by Denis Smith
In the words of his secretary Bunny Pound, Diefenbaker would regularly fail to bill the “funny little people with hats in their hands” who came to seek his advice. Eventually Cuelenaere took over the work of collections. Diefenbaker used the law firm as his constituency office, and he expected the partners to perform routine personal chores for him. In the spring of 1954 he instructed Harradence to have the Diefenbaker garage cleaned out and the garden prepared and planted with “an assortment of vegetables - carrots, peas, beans, etc., and tomato plants when the season is ready … Olive wanted to do this but she won’t be back in time so it will be quite a surprise if you can arrange to have it done.”
By 1955 relations among the partners were strained. Diefenbaker’s name attracted fewer clients, yet he seemed determined to involve himself marginally in as many files as possible in order to maintain his claim on the profits. Although Harradence appeared on the firm’s letterhead, he could not clarify his status as a partner or his share of the profits with Diefenbaker, and eventually left the firm in frustration. In 1957 Cuelenaere - who had carried the burden of the company’s business for more than a decade - also chose to leave the firm after an unresolved dispute over the distribution of profits.34 One pillar of Diefenbaker’s career appeared to be crumbling.
A few months earlier, Diefenbaker had taken on another high-profile murder defence - “almost without a fee,” he wrote to the accused’s father, “because I feel that a grave injustice was being done.”35 Donald Keith Cathro had previously been convicted of murder, along with three companions, in the killing of a convenience store proprietor during a robbery in Vancouver. Cathro’s conviction was sustained on appeal, but the Supreme Court of Canada ordered a retrial on a legal technicality. Diefenbaker was engaged as defence counsel for the new trial in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, where he appeared in January 1956 before Mr Justice J. V. Clyne and a jury.
The evidence suggested that Cathro and a second assailant, Chow Bew, had shared in strangling the victim, Ah Wing, in the course of robbing his store. But Diefenbaker asked the jury to convict his client of robbery rather than murder. The judge recalled Diefenbaker’s summation:
With little or no evidence to support his case, he tried to persuade the jury that Cathro had come to rob but not to participate in any act of violence. He pictured a scene in which Cathro, seeing Chow Bew attacking Ah Wing, rushed between them to separate them and to save Ah Wing from injury. In the ensuing struggle Ah Wing was supposed to fall, causing Cathro to fall on top of him with Cathro’s knee striking and breaking Ah Wing’s voice box, resulting in his death. Diefenbaker produced a very tense moment in court when he said, “And now, gentlemen of the jury, I shall show you how it happened.” With his gown flying in the air the future prime minister of Canada rushed across the court and threw himself on the floor in front of the jury box and almost under the counsel’s table.
The assize room in the old court house was a large room, and it was crowded during this trial. The judge’s bench stood quite high above the counsel’s table and the rest of the courtroom, so that, in fact, Diefenbaker had practically disappeared from my sight. There was dead silence in the room. I, of course, could not allow this sort of nonsense in my courtroom, so I said, “Mr. Diefenbaker, if you will come out from underneath the table I will be able to follow your argument more clearly.” The courtroom burst into laughter and Diefenbaker concluded his address somewhat sheepishly.36
