by Denis Smith
18 Boutin et al. v. Mackie, (1922) 2 Western Weekly Reports 1197 (Sask.); OC 1, 120-21; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 37-39; LePatriote de l’Ouest, May 1922
19 Diefenbaker discusses the early years of his legal career in chapters six and seven of his memoirs, OC 1, 93-124. For accounts of some of his major cases, see Wilson, Diefenbaker, passim.
20 OC 1, 102-03; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 40-41
21 OC 1, 136-37
22 Wilson, Diefenbaker, 39-42; OC 1, 137
23 OC 1, 74-75
24 Ibid., 75; JGDI, December 11, 1969
25 OC 1, 75; JGDI, December 10, 1969
26 Subsequently, he blamed the electoral frauds of 1917 on the Conservative minister of the interior, Arthur Meighen, who was also sponsor of the Wartime Elections Act. Meighen, he claimed, had directed the chief electoral officer to shift overseas votes among designated constituencies to assure the election of Unionist candidates. Diefenbaker said in 1969 that his source for this claim was a senator, who told him that he had personally delivered the message from Meighen to the chief electoral officer. The issue was raised at the Liberal Convention of 1919, and Meighen did not deny the accusation. In 1969 Diefenbaker commented: “I don’t claim to be pious or anything of the kind, but that’s wrong, no matter how you look at it.”JGDI, December 11, 1969
27 OC 1, 91, 126-27
28 OC 1, 132-33; JGDI, December 10, 1969. In the more vivid language of the interview, Diefenbaker’s story was: “I came back on the Monday and said, ‘Who in the hell did this? Here’s your bloody papers and it’s all over with.’ ”
29 Wilson, Diefenbaker, 51
30 JGDI, December 10, 1969
31 Wilson, Diefenbaker, 50-52
32 Ibid., 52-53
33 OC 1, 140
34 Ibid., 58-64, 139-41; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 50-55
35 Prince Albert Herald, October 15, 1925, quoted in Newman, Renegade, 49
36 JGDI, August 14, 1969
37 OC 1, 141-43; Newman, Renegade, 49-50
38 OC 1, 143
39 Ibid., 141
40 Ibid., 140-41; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 52-53
41 OC 1, 143. There is no published record that he visited Wakaw. The local newspaper supported the Liberal Party, despite threats from Conservative advertisers that they would boycott its pages if it did so. Wilson, Diefenbaker, 54
42 Quoted in Wilson, Diefenbaker, 54
43 OC 1, 143-44. Nevertheless, as compared with the 1921 results, Conservative candidates on the prairies shared votes lost by the Progressives with the Liberals and polled more votes in total than either the Liberals or Progressives. See the Reports, Chief Electoral Officer, Fourteenth General Election, and Fifteenth General Election, 360-90, 429-532.
44 Herald, December 1, 1925; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 55
45 Diefenbaker writes: “The Conservative Party, as such, decided not to run a candidate in that by-election, but they did not want Mr. King to go unopposed. I received a telegram suggesting that an Independent candidate run. I was standing, this telegram in hand, looking out from my window at the traffic on Central Avenue below. It was a cold, blustery day in January 1926. Across the street I saw Dave Burgess. I sent one of my staff to ask him to come up. I knew Burgess well, and respected his ability. His war record in the Royal Flying Corps was outstanding. When he came into my office I said, ‘You have often told me that you’d like to be in Parliament. Well, how about running as an Independent?’ Without hesitation, he agreed to do so. It was: ‘Dave Burgess, M.C., for M.P.’ King, of course, was a shoo-in; to defeat the Prime Minister in a by-election is almost an impossibility.” There is no record in the Diefenbaker Papers of this telegram. Liberal newspapers noted during the contest that “the witness to Mr. Burgess’ nomination paper was formerly employed in the office of J.G. Diefenbaker, Conservative candidate on October 29,” and reported local gossip that a federal party emissary had visited Prince Albert carrying “a little black bag” containing “a round sum to support any candidate who would allow his name to go forward.” But later in the year the Toronto Telegram reported that the decision not to nominate formally against King was taken on federal orders and against the instincts of the local party. In that case, the Burgess nomination might suggest local defiance. The paper also noted that in the general election of September 1926, Arthur Meighen did not speak in Saskatchewan and left Diefenbaker to fight King alone in Prince Albert. “Why was King let down so easy?” the Telegram asked. “That is one of the mysteries of the late debacle in the west.” OC 1, 160-61; Saskatoon Phoenix, February 9, 1926; Toronto Telegram, October 21, 1926
46 Wilson, Diefenbaker, 55-56; OC 1, 144
47 Quoted in Wilson, Diefenbaker, 66
48 Phoenix, February 17, 1926; OC 1, 145-48; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 56-57
49 Gray, Bennett, 263-64; OC 1, 146-54
50 OC 1, 148
51 Ibid., 151-53
52 Herald, August 9, 1926; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 57-59
53 “An appeal to base prejudice,” Phoenix, August 12, 1926
54 JGDI, June 27, December 11, 1969; OC 1, 148-50
55 Quoted in OC 1, 149
56 “Prince Albert’s Conservative Candidate,” St. Peter’s Messenger, Meunster, August 11, 1926. Diefenbaker’s companions on the platform, Strong and MacDougall, had been the two main speakers at the banquet honouring him in Prince Albert on December 1, 1925. See Herald, December 1, 1925.
