by Denis Smith
On the long drive into the city, Ottawa’s celebrated visitors were greeted by more than fifty thousand well-wishers. Soon afterwards, in a tree-planting ceremony at Rideau Hall, Kennedy lifted a silver shovel of dirt, felt a twinge of pain, and put his right hand briefly to his forehead in reaction. No one noticed, but over the next two days his discomfort worsened. Once on the plane for the return trip to Washington, he was in agony. He needed his crutches to allow him to disembark from Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base.53 But before that he bore the entire schedule of state dinners and receptions, a wreath laying, an address to the two houses of parliament, and meetings with the prime minister and cabinet. From the outside, all looked well, and the occasion was pronounced a success. The crowds were keen to see the Kennedys, and the president’s address to parliament had enough supple phrases to make it graceful and memorable. It was above all a call to Canadians to maintain the country’s role in freedom’s cause “in these days when hazard is our constant companion.” His trip, he said, was “more than a consultation, more than a good will visit. It is an act of faith, faith in your country and your leaders, faith in the capacity of two great neighbours to meet their common problems, and faith in the cause of freedom in which we are so intimately associated.” There was just one slip in the speech to annoy John Diefenbaker: Kennedy invited Canada publicly to join with the United States in the Organization of American States, an invitation Diefenbaker had pointedly rejected in private talks earlier in the day.54
Kennedy and Diefenbaker met for two and a half hours on the morning of May 17 in the presence of their aides. Diefenbaker began by showing off his prize marlin and his print of the British naval victory in the War of 1812 - both of them freshly mounted on his wall with this occasion in mind. Diefenbaker directed Kennedy to a rocking chair beside his desk, which had also been borrowed for the occasion. When the formal conversations began, both leaders seemed well briefed and in good spirits, although Kennedy appeared tired. The president touched briefly on the Bay of Pigs, where he had allowed Cuban volunteers to invade without adequate or overt American assistance. Cuba, he believed, remained a serious problem for the United States as a Soviet ally and a centre for Latin American subversion. He hoped Canada would become more active in the hemisphere as a partner of the United States, but free of America’s record of domination. Diefenbaker assured the president that Green’s remarks about mediation in Cuba had been misreported; there would be no question of that. Kennedy reassured Diefenbaker that the United States had no intention of invading Cuba unless there were serious provocation or unless the USSR “cut us seriously” in Berlin. If there were a crisis, he said, the United States would “talk with Canada before doing anything.”
Diefenbaker raised the subject of the Organization of American States by suggesting that Canada could be more influential outside than in, and stuck to his position despite Kennedy’s urging that the country should join. He seemed more favourable to the president’s suggestion that Canada should at least attend the next meeting of the inter-American economic and social council in Uruguay in July.
Kennedy pointed to increasing conflict in Vietnam and Laos, where he felt the international control commissions were failing. He gave notice that American military assistance to Laos might increase, and asked for a contribution of Canadian aid. Diefenbaker did not respond. On foreign aid in general, Kennedy appealed to Diefenbaker to increase Canada’s contributions to 1 percent of GNP per year, which would amount to a five-fold growth from $69 million to $360 million annually. Diefenbaker countered that he faced serious domestic problems and could not alter the aid budget.
Kennedy indicated that he favoured British entry into the European Common Market for its contribution to European stability, and asked for Diefenbaker’s comments. The Canadian prime minister made clear that Canada feared the loss of its agricultural markets. “The subject was not pursued,” Robinson reported, “but one could sense Diefenbaker’s displeasure at having it confirmed that the president was so firmly in support of British entry.”
