by Denis Smith
Diefenbaker, too, was offended by the title. “Never has such an epithet been used in connection with one who has occupied the position of Prime Minister,” he wrote in his random speech notes. “I leave the judgement of my course and my actions to the Canadian people. They will decide – you will decide whether that epithet ‘renegade’ is one that can fittingly be applied to one who has devoted his life without thought of reward to the service of this country. Like George Washington I say that my only regret is that I have only one life to give to my country. But my reputation I have always preserved intact … Sometimes these things hurt.”71 Elmer comforted him with lashing insults against Newman, and reported that he was spreading the word against the author. While visiting the University Hospital in Saskatoon, he had told a woman who wanted the book that it was “published by the Liberal Party as vile propaganda and the proceeds are to be used as campaign funds for the Liberal Party. I don’t want you to waste your money.” The woman had replied: “I am so glad you told me that.” Elmer judged that “a person might as well fight back all the way.” A week later he added: “We’ll have to see that a decent book is written in your favor. I have quite a few notes – I jot them down when I think about them. These notes are not in order, but when I get them to-gether, I’ll send you some more material.”72
Diefenbaker consulted David Walker about whether he might have a case for libel, but decided instead to maintain his public silence and let his friends fight the battle of publicity. He was most satisfied by Michael Wardell’s long “Reply to Newman” in the Fredericton Daily Gleaner. “The book is a sparkling affair that is already a best seller, and deservedly,” wrote Wardell, “but it seems, in a way, an exercise in schizophrenia. Between the first part of the book and the rest of it there is a marked disconnection of thought and expression. The first part is a masterful historical summary of the formative years of Diefenbaker, from his beginnings as a small-town lawyer … to his becoming Prime Minister of Canada in 1957. The remainder of the book is a tirade of denunciation, execration and scarification. There are no contrasts of lights and shades; only bitter unrelieved black … The result is so patently biased, so unfair, and so reckless as to defeat its own ends, and bring sympathy to the subject rather than censure.” Wardell shared the Chief’s conviction that reporters, including Newman, and the CBC had seen the Conservative government through the eyes of the Liberal Party, and had thus been engaged, in Newman’s words, in “an unpatriotic conspiracy, probably Liberal-inspired.” Despite them all, Diefenbaker’s policies had proved to be “good, solid, common sense.” Wardell concluded with a call for loyalty: “If I were a Conservative politician, which I am not, I would stake my faith in Diefenbaker. I would expel the traitors from my Party, I would turn my back on the faint hearts, and I would go forward with my trust in the only man who can hope to lead my Party to victory. And I would bring these great issues to the test next spring.”73
Renegade in Power was the first and most successful of a new Canadian genre, the journalist’s dramatic summary of a political era. As much as anything Diefenbaker himself could do, the book helped to create the legend of a Canadian folk hero.
George Grant gave philosophic weight to the Diefenbaker legend when he published his Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism in the spring of 1965. In counterpoint to Creighton’s Macdonald, which had celebrated Canada’s beginning, Grant lamented its end. For Grant, the dream of a North American alternative to American liberal, corporate society had been impossible. Diefenbaker was the nation’s last, half-blind defender, an inadequate tragic hero acting with courage and instinctive wisdom in a hopeless cause. Paradoxically, Lament for a Nation made Diefenbaker a historical figure of consequence and – perhaps surprisingly – gave inspiration to a new generation of intellectual nationalists who made their influence felt in all three national parties during the decade that followed. In Grant’s prose the legend had taken wing.
