Presidents of France: 3. Patrice de Mac-Mahon (1873-1879)

Mac-Mahon  was born in Sully in 1808 in the department Saône-et-Loire. He was descended from the old Irish Catholic aristocracy associated with County Clare.  The confiscation of lands from the time of Cromwell and then the support of James II against William III of England led to exile in France, their naturalization in 1749.  His grandfather was named Marquis de MacMahon by Louis XV.  The politics of the family was Catholic and royalist.  One of a very prolific clan, he was the 16th child of 17 in his father's family.  

MacMahon was educated at the Lycee Louis le Grand and at the Academy of St. Cyr, secondary school and military academy respectively.  He graduated in 1827.   As a soldier he served in Algeria, he was wounded in the assault on Constantine, was promoted to commander in the Foreign Legion, and became a Divisional General in 1852.  He also served with distinction in the Crimean War.  While serving in the Second War of Italian Independence which pitted the Kingdom of Sardinia against the Austrian Empire, he won a decisive battle at Magenta, and in gratitude Napoleon III created him the first duke of Magenta. 

Before the Franco-Prussian war he served as Governor-General of Algeria.  He returned when war broke out in 1870 and he served with Napoleon in this ill-fated campaign.  The encirclement of the army at Sedan, led to Napoleon III and Mac-Mahon being taken prisoner.  Released by the Prussian Army in the peace in 1871 he resumed his military service, leading troops in the assault of the Paris Commune which led to 6000 to 7500 deaths and many summary executions.  

In 1873 he was elected President of France, succeeding Adolphe Thiers.  He was staunchly monarchist and was supported by the conservative wing of the National Assembly.  He was a "Legitimist" a party of monarchists who favored the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty, last seen in 1830, but was forced to countenance the republicans in his midst and sometimes in his government. 

Since the Franco-Prussian War there was a French garrison in Rome protecting the pope from the depredations of the Italian nationalists, who had succeeded in erasing all but the last vestiges of the Papal States.  When in 1877 two bishops of the Catholic church in France asked MacMahon to help resolve the issue, the republicans, it provoked an outroar and backlash by the republicans.  MacMahon allegedly started to make moves to restore the Bourbon monarchy under the

Le Compte de Chambord

Compte de Chambord, the grandson of Charles X.  In the elections of 1877 a left-republican majority was returned in the national assembly putting and end to such ideas and after another leftist victory in the Senatorial elections in 1879 MacMahon resigned.  He died in 1893 and was afforded full military honors and buried in Les Invalides in Paris.

Presidents of France: Adolphe Thiers (Aug 1871-May 1873)

2.  Adolphe Thiers (Aug 1871-May 1873)

Adophe Thiers was the second President of France.  He was born in Marseille in 1797.  He was trained in the law at the faculty at Aix-en-Provence and educated at the Marseille lycee. 
 
At first he was known as a historian for the French Revolution though another eminent British historian of the same revolution and literary figure, Thomas Carlyle, said that Thier's voluminous history was full of inaccuracies.    He was prime minister in the governments of Louis Phillipe in 1836, 1840, and in 1848, when Louis Phillipe went into exile, and again became a leader of the French government after Louis Napoleon III was deposed after having been humiliated militarily and taken prisoner at Sedan. 

Charles X,  made himself unpopular by advocating a staunch conservative Catholic policy, recommending among other things, the death penalty for theft or harming of the consecrated host.  Thiers advocated Charles X's overthrow prior to the revolution of 1830.  He found he could work with Louis Phillippe whose Orleanist branch of the royal family was more liberal.  His father, who had initially supported the revolution of 1789, nevertheless lost his head. 

As a politician during the regime of Louis Phillippe, he helped to bring the remains of Napoleon I back from St. Helena to be interred in a place of honor at Les Invalides, the military memorial for France's war dead. 

Thiers eventually fell from favor with Louis Phillippe when he advocated supporting militarily Egypt's Mohammed Ali Pasha in his struggles against the Ottoman Empire. 

He tried to straddle the divide between the conservative Catholics on the one hand and the more atheistic or at least secular Republicans on the other side.  He helped develop the Falloux Laws of 1850-51. These were designed to establish schools in communes with more than 500 persons, to decentralize education, and place it in the control of local Catholic congregations.  This was a conservative movement aimed at decreasing the power of the Republicans and anti-clerical factions in education.

After the fall of Louis Phillippe in 1848, he was not a big fan of Napoleon III, and was said to have declared that electing Napoleon III as president of France would be a disgrace. 

Alexandre Bixio

Alexandre Bixio at least claimed to have heard him say this, which lead Thiers to challenge him to a duel in the gardens of the palace (1).  Apparently neither man was seriously hurt however.  Bixio went on to fame as an atmospheric scientist and baloonist, and Thiers as the man who crushed the Paris Commune of 1871. 

Later Napoleon III became President of France.  When he later staged his coup d'etat and made himself emperor, Thiers was imprisoned for a while, then sent into exile.  The next year he was allowed to return to France, but stayed out of politics and turned once more to his work as a historian.
In 1863 he reentered politics and served in parliament as the leader of the anti-royalist faction there.

He appeared to be of two minds about French assertions of its power abroad.  At first supporting war with Prussia he abruptly switched to being against the war and favoring negotiations to resolve the issues with Bismarck. 

Bismarck and his prisoner

Bismarck refused, the Franco Prussian war broke out and when Napoleon III was captured along with a large body of troops, he was deposed.

Thiers was elected head of the provisional government of the new republic in late February 1871 and on 1st March 1871 they signed a peace with the German Coalition which held the northern 2/3 of France.

Meanwhile on March 18th an insurrection took place in Paris.  Thiers had cannons and other military materiel and his government moved to Versailles.  A socialist city government was elected in Paris. 