Diefenbaker raised the issue of nuclear weapons by warning that there were powerful interests in Canada, including university professors, clergy, and the Voice of Women, who opposed the acceptance of warheads for the Bomarcs. For the moment it would be impossible to sign an agreement, but by the autumn he hoped that he might influence opinion in a national speaking tour and bring about a change. He “was stung,” Robinson recalled, by Kennedy’s suggestion that a refusal to take nuclear weapons would put Canada in a neutralist position - something that Diefenbaker found unpalatable. On the proposed triangular weapons swap, Diefenbaker refused to accept the condition that the F-101s should come already armed. Kennedy responded that, in order to justify so large a contract to produce American F-104s in Canada, he would have to demonstrate a net improvement in continental air defence. Diefenbaker reiterated his judgment: Despite his own preference to accept nuclear warheads, he could not yet risk the challenge to public opinion. Accepting warheads for the F-101s would weaken his position. He suggested that the weapons should be stored in the United States, for transfer to Canada if necessary. At breakfast the next morning Kennedy came back to the issue of weapons, but Diefenbaker was unmoved. The issue was left unresolved.55
After Kennedy and his party left the prime minister’s office on May 17, a member of Diefenbaker’s staff found a single piece of paper they had left behind. It was a brief memorandum to the president, by his adviser Walt W. Rostow, of talking points headed “What we want from the Ottawa trip.” There were four points, the first three beginning with the words “To push the Canadians … To push them … To push them …”: towards an increased role in Latin America, towards membership in the Organization of American States, and towards a 1 percent foreign aid budget. The fourth point urged Canadian help in the international control commission for Indochina to achieve better monitoring of the Laotian-Vietnamese borders. All these points had been raised amicably in discussion.56
The memo was turned over to the prime minister. When he showed it to his foreign affairs adviser, Robinson urged Diefenbaker to return it with an explanation to the US Embassy. This would have been diplomatically proper. But two days later, “in a post-mortem on the visit, the prime minister brought the paper out, remarking on its repeated use of the word ‘push.’ To him this personified the attitude of the Americans: they thought nothing of pushing Canada around. He seemed to be regarding the paper as a sort of trophy, and it was impossible to tell whether he would hold on to it for future display or return it as I had recommended.”57 The prime minister ordered the paper stored in his confidential filing cabinet, referred to as “the vault.”
Meanwhile Livingston Merchant, who knew nothing of the misplaced memo, summarized the American embassy’s impressions of the visit to Ottawa in a dispatch to Washington. He thought that the Canadians had been rapped helpfully on the knuckles, but could not predict the result.
Embassy regards visit as entirely on plus side. President’s forthrightness startled but did not offend Canadians who have been given much to think about, have had some of their complacency and smugness salubriously shaken, and will be examining their consciences as well as their pocketbooks. Whether this reaction will be translated into concrete action in increased aid, step-up in defense, end of irresolution on nuclear weapons, or greater involvement in hemisphere affairs is by no means certain and will become apparent only with time. At the least we should see a greater Canadian restraint in offering gratuitous advice unaccompanied by acceptance of responsibility.58
The day before, Diefenbaker offered his own, entirely favourable reactions in a letter to his brother. “The President and I had a private breakfast this morning and covered a number of important matters. We get along very well together. The opinion I formed of him when I first met him - a brilliant intellect and a wide knowledge of world events - was not only borne out but intensified as a result of our discussions in the last two days.”59 Diefenbaker wanted to ge
t along with the president. But those troubling disagreements over weapons - made intractable by the state of Canadian opinion and the unresolved disputes within his own cabinet and his own mind - remained to be resolved. There was, as well, the insulting document now hidden away in his vault. And there were the tormenting memories of slights and joking taunts to remind him that Kennedy looked down on him, and probably laughed at him. That “callow young man” lacked Eisenhower’s diplomatic graces. The prime minister would have been more disturbed to read Merchant’s account of Canadian “complacency and smugness salubriously shaken” by the president’s visit to Ottawa.60
