by Denis Smith
John Diefenbaker’s last will and testament was dated August 7, 1979. In it he named Senator David Walker, Joel Aldred, Mr Justice Edward Hughes, and Dr Lewis Brand as his executors, and Thomas Van Dusen, Major Greg Guthrie, and Keith Martin as his literary executors. Diefenbaker had received by bequest from his brother the 240 acres of homestead lands of his mother and father and his uncle Edward, and he bequeathed these to the University of Saskatchewan, to be maintained in their existing state “so that future generations will be enabled to view homestead life in general as it was in the pioneer days.” Rental proceeds from the lands were to be used by the university for arthritis research. Diefenbaker directed that a cairn should be erected on the section once owned by his uncle, “who was my teacher in Halcyonia public school from 1906-1909 during the homestead days.”
Diefenbaker’s home in Rockcliffe Park was offered in his will to the government of Canada, on condition that it be established as a historical museum displaying “documents, letters and pictures of the pioneer days of the prairies, of the settlement of Canadians of all racial origins, which will emphasize my lifetime devotion that all Canadians, regardless of racial origin (subject to constitutional rights) shall be equal.” After negotiation, Ottawa declined Diefenbaker’s offer, the house was sold, and the proceeds were applied to his estate. His Prince Albert house had previously been given to his home city, also to be used as a museum. But he decided not to be buried in Prince Albert, because the city had not given his name to the new bridge spanning the North Saskatchewan River.
The will revealed that John and Olive had been made beneficiaries of a $475,000 trust fund established after 1960, whose creation he had apparently not learned of until 1973. Neither John nor Olive had received any benefit from the fund during their lives, and Diefenbaker directed that its proceeds should be divided among the Diefenbaker Centre, the city of Prince Albert, and an educational program to be conducted by the Diefenbaker Centre under direction of the literary executors. All of Diefenbaker’s movable property, “including books, pictures, letters, papers and documents of all kinds,” were bequeathed to the University of Saskatchewan for storage and exhibition in the Diefenbaker Centre. There were a number of smaller bequests to family and staff, churches, the masons, and various charities in Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan.8
Disputes over the powers of the literary executors and the secret trust fund first emerged on the funeral train in what Geoffrey Stevens described as “a seething conspiracy which floated across the Prairies on a cloud of alcohol after historian-ghostwriter John Munro wondered aloud why the hitherto unknown trust fund wasn’t larger than it apparently was.” A week later the controversy continued at the press conference called by the executors to explain the will. David Walker and Joel Aldred criticized the press for its reporting of the trust fund, and John Munro for having revealed it. Stevens wondered why Diefenbaker had been so incurious about the fund’s existence, but concluded that the dispute was probably best forgotten.9
But it was not forgotten. In September, Canadian Press reported that in addition to the $475,000 available from the original trust fund, there might be a further $125,000 plus interest in a second fund referred to in a memo written by Olive, dated February 8, 1963, and discovered in the safe in Diefenbaker’s office after his death.10 The Diefenbaker Papers later revealed a confusing series of letters and memoranda from the 1960s containing veiled references to the trust fund (or funds), and indicating a certain confusion or indifference on Diefenbaker’s part to the whole matter - although he had known of the fund’s existence. The dispute between executors and literary executors about the capital and its disposition eventually reached the courts, and it was not settled definitively until May 1981, when the Ontario Supreme Court ruled that the will had given the literary executors only one function. Their task was to arrange for distribution of copies of Diefenbaker’s memoirs to schools across Canada. The residue of the estate was subsequently allocated according to Diefenbaker’s wishes.11
On August 16, 1994, on the fifteenth anniversary of John Diefenbaker’s death, almost two hundred persons with links to the funeral and Diefenbaker’s last journey gathered for a reunion in the Railway Committee Room of the Centre Block, hosted by the state funeral directors, Hulse, Playfair & McGarry. The guests included senators and MPs from all parties, members of the Chief’s staff, Jon Vickers, Joe Clark, and Ed Schreyer, and some of the RCMP officers who had hoisted the coffin onto and off the train in 1979. The evening featured reminiscences formal and informal, including a film of the late Sean O’Sullivan performing a wickedly accurate parody of a Diefenbaker speech. It was the first - and perhaps the last - occasion of its kind in Ottawa.12
Notes
Full citations for secondary sources are given in the Bibliography, and short references only are used in the notes.
