by Denis Smith
For five and a half hours they deliberated without conclusion, until the case was adjourned overnight. In the cells the guards heard Wysochan sing “Nearer My God to Thee” in Polish. Next morning, after a brief session, the jury returned with a verdict of guilty. Mr Justice Bigelow concurred in the verdict, offered no hope of clemency, and sentenced Wysochan to the gallows on June 20, 1930. Then, to John Diefenbaker’s distress, the judge immediately called another case for sentencing, in which Diefenbaker represented the defendant. This was a hard day.116
At the appeal hearing before Chief Justice Haultain on May 26, Diefenbaker challenged the admissibility of Antena Kropa’s last words as hearsay evidence and argued that the judge’s charge to the jury had been unfairly biased against the accused. On June 10 Haultain upheld the conviction. The dying woman’s words were admissible as “evidence more or less strong of a certain feeling or attitude of mind” that the jury had been free to weigh as it chose; and the judge’s charge, while it was “on certain points … not favourable to the accused,” had adequately pointed out to the jury that it was the sole judge of fact. The federal cabinet refused to grant a reprieve and, on June 20, Alex Wysochan was hanged in Prince Albert penitentiary, still protesting his innocence.117 Whatever the truth of the case, Diefenbaker’s gamble at long odds had failed. By denying the crime and seeking acquittal, he had lost the chance to argue for a reduced charge of manslaughter that might have saved his client’s life. The burden of that knowledge could not have eased Diefenbaker’s stomach pains. By the date of Wysochan’s execution, John was away from Prince Albert, recuperating from his illness at Edward Brower’s home in Toronto.
CHAPTER 3
A Provincial Life
1929-1938
TWENTY-FOUR YEARS OF LIBERAL DOMINANCE CAME TO AN END IN Saskatchewan in September 1929. Following the provincial election, the three opposition groups agreed to join forces to form a “cooperative government” under Conservative leadership, but Premier Gardiner chose to remain in power until his government could be tested in the legislature. It was defeated at once in a vote of confidence on September 6, and three days later J.T.M. Anderson became premier of the province. At last the Liberal machine’s challengers would have their revenge. Official patronage was in their hands, and the records of the previous regime were available to the Anderson ministry for scrutiny. But the government also had the energy and the reforming commitment of a new administration, and for two years it was active and ingenious. Negotiations were quickly completed to transfer jurisdiction over natural resources from Ottawa to the province; a public service commission was created to establish a merit system of appointment and promotion in the civil service, thus undermining the Conservative Party’s ability to build its own machine; a royal commission examined the problems of immigration and settlement in the province; legislation was adopted to ban religious symbols, religious dress, and French language instruction in the public schools; and a program of mechanized highway construction replaced the old system of labour-intensive roadwork favoured by the Liberals.1 The racial and religious fanaticism of the months leading to the election miraculously faded away, as the new government responded moderately to the anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant prejudices it had helped to arouse.
John Diefenbaker benefited at once by the change of government. As defeated Conservative candidate in Prince Albert, he assumed control of provincial patronage in the constituency and recommended the appointment, among others, of Mayor Samuel Branion as the local crown prosecutor. On January 1, 1930, both Diefenbaker and Branion were named King’s Counsel in the annual provincial honours list.2
Diefenbaker’s feisty participation in the 1928 Arm River by-election had drawn the attention of Conservatives in the federal riding of Long Lake, whose boundaries contained the provincial constituency, and as a federal election approached in 1930 the local party association sought him out. After the strains of his winter murder trials, Diefenbaker continued to suffer internal bleeding, and in June 1930, on medical advice, he and Edna went east on holiday. The Conservative association reached him by telegram in Toronto, asking whether he would accept nomination; Diefenbaker replied that his illness made that impossible. For a young man of such intense political ambition, the choice forced upon him must have been painful. Long Lake offered his first real prospect of victory after three electoral defeats: Arm River had fallen easily to the Conservatives in the provincial election, and the Anderson government was still enjoying its honeymoon in power. The signs of economic decline in the country were obvious after the Wall Street crash of the previous October, and the outlook for the King government was not good. But when the general election was called for July 28, 1930, John Diefenbaker was not on the candidates’ list.3
Instead, the Conservatives in Long Lake nominated Dr W.D. Cowan – the former, perhaps continuing, member of the Klan – who won the seat. In Prince Albert, Diefenbaker took to the platform in support of his successor candidate, George Braden. Otherwise, the Prince Albert lawyer’s activity in the campaign was restricted to persuading Robert Weir to contest Melfort, with the assistance of Diefenbaker’s friend David Burgess as campaign manager. Weir was also successful in R.B. Bennett’s sweeping victory and became minister of agriculture in the new government. On July 28 the Conservative Party increased its vote in Saskatchewan by 36 percent, taking eight seats in a province where it had held none since 1917. Mackenzie King held onto Prince Albert with a reduced margin, but his government was finished. Nationally, Bennett found himself with a comfortable parliamentary majority of thirty-four.4
