by Denis Smith
136 Edna Diefenbaker to JGD (undated), JGDP, V/10, 7077-85
137 Bruce makes reference to Edna’s illness and her presence at Guelph in letters to Diefenbaker on January 10, February 21, and April 5, 1946. The originals do not appear in the Diefenbaker Papers, but copies can be found in the Bruce Papers. Bruce’s interest was prompted both by his friendship with Diefenbaker and by his role as an informal medical adviser.
138 Dr Goldwin W. Howland to JGD, February 27, 1946; The Homewood Sanitarium to JGD, March 31, 1946, JGDP, V/10, 9145, 9151; H.A. Bruce to JGD, April 5, 1946; H.A. Bruce to Miss Gladys Dudley, April 10, 1946, Bruce Papers; Holt, Other, 261. The Diefenbaker Papers do not reveal who authorized the use of ECT, or even whether specific consent was sought. Edna’s letter (quoted above) seems to suggest her willingness to receive shock therapy as a means of escaping from hospital. Dr Howland wrote in February 1946 that “she is getting her own way” in receiving the treatments, but added that “I, personally, am pleased she is going to take them … the main hope is in shock treatment.” The treatment was bound to be frightening for the patient, and probably a matter of confusion for a medical layman like her husband.
The accounts for Edna’s six months in Homewood Sanitarium amounted to $8.50 per day for regular care and treatment, plus sundry personal expenses, plus $37.50 for electro shock treatment. At an estimated $300 per month, the bills reached close to $2000.
139 Dr Glen Green, JGDP, XVIII/OH/37, February 20, 1986
140 The McGregor quotation is from Holt, Other, 265-66.
Chapter 5 New Name, Old Party
1 Diefenbaker had known Bracken since his own first year at the University of Saskatchewan in 1912, when Bracken had joined the faculty briefly as professor of field husbandry. Diefenbaker recalled in his memoirs: “I followed his career. I watched him on the stump; he had an amazing capacity for meeting people. I do not think I have ever known anyone more effective with a farm audience. He understood their problems, and the farmers knew it. No one in public life knew more about agriculture, both theoretical and practical. John Bracken was a man of good character; his word was his bond. He was also blessed with a wonderful wife who ably assisted him through his years of public service.” OC 1, 256. But privately, in retrospect, Diefenbaker’s memories were less generous, hinting at a long memory of grievance from the period of Bracken’s choice as leader.
2 The occasion referred to was apparently at Manitou Beach, Watrous, on August 7, 1943. In the memoirs Diefenbaker mistakenly identifies the location as “a small town between Regina and Moose Jaw.” The meeting was widely advertised, but there seemed to be no newspaper reports of the incident. OC 1, 256; M.L. Hargreaves to JGD, August 26, 1943, and enclosures, JGDP, III/13/147, 9139-43
3 Pickersgill, Mackenzie King Record 1, 478
4 Granatstein, Survival, 155-58
5 Ibid., 165-67. The members of the proposed national organization committee were to be Henry Borden as chairman, J.H. Gundy (who was already Bracken’s finance chairman), E.W. Bickle (Drew’s fundraiser), James S. Duncan, Alex McKenzie (Drew’s chief organizer), and Richard Bell.
6 Richard Bell, “Problems of Organization,” nd [1944], quoted in Granatstein, Survival, 159
7 Pickersgill, Mackenzie King Record 1, 564-603, 630-36; Granatstein, Survival, 163-65; Granatstein, Canada’s War, 249-93
8 Granatstein, Canada’s War, 276
9 House of Commons, Debates, February 4, 1944, 188
10 OC 1, 152-53
11 Diary, July 26, 1944, Adamson Papers
12 Debates, July 27, 1944, 5460
13 Diary, July 27, 1944, Adamson Papers
14 Herbert Bruce’s comment about a bribe was judged unparliamentary by the Speaker, and when Bruce refused to withdraw the charge, he was named and suspended from the House for the day. Debates, July 31, 1944, 5677; H.A. Bruce to Gordon Graydon, July 20, 1944, Bruce Papers; Toronto Globe and Mail, August 10, 1944; Granatstein, Survival, 169
15 Debates, July 28, 1944, 5527-28
16 Quoted in Granatstein, Survival, 173
17 Debates, February 10, 1944, 365
18 Ibid., July 10, 1944, 4668
19 Granatstein, Survival, 177-78
20 Diary, July 24, 1944, Adamson Papers
21 Debates, July 10, 1944, 4672-73. Diefenbaker’s speech appears in the Debates, July 10, 1944, 4667-72.
22 Ibid., July 10, 1944, 4673
23 The complex story of the conscription crisis is told, inter alia, in Dawson, Conscription; Stacey, Arms; Ward, Party Politician; Pickersgill and Forster, Mackenzie King Record 2.