Clyne noticed that, although the accused was twenty-six years old, Diefenbaker appealed to the jury’s sympathy by referring to him throughout as “this boy.” In his charge to the jury, the judge emphasized the lack of evidence supporting Diefenbaker’s theory. He told them that, in law, the charge of murder could not be reduced to one of robbery as Diefenbaker had proposed. He concluded that Cathro had intended to commit robbery and, in doing so, had inflicted grievous bodily harm that “was likely to cause death.” The jury returned a verdict of guilty. Clyne sentenced Cathro to death, with a recommendation for clemency since he may not have intended to kill and had no previous record. The sentence was eventually commuted. Clyne wrote that Diefenbaker “was very eloquent before juries and could present a persuasive argument, but in my opinion he was not a very good lawyer.”37
GEORGE DREW’S SECOND GENERAL ELECTION DEFEAT AS LEADER OF THE PARTY WAS followed inevitably by speculation in the press about his retirement.38 Drew hoped to remain, and his supporters knew that he would need renewed endorsement to maintain his authority in the caucus. Planning began for a national meeting of the Progressive Conservative Association in the autumn of 1953 to give him that support. Suspicions of disloyalty centred on John Diefenbaker; Drew’s advocates (and Diefenbaker’s opponents) were determined to turn the issue into one of loyalty. “To deserve loyalty on the part of others,” Fleming later wrote, “a leader must have proven himself loyal as a follower … I hoped that my loyalty would never become suspect as Diefenbaker’s was in these grim circumstances.”39
Diefenbaker knew the dangers of disloyalty and was careful to offer Drew no overt challenge, so Drew’s immediate problem was to stifle the rumblings rather than to put down revolt. The party meeting was orchestrated to that end. Diefenbaker’s Saskatchewan associate - and once-competitor - Murdoch McPherson was recruited as keynote speaker, opening the meeting with an appeal for renewed confidence in the leader. The loyalists were cued to rise in ovation for Drew, and did so enthusiastically. “Even those opposed to George’s continuance were too embarrassed to remain in their seats under the direct observation of those of us who were standing and applauding. The whole audience was on its feet, none daring to appear not to applaud. This was accepted by the press and by the meeting itself as a rousing and unanimous endorsement of George Drew’s leadership. Our strategy had succeeded beyond our hopes. To all outward appearances George was securely confirmed in the leadership: at least the known opposition to him had been driven underground for the time being.”40
Diefenbaker’s position of isolation within the caucus was reinforced. While he believed that Drew’s “palace guard” intended to freeze him out of any preferment, he professed satisfaction that Drew sometimes invited him to lead in debate for the party, to attend conferences, or to take speaking engagements on the leader’s behalf.41 Drew certainly made no effort to bring Diefenbaker into his inner circle; he was never a member of what became known as the “Five O’Clock Club” of Drew’s intimates, who met regularly in the leader’s office for drinks and gossip.42 But Diefenbaker’s aloofness in caucus was above all a matter of his own style and his own suspicions. Behind the facade of civility he disliked and resented Drew, and remained ill at ease among his colleagues. As Dalton Camp, the party’s new director of publicity, recalled: “He rarely attended caucus, was not usually available to the Whip’s Office when it was attempting to organize the schedule of opposition speakers, and beyond the call of the duty roster for attendance in the House.” The party’s office staff dealt with him cautiously, using Davie Fulton as intermediary when they wished to make contact. For Camp, Diefenbaker was an enigma: a popular public figure always distant from his own associates.43 Diefenbaker remained lonely and insecure. He did not trust people, and was rarely confident that they trusted him.
The Progressive Conservative Party, which remained the formal vehicle of Diefenbaker’s ambition despite his distance from its centre, was in flux. The national president, George Nowlan, was replaced after 1953 by another young MP, the flamboyant and equally ambitious George Hees. Fearing that Hees would install his own national director after the retirement of Richard Bell, Drew’s inner circle persuaded Earl Rowe’s son William to take that job. The younger Rowe set about to modernize the national office by developing its advertising, publicity, and research activities, but the organization depended, inevitably, on the leader’s inspiration and popular appeal. Although Drew had the superficial confidence of his party, there was widespread feeling that he could never win a national election. His platf
orm manner and appearance -double-breasted, upright, stiff - had stereotyped him indelibly and unfairly as a patrician snob. The Ontario provincial party of his successor, Leslie Frost, kept aloof from the national party, and elsewhere Drew was regarded indifferently by local Conservatives. The new and promising provincial leaders of the party - Hugh John Flemming in New Brunswick, Robert Stanfield in Nova Scotia, Duff Roblin in Manitoba - were never close to him. In British Columbia, Drew was in open conflict with the provincial leader, Dean Finlayson, by 1955. Whatever others might do to revive the party’s national fortunes seemed blocked by the limitations of the leader and his image.44
Meanwhile, the Liberal government of Louis St Laurent was beginning to stumble. By 1955 St Laurent himself was tiring of the political game and deferring regularly to the domineering ways of his “minister of everything,” CD. Howe. The Liberal journalist Bruce Hutchison commented on “the tired look of the government and its leader.” “The Old Man,” he wrote in April, “is really through and the sooner a new one is found … the better. The boys in Ottawa may not realize it, but St. Laurent has just quietly faded out of the picture in the last six months.”45 In June 1955, when Howe introduced a bill to extend his special powers without time limit under the Defence Production Act, the Tories seized the moment to filibuster and arouse popular complaint. After extended, acrimonious debate, the prime minister finally took advantage of Howe’s absence from Ottawa in July to amend the bill and impose a time limit. This was a signal victory for the Conservatives and a tangible boost to party morale in the House. But Hutchison observed that “the fact undoubtedly is that the country has lost all interest in national politics at the moment, being sated with prosperity. No government can easily defeat itself, however it tries, under these conditions.”46 He missed the slowly percolating undercurrents of popular discontent.47
So did Howe, who was now promoting the rapid construction of a natural gas pipeline from Alberta to the east after years of delay. For the minister, this would be his last great national project, matching the Canadian Pacific Railway in its nation-building potential, bringing cheap prairie energy to the industries and homes of central Canada. The great industrial expansion of the early 1950s had created an urgent energy shortage in southern Ontario; for Howe, the challenge required a dramatic response. The government’s settled policy was that the line should be built entirely within Canada, sweeping north of Lake Superior through the hard rock of the Canadian Shield. Howe agreed with the American owners, Trans-Canada Pipe Lines Limited, that the government should finance construction on the prairies with a loan of $80 million and that a crown corporation should build the northern Ontario section of the line. The company, in addition, would be permitted to export surplus gas to the US market on a Manitoba branch line. The cabinet had previously delayed Howe’s efforts to get the project under way. Now, under his intense pressure, it agreed that the enabling legislation should be introduced under closure in May 1956 to permit construction to begin by July 1. The use of closure to limit debate was unusual; its introduction before any discussion was unprecedented. Howe was determined to defy the opposition and revenge his parliamentary humiliation of the previous year - all in the service of his national vision.48
The Conservative caucus - heartened by its success in the last session and sensing public suspicion of both government aid to an American corporation and Howe’s contempt for parliament - determined to resist his effort to stifle parliamentary debate on the bill. This time the Tories had the support of the CCF caucus as well, and Davie Fulton coordinated parliamentary tactics with Stanley Knowles to assure maximum damage to the government’s tight timetable and good reputation.49 The result, over five weeks of turbulence in the House of Commons, was a stunning embarrassment to the ministry. The prime minister, dejected, disspirited, and silent, seemed to have lost control of his government. The pipeline legislation was finally passed under closure a few days beyond the cabinet’s self-imposed deadline on June 7, but only after an unprecedented series of upsets and noisy disruptions in the Commons. Howe had his bill, but he and his colleagues had been shamed by their display of impatience and ruthless indifference to democratic forms and the popular will.
The Conservative attack on Howe and the government was led with ingenious panache by George Drew, Davie Fulton, and Donald Fleming. It concentrated on procedural issues and came to focus on the role of the Speaker; the substance of the government’s measure was scarcely discussed. On May 25 there was an extraordinary incident when Fleming was suspended from the day’s sitting by formal vote for having attempted to speak to a point of privilege in face of the Speaker’s denial. As Fleming walked down the central aisle of the chamber to withdraw through the main south door, the Conservative and CCF members were on their feet applauding the martyr; and when he reached Diefenbaker’s desk, the Saskatchewan member cried out “Farewell, John Hampden!”50 In Fleming’s absence, Ellen Fairclough draped a Union Jack over his vacant desk. This was high political theatre, conducted with instinctive skill by an opposition confident that it had both propriety and public support on its side.51
Surprisingly, Diefenbaker played only a secondary role in the opposition’s tenacious fight to protest and delay passage of the pipeline legislation. He was in the House for most of the extended debate, voted with his party, and spoke in debate on May 17. He was well informed about the history of Trans-Canada Pipe Lines and its extended negotiations with the federal government. He was contemptuous of the pipeline promoter, the Texan millionaire Clint Murchison; questioned the monopoly privileges of Trans-Canada; ridiculed the domineering manner of the minister, C.D. Howe, and the silence of the prime minister; condemned the improper use of closure before debate had begun; and asked that a parliamentary committee should examine all aspects of the pipeline issue. But the point of his speech remained strangely vague. Partly, that reflected Conservative difficulty in framing an alternative to the government’s policy; partly, it indicated that Diefenbaker was uncertain about his own party’s tactics.52
In caucus, Diefenbaker made clear that he did not favour a policy of obstruction or cooperation with the CCF. In his judgment, voters would not support a campaign of obstruction; and he found it difficult to ally himself with his chief political opponents in Saskatchewan. As a matter of habit and pride, he was reluctant to work closely with his own caucus. He shared the interests of prairie producers and voters whose natural gas would at last be available for sale in eastern and American markets. This was also Social Credit’s justification for supporting the government. But Diefenbaker’s political sense, in this case, was wrong. “Fortunately,” said Fulton, “we were right and the press supported us one hundred percent.”53
Three weeks of distracted conflict over the pipeline had upset the government’s financial timetable, and in early June it found itself needing an urgent vote of interim funding. With a renewed filibuster, the opposition could have forced a dissolution of parliament and an early general election. But George Drew baulked, and supply was granted. Diefenbaker, who was absent from the House, protested privately that the opposition, this time, should have obstructed the vote. He was quick to learn the lesson of the pipeline and would never again underestimate the impact of an unrestrained parliamentary struggle. For three weeks, the House had been the centre of national attention, as it had not been for two decades.54
The parliamentary session straggled to its end in August. The Liberal government was shaken if still uncomprehending; the Conservative and CCF opposition were revived and newly confident. The Conservative front bench looked forward to renewing the battle when parliament reconvened in the autumn. Then came misfortune. Before the House adjourned, George Drew withdrew in strain and exhaustion, naming Earl Rowe as interim parliamentary leader. In the following weeks his health did not improve. His doctor and his wife urged him to resign; and others close to him, knowing that the party needed vigorous leadership at this crucial time before a general election, counselled withdrawal as well. In
late September he offered his resignation, and the party was thrown unexpectedly into a leadership campaign.55
Diefenbaker’s candidacy was taken for granted. He was the party’s most celebrated front-bencher, and his ambition for the leadership was well known. He indicated to his friends at once that he intended to run. George Pearkes wrote from Victoria to say that “the Pearkes family is three hundred per cent behind you as the new leader of our Party and the next Prime Minister of Canada,” promising that “this time we will make certain that you carry the convention. We must not let Bay Street get away with any fast work.”56 But “Bay Street” was one leap ahead of him. David Walker reported that the party’s Ontario organizer, Harry Willis, had surveyed the province and found Diefenbaker to be the favourite, destined to “win the convention on the 1st ballot.” Willis speculated that Fleming and Hees “will cut one another’s throats,” that Diefenbaker might achieve a unanimous convention, and that the National Executive might even give Diefenbaker the leadership without a convention. The acting leader and pillar of the old caucus establishment, Earl Rowe, was reported to be “almost convinced you are the man.” Walker was awed by this sea change: “What can one believe?”57