This was the start of the Paris commune.   In street fighting, the insurrection quickly resulted in thousands of Parisians being arrested, killed, tried and shot, or deported to the French colonies.  The Tuileries palace, a symbol of monarchism,  burned to the ground.  The Vendome column was toppled.


After peace was restored Thiers served as president of the third republic for two more years.  He was a protectionist and republican presiding over a national assembly dominated by monarchists.  Following a motion of no confidence that passed, Thiers resigned and his resignation accepted.  They elected Marshal Patrice de MacMahon as his successor.  Thiers died 4 years later at the age of 80.



(1) The Life of Louis Adolphe Thiers by Francios J. LeGof,  GP Putnam & Sons. 1879.  

Canadian Prime Ministers IX: Paul Martin and Stephen Harper

26.  Paul Martin (2003-2006)
Liberal Party.

Paul Edgar Philippe Martin was born in 1938 in Windsor Ontario, the son of Paul Joseph James Martin, who himself was a member of the Canadian Parliament for years and served in the cabinets of four Prime Ministers from Mackenzie King through Pierre Trudeau.   His roots were both French and English-Canadian. He graduated from St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto with a degree in history and philosophy in 1961.  He got a law degree from the University of Toronto Law School and was called to the bar in 1966.   For a number of years he was involved with the Canada Steamship Lines company, serving as executive assistant to the CEO and later as President and CEO.  

In 1984 he was considered for leadership of the Liberals after Turner was resoundingly defeated, however he lost out to Jean Chretien at that time and the two men soon became bitter political rivals within the Liberal Party.  In 1993 when the Liberals were swept into power, Turner, in spite of his antipathy to Chretien, was appointed finance minister.  This was at a time of turmoil in the Canadian economy.  He made deep cuts in public spending which eventually revived the economy in the private sector and enhanced government revenues.  Moody's revised upward Canada's bond rating back to AAA.  

He was chosen new Liberal leader and Prime Minister in late 2003 when Chretien resigned.  New elections were called in 2004, an in spite of the resurgence of Stephen Harper's Conservative party, the Liberals won a small plurality in parliament and formed a minority government.  

Changes made to the "equalization program" which ensured that the "have-not" provinces received aid for government service expenses led to conflict with Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nova Scotia over revenue from natural resources.    Martin was opposed to same-sex marriages, but reversed his position following court cases which favored legalization.  Thus the Civil Marriage Act was passed in 2005, making Canada the 4th nation in the world allowing same sex marriage.    The Martin government signed what is known as the Kelowna Accord, which was an effort to equalize health, education, and economic opportunity between First Nations peoples, Metis and Inuits and other Canadians.  

When the Gomery commission reported its investigation of the Sponsorship scandal, which uncovered corruption in the payment of advertising contracts designed to promote the role of the Federal government in Quebec, it indicated that there has been lack of oversight in the administration of funds.  The NDP, in the wake of these revelations started making demands on its coalition partner and this led to a vote of no confidence and the calling of early elections in 2006.    After his defeat in January 2006, Martin stepped down as Liberal party leader.  





27.  Stephen Harper (2006-present) Conservative Party of
Canada.
 
Harper was born in Toronto in 1959, the son of an accountant for Imperial Oil.  After dropping out of the University of Toronto, he moved to Edmonton, Alberta where he worked in the mailroom of Imperial Oil, then went to the University of Calgary where he earned both a bachelor's and then a master's degree in economics.  

He was a chief aide to Jim Hawkes a PC MP in Edmonton. Later, he broke with the Progressive Conservative Party and was later elected as the Reform Party candidate in 1993 after having been defeated in the previous election by his former boss, Jim Hawkes.    Not entirely happy with the Reform Party he resigned from his seat in parliament in 1997 and went on to head the National Citizen's Coalition.  

A persistent theme in Harper's career has been opposition to populism and "social conservatism" and support for "economic conservatism".  This led him to conflict with both Preston Manning and Stockwell Day.  When Day announced new leadership elections for the Reform Party in 2002, Harper stepped down from the NCC and was elected Reform Party leader later standing for and being elected to parliament from Calgary Southwest.  

The Reform Party soon became the "Canadian  Alliance" and then in 2003 merged with the Progressive Conservative Party to become the Conservative Party of Canada.  Early in 2004 Harper left his post as head of the opposition to run for leadership of the new party, and won.  

As Prime minister, Harper has had three governments, the first two as minority governments and a third, elected in 2011 as a majority.  The Goods and Services Tax was reduced from 7% to 5%.  The Federal Accountability act outlawed corporate and union contributions to federal campaigns.  In 2012 the government eliminated the Federal Long Gun Registry, as promised in their platform.   In 2011 Harper's government suceeded in tipping the balance in the Senate towards the conservatives filling six new vacancies with conservative senators.  The government made in the 2011 census the providing of detailed demographic information optional, which provoked a storm of protests from those who saw it as weakening the statistical framework upon which targeted government programs were based.  Harper has taken a basically pro-Israel stance which may have cost Canada a chance to gain a seat on the UN Security Council.  In 2007 Canada announced it has finalized an agreement with the European Free Trade Association, consisting of four European countries not in the European Union including Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein.  

During the US Presidential campaign prior to Obama's getting the Democratic Party nomination, a campaign operative was reported to have reassured the Canadian government that Obama's public statements regarding possible "renegotiation" of NAFTA was just for domestic consumption and not to be taken seriously.   In the event, this turned out to be true, though at the time it was embarrassing to the Obama campaign.  

As Canadian governments must hold an election at most after a period of five years, its next election must be in 2016 or sooner, depending on the current political situation.  Recently Harper visited Israel and expressed pessimism at the resolution of the Syrian civil war and for the chances of democracy in Egypt.  Of the latter he said that Egypt was not ready for Democracy.

