Rogue Tory

by Denis Smith

  Stursberg, Peter. Diefenbaker: Leadership Gained, 1956-62. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975

  — Diefenbaker: Leadership Lost, 1962-67. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976

  Swainson, Neil A. Conflict over the Columbia: The Canadian Background to an Historic Treaty. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1979

  Tarnopolosky, Walter Surma. The Canadian Bill of Rights. 2nd rev. ed. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1975

  Taylor, A.J.P. English History, 1914-1945. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1965

  Thompson, John Herd, and Stephen J. Randall. Canada and the United States: Ambivalent Allies. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994

  Thomson, William A.R. The Macmillan Medical Encyclopedia. New York: Macmillan, 1906, 1959

  Van Dusen, Thomas. The Chief. Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1968

  Waite, P.B. The Loner: Three Sketches of the Personal Life and Ideas of R.B. Bennett, 1870-1947. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992

  Ward, Norman. A Party Politician: The Memoirs of Chubby Power. Toronto: Macmillan, 1966

  Ward, Norman, and David Smith. Jimmy Gardiner: Relentless Liberal. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990

  Ward, Norman, and Duff Spafford, eds. Politics in Saskatchewan. Toronto: Longmans Canada, 1968

  Whitaker, Reginald. The Government Party: Organizing and Financing the Liberal Party of Canada, 1930-58. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977

  Whitaker, Reginald, and Gary Marcuse. Cold War Canada: The Making of a National Insecurity State, 1945-1957. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994

  Williams, John R. The Conservative Party of Canada, 1920-1949. Durham: Duke University Press, 1956

  Wilson, Garrett, and Kevin Wilson. Diefenbaker for the Defence. Toronto: James Lorimer, 1988

  Theses

  Belliveau, Robert M. “Mr. Diefenbaker, Parliamentary Democracy and the Canadian Bill of Rights.” MA thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 1992

  Calderwood, William. “The Rise and Fall of the Ku Klux Klan in Saskatchewan.” MA thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 1968

  Gingrich, Stephen K. “Defence Production Sharing and Canada and the United States, 1957-1967.” MA thesis, University of Western Ontario, 1990

  Halabura, Gerald M. “Diefenbaker and Electoral Redistribution: Principle or Pragmatism?” MA thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 1992

  Acknowledgments

  This book had a long genesis. My father introduced me briefly to John Diefenbaker at a meeting of the Canadian Bar Association in Winnipeg in August 1942, and from then on I was aware of the activities of the MP for Lake Centre, Saskatchewan, as his parliamentary reputation grew on the prairies. By 1957, when he came to power, I was certain his life would offer rich material for inquiry. In that era of reawakened political interest, I watched his rise and fall with fascination.

  I am grateful to Donald Creighton for setting the modern standard of Canadian political biography. His John A. Macdonald was published in the mid-1950s at the right moment to influence John Diefenbaker’s vision of Canada and my interest in the biographical art.

  In 1967, when Diefenbaker seemed on the point of retirement as leader of his party, I made known to him my interest in writing about his life and career. For three years after that, in extended personal interviews, negotiation, and ventures into his papers, I received a close education in his character which was later valuable in seeking to portray him. In 1970 - failing any agreement on the use of materials from his papers - this early project was abandoned. I doubted that I would return to it.

  Almost twenty years later, the Diefenbaker Centre and the National Archives were well advanced in organizing the mass of the Diefenbaker Papers, but no one had yet ventured on a biography. I was drawn back to the subject, and with support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada I began work on this book in 1989.

