John A. Macdonald and the Pacific Scandal

A nonfiction piece, done in the vein of Things in History You Should Know.

In 1873, John A. Macdonald was not in a happy place. He’d been serving as Canada’s first prime minister for six years by that point and he quite liked the gig – that, and the drinking. He’d accomplished much in that time. He’d put down rebellions. He’d weathered through the murder of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, a dear friend and drinking partner. To the original four provinces of Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, he’d added British Columbia, Prince Edward Island and the entire Northwest Territories, which was so huge, they eventually carved out three extra provinces and two territories from its magnificent bulk. And now that he already fulfilled his main goal of creating a country that spanned the continent, he was already enacting schemes of keeping it together.

Exhibit number one, the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), which would connect all of the provinces together without venturing into American territory.

So Macdonald had a great, nation-building, media-friendly project on the strength of which he could and did win the 1872 election. What could he possibly do to screw it up? Send a telegram to a railway promoter by the name of Hugh Allan begging for more campaign money. Have a paper trail indicating that said Allan contributed about a third of a million dollars to the campaign, which to put it in today’s terms, was holy crap, a lot of money. Reward Allan the contract for the CPR post-election. Have a Liberal Opposition that’s hell-bent on getting in power one of these days and ready to spend a respectable chunk of change for a copy of the telegram.

Which are promptly published in all the right Liberal newspapers.

Thus we come back to Macdonald, in the August of 1873. He was facing an inquiry in less than two weeks. His finances were in shambles. His young daughter, Mary, was suffering from a mysterious condition that swelled her head and debilitated her body – it would later be known to be hydrocephaly. He walked out of his summer home in Trois-Rivières and disappeared for an entire weekend.

What is known is that he spent this time going on the mother of all benders, heading off to Montreal and elsewhere while his wife, Agnes, wondered where the hell he had got to. What isn’t known is whether he merely fell into the river in a drunken stupor or if it was an attempt at suicide. The papers started speculating… then stopped.

Then Macdonald sobered up. Relatively speaking.

He survived the royal inquiry, but when Parliament met again in October, it was done. Previously loyal MPs had revolted, Macdonald could no longer pretend to have their support, so he resigned as Prime Minister. He just barely held on as leader of the Conservative Party.

Alexander Mackenzie of the Liberal Party took over from that point, calling an election in 1874. He won this despite making it as un-fun as possible – secret ballots never did have the thrill of danger and pressure of peers as the old method did. He engaged on a program of electoral reform and having the CPR finance its own damned self. But there were two things working against him. One, solidness and dependability are admirable traits for a stonemason, which he formerly was, but the public demands a touch more zing in their prime ministers. Two, economic depression, which was, of course, entirely the fault of him and his inclination for freer trade with the States.

Macdonald took advantage of both with bells on in the election of 1878. The matter of ‘zing’? Easy for him to take care of. Ugly though he was, drunk though he may be at times, Macdonald was a walking ball of charm. The matter of the economy? Oh, he had a plan for that. First, you get that railway built. Second, you used that railway to ship people westward to the Prairies to homestead. Third, you shipped – grains and foodstuffs eastward, manufactured goods and niceties westward. A simple, pat plan in which the States hardly needed to be dealt with at all. It was called the National Policy and the voting population deemed it good.
He never left office after that.

The railway was eventually built, several years overdue and millions of dollars over-budget, but the National Policy did seem to work. He’d held onto power despite the matter of Louis Riel’s second rebellion over in the west, which ended with Riel’s execution and the whole of Quebec being righteously ticked about that. He even made a solid go at giving unmarried women the vote, but was, alas, defeated in that.

John A. lived to see his son, Hugh, become an MP in the 1891 election, but died in office later that year. Considering his recurring poor health, the drinking, and the century, seventy-six was not a bad age to make it to.

Of course, because of his failure to groom a successor, the Conservative Party wouldn’t recover from his death for another generation. Canada would just have to deal with the Liberal PM Wilfrid Laurier, who was almost as stylish as John A. and less prone to silly little scandals. It seemed to work for him.