24 Ward, Party Politician, 170
25 Debates, November 23 and December 5, 1944, 6539-43, 6805-10. Diefenbaker shared the party’s view that conscription should apply to Pacific as well as European service. But by the time of the June 1945 general election, with the European war at an end, his keenness on compulsory assignment in the Pacific theatre had cooled to match the sentiments of prairie voters. He wrote in his memoirs that 7000 envelopes containing “highly decorative literature for distribution in my constituency,” calling for the transfer of Canada’s European forces to the Pacific, were summarily destroyed as soon as he had read the message. OC 1, 258-59
26 Granatstein, Survival, 183-84; Canada’s War, 389-94
27 Granatstein, Canada’s War, 404
28 Mackenzie King to the People, 126, quoted in Granatstein, Canada’s War, 408
29 Quoted in Williams, Conservative Party, 169
30 Quoted in Granatstein, Canada’s War, 405
31 Some of his campaign material mentions that he had seconded a House motion to make all home service conscripts available for Pacific service. OC 1, 258-59; JGDI, August 14, 1969; Typescript, “May I review some salient matters …” undated, JGDP, III/45/498, 35395
32 A handwritten memo on “the Elbow Dam,” apparently in Elmer’s handwriting, proposes a slightly different slogan: “It will be a dam site surer and sooner, if you re-elect John Diefenbaker.” OC 1, 260-61; JGDI, August 14, 1969; Memo, “Publish an elaborate pamphlet …” undated, JGDP, III/84/1048, 67001-04
33 Diefenbaker received financial support for his campaign from his friends David Walker and Bill Brunt in Toronto and Mickey O’Brien in Vancouver. Walker was especially helpful, providing a cheque for $1000 and covering the cost of Diefenbaker’s recorded radio addresses. J.F. Anderson to JGD, May 21, 1945; “List of meetings to be held week of May 28th, 1945”; “Week of June 4th/45”; Notice of radio addresses, May-June 1945; David J. Walker to JGD, May 31, 1945; Memo, “Cheques handed by Mr. Diefenbaker to his Official Agent, August 3, 1945,” JGDP, III/45/498, 35408-09, 35424, 35434, 35401, 35426, 35439
34 Pickersgill and Forster, Mackenzie King Record 2, 399
35 OC 1, 263
36 Public Opinion Quarterly 9 (summer 1945): 234
37 Williams, Conservative Party, 169-70, 199; Granatstein, Canada’s War, 409-10; OC 1, 260-63
38 OC 1, 263
39 Fleming, Near 1, 107-08, 111-12, 135. Fleming himself was a vain and ambitious MP, but he was also an accurate witness who could honestly report in his memoirs that caucus members described him as an “Eager Beaver” because of his capacity for work and his tenacity in debate.
40 Fulton interview, September 24, 1993
41 See my Diplomacy, 129-30.
42 Pickersgill, Mackenzie King Record 3, 136. These events are treated at length in the King diaries and in my Diplomacy, 94-136.
43 Debates, March 21, 1946, 135-40
44 Ibid., March 21, 1946, 137-38
45 Pickersgill, Mackenzie King Record 3, 156-57; Smith, Diplomacy, 135
46 Debates, April 2, 1946, 510-11. The bill was the product of a compromise in the Liberal cabinet, fashioned by Mackenzie King and Paul Martin, which established Canadian citizenship but maintained that “a Canadian citizen is a British subject.” That offended some nationalists, both French- and English-speaking, but was necessary to assure the support of many Liberals. Diefenbaker critici
zed the bill for requiring that British and Commonwealth immigrants would have to apply for citizenship through citizenship courts like all other immigrants, and Martin subsequently altered the draft to allow British subjects to file directly for citizenship with the secretary of state. See Martin, Very Public 1, 445-53.
