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Contents
1 “I’m going to be prime minister!”
4 Member of Parliament
5 Leader of the Opposition
6 Prime Minister of Canada
7 Follow John!
8 Collision Course
9 “Everybody’s against me but the people.”
10 “Washed Up”
Epilogue: The Final Whistle Stop Campaign
Chronology of John George Diefenbaker (1895–1979)
Acknowledgments and Recommended Further Reading
Index
John George Diefenbaker as a child, seated, with his brother Elmer at his side. “Someday I am going to be prime minister.”
“I’m going to be prime minister!”
The Métis man with the fierce, determined eyes was known to have killed at least a dozen men during the Riel Rebellion of 1885. He sat in the Diefenbaker house, a gun at his side. He was sixty-eight years old, but his hair was dark black. It had been parted to hide the scar from a bullet that had grazed him during the rebellion.
His name was Gabriel Dumont.
Young John Diefenbaker, just eight years old, couldn’t stop staring at the stranger. John’s heart raced. He knew this guerrilla fighter had guided the Métis to victory during the Battle of Duck Lake, less than twenty years ago. That battle had been fought only a few kilometres from the Diefenbaker home, staining the snow red with blood. Prime Minister John A. Macdonald ordered General Middleton to take the Canadian army by train to the territories and end the fighting. Over five thousand soldiers descended on Batoche, with Gatling guns and cannons blazing. The Canadian army won, Dumont fled to the United States, and Louis Riel, the rebel leader, was hanged. Fifteen months later the government issued a general amnesty to all the rebels, hoping to quell feelings of anger in Quebec over Riel’s death.
Young John couldn’t believe Dumont was here – right in their house. He had stopped by for a visit while hunting game. Everything about the man was intimidating; his size, his demeanor, his dark, serious eyes. He was part of history. John didn’t know if he trusted Dumont, but he did admire him.
Dumont would be the first of many famous men whom John Diefenbaker would meet in his lifetime. In the following years, Diefenbaker grew to understand why the Riel Rebellion had been fought and recognized the problems faced by the First Nations people, the Métis, and the less fortunate in Canada. But on the day Gabriel Dumont had dropped by their home on the prairie, John was still a child. A little frightened, a little worried, but sitting on the edge of his chair ready to pick up any new revelations about Canada’s history.
William Thomas Diefenbaker, John’s father, was born in Ontario and never intended to move west. He was a short man, with a friendly face and well-trimmed mustache and the wide-eyed look of a dreamer. He also loved books and trained in Ottawa to be a teacher. His second love was politics: he spent his spare time in the House of Commons gallery watching the Canadian government in action. John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, was serving his last year in office. An election was brewing and William heard many grand speeches. “The House of Commons lived for him,” John Diefenbaker later explained, “and it lived for me when I heard him recount the events he had witnessed and stories of the parliamentary personalities he had seen.”
William began his life as a teacher and, oddly enough, one of his students was a boy named Mackenzie King, who would one day become prime minister. In 1894 William Diefenbaker married Mary Bannerman, a strong-willed, straight-backed woman of Scottish descent who was a devout Baptist.
On the 18th of September, 1895, their first son was born: John George Diefenbaker. He had clear blue eyes and soon grew an unruly mop of blonde hair (it would darken as he aged). He was a lad stuffed full of questions, eager to know everything. He could be a precocious little devil too. He enjoyed watching aristocrats from Toronto, out for a Sunday drive, pass by his home town in their newfangled electric cars. Whenever one of the untrustworthy vehicles broke down, leaving the rich men and women stuck kilometres from home in their best clothes, John would dash up and taunt them with questions like, “Do you think it will ever start again?” This led to the men yelling and stamping their feet while John ran giggling away.
Lucky for John he was not alone in his youthful adventures. His brother, Elmer, was born in 1897. Elmer was an outgoing and happy-go-lucky child, the perfect sidekick. Diefenbaker later wrote, “Our relationship over the years approached that often described but seldom encountered ideal.” In other words, they were brothers and friends.
But John had a serious side as a child too. He became acquainted with black boys who were often badly treated by others. Even at this early age John said, “The idea of the poor being treated differently, the working man being looked down upon as a digit, filled me with revulsion.”
John’s idyllic childhood was interrupted by bad news: TB. In the spring of 1903 William was diagnosed with Galloping Consumption, a type of tuberculosis that affected both lungs. He was advised to seek the healthy benefits of the dry prairie climate. William immediately secured a position in what was then part of the North-West Territories, but is today known as Saskatchewan.
When the relatives found out the Diefenbakers were leaving Ontario to live in the sticks, Mary’s brother said, “What’s the matter with you? Going to that awful country where there’s nothing but bears and Indians – they’ll kill you!” This was exactly the wrong thing to say. Mary Diefenbaker, never one to back down once a decision was made, announced they were going to go no matter what.
The Canadian prairie was still a land of homesteads and opportunities, and the trains were packed with immigrants of all nationalities hoping to get a piece of prairie farmland and make a life for themselves. The Diefenbakers could only afford colonist class, with no sleeping accommodations and no dining car. Mary had prepared for this by sending blankets and food early to the train with William, but unfortunately a railway official gave William bad directions and he stored the supplies on the wrong train. The Diefenbakers got by with the help of fellow passengers who shared their food and blankets. At night, the boys slept tied to a wooden shelf on the wall so they wouldn’t fall out.
The cramped quarters and constant jostling got on William’s nerves. Part way to the Prairies, he announced they were returning to Ontario.
Mary
