northern landmass that stretched longer north and south than east to west.

Diefenbaker, an early vocal opponent to South Africa’s apartheid practices, was not popular with the Canadian bureaucracy or business elites. His fierce opposition to communism, when the bureaucracy in external affairs was still rife with communist sympathizers and the media were soft on communist supporters due to the overreach of McCarthyism, did not gain him deep support amongst the left leaning senior civil servants. Or Diefenbaker’s innate distrust of Americans who sought to actively undermine his leadership.83 Or his articulate and lonely support for dissidents in Communist Russia.⁸⁴ Or his equally lonely and vigourous support of Israel. All these things Roy drummed into my noggin’ taken as I was and am taken with the Liberal Party. But all this came after Mr. Diefenbaker was no longer Prime Minister and I came to spend time with him after being carefully briefed by Roy.

One of my first acts on the national political scene in support of the Liberal cause was to provide research and support for Keith Davey’s imaginative idea the ‘Truth Squad’, spearheaded by Judy LaMarsh, a tough rowdy opinionated federal politician who would travel on the campaign trail in 1963 following Mr. Diefenbaker and give a press conference after Mr. Diefenbaker’s campaign speeches and to ‘tell the truth’ to correct the Diefenbaker record. Great idea. The execution less than satisfactory; but perceptions of Mr. Diefenbaker as a fabricator and exaggerator were established. His devout supporters defended him against these attacks, but it provided fodder for his Bay Street cabinet appointees who thought they could wrest power from him. Keith’s other idea to illustrate the devaluation of the dollar and Diefenbaker which he called the ‘Diefenbucks’ or the ‘Diefendollar’. The public understood this easily – Keith would argue. Diefenbaker had been forced to peg the dollar at 92.2 cents to gain World Bank support when Canadian reserves were under attack.

Tories did what the Tories did best – divide and attack their own. How much more superior a political party were we, I believed. Liberals believed in ‘unity’ and ‘loyalty to the leader’. I believed all the Davey crafted messages about the ‘goodness’ of Mr. Pearson and the propaganda about the ‘blackheart’ of Mr. Diefenbaker.

I also learned early that the most effective political tactic in the Liberal toolkit was to frame and demonize the Tory leader. Of course, the Tories helped as they sometimes ignited the demonization of their unpredictable leader Mr. Diefenbaker themselves.

When I started to read history more carefully, my ingrained attitudes changed about both. Mr. Pearson’s strengths were more grandiose than I thought, and Mr. Diefenbaker’s flaws were not as deep as I had believed. But these changes and attitude came later as I reread history and my mind gained a different perspective of both. I learned to admire both Diefenbaker and Pearson for their acts of undisputed leadership and dedication to principles, their personal probity, and felt less animated by their apparent weaknesses. This became my first self-imposed political lesson. Facts first. Condemnation later in light of the facts. The closer to other political leaders I came, the more I came to respect their character, dedication, and accomplishments. Both Pearson and Diefenbaker left politics and public life economically diminished, without personal gain from public service or seeking gain from their former office when they left public office.

Diefenbaker like the lonely northern star, blazed a trail that others followed. He was an original!

Diefenbaker left a lasting legacy of accomplishments. He woke up the Conservative Party and broadened its tent to include the working-classes, the ‘blue’ collar workers and moved it in a progressive direction, modernizing the Progressive Conservative Party. He introduced the first Bill of Rights. He commenced concrete steps towards repatriation of the Constitution by the Fulton Formula and a Royal Commission. He opened trade with China by its first wheat sale. He was a staunch supporter of Israel.85 He was a strong supporter of the Russian dissident movement. He started the early steps to Medicare. He opened the Cabinet to its first ethnic ministers, and his caucus to diverse Members of Parliament (Asian and eastern European). He intensified close relations with Aboriginal leaders. He stood against American hegemony over Canada or elsewhere. He and his Cabinet sought out and enlisted bright young talented men to politics like Ray Faibish, Michael Pitfield, Marc Lalonde, Joe Clark, and Brian Mulroney and other ambitious talented young men.

In the start of the 1958 campaign, Diefenbaker was anxious to pour substance into his ‘vision’ for Canada’s north. Diefenbaker wanted to broaden Sir John A. McDonald’s vision of the west to include the north in his campaign messages. His campaign team turned to the likes of Roy Faibish and Don Johnson to carve out distinct new policy ideas and plans to match his own instincts to unleash the untapped natural resources of oil and minerals hidden beneath the tundra and along the arctic coastline. Diefenbaker, because of the disdain J.F. Kennedy had for him, fanned the flames of anti-Americanism and the still sputtering the Canadian psyche. Diefenbaker decried of American interference in the 1962 election surreptitiously supporting Pearson because of the Bomarc missile testing issue that Diefenbaker refused. Diefenbaker openly challenged American hegemony and, in the process, became a kindred spirit with Charles de Gaulle.86

While Sir John A. MacDonald spoke of Canada from East to West, Diefenbaker added the North. How? By building roads to these resources, improving the northern sea routes and adding self-government to the Yukon and the Northwest Territories, fiefdoms of the Federal government.