JOHN DIEFENBAKER WAS NOW SIXTY-FIVE YEARS OF AGE. WITHOUT CHILDREN - APART from his step-daughter Carolyn - his family could only diminish. In July 1960 his uncle, Edward Diefenbaker, died in Regina. With Elmer’s assistance, Gowan Guest made arrangements for the funeral in Saskatoon, and Diefenbaker flew west briefly by commercial airline to attend the ceremony. The will divided the small estate among John, Elmer, and Mary Diefenbaker, but John turned over his inheritance to Elmer. “It was nice of him to give me such a considerable share,” John told Elmer, “but because of what you have done for him since he made the will in 1949 demands that I follow the course of doing what he would have done if he had made another will.”61 Burial took place in the family plot in Saskatoon, which prompted John’s reflections. “There is room in that plot for five. This will make four and no doubt you will choose to be buried there too when your time comes. Olive and I have to decide on another plot. There has been some suggestion that it should be in Ottawa for I must say that I would not think it should be in Prince Albert. This, of course, can be decided after we talk things over.”62
A month later, Elmer told John that an old campaign associate had died, and John responded: “Those that were with me in my first election in 1925 are now pretty well gone.”63 Meanwhile his mother remained in University Hospital in Saskatoon, where she had been bedridden under the care of Dr David Baltzan since the summer of 1957. Mary Diefenbaker was eighty-eight and suffered frequent spells of dementia. Diefenbaker had provided regular payments for her expenses, kept in touch with Dr Baltzan about her fluctuating condition, wrote and telephoned almost daily, and visited her on his frequent trips to Saskatoon. By Christmas of 1960 she was failing, and Baltzan told Diefenbaker that in these last stages he would seek his patient’s comfort but would not prolong life to the point of torture. Baltzan commented that Diefenbaker had taken this advice in a mood that was “calm, composed and prepared.”64 Two months later, while Diefenbaker spent the day in Washington, Mary died. The two sons arranged the funeral at First Baptist Church in Saskatoon, attended by John, Olive, Elmer, the Brunts, the lieutenant governor, Chief Justice Emmett Hall, Mayor Sidney Buckwold of Saskatoon, Mayor John Cuelenaere of Prince Albert, and four hundred others, and buried their mother in the family plot. The Regina Leader Post commented that Mary Diefenbaker had been “a great Canadian mother”: “This is an ideal story of mother-son relations, those primary relations that can mean everything to both and equip a man for the battle of life as no other relationship can.” Patrick Nicholson commented in The Scotsman that the Diefenbaker home had been “a matriarchal oasis of intellectual activity amid the brawn opening up the prairies.”65
Six weeks later, in a letter advising his brother of various matters relating to her will, John proposed that they should “make some arrangements to fix up the shack on the homestead so that it will be preserved.” He continued: “If you are out that way you might make some enquiries as to how much it would cost to clean it up in general, put in windows and generally restore it. Of course I wouldn’t want it used to store wheat for that would mean that the place would go back to rack and ruin again. I am surprised that it has stood up so well in the fifty-one years since we left.”66 That relic, they both knew, would be not so much a memorial to his homesteading parents as to their eldest son. He was the Abe Lincoln of the family.
JOHN DIEFENBAKER HAD COME TO POWER WITHOUT ANY COHERENT ECONOMIC strategy. He had taken for granted, like many Canadians, that the period of postwar expansion would continue indefinitely. Government’s role was, through budgetary and monetary policy, to make adjustments at the margin to control or stimulate growth within reasonable limits, and to maintain full employment. In his years in opposition, Diefenbaker had lectured on the dangers of inflation and the need for lower taxes. Before achieving power, he had begun to echo the mildly nationalist views of Walter Gordon’s royal commission about the effects of too much American capital investment in Canada. In 1957 and 1958 he had spoken grandly of Canada’s expanding horizons of growth. But these were all rhetorical positions, adopted for political reasons. They did not reflect a considered understanding of the economy, and they were not necessarily consistent. “The Vision” of national development was a magical charm that never became a plan. What it amounted to after 1958 was a series of discrete aid and investment projects responding to regional demands for roads, railways, dams, power plants, and resource projects, put together under the energetic inspiration of Alvin Hamilton.
