John George Diefenbaker was the first Prime Minister of Canada (1957–1963) with a name and lineage neither British nor French. His grandfather, George Diefenbacher, came from Baden in Germany, although his mother’s side was Highland Scots. He had been mocked as a “Hun” during his youthful campaigns in Saskatchewan, so he knew what it was like to be picked on because of his name and race. And so Diefenbaker put himself on the side of the “little guy” and it took him a long way.
Among Diefenbaker’s accomplishments was a symbolic Bill of Rights (1960), which codified existing rights that Canadians had inherited from English law and did not undermine parliamentary or legislative authority and traditional constitutional law—unlike the injudicious 1982 Charter of Rights.
It is true these symbolic milestones bore the mark of tokenism. Such is politics. For the Conservative movement these were defensible gestures to help refute the political caricature that Progressive Conservatives (the self-contradictory name of the party from 1942 to 2003) were dyed-in-the-wool imperialists who would oppress and exclude minorities. In those days, Liberal candidates went to immigrants’ doors and told them the “retrograde” Conservatives, if elected, would send them back where they came from. It was twisted, but effective.
Diefenbaker overcame his enemies’ low tactics by speaking eloquently of “One Canada” of equal citizens. He was a fervent anti-communist and won over the so-called “ethnic vote” that Liberals had assumed they owned.
When Dief won a minority in 1957 and then won the largest-ever majority of seats in the House of Commons in 1958, it was a monumental breakthrough. His ferocious barnstorming style had energized people across the country. He now held 208 seats including 50 in Quebec, where Premier Maurice Duplessis had lent his organizational support (a one-off).
It is no exaggeration to say that Liberal politicians and strategists were terrified. What they feared was an incipient “Tory-democracy movement,” uniting Canadians of all backgrounds behind a proper federalist vision. The Laurier, King, and St. Laurent Liberals had practised divide-and-conquer tactics—telling different people different things and pitting the regions against each other. It was politically effective, and held things together, but in the long run aggravated the divisions.
Diefenbaker’s popular appeal, energy, still-unknown potential to grow, and not least the shock of defeat after holding office since 1935, unsettled socialist Liberals like historian Frank Underhill, who had warned Lester Pearson’s policy adviser Tom Kent in November 1957 that all Diefenbaker needed to create a lasting Tory coalition was “an adviser who knows any English history.”
Kent was referring to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli’s galvanizing of a patriotic Tory movement in the 1870s that transcended class and regional divisions and attracted the labouring classes behind his Conservative vision of big England at the head of a benign Empire.
In short, his enemies feared that Diefenbaker could change the course of Canadian political history and keep the Liberals out of office for a generation.
But he failed. Not only did he not know enough English history but he didn’t know Canadian history either. He couldn’t grasp that in our federation, francophone Quebecers are a nation within a nation.
Diefenbaker had some flashes of brilliance but he was too idiosyncratic and undisciplined to be a successful leader and hold onto office. He wasn’t humble, insightful, or broadminded enough to rebuild a Macdonald Toryism, a partnership between English and French, Protestant and Catholic, and keep the regions onside.
As a campaign performer he had no trouble channelling Western discontent. His quasi-socialist approach had some allure for Maritimers. But he did not grasp that beyond Liberal Bay Street, there was a rural and small-town Ontario conservatism that he failed to tap into. Nor did he have the sense to cultivate Quebec lieutenants: Quebecers are natural conservatives, desiring to preserve a besieged culture and language that are old and unique in North America and to have provincial powers returned to where they belong.
The uniting factor for the Tories could have been regional and Quebec umbrage at the centralization of power and the invasion of areas of provincial jurisdiction and taxation by Ottawa. But the Chief could not figure that out.
Was Diefenbaker ever really a Conservative anyway? Grattan O’Leary, editor of the Ottawa Journal, a Conservative newspaper, thought him too much of a “western radical” to suit the “eastern establishment of the party,” too “erratic” and “unreliable,” too much of a “man of destiny,” not the Conservative style.
That was the fatal flaw. When the Conservative cabinet was divided over whether to proceed with nuclear warheads for RCAF deterrent aircraft and missiles—per Canada’s previous North American defence agreement with the United States—the Chief waffled. That caused resignations from his cabinet. Diefenbaker failed to pick a side and defend it. The divisions and waffling made it easy for the opposition Liberals to appear competent and comfortable with the Americans—and win. Thus, John Diefenbaker’s flameout.
