by Denis Smith
John, the leader is not always the best man, that is very important to note. The qualities desired in leadership are not necessarily those which make a man. You have such a depth of sincerity, such a brilliant mind, such an independence of spirit, that these very virtues are such as to take from you the other requisites of leadership…
Out of all this John, I hope you will realize that there is so much to be done - and so much that only you can do! George can’t win the next or any election without you by his side, fighting as valiantly, inwardly and outwardly, as though your positions were reversed…
John, don’t be despondent, be of good cheer, rest and relax for a while … remember there are many who labour without reward of any kind. It is more difficult, but then were you ever one to set aside a task because it was too difficult? Not from my knowledge of you!114
Most poignant of all were two letters from Davie Fulton in Kamloops, one handwritten to “Johnny,” the other formal and “more abstract.” The handwritten note said:
I should like briefly to try to say how my own personal feelings are.
It’s hard to express them adequately. My admiration & affection for you and for your conduct are quite unbounded. I know you have suffered a tremendous blow, and am heartsick - and believe me, I am hurt deeply for you. Under the circumstances, to write and ask you in a cool and dispassionate manner to continue your work just as though you hadn’t suffered a deep personal injury is difficult and may seem a little unreal.
But that is what I’m doing, because I believe it’s the thing you should do. I also believe it’s the thing that will make you happiest in the long run (I hope I don’t transgress). I know it will be the salvation of the Party, and, I believe, of the country. It would be a shame if your contribution were lost now.
I said before, however, you don’t owe the Party a thing: the obligation is all the other way. That’s why you can continue to do so much for it, and for the country. But you are, therefore, entitled to the most definite assurance that your position will be that of first lieutenant - any cabinet position you want, and that the new leader wants you and wants you to fill that position … I think he is a sufficiently big man, & sufficiently realistic, to take that position himself & make the offer. The genuine co-operation of the two of you will carry us over every difficulty…
My regards to your wonderful wife & my friend Edna.
Love from Pat too!
How’s about coming out for some shooting?115
The second letter insisted that “the vote does not reflect your Party’s feelings toward you,” and repeated Fulton’s urgings that Diefenbaker should take his place beside George Drew in order to make possible a “march forward across the whole breadth of the Dominion with a united party and people behind him. Without this I fear there is again the danger of sectionalism … I know that the whole nation feels the same way and I am confident that I speak for all your friends, both in and out of the House of Commons.”116
Diefenbaker’s campaign manager in Manitoba, G.S. Thorvaldson, found solace in the thought that “the leadership contest was a grand fight … there is general agreement on this point - that the convention would have been as dull as ditch water if a few of us had not created a contest between Drew and Diefenbaker … It is, of course, easy for us to say now that we are complete amateurs in a show of this kind. On the other hand it is well to recollect that we had against us the whole power of the Ontario political machine as well as the power of the Duplessis machine.”117
Diefenbaker nursed his wounds in private. He told Archer that he was not discouraged, and wrote to Arthur Lower that “things turned out much as I had expected but I have nothing to regret for having been a candidate for the leadership.”118 A letter to his old friend and constituency manager Jack Anderson hinted more openly at his resentments: “If the vote had taken place on the night of the speeches the vote that I received would have been very much larger than it was but during the night the pressure was applied and nothing could hold back the forces during the night. I reduced the number that I would have received 225 over night and the number I estimated on the day of the vote was 375. I wrote that number down so it is not after thought.”119
Similar suggestions about Diefenbaker’s “unexpectedly small” vote appeared in prairie newspapers, and on October 8 the Globe and Mail responded in an editorial titled “The One Sour Note.” The Globe suggested that “in all probability he would have obtained more votes had it not been for the inept and discreditable tactics by which his campaign manager, Mr. David Walker, sought to further his cause.”
While Mr. Diefenbaker at one point dissociated himself from the tactics, Mr. Walker persisted in them right down to the day of the vote. Workers acting under his generalship not only circulated rumours and innuendoes which could have caused deep personal acrimony, they adopted and gave currency to the malicious reports and disreputable slogans manufactured by hostile Liberal journalists in their campaign to discredit Mr. Drew. As events were to show, this was a great disservice to their candidate and to the party as a whole.