‘Canada and the North’, Diefenbaker repeated, sketching in his ‘vision’ to little known expansive outer boundaries of Canada. Canadians trained to look east and west now lifted their eyes to the unknown north. While investment increased and feeble starts were made and the vision faltered, the vision remains intact today, if undeveloped.

The northern promise remains unfulfilled. This we know. Billions of oil reserves and minerals lie untapped in the north, especially along the northern arctic coastline in Ontario (the Ring of Fire) and Quebec (Quebec Nord) where massive mineral resources have been detected but lie buried, waiting for a new political will to excavate and monetarize Canada’s vast hidden storehouses of richness.

While Diefenbaker left his Party divided, he left a strong cohort of followers to continue his work more than two decades later. Joe Clark took down Pierre Trudeau and led the Progressive Conservatives back to victory. Mulroney picked up the Progressive Conservative Party mantle. Harper, also influenced to some degree by Diefenbaker’s western takeover of the federal government, brick-by-brick, rebuilt a new Conservative Party in his mold, restoring pride in Canada by increasing respect for the military, veterans, and patriotism. Harper recognized the sorry relationship with Aboriginals and attempted to recognize their leadership and broader rights, a task still in progress. Diefenbaker relished being named honourary ‘Indian Chief’ and wore his Aboriginal feathered headdress with obvious joy. Diefenbaker’s travails were never far from the minds of his successors and unity of party became an architectonic of Conservative success by party leaders who inherited his mantle.

For one fleeting moment, “O Canada” became the cry of Canadians from coast to coast-to-coast – the ‘True North’ that still lies hidden, beating in the hearts of all Canadians, waiting for discovery.

66Diefenbaker was born of Scottish and German descent in Neustadt, a small town in Saskatchewan in 1895. His father was a teacher and taught him to love history. Diefenbaker’s early admiration for Laurier ignited his dreams of political leadership. After service in World War I, he was invalided and returned to Canada. He got his BA from the University of Saskatchewan and then his MA in Economics and Politics. He decided to become a lawyer and graduated Law School at the University of Saskatchewan. Diefenbaker practiced criminal lawyer, quickly gaining a reputation as a defender of the ‘downtrodden’ and an opponent of capital punishment.

⁶⁷These losses gave Diefenbaker an internal beacon that drove him to continue to believe in his destiny as leader even after he had been defeated in two national elections in the ‘60s. Diefenbaker, for a short time in the ‘30s, was a leader of the Saskatchewan Conservative Party and when defeated turned his energies back to becoming a Member of Parliament.

⁶⁸Britain believed in dividing power between the federal governments and the regions as it did in India so that its hegemony could not be easily challenged by a strong central government. Hence the British North America Act in 1867 divided powers between the federal and provincial levels of government with a lock on allowing any amendments without provincial assent – almost impossible to allow for change. It was a delicious recipe for keeping colonial Canada in lock step with the Imperial power in the U.K. especially after the loss of the American colonies a century earlier in 1783.

⁶⁹Peter Newman, one of Canada’s leading political journalists and authors and a Diefenbaker antagonist, considered Diefenbaker in his essay on Canada in the 20^th century, one of Canada’s greatest orators.

⁷⁰Grosart was based in Toronto. I was introduced to ‘Red’ Foster, a pal of my father-in-law Harry Sniderman. ‘Red’ told me how first his ad group were dismissive of Diefenbaker but soon jumped on his band wagon when he began to arouse the Canadian public.

⁷¹McLuhan, the Canadian guru of the media, later opined that ‘cool’ on TV, in effect, quiet and understated was more persuasive ‘hot and loud’. Diefenbaker shredded this thesis.

⁷²James Sinclair became Pierre Trudeau’s father-in-law and Justin Pierre James Trudeau’s grandfather named in part after his grandfather. Had Sinclair not been defeated in 1958, he would have been a formidable Liberal leadership contender.

⁷³John Bassett Senior ran for Parliament under Diefenbaker in Toronto, perhaps as a leadership aspirant in case Diefenbaker gave up the Conservative leadership. Bassett was defeated in the Spadina Riding.

⁷⁴George M. Black’s son is Conrad Black. Together Taylor, McCutcheon and Black built the first Canadian conglomerate, Argus Corp., composed of different businesses like insurance companies, insurance agencies, mining, broadcasting, food stores, and breweries.

⁷⁵Roy Faibish, who I first encountered in 1961 working for a CBC program This Hour Has Seven Days, became a lifelong mentor, friend, confidant, and gadfly. He never left off cajoling me about my Liberal loyalties. Roy Faibish became a trusted advisor to Diefenbaker, Trudeau and Mulroney, respected by all for his political judgement and profound intellectualism. Roy, a polymath, knew and had studied, it seemed to me, everything! There was no book on any subject I read that he had not already read and analyzed. Amazing! He spent his last years in London, reading every week day for a few hours in the Reading Rooms of the London Library where he joyfully served with distinction on its privileged oversight committee. Not a week would go by when Roy did not send me a blistering note or long fax or later emails castigating Liberal policies and personalities except Trudeau who he respected for his intellect.