57 Quoted in OC 1, 149; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 58
58 The source of Diefenbaker’s claim may have been an advertisement in the Ukrainian Voice of August 16, 1926, over the name of F.W. Wright, the official agent for W.L. Mackenzie King. The advertisement quoted a Conservative candidate in Ontario as saying that “no person not of British birth should be given a right to vote in Canada,” and interpreted this to mean that the Meighen government, if re-elected, would remove that right from all naturalized Canadians. This piece of electoral hyperbole may have been matched (or surpassed) by Diefenbaker’s imaginative leap from the removal of voting rights to deportation one by one.
The campaign was crude in other ways as well. Diefenbaker later charged that agents of the provincial police, acting under political direction, had attempted to set him up for charges on a liquor offence during the campaign. He said that while being driven to a public meeting in Parkside, he discovered a bottle of illegal home-brew on the seat beside his travel bag. He threw the bottle away. That evening, he said, all the cars outside the meeting hall were searched by special detectives of the liquor squad, and one officer confessed to him: “I should tell you that they wanted me to plant liquor on you there and I refused … I was directed by the inspector of police to do that.” After the Conservatives came to power in September 1930, Diefenbaker said that he gained access to the attorney general’s files and discovered that the liquor police had been in Parkside that night. Diefenbaker asked that one member of the police force (by then, the RCMP) should be dismissed for his responsibility in the affair, but the minister of justice refused and had him transferred instead to the National Parks service. Wilson, Diefenbaker, 58; JGDI, June 27, 1969; and Herald, August 31 and October 1, 1926
59 The vote in Prince Albert constituency was King, 8933; Diefenbaker, 4838. OC 1, 153-54; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 59; Newman, Renegade, 50
60 OC 1, 154; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 59
61 Gray, Bennett, 279-85; OC 1, 155-56
62 Quoted in Gray, Bennett, 284
63 OC 1, 155-57, 161-62
64 The short but spectacular history of the Klan in Saskatchewan is recounted in Robin, Shades, 1-86; Kyba, “Ballots and Burning Crosses,” and Calderwood, “Rise.”
65 Robin, Shades, 59
66 The statistics are cited in detail, ibid.
67 J.F. Bryant to R.B. Bennett, March 16, 1928, Bennett Papers, 24954-55; Robin, Shades, 60-61
68 J.G. Gardiner to W.L. Mackenzie King, August 23, 1927, quoted in Robin, Shades, 62
69 W.L.M. King to J.G. Gardiner, August 30, 1927, quoted ibid., 64
70 Ibid., 63-65
71 “Platform adopted at the Saskatchewan Conservative Convention. At Saskatoon. March 14th and 15th, 1928,” Bennett Papers, 24974-77. Bryant, in his first letter to Bennett reporting reassuringly on the convention, quotes a slightly different version of the resolution. J.F. Bryant to R.B. Bennett, March 16, 1928, ibid., 24954-57
