to characters like you. It’s easy to sit down there and ask questions you’ve been sent to ask, and paid for. Well, I’m going to give you the opportunity to let this audience see and hear you. I’m going to give you the platform for twenty minutes.” He smiles.
The stranger stands and Gardiner’s smile slips from his face. He squints his eyes as a familiar tall, thin, wraith-like man steps into the light. It is John Diefenbaker.
“The offer doesn’t apply to you,” Gardiner says quickly. “What are you doing here anyway? I wouldn’t let you speak on my platform for anything.”
“But you asked me,” Diefenbaker replies, striding along until he reaches the foot of the platform. Gardiner continues to protest but Diefenbaker lectures him, saying, “Fairness is essential in every walk of life. You challenged me, and I’m here.”
The audience begins to murmur, then to yell, “Let him speak.”
Gardiner steps back. “I want to be fair. I’ll give you ten minutes.”
“No,” someone shouts out, “Give him the twenty minutes you promised.”
Gardiner sits down and Diefenbaker takes the stage.
“I have some questions in connection with education,” he says, then he pauses. “As it appears to be the custom for speakers in this campaign to indicate their religious beliefs, I hereby state that I am a Baptist and I am not a member of the Ku Klux Klan.” That declaration out of the way he asks question after question, each embarrassing to the premier and his government. Why are nuns teaching in a public school? When is the Liberal patronage going to stop? Diefenbaker finishes his barrage within ten minutes and returns to his seat.
Somewhat flustered, Gardiner takes the stage again. Its 10:30 p.m. and as he begins his speech, his spine straightens, his voice shakes the rafters, and word after compelling word is launched at the crowd. But he ignores Diefenbaker’s questions.
The crowd interrupts, asking him to answer the charges.
“You wait,” Gardiner promises. He continues talking and talking and finally, he stops, looks at his watch and announces, “Its midnight. I never discuss politics on Sunday. I believe we should keep Sunday a holy day”
And that was that. On polling day in Arm River, 91 per cent of the population turned out, an extraordinary number for a by-election. The Liberals held onto the seat, but only by fifty-nine votes.
More importantly, this one feisty performance by Diefenbaker caught the attention of a number of people high up in the Conservative party, both federally and provincially. “Out of that meeting at Hawarden,” Diefenbaker explained, “stemmed my invitation to contest the federal seat of Long Lake in the 1930 election, my bid for a provincial seat in Arm River in 1938, and finally, my nomination and election to the House of Commons in Lake Centre in 1940.”
It was indeed a good night’s work.
A provincial election was called for June 6, 1929 and Diefenbaker decided to switch from federal to provincial politics. The Liberals had been ruling Saskatchewan since 1905, but there were holes in the Liberal armour now. People resented the patronage practices. The province was ripe for a Conservative win.
Diefenbaker squared off against his old foe T.C. Davis, who was the owner of the Prince Albert newspaper and the attorney general. Diefenbaker was promised the attorney generalship himself if the Conservatives were victorious.
The mudslinging began at once. The Liberals accused Diefenbaker of working hand in hand with the Ku Klux Klan, a group that was anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, and against non-English and immigrants of colour. The Klan also hated the Liberal party. Diefenbaker explained that “everyone who opposed Gardiner, his policies, and the viciousness of his machine was tarred with the dirty brush of Klan fanaticism.”
The Conservative party won the election, ending twenty-four years in power by the Liberals. Diefenbaker wasn’t able to join the celebrations: he lost his riding to Davis by several hundred votes.
John didn’t stick around to lick his wounds. Instead, he retreated to Toronto and married Edna.
In 1930 Diefenbaker and Edna were in Toronto for a holiday, so John could relax. His health wasn’t getting any better; in fact, he was still suffering from internal bleeding and stomach pains. The stress of his political life and his numerous trials had taken their toll. It was time to rest.
Then a telegram from the Conservative association arrived. John read it carefully, his hands shaking. They wanted him to accept the nomination for the federal riding of Long Lake, a riding that was supposed to be an easy win.
He talked to Edna. He felt the tiredness in his bones. The aching in his stomach. John, who had dreamed of this all his life, was forced to say no. He was too sick. Too tired. He watched sadly from the sidelines as another man won the seat and went to Ottawa.
The country, and particularly the Prairies, was changing for the worse. The stock market had crashed in 1929. The price of wheat, a major Saskatchewan export, began to drop, and the onset of drought made the amount of wheat available for sale even smaller. Next came mass unemployment and a general disenchantment with politicians. This was a tough time to be a government.
By 1933 Diefenbaker began once again to dabble in politics. He was elected as the vice-president of the provincial Conservative party. Later that same year he ran for mayor of Prince Albert and lost by forty-eight votes.
A provincial election was held on June 19, 1934. Diefenbaker didn’t run, but he worked desperately behind the scenes. The Conservatives, squeezed by the Liberals on one side and the new Farmer-Labour party on the other, failed to win a single seat.
The western world was in the throes of major political change. Across the ocean the Nazi party unfurled its swastikas in Germany. The Depression continued sending dust cloud after dust cloud into the Prairies. And thousands of unemployed men of all ages now hitched rides on the train to look for work.
In May of 1935 the “On-to-Ottawa” journey was begun from the West Coast. At first there were just a thousand unemployed men packing the freight cars. Then two thousand. Three thousand. The movement gathered steam and support every time the train stopped at a railway station. In Regina the RCMP halted the gathering, and after negotiations and a violent clash that ended with the death of a policeman, the marchers were dispersed. The whole episode made the federal Conservatives, under the leadership of Bennett, look bad.
Parliament was dissolved a few months later. Diefenbaker declined the nomination in Prince Albert saying, “I think this is a time for us to have a farmer as a candidate.” A farmer was chosen and Diefenbaker, now the president of the provincial Conservative party, did all he could to help the cause. But it was a mishmash of an election: the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) was rising up in the West; Social Credit, an Alberta-based party, was now nominating federally; the brand new Reconstruction party, an offshoot of the Conservatives, appeared; and the Liberals still had their political machine in high gear.
On October 14th it was a landslide for the Liberals, and after all the other parties took a piece of the pie the Conservatives were left with only forty seats.