⁷⁶Diefenbaker was mindful of Parliamentary history. He admired Churchill and avidly devoured his books and speeches. In 1958, Diefenbaker took the time to write a graceful foreword to the catalogue listing Churchill’s paintings that were then touring Canada.

⁷⁷Roy worked hard to become an ‘old hand’ in China and a leading expert in Chinese affairs. He travelled to China often and had a large circle of Chinese intellectuals in his network. Some I had the pleasure of meeting during my travels in China. Two were elderly Canadian communists who married Chinese women, settled in China and each raised a family. From the outset, he cajoled me to become knowledgeable about China as he predicted early that China would become a leading world economic and technological power, outstripping the west. I was too Eurocentric, he charged and sought to change my interest in China which he did. Immediately after the Tiananmen Student Massacre in 1989, Roy, upset and dismayed, travelled to China and got a firsthand look including the precise number of victims. For my 50^th birthday, my wife had arranged our first long trip to China with my two young sons to follow Marco Polo’s Silk Road into the heart of the Middle Kingdom that accelerated my later visits and studies of China, especially the deep Canadian connections that started before the turn of the 19^th century by Toronto based Protestant and Catholic missionary movements originating in Toronto. This historic connection between China and Canada, especially in west and southwest China, and the influences of both countries on each other is a tale in need of historic rediscovery. How the Canadian China missionary movement in the later 19^th and early 20^th century influenced the first members of the External Affairs in Ottawa in the ‘20s is a vital piece of Canadian history necessary to understand deep principles of both our domestic and foreign policies. The ‘social gospel’ gained and promoted by these Canadian missionaries in China early influenced our public policies especially in external affairs and continues to this day.

⁷⁸After a successful career as a senior bureaucrat, Pitfield was appointed to the Senate where he sat as an independent and became a thoughtful colleague while I served in the Senate as a Liberal.

⁷⁹The Jewish National Fund, considered the first ecology organization in the world, was started by early Zionists at the turn of the century to plant trees and promote water and other ecological projects in the then mostly arid Palestine.

⁸⁰Diefenbaker and Martin, though political antagonists, were close good friends, spent private time together sharing a glass of wine (though Diefenbaker was considered a teetotalling Baptist) and held each other’s talents in high esteem. Both were life-long skilled, successful politicians yet, were never fully respected by their party elites. Paul Martin, Sr. had an extraordinary career in public service from the ‘30s to the ‘80s. Martin’s remarkable two volume biography A Very Public Life, published in 1983 and 1986 by Deneau, I consider one of the best of its genre. Martin detailed his rise from humble beginnings, effected with childhood polio and maimed for life to becoming the leading ‘progressive’ in the Liberal Party. Martin single-handedly transformed Windsor, his political base, to a decades long Liberal stronghold despite strong union activism and CCF then NDP staunch opposition. As Minister of Health, he introduced the first stage Medicare in 1948 with grants and tax credits, then aid to hospitals in 1956, threatening to resign if the St. Laurent government did not keep its election promises. Martin went on to be Secretary of State for External Affairs under Mr. Trudeau, Leader of the Senate and High Commissioner to the U.K. government and finally a University lecturer in Windsor – all in all, an astonishing ‘progressive’ 20^th century record of accomplishments and commitment to public service.

⁸¹We travelled outside Jerusalem to inaugurate the John Diefenbaker Forest and Diefenbaker Parkway. All of us were invited to plant a tree. I planted mine very close to the ‘Chief’s’. He looked up and asked why I had planted my tree so close to his. I told him that I would return later and water both trees when I urinate on mine and his tree at the same time to his great laughter and delight.

⁸²Mike Pearson was an avid letter writer sending his concise reports to other foreign leaders who valued his insights. John Turner sent short notes of congratulations and condolences to friends and foes alike.

⁸³Diefenbaker in his last volume of his memoir One Canada detailed how President Kennedy and the Americans had undermined his election and his administration and meddled in his national campaign elections in 1962 and 1963.

⁸⁴Rabbi Monson of Toronto, a friend of my wife’s family, was a strong supporter of Diefenbaker. On learning of Diefenbaker’s visit to Russia, he turned up in Ottawa and asked him to deliver several heavy suitcases of Hebrew prayer books to the large Moscow synagogue. To the surprise of the local Jewish Moscovites, Diefenbaker dropped off the suitcases, filled with prayer books, to the startled Moscow rabbi.

⁸⁵Diefenbaker was without religious bias. No doubt he was a man of deep faith. He was a practicing Baptist though he occasionally had a glass of wine. He developed deep loyal roots in Jewish circles, first in the west and later across Canada. He was a staunch defender of Israel and a vocal supporter of the Russian dissident movement and especially the Jewish leaders in Russia who led in that remarkable movement.

⁸⁶Charles de Gaulle and John Diefenbaker had a little-known excellent relationship. Both challenged American hegemony in foreign affairs. Read De Gaulle’s second volume of his memoirs, Charles de Gaulle Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavor (Simon and Schuster, 1971, pages 238-242) to gain a clear insight into DeGaulle’s and Diefenbaker’s shared thoughts about this issue usually overlooked by most historians.

 

John Diefenbaker - Maiden Speech