by Denis Smith
The assault continued for forty minutes, as “his scathing and sarcastic words rang nasally round the Commons Chamber like a trumpet call of a Guardian Angel,” ending in a motion that accused the government of “indifference, inertia and lack of leadership … and disregard of the rights of Parliament.” Members of the cabinet shifted uneasily, knowing there was truth in his words.17
THE MOST DISTURBING POLITICAL EVENT OF THE SESSION OCCURRED ON APRIL 4, 1957, when the Canadian ambassador to Egypt, E.H. Norman, jumped to his death from the roof of the embassy building in Cairo. Norman had entered the Canadian foreign service in 1940 with a distinguished academic record in Japanese studies from the University of British Columbia, Cambridge, and Columbia. His initial posting in Japan was followed during the Second World War by intelligence work in Ottawa; and in 1945 he was reposted to General MacArthur’s headquarters in Tokyo to assist the occupation administration. In 1950 he was recalled to Ottawa for an intensive security review that resulted in his formal clearance. In 1951 and later, his name featured in testimony before the US Senate internal security subcommittee as a possible Soviet agent, and in mid-March 1957 Norman’s purported record was raised again. The legal counsel to the subcommittee, Robert Morris, read into the record excerpts from an “executive agency security report” casting doubt on Norman’s activities, and transcripts of the hearings were released to the press. By this time Norman occupied the sensitive role of Canadian ambassador to Egypt, where he had arrived just before the outbreak of the Suez war in 1956.
On March 14, 1957, in the House, the new leader of the opposition asked the secretary of state for external affairs, Lester Pearson, “whether, if it is found that there is no justification for these allegations, the strongest possible protest will be made to the United States against this attack which is detrimental not only to the Canadian diplomat but to Canadian international relations.”18 The minister replied that the subcommittee had improperly released its record without previously informing the Canadian government. The transcript, he said, “contains a great many innuendoes and insinuations that Mr. Norman was a Communist.” These claims were previously known, and Norman had been cleared years before in “a special and exhaustive security check.” Pearson praised Norman as “a devoted, efficient and loyal official… who is doing extremely important work at a very difficult post in a way which commanded my wholehearted admiration and deserves my full support.” The subcommittee’s “slanders and unsupported insinuations” should be regarded with contempt, and the Canadian government would be making strong protests to the United States for this treatment of a senior Canadian diplomat.19 For the moment Pearson’s statement and Diefenbaker’s support seemed to end the incident. Two weeks later Pearson wrote to Diefenbaker: “Our Ambassador in Cairo, Herbert Norman, has written to me to say that the reaction in the House of Commons to the renewed allegations against him in the United States Senate Subcommittee has increased his pride in and devotion to our institutions and our sense of fair play. Mr. Norman asked if I would pass on to you the expression of his sincere appreciation for the thoughtful and considerate manner in which you introduced the subject in the House on March 15th. This I am very glad to do.”20
When Norman fell to his death four days later after carefully preparing several suicide notes, Pearson told the House that Norman had been “deeply and understandably distressed by the resurrection … in Washington of certain old charges affecting his loyalty and which were disposed of years ago after a careful investigation … There will be much sorrow in America as in Canada at this terrible consequence of the Committee’s recklessness.” Diefenbaker added his own strong words. “I am shocked to learn of the death of Herbert Norman. Canada will be the poorer without the special knowledge of Asian affairs possessed by this devoted public servant. His tragic death seems to be attributable to the witch-hunting proclivities of certain congressional inquisitors in Washington who, lacking local targets, felt impelled to malign and condemn Canadian public servants as well. Desirable as it is to preserve our freedom against communism, this is but further evidence that trial by suspicion and conviction by innuendo have terrible results in the lives of those subjected to it.”21 From across the aisle, Pearson wrote a brief note of gratitude: “John - I have been deeply touched by your words - and I want to thank you very sincerely for them - as not only Norman’s chief - but as his old and close friend. Mike Pearson.”22
The Canadian and American press echoed the parliamentary condemnations. For the next few days Diefenbaker maintained his common front with the government, while rumours circulated in Washington that Pearson too was under suspicion by congressional investigators.23 To one critic who warned Diefenbaker of the dangers of communist subversion he replied:
The Secretary of State for External Affairs, on behalf of the Government, has made it perfectly clear on several occasions in recent years that a very thorough investigation of Mr. Norman under Canadian security procedures failed to show any justification for the charges which were levied against him by certain persons in the United States. If we are to indulge in the sort of trial by slander and conviction by innuendo, which is one of the principal badges of communism where it is in power, I do not see how we can pretend to have a better system of government than that existing behind the Iron Curtain. My remarks in the House of Commons last week on Mr. Norman’s death related wholly to our traditions of freedom and justice - traditions which do not exist under communism.24
A whirlwind of rumour, accusation, and denunciation followed Norman’s death. In Canada, comment focused on the US Senate subcommittee’s reckless disregard for the rights of a Canadian citizen in publicizing secret and unsubstantiated claims. But in Washington it emerged that the State Department had authorized release of the subcommmittee’s testimony. The issues - of suicide, secret intelligence, and the Cold War - were grist for the gossip mills and tempting subjects for political conflict. Yet Canadian politicians were restrained by decency in a personal tragedy, by solidarity with the government on subjects of national security, and by reluctance to strain relations with the United States. Diefenbaker shared these attitudes, and chose - like the minister - to focus his complaints on the irresponsibility of American congressional committees. On April 9 he asked Pearson whether Canada had lodged its protest “against the extra-judicial investigations of Canadians by congressional committees.” The next day Pearson made a formal statement to the House in reply. He read the Canadian letter of protest and the American response, which noted the independence of Congress and insisted that “any derogatory information developed during the hearings of the Subcommittee was introduced into the record by the Subcommittee on its own responsibility.”
In an effort, apparently, to limit the scope of Canadian criticism, Pearson then entered dangerous ground. He read the text of a new diplomatic note to Washington asking for assurances that “in the reciprocal exchange of security information” between the two countries, the US government would not pass such information to any body beyond executive control “without the express consent of the Canadian Government in each case.” Without such assurances, Canada threatened to withhold future security information dealing with Canadian citizens.25
The opposition’s initial response was to commend Pearson for the government’s directness. But as the implications of his words took hold, two disturbing possibilities emerged. The new request to the US suggested that the original source of the “executive agency security report” read to the subcommittee might be the RCMP security service; and if so, that in turn suggested that the reports about Norman’s early communist associations were believed to be accurate by the Canadian government. Pearson had previously suggested the opposite. For Diefenbaker, the potential issue was now political and demanded pursuit. Had Pearson misled the House? On April 12 Diefenbaker asked: “In order to clear up the matter once and for all, will the Minister say that the allegations and statements made before the Subcommittee of the United States Senate … specifically were u
ntrue, unjustified and had no basis in fact?”26
Later in the day, Pearson responded with a further statement, in which he conceded for the first time that Norman was known to have had communist associations as a university student. Nevertheless, the minister insisted, the Canadian government’s security review had found him “a loyal Canadian in whom we could trust, and the decision was made to retain him … His loyal and devoted and most valuable service over the years in positions of increasing importance have never given us any cause to regret that decision.” But he did not answer Diefenbaker’s question about the accuracy of the subcommittee’s record on Norman.27
Diefenbaker replied that Pearson’s statement was “equivocal,” and added that if no Canadian security information had passed to the Senate subcommittee, the government’s latest protest to the United States was meaningless. He asked: “Did any portion of the information transmitted by Canadian security bodies find improper use in the records of the United States Senate Committee?” In an extended and intricate round of debate, Pearson denied that any American security agency had misused Canadian intelligence, but was unclear about the source of the subcommittee’s information on Norman. Diefenbaker complained that Pearson had “either spoken too much or too little.” CCF and Social Credit spokesmen agreed, and the discussion ended in confusion.28
The episode exposed unexpected weaknesses in the political skills of Lester Pearson: he seemed to have walked into a morass, and in his distress to have dug himself in deeper. The House was left feeling that it had been deceived, that the government was floundering, that the truth remained hidden.