Abbreviations
CC Cabinet Conclusions, Canada
FRUS Foreign Relations of the United States
JGD John G. Diefenbaker
JGDI John G. Diefenbaker interview
JGDP John G. Diefenbaker Papers, Diefenbaker Centre Archives
OC 1 One Canada: Memoirs of the Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker: The Crusading Years, 1895-1956
OC 2 One Canada: Memoirs of the Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker: The Years of Achievement, 1957-1962
OC 3 One Canada: Memoirs of the Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker: The Tumultuous Years, 1962-1967
Chapter 1 A Prairie Youth
1 See OC 1, 9-68. There may have been ten homes altogether. Nicholson writes that the family also lived in Port Elgin, Ontario, in 1897. Nicholson, Vision, 16
2 OC 1, 12-13
3 Ibid., 13-14; The Globe, November 6, 1900. The returning veterans of the South African Corps were members of the Royal Canadian Regiment, who had left for war in October 1899. Many other local units, including the 48th Highlanders, marched with them in the welcoming parade. Although the main ceremonies took place at the armouries on University Avenue, the parade did pass the city hall en route. Some of Diefenbaker’s memories of his early life seem to have been stimulated by photographs; there is one elegant studio portrait of John and Elmer in their sailor suits “about 1902.”
4 OC 1, 14
5 Ibid., 10
6 Ibid., 14-15.
7 OC 1, 1-2. Diefenbaker knew that the account of his ancestry in the memoirs was wrong, since he had learned that a cousin, George Brandt of Waterloo, Ontario, had given the correct one to reporters in 1958. Brandt’s story was confirmed through records in the Waterloo County Registry Office by a reporter for the Hamilton Spectator. By placing the family’s arrival one generation earlier, Diefenbaker seemed to be sustaining the story he had used in his campaigns for the leadership, emphasizing both the length of his Canadian ancestry and the possibility that the Diefenbakers had arrived in Canada via the United States as “Pennsylvania Dutch.” There were Diefenbakers of American origin in the Hawkesville area, but they were apparently unrelated. On the spelling of his name, Diefenbaker notes only that his grandfather retained the original spelling throughout his life. Hamilton Spectator, December 20, 1958
8 OC 1, 7
9 JGDI, December 11, 1969
10 OC 1, 7
11 Ibid., 8, 18. In a 1958 interview with Pierre Berton, Barbara Moon, James Bannerman, and Hugh MacLennan, Diefenbaker said that his father was “a great student” of history, no disciplinarian, and “quite an accomplished musician,” who encouraged his students to enter public service. But he refused to say whether William had advised him to enter law or politics, or to comment on the balance between his mother and his father. When Barbara Moon asked what William was like as a father, Diefenbaker replied testily: “I have said it was a normal home. If you think I am going further than that, your questions in that direction do not merit the answer that you want.” “Verbatim Proceedings … February 10, 1958,” JGDP, VII/85/A/772.1, 49923-51, esp. 49924-27
12 OC 1, 7-9, 17-18
1
3 Ibid., 9
14 See Nicholson, Vision, 15.
15 See, for example, Nicholson’s comments, which were based on interviews in the late 1950s with John, Elmer, and Mary Diefenbaker. Nicholson, Vision, 15
16 JGDI, December 11, 1969
17 OC 1, 2-5
18 Ibid., 10-15, esp. 15
19 Ibid., 16
20 Ibid., 18; note from Elmer, undated, in JGDP, V/3, 1349-52; William A.R. Thomson, The Macmillan Medical Cyclopedia, 918; JGDI, December 11, 1969. Consumption was the popular name for pulmonary tuberculosis. There is no subsequent family record of William’s illness, and the following year seems to have been an extraordinarily active one for the whole family. It may be that the diagnosis, or John Diefenbaker’s memory of it, or the accepted family story was incorrect.
21 Quoted in Nicholson, Vision, 16
22 OC 1, 19-20
23 Ibid., 20-21
24 Ibid., 22; note from Elmer, undated, in JGDP, V/3, 1349-52
25 OC 1, 23
26 Ibid., 23-24, 34. Diefenbaker also describes this schoolhouse home in “My First Prairie Christmas,” Reader’s Digest, December 1976, 49-52
27 OC 1, 31-32
28 Quoted in Nicholson, Vision, 17. See also OC 1, 35-40; JGDI, December 11, 1969. In the memoirs, Diefenbaker mistakenly places registration of the homestead in the autumn of 1905, after a visit to the land. The Dominion Lands Office records show that this actually occurred in 1904. William Diefenbaker’s shortage of capital was common among homesteaders. Most immigrants were forced to seek second, paying jobs or to barter their skills in order to raise the estimated $1000 (or its equivalent in kind) needed to develop a quarter section. See Archer, Saskatchewan, 78, 100.