Delegates who came to the convention intent on getting the best possible leader for the party, according to their personal appraisal of the men, naturally viewed with suspicion the cloud of disparaging rumours circulated by Mr. Walker and his associates. They could not be expected to realize that it was generated, not by the candidate, but by partisans who were as politically ambitious as they were irresponsible and immature. But now that the facts have emerged, and responsibility for the only sour note clearly established, the men who produced it should be well marked and given a wide berth in future. They have nothing to contribute which is of value to the party.120
For John Diefenbaker those were fighting words. He replied on October 15 that he accepted his defeat “with equanimity and with malice to none,” because his aim was to assure the unity of the party under its new leader. But he could not ignore the unfair references in the editorial to David Walker “and associates.”
I know of nothing that Mr. Walker and “his associates” did that was not done in a spirit of fair and honorable competition and for that reason any suggestion that I at any time disassociated myself from him or them in what he or they did has no foundation.
…I am shocked that he should be singled out by you for exile from his party. Your proposal that the “associates” of Mr. Walker be purged from the party is startling for it places all who worked in my support under an unsupported suspicion of wrong-doing.
While fully realizing that unity above everything else is necessary if victory is to crown the magnificent work done by the convention any unjustified criticism of my friends and supporters at any time and in particular when such criticism endangers that unity will always bring me to their defence.121
WHEN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS RECONVENED IN JANUARY 1949 IT FACED BOTH A new prime minister and a new leader of the opposition. The session would probably be short, since Louis St Laurent was expected to go to the country for a mandate by early summer. In the meantime there were first impressions to be made and parliamentary housekeeping to complete. For the government, the most important measures were a budget, the resolution bringing Newfoundland formally into the federal union, and ratification of the North Atlantic Treaty. The prime minister was already a familiar and genial presence in the House. George Drew was known only by his Ontario reputation as a domineering premier, an aggressive debater, and a handsome patrician: “the Big Chief” to friends, “Gorgeous George” to his mocking Liberal critics.122 Drew was determined to establish himself as a forceful leader, and he quickly imposed unity on the previously fractious Conservative caucus. Grant Dexter of the Winnipeg Free Press commented: “To one sitting in the press gallery, the Conservative party often appears to be not unlike an orchestra with Mr. Drew as the conductor. At one wave of his hand, the sixty-eight are silent. At another, heckling and general uproar breaks out in such volume as to drown out an opponent. Yet even in the midst of such a demonstration, if
Mr. Drew desires to hear what this opponent is saying, he merely raises his hand and the three score and more adult men hush up as if their wind pipes had been slit.”123 His maiden speech was an overbearing denunciation of government policy and the new prime minister, which gave his parliamentary career a bad start. The courtly Louis St Laurent did not seem to merit such treatment. Liberals took it as a personal affront, and even Conservatives were embarrassed.124
Drew’s domineering was not accompanied by any clarity in the party’s program. One of his first efforts - to link the Liberals with communist subversion and demand a ban on the Communist Party - was greeted with contempt from the government benches, and in March his own party conference rejected the policy.125 Diefenbaker was prominent among the opponents of banning. Through the winter of 1949 “heckling and general uproar” were the sum of Conservative policy, as the party confidently assumed that the Liberal government was heading for defeat under its new leader.126 Conservative gains in two by-elections - one of them in Quebec - sustained that hope.127
In April, St Laurent dissolved parliament for a June election and set out on a dignified progress by train across the country. The nation was prosperous as never before, and prosperity was the government’s message.128 The prime minister spoke colourlessly of the government’s record, but made up for dullness with his patrician charm. “He has the attitude,” wrote one reporter, “that sane people obviously must vote Liberal and it’s a waste of time to keep on telling them so.”129 The public responded with faith and personal affection. In Quebec he was a favourite son; elsewhere he was a kindly uncle. Other members of cabinet gave support in St Laurent’s benign campaign.
