by Denis Smith
The rebels were so surprised that they omitted to keep count but they accepted later that the margin at most was 55 to 52 and one delegate was sure it was only 53-52.106
The association’s officers, who had proposed the question, had not voted. Eddie Goodman protested, but Camp insisted that they would not do so. “How can you not vote in favour of your own ballot when you got us here and presented it to us?” Goodman asked. Camp did not answer – and the question was deleted.107
Before the questionnaires were returned, other members of the executive spoke. Davie Fulton admitted to his ambition on behalf of, and his loyalty to, the party. He recalled that he had remained in the 1963 cabinet until after the election defeat, denied any improper conduct, and asked the executive to look forward, not back, in considering the party’s needs.108 J.M. Macdonnell, aged eighty-one and still “ramrod proud,” also rose and looked directly at Diefenbaker as he spoke: “It is possible that I qualify for this term ‘termite,’ since a year ago I was among the few who stood up against the leader. But since, in addition to being a termite, I am also an octogenarian, I doubt if I qualify for the leader’s suggestion that all termites are moved by personal ambition.”109 At the end of debate John Diefenbaker returned to the microphone with a quieter call for party unity in the coming battle against the Grits. The questionnaires were returned to the national president for counting, and the meeting adjourned. Diefenbaker told reporters, “We have been able to bring about a sense of agreement as to the course to be followed in the days and weeks ahead,” and asserted that there had been no challenge to his leadership. “There being no challenge, I didn’t meet it … A national leadership convention is held only when there is a vacancy, and I can tell you there is no vacancy at this time.” Dalton Camp offered more soft soap: “It was a family meeting in an appropriate spirit of the family home … We accomplished a good thing today.” The results of the balloting, he explained, would be conveyed to Mr Diefenbaker in confidence, solely as advice.110
Camp announced the next day that the proposal for a leadership convention had been rejected by the meeting. The Globe reported that “the voting figures were not officially disclosed, but are believed to have been 55-52 …Although the majority was narrow, it probably secures Mr. Diefenbaker’s position for the foreseeable future.” Balcer responded that the announcement “is in conflict with the general trend of yesterday’s meeting,” and asked to see “the complete figures and the voting slips on which they are based.” Newman commented that Diefenbaker had been “cruelly wounded” by the meeting, and could “no longer count on the public affection which nurtured him.” The Toronto Star spoke editorially of his “unshakeable will to power” as leader of a party “confused, divided and without hope.” Many of those who opposed a leadership convention, it judged, had done so “not in support of Mr. Diefenbaker, but in fear that the Liberals would call an election while the Conservative party was helpless in a bitter leadership fight.” Now Diefenbaker would lead the party into another general election against a Liberal government “racked by scandal,” while many good Conservatives stood aside.111 A few weeks later one Conservative MP from Quebec, Rémi Paul, left the caucus to sit as an independent; and in April Léon Balcer followed.
On February 17 Diefenbaker spoke to the people on television: “I have been maligned. I have been condemned. No one since the days of Macdonald has gone through the like … They say they want to remove me … I have been told … in the last few days that if I remain as Leader of the Conservative Party, support for the Party by certain interests will end. My friends, they believe they will succeed in this way. I will follow the will of the people. Will it be the will of the People or those that are all powerful?”112
Despite his bravado, Diefenbaker was worn down by his struggle, and Olive encouraged him to retire. In March he met with a small group of his closest supporters, apparently intent on making a voluntary departure. He told them of his intention to go. But the story was leaked and Diefenbaker – typically torn by conflicting advice – impulsively reversed himself. “I was so aroused by the necessity of denying to the press my decision to retire,” he put it in his memoirs, “that I decided not to retire.”113 Diefenbaker’s demons would not let him go by his own choice.