47 Debates, April 2, 1946, 511. Diefenbaker’s phrase, “unhyphenated Canadians,” probably had an American source as well. Decades before, Woodrow Wilson had attacked immigrants as “hyphenated Americans”; and in the 1920 presidential campaign, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Franklin Roosevelt, had appealed to xenophobic voters with the claim that his party wanted “all-American votes only.” Roosevelt’s family was already long enough established in America to remove him from the hyphenated class. See Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt 1, 280.
48 Debates, May 3, 1946, 1177. Despite suggestions in his memoirs that he had been an advocate of the Japanese Canadians in the House during their wartime internment, this appears to be the first parliamentary reference Diefenbaker made to their plight. His postwar intervention was less troublesome in caucus than it would have been in wartime, when west coast MPs were fanatically committed to expulsion and internment; but Diefenbaker was careful to limit his protest at this time to the government’s attempt to arrange deportations. Nevertheless, even in 1946 members of the Conservative caucus from British Columbia, including Davie Fulton, took a less critical position.
49 Debates, May 6, 1946, 1310-14
50 Ibid., May 6, 1946, 1311; Martin, Very Public 1, 450-51
51 Debates, May 6, 1946, 1311-12
52 Globe and Mail, May 10, 1946; Winnipeg Free Press, May 20, 1946; Martin, Very Public 1, 448-51. Diefenbaker persisted at third reading of the citizenship bill by seeking to attach another amendment requiring a House of Commons resolution favouring a bill of rights, to be examined by a select committee “properly representative of the entire population of Canada.” The proposed amendment was ruled out of order by the Speaker, a ruling sustained on Diefenbaker’s appeal to the House. Debates, May 16, 1946, 1575-79
53 See Berger, Fragile Freedoms, 170-75.
54 Debates, May 16, 1947, 3148-49
55 Ibid., May 16, 1947, 3149-59
56 Ibid., 3158-59
57 “The Week on Parliament Hill,” May 20, 1947, JGDP, III/66, 52755-56
58 Elmer Diefenbaker to JGD, May 24, 1947, JGDP, III/3/29.5, 1472-76, esp. 1472-73. Elmer continued the letter with a three-page description of his latest venture as salesman for a pipe with a built-in lighter, previously unknown in Saskatchewan. “Once it catches on it will move,” he assured John, although “I went out with it yesterday but had trouble making appointments, but those who saw it really talked.” He was also selling wagons and kiddy cars, thanks to an agency arranged by Bill Brunt which “has great possibilities.”
59 JGD to Glen How, July 14, 1947; JGD to H.R. Harrison, August 5, 1947, JGDP, III/3/29.5, 1558, 1556; Belliveau, “Diefenbaker,” 51-55
60 The committee did, however, recommend that the existing limitation on appeals to the Supreme Court of Canada requiring that cases must involve monetary disputes should be removed. Diefenbaker believed that this change would mean that the “need for a bill of rights while not remote would be materially reduced.”JGD to H.R. Harrison, August 29, 1952, JGDP, III/4/29.11, 2366; Belliveau, “Diefenbaker,” 54-55
61 These included A.R.M. Lower, F.R. Scott, and Eugene Forsey. They differed, however, over whether a federal statute would be sufficient, and whether it would apply to provincial as well as federal actions.
62 Belliveau, “Diefenbaker,” 59. This is the form that Diefenbaker’s bill took, when it became law ten years later.
63 Debates, July 10, 1946, 3328-29
64 Ibid., 3328
65 OC 1, 240-47
66 See Ward and Smith, Gardiner, 284-86.
67 OC 1, 261-2. Diefenbaker mistakenly suggests that Gardiner was responsible for a small revision of constituency boundaries before the 1945 general election, intended to ensure his defeat in that election. But that change actually occurred as part of the major readjustment of 1947, described by Diefenbaker as a “Jimmymander.”
68 Boundary adjustments were also made, it appeared, to reduce electoral prospects for four other prominent Conservatives: Davie Fulton in British Columbia, John Bracken in Manitoba, J.M. Macdonnell in Ontario, and George Black in the Yukon. Black did not contest the 1949 election, while Bracken and Macdonnell were defeated.
