by Denis Smith
In August and September Diefenbaker spoke or met delegates in Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary, Halifax, Saint John, and Montreal. He was confident about solid delegate support in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, with some in British Columbia, and wrote that “the situation in Ontario is unbelievably good and I haven’t changed my view about getting 40% of that province.”79 But those prospects were offset in Alberta, Quebec, and New Brunswick, where delegates were unreceptive.80 And he was worried by the number of delegates-at-large to be chosen by provincial party organizations. “These need not be Conservatives nor reside in the constituency for which they are allotted. I do not have to go any further than that to indicate how this may work out.”81
Like Diefenbaker, George Drew held back from any formal announcement of his candidacy while his organizers rounded up commitments from delegates, the two shadow campaigns feeding rumours of uncertainty, dispute, or weakness in each others’ camps. Both sides speculated about overweening ambition in the other candidate. One of Drew’s men in Calgary wrote that “we all have our weaknesses and Diefenbaker’s is too much personal ambition. In my opinion, he would be much wiser, and in the end much stronger, if he did not contest the leadership.”82 Walker commented that Drew “has dreamed of being the Prime Minister of Canada for thirty years and he is waiting for public demand to increase. He does not wish to appear to be preaching for a call. People feel he is so ambitious that even at the last moment an enthusiastic demonstration would swing him into the arena.”83 These were still times of sham gentility, when an early declaration of intent looked unseemly.
The autumn of 1948 was a time of anxiety and fear of war in Europe and North America, as the democracies of the west confronted an abrasive Soviet Union. For several months the Soviets had blockaded rail and highway traffic from the western zones of occupation in Germany to West Berlin, while Britain and the United States mounted a vast airlift to supply the residents with food and fuel. In Washington, planning was under way for a North Atlantic treaty of mutual guarantee, which would offer its European members the assurance of American military support in the event of war. The spy scare of 1946 was still a fresh memory. A wave of anticommunist sentiment, sometimes amounting to panic, had swept the United States and Canada since the spring. In this atmosphere, politicians could not avoid declaring their loyalties. The easy temptation was to demonize the entire political left, to link democratic socialism and trade unionism with communism and subversion, even to call for a ban on the Communist Party.
Diefenbaker’s senses were acutely tuned to the moods of the moment and he was bound to enter the anticommunist debate. In his preconvention speeches he made the subject his central theme. Diefenbaker shared the dominant anticommunist prejudices, but gave them his own populist twist. In a speech to Toronto Rotarians on September 10 he called for a campaign to educate Canadians against the enemies of free enterprise. On one side these were the communists, socialists, and central planners “promising as they do freedom from work, taxes and responsibility.” Their dreams, he said, were both empty and incompatible with individual liberty. He commended labour leaders for purging the unions of communists, and suggested vaguely that “real teeth should be put in the law, in place of the false teeth which permit Communists to operate almost with impunity.” But there were enemies on the other side, too. Diefenbaker warned against the sins of big companies, “the unfair business practices of the few,” which “if not eliminated, will destroy free business enterprise for the many.”84 He knew that the Rotarian audience of small businessmen and professionals matched his most likely supporters at the coming party convention.
The Liberal Toronto Star - hardly a neutral observer - entered the Conservative fray by suggesting that “the big money boys” had arranged for John Bracken’s retirement in order to promote George Drew, “a leader they can depend upon,” to the leadership.85 The Globe and Mail responded angrily on September 14 that the Star’s “anti-Drew complex” had now spread to the entire Liberal press in Canada. It was suggesting not only that Drew was the candidate of the “financial moguls,” but also that he was disliked in the Maritimes, Quebec, and the West. On the contrary, the Globe insisted that “there are several obvious and excellent reasons why Mr. Drew should be considered a suitable man for the national leadership. He is the only Progressive Conservative Premier now in office. He has won three general elections in Ontario, the most populous province. He has given Ontario sound and progressive administration.”86 The Star’s caustic reply was that the federal party leadership was “what he has been after all along, and nobody who has watched him flitting hither and thither for years, making speeches on national and international issues to the neglect of Ontario issues, can have thought anything else.”87
Diefenbaker was the first to declare his candidacy on September 17. “It is because,” he said, “I believe I have something to contribute to Canada in a Crusade to mobilize Canadians everywhere for Canada.”88 He announced a seven-point program of internationalism, “an end to the pampering of those who indulge in Communist subversive activities,” the restoration of parliamentary authority, the protection of provincial legislative powers, the promotion of free enterprise, the preservation of liberty under a national bill of rights, and generally fair and just treatment for all Canadians.
