a victory.
The Pasowesty trial was immediately followed by Diefenbaker’s second murder case, which he took on without a fee. His client, a Polish immigrant named Alex Wysochan, was involved in a love triangle that ended with the death of Antena Kropa, and her husband was the only witness. Stanley Kropa’s version was that Alex Wysochan, his wife’s lover, had broken into the Kropa house while drunk and threatened to shoot him. Stanley leapt out a window then heard four shots and his wife’s anguished cry. The police arrived to find Antena fatally wounded, and her lover lying drunk beside her.
Wysochan, who spoke only through a Polish interpreter, had a different version of events. He said that Stanley had found him drinking at the Windsor Hotel and invited him home, then started a fight and pulled out a gun. Antena got between them, four shots rang out, and Antena crumpled to the ground. Wysochan collapsed in a drunken stupor.
Diefenbaker, who was suffering from his gastric ulcer and had been bedridden for parts of the trial, tried to convince the jury that Wysochan’s story was true. At first he advised his client to stay off the witness stand and say he didn’t remember anything of the night. That way the charges might be lowered to manslaughter and Wysochan would only have to spend ten years in jail. “I’m innocent, why should I?” Wysochan replied. He went to the stand. The jury, all men of British background, took an immediate dislike to this European immigrant who drank and had committed adultery.
“Admittedly, Alex Wysochan dishonoured the Kropa home,” Diefenbaker said in his closing arguments, “Admittedly, he was immoral in his relations with Antena Kropa. But he is not charged with these things. He is here today charged with the killing of Antena Kropa, the woman he loved and had no reason to kill.”
The prosecuting lawyer didn’t take a rational, calm approach to his closing arguments. Instead, he called Alex “this little rat,” “this reptile,” and “the dirty little coward.”
The jury convened for five hours, broke for the night, and in the morning returned with a guilty verdict. Wysochan was sentenced to the gallows and the judge immediately called up the next case. Diefenbaker just happened to represent the next defendant, too. He had a brutally hard day.
Diefenbaker filed an appeal for Wysochan’s verdict, but no reprieve was granted and Alex Wysochan was hanged in Prince Albert on June 20, 1930.
“A few months after the trial it was established that he was innocent,” Diefenbaker said in his memoirs. For him, to have a client hung was the ultimate failure. “My profound respect for human life is based on religious conviction. I do not believe in capital punishment.”
From 1930 to 1936 Diefenbaker fought four more murder cases. A woman accused of smothering her newborn child was found not guilty. A grand success. Diefenbaker was becoming a dramatic genius. He had learned how to use his penetrating eyes and to control his voice so the jury would hang on every word. Many a witness feared to face John in court.
Even the RCMP could be intimidated by Diefenbaker. “I was anything but the serene and confident Mountie I appeared to be,” admitted Constable Arthur Cookson, “It was his eyes most of all.”
Cookson was the investigating detective in the trial of Steve Bohun, a nineteen-year-old accused of shooting and robbing a postmaster. Diefenbaker defended Bohun, using every technique he had mastered. He wanted to prove that the Mounties had forced Bohun to confess. “Do you understand the nature of an oath?” he boomed, starting his cross-examination of Cookson. The constable was an impressive man decked out in his RCMP dress uniform of redcoat, breeches and high boots, but he soon felt flustered as Diefenbaker paced the floor or stood facing the spectators, firing questions over his shoulder for over an hour and a half. “You showed him the blood stains still upon the floor, the blood of the dead Peter Pommereul, didn’t you?” Diefenbaker accused. “And then, Constable Cookson, then you tried to force this young boy to put his hands upon those blood stains. What do you say to that?” Diefenbaker suddenly turned and thrust out a long accusatory finger. It was a move he would become famous for in the House of Commons.
“I did no such thing,” Cookson replied, rising to his feet. But a seed of doubt had been planted in the jury’s mind.
Diefenbaker was at his dramatic best but the jury found Bohun guilty, though they did ask for mercy because of his lack of intelligence. The judge sentenced him to hang.
On March 9, 1934, John walked out to his front porch. From there he had a view of the Prince Albert prison. A black flag was raised slowly up the flagpole, signalling Steve Bohun’s death. Diefenbaker wept, jaws clenched, tears staining his cheeks. “Poor devil,” he whispered, “poor, poor devil.”
In Diefenbaker’s next case, the violent murder of a farmer near Leask, the prosecution didn’t have enough evidence to continue the trial, so Diefenbaker won by default. Next came a front-page murder trial. Two trappers had gotten drunk, and in an argument over their take, one had shot the other dead. Diefenbaker was able to get the charge lowered to manslaughter because the culprit had been drinking.
John Diefenbaker had made a name for himself and had become the lawyer he wanted to be.
He had one more goal to achieve.
A shot of Edna in the 1930s,
stylish as always.
A 1933 ad urging the public
to meet Diefenbaker.
Running for Election
In 1911, when John Diefenbaker was fifteen years old, Liberal Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier called an election. Laurier had been running Canada like a well-oiled machine since 1896. He had created the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. He had opened the floodgates to immigrants and the population of the dominion had grown from four million to seven million. He was the first and perhaps the greatest French Canadian leader, able to balance Quebec interests with the interests and the demands of the rest of Canada. He was known as the “Knight of the White Plume,” and he predicted bravely that the twentieth century belonged to Canada. Laurier wanted another term, so he called the election and ran on the platform of reciprocity – freer trade with the United States.
It was a big mistake. The Conservatives, led by Robert Borden, unfurled their Red Ensigns and waved them like mad, singing “Yankee Doodle Laurier.” They believed open trade with the U.S. would lead to stronger economic and political union with the Americans and eventually Canada’s sovereignty would be diminished. After all, Canada was only forty-four years old and still had important ties to Britain. And then “Champ” Clark, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, declared his support for reciprocity because he hoped, “to see the day when the American flag will float over every square foot of the British North American Colonies clear to the North Pole.” This didn’t help Laurier’s cause one iota. His campaign was dealt another blow when Clark announced, “We are preparing to annex Canada.” The flag-waving and the shouting of the Conservatives grew to near pandemonium. Laurier was voted out of office tout de suite.
Young