In Diefenbaker’s eyes, fairness and social conscience required a more active concern for the poor, the unemployed, the ill, the elderly, and the farmers than the Liberal government had shown in its last, complacent years. But once those adjustments had been made, he did not expect that the economy would be a major preoccupation. When the economic slowdown came soon after his government took office, he was alarmed because it was unexpected, because he could not comprehend it - and because it recalled R.B. Bennett’s failure to overcome the great depression of the 1930s. Unemployment rose to almost 8 percent by the summer of 1958, and Liberals were quick to proclaim that “Tory times are hard times.” For the rest of his term, unemployment haunted and distracted the Diefenbaker cabinet, threatening it with the fate of Bennett in 1935 and another generation of Conservative exclusion from power. There was some recovery in 1959, but by 1960, despite the government’s various injections of winter works, housing grants, and regional aid, the unemployment rate rose once more to 8 percent. The Liberal front bench, led by Mike Pearson, Lionel Chevrier, Paul Martin, and Jack Pickersgill, hammered away at the cabinet’s ineptitude and apparent unconcern. The government’s uncertain statistics added to the atmosphere of confusion. In February 1960 there were 500,000 persons registered in search of work, but Michael Starr admitted in debate that there were almost 800,000 drawing unemployment insurance. From the government’s own back bench, the unpredictable New Brunswick MP Charles Van Horne attacked his party’s record and warned that “we will all be kicked out at the next election if the government doesn’t smarten up.” For several days in early March, during discussion of the labour department estimates, there was disorder, sometimes beyond the Speaker’s control, in the House. Liberals and CCFers prolonged debate while government back-benchers heckled and shouted them down.67 The government was embarrassed both by the economic facts and by the opposition’s unending protests.
Diefenbaker struggled for some means of escape. In a meeting of ministers on February 9, he sought opinions about when - or whether - there should be a budget, perhaps contemplating the option of dissolution and an election as a means of diverting attention away from the economy for a few months. That would put him onto ground where he was confident of his talents. But dissolution after only two years, with an overwhelming majority, would have been unprecedented and controversial. George Hees made the most emphatic statement in favour of a budget, which Diefenbaker summarized in his notes: “People expect their government to give accounting. Voter isn’t concerned with Budget deficit. If we don’t have a budget we are hiding. Must be open and above board.”68 The prime minister accepted both parts of that advice: There would be a budget in March, and he would not be worried by the size of the deficit. On March 3 he told a television audience that no one would suffer from unemployment while he was prime minister.69
“This,” reflected the minister of finance, “was obvio
usly promising far too much.” Donald Fleming was struggling to produce a balanced budget in the face of incessant demands for increased spending from his own colleagues - and especially from the prime minister. With cabinet’s agreement on an early budget, Fleming won at least a temporary victory against the Chief’s schemes for renewed assistance to western farmers, and applied his strong arm against all other proposals for new spending. The estimates predicted an increase of only 1 percent in government spending for 1960-61. When he introduced the budget on March 31, Fleming reported an annual inflation rate of 1 percent, declining interest rates, high levels of domestic saving and investment, and reasonable but not excessive inflows of foreign capital. His proudest moment came when he forecast a slight budget surplus of $12 million for the coming year, and took his seat “to the sweet music of thunderous applause.”70 The press took the budget to mean that Fleming had won a precarious victory in the cabinet battle over spending, but showed little confidence that it reflected any longer-term purpose. One exception was Charles Lynch, who judged that Fleming had “brought the impression of firm, long-term planning into the record of a government that at times has seemed to be planning as it went along.” With a further year of sustained growth, he foresaw the prospect of pre-election tax cuts in 1961 or 1962, and “an end to the old cry that Tory times are hard times.”71
Within two months, Diefenbaker and Douglas Harkness, who was still minister of agriculture, were undermining the balanced budget with appeals to cabinet for acreage payments for unsold wheat, increased farm loans, and funding for the purchase of Canadian grain for foreign aid. Donald Fleming fought a delaying battle through six cabinet meetings, and denied Diefenbaker’s efforts to gain these benefits before the Saskatchewan provincial election in early June 1960. The provincial Conservative Party, under its new leader Martin Pedersen, had promised provincial acreage payments and hinted at matching federal support of one dollar per acre. In his campaign for a fifth consecutive majority, Tommy Douglas sought a mandate to introduce universal medical care. The CCF was re-elected with an increased majority, and the Conservative Party elected no one.72 With Gallup Poll support for the federal party in Saskatchewan below 40 percent, the prime minister rallied his forces in caucus, and on August 2 cabinet approved acreage payments to western farmers totalling $42 million. Fleming lectured ministers that the balanced budget was shattered, but his colleagues rebuked him for his lack of political sense. Diefenbaker, with “a knowing grin,” told him: “There is no chance of balancing the budget. There never was.”73