 

Canadian Prime Ministers VII: John Turner, Brian Mulroney, and Kim Campbell

22.  John Turner (1984) Liberal Party.

John Turner was born in Richmond, Surrey, England in 1929.  After his father's death his Canadian born mother and he moved back to Canada and lived in Rossland, BC.  He went to the University of British Columbia where he was a star in track and field, graduated with honors and became a Rhodes scholar.  He studied at Magdalen College at Oxford and at the University of Paris, where he earned several law degrees.  In 1959 he was even romantically linked with Princess Margaret.  Turner practiced law in Quebec and entered parliament as a Liberal in 1962.   Once when vacationing in Barbados he happened to notice the former PM John Diefenbaker was in danger of drowning, and he pulled him to safety. 

In Parliament he became a cabinet minister for Lester Pearson and for Pierre Trudeau.  When Pearson retired he ran for the position of party leader but lost to Trudeau.  Like Trudeau before him with Pearson,  Turner served as minister of justice in Trudeau's cabinet.  Later he served as Finance minister but resigned in 1975 owing to differences with Trudeau and left the government to practice law, which was much more remunerative.  

When Trudeau finally decided to hang it up in 1984, Turner entered politics once more and defeated John Chretien to replace Trudeau as party leader and head of government. 
 
His tenure as Prime Minister was one of the shortest in Canadian History, less than 3 months.  While things looked good for the Liberals when elections were called, the mass patronage appointments by Trudeau, and other political miscalculations led to a massive victory by the Progressive Conservatives in the election that same year.

23.  Brian Mulroney (1984-1993)

Progressive Conservative Party.

Brian Mulroney was born in 1939 in Baie-Comieu in eastern Quebec on the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  His parents were of Irish Catholic background and his father was a paper mill electrician.  Baie-Comieu, was a company town supplying paper for the newspaper business, specifically for Robert McCormick's conservative American newspaper, The Chicago Tribune.  

Mulroney went to Catholic boarding school in New Brunswick,  there being no English language schools in the immediate area near his home and grew up fluent in both English and French.  He went to St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, NS.   While a student there he became involved in Progressive Conservative politics and helped to elect PC candidate Robert Stansfield to a position as premier in the province.  Stansfield would later become national PC party opposition leader during the early Trudeau years. 

Mulroney graduated from St. Francis Xavier in 1959 and entered law school at Dalhousie, but neglected his studies there while working to re-elect Stansfield as premier.  His subsequent illness caused him to flunk out of Dalhousie and he began law school later at Laval University in Quebec City. He received his law degree there in 1964 and passed the Quebec bar exam after the third try, subsequently joining a large law firm in Montreal where he specialized in labor relations.   He became a partner in the firm in 1971.   His stature in Quebec politics was enhanced by his participation in the Cliche Commission, a body set up by Quebec Premier Bourassa to investigate organized crime infiltration into labor unions in James Bay where major hydroelectric projects provide electricity to much of Eastern Canada and Northeastern US.

In 1976 he waged an expensive and unsuccessful campaign to become the leader of the Progressive Conservatives, a struggle in which Joe Clark was the winner.  In 1977 he became executive vice president of the Iron Ore Company of Canada where his experience as a labor lawyer was very useful.    

In 1984 he won the position of PC party leader over Joe Clark and went on to demolish John Turner's Liberal party at the polls becoming the Prime Minister.    While Mulroney had a large majority in the House of Commons, the Senate was a different matter, since it was primarily Liberal owing to the years of Liberal dominance in Canadian politics.   

As the PC PM he did a number of things in his nine years.  He privatized 26 of the 61 crown corporations then in existence, including Air Canada, and Petro Canada.  Although the new constitution following the patriation of Canada took place took effect, it did not get the blessing of the Quebec Provincial government, which has long requested and in some cases received special consideration and veto power in national matters.  The Meech Lake accord was an attempt to mollify the French Canadiens as a "distinct people" within Canada. It was a constitutional change requiring approval by all the provincial premiers.  This proved not to please anyone and the effort died. 

The idea and issue of free trade with the United States had long been a thorny issue.  At the time it appeared that the proponents and opponents had switched sides, with the PC's in favor and the Liberals (formerly in favor) opposed.  Before such an issue was resolved, an election was called in 1988, which returned the Progressive Conservatives to power if with a smaller majority. 

After the election a recession set in, in Canada as well as in the US.  A new "Goods and Services Tax" or GST was instituted, which, though said to be a shift of taxation from the old Manufacturer's Sales Tax to a consumer tax, was not popular.    A free trade agreement was made with the US in which all trade barriers would be eliminated by 1998, and which became NAFTA when the agreement was extended to include Mexico too.  This of course was the agreement that Ross Perot famously criticised as the "giant sucking sound" and Canadians and Mexicans were in retrospect divided as to its benefits.  

The cumulation of the unpopularity of the GST, the trade agreements, the economic downturn of the early 1990s, foreign entanglements,  and the demise of the cod fishery led to a rout of the PC of unprecedented size.  The number of Progressive Conservatives in parliament dropped from 150 to 2.   Prior to the election he decided to retire, leaving his justice minister, Kim Campbell to face the music.  She in turn only had a couple of months before the statutory end to the PC government in 1993. 



24.  Kim Campbell (1993) Progressive Conservative Party.

Avril Phædra Douglas "Kim" Campbell  was born in 1947 in Port Alberni, BC.   She attended the University of British Columbia, graduating with a degree in Political Science in 1969.  She then proceeded to the London School of Economics, where she worked on a doctorate in Soviet Government, but left before acquiring her Ph.D.  She then went back to the UBC and earned her law degree in 1972.  Her first foray into politics was for a seat in the BC provincial parliament as a Social Credit Party candidate.  She finally won a seat in 1976.  She served as Minister of Justice from 1990 -1993.   She became prime minister in a contest for party leadership where she defeated Jean Charest and then, as Prime Minister called for new elections, which would have had to have been held anyway since the default election date was fast approaching.  In the few months when she was prime minister she took the Progressive Conservatives to as thorough a defeat in national elections as any major party had experienced up to that time,  leaving the conservatives with enough members in parliament to hold a caucus in a phone booth.