As he was mythologized, so he was demonized. In 1964, wrote John Saywell, Canada was a country divided over language and regionalism, in which traditions, loyalties, and views of the nation were in conflict. Parliament was wounded and, in the eyes of many, antiquated; and yet, puzzlingly, the men in it “were of an unusually high calibre. To resolve the paradox many observers were forced to conclude that the political and parliamentary process lay at the mercy of one man, whose natural desire to return to office and whose simplistic view of the nation’s problems threatened to do irreparable damage to his party, if not to his country.”74
As the year began, Diefenbaker toured the country denouncing Liberal approaches to national unity, pleading that Canada was one nation, not two. An element in that campaign was his effort to silence Conservative critics of his own leadership before the annual meeting of the party association at the beginning of February. In mid-January a Quebec constituency association circulated a letter to all constituency associations urging support for a leadership convention in 1964; and in Toronto, John Bassett and others promoted a vote of confidence in the leader to be conducted by secret ballot at the annual meeting. Diefenbaker’s approach to criticism was almost the same as it had always been. He expected loyalty. He did not engage in extended negotiation with his opponents, but appealed beyond them to the broader party he had created, talking in vague terms of “the Toronto clique,” or “the financial interests,” or “the Warwicks of the Conservative Party” who opposed him. He did not attempt to organize or direct his own campaign of support, beyond falling in with one crucial encounter arranged by David Walker and Ted Rogers. Just before Christmas in 1963 he accepted an invitation to dinner at the Rogers home, where John Bassett would also be present. He told Elmer that “I am not looking forward to it in sweet contemplation. However, if I see him and there is no change in his attitude I will feel that I have done everything possible.” That meeting led to another, private one in early January, which Diefenbaker thought had “turned out very well … Time will tell but I am hopeful that after the Annual Meeting the Telegram may decide to come back to the Progressive Conservative party. If it does that will be beneficial.”75
The meeting apparently resulted in a real and crucial compromise. When Diefenbaker addressed the annual meeting on February 4, 1964, and called for the expected vote of confidence in his leadership, he told delegates that he was ready to accept a secret ballot if that was what they wished. The same day the lead editorial in the Telegram, titled “Day of Decision,” called for an overwhelming vote of confidence in Diefenbaker – “whether it is a standing show of hands or a secret ballot.”76 Those two changes of position weakened the opposition to Diefenbaker. The motion for a secret ballot was defeated by three to one, and the motion of confidence, in an open vote, carried almost unanimously. About thirty opponents, including Douglas Harkness and J.M. Macdonnell, stood prominently together to register their dissent amid taunts from the leader’s supporters. More abstained from voting. Diefenbaker thought he had disposed of the challenge for good, but that was clearly wishful thinking. “We cannot believe,” commented the Globe and Mail, “that it is the end of the story, that a great party has really resigned itself to go into the next election behind a man who has proved he cannot lead.” Even the Telegram remained sceptical of a leader who still failed to appreciate that “the job of restoring the party’s fortunes demands conciliatory gestures on both sides.” But Michael Wardell’s Fredericton Gleaner judged that the endorsement of Diefenbaker was a “big decision, a noble, correct and triumphant one.”77
To avoid damaging defections from the Quebec wing of the party, Diefenbaker attended a meeting of the Quebec caucus the next day and endorsed Léon Balcer as his Quebec lieutenant and “provincial leader of the federal party in Quebec.” Balcer, he roundly declared, was a modern George-Etienne Cartier to his own Macdonald, and he would live in history. When the House of Commons opened two weeks later, Diefenbaker had rearranged the party’s seating to place Balcer beside him on the front bench. But he denied that
Balcer held the position of deputy leader or chief lieutenant. Balcer expressed his puzzlement to reporters.78
As a further symbol of reconciliation, the annual meeting elected Dalton Camp as the new president of the party, succeeding Diefenbaker’s critic Egan Chambers. In his acceptance speech, Camp declared that the national association must be “in the service of the Parliamentary Party. Their policy must be our policy. And their leadership is ours, to be sustained and championed, supported and upheld.” That was, precisely, the view of John Diefenbaker, who knew that his strongest supporters were in the parliamentary caucus.79 But under Camp’s inspiration the party was also thinking ahead, planning for renewed communication between party and leader – which he promised would be “cordial … confidential … candid” – and for a policy conference modelled on the Liberal Party’s 1960 Kingston conference.
Paralleling Diefenbaker’s political activity, the legend-making proceeded. In March the CBC presented Douglas Leiterman’s hour-long profile The Chief, an engagingly sympathetic portrait of Diefenbaker in his home-town surroundings of Prince Albert, or fishing in deerstalker cap and dufflecoat, wry, witty, and unpretentious, the man of the people he had always declared himself to be. The film was an early and outstanding example of the techniques of cinema vérité then being pioneered by Canadian filmmakers with their new, lightweight cameras, telephoto lenses, and compact sound equipment. Leiterman said that the image of Diefenbaker had “the ring of truth,” and his audiences believed it. The image contrasted vividly with the picture of attractive but bumbling incompetence and disorder conveyed by D.A. Pennebaker’s film Mr. Pearson, which was temporarily withheld from showing on the CBC later in the year amid accusations of improper news management against the Liberal government.80
Prime Minister Pearson opened the 1964 session of parliament with emphasis on his party’s plans for parliamentary reform, cooperation with the provinces, and “full partnership” among English- and French-speaking Canadians. Diefenbaker criticized the cabinet for irresolution, incoherence, and creeping centralization.81 On February 25 the government scraped through a vote on a Conservative amendment by a vote of 128 to 120, when three Social Crediters and two New Democrats gave the cabinet its slight margin. For two months the House occupied itself with petty and raucous debate on interim supply, the estimates, and an unexciting budget, with repeated conflict over the timetable. The press blamed both the government for poor management and the opposition leader for persistent obstruction – which Diefenbaker denied as “a baseless and empty alibi.”82 He was enjoying the combat and hoping to defeat the government.