For Diefenbaker, the political climate was at last favourable, but his role remained a limited one. J.F. Bryant, who was now minister of public works in the Anderson cabinet, continued to harass the former government with accusations of political interference in provincial police operations. The charges were old ones, since Gardiner had transferred jurisdiction to the RCMP and wound up the force in 1928. In February 1930 Bryant offered his evidence to the legislature; the result was the appointment of a royal commission of investigation subsequently known as the Bryant Charges Commission. Diefenbaker assisted Bryant in planning for the commission’s hearings, and in August 1930 he was appointed junior counsel to the commission, along with Colonel C.E. Gregory, acting on behalf of the Conservative government. For fifty-five days of hearings that autumn, Gregory and Diefenbaker made headlines as they teased away at a parade of witnesses testifying to the blatant use of the police force to promote the Liberal cause. At least two potential witnesses disappeared, and plentiful evidence went into the record of a shabby exercise in low politics. Although T.C. Davis was shown to have used the police force to seek evidence linking the Ku Klux Klan to the Conservative Party (a subject of sensitivity that threatened to backfire on the Conservative investigators), nothing tied James G. Gardiner directly to any improprieties. Once the possibilities of political gain began to fade, the Conservative government lost interest in the inquiry and halted testimony in time for a report to the legislature in the spring of 1931.5
The commission recommended total fees of $30,500 for the four counsel, including $6500 for Diefenbaker – a substantial sum in 1931, which the government refused to pay. Diefenbaker and the others eventually received payment when one of them sued, but for several years the Liberal Party used the figures freely in the legislature in the hope of embarrassing the partisan from Prince Albert.6
On the prairies the economic boom began to weaken in the summer of 1929, well before the Wall Street crash of October 29. The price of wheat in world markets was falling, and the size of the Canadian crop was reduced by drought. For the time being, the wheat pools set an optimistic interim price for 1929 wheat of $1 per bushel and borrowed funds for advance payments to farmers. The full impact of depression came in 1930 and 1931. As world grain prices continued to drop, the pools found themselves overburdened with debts, sought emergency government support, and before long surrendered their marketing role to a makeshift federal agency
. The downward spiral of drought, falling grain prices, debt, foreclosure, unemployment, tight money, and rising tariffs hit the agricultural economy with special intensity, and by mid-1931 the prairie provinces were mired in the depths of a ten-year crisis. Crop failure throughout the whole of southern Saskatchewan in 1931 led the Anderson government to create the Saskatchewan Relief Commission to coordinate the distribution of rural relief payments. Depression now distracted and preoccupied governments at all levels, as the costs of relief exploded and revenues evaporated. The provincial government, like others, found itself the confused and unwitting victim of economic catastrophe.7 As Saskatchewan lost its livelihood, confidence in government disappeared.
Diefenbaker’s legal practice had grown steadily since his arrival in Prince Albert in 1924. By 1929 he employed two lawyers and eight secretaries, and enjoyed a comfortable personal income, after expenses, of $4573. Because he had no investments beyond his local real estate, and no debts, Diefenbaker was unaffected by the stock market crash and the initial losses of the great depression. His income held up through the first six years of depression and declined only modestly to about $3500 per year in 1936, 1937, and 1938.8 The decline was at least partially due to his political preoccupations. He took pride in claiming to be one of Saskatchewan’s most prosperous lawyers, billing only those clients who could afford his fees; others he took on without charge. Yet his papers reveal that he pursued the collection of legal fees with great persistence in this period.9 In 1933, with reduced billings and a smaller office staff, Diefenbaker wrote to his landlord requesting a rent reduction from $60 to $50 monthly, or to $40 with less space. “I have endeavoured,” he explained, “to carry on during the past six months according to the strict letter of the agreement but I realize now very clearly that I cannot continue on this basis and that to do so would be ruinous to me.” The Banque Canadienne Nationale refused to consider a reduction in 1933, although it did later allow Diefenbaker a $5 monthly saving.10
Diefenbaker’s partner, William Elder, left Diefenbaker alone in practice when he departed from the firm in mid-1932. The parting was bitter; the issues, in Elder’s eyes, were finances and ethics. Diefenbaker made no comment.11 The following year Diefenbaker took on John M. Cuelenaere as an articling student when he turned up to remind Diefenbaker of a promise he had made six years earlier after a political meeting in Leask. Cuelenaere stayed on as a partner and valued associate for more than twenty years, complementing Diefenbaker’s courtroom talents with his own skills in legal research. In the memoirs, Diefenbaker generously concedes that “this was one of the best things I have ever done.” Cuelenaere turned out to be “a hard worker” and “an excellent counsel.” He was an active Liberal who later served as mayor of Prince Albert, member of the provincial legislature, and provincial cabinet minister.12
The early glow of John Diefenbaker’s marriage to Edna lasted into 1930 and 1931. She made a comfortable home for him, graciously hosted his dinner parties, for a time coaxed John out to weekend dances, and projected her warmth easily into the community in a way that John had never been able to accomplish. The young lawyer continued to show her off and to appreciate her as his public ornament. The couple surmounted an initial confrontation in the autumn of 1929 when Elmer arrived with John at their new home, intending – at John’s invitation – to take up residence with them. Edna responded that she was moving out to her mother’s home and would return only when Elmer had another place to live. After a few days Elmer left for lodgings, and John brought Edna home.13
The family triangle perplexed and troubled Edna. She was genuinely sorry for Elmer, slow Elmer, “poor Elmer,” the ne’er-do-well who was protected, abused, and manipulated by his domineering brother. Members of the family recalled that Edna was repeatedly distressed by John’s tirades against Elmer, delivered in person and on the telephone. Often, Elmer sought Edna’s protection as an intermediary, reporting his mishaps to her rather than directly to John. Among other things, there were frequent car accidents. Edna would then – sometimes successfully – seek to soften her husband’s anger before it descended on his hapless brother.
