Rogue Tory

by Denis Smith

  62 Kerr and Hanson, Saskatoon, 84-86

  63 OC 1, 77-78

  64 Ibid., 78. His lecture notebooks, on the other hand, suggest a conscientious and orthodox undergraduate, dutifully recording without comment or question the outlines of the lectures he attended. See, for example, lecture notebooks, JGDP, II/9, 10, 7335-8054

  65 OC 1, 78, 83

  66 Ibid., 80-81

  67 Some of his university notebooks and essays are preserved in his papers at the Diefenbaker Centre. They appear to be incomplete. His notes for Economics 17 (Canadian Economic History) include materials on statistics and statistical method, the history of banking and banking in Canada, and introductory sociology. They contain little Canadian economic history. See also Wilson, Diefenbaker, 15-16.

  68 OC 1, 78, 82-83. The Wilsons, however, suggest that Diefenbaker was leader of the opposition in the mock parliament of 1914-15, that the debates were non-partisan, and that he appeared as head of “an untitled party,” not the Conservative Party.

  69 The dispute is recounted in Wilson, Diefenbaker, 13-15, from records in the Department of Education archives. The Diefenbaker Papers contain the daily register of attendance for the Wheat Heart School District for the year ending December 31, 1914, in which John Diefenbaker has signed the monthly attendance report from May through September, and Edward L. Diefenbaker has signed the reports from October through December. JGDP, II/12, 9963-74

  70 OC 1, 81-82. The story of the incident passed down in one family, whose two boys were members of Diefenbaker’s class that summer, is slightly different. A great niece, Cynthia (Krivoshein) McCormack, writes: “Some of the books say he was outside shooting - that is the part my Krivoshein relatives deny. The talk around the table was that ‘J.D.’ was inside the school shooting out the windows - my great uncles were outside to run and pick up what was shot. The bounty then was one cent for gopher tails and two cents for crows’ feet.” Cynthia McCormack to author, May 10, 1992

  71 Kerr and Hanson, Saskatoon, 147-59

  72 His papers record courses in economic history; money, banking and taxation; municipal and company law; sales law; and contracts and jurisprudence. Academic notebooks, JGDP, II/8,9,10

  73 The Sheaf April 1915; OC 1, 82-83

  74 The John A. Hertel Company, Canadian Bulletin No. 10, July 7, 1915, JGDP, II/9, 8086-87; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 17. The saturated village was apparently Watrous.

  75 OC 1, 84-85; The John A. Hertel Company, Field Echoes and Pointers to Success, December 24, 1915, JGDP, II/9, 8088; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 16-19.

  76 Wilson, Diefenbaker, 19. Mighton later practised law in North Battleford.

  77 Elmer to JGD, July 13 and 19, 1915, JGDP, V/3, 1393, 1389

  78 Academic notebooks, JGDP, II/8,9,10; JGD to Mary Diefenbaker, April 16, May 16, 1916, JGDP, V/32, 248, 245; Certificate of Military Qualification, “Probationers,” 27 May 1916, JGDP, II/12/166, 10024; OC 1, 85; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 19-20. There is no apparent basis for the claim made in the memoirs that “there was, I fear, no lack of evidence to show that commissions were excessively handed out on the basis of political and personal friendship. I had to wait for mine.” The commission was issued nine days after Diefenbaker wrote his examinations.

  79 OC 1, 85-86; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 20; JGD to Col. Edgar, DOC, MD No. 12, Regina, August 21, 1916; telegram, DOCMD12 to JGD, August 22, 1916; Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, August 26, 1916, JGDP, II/13/167, 10025-26, 10029

  80 JGDP, II/13/167, 10170-72. Hugh Aird and Allan McMillan had been classmates of Diefenbaker in high school and university, took officers’ training with him, and were also articling law students. McMillan was killed in action and Aird was wounded. “Sadie” was Sadie Bridgeman, a sister of Mary Diefenbaker.