Canadian Prime Ministers VIII: Jean Chrétien

25.  Jean Chrétien (1993-2003) Liberal Party.

Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien was born in 1934 in Shawinigan, QC.  He attended Laval University where he studied law.  He was elected to parliament in 1963 as a Liberal member.  He served as Minister of National Revenue under Pearson, and then, in the Trudeau governments served as  Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Minister of Finance, and then Minister of Justice.  He did not get on extremely well with Trudeau, and was not often included in policy discussions or decisions by the Trudeau government.  Nevertheless during the Quebec sovereignty crisis he was instrumental in defeating the separatists during the referendum.  When Trudeau stepped down he was defeated when he ran for Party leader by Turner.   

As part of Trudeau's government as Minister of Justice he worked for the Patriation act, and as Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources.  

Chrétien was elected Liberal leader in 1990 after John Turner's resignation. He was a "conditional" opponent of the Meech Lake accords, which failed.  He was in favor of designating Quebec as a "distinct society" but opposed to the form in which the idea was put forward.   The struggle between the Chrétien faction and the Paul Martin faction was more between those favoring a strong central government (Chrétien and Trudeau) and those favoring a decentralized government (Paul Martin and John Turner).  He gained traction against the Mulroney government with his opposition to the unpopular Goods and Services Tax.  He supported the failed Charlottetown Accord, another attempt at reforming the constitutional powers of the provinces vs. the Federal government.  

He defeated the Progressive Conservatives overwhelmingly in elections in November 1993, and ruled somewhat autocratically, bypassing even his own cabinet at times.  Once in office he cancelled the defense contract for Sea King helicopters and tried to renegotiate NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) with the US, but President Clinton refused.  Instead he offered to draft a letter indicating that the US had no interest in taking over Canadian energy or water, even though such a letter was not legally binding.  This was accepted by Chrétien who presented it as a concession.  He reluctantly fired the head of the Bank of Canada when he refused to alter his policy of high interest rates to ensure low inflation during the recession.   Rather than purge civil servants with PC sympathies, Chrétien announced that any civil servant who did anything to disadvantage the Liberals would be sacked. 
At the same time Chretien sought to reduce the budget deficit to 3% over time mainly by cutting military spending.  It wasn't until the 2001 terrorist attacks on the US that this policy was reversed.  If Canada had wanted to be eligible to join the European Union, it would have had to reduce its budget deficit to 3%, but there was no stated intention on doing so.  On the other hand the budget put out by the government was interpreted as a lack of seriousness about the budget problems of Canada, and Moody's downgraded their bonds.  This exacerbated the problems of the banks in the country and caused the interest rates to rise even further.   Starting in 1995 the government felt compelled by economic events to make deeper cuts in the Federal budget and the Canadian economy began to improve, the budget deficits disappeared and along with the improving economic picture in the rest of the world.  They were able to cut tax rates as well.   In 1995, at a time when Parti Quebecois was dominant in the Quebec legislature, another referendum on national sovereignty, which was defeated narrowly by voters in the province.   Lip service was given to the idea of Quebec's "distinct society" but no more.   

In the meantime, the Prime Minister's Office leaked a letter in which the Justice Ministry had made inquiries to the Swiss authorities into alleged Swiss Bank accounts kept by former PM Brian Mulroney, in connection with the Airbus affair.  The Airbus affair was a scandal in which government officials allegedly received kickbacks for favoring Airbus in the purchase of new Air Canada aircraft.  Air Canada then being a crown corporation.  In response to this leaked letter, Brian Mulroney sued for $50 million in damages and suggested that the letter was leaked to divert attention from the uncomfortably narrow defeat of the Quebec sovereignty referendum.

The eventual passage of the "Clarity Act" was designed to complicate any move by Quebec towards sovereignty, by setting certain rules as to how such a separation would take place.   This plus decisions made by the Supreme Court of Canada served to raise the barrier to separation.

When the 1994 Rwandan genocide was under way, the Canadian government had perhaps the best information on the ground concerning it, but did not regard it as a vital concern to Canadian interests, an indifference that it  apologised for, years later. 

In 1997 Chrétien called early elections and, while the Liberals lost much support in Western Canada and in the Atlantic Provinces, his core support in Ontario won the Liberals a narrow majority.   His main achievements during the second term were the passage of the Clarity Act, and the balancing of the budget.   After that social spending began to creep back into the budget.




In his second term he experienced controversy when during state visits by the Indonesian President Suharto, and the Chinese President Jiang Zemin, he had to resort to suppression of protests against these two leaders with somewhat less than stellar reputations in the area of "human rights".  The Social Union Framework Agreement was signed by 9 of the 10 provinces (guess which one opted out) in order to regularize Canadian rights of mobility, welfare access, and equal opportunity.   The Clarity Act was passed into law in 1998.  

The opposition parties, in disarray since 1993, were split between the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive conservatives, with the Canadian Alliance the official opposition.  Sensing that the timing was right for new elections, Chrétien called another election in 2000, at about the time of the death of Pierre Trudeau. 

Chretien faced multiple opponents, the main one of whom

was Stockwell Day, then the head of the Canadian Alliance, who did not help his cause by his creationist beliefs that dinosaurs had existed on earth at the same time as early humans. 

This led to a series of appearances by liberal campaign operative Warren Kinsella with a stuffed Barney the Purple Dinosaur, designed to make fun of these beliefs. Other gaffes such as saying that the Niagara River flows south tended to sink Day's campaign, although the Canadian Alliance held its own in the West.  