By contrast, Drew conducted a hectic individual crusade of abuse against ministers and civil servants. His most familiar complaint, that the engines on the North Star aircraft owned by Trans-Canada Airlines were too noisy, attracted more ridicule than respect. In Quebec, where he had hoped for strong support from Premier Duplessis, Drew was disappointed. St Laurent was too popular, and Drew’s old record too familiar, for the canny premier to risk his own credit openly. The Union Nationale machine was active in the Conservative cause, but Duplessis himself kept silent. His party could deliver candidates - more than twice as many as the Conservatives had nominated in 1945 - but few votes.130 In Ontario, on the other hand, the Toronto Star led a crude campaign to discredit Drew’s tenuous Quebec ties. Two days before the vote, the Star asked under photos of Maurice Duplessis and Camilien Houde: “Shall These Two Men Become Canada’s Real Rulers?” and proclaimed in a front-page banner: “Keep Canada British/Destroy Drew’s Houde/God Save The King.”131
Diefenbaker kept close to home in Lake Centre, where he had built his personal support well beyond that of the party. He was uncertain about CCF strength in the riding, which had grown by redistribution in 1947. That gave him the excuse (as though he needed it) to campaign hard in every village and township, venturing outside the constituency for only a few speeches elsewhere in the province. Under persistent pressure for support from other Tory candidates, he also made brief campaign visits to other provinces.132 When advertising material arrived in Lake Centre from party headquarters (“We must have had almost a ton of it”), Diefenbaker judged it useless. Late one night he and Arthur Pearson loaded it into a boat at Regina Beach on Last Mountain Lake and, in irreverent defiance, dumped it in the waters.133
Diefenbaker couldn’t resist a bit of modest red-baiting mischief when he suggested in a broadcast that “all the Communists in Lake Centre were going to vote for my CCF opponent.” The CCF premier, Tommy Douglas, challenged him to name them. The candidate - who claimed to have Communist Party membership lists in his hands - responded that doing so would consume too much costly radio time. Instead, he offered to read “a list of the Communists who were not going to vote CCF” if Douglas would supply that. The contretemps died in a standoff, while the Communist Party asked members to spoil their ballots.134
The opposition’s hopes were crushed on June 27, when Louis St Laurent was rewarded with overwhelming victory in 193 ridings. Conservative membership in the House fell from sixty-seven in 1945 to forty-one in 1949, while the CCF fell from twenty-eight to thirteen. In Quebec, Drew elected only two MPs. The Conservative Party lost votes in every province from Ontario west. In Saskatchewan, John Diefenbaker retained his lone Conservative seat with an increased majority of 3422: a rebuke, in his eyes, both to the Liberals who had gerrymandered his constituency and to the Tories who had chosen George Drew as party leader.135 On that bittersweet night, John and Edna looked ahead to four more years of demoralized opposition in Ottawa.
FOR TWO YEARS AFTER HER HARROWING INTERLUDE AT HOMEWOOD SANITARIUM IN 1945-46, Edna spent longer periods at home in Prince Albert than in Ottawa. Although John assured friends that she was in good health, that seemed to be a cover for worry and uncertainty. Perhaps he felt more comfortable alone in Ottawa during parliamentary sessions as long as Edna was unwell - although his own remaining letters give little indication of his feelings about such personal matters.136 Edna was undoubtedly troubled and unhappy in Prince Albert, despite the presence of her mother and friends like Lorne and Mabel Connell. Only a few undated letters from Edna to John remain from this period. In one, she confesses her loneliness and insecurity: “I wish I could fly down & see you I dont seem able to face that train trip alone so far.”137 In another, written in the spring of 1947, she expresses pleasure at a telephone conversation with him the previous day, reports on her illness, and pleads, “I love you John & want to be with you always.”
To-day my throat has been terrible & I get very discouraged when it is like this as Im desperately afraid it is some thing serious because if it was poisin it should be gone now.
