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.

Canadian Prime Ministers III: Sir Charles Tupper, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, and Sir Robert Borden

7.  Sir Charles Tupper (1896)
Liberal-Conservative.

Tupper was sworn in to replace Bowell, but the Conservatives, split on the Manitoba Schools question lost the subsequent parliamentary election.  He served as PM only 69 days.    

Originally from Nova Scotia, he studied medicine at the University of Medicine.  In the early 1860s he has been an advocate of a union of all the British North American provinces, and then of the Maritime provinces.  He served in the MacDonald government and as Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, (i.e. as a kind of representative of the dominion to the crown.)  

8.  Sir Wilfrid Laurier (1896-1911) Liberal.

Laurier was born in 1841 in Saint-Lin-Laurentides, Quebec, and became the first French speaking prime minister of Canada, and the first Liberal to hold the office since Alexander Mackenzie.  He remained Prime minister for 15 years, from 1896 to 1911.   While Quebec had originally been a conservative stronghold owing to the social conservatism of the majority French Catholics who lived there, the Manitoba Schools crisis had succeeded in aligning the Quebec population against the strongly Protestant Conservatives MacBowell and Tupper.  

At the same time Laurier, a believer in church and state separation was at odds with the Catholic church. The Pope who had recently put out an encyclical condemning strict Church/State separation, as was customary in France.   In spite of these difficulties Laurier produced a satisfactory compromise in the Manitoba Schools Question that provided for a French and Catholic public education in any school area, provided there were enough French Catholic students in the area to justify one.  

During the Second Boer War in 1899, Laurier resisted sending a militia to aid in the war, considering it an English war unrelated to the interests of Canada, while he did allow a volunteer force to go to South Africa.  Later, rather than provide the British with money for ship construction, Laurier founded the Canadian Navy instead, with the option offered of lending Naval assistance to the British at such time as it was needed. 

It was the issue of trade reciprocity with the US which led to the fall of the Liberal government.  Western agricultural interests were very much in favor of it, but opposition elsewhere led to the fall of the government and the return of the conservatives under Robert Borden.

During his time as Prime Minister, Saskatchewan and Alberta were created as Canadian provinces, and the Yukon territory was created out of the Northwest Territories. 


 
9.  Sir Robert Borden (1911-1920) Conservative Party, Unionist Party.

  Born in 1854 in Grand Pre, Nova Scotia, he worked for a while as a teacher in Grand Pre and later in Matawan, NJ, but gave it up and decided to study for the bar and was admitted in 1878.  He ran a very successful legal practice in the Maritime provinces.  Originally a Liberal, he broke with the party on the issue of trade reciprocity and became a conservative. 

 With the onset of the First World war, Borden promised the United Kingdom half a million soldiers, but when it became clear that volunteers would not supply those numbers, conscription was instituted, which led to the Conscription Crisis of 1917.   The War Measures Act was passed which allowed for, in times of emergency, suspension of habeas corpus, detention of enemy aliens, censorship, and even the outlawing of the reading and writing in an "enemy" language.   As many of the population of Ukrainians living in Canada had come from from parts of the Austro-Hungarian empire, many of them were deprived of their property, and detained, until a labor shortage led to the release of some of them to ease that shortage.    

In 1917, to ensure the return of the Conservatives to power they formed a "unionist" coalition with Liberals disenchanted with Laurier's leadership, and crushed the opposition.  During the campaign Borden also promised that he would extend the voting franchise to women in Canada, which he subsequently did in 1918.   He sought to have Canadians serve in units of the Canadian Army rather than, as previously, simply inserted into the ranks of the British Army.   Borden also introduced the  "temporary" Canadian income tax to help finance the war,  and, just as in the US, which instituted an income tax around the same time, has never gone away. 

Borden was the last Canadian Prime Minister to be knighted after the Canadian parliament expressed a desire that such honors be discontinued.  

In the Paris Peace Conference Borden finally prevailed on the leaders of the peace conference, Lloyd George and US President Woodrow Wilson to allow the participation in the conference as "minor" powers all of the British commonwealth nations that had participated in the war.

After leaving office Borden returned to private life serving as president of Barclay's Bank of Canada and the Continental Life Insurance Company.   He died in 1937.