The "Shawnigate" scandal broke during Chretien's third term.  It was alleged that Chretien had used his government connections to profit from some real estate deals in his native town of Shawnigan, QC.   After investigations by the RCMP regarding these eventually he was cleared of wrongdoing, although there was question as to whether the investigators, being directly under his control, were likely to be objective.  

Having announced that he would leave office, he resigned finally at the end of 2003 and Paul Martin, his long time rival in Liberal politics took over as Prime Minister.  

Canadian Prime Ministers VI: Pierre Trudeau and Joe Clark

19.  Pierre Trudeau (1968-1979) Liberal Party.

Pierre Elliot Trudeau, or Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau was born in 1919 in Montreal, the son of a prosperous businessman and owner of a chain of gas stations in Quebec.  He attended a Jesuit secondary and college level school Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf and then went on to earn his law degree at the University of Montreal in 1943.   After being expelled from the Officers Training program, he studied political economy at Harvard, attended the Paris Institute of Political Studies and went for a doctoral degree at the London School of Economics, but did not complete his dissertation.  For a time he was blacklisted and denied admission to the US owing to his journal subscriptions to left wing publications and his visit to Moscow to attend a conference.  He tried to get a job teaching at the University of Montreal but was kept out by the premier of Quebec, Duplessis.   He was finally appointed an associate professor there in the 1960s.

He eventually became an opponent of Quebec nationalism.  He also opposed the BOMARC missile bases in Canada, but later joined the Liberal party and was elected to parliament.  He quickly became a special secretary to the prime minister and later Pearson made him Minister of Justice, which seems to be a frequent position of persons later becoming prime minister, as was the case with Trudeau.  

As minister of Justice, Trudeau created legislation decriminalizing homosexual behavior, legalized abortion, and liberalized divorce laws.  When Pearson stepped down he joined the campaign to become the party leader, and narrowly defeated several longer serving candidates.

As prime minister Trudeau enjoyed considerable celebrity as well as violent opposition from Quebec nationalists.  In 1970 when Quebec minister of Labour Pierre Laporte and British diplomat James Cross were kidnapped by a nationalist terrorist group, Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act, which allowed mass arrests and detention without trial.  When later Pierre Laporte was discovered to have been murdered, the Canadian public overwhelmingly supported the use of the WMA for this purpose.    The perpetrators were arrested and sentenced to 7 to 11 years in prison, and some of them exchanged for Canadian nationals imprisoned in Cuba.  

As Liberal leader he promoted what he called a "just society" which consisted mainly of redistribution of wealth, universal health care, and in general expanding the role of the government in social welfare in Canada (12).  Trudeau also established French as well as English as "official languages" of Canada, requiring all government services to be provided in both languages.  

In foreign affairs, while Trudeau was a firm supporter of NATO, he also was friendly with communist nations and

Castro and Trudeau

leaders.  He was a personal friend of Fidel Castro, and also recognized and visited the People Republic of China.  
In 1972 the Liberals were returned to power but with a minority coalition with the NDP.   Afterwards Petro Canada was formed as a "crown corporation", assembled from government ownership stakes

in various oil companies. 

In 1974 new elections were called after a no confidence vote, and Trudeau's Liberals were returned to power with an absolute majority in parliament.  In the ensuing years Canada was admitted to what was now the G-7 economic summit.   The death penalty in Canada was abolished. 

In the 1979 general election the Liberals narrowly lost in the wake of a worsening economy and resentment of the high handed approach of Trudeau to government.  Joe Clark of the Progressive Conservatives formed a minority government that year.  


20.  Joe Clark (1979-1980) Progressive Conservative Party.

 Charles Joseph Clark was born in 1939 in High River, Alberta.  His father was a local newspaper publisher.  He attended the University of Alberta where he earned a BA and MA in political science.  While he attended Dalhousie University his interest in politics was greater than his interest in law.    After some false starts in local Alberta politics as a PC candidate, he was elected to parliament in Ottawa from Rocky Mountain, Alberta.

In 1976, previous PC party leader Robert Stansfield retired, and Clark won the leadership on the 4th ballot against contenders such as Claude Wagner and future PM Brian Mulroney.  Clark was the youngest PC party leader and later the youngest PM in Canadian history.

In 1979 he became Prime Minister, forming an unstable government in which the Progressive Conservatives were the largest minority.  In the nine months he was in office he wasn't able to do much and when elections were called, he and other PC's misjudged the mood of the electorate which promptly returned the Liberals and Trudeau to power.


21.  Pierre Trudeau (1980-1984) Liberal Party.

 Trudeau and the Liberals were able to continue for another four years.  The two major events of that time were (1) the defeat of the Quebec sovereignty referendum which pitted

Leveque and Trudeau

Trudeau (Non!) against Rene Leveque (Oui!) and (2) the "patriation" of the Canadian constitution by the Canada Act of 1982.  The latter relinquished any need to defer to Britain's wishes in making changes to the Canadian constitution.  In the negotiation among the provinces that led to the patriation agreement, Quebec premier Leveque tried and failed to hang on to Quebec's traditional special veto power over the decisions regarding the Canadian constitution.
In 1984, after a decline in the polls, Trudeau decided to retire from party leadership, officially leaving on June 30 of that year.  John Turner took over.

Canadian Prime Ministers VI: Lester Pearson

18.  Lester B. Pearson (1963-1968) Liberal Party.

Pearson was born near Toronto in 1897.  He attended Victoria College in the University of Toronto.  The First World War interrupted his college education and he volunteered for service, first in a medical unit, and later in the Royal Flying Corps.  He suffered an aviation accident on his first flight and later, when recuperating in London, was hit by a bus, which pretty much ended his career in the Great War.  

Returning to Canada, he received his BA from the University of Toronto.  He then worked in the meat packing industry in Hamilton, ON and in Chicago, but left in time to pursue an advanced degree in history.  He won a scholarship to the UK to study history at Oxford in St. John's college and received his MA there.  He returned to the University of Toronto and taught history there, and also coached Varsity Blues Canadian football and ice hockey.    