29 OC 1, 38-39
30 Ibid., 39; Archer, Saskatchewan, 133-38; Smith, Prairie Liberalism, 3-24
31 OC 1, 40-41
32 The memoirs suggest that this move took place in August 1906, while Edward Diefenbaker (in a brief biographical note prepared at John’s request in May 1959 and edited in John’s handwriting) says that it occurred in October. OC 1, 40; Ed. L. Diefenbaker, “Biography,” JGDP, III/96, 66981-91, esp. 66983
33 OC 1, 41. Nicholson estimates the cost of materials for the house at $250. He adds that “its sufficiency as a home is perhaps best described by the fact that a tenant of the homestead in later years used it as a grain store.” Diefenbaker suggests in the memoirs that he and his father built a one-room shack on the land in the summer of 1905 and apparently added to the building in 1906. Nicholson says that the shack was built in 1906 and then enlarged. In 1965 the Saskatchewan government moved the building to Wascana Centre in Regina as a historic site. OC 1, 39-40; Nicholson, Vision, 18
34 OC 1, 41-42; JGDI, December 11, 1969
35 OC 1, 42-43. Elmer remembered that his mother produced about ten pounds of butter per week and sold the surplus: “It fetched fourteen cents a pound, commanding a premium of two cents on account of its high quality.” Quoted in Nicholson, Vision, 18
36 Archer, Saskatchewan, 140-41
37 Ibid., 141
38 OC 1, 49; Archer, Saskatchewan, 141
39 OC 1, 43
40 Ibid., 44
41 The writer was Lila A. Pope, who provided Diefenbaker in the 1970s with three short, undated reminiscences of Borden and the Halcyonia school. They can be found in JGDP, XIV/1/A/3. The description also appears in her contribution to the Borden and District local history, Our Treasured Heritage, 395.
42 JGDI, December 11, 1969
43 Ibid.
44 The chronicler Lila Pope, writing in 1980 about the Halcyonia school, wrote of this episode: “Fortunately John suffered no worse than frost bitten toes, or we might never have had him for our Prime Minister.” JGDI, December 11, 1969; OC 1, 49-51; Our Treasured Heritage, 395
45 OC 1, 51
46 Ibid., 51-52
47 Ibid., 45-52
48 OC 1, 32, 44-54, 65; JGDI, December 11, 1969; Nicholson, Vision, 19. In his 1958 interview with Berton, Moon, Bannerman, and MacLennan, Diefenbaker said that, despite his father’s small income, “in those days there was no book of any importance in history or biography or the like that was not bought.” But he could not remember any book that had particularly influenced him, beyond an encyclopedia of biography. He had never read fiction or science, and could think of no title that he specially treasured. He refused to answer questions about his reading of the Bible on the ground that “that is very much my personal life, and something that I would prefer not to discuss.” Several times he referred with admiration to the exploits of Gabriel Dumont, “this Indian fighter, the greatest of them all,” whose story “has to be written.” “Verbatim Proceedings … February 10, 1958,” JGDP, VII/85/A/772.1, 49923-51, esp. 49930-35, 49944, 49948
49 OC 1, 67
50 Ibid., 66-68
51 OC 1, 41, 68; Garrett Wilson and Kevin Wilson, Diefenbaker, 12. The Wilsons note that William’s “ability to acquire government employment so readily must indicate well-established credits with the Liberal Party, given the politics of the day.” William kept his homestead land and eventually willed it to John and Elmer. On his father’s death, John transferred his share to Elmer, and inherited it again on Elmer’s death in 1971. William rose gradually from the position of gauger to preventive officer to assistant appraiser. In 1925 John wrote in his father’s name to the provincial minister of public works, the Liberal A.P. McNab, noting his employment record in the Customs Office, by inference making the case for an increase in salary. Although Customs was a federal department, Diefenbaker seemed to expect that the appeal would make its way up Liberal patronage channels from Regina to Ottawa. Since John’s political affiliation was already Conservative in this most partisan province, his covering note to William bore a conspiratorial tone. “I was afraid to be more definite,” John wrote, “as if the letter got into some one else’s hands it might be hard to explain.” In 1933, with Conservative governments in both Regina and Ottawa, Diefenbaker made a direct and urgent appeal to Premier Anderson to intercede on William’s behalf to prevent his compulsory retirement at the age of sixty-five. “You will appreciate my position in this matter,” Diefenbaker explained. “Those of the opposite political Faith are commencing to pour ridicule on me now and will continue so to do. Surely under the circumstances of this case and of the service which I have rendered for the Party something can be done towards preventing his retirement … Anything you can do will be appreciated.” Anderson and other Saskatchewan Conservatives successfully intervened, and William remained in the public service until July 1937, when he retired at the age of sixty-nine. JGDP, V/30, 20250, 20273-74, 20278-90
52 OC 1, 71-73. If his estimates are correct, in 1910-12 John and Elmer were earning at an annual rate above that of their father. He records that, in July 1912, at the height of the land boom, he and Elmer were able to buy lots in River Heights on margin, as their father had done earlier on Victoria Avenue. When the boom collapsed in October 1912, all three lost their investments.