Canadian Prime Ministers II: Sir John Abbott, Sir John Thompson, and Sir MacKenzie Bowell

4.  Sir John Abbott (1891-1892) Liberal-Conservative.

Abbott was the first Canadian prime minister to actually be born in Canada.  He got his law degree from McGill College in Montreal.  He successfully defended fourteen American Confederate Agents from extradition, who had made a raid from Canada on Burlington, VT which increased tensions with the US in the immediate post civil war period.  He was a successful Montreal corporate lawyer and as a young man was in favor of Canada joining the United States.  
In 1865 he changed parties to join the conservatives. He was tainted by the Pacific Scandal and was defeated along with MacDonald's party.   He became Prime Minister on McDonald's death in 1891.  Although the original candidate was John Thompson, his Catholic faith led to Abbott's appointment instead.   Thompson eventually succeeded him anyway, after Abbott, already suffering from a brain tumor and in failing health, had to leave office in 1892.  


5. Sir John Thompson (1892-1894) Liberal-Conservative.

Thompson was of Irish descent and came from Nova Scotia.  He served in various offices in that province before becoming Prime Minister in 1892.  He was one of the founders of the Dalhousie Law School. 

Originally a Methodist, he converted to Catholicism on his marriage to Anne Affleck.   He gained acclaim for his hard line against the followers of Louis Riel, though he was passed over for Prime Minister the first time because of his Catholicism. 

As PM he almost succeeded in wooing Newfoundland and persuading it to join the confederation, but it held out until 1949.    In 1893 he succeeded in an international arbitration over the dispute with the US over its exclusive claim to the seal harvest in the Bering Sea, winning rights for Canadian sealers.  He died while at a conference in London at the rather early age of 49.

6. Sir MacKenzie Bowell (1894-1896)
Liberal-Conservative.

The main problems confronting MacKenzie Bowell were the religious and ethnic tensions in Manitoba and in Quebec.  As the growing English-Canadian and Protestant population had grown in the province, the province of Manitoba eliminated public funding of Catholic and mainly French schools in the province.  This led to a crisis in Bowell's government which was split between those who favored removing French Catholic schools and those who believed in some kind of compromise with Bowell in the latter group.  His inability to act on the matter brought his government down and his replacement by Sir Charles Tupper in 1896.

Canadian Prime Ministers: Sir John MacDonald and Alexander Mackenzie

1. Sir John MacDonald (1867-1873), Liberal-Conservative

MacDonald was born in 1815 in Glasgow.  His family emigrated to Canada in 1820.  His father was a shopkeeper and John, like many of his generation had no formal schooling after he left grammar school.  At the time after he left grammar school he decided to study for the law and was apprenticed to a lawyer for this purpose.  In 1836 he qualified for the bar and shortly afterwards took on two apprentices under him, who also became "fathers of confederation".  He practiced in what is now known as the Picton and Kingston area of Ontario.  He became active in colonial government. When a capital of the new colony was originally considered many favored Quebec City as the capitol but those in the west were non agreeable to this, so they appealed to Queen Victoria for the decision.  Victoria duly chose Ottawa, which was geographically midway between the two halves of Canada.  

MacDonald was a leader of the conservatives in efforts to form a Canadian confederation.  The Maritime colonies met in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island in 1864.  The Canadian colonies met in Quebec City in 1865, and in 1866 there was a London Conference, which led to the passage by the British parliament of the British North America Act in 1867, which served at the Canadian constitution for more than a century.   MacDonald received a knighthood and Canada West and Canada East became Ontario and Quebec.  

In his first term, MacDonald had to deal with numerous problems.  Foreign policy was still handled through London, New Brunswick was already wishing to withdraw from confederation.  The railway which was designed to link the provinces together had yet to be built, and much of Canada was still under direct British control.  The Americans had withdrawn from the Reciprocity Treaty of 1866.  Newfoundland refused to join the confederation.  During his tenure Canada succeeded in receiving the Northwest Territories and Rupert's Land as part of Canada, as well as retaining the province of British Columbia, where there was some interest in US annexation.  

Other Canadian-American disputes included arguments over fishing rights in coastal waters.  The British negotiated these in the Treaty of Washington, which did not serve Canadian interests well, in view of the fact that no compensation was forthcoming from Fenian raids into Canada and Canadian waters were considered open to American fishermen.  

MacDonald's first government fell owing to Pacific Scandal, in which Conservative members accepted bribes for the contracts to build the Canadian Pacific Railway.  Alexander MacKenzie, of the Liberal Party took over.  By profession he was a building contractor and a stonemason from Scotland.  As PM he helped to design and oversee the construction of Canada's new parliament buildings in Ottawa.   He also negotiated a free trade agreement with the US in the wake of the Panic of 1873.  When economic conditions did not improve the Liberals were swept from office in 1878 and the Conservatives, headed by MacDonald took over once more. 