72 J.F. Bryant to R.B. Bennett, March 16, 1928, ibid. See also Wilson, Diefenbaker, 77-79.
73 See, for example, A.G. MacKinnon to R.B. Bennett, March 28, 1928; J. Harvey Hearn to R.B. Bennett, March 28, 1928; J.J. Leddy to R.B. Bennett, March 28, April 12, April 17, 1928; M.A. MacPherson to R.B. Bennett, April 7, 1928; J.A.M. Patrick to R.B. Bennett, April 21, 1928; M J. Perkins to R.B. Bennett, May 23, 1928, Bennett Papers, 25003-06, 24987-90, 24992-93, 25019-20, 25029-33, 24994-5001, 25035-38, 25074-76
74 J.F. Bryant to R.B. Bennett, May 31, 1928, ibid., 25113. Soon after the convention, one of the absconding Klan officials, Pat Emmons, was arrested in the United States, waived his rights under extradition, and was returned to Regina and Moose Jaw, where he was tried on charges of fraud and misappropriation of funds. Emmons testified that he had met with J.T.M. Anderson to coordinate Klan and Conservative Party campaigns against the Liberal government, and that Anderson had tried to seize control of the Klan. The criminal charges were dismissed, but the political evidence intensified the party conflict. Emmons followed up by publishing affidavits about his meetings with Conservative leaders and speaking at a noisy public meeting in Regina. He was then hustled secretly out of the country. Although R.B. Bennett suggested to Anderson that he should sue to clear his name, Anderson neither sued nor denied that he had met with Emmons. Conservatives complained, with good reason, that the affair had been orchestrated by the Gardiner government. F.R. MacMillan to R.B. Bennett, May 7, 1928; R.B. Bennett to J.T.M. Anderson, June 20, 1928, ibid., 25056-57, 25130; Robin, Shades, 73-78
75 See especially R.B. Bennett to J.J. Leddy, November 6, 1928, Bennett Papers, 25187. Bennett advised Leddy to accept the situation “with equanimity,” and remembered what he saw as a similar example of political prudence or cynicism: “You will, perhaps, recall that it was the Liberal Party that came to power through the Manitoba school issue in 1896, and Sir Wilfrid Laurier was content to retire behind the lines of torres vidras [sic]. Might it not be well for us to emulate the example of so great a tactician?” Bennett’s allusion was to Wellington and the Peninsular War. Torres Vedras was the solid British defensive line before Lisbon where the French under Massena approached and then turned back in October 1810, marking the turning point in the war.
76 J.F. Bryant to R.B. Bennett, April 11, 1928, ibid., 25014-18; Robin, Shades, 300 n120. The other possibility was that MacKinnon’s name appeared on the typed list, but was omitted at the platform when the names were read to the convention. Dr J.F. Leddy, the son of J.J. Leddy, who became president of the University of Windsor, recalled being told emphatically by his father that Diefenbaker had played a part in blackballing the two Catholic nominees at the convention. Private information
77 J. Harvey Hearn to R.B. Bennett, March 28, 1928, Bennett Papers, 24988
78 Wilson, Diefenbaker, 79
79 Ibid.; McLeod, “Politics,” 139-40
80 J.J. Leddy to R.B. Bennett, October 29, 1928, Bennett Papers, 25185-86; Regina Morning Leader, October 19, 1928; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 81
81 OC 1, 157
82 Morning Leader, October 22, 1928; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 81-83; OC 1, 157-58. Diefenbaker’s account of this incident in the memoirs is drained of all content; without any mention of the nature of his questions, it becomes a long and amusing anecdote about Gardiner’s agility in evading answers. This notable gap is perhaps an indication of Diefenbaker’s subsequent unease about the attitudes of the Saskatchewan party in the late 1920s - and his own role in it.
83 The by-election result was Liberal 2764, Conservative 2705. Manitoba Free Press, October 26, 1928; Ward and Smith, Gardiner, 98; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 82
84 Quoted in Wilson, Diefenbaker, 83
85 Ward and Spafford, Politics, 114-23; Archer, Saskatchewan, 209-12
86 Wilson, Diefenbaker, 84-85
87 OC 1, 150-51. The memoirs offer two more insights into Diefenbaker’s state of mind about the Klan and its attitudes. He admits that he was once consulted briefly by J.J. Maloney about the Klan’s legal affairs; and he speculates that, if he had won the seat in 1929 and become attorney general, he probably would have supported the Conservative government’s legislation to ban a Catholic presence in public schools. “That would have been my destruction. I would have been irredeemably associated in the public mind with the religious and racial bigotry of the period.” OC 1, 151. By good fortune, he implies, his ambivalent relationship to the Klan was in fact forgotten. In an undated, tape-recorded dictation from the 1960s, Diefenbaker makes the unsubstantiated claim that “I took a strong stand against the activities of the Ku Klux Klan which at that time was flourishing and had for a year or so earlier.” “Dictation found on a tape purchased by Mr. Garnet C. King of Perth, Ontario, and presented to Mr. Diefenbaker on July 21st, 1970,” JGDP, XIV/1/A/3
88 Ward and Spafford, Politics, 120-23; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 85; Archer, Saskatchewan, 211-12
89 T.C. Davis to J.G. Gardiner, October 29, 1936, Gardiner Papers, 41289, quoted in Ward and Smith, Gardiner, 146-47
90 Wilson, Diefenbaker, 48
91 Ibid., 49
92 The Prince Albert Daily Herald reported that Cousins had died in his sleep and that “the doctor stated that death was due to natural causes, probably the result of being gassed during the war.” Daily Herald, June 9, 1927; OC 1, 137; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 65
93 An outline of Elmer’s career can be traced in the Diefenbaker Papers. One of his enterprises, for which John acted as lawyer and financial guarantor, was the Acme Storage Company. From May 1931 until January 1933 this company held a franchise as the Prince Albert beer bottle exchange. The business was a financial failure and folded in dispute among the three partners after it lost the city franchise. See JGDP, I/1/A/1, 44-84.