69 Debates, July 14, 1947, 5598-99
70 Ibid., July 15, 1947, 5667
71 Ibid., 5669-70. Diefenbaker was defensive when asked why he had signed the subcommittee report recommending the boundary changes. “There is a fine question,” he replied, “I have heard that before. It was once raised as a defence by a highwayman who stuck a gun into the face of a victim and said, ‘Your money or your life’; and then afterwards said, when charged, ‘Why did he consent?’ ” The subcommittee, he suggested, had responded to some of his complaints and threatened that it would revert to the original scheme if he did not sign; so he did. Ibid., July 14, 15, 1947, 5600, 5646-47, 5664-67
72 The Conservatives had conducted their own gerrymander in 1932, as Diefenbaker pointed out, when Mackenzie King’s Prince Albert boundaries had been altered by the Conservative majority. King had pleaded with Prime Minister Bennett for fairness then, just as Diefenbaker did with King now. Ibid., July 15, 1947, 5643-45, 5667-69
73 Holt heard the account of Diefenbaker’s apology from Walter Tucker. Holt, Other, 279
74 OC 1, 262
75 See, for example, Hugh C. Farthing to H.A. Bruce, July 29, 1948; H.A. Bruce to Hugh C. Farthing, August 10, 1948, Bruce Papers. On Bracken’s decision to resign, see also Perlin, Tory Syndrome, 64; Fraser, “Blair Fraser Reports”, 14-16.
76 JGD to David J. Walker, July 13, 1948, JGDP, III/72, 58673-74. Diefenbaker’s isolation in the caucus is reflected in this comment. He seemed to know nothing of the advice to retire then being offered to Bracken by Davie Fulton, Richard Bell, and J.M. Macdonnell. See Fraser, “ Blair Fraser Reports ”, 14-16.
77 JGD to M.J. O’Brien, July 23, 1948; JGD to David Walker, August 4, 1948, JGDP, III/73, 58699, 58722
78 JGD to David Walker, August 28, 1948, ibid., 58843
79 JGD to J.F. Anderson, September 16, 1948, ibid., 58996
80 JGD to J.F. Anderson, September 16, 1948, ibid., 58996; Hugh C. Farthing to H.A. Bruce, September 10, 1948, Bruce Papers
81 JGD to J.F. Anderson, July 30, 1948, JGDP, III/73, 58717
82 Hugh C. Farthing to H.A. Bruce, September 10, 1948, Bruce Papers
83 David Walker to JGD, August 13, 1948, JGDP, III/75, 60565
84 Globe and Mail, September 11, 1948. Parliament had recently adopted the Combines Investigation Act, which Diefenbaker had criticized for what he saw as its excessively lenient penalties for corporate lawbreakers.
85 Toronto Star, August 31, 1948
86 Globe and Mail, September 14, 1948
87 Toronto Star, September 21, 1948
88 Globe and Mail, September 18, 1948
89 Ibid.
90 R.J. Gratrix to W.R. Brunt, August 31, 1948; JGD to Mary F. Diefenbaker, September 17, 1948, JGDP, III/73, 58890; V, 419-20
91 David J. Walker, quoted in the Toronto Star, September 17, 1948
92 Globe and Mail, September 18, 1948. In the following days there were press reports that two pro-Diefenbaker delegates had been omitted from the Ontario list of delegates-at-large. But Diefenbaker himself took the high road and “dissociated himself from charges that the convention was being ‘fixed.’ ” Globe and Mail, September 20, 1948. In retrospect, Diefenbaker charged that the national director of the party, Richard Bell, had acted improperly in selecting delegates-at-large: “His attitude to me in the forty-eight convention in the choice of delegates was just unbelievable, totally biased, prejudiced and without any compunction as to the need of maintaining reasonable fairness.” JGDI, August 14, 1969. In his memoir
s, Diefenbaker suggested that the convention organizers were “one hundred per cent dedicated to ensuring that Drew would be the Leader,” and that delegates-at-large were selected solely to assure Drew’s victory. “Anyone suspected of supporting me was removed from the list of authorized delegates-at-large. For that purpose, there were people stationed outside my hotel suite taking down the names of my visitors. This created needless bad feelings between my supporters and Drew’s.” OC 1, 267. There were 311 delegates-at-large, 237 ex officio delegates, and 765 riding delegates named to the convention. “Proposed Rules for the Conduct of the Election of Leader - Progressive Conservative National Convention – 1948,” JGDP, III/73, 59540-43
93 Toronto Star, September 24, 1948; Ottawa Citizen, October 1, 1948
94 Toronto Star, September 29, 30, 1948
95 Ibid., September 25, 1948
96 Ibid., September 29, 1948