He was asked whether he would defeat George Drew. “ ‘Of course I will,’ he replied, and then with a smile, he added: ‘I mean that seriously, although I would not have said it two weeks ago.’ ”89 Diefenbaker relished the game. His Commons secretary RJ. Gratrix noted earlier, “I have never seen the Chief more optimistic and enthusiastic.” To his mother, Diefenbaker wrote: “I cannot hope to win but it’s a good fight. I had a press conference today and told them I would defeat Drew. That’s cheek in his view.”90
In Toronto, Diefenbaker’s campaign chairman, David Walker, predicted “a sweeping victory at Ottawa” on the basis of two special advantages: Diefenbaker was a House of Commons man who had mass appeal. The contrast with Drew was unmistakable, though unspoken.
His forte is the House of Commons. Being in the House of Commons and having proved himself a great leader, why shouldn’t he be officially confirmed in his position and given the leadership we have been looking for since Bennett dropped out in 1937?
The Conservative party has made one mistake after another in our choice of leaders. Now we have a man in the House who has earned his spurs, and we must not lose this final opportunity…
Out West … they fear if Diefenbaker doesn’t get the leadership, the Conservative party will be considered as a central-Canadian bloc…
The genuine wave of enthusiasm which has swept Canada seems to me to be a grass-roots movement … Diefenbaker has gained the confidence and affection of the man on the street, the man on the back concessions, and labor considers him their friend.91
Walker showed the talents of a natural pitchman. Delegates from the west, he said, would favour Diefenbaker by a majority. In Quebec, he had been “literally inundated with offers of help and promises of support at the convention from French-speaking delegates.” The Maritimes were “very enthusiastic,” and in Ontario Diefenbaker would have “a good majority” of the constituency delegates. Walker was uncertain about the Ontario delegates-at-large, to be appointed by the party organization.92
Three days after Diefenbaker’s declaration, George Drew announced his candidacy, and a few days later Donald Fleming did so too. The press assumed that Drew would carry the convention with the overwhelming support of Ontario and Quebec delegates, but Fleming’s entry brought speculation about his ability, as the only bilingual candidate, to cut into Drew’s Quebec support.93
While the Globe and Mail led the press campaign for Drew, the Toronto Star reminded its readers in two editorials on the eve of the leadership convention that the Ontario premier had condemned family allowances in 1944 as a bribe to Quebeckers who would not fight in the war.94 On its front pages, the Star gave Diefenbaker fla
ttering treatment. “Diefenbaker, 2-1 Said the Choice of Average Man,” reported Robert Taylor, citing the evidence of a man-in-the-street poll conducted in “politics-wise Ottawa” by “an ardent supporter of Mr. Diefenbaker.” The article did not add, as it might have, that the pollster was one of the Diefenbaker organizers whose names had been omitted from the delegates-at-large list.95 From the parliamentary press gallery, the Star reported that gallery members predicted (27-4) that Drew would defeat Diefenbaker for the leadership, but favored Diefenbaker (18-9) when asked, “Who would be best for the party?”96
The candidate himself received similar unsolicited signals that his leadership would find popular support beyond the party. From Victoria, the crusading feminist Nellie McClung wrote: “If the friendly good wishes of a hard shell Mackenzie King Liberal can bring any help to you - you certainly have mine - I have admired your courage, and clear thinking, for a long time and hope you will be the new leader. You are young, modest, straightforward, and have an open mind. So we hope you’ll win. My kindest wishes to Mrs. Diefenbaker.”97 From Kingston, the historian A.R.M. Lower wrote:
Just a line to say that I hope you come out on top in the Conserv. leadership. Altho’ I am not of your political faith, I don’t think we differ much on essentials.