In 1927 he became a diplomat and was sent to London in the late 1930s as the second in command in Canada House there under the high commissioner Vincent Massey until 1942 during the critical war years. He returned to Ottawa and then was re-posted to Washington DC as a ministerial counselor and then became the Canadian Ambassador to the US in early 1945, a position he held for nearly two years.  During this time he aided in the founding of NATO and the United Nations.  He almost became the first Secretary-General of the United Nations, but the Soviet Union vetoed that nomination. 

He was offered a place in the government of Mackenzie King, but Pearson declined.  It was only later on that he accepted St. Laurent's appointment as Secretary of State for External Affairs (i.e. Foreign Minister).  While in that position he played a key role in resolving the Suez crisis of 1957.  In that crisis, an Anglo-French-Israeli seizure of the canal zone followed Nasser's decision to "nationalize it" and tilt his nation towards a more cosy relationship with the Soviet Union.  In the ensuing military conflict, Cairo was bombed and the US, the Soviet Union, and the United Nations forced the French, British, and Israelis to back down.  The canal remained open for all-important oil from the Middle East, but Nasser's Egypt remained in control of the canal.   For his efforts Pearson received the Nobel Peace Prize, back when the award was awarded to persons for actually doing something for world peace, (or at least doing something the Norwegians approved as efforts towards world peace.)  

Pearson became party leader on the retirement of St. Laurent in 1958 after the fall of his government in 1957.  Pearson's first year as leader was unauspicious, as when he sought the return of power back to the Liberals, but was humiliated by Diefenbaker's revelation of St. Laurent predicting in a classified document that 1958 was going to be a bad year economically.  Thus the petty game of blaming one party or the other for the economy was played out that year.   (This, incidentally, was the same economic downturn that made 1958 a year that favored the Democrats in the US congress, who of course blamed it on Eisenhower).

I

n 1963, the BOMARC missile defense issue and the divisions within the Diefenbaker government caused new elections to be called and Pearson became prime minister. As a Liberal prime minister, the BOMARC missile defense project went ahead, relations with the US improved, and a number of social programs were instituted, including

universal health care, the Canada Pension Plan, subsidized student loans for college students, and a new maple leaf flag, eliminating the old union jack version. 

An auto pact negotiated with the US in 1965 resulted in free trade for automotive products, leading to more cross border trade and manufacturing in subsequent years.  When my wife and I showed up at a family reunion in the 1990s in Lockport, NY they were bothered that we had bought a Toyota, (Lockport being a GM manufacturing town at the time)  but were mollified somewhat by the discovery that the model we were driving was made in London, ON. I guess a Canadian import was better than one from Japan. 

Pearson was less forthcoming when it came to lending support to the US war in Vietnam, refusing to send troops, and even criticizing US military strategy while speaking in the US.   Nevertheless relations with the US were friendlier than they had been under Diefenbaker.    While PM, Pearson combined the Army, Air Force, and Navy into a single entity called "Canadian Forces" in 1968.   The practice common in both the US and Canada of immigration quotas was eliminated during the Pearson years, and replaced it with a points system which did not consider race or national origin.  

de Gaulle in Montreal

It was 1967 that French President Charles de Gaulle made his infamous "Vive le Quebec Libre" speech.  Pearson criticized his speech the next day in parliament.  Just as Lyndon Johnson did not take kindly to Pearson criticizing US military strategy on American soil,  Pearson did not appreciate de Gaulle stirring up separatist sentiment on Canadian soil and said that de Gaulle was no longer welcome in Canada.    

In late 1967 Pearson announced his retirement and in a leadership conference that year Pierre Trudeau was chosen as the new leader and prime minister.    Pearson died in 1972.

Canadian Prime Ministers V: St. Laurent and John Diefenbaker

16.  Louis St.Laurent (1948-1957) Liberal Party.

St. Laurent was born in 1882 in Compton, QC.  While his father was French, his mother was Irish and he grew up speaking both English and French.  He attended St. Charles Seminary and received his law degree from Laval University.  For most of his career he practiced as a lawyer and as a professor of law at Laval.  It was only in 1941, when nearly 60, that he was persuaded to enter politics in the government of Mackenzie King as his unofficial adviser on Quebec, and the minister of justice.    He was instrumental in holding the Liberal party together when in 1944 conscription was imposed, which was especially unpopular in Quebec.  Later he served as Secretary of State for External Affairs and represented Canada in the postwar international conferences leading up to the founding of the United Nations. 

As mentioned previously, Mackenzie King ended his long career in 1948 and St. Laurent became only the second French Canadian prime minister.  In 1949 and 1953 he led the Liberals to overwhelming majorities in parliament.  He promoted national unity and participated in the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and supported the UN's role in the Korean War, sending Canadian troops to fight there. 

In 1949 Newfoundland finally joined the Canadian Federation.  St. Laurent ended the practice of allowing the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council of Britain to be the highest court of appeal, that role now assumed by the Supreme Court of Canada.    St. Laurent oversaw the expansion of social programs and universal hospital insurance, as well as large infrastructure projects such as the St. Lawrence Seaway, which allowed ocean going vessels access to the Great Lakes, the Trans-Canada Highway, and the Trans-Canada pipeline.  

The Trans Canada pipeline was designed to transport natural gas from Alberta to Eastern Canada and for a time was the longest pipeline of its kind in the world.  The debate in parliament regarding its creation, however, was contentious and the conservatives complained that excessive use of cloture was symptomatic of the arrogance that had grown up in the dominant Liberal party.  In 1957 elections were held and the Progressive Conservatives took over with John Diefenbaker as PM.  


