Year approached, the Prime Minister of Canada had confided to his diary that all was right with the world. “A good year it has been on the whole,” he told himself, “a year in which there has been I believe, some improvement in mental and moral strength, some slight growth in wisdom.…”
He continued to congratulate himself: “The session of parliament was a good one. I had to carry much of the load myself, but I came out stronger in public regard I believe than I went in.… The summer was a good one and a happy one.… The fall has been good.” For thousands the fall had been very bad, but King didn’t mention the market crash. He was still basking in the glow of Ramsay MacDonald’s visit to Canada. King, who loved to hobnob with great men, was certain that the British prime minister’s brief sojourn was “an important international event which added a little I believe to my prestige in the country.…”
He saw no dark clouds on the political horizon. “… I believe that with the party & the country I am stronger than any time since I assumed office … I thank God with all my heart for protecting me through the year now drawing to a close.…”
These smug and self-complacent scribblings seem almost demented in the light of what we now know, but King was not alone in his musings. The business and political world felt the same way.
The exception seemed to be R.B. Bennett, who was demanding a radical change in government policy to ensure prosperity. A radical change was the last thing that Bennett expected from the cautious King and the last thing that he himself contemplated when he took office, unless by radical he meant an increase in the country’s protective tariffs. But he
was
Leader of the Opposition, and so his demands were as predictable as the response of John Dafoe’s Manitoba
Free Press
. The Liberal voice of Western Canada pointed the finger of scorn at the Tory leader for his “lamentations.”
“Whom are we to believe,” the paper asked, “… the sober financial executives who say that conditions are essentially sound and full of hope for the future, or the politicians who declare that in many respects the country is in a deplorable state …?”
The sober financial executives, of course, were dead wrong. The country
was
in a deplorable state, for which the Honourable Mr. Bennett had no cure and which Mackenzie King simply ignored, in the belief that the trouble would shortly go away. Within a fortnight, with ten thousand jobless men in Winnipeg alone, Dafoe was less sure of himself and was calling for federal action. The mayors of the larger Western cities, from the Lakehead to British Columbia, poured into Winnipeg on January 29 for a conference on unemployment. They wanted the federal government to underwrite a third of all relief costs, to launch a massive program of public works, to appoint a royal commission to investigate the situation, and to stop all immigration to Canada – radical suggestions indeed, by the standards of the day.
The
Free Press
now changed its tune to declare that unemployment was “a social condition … which cannot be explained away by soft phrases or met by emergency palliatives.”
Nonetheless, when a Western delegation headed by Winnipeg’s pugnacious mayor, Ralph Webb, went to Ottawa, it got neither soft phrases nor emergency palliatives but instead tough talk. The Depression had struck the West but was only beginning to be felt in Eastern Canada. Cushioned from reality in the green womb of his Kingsmere estate, Mackenzie King shocked the delegates by refusing to believe there
was
a crisis. “If the situation is so deplorable as you try to picture, why is not eastern Canada represented?” he asked Webb. “The answer is that, generally speaking, the employment situation in Canada is not abnormal. I have a telegram from the government of the province of Quebec that conditions there are quite satisfactory.”
Standing on the rock of the
He continued to congratulate himself: “The session of parliament was a good one. I had to carry much of the load myself, but I came out stronger in public regard I believe than I went in.… The summer was a good one and a happy one.… The fall has been good.” For thousands the fall had been very bad, but King didn’t mention the market crash. He was still basking in the glow of Ramsay MacDonald’s visit to Canada. King, who loved to hobnob with great men, was certain that the British prime minister’s brief sojourn was “an important international event which added a little I believe to my prestige in the country.…”
He saw no dark clouds on the political horizon. “… I believe that with the party & the country I am stronger than any time since I assumed office … I thank God with all my heart for protecting me through the year now drawing to a close.…”
These smug and self-complacent scribblings seem almost demented in the light of what we now know, but King was not alone in his musings. The business and political world felt the same way.
The exception seemed to be R.B. Bennett, who was demanding a radical change in government policy to ensure prosperity. A radical change was the last thing that Bennett expected from the cautious King and the last thing that he himself contemplated when he took office, unless by radical he meant an increase in the country’s protective tariffs. But he
was
Leader of the Opposition, and so his demands were as predictable as the response of John Dafoe’s Manitoba
Free Press
. The Liberal voice of Western Canada pointed the finger of scorn at the Tory leader for his “lamentations.”
“Whom are we to believe,” the paper asked, “… the sober financial executives who say that conditions are essentially sound and full of hope for the future, or the politicians who declare that in many respects the country is in a deplorable state …?”
The sober financial executives, of course, were dead wrong. The country
was
in a deplorable state, for which the Honourable Mr. Bennett had no cure and which Mackenzie King simply ignored, in the belief that the trouble would shortly go away. Within a fortnight, with ten thousand jobless men in Winnipeg alone, Dafoe was less sure of himself and was calling for federal action. The mayors of the larger Western cities, from the Lakehead to British Columbia, poured into Winnipeg on January 29 for a conference on unemployment. They wanted the federal government to underwrite a third of all relief costs, to launch a massive program of public works, to appoint a royal commission to investigate the situation, and to stop all immigration to Canada – radical suggestions indeed, by the standards of the day.
The
Free Press
now changed its tune to declare that unemployment was “a social condition … which cannot be explained away by soft phrases or met by emergency palliatives.”
Nonetheless, when a Western delegation headed by Winnipeg’s pugnacious mayor, Ralph Webb, went to Ottawa, it got neither soft phrases nor emergency palliatives but instead tough talk. The Depression had struck the West but was only beginning to be felt in Eastern Canada. Cushioned from reality in the green womb of his Kingsmere estate, Mackenzie King shocked the delegates by refusing to believe there
was
a crisis. “If the situation is so deplorable as you try to picture, why is not eastern Canada represented?” he asked Webb. “The answer is that, generally speaking, the employment situation in Canada is not abnormal. I have a telegram from the government of the province of Quebec that conditions there are quite satisfactory.”
Standing on the rock of the
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