office door on the second floor of the red brick Bank d’Hochelaga building on Second Avenue read: John G. Diefenbaker Law Office – Walk In. Inside were two used bookcases, a gooseneck lamp, and an oversized desk. Looming behind that desk was John Diefenbaker, now a seasoned veteran of the daily battles in court.
He took on any case that came his way: bad debts, estates, minor thefts, assault, insurance claims, and slander. Not all as exciting as defending someone against a charge of murder, but he was in a city now. Residents of Prince Albert soon grew accustomed to seeing a confident young lawyer in a three-piece suit striding up and down the streets, or driving his 1927 Chrysler Sedan.
He did make enemies. T.C. Davis, who was a Liberal, the attorney general of the province, and the owner of the Prince Albert Herald, didn’t much like Diefenbaker, especially because of Diefenbaker’s support of the Conservative party. In fact, when Diefenbaker’s court cases were written up in the Herald, Diefenbaker discovered the reporters wouldn’t mention his name; they just called him “a lawyer from Prince Albert.” Clients came to him anyway, despite the lack of press.
A slight, pretty young schoolteacher stood on a train platform in Saskatoon. Red hair. A fashionable dress. A light laugh. It was enough to make a young man fall in love.
That’s exactly what happened to John. John was introduced to Edna May Brower through his brother. Edna was a “flapper,” a term used at the time to describe a woman who was free-willed and unconventional. She wore the latest fashions and loved social events, and though she was engaged to a Langham farmer, she soon only had eyes for John. As one friend explained it, Edna’s photograph album, which was filled with pictures of Edna with other men, eventually only had pictures of her and John, swimming, laughing, and picnicking together.
Not everyone saw why these two opposites were attracted to each other. A teaching colleague, Molly Connell, recalled: “His eyes, they just bored right through you. They were like steel; hard eyes. There was never any tenderness or warmth about John Diefenbaker. I felt it then, but one does not say that to a good friend who may be in love with him.”
There were others who also didn’t understand, but the couple grew closer and closer together.
On a still summer night, John and Edna are alone in the moonlight. They sit with hands entwined. Here is a woman he can trust. In his quietest voice he whispers about how awkward he feels in public and tells her of his wish to become prime minister, because it is “more than a goal; it is my destiny.”
Like John’s mother so many years before, Edna does not laugh. She looks at this man who is a hawk in court but a wallflower in social situations. She sees the ambition in his eyes. Desire. She knows it will be hard to teach him how to relax in public. To remember people’s names. But she is a good teacher. They begin discussing how this goal can be accomplished.
In the spring of 1929 in Walmer Road Baptist Church in Toronto, John George Diefenbaker and Edna May Brower were married. The wedding was in Toronto because that was where Edna’s brother’s lived.
John suddenly emerged from his shell. At the reception he moved through the crowd with Edna, talking, joking, shaking hands and hugging her. Not a trace of aloofness. Not even an awkward moment. And to top it all off, he even danced with Edna.
That put to rest the gossip that she had chosen a dud.
They returned to Prince Albert and John continued his career. But with the support of his wife, he was a stronger man.
And his legal practice had grown by leaps and bounds. He now employed two lawyers and eight secretaries and had a yearly take-home pay of $4573.00. He was one of Saskatchewan’s most prosperous lawyers.
A shotgun blast in the middle of the day. Nick Pasowesty, a successful farmer, was murdered on his own land. No one knew who pulled the trigger, but an RCMP investigation found the family weapon that fired the shell and discovered that Pasowesty was highly disliked by his neighbor and had a rather rocky relationship with his third wife, Annie. The Mounties dug deeper and quickly focused on the youngest son, John, a spendthrift seventeen-year-old who had apparently bragged about shooting his dad.
After a brief interrogation, the boy confessed to the crime. A week later he changed his tune, saying his mother had pulled the trigger. “She told me that I should say that I have killed my old man because I might get out of it somehow because she would get some lawyers for me.”
That lawyer turned out to be John Diefenbaker and this was his first murder case. He faced an uphill climb – the trial judge was Mr. Justice George E. Taylor, who had been intimidating defence lawyers for over forty years. He preferred prosecution to leniency and Diefenbaker had butted heads with him a number of times in the past.
John first questioned Annie on the stand, but several lines of inquiry were shot down by the judge. Next Diefenbaker tried to convince the judge that the boy’s first confession was inadmissible because the boy was under stress and had been arrested without being allowed to speak to his family. The judge cut Diefenbaker off and explained that the confession would stand: “I must say that I feel so convinced that I could not hope that any further consideration of the matter would alter the conclusion at which I have arrived.”
Diefenbaker began to sweat. He had to put doubt in the jury’s mind by implicating the boy’s mother. Unfortunately Diefenbaker had made a serious mistake, he hadn’t subpoenaed the RCMP officer who wrote down the boy’s second confession. Diefenbaker had believed the prosecution would call the officer. Too late, Diefenbaker asked to call his witness up. The judge disallowed the request and rebuked Diefenbaker in front of the whole courtroom. “If you want evidence,” the judge lectured, “it is your duty to get it yourself. Proceed please.”
Diefenbaker had only one choice left. He put the boy in the witness box. The prosecution carefully and politely tore holes in the boy’s suggestion that his mother was the killer. By the time the prosecution was finished, the boy looked like a cunning murderer.
“Annie Pasowesty,” Diefenbaker said in his closing arguments, “committed this crime. A schemer, a plotter, she contrived an arrangement where she could kill her husband and throw suspicion upon her son. And worse. Then she induced this boy to confess to the crime, to take that responsibility upon himself and steer all suspicion away from her.” He hoped his words would be enough to put doubt in the minds of the jury.
The prosecution continued to insist the boy could not be believed. The judge echoed that conclusion.
Five hours later the jury returned with a verdict of guilty and the judge sentenced John Pasowesty to be hanged at Prince Albert jail on February 21, 1930.
It was a loss, but Diefenbaker, who disliked capital punishment, had one final ace to play. He had a psychiatrist examine the boy. The conclusion: John Pasowesty had a mental age of eight or nine years.
With this new information John petitioned the federal cabinet for clemency, and the boy’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
“I knew I wouldn’t die,” John Pasowesty sobbed as he clutched the telegram from Ottawa. “I don’t know about spending the rest of my life in jail, but I think I’ll like it better