17.  John Diefenbaker (1957-1963) Progressive Conservative Party.

 John Diefenbaker was born in Neustadt, Ontario in 1895 to William Diefenbaker, a teacher, and Mary Bannerman Diefenbaker.  In 1910 the family moved to Saskatoon, which was then part of the Northwest Territories.  He entered the University of Saskatchewan and in 1916 left with a BA and a MA, enlisted in the army and was sent to Europe, but never reached the front, having been invalided out in 1917 after having been hit in the head with a shovel, as Diefenbaker asserted, or as his biographer suggested for psychosomatic reasons.  He became an articling student of law, and received his degree in 1919 and was called to the bar the same year.  He then opened a law practice in Wakaw, SK, which was so successful in the small community (population 400) that his competitor left town.  

As Saskatchewan at the time was a Liberal stronghold with a powerful machine, and overwhelmingly pro-free trade, he was moving against the trend when he came forward as a conservative in 1925.  He ran against the Liberal candidate in the federal riding of Prince Albert,  and lost his "election deposit", which was an amount of money required to be put

up to a candidate for office, which was returned only if he received a certain percentage of the vote. (Election deposits were to discourage fringe candidates from running).    In 1926, because Mackenzie King, the prime minister had resigned his home seat in Ontario as a result of the King-Byng Affair, he chose (of all places) Prince Albert as a "safe" seat from which to run for parliament.  While opposition candidates did not usually bother running against Prime Ministers, Diefenbaker did not take this course, running against Mackenzie King and of course losing once more.  He lost twice more, once as a candidate for Saskatchewan's parliament and as a candidate for Mayor of Prince Albert.  The latter was a narrow loss, only 48 votes however.  In the meantime his law practice thrived. 

Finally in 1940 he was elected to the national parliament  as a conservative, a year that overwhelmingly favored the Liberals.  

As a German Canadian he was opposed to the war powers granted the government such as the internment of Japanese Canadians in British Columbia which he felt, as a member of another ethnic group under suspicion, to be a violation of civil liberties.  He and other leaders of the Conservative Party, now renamed the "progressive conservative party" sought to take the party left towards the center.  Diefenbaker championed a "Bill of Rights" to stop the encroachment on personal liberty by the Mackenzie King governments. 

The Progressive Conservatives continued to fare badly in elections.  When Diefenbaker went for the party leadership post, he was soundly defeated by the Eastern candidate, George Drew, who was subsequently trounced by St. Laurent in the election of 1949.  

In the meantime, in spite of gerrymandering, he still won his seat in Saskatchewan, and then they completely eliminated his district in another wave of redistricting.    He considered just leaving politics and doing legal work, but he was so outraged by the gerrymandering, that he decided to stand for the seat in Prince Albert, and though not held by conservatives since 1911, he won that seat.  

The excessive use of cloture to cut off debate in the parliament during the Pipeline Debate turned the political winds against the Liberals.  Diefenbaker, running against St. Laurent increasingly tired and jaded liberal leadership, was able to narrowly defeat the Liberals in 1957.  He was made prime minister once some of the smaller parties agreed to form a coalition.  

The new coalition was a shaky one, and the onset of the recession of 1958 and the opposition leader, Lester Pearson, made a motion in parliament which turned out disastrously for his party.  Diefenbaker made one of the best speeches in his life, and when it was over, was able to prevail upon the governor general to dissolve parliament and call new elections, which in 1958 delivered a huge majority to the Progressive Conservatives and reducing the Liberal seats in parliament to a mere 48.  

With a large majority Diefenbaker now moved to make some changes.    As a lifelong proponent of civil liberties, he obtained passage of the "Canadian Bill of Rights", while only a piece of national legislation, non-constitutional,  and having no impact on the civil liberties allowed in different provinces, it still was a bold statement of what rights should exist for citizens of Canada.  In 1960 voting rights were extended to the aboriginal peoples of Canada.  

His message was "one Canada" and refused to make special allowances for the French Canadians in Quebec, and hence lost support in Quebec for that reason.  The devaluation of the Canadian dollar versus the US dollar also helped to depress conservative prospects for 1962, when elections were called and they were able to form a government only by forming a coalition.

Tension developed the next year however between the US and the Diefenbaker government, especially during the Kennedy years over the placement of nuclear weapons in Canada as part of its NATO obligations.  Complicating matters was the Avro CF-105 Arrow, which was a Canadian-made supersonic military aircraft which was cancelled in the wake of a changing military and political situation.   While the liberals were in favor of basing the BOMARC air defense system in Canada, the progressive conservatives were divided, and when a vote of no confidence ensued, elections were called and the Liberals took over.

Canadian Prime Ministers IV: Mackenzie King, Arthur Meighan, and R.B. Bennett

10.  Arthur Meighan (1920-1921) National Liberal and Conservative Party.

Meighan was born in Anderson, ON in 1874, went to the University of Toronto where he studied mathematics then Osgood Hall Law School where he earned his degree.   He then moved to Manitoba where after taking stabs at teaching and business, he entered politics as a conservative.  After entering parliament in 1908 he served as Solicitor General and then was appointed Minister of Mines, then Secretary of State for Canada.    He was charged with directing the conscription for the first world war, as well as the disenfranchisement of those who were members of groups thought to oppose the war.  

When Borden resigned in 1920, Meighan succeeded him as prime minister, and served out the rest of his mandate, but was defeated in the general elections of the next year by Liberal leader William Lyon Mackenzie King.  


11.  William Lyon MacKenzie King (1921-1926) Liberal Party.

The longest-serving prime minister so far in Canadian History, King was born in what in what is now known as Kitchener, ON in 1874.  It was a town named Berlin until the great war, the name, owing the anti-German sentiment, was changed.   His grandfather had been mayor of Toronto at one time, and his father was a lawyer.  Like Meighan he went to Osgood Hall Law School and knew him there. They were not friends, however. 