94 Wilson, Diefenbaker, 65
95 OC 1, 137
96 Holt, Other, 106
97 Quoted ibid., 108
98 Ibid, 109-10. Much of Holt’s information about Edna and the Diefenbaker family in this period comes from Edna’s niece Sheila Brower, who became a frequent visitor in the Diefenbaker homes from 1927 onwards and remained a close and fascinated observer of family relationships throughout her aunt’s life. In Edna’s later life she confided at length in Sheila.
99 Ibid., 111
100 Ibid.; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 69; JGD to William Diefenbaker, July 19, 1928, JGDP, V/1, 6; Holt and the Wilsons say that both William and Mary made the trip, but John’s postcard to William suggests, “You are lucky you didnt come along. Nearly froze to death last evg. Between tires and bad roads have not had such a wonderful trip.”
101 Holt, Other, 113-14
102 Quoted ibid., 117
103 See ibid., 118
104 Ibid., 119
105 Ibid., 120
106 Betty Andrews Davis, quoted ibid., 121. She was the wife of Ted Davis, the new editor of the Prince Albert Herald.
107 Ibid., 127
108 Ibid., 124-33. There is no direct evidence of the reasons why John and Edna had no children, and no basis, even, for plausible speculation. Holt intimates that John’s preoccupation with his political career meant that he would not accept the distractions of raising a family; but in the absence of firm evidence, there is no way of telling whether such suggestions on his part were statements of intention or rationalizations.
109 Wilson, Diefenbaker, 60-65; Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, September 22, 1927
110 R. v. Olson, (1929) 1 Western Weekly Reports 432, 23 Saskatchewan Law Reports 321, 51 Canadian Criminal Cases 122, (1929) Dominion Law Report 300 (CA); Wilson, Diefenbaker, 70-73
111 Wilson, Diefenbaker, 95. “One of the enduring legends of the Sask
atchewan bar,” they write, “is of E.C. Leslie, K.C., opening a case in the Court of Appeal: ‘My Lords, this is an appeal from a judgment of Mr. Justice Taylor. But there are other grounds.’ ”
112 Wilson, Diefenbaker, 100
113 Daily Herald, November 22, 1929; Star-Phoenix, March 4, 1930; JGD case notebook, JGDP, I/7, 8486-502; Diefenbaker & Elder to minister of justice, telegram, undated; undersecretary of state to John J. Diefenbaker [sic], March 4, 1930, ibid., 8560-61; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 89-109
114 R. v. Wysochan (1930) 54 Canadian Criminal Cases 172 (Sask. CA)
115 Morning Leader, March 19, 1930, quoted in Wilson, Diefenbaker, 114
116 The case is reported on the front page of the Star-Phoenix, March 21, 1930.
117 The Diefenbaker Papers contain a transcript of the appeal judgment, as well as correspondence and telegrams to the minister of justice seeking a stay of execution and petitioning for a new trial on evidence of Wysochan’s intoxication. But W.G. Elder wrote to Diefenbaker on June 17, 1930: “I have absolutely no hope whatsoever of any consideration at the hands of the Department. However, for your personal information I might say that after speaking to a great number of people … I have somewhat changed my mind in respect to the case. I don’t think that we should lose any sleep over the matter whatever.” Elder apparently accepted Wysochan’s guilt. See JGDP, I/9, 9528-31, 9535-36, 9549, 9552; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 110-24.
Chapter 3 A Provincial Life
1 Archer, Saskatchewan, 211-15; Smith, Prairie Liberalism, 195-99; Ward and Smith, Gardiner, 107-21, 143-44
2 Wilson, Diefenbaker, 125-26
3 OC 1, 156-61. In the late winter of 1930 Diefenbaker made an insurance claim seeking compensation for absence from his office from February 13 to March 13, 1930, supported by a medical certificate, on the ground that he had suffered an “attack of influenza” resulting from exposure, and noting that he had had no illness lasting more than two weeks in the previous five years. The record does not make clear whether this was the same illness Diefenbaker referred to in the memoirs, where he reported that “my haemorrhages had recurred, and the doctors ordered me to take a long rest.” JGDP, II/10/135, 8597-606; OC 1, 156