  81 JGDP, II/13/167, 10172-75

  82 Diary, September 14, 16, 18; Capt. E.H. Oliver to Mrs Diefenbaker, September 18, 1916, ibid., 10177-78; II/12/166, 10034

  83 Diary, September 20-October 6, 1916; JGD to Mary Diefenbaker, September 21, 1916; White Star Line Passenger List, SS Lapland, From Halifax, NS, to England, September 23, 1916, JGDP, II/13/167, 10178-83; V/1, 243; II/12/166, 10036-39; OC 1, 86-87; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 20-21

  84 Diary, October 3-6, JGDP, II/13/167, 10182-83; OC 1, 86

  85 OC 1, 88-89

  86 Ibid., 89-90

  87 JGDI, November 28, December 12, 1969; Biographical sketch, nd, JGDP, II/2, 803-05; Nicholson, Vision, 22; Newman, Renegade, 47

  88 Diary, October 6-November 4, 1916, JGDP, II/13/167, 10183-91

  89 Diary, November 5-10, 1916; Charing Cross Hotel pamphlet and ticket stub 4617, “H.M. Forces, Officer on leave, Charing Cross to Shorncliffe, First Class 11/8,” ibid., 10192-93, 10063-119

  90 Diary, November 13-16, 1916, ibid., 10194-95

  91 Diary, November 17-26, ibid., 10195-98

  92 Diary, December 6-12, ibid., 10200-02

  93 Diary, December 18-29, ibid., 10204-08. The February 1917 order for Lieutenant Diefenbaker’s return to Canada is addressed to him at the 19th Reserve Battalion. Ibid., II/12/167, 10122

  94 Diary, December 29, 1916-January 1, 1917, JGDP, II/13/167, 10207-08; OC 1, 89

  95 Diary, February 7-20, 1917, JGDP, II/13/167, 10166-69

  96 Ibid., II/12/167, 10124-33. In an interview in 1969, Diefenbaker told the author: “I tried my best. They wouldn’t have it and they sent me back. Then - after about six months, not that long, five months - I then tried to get into the RAF and I thought I was going to be alright there … but that was out because … there was a recurrence of the haemorrhage when I got up … when I got up to 5000 feet I started to bleed.” This account appears to have been a brief flight of fancy. JGDI, December 12, 1969

  97 Board of Pension Commissioners for Canada to JGD, April 9, 1918; certificate issued with War Service Badge to JGD, May 25, 1918, JGDP, II/13/167, 10142, 10138-39

  98 In the First World War the Canadian Army acknowledged 15,500 “neuropsychiatric disabilities,” including 9000 cases defined as “shell shock and neurosis.” The terms were imprecise, as they remained by 1940. General E.L.M. Burns wrote of the army’s straightforward approach to human behaviour in 1914-18: “At that time a man did what he was told, encouraged by the kindly admonitions of his sergeant or sergeant-major - or else. If he reported to the medical officer with nothing visibly the matter with him, he was malingering, a crime under the Army Act.” Terry Copp and Bill McAndrew add chillingly that “it seems plausible that at least some of the 25 Canadians and 346 British soldiers executed for cowardice or desertion were dysfunctional psychoneurotics.” They comment on the approach of medical boards at the opening of the Second World War, taking up where they had left off in 1918: “If the medical board had doubts about an individual’s mental fitness its job was to reject him, not to diagnose him.”

  The Canadian government’s neuropsychiatric advisers in 1939 were concerned above all to confront “the pension question”: “After World War 1 large numbers of veterans received pensions on the basis of neuro-psychiatric disability. There was a strong belief that such pensions, by formally recognizing the existence of a psychoneurosis, reinforced the condition instead of helping to cure it.” By that reasoning, the Pension Board’s rejection of the Diefenbaker claim in 1918 could be regarded as therapeutic.

  Dr Colin Russel, who had been a leading neuropsychiatrist in the First World War at the Ramsgate Special Hospital for Nervous Cases, held that all “fear reactions” could be handled successfully with “rest, food and an understanding appreciation.” For him the more serious problem was “a large class, which became larger, the further one got away from the front, who exhibited all the evidences of conversion hysteria - the so-called shell shock.” He believed that this hysteria was caused by “extraordinary suggestibility” or the lack of “high moral standards.” During the Second World War, as one of the Canadian Army’s leading consultants, he treated such cases with electric shock, psychotherapy, reclassification, or reassignment. His patients from 1940 to 1942 displayed “a wide v
ariety of symptoms - strong fear reactions, chronic headaches, enuresis, gastric illness, uncontrollable restlessness, exaggerated physical weakness, muscle tics, obsessions, phobias - the list was almost endless.” Alarming numbers of British and Canadian soldiers who had not faced combat were invalided out in 1940-41 with “gastric, mental and nervous problems.” There were more than 100,000 cases in the British Army. Diefenbaker seems to have marched in a large shadow army. See Copp and McAndrew, Battle Exhaustion, 13-17, 67-68.