He got involved in the settlement house movement, which was a social welfare movement where more educated and advantaged people were encouraged to work with the poor and try to inculcate in them values which would allow them to rise out of poverty. Having a scholarly bent, he went to Chicago to study at the University of Chicago, and for a time as worked with Jane Addams in her settlement house. From the University of Chicago he went on the Harvard University, where he earned a Ph.D. in political economy, where he wrote a thesis titled "Oriental Immigration to Canada".  He was not in favor of Asians in Canada, arguing that Canada should, for economic, social, as well political and national reasons, restrict their immigration.   

For these efforts he was considered an expert on immigration and was appointed deputy minister of labour in the Laurier government. He worked in this capacity for the involvement of government in labour disputes and in anti-trust and anti-competitive legislation.  When the Borden government came in he lost his seat in parliament and got a job as a director with the Rockefeller foundation in New York where he led the department of industrial research.  

In 1918 he returned to Canadian politics, and when Laurier died in 1919 he became leader of the Liberal party and in 1921 became Prime Minister.  His first term as prime minister he barely held a majority in parliament, with the Conservatives in third place behind the new Progressive Party.    The Progressives, strong in the Western provinces,  were only partially supportive of King, owing to their favoring of lower tariffs.  King's party on the other hand was opposed to lowering tariffs too much as it would alienate his industrial constituencies in Eastern Canada.    

King declined to aid the British in the Chanak Crisis, involving Turkey threatening the British holding of the Dardanelles, saying that the Canadian parliament would have to decided whether aid was forthcoming.  This led to to greater independence among the British commonwealth nations in their foreign policy, formerly handled previously through London.

In 1925 he won another narrow victory for a second term.  To avoid a vote of no confidence he asked Governor-General Lord Byng, the British government's representative in Canada for permission to dissolve parliament and hold elections.  This Byng refused, and instead invited Meighan, the leader of the opposition to form a government instead.  

12. Arthur Meighan (1926)  Conservative Party.

Meighan formed a government which only lasted a few months when invited to form one by Governor-General Byng.  Mackenzie King characterized this decision as showing favoritism and interfering in Canadian politics.  King was vindicated when he won a clear majority for the Liberals in the 1926 elections that September.  

13. William Lyon MacKenzie King (1926-1930) Liberal Party.

The constitutional controversy stirred up by the King-Byng affair led to a redefinition of the relationship between Britain and all its dominions.  It led to the Balfour Declaration of 1926 and the Statute of Westminster in 1931.   As such it was the end of the British government's ability to legislate for its dominions.   The provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan were given provincial control of crown lands within their jurisdictions as well as subsurface rights.  He also initiated a system of old age pensions requiring payroll deductions.  

When the great depression began in the fall of 1929, King's slow response to the crisis led to his defeat in elections in 1930 by the Conservatives. 


14. R.B. Bennett (1930-1935) Conservative Party.

Bennett was born in 1870 in Hopewell Hill, NB. and earned his law degree from Dalhousie University.  He became close friends with Max Aitken who eventually became the immensely wealthy newspaper publisher, Lord Beaverbrook.  As a corporate lawyer he had a very successful practice both in Nova Scotia and later in Alberta.  In 1911 he was elected to parliament.    He served as Minister of Justice under Meighen, and when Meighen resigned as party leader, Bennet took over in 1927.    In 1930, in the depths of the great depression he became prime minister.  

His strategy for boosting the Canadian economy was to increase tariffs on non-commonwealth nations and encourage trade with other Commonwealth nations.  This did not have much effect and his own great wealth and lack of a common touch did not help him politically.  

Radical left wing political groups flourished during the great depression and were seen by Bennett as a threat to Canadian institutions.  As a result the Section 98 criminal code came into being,  which enabled more vigorous suppression of groups and individuals identified as subversive.  This was in response to the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 and similar events. 

Later, in imitation of the "New Deal" put forward by US President Franklin Roosevelt, Bennett put forth a plan for a progressive income tax, minimum wages, maximum weekly work hours, health insurance, old age pensions, and unemployment insurance, but by 1935 the Canadian voters had tired of his efforts and he was defeated by Mackenzie King's Liberals that year.   While many of these efforts were struck down by the courts, his creation of the Bank of Canada in 1934 remains as part of his legacy.


15. William Lyon MacKenzie King (1935-1948) Liberal Party.

Pardoxically it was Bennett and not King who tried and failed with New-Deal like legislation.   King reversed the trade barriers constructed by Bennett and negotiated a reciprocal trade agreement with the US in 1935 which improved the Canadian economy.   On the other hand, he nationalized the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Bank of Canada, and the National Film Board of Canada. 
 
With the approach of war with Germany, King actually met with Hitler in 1937 and was not especially supportive of Britain's efforts to counteract Hitler, saying at one point that he would support Britain only if they were directly attacked.  Nor was he especially welcoming of Jewish refugees from Europe and along with Cuba, and US, denied sanctuary to 900 such persons on the MS St. Louis in 1939.  

While Canada did enter the war with Germany when Britain entered in September 1939, it wasn't automatic, as it had been with the first war.  King waited a week and a parliamentary debate before Canada entered on the side of Great Britain.  (Of course it was a little over two years later before the US entered the war, when Japan attacked the US, and Germany declared war on the US.)

Again as with the First World War, there was a problem with manpower needs which led to the introduction of conscription, but with limitations of the theatre of conflict. King had to play a balancing game between the Canadian isolationists until after the Liberals were returned to parliament in 1940.   Even then, it was mostly volunteers and not conscripts who were sent overseas from Canada.  

During the war, King's government in Canada, like the US, chose to intern large numbers of Japanese Canadians as a security risk.  

After the war King helped to found the United Nations, and discontinued wartime censorship.  He called elections in 1945 and was returned to power, though only formed a Liberal dominated government as a coalition.  In 1948 he retired from public life and the Liberals chose Louis St. Laurent as his successor.  King died in 1950.