I felt pretty good all week but this day has surely taken the pep out of me. Just pray for me Dear I want to get well & be with you this is no life for either of us.138
Shortly afterwards she tells her husband:
The papers & your letters have been grand its all there is to break a very monotonous life but that is not your fault. My throat has been very bad the last few days & I get very discouraged I wonder if I am right in my conclusion Im being patient & hoping the poisin is the cause & that it will eventually leave me…
Im lonesome for you & dont let myself think of how happy I was in Ottawa with you when I was well - if only this pain in my throat & head leaves Ill never ask for another thing.
I see how busy they are in Ottawa with gay parties & all & I dont envy them all I want is my health…
…Tomorrow is another day and Ill be like Scarlet & go on.139
Beside the dreams of Ottawa, small town Prince Albert paled. Edna appealed to John’s own memory in a desperate call for rescue: “You hated PA & longed to get east so you can’t wonder.”140
One of John’s responses was to suggest that they should look for a house larger than 22 Twentieth Street, and in the summer of 1947 he purchased 246 Nineteenth Street, a spacious dormer-windowed home on the ridge overlooking downtown Prince Albert. In October they moved, and Edna turned enthusiastically to the task of redecoration. A friend, Gertrude Cote, recalled an evening with Edna when, removing the last bits of storage from the basement of the old house, they discovered a dusty bottle of vintage wine. The two sat on the kitchen floor and drank themselves generously into a haze. “She told me afterwards,” reported Mrs Cote, “even John chuckled about it.”141
By 1948 Edna had regained her health and confidence, and she returned to Ottawa more regularly with John for sessions of the House. Their journalist friend Patrick Nicholson thought that “her husband gave her all the kind and loving care needed for recovery,”142 including the welcome prospect of living away from the Château Laurier Hotel. For the winter session of 1948 the Diefenbakers took an apartment at 61 Cartier Avenue, behind the defence department’s temporary wartime buildings.143 Here at last was a second home, a place to cook, and, on weekends, to entertain friends for dinner. Tom Van Dusen, then a
young reporter with the Ottawa Journal, remembered that “members of the Press Gallery were familiar visitors in their downtown apartment. At such dinners John Diefenbaker was an animated host who kept us all entertained with anecdotes and inspired by his grasp of the problems of the day… at a time when the Liberal Party seemed to have secured a perpetual lease on power.”144 Aside from a few political friends like the Fultons, the Brunts, and the Walkers, gallery reporters and their wives were the most common visitors; with them the couple could indulge their irreverent wit and John’s great talent for mimicry.145 Edna was a vivacious hostess, “quite an extrovert, a very talkative person,” a companion who softened John’s aloofness with her instinctive and embracing warmth.146 Her meals were “delectable,” and “drinks were in plentiful supply, including several brands of imported wine.”147
By this time Edna was once more, as Diefenbaker told a broadcaster in 1948, “his right hand man,” assisting in his parliamentary office, watching his interventions in the House from the gallery above, sitting on the platform and “looking most decorative” at his meetings.148 She still longed for a different life, but did not expect it. Diefenbaker occasionally toyed with offers of a business appointment or a lucrative legal partnership in Toronto or Vancouver, but Edna knew he could not forsake his vocation. She was in it with him, for better or for worse.149
Edna’s desire to be at his side reflected a certain sense of sexual jealousy - a jealousy that was probably mutual. John was aware of Edna’s old flirtatiousness and desire for affection; Edna was aware of John’s magnetic appeal to women, both as a man of arresting appearance and as a prominent politician who was often on his own. In 1947 she wanted to know whether Diefenbaker had been assigned a male secretary, John Gratrix, for his parliamentary office. That happened, and Gratrix accompanied Diefenbaker on his campaign for the party leadership in the summer of 1948 - no doubt a safer companion, in Edna’s eyes, than another woman.150 Following one further reference to his secretary, Edna added: “Be good dear & keep me from worrying as you know the things I fear”; and again: “I’m trying not to worry you & you know I’m ill & can’t help but imagining things.” She wanted to be in Ottawa “with you if you want me,” “if only I thought I was well enough & looked presentable.”151 This marriage of twenty years had become, for them both, a necessary bondage, a common commitment to John’s ambition that both appeased and fed their separate insecurities.