2.  Alexander MacKenzie (1873-1878) Liberal.

MacDonald's first government fell owing to Pacific Scandal, in which Conservative members accepted bribes for the contracts to build the Canadian Pacific Railway.  Alexander MacKenzie, of the Liberal Party took over.  By profession he was a building contractor and a stonemason from Scotland.  As PM he helped to design and oversee the construction of Canada's new parliament buildings in Ottawa.   He also negotiated a free trade agreement with the US in the wake of the Panic of 1873.  When economic conditions did not improve the Liberals were swept from office in 1878 and the Conservatives, headed by MacDonald took over once more. 

The only reason Alexander MacKenzie never received a knighthood was that he declined it   each of the three times it was offered to him.
  


3.  Sir. John A. MacDonald (1878- 1891) Liberal- Conservative.

The conservatives opposed free trade with the US and raised tariffs once more.   The transcontinental railroad proved hideously expensive and an engineering nightmare, especially for a nation of about 4 million.    Nevertheless it was completed with large public subsidy in 1885, and MacDonald celebrated by traveling west to British Columbia.   New disputes over fishing rights broke out with the Americans and the British had to intervene.  

At this time Louis Riel, a Manitoban of Metis (mixed First Nations and French) background led the Red River rebellion which led to some bloodshed and the controversial execution of Thomas Scott, who failed to die from being shot by a firing squad, and an additional gun shot to the head, and was later buried alive.  Riel, following the suppression of the rebellion,  fled into American exile but was enticed back to Canada by John MacDonald in hopes that a political settlement could be reached.  When this proved unfeasible, Riel was arrested and hanged. 

MacDonald, a protectionist to the end, was in favor of trade barriers while the Liberals were in favor of more open trade with the US, owing to the practicalities of high freight rates on the Canadian National railway and the geographic proximity of much of the US.  The Conservative majority dwindled, but he remained in office until he died from a stroke in 1891.

Illinois Governors VI: George Ryan, Rod Blagojevich, and Pat Quinn

George Ryan (1999-2003), Republican

convicted sentenced to 6 1/2 years

Ryan was born in Maquoketa, IA in 1934, and grew up in Kankakee County, IL.  He worked in his father's drug stores, and attended the Ferris State College of Pharmacy in Michigan.  Ryan was drafted and sent to Korea during the Korean War and served 13 months as a base pharmacist there and then returned to build his family's pharmacy business into a lucrative state-wide business. 

He served on the Kankakee County Board from 1968-1973.  He then served in the Illinois House from 1973 to 1983 where he rose to become minority leader and then speaker.  Then he served as Lt. Governor under James Thompson, then as secretary of state from 1991-1999. From 1999 to 2003 he served as governor.  

As governor he followed the usual path of being in favor of education spending, road construction, and mass transit.  More controversially he led a trade mission to Cuba, and was the first sitting governor to meet with Fidel Castro.  He also opposed the death penalty in Illinois because he felt it was arbitrary and too many questionable verdicts had led to the death penalty.  As a result he commuted all death row inmates (about 160 or so) at the time he left office in 1999.  

It was only after leaving office that he started to encounter his legal problems, for things done before he was governor, when he was secretary of state.  

Willis Mini-van

  His problems stemmed from a tragic accident in I-94 in Wisconsin in November 1994, where a piece of metal fell off a truck in front of a minivan where the pastor Duane Scott Willis, his wife and all six of their children were passengers.  Running over the piece of metal punctured the gas tank of the minivan causing it to burst into flames.  While Willis and his wife escaped with relatively minor burns, his six children were incinerated.   As it was subsequently determined, the driver of the truck whence the metal had fallen had obtained his Illinois drivers license through a bribe and was apparently unqualified to be operating a truck.
In the subsequent investigation into the Secretary of State's office it uncovered a pattern of bribery and corruption that ultimately led to George Ryan to be sentenced to 6 and 1/2 years in Federal prison after conviction on 20 of 22 counts of racketeering, bribery, extortion, money laundering and tax fraud (1).   Ryan has now been released to home confinement as of January 2013.    
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Rod Blagojevich (2003-2009) Democrat

convicted, sentenced 14 years

Blagojevich, born in 1956 in Chicago was the son of immigrants from Serbia.  He went to school at the University of Tampa then transferring to Northwestern, where he graduated in 1979 with a BA in history. He got his law degree from Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA.  He is married to Patricia Mell, daughter of former Chicago Alderman Richard Mell. He was a law clerk for Chicago Alderman Ed Vrdolyak, and then became an assistant prosecutor for Cook County for Richard M. Daley, then State's attorney and later mayor of Chicago.   In 1992 he was elected to the Illinois House from the North Side of Chicago.  In 1996 he was elected to the US Congress, taking back for the Democrats the seat won by Michael Flanagan over the disgraced longtime congressman Dan Rostenkowski, who was convicted of mail fraud.  He was reelected twice more as Congressman from the district.  Interestingly he was one of only 81 house Democrats who voted in favor of the invasion of Iraq in 2002.  He was alone among the Democrats in the state delegation to have done so.