The demoralized Conservative Party could do little to hide its disarray except to attack the government, which was in its own state of chaos. Pearson pursued his quest for accommodation with the new Quebec, while his office remained disorganized and his Quebec ministers unusually accident-prone. After long and contentious debate, the Canada Pension Plan and legislation to permit Quebec to opt out of federal social programs were adopted during the winter. While the Dorion inquiry continued, the government faced new embarrassment when the key figure in the scandal, the narcotics dealer Lucien Rivard, escaped from Bordeaux jail by climbing over the wall from the prison yard where he was watering the skating rink on a warm evening in early spring. That permitted Diefenbaker to accuse the cabinet once more of “slack or careless administration of justice and law enforcement.” Although Rivard had been held in a provincial jail, Diefenbaker accused the federal minister of negligence: “such a disregard of political morality on the part of this government as to shock the public conscience.”114
In April the government began a new session of parliament by outlining plans for generous new public assistance programs, inevitably described as the Canadian version of President Johnson’s “Great Society.” Diefenbaker attacked the preview as “a catchall of promises,” renewed his criticisms of the government’s moral laxity, and challenged the proposed Fulton-Favreau formula for constitutional amendment as unworkable. At the very end of the session in June, the cabinet received Judge Dorion’s report, which found that there had been a conspiracy to obstruct the course of justice in the Rivard affair, and that Guy Favreau, as minister, had failed to exercise proper discretion by neglecting to consult his legal officers when he learned of the bribe attempt. The cabinet went through a day of distressed consultation before the prime minister announced that Favreau had resigned as minister of justice but would remain in cabinet in another portfolio. The minister’s prestige was destroyed, and the prime minister’s half-measure gave the leader of the opposition more evidence for his claim that this was a weak and negligent government.115
The Conservative Party’s never-ending domestic strife meant that its popularity in the polls declined steadily during the winter and spring of 1965. Mike Pearson dreamed of a majority government to finish his work of accommodation and social reform; and he dreamed, too, of a time when he would be free of the malign force across the aisle of the House. His advisers urged him to go to the electorate before Diefenbaker retired, both to conquer and to drive him out of politics. But the Rivard report, and a summer railway strike, gave Pearson pause through July and August. Finally, in early September, after polling his cabinet, Pearson announced an election for November 8, 1965, and appealed for a majority government. Diefenbaker echoed widespread editorial sentiment by denouncing the dissolution, but declared in predictable phrases that “we have an appointment with destiny and I say, forward in courage and faith.” His wounded forces, reluctant, fatalistic, or bitterly loyal, gathered round him for one last crusade.
Diefenbaker talked of elections in the language of military campaigns, and he might have imagined himself, in 1965, as Laurence Olivier’s Henry V encouraging his yeoman army on the eve of Agincourt. To his followers, though, he was no Olivier or Henry, the companion leader of the team, but a manic wanderer standing alone and surveying the hostile country beyond, his guides clustered separately behind him in anxious conclave about where he might be leading them. By the autumn of 1965 there was scarcely any national organization left; in Quebec there was hardly a party at any level.
During the first meeting of the Conservative campaign committee, Richard Thrasher took Eddie Goodman aside to ask him if he would run the campaign. Apart from supporting Léon Balcer at the February executive meeting, Good
man had taken no part in politics since the cabinet split of 1963. In Diefenbaker’s eyes he was one of the Toronto conspirators. Goodman was incredulous. “How can you run an election campaign,” he asked, “when the leader doesn’t speak to the campaign chairman? Dief would never agree to this.” Thrasher replied that Diefenbaker, who had been under pressure from Gordon Churchill and Allister Grosart, would accept him. Others had refused the job, and no one else could do it. Goodman reflected, consulted, and accepted, knowing that he was one of only a few – Camp and Brunt had been others – who could stand up to the Chief. He approached their first meeting “with a mixture of amusement and trepidation.” Diefenbaker greeted him coldly, confirming that he had accepted Thrasher’s advice that Goodman was “the best man under the circumstances.” When Goodman asked for Diefenbaker’s “absolute confidence … throughout the campaign, both in my loyalty and my judgment,” Diefenbaker replied, “I have always found you forthright if sometimes mistaken, and I certainly accept your promise to do your best.” But he asked for a delegate at headquarters for the duration. Goodman exploded: “Mr. Diefenbaker, there will be only one person reporting to you at my headquarters. Me. In one breath you tell me you trust me and in the next you ask for a personal agent.” Diefenbaker backed off, then asked for a guarantee that Lowell Murray would not enter headquarters. Goodman agreed, but consulted Murray privately throughout the campaign.116