53 OC 1, 69; Nicholson, Vision, 21. Nicholson describes the bank as the Northern Grain Bank.
54 OC 1, 65
55 Ibid., 66
56 Telegram, Elmer to John Diefenbaker, June 17, 1957, JGDP, V/3, 1634
57 Nicholson, Vision, 14. A childhood acquaintance, C.J. Golding, wrote in 1980 that John had boarded on his family’s farm in the summer of 1914 “while he was doing harvest work for a neighbouring bachelor.” The date may actually have been 1913. Golding recalled that “Mr. Diefenbaker slept in the granary with me and at that time he told me he would be prime minister of Canada some day.” Our Treasured Heritage, 123
58 OC 1, 75-76; JGDI, December 11, 1969. The Saskatoon Daily Phoenix’s account of the cornerstone laying makes no mention of Laurier’s conversation with a newsboy. Nicholson quotes Diefenbaker as saying that “he paid me a dime, five times the price of a paper.” The story was immortalized in 1972 when a plaque was placed on the Canada Building, opposite the entrance to the old Ca
nadian National station in Saskatoon, quoting from the Joseph Schull biography of Laurier about the meeting of the prime minister and the newsboy. In 1990 the legend turned to bronze on the same site, when the Star-Phoenix donated a statue of Prime Minister Laurier and Master John Diefenbaker by the sculptor Bill Epp. Schull’s source for the story was probably Diefenbaker. Daily Phoenix, July 30, 1910; Nicholson, Vision, 20-21
59 Quoted in Nicholson, Vision, 20. In his address to a civic reception in the Saskatoon ice rink that evening, Laurier spoke memorably about his desire to unite Canadians of all races and origins: “My days now must be short. You can see my hairs are grey, and I cannot hope to live many years; but when I am gone I want to feel sure that it will have to be admitted by my bitterest enemy that during fourteen years at least Canada made progress as she never made it before, united people, upon all races which have been brought here … In addition to this, when my last day comes, if my eyes can close on a policy, if I can look upon them as true Canadians, all preserving the pride of their race, but putting the pride of Canada first, I will feel that my life has not been lived in vain and I shall die happy.” Daily Phoenix, July 30, 1910. These words may have been an early source of Diefenbaker’s public attitudes.
60 A program for the Third Annual Elocution and Oratory Contest of the Saskatoon Collegiate Institute, April 1, 1912, lists John G. Diefenbaker’s proposed speech on “The Progress of Canada during the Past Century.” The student newspaper for May 1912 notes that he participated but did not win. Doris C. Haynes’s 1967 memoir is the source of the story that Diefenbaker forgot his lines. JGDP, II/8, 6097a; XIV/1/A/3
61 OC 1, 70-71; JGDI, December 11, 1969. In 1969 he told a student that he wanted to become prime minister because “I felt the challenge of being able to do something to ensure that whatever racial origin, creed or colour they might be, all Canadians should be equal subjects, with equal constitutional rights. This came about as I saw people from all parts of the world coming into western Canada, most of them feeling, with reason, that those of other origins than English, in a citizen sense, or of French, were hyphenated Canadians. I decided I was going to do my part to bring about one Canada, and that became the subject of my continuous advocacy, both in the Saskatoon Collegiate Institute and University of Saskatchewan. I have pursued my objective. It took me almost half a century to bring about the enactment of the Bill of Rights in 1960.” JGDI, December 11, 1969
