John George Diefenbaker
| John George Diefenbaker | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1895-09-18 Neustadt, Ontario |
| Died | 1979-08-16 Ottawa, Ontario |
| Occupation | Lawyer; Prime Minister of Canada |
| Father | |
| Mother | |
| Partner | |
John George Diefenbaker (18 September 1895 – 16 August 1979 (aged 83)) was a Canadian criminal defence lawyer and Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of Canada from 1957 to 1963.[1]
Early life
Diefenbaker was born on 18 September 1895 in Neustadt, Ontario, the son of William Thomas Diefenbaker, a schoolteacher, and Mary Florence Bannerman. His family background combined dispossessed Scottish Highlanders on his mother's side — her grandparents had been displaced during the Sutherland clearances of 1811–12 and had settled at Lord Selkirk's Red River settlement before relocating to Bruce County, Ontario — and Palatine German immigrants on his father's side, his paternal grandfather George M. Diefenbaker having emigrated from Baden, Germany in the 1850s to work as a wagon maker.[1]
William Diefenbaker's teaching career took the family through postings in Greenwood and Todmorden. In 1903 the family moved to the Tiefengrund Public School District near Fort Carlton, Saskatchewan, where they lived in primitive quarters attached to the schoolhouse. In December 1904 William claimed a homestead near Borden, Saskatchewan, finally occupying it in the summer of 1906. After three harsh homesteading winters, the family relocated to Saskatoon in 1910, where William secured work as a provincial public service clerk and later as a customs inspector from 1911 to 1937.[1]
Education and military service
Diefenbaker attended Saskatoon Collegiate Institute and enrolled at the University of Saskatchewan in the autumn of 1912 to study arts and law. He received his BA in the spring of 1915 and began graduate work in political science and economics. In March 1916 he enlisted for officers' training, was commissioned as a lieutenant, and sailed for England in September 1916 as a member of the 196th (Western Universities) Battalion. He spent the autumn of 1916 at English camps before being found medically unfit for front-line service in February 1917 and returned to Canada. He was demobilized in December 1917 and was denied a disability pension; official records cited "general weakness," though he later attributed the injury to a pickaxe accident.[1]
Returning to Saskatoon, Diefenbaker articled at three law firms during 1918–19 while attending university law classes. He obtained his LLB in May 1919, was granted a two-year articling exemption by the Law Society of Saskatchewan on account of his veteran status, and was called to the bar in June 1919.[1]
Legal career
Diefenbaker opened his first law office in Wakaw, a thriving market town of about 400 residents forty miles north of Saskatoon, with a mixed European immigrant population. His first notable case in October 1919 involved a careless wounding charge; he successfully argued the shooting had occurred in fading evening light. Within a year he had expanded to larger offices and had purchased a car.[1]
He won early prominence defending French-speaking school trustees in May 1922 against alleged violations of the School Act regarding French-language instruction. Although the court found violations had occurred, Diefenbaker won on appeal on the technical ground that the trustees bore no responsibility for the school's internal operations. The Association Catholique Franco-Canadienne de la Saskatchewan paid his fees, establishing his reputation as a defender of minority rights.[1]
His criminal defence work made him well known in Saskatchewan. He built his courtroom reputation through a powerful voice, a penetrating manner, and a command of evidence, and he identified strongly with clients he regarded as dispossessed or marginalized. In 1924 he partnered with Alexander Ehman in Wakaw and relocated his main practice to Prince Albert, closing the Wakaw branch in 1929. He was named KC on 1 January 1930.[1]
Notable murder cases in which he acted for the defence during the late 1920s and 1930s included The King v. Bourdon (1927, not guilty), The King v. Olson (1928, appeal successful, sentence commuted to life), The King v. Pasowesty (sentence commuted to life), The King v. Wysochan (1930, convicted, appeal dismissed, hanged June 1930), The King v. Bajer (young woman acquitted of infanticide), The King v. Bohun (convicted, hanged March 1934 despite a clemency recommendation), The King v. Fouquette (Crown stayed charges), and The King v. Harms (murder conviction appealed; second trial resulted in a manslaughter conviction and a fifteen-year sentence).[1]
Political career
Early campaigns (1925–1940)
Diefenbaker's political ambitions took shape in the mid-1920s. He ran unsuccessfully as the Conservative candidate in the Prince Albert federal riding in the 1925 general election and again in 1926, when he faced sitting Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, who had taken the seat after losing elsewhere. Both times he was defeated, but he attracted national attention as a campaigner.[1]
He was elected Saskatchewan Conservative Party leader in October 1936, a period when the party had no seats in the provincial legislature. Running in the June 1938 provincial election, he led a campaign calling for farm debt adjustment, crop insurance, and public health insurance, but the Conservatives remained marginal and he retained the leadership by default. He was finally elected to the federal House of Commons in March 1940, winning the Lake Centre riding by a narrow margin after five successive electoral defeats. He never lost another election.[1]
Parliamentary opposition (1940–1957)
As one of forty Conservatives in the wartime parliament, Diefenbaker quickly established himself as an effective opposition critic, emphasizing civil liberties and parliamentary scrutiny. He ran for the national party leadership in 1942, finishing a respectable third, and again in 1948, losing to Ontario Premier George Alexander Drew on the first ballot. Throughout these years he championed a Canadian bill of rights and spoke frequently about building "an unhyphenated nation" in which citizens of diverse origins and religions would be regarded equally under the law.[1]