  Over that long journey, I am obliged to many persons for support. In my research and interviews in 1969 and 1970 I was joined by W.F.W. Neville, with assistance from John O. Stubbs, Colin Wright, Arlene Davis, and Fran Cormode. I benefited from frequent discussion of the Diefenbaker government and its successors with Bernard Blishen, David Cameron, Bruce Hodgins, David Kettler, W.L. Morton, David Morrison, Joe Wearing, and Alan Wilson. T.H.B. Symons, president of Trent University, and T.E.W. Nind, dean of arts and science, gave their encouragement, as did John Gray and Diane Mew of the Macmillan Company of Canada. Dalton Camp gave generous interviews during his year as Skelton-Clark Fellow at Queen’s University. John Diefenbaker’s staff or former staff - Bunny Pound, Betty Eligh, Marion Wagner, Gerry Haslam, and Keith Martin - offered helpful insights about the Chief. Bill Neville and Colin Wright interviewed Gordon Churchill, Clark Davey, Peter Dempson, Norman DePoe, and Robert Blackwood, and made their interviews available to me. By the time I returned to the subject in 1989, I had moved to the University of Western Ontario, and I am grateful for advice and comment from Jack Hyatt, Don Avery, John McDougall, and Clark Leith, and for research assistance from Alison Bramwell and Tom Saunders. At the Diefenbaker Centre I found skilled support and help from the successive directors, John A. Munro, Elizabeth Diamond, Stan Hanson, and Bruce Shephard; from the archivists Steve Billinton, Fiona Haynes, and Joan Champ; from archival assistants Naoise Johnston and Chris Kitzan and research clerical assistants Katie Andrews and Michael St Denis; and from Centre staff members Helen Aikenhead and Pat St Louis. John Courtney, Gay and Fred Forster, David Smith, and Duff Spafford provided hospitality and helpful advice in Saskatoon. Robert K. Webb acted as my American intermediary in seeking mandatory review of documents at the Kennedy Library, and Suzanne Forbes was helpful there. The archival staff of the National Archives of Canada - particularly John Bell, Loretta Barber, and Bill Wood - were unfailingly obliging, as were archivists at the Queen’s University Archives, the US National Archives, the Public Record Office at Kew, and the University of Calgary Archives.

  For the use of papers and/or comment on the Diefenbaker period, I am grateful to Agar Adamson, Anthony Adamson, Blair Adamson, Ruth Bell, Admiral Jeffry V. Brock, George and Sheila Connell, John English, Davie Fulton, Eddie Goodman, Gowan Guest, Douglas Harkness, Clyne Harradence, Dr J.F. Leddy, Cynthia McCormack, Flora MacDonald, Brian McGarry, Desmond Morton, Peter Roberts, Basil Robinson, Benjamin Rogers, and Carolyn Weir. Many others volunteered their memories of encounters with John Diefenbaker in tones of affection, puzzlement, or sometimes outrage. For various acts of assistance I am grateful to Stevie Cameron, Stephen Clarkson, Margaret Doxey, John Gray, Jack McLeod, Bill Montgomery, and Mayling and John Stubbs. Bella Pomer has given wise professional counsel, Jan Walter has been a superb editor, and Rosemary Shipton an exemplary copy editor. My son, Stephen, has been a constant source of literary inspiration; and my wife, Dawn, as always, has given endless encouragement and advice as first reader and discerning critic. I am grateful to all of them.

  DS

  Port Hope, Ontario August 1995

  Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to quote copyright material published by the following:

  Deneau and Greenberg, for an extract from Points of Departure (1979), by Dalton Camp;

  Doubleday, for extracts from The Other Mrs. Diefenbaker (1982), by Simma Holt;

  General Publishing, for an extract from Assignment Ottawa: Seventeen Years in the Press Gallery (1968), by Peter Dempson;

  Key Porter, for extracts from Life of the Party: The Memoirs of Eddie Goodman (1988), by Eddie Goodman;

  Longman, for extracts from The Party’s Over (1971), by James Johnston, and Vision and Indecision (1968), by Patrick Nicholson;

  James Lorimer, for extracts from Diefenbaker for the Defence (1988), by Garrett and Kevin Wilson;

  McClelland & Stewart, for extracts from Gentlemen, Players & Politicians (1970), by Dalton Camp; So Very Near: The Political Memoirs of Honourable Donald M. Fleming (1985), by Donald Fleming; Kennedy and Diefenbaker: Fear and Loathing across the Unde
fended Border (1990), by Knowlton Nash; Renegade in Power: The Diefenbaker Years (1989) and The Distemper of Our Times (1978), by Peter C. Newman; and This Game of Politics (1965), by Pierre Sévigny;

  Macmillan, for extracts from One Canada: Memoirs of the Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker (1975, 1976, 1977), by John G. Diefenbaker;

  Prentice-Hall, for an extract from Canadian Foreign Policy: Selected Cases (1992), ed. by Don Munton and John Kirton;

  University of Toronto Press, for extracts from The Politics of Survival: The Conservative Party of Canada, 1939-1945 (1967), by J. L. Granatstein; The Mackenzie King Record, vol. 1 (1960), ed. by J. W. Pickersgill; Shades of Right: Nativist and Fascist Politics in Canada, 1920-1940 (1992), by Martin Robin; Diefenbaker’s World: A Populist in Foreign Affairs (1989), by Basil Robinson; and Diefenbaker: Leadership Gained, 1956- 62 (1975), by Peter Stursberg.