Delving into the history of Canada’s prime ministers

Standing beside the sunny final resting place Thursday for William Lyon Mackenzie King, in Toronto’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery, historian James Stewart couldn’t help but think about the service Canada’s 10th prime minister rendered to the country over a lengthy political career.

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The legacy of King, a Liberal who spent more than two decades in office as the longest serving prime minister, gets scant attention, Stewart said.

“He’s not talked about in public discourse as much as someone like Mackenzie King should be, and like a lot of our prime ministers, they don’t take up a lot of space in the public square,” he said.

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That’s why Stewart, a retired history teacher and the author of two books on Canadian prime ministers, along with one of his former students at Toronto’s Bishop Strachan School, Joanne Archibald — a historical consultant who wrote her Masters thesis at the London School of Economics on Pierre Trudeau, and earned her PhD from Queen’s University with a thesis on the leadership of prime minister Louis St. Laurent — decided to form a new organization with plans to change that.

“It’s important for us to understand who these people are,” Archibald said. “What makes them tick? Why did they get out of bed in the morning? How did they grow up? What’s their background? What influences them from a family structure point of view?”

The non-partisan Prime Ministers Institute will be committed to telling the stories of Canada through the lens of its prime ministers, from Sir John A. Macdonald to Mark Carney and those who succeed him. It aims to promote research, education and informed conversation about Canada’s political history, including the achievements, failures and legacies of those who led the country.

Part of protecting your sovereignty is knowing your history and knowing your culture

“None of them get talked about,” Stewart said.

“You might say there’s an exception with Pierre Trudeau because he still seems to loom large in the memories of the baby boomers and others, but the other prime ministers, we don’t really hear about them in the public conversation. And that could be anyone from Louis St. Laurent, to John Diefenbaker, even to a lesser extent Brian Mulroney, although he has been talked about a little bit because of his recent death. And then of course, John A. Macdonald gets talked about because of controversies about the removal of the statues and such, but we don’t have a good grasp of what kinds of legacies prime ministers left behind and what the consequences of their decisions have been, both for the good and the ill, and how they’ve managed the federation,” Stewart said.

“So, if we can bring more conversation to the public sphere, it’s going to be useful for us, particularly at this time where we’re trying to figure out what actually made Canada. What actually are we trying to defend when we say we want to protect our own sovereignty? And part of protecting your sovereignty is knowing your history and knowing your culture.”

Canadians in their 20s and 30s might not know what Lester Pearson, who was prime minister from 1963 to 1968, did “in terms of establishing national health care and establishing our own distinct Canadian flag,” Stewart said.

“If you look at somebody like Alexander Mackenzie, he was prime minister for one term after Sir. John A. Macdonald, but he established the Supreme Court in Canada and he also established the secret ballot,” Stewart said of the Liberal who was prime minister from 1873 to 1878.

“Everything that a prime minister does is laying a foundation for building the country and sometimes they’re a little bit minor but still have a role to play when you look at the grand scheme.”

When the rocky relationship between Prime Minister Mark Carney and U.S. President Donald Trump creeps into conversation, Archibald notes there’s a lot we can learn by examining how other prime ministers have handled relations with their American counterparts.

Canada’s 12th prime minister, St. Laurent, had “quite close working relationships” with both Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, she said.

“He played golf, for example, with Eisenhower at Augusta National Golf Club in 1956 and he came back to the House of Commons and talked about how the golf course was a great place for diplomacy because they were talking politics in between shots and in the golf cart on the way to the next hole,” Archibald said.

St. Laurent even attended a performance by Truman’s daughter, Margaret, a classical coloratura soprano, in Ottawa, she said.

“Harry Truman wrote a letter back to Louis St. Laurent saying how much he appreciated that Louis St. Laurent and his wife, Jeanne, went to support Margaret Truman in her performance in Ottawa. So, you can really see the personal connections between these leaders and the way in which that shapes their relationship.”

If we look at “previous examples of really nasty relationships,” those between John F. Kennedy and Diefenbaker stand out for their generational clash, as does the discord between Pierre Trudeau and Richard Nixon, Stewart said.

“If you look at Nixon’s speech to Parliament in 1972, he throws a lot of cold water on the relationship and says we need to get by the sentimental past and just look at both these countries that have different interests and different identities,” Stewart said. “He took all the sugar off and said we’re not always going to get along. So, he didn’t really push the rhetoric of the great relationship between the two countries.”

The new institute, to be known by its initials PMI, is a program of the Canadian Institute for Historical Education, a registered charity dedicated to promoting historical literacy through research, education, and engagement in the public square.

The PMI is supported by leading historians, journalists, and thinkers from across the country.

The institute is not located in a building but will be a virtual organization committed to in-person public engagement. It plans to partner with civic and academic institutions to engage with the public about political history and its relevance to today.

The institute will launch its first public event on Tuesday, Nov. 24, at 6 p.m. at the Royal Canadian Military Institute in Toronto when it hosts a panel discussion on Prime Ministers and 24 Sussex Drive.

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