If we must have Tories, they will be relatively immunized under your leadership. But beware of Toronto, my dear sir.98
On September 30 the convention opened at the Ottawa Coliseum, the drab hockey rink where the Liberal Party had met to choose a leader in the previous month. The Liberal meeting, said J.B. McGeachy of the Globe and Mail, had been a polite one guided by a “sanctified hierarchy.” But this occasion was raucous, “immeasurably less polite, less formal and more like the convulsion of nature which a political meeting under a democracy ought to resemble.” There was talk of a party machine, he wrote, but no one could say who ran it, and the delegates were “a fractious and rebellious lot.” George Drew, looking “rather like a swan in a duck pond (as he must inevitably do at all political meetings, not to his own great advantage),” was acting affable but “decidedly restrained.” His publicity seemed to consist entirely of reprinted press articles.
The Diefenbaker campaign - the word is quite in order here - has a much less improvised air. There are Diefenbaker headquarters right off the foyer of the Chateau Laurier - an enormous, rather cheerless room in which comely young women hand out Diefenbaker leaflets. These certainly do present the Saskatchewan crusader as the able and attractive figure he is, and they leave nothing out. One of them deals neatly with the silly suggestion that his name is a handicap. “His unusual name,” it says, “like that of Eisenhower and Roosevelt, is an asset.” This leaflet names nineteen points for Mr. Diefenbaker, rather reminding one of Clemenceau’s remark, when he heard of Woodrow Wilson’s fourteen, that the Almighty had been content with ten. But the Diefenbaker drive is a real grass roots movement, and the consensus is that he will make an excellent run.99
Frank Swanson of the Ottawa Citizen also noticed the double contrast: between staid Liberals and lively Tories, and between the Diefenbaker and the Drew campaigns. “At the Liberal meeting, there was no open solicitation for votes on the scale being used by the Conservatives. It looked more like a U.S. national political convention today with leadership buttons and ribbons on nearly every lapel, campaign signs around the outside of the Coliseum and a constant undercurrent of back-room leadership chatter in evidence everywhere.”100 The Diefenbaker organizers had made “the smartest move of the convention” the previous evening at the Château Laurier by holding “an impromptu campaign meeting in one of the large convention halls. It attracted a capacity audience, many members of which were wearing Drew and Fleming buttons.” Swanson reported the claim of Diefenbaker supporters that votes were moving to him as a result, and concluded that the race had tightened.
While the press saw inspired planning in the Diefenbaker campaign, Walker insisted just the opposite. A campaign had indeed been organized, he said, but when Diefenbaker arrived, “he cancelled the events which included a reception for 2,000 persons, use of a sound truck to promote his candidacy and slogans and banners. Mr. Diefenbaker said he would not stand for that. He said that if people wanted to vote for him they would have to do so on his own personal ability. He said he wouldn’t buy his votes.” The Bay Street lawyer told reporters that one of the slogans prepared for display would read “Dief: The Man from Main Street - Not Bay Street”; but Diefenbaker had vetoed it. He preferred supporters “because they liked and admired him and not because of sectional or other reasons.”101
The convention opened with a tub-thumping keynote speech from the Ottawa Journal’s Grattan O’Leary, pouring his Irish scorn on the bloodless party of Mackenzie King. John Bracken followed with his valediction, calling on Conservatives to avoid the extremes of communism on the left and an exclusive commitment to business on the right. Instead, he urged, “this party can follow the straight path to reasoned progress and become what it has never fully succeeded in becoming in this century - the crusading party of the common man in every walk of life.”102 That sounded more like support for John Diefenbaker than for George Drew; but Bracken, by now, was discarded and uninfluential.