Diefenbaker then produced a copy of the discredited US Senate committee testimony of the spy Elizabeth Bentley accusing Pearson of wartime Soviet espionage, suggesting that it offered ammunition for the campaign. Goodman told him firmly that “we had quite enough material to make Pearson’s leadership look bad without resorting to this type of scurrilous innuendo.” Diefenbaker dropped the subject.117
Goodman’s objective was to reunite the party and “bring back the dissidents of 1963 and 1964”: to do what the Toronto Star had said could not be done under Diefenbaker’s continuing leadership. The miracle was occurring. George Hees, Davie Fulton, Dalton Camp, and George Hogan were all candidates. The Telegram, too, had renewed its loyalty. The premier of Manitoba, Duff Roblin, was on the point of declaring his candidacy, but refused the final jump when Diefenbaker neglected to encourage him. At national headquarters, Flora MacDonald and James Johnston provided energy and ideas, and a fresh crew of young aides provided muscle.118
There was a lively spirit of gallows humour among the national organizers. Two stories especially became part of Diefenbaker lore. As they patched together the official version of a party program, Allister Grosart and Jim Johnston bantered about a winning election slogan; and a decade later Johnston explained the incident to Diefenbaker.
One afternoon I said to Grosart that we had to answer the query of the public, why had our government lost its 208 seats. We were searching for a concise answer to that one … I said to him … what we should be doing by election day was getting the issue down to one point, “Give the old bugger another chance.”
So there were your friends laughingly treating you with affectionate disrespect.119
Johnston repeated the line to Goodman and others, and it was instantly transmitted across town to the prime minister’s office. “This made me feel very badly,” Johnston told Diefenbaker, “as I hated the thoughts of the Grits laughing at something like this, when it had all been said in good fun at the beginning … But … no offense was meant. It also summed up precisely what we were fighting for – another chance.”120
Peter Newman reported the second story, perhaps from an account by Lowell Murray:
On October 2, when the Conservative campaign seemed to be going well and it looked as if Diefenbaker might have a chance of winning, Goodman looked around his subalterns, most of whom had at one time or another opposed the Prince Albert politician, and said: “You know if Dief wins, there’ll be the biggest political bloodbath this country has ever seen, and much of that blood is now running in the veins of those in this hotel room.” The remark was greeted with shrieks of laughter and the assembled company immediately began to plan how they would act on election night following a Diefenbaker victory. It was agreed that Goodman would go on national television (“After all, I’ll be something of an architect”) and apologize to the people of Canada for having played such a monstrous practical joke on them. Then the entire Tory headquarters crew would join hands and leap off the roof of the Chateau Laurier.121
The party’s electoral program was a patchwork put together by Alvin Hamilton and James Johnston, from speeches of Diefenbaker and Hamilton, vetted by the Union Nationale leader Daniel Johnson. It was an extension of Diefenbaker’s earlier, progressive, and welfarist manifestos, with the added promise of “a great national conference on confederation.” That commitment could not conceal the party’s unresolved constitutional dilemma: How could Diefenbaker’s belief in “one Canada” be reconciled with the recognition of “two founding nations,” one of them represented by a French-speaking province, which was now promoted by the Laurendeau-Dunton (“B & B”) Commission and endorsed by the Pearson government? The program offered the promise of “unity in equality between the two basic races of Canada, with every Canadian, regardless of race or creed, having equality in citizenship and equality of opportunity … The dismantling, piece-by-piece, of our country must stop. Canada cannot exist without Quebec, nor can we visualize Quebec without Canada.” The message was confusing, and did not seem to be aimed at French-speaking voters. It became somewhat less mystifying when the Ontario premier, John Robarts, declared himself in favour of a constitutional conference to discover what it was that all provinces, including Quebec, wanted from a renewed confederation.122
But the party program was an irrelevance. For those who had returned to the fold, the election was an occasion to repair the foundations and prepare for life-after-Diefenbaker. Surely the campaign would be lost, and the leader would accept the final verdict of his jury or be forced to retire. The potential successors would re-establish their credentials and return to the House of Commons. For Diefenbaker, the election became an occasion for nostalgia, justification, historical redemption, and – as the campaign progressed – even for conquest of the Liberal foe. The leader found resonance in two issues, and repeated the themes with his singular passion. Above all he denounced the Liberal scandals: conflict of interest, dubious connections, a weak prime minister who would not confront the rot in his own administration, a cabinet that let criminals water hockey rinks on warm spring evenings. Because the subjects of scandal were almost all Québécois, the scandals blended vaguely into the second theme: national unity and the place of Quebec in Canada. The implication of some ugly racial defect among Pearson’s Quebec ministers lay just below the surface, to be absorbed by Tory audiences outside Quebec. The Pearson government, through Diefenbaker’s eyes, became an undifferentiated “galaxy of wrongdoers” undermining the moral fabric of the country.