The issue that preoccupied the House for most of the year, perturbed the country, and brought fresh disturbance to the Conservative Party was put on the agenda by Pearson in May. He chose the annual convention of the Royal Canadian Legion in Winnipeg to announce that his government would propose a Canadian flag “designed around the Maple Leaf.” Legion members were not appeased by his assurance that the Union Jack would remain as a symbol of the monarchy and membership in the Commonwealth, and they booed him lustily. The press in English-speaking Canada interpreted the prime minister’s decision primarily as a bow to French-speaking sensitivities, either endorsing it as an act of statesmanship or denouncing it as craven pandering. In the face of widespread criticism – including Joey Smallwood’s ultimatum that the Union Jack or the Red Ensign must share equal place as Canada’s second flag – the government introduced two balanced resolutions on May 27: one provided for a maple leaf flag, along with maintenance of the Union Jack as the royal and Commonwealth flag of Canada; the other declared “O Canada” the national anthem and “God Save the Queen” the royal anthem of Canada. That compromise alienated some Quebec members of the Liberal caucus and antagonized the Créditistes, while failing to satisfy traditionalist Tories. The government was probably saved from initial defeat by the Speaker’s decision to split the flag resolution into two separate votes.
The party leaders established their positions in three days of debate in mid-June. Prime Minister Pearson reiterated his faith in a maple leaf design; Diefenbaker denounced the proposal as a source of disunity and a distraction from “the chaos and confusion of the government,” and called for a national referendum; Tommy Douglas appealed for calm and delay; and Real Caouette praised Pearson’s courage and opposed the Union Jack. Diefenbaker and many members of his caucus confirmed their position as die-hard supporters of the Red Ensign, and when debate was resumed in August it was clear that they were prepared for an endless filibuster. Léon Balcer and his Quebec colleagues sought some middle ground, and after a month of futility the parties agreed to refer the issue to a committee of fifteen to report within six weeks. Diefenbaker warned that his party would insist on unlimited debate on the committee’s recommendation unless it reported virtually unanimously – but that seemed impossible because four of its Conservative members were committed to the Red Ensign.83
With the flag debate temporarily sidetracked, the House had a productive autumn, adopting a non-partisan redistribution bill and several major reforms in House of Commons procedure and organization. In October Diefenbaker and his colleague Erik Nielsen – a tough and honest Yukon lawyer who had entered the House in 1957 – led attacks on the government with charges that it had assisted the secret departure from the country of the longshoremen’s union leader Hal Banks (who was being sought on criminal charges), and that Banks had contributed to Liberal campaign funds. The minister of justice and Liberal House leader, Guy Favreau, stumbled in defending the government’s case. At the end of November, once again, Nielsen and Diefenbaker pounced on Favreau. The minister, they said, had failed to consult his legal officers before deciding not to prosecute a senior ministerial staff member for offering a bribe to obtain bail for the Montreal drug dealer Lucien Rivard; and Favreau had not informed Pearson of involvement by his own parliamentary secretary. Nielsen had prepared carefully and informed Favreau of his concerns in advance, in the hope of avoiding a partisan attack on the minister, but Favreau had taken no action. Once questions were asked, Pearson agreed to establish a judicial inquiry and dismissed the persons implicated, but he left Favreau dangling by failing, day after day, to correct a misstatement he had made about when Favreau informed him of the affair. Finally he did so, not in the House, but in a letter to Mr Justice Frédéric Dorion, the chairman of the inquiry.
Simultaneously, the Conservatives and the NDP raised serious charges of impropriety against two more Quebec ministers, René Tremblay and Maurice Lamontagne. They were politically crippled, but Pearson kept them in cabinet for another year. In January 1965 Pearson dismissed Yvon Dupuis, his minister without portfolio, who had been charged with accepting a bribe. The Liberal cabinet was shaken by these repeated indications of scandal and incompetence, all of them implicating Québécois ministers and all of them handled ineptly by Prime Minister Pearson. The leader of the opposition relished the atmosphere of attack, and – in Liberal eyes – enhanced his reputation as an evil genius.84
Pearson, who had always disliked the parliamentary battle, was driven to distraction by Diefenbaker’s unyielding pursuit. In discouragement, Pearson let what now seemed to be his hatred of Diefenbaker carry him too far. On December 4, 1964, Diefenbaker received a letter from the prime minister, delivered at home by special messenger. It opened portentously:
In discharge of my constitutional duty as Prime Minister, I am writing this letter to you as a Privy Councillor and former Prime Minister.
I have been much concerned, not only about allegations made recently in a particular case, the Rivard case, but, even more, about an attitude toward the operation of the law that certain evidence in this case discloses. This attitude is not widespread but the Rivard case illustrates the need to take thorough action to remove it.
The problem has not sprung up suddenly. In order to assess the need for corrective action, I have asked for a full report of instances in the last ten years or so in which political interventi
on was involved in investigations. This information will enable me to see how such matters could and should be dealt with.
One case (the Munsinger case) has given me very grave concern. It affects the security of the country. In 1960-61, a Minister who occupied a position of great responsibility in the Government was involved in a liaison which clearly endangered security.