As candidate for governor in 2002 he narrowly defeated two opponents, IL attorney general Roland Burris and Chicago Public Schools superintendent Paul Vallas.  Rahm Emmanuel, Barack Obama, and David Wilhelm in various capacities supported Blagojevich's run for governor.  The Republican candidate was Illinois attorney general Jim Ryan. Though no relation to George Ryan, Blagojevich successfully linked the two together and the need for "change".   

By 2006, the Blagojevich administrated had its own bad smells to contend with lone statewide Republican Judy Barr Topinka, state treasurer, running a campaign against Blagojevich that emphasized his corruption.  Nevertheless she lost the election.  

Some of the change that Blagojevich promoted was ethics reform, death penalty reform, state Earned Income Tax Credit, KidCare and FamilyCare heath care programs, sexual orientation discrimination bans.  The costs of these programs was borne by raiding the state pension funds and expanding gambling in the state,  rather than tax increases. 

Blagojevich faced mounting opposition even from his own party as he did things and said things that alienated them.  He refused to live in Springfield, and seldom talked to members of the legislature.   Mayor Richard M. Daley went so far as to say that Blagojevich was "cuckoo".  One could go on and on cataloging the legislative outrages of this governor but a fairly good summary is found here.

Wiretaps conducted by the US attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, convinced him to arrest Blagojevich at his home.  As it appeared the governor had openly sought to "sell" the open seat left when Barack Obama was elected President, the Illinois governor being given the option to appoint someone to fill the remainder of Obama's senatorial term until the next general election.  On the tape he remarked that "I've got this thing, and it's fucking golden. I'm just not giving it up for fucking nothing."  Subsequently he was removed from office on a 59-0 impeachment vote, and banned from holding political office in Illinois.  Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn succeeded him in office.   He was convicted in Federal court in 2011 of all charges associated with the sale of the senate seat, and for extortion relating to a children's hospital and a race track.   In the Federal trial for corruption he was sentenced to 14 years in Federal prison, and is now incarcerated in Englewood Colorado.  He will not be eligible for release until 2024.   
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Patrick Joseph Quinn III (2009-present), Democrat

Quinn was born in 1948 in Hinsdale, IL.   He earned a degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University in 1971.  He received his law degree in 1980 from Northwestern University.   He served as an aide to Governor Dan Walker.   Early on he supported an initiative to increase the voter referendum as a way of influencing policy, but this was ruled unconstitutional by the Illinois supreme court.  Another initiative more successful was his effort to cut back on the number of members of the Illinois House, reducing the number from 177 to 118 members, and eliminating cumulative voting and multiple member districts.   Others have suggested however that the old multiple member districts produced a better legislature.  

In 1982 he became commissioner of the Cook County board of tax appeals.  After one prior unsuccessful run, he was elected state treasurer from 1991 to 1995.  He was critical of George Ryan and ran against him for Secretary of State in 1994.   In 1996 he ran for the open Democratic seat in the US senate vacated by Paul Simon, but Dick Durbin won that contest.   Quinn was an early teabagger, encouraging voters to express their displeasure with the approval of an increase in the salaries of state legislators under Jim Edgar by mailing in tea bags, and encouraged a similar protest against Commonwealth Edison's increase in rates.  

In 2002 he was elected Lt. Governor on Rod Blagojevich's ticket, but did not remain a supporter of Blagojevich, and by 2006 they were pretty much political enemies. In 2010 he narrowly won reelection in his own right against Republican Bill Brady, who in a Republican year was widely expected to win.    In a lame duck session after the 2010 election Quinn and the legislature passed a 66% personal income tax increase and also increased corporate income tax rates.  The new legislature coming in in January 2010 would never have approved these changes, so obviously it had to be done in this sneaky way.  In order to accomplish this the legislature actually stopped time and delayed the midnight hour a couple of hours past midnight.  

Businesses, owing to the tax structure of the state, one of the most confiscatory in the nation, are relocating outside of Illinois.  The most recent example of this is Office Depot's decision to locate its corporate headquarters in Boca Raton, FL.    However, so far, the teacher's unions, the SEIU and anyone else on the state payroll is well pleased with the governor although a crisis regarding pension funding still looms.