Was this an issue to be exploited in the forthcoming election? Diefenbaker was under conflicting pressures. He shared the government’s commitment to the Cold War alliance with the United States, and accepted its corollaries of a common defence and pooled systems of intelligence gathering. He understood the need for ministerial discretion and silence in matters of security, and was sympathetic to the personal aspect of the case. He was a committed civil libertarian with a strong sense of fairness. On the other hand, he was attracted by hints of conspiracy, he could see Pearson’s discomfort, he was genuinely offended by the Senate subcommittee’s impudence - and he was now aware, through press reports and his own correspondence, of much more sweeping charges of subversion that vaguely included Pearson himself.29
The daily pressure for debate ended when the House was dissolved on April 12. Diefenbaker had a short time to reflect before the rough and tumble of the election campaign. One supporter wrote to him that reports of his assault on Pearson were “very disturbing … I feel more jolted by your attack than at any other single incident and am doubtful whether the P.C. party is putting expediency ahead of principle … To attempt to belittle Pearson for an apparent political advantage for election purposes is wrong from every point of view. It is bringing Cdn politics down to the U.S. level … In short it is the smear tactics of a U.S. Congressional Committee.” Instead, he urged Diefenbaker to give Pearson proper credit for his protests, but to urge a more independent Canadian foreign policy.30 There were other, similar letters. By early May his own staff cautioned Diefenbaker to put the issue aside on the ground that the subject was in bad taste, and that to pursue it would alienate many “lukewarm Liberals” who were ready to vote Conservative.31 Diefenbaker did so, and the Norman case was virtually unmentioned during the next two months of campaigning. Mike Pearson, alone among Liberal ministers, seemed immune from criticism. But the incident marked the first occasion when Diefenbaker had reason to doubt Pearson’s word, or to perceive his innocence in the parliamentary battle. The politician stored away his suspicions and insights in his capacious memory.32
DONALD CREIGHTON’S MAGNIFICENT TWO-VOLUME BIOGRAPHY OF THE COUNTRY’S first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, was published in 1952 and 1955.33 The biography, with its entrancing picture of a practical and sometimes roguish visionary, found an eager audience among English-speaking Canadians who craved knowledge of and pride in their own history. For the slowly reviving Conservative Party, Creighton’s Macdonald was a timely gift. Members began to recall the party’s historic beginnings in their rhetoric.
On the inspiration of Donald Fleming, Conservative motions in the parliamentary supply debates of 1956 and 1957 urged that “the welfare of the Canadian people requires the adoption of a national development policy which will develop our natural resources for the maximum benefit of all parts of Canada.” The wording was meant to echo John A.’s National Policy, and to assert the party’s forward-looking interest in economic growth.34 But this was mere rhetoric: there was no program to match the aspiration. In November 1956, as the Conservative leadership convention approached, Diefenbaker’s Prince Albert friend Dr Glen Green asked his brother-in-law, Merril W. Menzies, a young economist who had recently completed his doctoral thesis on Canadian wheat policy, to write him with some thoughts on Conservative economic policy. When a bulky forty-three-page reply arrived, Green sent it on to Diefenbaker. Diefenbaker read it and indicated his interest to Green; and in January 1957 Menzies’s wife June - also an economist - followed up with a letter of impassioned political analysis to the new leader. Two weeks later Merril Menzies himself wrote to Diefenbaker, offering six to eight months of service to Diefenbaker in an “intensive study of national economic policies and problems.” The project would be jointly conducted by husband and wife, and Menzies emphasized that their approach “would be one of bringing economic analysis to bear on national problems, while leaving the political analysis to yourself.” “This suggestion,” Menzies noted, “may well be unique in Canadian politics, but if you think that it could make a valuable contribution to the development of a rounded and effective national policy it might be worth experimenting with it for a few months.” Diefenbaker saw the opportunity. After cursory inquiries about Menzies and a personal meeting in Vancouver, he offered Menzies an appointment as his policy adviser during the election campaign. For eight weeks in April, May, and June, Menzies accompanied Diefenbaker on the campaign train, producing a stream of memos as background for Diefenbaker’s election speeches. He became Diefenbaker’s prolific idea man.35 His wife disappeared into the background, though she presumably continued in informal collaboration with her husband on what they had initially seen as a joint venture.