Conservative advertising (for the first time since 1957) emphasized the strength of the team and played down the role of the leader. The provincial Tory premiers, Robert Stanfield, John Robarts, and Duff Roblin, declared their support and provided assistance. But John Diefenbaker inevitably dominated the campaign. He opted once more for a whistle-stop journey by train, crisscrossing the provinces to stop in scores of cities and small towns. His audiences were large and enthusiastic, laughing at his jokes and applauding his denunciations, enjoying the performance of a great political entertainer. Their warmth did not necessarily translate into votes, for they knew his record in office, but the campaign could be savoured for its own professional skill. Ben Malkin of the Montreal Gazette probably expressed the sentiments of many who watched him on that journey.
He remains the very model of an opposition leader on the campaign trail – filled with scorn for the incompetents in government, ready to be charitable toward the malcontents within his own party should they wish to return to the fold, gaily scattering vague jelly-like promises across his campaign trail. He does
so well in this role, that I think he is unwise to work so hard to relinquish it in favor of playing a part that has, in the past, proved a little beyond his special gifts.123
When the Diefenbaker train reached the prairies in early October, the leader indulged himself shamelessly in sentiment and nostalgia. With Elmer at his side, he took reporters by car to the homestead near Borden, Saskatchewan, to show them the decaying family shack and relate his stories of prairie fire, deadly blizzards, cheating grain buyers, and visits by the Métis fighter Gabriel Dumont. “I have these views,” he told his companions, “and you’ve got to go back to see where they were formed … They were not always the right views, perhaps, but they were formed of the pioneer tradition.”124 Newman wrote that Diefenbaker “moves like a legend over the land … He is the political poet who can evoke the glories of a simpler past when the Red River carts still creaked along the Battleford trail and buffalo bones littered the horizonless prairie … On other occasions, Diefenbaker gives tongue to the sense of affront felt by the inhabitants of the small, flat Prairie towns who feel themselves overwhelmed by the alien world they never made. The mood at these whistle-stops is one of joyful defiance; pride in the fact that this singular politician reflects and champions their lonely way of life.” But the crowds that greeted him, Newman reported, were mostly elderly, and the landscape was changing: “The legend of John Diefenbaker is being tested for the last time.”125 For George Bain of the Globe, the Chief seemed “like an old man dreaming dreams.”126
Mike Pearson had always been a reluctant campaigner, and this time the effort, for him, was especially repugnant. While Diefenbaker met the voters face to face, Pearson stayed behind in Ottawa, attempting to establish the image of a responsible prime minister occupied with matters of state. (By November there were signs at every Diefenbaker rally declaring: “He cared enough to come.”) Pearson’s campaign was half-hearted and unconvincing, no match for the beguiling storytelling and high spirits of his opponent. The Liberal Party could find no compelling theme; its campaign amounted to an appeal for majority government and a warning against the destructive potential of Diefenbaker in power. In mid-campaign the Liberals were embarrassed by more reports of criminal links in Quebec, and by sensational charges, immediately denied, that J.W. Pickersgill had participated in arranging payoffs for the six Social Crediters who had supported a Pearson government in 1963. The electorate was disinclined to give Pearson his majority, and equally disinclined to think of Diefenbaker’s restoration. The whole exercise, aside from the diverting political theatre, seemed pointless.127