But her most difficult problem was always with John’s mother, Mary. She treated Edna with cool and haughty reserve, and expected that John’s first loyalty would always be to her rather than to his wife. This was a loyalty imposed and enforced from above, and never repudiated by the son. John talked daily with his mother by telephone – often more than once – and rushed off to Saskatoon at short notice when she sought his presence. That happened regularly, whatever previous plans John and Edna might have made. Soon Edna came to dread the last-minute cancellation of engagements following the latest phone call from Saskatoon. When John himself was committed in court, Edna would be dispatched unwillingly to her mother-in-law’s aid. Sometimes John’s parents arrived in Prince Albert – inconveniently and with little warning – and Edna would dutifully entertain her ungrateful visitor while John went fishing with his father. By the mid-1930s Edna reconciled herself to playing third fiddle for John: she knew that mother and politics would take precedence forever. For the sake of peace she accepted the arrangement, but she confided to friends that it was a heavy burden.14
In the early 1930s Diefenbaker’s political ambitions were in suspense while his public life focused on his legal career. By her husband’s choice, Edna was more and more involved in that life. John telephoned home several times each day, seeking advice and reassurance or relaying gossip. Edna inspected and approved John’s courtroom wardrobe, tidied up and calmed his younger clients before trial, and held a watching brief on his courtroom performance and the reactions of judges and juries.15
In return for his unusual emotional dependence, Diefenbaker took care that Edna enjoyed solid material comfort. She dressed well, kept open charge accounts at local department stores, and always had household help. She travelled regularly to trials, political meetings, and bar conventions with her husband, and shared John’s pleasure in a series of fancy automobiles – new Chryslers in 1930 and 1931, Buicks in 1934 and 1936.16
Nevertheless it was soon clear to Edna that John would maintain his own rhythm of life, distinct from her own. While Edna enjoyed evenings out and often could not sleep until the early hours of morning, John preferred an early bedtime, sometimes by 8 pm, and an early rise. John’s routine departure from the dinner table for the bedroom left Edna with lonely hours to fill each evening. The young lawyer was active in the clubs and formal social activities that were congenial and helpful to his career in law and politics, but he frequently opted out of engagements accepted by Edna. Aside from Edna’s devoted and invaluable role as his legal and political aide and his tutor in manners, the social lives of the couple were scarcely compatible. Edna was an attractive and outgoing social butterfly; John was narrowly dedicated to the pursuit of his own ambitions. But the customs of the time in small-town Saskatchewan meant that Edna could only live in John’s shadow.17
In 1933 Diefenbaker was ready to renew his political life. Although it was obvious that the provincial Conservative Party was failing, Diefenbaker attended the annual convention in Saskatoon in October to seek election as vice president of the party. He was victorious on the third ballot, joining his legal colleague J.A.M. Patrick, who had been elected president. But the party came out of the convention demoralized and divided.18
By autumn 1933 the endless depression had sapped the budgets of every Saskatchewan municipality. Almost half of Prince Albert’s revenue was consumed by interest on the city’s debt. As relief support and debt payments grew, civic services languished. In November, when it appeared that the Prince Albert mayoralty would be filled by acclamation, Diefenbaker put himself forward at the last moment on a populist platform of interest reduction and an appeal for federal public works. The public responded enthusiastically, but the civic establishment, business, the Daily Herald, and the Liberal Party raised the alarm of debt cancellation. After one hectic week of campaigning, Diefenbaker came withi
n forty-eight votes of victory in a record poll, 1068 to 1020. His post-election statement hinted ominously at major civic improprieties:
The determination with which the financial magnates of the city fought my candidature yesterday is convincing evidence that they were fearful and alarmed at the prospect of the investigation into city finances which would have been made had I been elected mayor.
But even as a private citizen it is not my intention to give up the fight. I shall make every effort during the next few months to ascertain the entire and exact financial set-up of the city and the connection with and participation therein of certain people and interests in this city.19
As he soon revealed when he sought information from the city council on all transactions in civic debentures since 1919, Diefenbaker suspected that the unnamed “financial magnates” were undermining Prince Albert’s financial condition in order to buy existing civic debentures at discounted prices. When the council made available its records, they showed few debenture purchases, none of them by anyone connected with the city. Diefenbaker gave up on the subject, but cultivated his suspicions.20 He was inclined to fight elections in a mood of righteous grievance, a mood which, in defeat, could slide over into bitter charges of conspiracy. Diefenbaker was drawn compulsively to the flame of politics, and it had already burned his soul.
