Things in History You Should Know: John Diefenbaker

Here is the spooky Halloween special I promised. Make sure you stare at the above picture for at least five minutes before attempting to sleep this night.

Gather ‘round the fire, boys and girls, and huddle close together. You thought you heard something in the bushes, Timmy? Man up, little boy. Don’t you know the wind when you hear it?

Now then. It was a dark and stormy night. For decades, the Liberals under Mackenzie King and Louis St. Laurent ruled over Canada with iron fists. All across the nation, the people cried out for change. Little did they know the cost this ‘change’ would bring.

Election season, 1957. St. Laurent – called ‘Uncle Louis’ by the fear-gripped populace – felt his stranglehold on power weaken with his increasing age. A grandfatherly demeanour was no longer enough and it was his bad luck to be up against a wild-eyed madman from the godless west.

But who was this ‘madman’ who captured the hearts of the people with his promises of rainbows and ponies for every child? Raised in a land called Saskatchewan, he dreamed of the day he would rise to seize the office of prime minister – by force if necessary, preferably by gilded words. His mother attempted to dissuade him of these notions by telling him that it was impossible for a western lad to become PM, as she knew the havoc her spawn might unleash. But he would not hear of it.

His course decided upon, nothing could steer him from it. Even then-sitting Prime Minister Laurier – who, as a Liberal, sensed the dark future this lad might cause – tried to push him away from politics when the lad gained an audience from him whilst selling him a newspaper. Diefenbaker brushed him off like he was so much lint and went to sell more newspapers to bolster his war chest.

And though the heavens struggled mightily against him by inflicting a German last name upon him and having him move to safe Liberal ridings, Diefenbaker struggled even more mightily back, until he became a Member of Parliament in 1940. He continued much as he did in the seatless years, fighting battle after battle in periodic leadership races. Arthur Meighen was old and crotchety (and a bit of a dick). He would be put to pasture sooner than later. So this proved true, as it did for the failed John Drew.

Thus we return to 1957, with its red scares and pipeline debate and all that petty nonsense. St. Laurent was rather more in the mood to retire early with a glass of warm milk than fight an election, but Diefenbaker? Ah, he fought dirty. And he had a power that St. Laurent didn’t: the ability to take advantage of the West’s collective Napoleon complex with the mighty force of populism. Against all expectations, he won. A minority government, yes, but he did win.

And you know what? He didn’t do too badly that first year. This was aided by the fact that the Liberals were still trying to puzzle out this brave new world in which, oh my stars, they were the opposition and in which they had a leader that was well under sixty. So Diefenbaker called an election because that uppity bowtie-wearing egghead Lester Pearson was clearly trying to undermine him. The Governor General was like, why the hell not?

The year was 1958. That’s right; Diefenbaker couldn’t even let more than a frickin’ year pass without another damned election. Being Prime Minister wasn’t enough for the likes of him. He had to have a sweet, sweet majority. He achieved this handily by promising the world – one in which he, as the fabled ‘Chief’ would stand at the right hand of the J-Man in ability to grant grace to the hope-starved masses and the frozen north would be transformed into a land of milk and honey. Then the Dark Times came.

The Canadian dollar lost parity with its American counterpart. Darkness descended and a plague of locusts overran the land. The Bill of Rights was introduced, which was like the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms if the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was completely fucking useless. The thought of language rights for francophones made him chortle like a whiskeyed-up schoolgirl. To trick people into believing that his reign was not an unmitigated disaster, he brought forth a woman cabinet minister, a native senator, and native voting rights upon the nation. Admittedly, this was pretty awesome.

But then... he scrapped the Avro Arrow. Because the man loved his America and wished for nothing more to complete the perfection of his life than to be BFF with President Eisenhower. (Kennedy, now, he could piss up a rope.)

The Canadian people slowly began to awaken to the hellish reality they had summoned forth, knocking Diefenbaker back into a minority in 1962 and into the humiliation of being leader of the opposition once more in 1963. Lester Pearson became PM and the long national nightmare was largely over, if one ignored the fact that Diefenbaker refused to leave. Like a decrepit zombie whose jaw had long since rotted off, he stalked the chambers of the House of Commons, shouting incoherently in debates. Maple leaves and Oh Canada? Ha! A real Canadian would stick with the red ensign and God Save the Queen until hell froze over the land. Old age conspired to put a stop to him in 1979.

But even death was not enough to free Canada from ‘The Chief’s’ tyranny, for his corpse-stuffed coffin was dragged across the country by train at taxpayer expense with pomp and ceremony! To do less would be an insult to his majesty, he felt.

If you listen closely to the howling wind on chill prairie nights, you might pick out his everlasting moan of “Everyone is against me except the people!” Don’t try too hard to do so, though – hearing those words have been known to drive men mad as they became more and more obsessed with discerning the statement’s logic.

Timmy, seriously, you’re cutting off the circulation in Beth’s arm.