Nominations and speeches by the candidates were scheduled for the second night of the convention, after a full day of lobbying for votes. When Drew - apparently uninvited - entered a caucus meeting of Quebec delegates during the day, the rumour was spread by “the Diefenbaker forces” that he had been booed; but Drew’s spokesmen were quick to advertise their denials, and by evening the incident seemed to result in a hardening of Drew’s wide support among Quebec delegates.103
Old murmurings about Diefenbaker’s name and ancestry made the rounds among convention delegates, and on nomination day the Ottawa Citizen devoted an editorial to the subject. “It is an unhappy commentary … on the outlook of Canadians generally,” said the Citizen, “that as an aspirant for his party’s leadership Mr. John Diefenbaker has felt impelled to deny that he is of German origin. As it happens, Mr. Diefenbaker is of Dutch descent, and a fourth generation Canadian at that.”104
Each of the three candidates took care to have one English-speaking and one French-speaking nominator; Diefenbaker’s seconder, Roger Roberge, drew attention in his speech to the candidate’s reputation as a “great champion of minority rights” who would protect Quebec’s language and religion despite his inability to speak French. Diefenbaker himself, in a twenty-minute speech, appeared typically “lean and earnest … occasionally wagging an admonitory finger.”105 He called for “a crusade to arouse our people to an eagerness to become the servants of Canada”; condemned “the pagan and diabolical advance of Communism” without favouring a ban on the Communist Party;106 and in one breathless sentence told the convention what kind of party he thought the people of Canada desired:
Canadians are asking for a party that will honestly try to end class warfare and hatred; that will regulate injustice and exploitation in enterprise while retaining an expanding free initiative; that will accept social security as a means not an end and will now launch a social security contributory plan while continuing to provide adequately for the aged and afflicted; that will arouse the creative and productive capacity of Canada by lifting the horizons of opportunity; that will push outward the frontiers of enterprise; that will assure the many young men and women in this country (who look with suspicion on us) that only under responsible free initiative is there opportunity to rise to the top however humble one’s origins; that will protect our people against unfairness.107
Diefenbaker’s speech seemed slightly strained, perhaps the result of campaigning so hard against the odds. By contrast, Drew conveyed “an impression of smoothness and power with still some to spare.”108
The last-minute contest for delegates spurred Diefenbaker’s hopes, but the result was crushing. Drew swept to victory on the first ballot, with 827 of 1242 votes, while Diefenbaker managed only 311, centred in th
e west and Ontario. Donald Fleming followed at a distance with 104.109 Dick Sanburn commented in the Ottawa Citizen that the convention had bowed “to unseen but crushing pressure from above, and the Man from Main Street who was going to vote for Diefenbaker switched his ballot to Drew.” Delegates played safe in the end; but Sanburn was convinced that the most popular candidate had lost. “No man, probably ever before in Canadian political history, had such a wealth of spontaneous loyalty and fierce support as John Diefenbaker. You could see it, you could hear it, and almost feel it among the hundreds of delegates. And non-delegates all across the nation were talking the same way.”110 Sanburn added that, “warranted or not,” many Conservatives believed that Drew was the man “with Montreal and Toronto financial interests behind him.” “One western Conservative told this writer that it would be a long, colossal task for Mr. Drew to break down that suspicion, whether it was true or not. And he feared the taunts and jibes the Liberals will fling.”111 The party, he concluded, had regained its pre-Bracken reputation.
John Diefenbaker was wounded again. And he suffered what looked like personal insult when he visited Drew’s suite in the Château Laurier that evening to offer congratulations. “I walked into that gathering,” he recalled a quarter century later, “and it was as if an animal not customarily admitted to homes had suddenly entered the place.”112 He left Ottawa the next day for Prince Albert.
Messages of support in defeat began to pour in. Diefenbaker’s friendly antagonist across the aisle of the House, Paul Martin, the minister of national health and welfare, wrote that he had deserved the leadership. “You, John, could have been the leader … You had a great body of supporters among the delegates but unfortunately there seemed to be adverse considerations which I can only suspect. I do know that the newspaper men were fully behind you and they are real friends to have.”113 One of many delegates who campaigned for Diefenbaker, Bill Archer, wrote from Montreal:
