by Denis Smith
Well, not quite everything. It was true that Leslie Frost and his chief organizer, Alex McKenzie, who had managed the Ontario delegation for Drew at the 1948 convention, had decided to ride the tide of Diefenbaker’s popularity despite any lingering doubts about his character. It was true that they had persuaded George Hees to abandon his own campaign and throw his support to Diefenbaker.58 But Earl Rowe - with his long experience of Diefenbaker in the House - remained unconvinced. As the tide mounted, he met in Ottawa with Léon Balcer, the party president, George Nowlan, J.M. Macdonnell, Grattan O’Leary, Richard Bell, and Donald Fleming to consider a “Stop Diefenbaker” campaign. Fleming agreed with the group that he would withdraw his candidacy if they could persuade Sidney Smith, by then president of the University of Toronto, to enter the race. If Smith would not run, Fleming believed he had their promise of support. Smith declined the approach, Fleming announced his candidacy, and the cabal dissolved without coming to Fleming’s aid. Only Macdonnell, of this group, worked actively for him. “It became obvious,” Fleming concluded, “that even those who were not ready to support Diefenbaker were reluctant to show their colours against him. This was based in some cases on the belief that he was bound to win, in others on fear of his reputed vindictiveness. I doubt if they gained anything from their abstention.” Fleming lamented that Diefenbaker supporters attacked him as the candidate of “the establishment,” while he could never find its members. His sole base of support was in Quebec.59
Despite his answer, Smith was approached several times in October and November to reconsider. Each time he refused. Rumours were widespread, and talk of the “Stop Diefenbaker” lobby fed the Diefenbaker organization with fuel for its unnecessary, but convenient, anti-establishment campaign. In mid-November Diefenbaker’s friend Patrick Nicholson wrote of “the Tory party machine controlled by that nebulous group of back-stage string-pullers,” “the Old Guard, desperate to retain its macabre throttle on the jugular vein of the Conservative party … now seeking madly for some other candidate, some other means, to prevent the democratisation of the party under Diefenbaker’s enlightened leadership.” But he recognized that “the machine, that hard core of MPs, Bay Street millionaires and other political string-pullers,” were now hopelessly outnumbered.60
The machine, in fact - the new machine - was in Diefenbaker’s hands, although he would not admit it. Once again David Walker and Bill Brunt were his closest advisers, but a national campaign had blossomed instantaneously - and as close to the party establishment as anyone could hope. Diefenbaker had not only Leslie Frost and the Ontario organization, but Robert Stanfield in Nova Scotia, Hugh John Flemming in New Brunswick, Duff Roblin in Manitoba, and Toronto advertising man Allister Grosart, who had been George Drew’s national organizer for the 1953 election campaign. In the House of Commons, to his surprise and pleasure, he had Gordon Churchill and a “large committee” of MPs representing 80 percent of the caucus. He had early campaign promises of $7500 to be raised in Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia, and the expectation of more. Approaches were even under way to assure the discreet support of Premier Maurice Duplessis in Quebec. Such impressive stirrings of national enthusiasm had been unknown in the Conservative Party for twenty-five years.61
The National Executive of the party called the leadership convention for early December in Ottawa. Once his campaign was rolling, Diefenbaker humbly announced his candidacy:
In the last two weeks I have been deeply moved and encouraged by the messages that have come to me from many of my colleagues in the House of Commons, from a multitude of people in all walks of life, and from one end of Canada to the other, asking that I allow my name to be put in nomination.
I need hardly say that the guiding purpose of my public life has been to serve Canada, to do what I can to restore the Conservative Party to a position where it will best serve all the people, and in so doing to make a prosperous, strong, and united Canada.
To the many people who are asking what I plan to do, I give my answer in a few simple words: I have not sought for myself and I shall not seek the high honour of leadership. But if Canadians generally believe that I have a contribution to make, if it is their wish that I let my name stand at the leadership convention, I am willing.62
This time the campaign was meticulously, though simply, planned, despite the assurance of a Diefenbaker victory on the first ballot. The candidate had been disappointed too often to take such things for granted. Although Grosart was there to help, the planning committee noted that “no public relations man or press agent is required.” Diefenbaker would make “a few speeches, say nine,” across the country. Drew would be praised. Duplessis’s support would be solicited. Committees in each province would canvass every delegate, pointing out to them “what the man in the street thinks.” Protests would be made against vote rigging at the convention. A Diefenbaker hospitality suite would be booked at the Château Laurier, but with “no liquor to be supplied to delegates.” As Diefenbaker’s train crossed the nation on its way to Ottawa, reception committees would meet it at every stop. The influences from south of the border were unmistakable: this was to be Canada’s first presidential leadership campaign.63
Diefenbaker’s two challengers, Donald Fleming and Davie Fulton, could not match it. Fleming toured the country alone but concentrated his efforts in Quebec where, he believed, Diefenbaker’s campaign under Pierre Sévigny was making no progress.64 Fulton, an admirer and long-time supporter of Diefenbaker, was persuaded to run, as Diefenbaker had done in 1942, not to win but “to stake out a claim” for the future.65
There was only the appearance of a contest. On November 24 the Gallup Poll of Canada declared that Diefenbaker had the support of 55 percent of Conservative voters, ahead of Fleming with 14 percent, Hees with 5 percent, Smith with 4 percent, and Fulton with 2 percent.66 That breakdown seemed roughly to reflect the reports of delegates’ sentiments. But a week later, Gallup offered reassurance to the Liberal government with evidence that its popularity remained at 50 percent - actually three points higher than in August -while Conservative support was frozen at 31 percent.67
While Diefenbaker concentrated his energies on the leadership campaign, momentous events were taking place in the larger world. In October the Hungarian revolution raised temporary hopes that the Soviet bloc was in collapse, but in early November Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces brutally crushed the revolt as the West offered no more than rhetorical complaint and began to accept the flood of escaping Hungarian refugees. Simultaneously, Britain, France, and Israel conspired to attack Egypt in a mad effort to restore the recently nationalized Suez Canal to international ownership and to overthrow President Nasser. This plot brought down the ire of the United States, divided the Commonwealth, and faced Canada with the nightmare of a major Anglo-American dispute. Gallup reported that 43 percent of Canadians supported the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt, while 40 percent opposed it. The Canadian interest pointed to some great feat of compromise, and the ingenious secretary of state for external affairs, Mike Pearson, in intimate consultation with John Foster Dulles of the United States and Dag Hammarskjöld of the United Nations, produced a ceasefire, a withdrawal of forces, and the first of many UN peacekeeping operations to hold the fragile line between antagonists.68
At the end of November - just two weeks before the Conservative leadership convention - the House of Commons met in special session to debate the Suez and Hungarian crises. As opposition foreign affairs critic and potential leader of his party, John Diefenbaker shared the limelight with Louis St Laurent and Mike Pearson. The government sought formal support for its conciliatory role at the United Nations and its contribution to the peacekeeping force, which was now complicated by Nasser’s objection to participation by the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada.69 The Conservative Party, like the Canadian electorate, was torn between its loyalty to Britain and its support for the United Nations. It could hardly oppose the government’s initiative at the United Nations, but neither could it s
afely condemn the British and French aggression. There was no unity in the caucus. Diefenbaker was forced to walk a narrow and weaving path, and chose to play the statesman in doing it. He emphasized the need to restore “the old alliance between Britain and the Commonwealth, France and the United States” in face of an aggressive Soviet Union and an expansionist Egypt - the two of them aiming, in his fancy, “to take over the Middle East and then, having done that, to take over Africa, to mobilize the people of the Moslem world … There is the blueprint.” This was exaggeration of Churchillian proportion. He took credit for having proposed a UN force in the Middle East eight months earlier, when the government, he said, had denied its usefulness. He objected to the careless words of the prime minister, who had appeared to link Britain, France, and the USSR as common oppressors of the weak. And he criticized the government for having allowed “a thug,” President Nasser, to dictate the personnel, location, and tenure of the UN force.70
Diefenbaker concluded by suggesting a new Quebec conference that would bring together the leaders of Britain, France, and the United States, “without malice, without vituperative statements and without words of grandiloquent content, and in that city lay the foundations for once more re-establishing in the free world a unity which, unless it is achieved and achieved immediately, may result in irreparable harm.” That big idea, if it came to fruition, might just surpass Pearson’s recent achievement at the United Nations - which Diefenbaker had managed neither to praise nor to condemn.71
The idea of a conference was a will-o’-the-wisp, but the speech hit the right political note. Fleming wrote that Diefenbaker “was able to appear as the shining light who avoided smaller issues and idealistically rallied support to the United Nations. His speech was described by the press as a tour de force.” Fleming knew he was beaten.72
On December 10 the Conservative leadership convention assembled in Ottawa, meeting once more in the dreary ambience of the city’s hockey rink -but enjoying relief and refreshment at the Château Laurier. More than thirteen hundred Tory delegates poured into Ottawa for the convention, most of them, according to Dalton Camp, “immediately apprehensive, secretly awed, and aware they are entering enemy territory.”73 Yet among the organizers, there was an insouciant spirit entirely new to the party. Eddie Goodman, who handled the Ontario campaign for Diefenbaker, noticed at once that the Diefenbaker hospitality suite, where liquor was banned on Diefenbaker’s personal order, remained empty, while Fleming’s and Fulton’s rooms, catering copiously to drinking delegates, “were full to the brim.”
I knew something had to be done. The Diefenbakers’ personal suite in the Chateau Laurier was next to the hospitality suite. I moved them to a corner suite beside my own bedroom and away from the din. I then called a meeting of the campaign committee, which only I attended, as no one else had been notified, and passed an amendment to the no-drinking rule. The result: a full hospitality suite. I did not fool Diefenbaker - one seldom did - but he bowed without comment to political necessity.74
The delegates gathered on the first afternoon to hear Grattan O’Leary’s silver-tongued homage to George Drew, and Drew’s own graceful retirement speech - written for him by Grattan O’Leary.75 That evening they assembled again for Robert Stanfield’s keynote address. This quiet man told the clan that Drew had left his party “united, strong and in good spirit. Whoever succeeds George Drew will do well to maintain and stimulate this unity, for without it we are unworthy and incapable of success.” Stanfield appealed for national policies to assist the poorer regions, to overcome poverty, to aid the sick, “to uplift and elevate the state of mankind in this society.” When finished, he slipped unobtrusively out of the Coliseum and returned by air to Halifax.76
Beyond the discreet and efficient management of the Diefenbaker campaign by Gordon Churchill, George Hees, and the agents of Leslie Frost’s Ontario party, the most significant elements in his organization at the convention were young Conservatives, rallied by the students Ted Rogers, Hal Jackman, Tom Bell, Brian Mulroney, and other enthusiasts. They were nicknamed “Rogers’ Raiders” and provided “a spirited presence and muscle that is unique to the convention,” spurred by Diefenbaker’s own suspicions of an old guard that might still deprive him of the prize.77 Camp noticed that there was “a peculiar hostility” among the Diefenbaker forces, “an undercurrent of malice, a sense of an impending blood-letting, in which the victorious would all avenge the past.”78
Diefenbaker himself revealed the primary source of that undercurrent on the day before the convention opened, when he encountered the co-chairman Richard Bell on the platform arranging with carpenters to raise the low podium. Bell told Diefenbaker: “John, these crazy people have put the platform podium away down there. It is no good for you or for me.” Diefenbaker responded: “Ho … You are building it for Fleming, eh? - up to your old tricks.” Bell did not take this as a jest.79
There would be no drama in the convention’s outcome; reporters and critics found its substitute in a conflict over the choice of Diefenbaker’s nominator and seconder. Diefenbaker had selected an easterner, Hugh John Flemming of New Brunswick, to nominate him; and a westerner, his House colleague George Pearkes, to second the nomination. But Pierre Sévigny, Diefenbaker’s new advocate in Quebec, had expected to be his seconder. When he discovered Diefenbaker’s choice, he took his complaint to party president Léon Balcer and to Gordon Churchill - and Balcer took it to the press. Balcer, who had managed the appointment of most Quebec delegates to support Donald Fleming, claimed the authority of a party tradition that “dated back from the previous convention” calling for one English and one French nominator. A stream of supplicants offered their advice. George Hees, Duff Roblin, and Dalton Camp sympathized with Balcer and Sévigny, while Gordon Churchill regarded the issue as a crucial test of Diefenbaker’s firm resolve. The English-speaking doubters saw the issue as symbolic and little related to delegate votes. Could Diefenbaker signal his sensitivity to Quebec? Flemming and Pearkes both offered to step down, but Diefenbaker was intransigent. There were few delegates to be swayed in Quebec; he probably had a majority without them; and Canada was one unhyphenated country. When Sévigny met him in his hotel suite, Diefenbaker exploded in rage “and started to harangue me in a loud almost screaming voice … he went on for what seemed to be a very long time. His face was pale, his head shaking, his dress was in complete disarray, and the strange pale blue eyes were literally blazing with anger. His flow of temper ended as quickly as it started.” Diefenbaker stuck with Flemming and Pearkes. The affair left a residue of unease that close observers preferred, for the moment, not to analyse. At the very moment that power fell into his hands, Diefenbaker had begun to sow distrust and confusion around him.80
That evening in the Coliseum, the candidates were nominated. For this first television convention, the campaign committees produced copious placards, banners, badges, balloons, and noisy displays. The dominant Diefenbaker forces did their best to shield their opponents’ signs from the television cameras - in Fleming’s eyes, a “shabby, contemptible trick.” Diefenbaker’s old rival Murdoch MacPherson of Saskatchewan nominated Davie Fulton, emphasizing Fulton’s youth and that of other eminent leaders past and present, in unspoken contrast to Diefenbaker, now sixty-one. James Maloney of Ontario nominated Donald Fleming and sharpened the warning: “I suggest to you with great respect that we should now choose a man who not only has great ability but who is old enough and yet not too old, one who is strong and healthy and who is of a disposition and temperament that he can stand up to the grave responsibilities and discharge the tasks that lie ahead.” The words would change no votes, but they gave unsubtle testimony to the whispered doubts about Diefenbaker’s health and mental balance.81
Fleming and Fulton each produced seconders from Quebec and made forgettable speeches. Diefenbaker, after stumbling awkwardly through an apology for his English-speaking nominators, and two excruciating sentences in French, made a better show - perhaps because he coul
d sense that the audience was already with him. For the reporter J.B. McGeachy, “the Diefenbaker effort was emotion undiluted.” Sévigny was overcome by this man transformed: “The voice was clear, the phrasing beautiful, and the thoughts strong and inspiring. The interruptions were numerous, the applause at times deafening. And as he proceeded, the magnetism of the man, the hypnotic qualities which were to entrance a whole nation came to the fore. He spoke with an obvious sincerity and an inspired fervour … the vast audience became subdued, silent and enthralled.” Diefenbaker sang his old themes of equality, fairness, freedom, and Canadian revival - and pledged his devotion: “I have one love … Canada; one purpose … Canada’s greatness; one aim … Canadian unity from the Atlantic to the Pacific.” He urged the party to banish defeatism and, with him, “not to win the election after the next election or the next election after the next but … the next election.” Such faith, such heart-on-the-sleeve pleading was unfamiliar to Canadians bred in the calm rationalism of postwar Liberalism. The audience roared.82
Despite Diefenbaker’s explanation that his nominators represented Canada from east to west, many Quebec delegates remained offended by his rebuff. Before voting the next day, they met in insulted conclave. As balloting began, Sévigny and others worried about a violent display on the floor, but nothing occurred. The vote confirmed a decisive first ballot victory: 774 votes for Diefenbaker, 393 for Fleming, 117 for Fulton. Fleming and Fulton rushed to Diefenbaker’s side, took him by the hands, and led him to the podium, where Fleming moved that the election be made unanimous. As the rafters rang, a body of Quebec delegates led by Léon Balcer rose in a spontaneous, and at first unnoticed, wave and left the auditorium. When silence came, the new leader thanked the audience, appealed for party unity from sea to sea, and prophesied that “I will make mistakes, but I hope it will be said of me … he wasn’t always right, sometimes he was on the wrong side, but never on the side of wrong.” The meaning was obscure, but the sentiment was conciliatory. He promised to work for victory “not for victory itself, but on behalf of the people of Canada,” and recalled “in all humility” the words of R.B. Bennett at the leadership convention of 1927: “This will be my attitude, this will be the stand that I shall take, ‘Whosoever of you will be the chiefest shall be servant of all.’ ” Olive too - sporting a giant turban out of the Arabian nights - joined her husband on the platform to beam serenely upon the audience and to promise she would improve her French. The triumph was undoubted, though for Diefenbaker it was tinged with embarrassment.83