In February 1951 his first wife Edna Mae Brower, whom he had married in Toronto on 29 June 1929, died of acute leukaemia. Two years later, on 8 December 1953 in Toronto, he married Olive Evangeline Palmer, a senior Ontario Department of Education civil servant and childhood acquaintance, who became a steady personal and political support throughout his subsequent career.[1]
Prime Minister (1957–1963)
Diefenbaker won the federal Conservative leadership in December 1956 after Drew resigned due to ill health. In the June 1957 federal election his party won a surprise minority victory, and he took office on 17 June 1957. Among the cabinet appointments he made was Ellen Louks Fairclough, who became the first woman to hold a federal cabinet position in Canada, serving as Secretary of State.[1]
In the March 1958 election, Diefenbaker campaigned on a "Vision" of national development, particularly in the north and Atlantic provinces, and won an extraordinary majority of 208 of 265 seats, including 50 in Quebec. His government enacted significant legislation, including a Canadian Bill of Rights unanimously adopted by parliament in August 1960, which he regarded as his most important achievement. The federal franchise was extended to the aboriginal population in 1960. His government also oversaw the cancellation in February 1959 of the CF-105 Avro Arrow aircraft program, a decision that remained deeply controversial.[1]
In defence policy, Diefenbaker's government committed Canada in July 1957 to the integrated North American Air Defence Agreement and agreed to site two Bomarc anti-aircraft missile bases in Ontario and Quebec, with the understanding they would eventually be armed with nuclear warheads. His subsequent reluctance to accept nuclear warheads under US dual-control arrangements became a source of escalating tension with the Kennedy administration, ultimately contributing to the government's fall. The relationship with Washington deteriorated sharply after Kennedy took office in 1961; Diefenbaker's government also drew criticism for its opposition to Britain's application to join the European Economic Community.[1]
At the 1961 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' meeting, Diefenbaker took a prominent role in the question of South Africa's continuing membership following the Sharpeville disorders of 1960, ultimately siding with non-white Commonwealth leaders in opposing South African readmission without a racial equality commitment. South Africa withdrew its application, and Diefenbaker received wide recognition for his stance.[1]
By 1962 the government faced a monetary crisis, rising unemployment, and growing cabinet disarray. In the June 1962 election the Conservatives were reduced to a minority of 116 seats. The Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 deepened divisions when Diefenbaker responded hesitantly to the Kennedy administration's call for allied solidarity. Defence Minister Douglas Harkness resigned over the nuclear warhead issue, and on 5 February 1963 the government was defeated in the House of Commons. In the subsequent April 1963 election Diefenbaker fought a vigorous but unsuccessful campaign; Lester B. Pearson's Liberals formed a minority government and took office on 22 April 1963.[1]
Leader of the opposition (1963–1967)
Diefenbaker led the opposition for three and a half years under sustained pressure from within his own party. He delayed adoption of the new Canadian maple leaf flag for eight months in 1964, and in the November 1965 election he again deprived Pearson of the majority government the Liberals sought. In 1966 a judicial inquiry into the Munsinger affair examined the security conduct of his government; the inquiry's final report censured him for not dismissing associate Defence Minister Pierre Sévigny after learning of his liaison with Gerda Munsinger, who was believed to be a Soviet agent, though no security breach was found.[1]
In September 1967 Diefenbaker stood for re-election as party leader at the Conservative leadership convention, opposing a resolution that characterized Canada as having "two founding peoples." He argued the formulation would place Canadians of neither British nor French origin in a secondary position, consistent with his lifelong advocacy for equal citizenship regardless of ethnic origin. He finished fifth on the first ballot; Robert Stanfield won the leadership on the fourth ballot.[1]
Later life
Diefenbaker remained a member of parliament through four more general elections (1968, 1972, 1974, and 1979) and continued as a prominent backbench presence until his death. In 1976 he was appointed to the Order of the Companions of Honour and travelled to Windsor Castle for the investiture. He published three volumes of memoirs in the mid-1970s.[1]
Death
Diefenbaker died on 16 August 1979 in Ottawa following a period of ill health. He received one of the most elaborate state funerals in Canadian history: his coffin lay in the parliamentary hall of honour for three days before a ceremonial procession to Christ Church Cathedral for an interfaith service. A funeral train carried his coffin and over a hundred passengers westward to Prince Albert and Saskatoon, stopping at communities along the route. He was buried on the bluffs above the South Saskatchewan River, beside what is now the Diefenbaker Canada Centre on the grounds of the University of Saskatchewan. His second wife Olive, who had predeceased him, was reinterred beside him. Joe Clark, then Prime Minister, delivered the graveside eulogy, describing Diefenbaker as "the great populist of Canadian politics . . . an indomitable man, born to a minority group, raised in a minority region, leader of a minority party, who went on to change the very nature of this nation permanently."[1]
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 Denis Smith."Denis Smith, "Diefenbaker, John George," Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 20."[website].Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 20 (University of Toronto/Université Laval).2005.University of Toronto/Université Laval.Link.(Rights: copyrighted | Access: open)