Menzies had worked for the Liberal government, as an executive assistant to justice minister Stuart Garson, until after the 1953 general election. But he had left Garson out of frustration, convinced that the Liberal Party had slipped into a doctrinaire free market policy that left no positive role for the state in economic development. In the years since 1953, he had worked out what he saw as a coherent approach to Canadian economic growth which found its historic basis in Macdonald’s National Policy. Menzies was convinced that development, if left to the market, would shatter the east-west links of the national economy and bring economic integration with the United States. After 1950 the Liberal Party had taken that path, and under the inspiration of C.D. Howe it would not deviate from it. Only a revived Conservative Party, in Menzies’s view, could save the country from disintegration. But under George Drew the party had remained frozen in reaction, blindly committed to “free enterprise,” and lacking any understanding of the historic role of the national government. Menzies told Diefenbaker: “I have been acutely conscious of the emphasis you have been putting on the need to formulate a national development policy … The fact that you as a politician have discerned the necessity of such a policy is greatly encouraging to me after many years of frustration.”36
Menzies’s call for a program of development inspired by Macdonald’s continental policy, aimed particularly at growth in the Atlantic provinces, the west, and the north, and infused with passionate conviction was brilliantly attuned to John Diefenbaker’s mood and intuitions in 1957. Menzies’s approach justified and gave coherence to Diefenbaker’s long-nurtured sense of political grievance by transcending his personal resentments: what he had f
elt, Menzies seemed to tell him, was not merely personal frustration, but the nation’s forgotten destiny. Diefenbaker had been right to think that both the Liberal and the Conservative parties had neglected, misconceived, and betrayed the country’s interests. He was right to think that under his leadership the nation could rediscover itself. He was an outsider because those at the centre had lacked vision. Now he could give the nation back its purpose and its soul.
Merril Menzies was a scrupulous analyst with a sense of the complexity of the Canadian economy and a scepticism about slogans and stereotypes. But he was moved by an overriding belief in a distinct Canadian existence that might be lost. That conviction reflected the views of other thoughtful Canadians in the 1950s, including many Liberals like the mildly nationalist royal commissioner Walter Gordon and the Montreal Star’s editor, George Ferguson. Menzies alone managed to shape his thoughts into a political and economic framework of justification for the leadership of John Diefenbaker; and once in Diefenbaker’s company, he fed Diefenbaker the phrases and slogans the party leader needed to convey that passionate vision to the country. As never before, Diefenbaker was inspired - and Menzies was his muse. Diefenbaker himself had no talent for coherent economic and social analysis. His political discontents had previously been expressed in sharp but disconnected criticisms of his opponents. Now Menzies - another westerner who viewed the country from outside the Ontario-Quebec heartland - transformed those criticisms, like magic, into a positive vision. As the letters and memos flowed from Menzies in the spring of 1957, the leader took his pencil to them, underlining, making marginal summaries, reshaping Menzies’s thoughts to his own electoral needs.37
“From Confederation until the early 1930’s,” Menzies wrote, “there was a powerful unifying force in the nation - what Bruce Hutchison is fond of calling the national myth. This unifying force was the challenge and the development of the West. It engendered a powerful but not xenophobic nationalism and was made possible and given shape and direction by Macdonald’s National Policy.” That policy had effectively ended in 1930.