  99 “Officer’s Declaration Paper, Canadian Over-seas Expeditionary Force … Certificate of Medical Examination, August 26, 1916,” contained in Lieutenant J.G.B. Diefenbaker’s military personnel file (MPF)

  100 “Medical Case Sheet, 26/11/16, Crowborough Camp,” MPF

  101 The diagnosis was “ametropia”; it was treated with corrective lenses. Casualty and hospitalization records, Lieutenant J.G.B. Diefenbaker, C.M.S. (196th Bn.); “Medical Case Sheet, 26/11/16, Crowborough Camp,” MPF

  102 The full case description reads: “This officer suffered a great deal from symptoms of weakness and partial loss of compensation before enlistment. Immediately after enlistment he was given ten days leave owing to heart trouble and weakness. He cannot double, climb a hill or do physical training owing to dyspnoea difficulty in breathing and general weakness. He has a blowing systolic refurgitant—–[unintelligible word] considerable cardiac hypertrophy. Diffuse apex beat. Weak sight corrected by glasses. Weak physique, and has dyspnoea upon exertion.” “Medical Case Sheet, 26/11/16, Crowborough Camp,” MPF

  103 Macmillan Medical Dictionary (1906, 1958), 226, 294

  104 “Proceedings of a Medical Board, Saskatoon, 27th day April 1917,” MPF

  105 DOC, MD #12, to Adjutant-General, Canadian Militia, Ottawa, May 25, 1917; DOC, MD #12, to Secretary, Militia Council, Ottawa, August 29, 1917, MPF

  106 “Medical History of an Invalid,” August 4, 1917, MPF. It is clear from later correspondence that Diefenbaker’s previous medical records from England were not available to the medical board in Saskatoon in August. They were finally forwarded from Canadian militia headquarters on October 30, 1917, after Diefenbaker had been retired. DOC, MD #12, to Secretary, Militia Council, Ottawa, September 28, 1917; Adjutant-General, Canadian Militia, to GOC, MD #12, October 9, 1917; Cablegram, Records Ottawa to Canrecords London, October 6, 1917; Adjutant-General, Canadian Militia, to GOC, MD #12, October 30, 1917, MPF

  107 Ibid.

  108 “Medical History of an Invalid,” October 10, 1917, ibid. The Oxford Companion to Medicine describes one type of valvular heart disease as “incompetence,” when a defective valve fails to prevent retrograde flow. Black’s Medical Dictionary suggests that “the detection of valvular disease unfits a person for entrance upon any public service, and renders him subject, if he becomes a candidate for life assurance, either to refusal or to a heavily increased premium.” For treatment, Black’s continues, “the subject of such disease must lead a quiet and well-regulated life, avoiding, as far as may be, excitement, worry, and sudden strains, although methodical attention to business, and even hard, steady work, are quite well done.” Oxford Companion to Medicine (1986), 1416, 1522; Black’s Medical Dictionary (34th ed., 1984), 438-40

  109 DOC, MD #12, to Secretary, Militia Council, Ottawa, October 26, 1917, MPF

  110 Adjutant-General, Canadian Militia, to DOC, MD #12, November 13, 1917, ibid.

  111 In Pearson’s case, the affliction was described as “neurasthenia.” See the account in English, Shadow, 42-47.

  112 Taylor, English History, 70

  113 OC 1, 87; the story was also recounted in JGDI, December 12, 1969.

  114 Diary, November 30, December 6, 8-12, 1916, February 10, 1917, JGDP, V/13, 10198, 10200-03; JGDI, December 12, 1969. Diefenbaker also said in the 1969 interview that he had heard parliamentary speeches at the time by Winston Churchill, Sir John Simon, Asquith (while still prime minister), Arthur Balfour, Stanley Baldwin, and Ramsay MacDonald.

  115 Wilson, Diefenbaker, 24; OC 1, 92

  116 “Robert Service,” JGDP, XIV/1. The manuscript is described by Diefenbaker in a covering memo of May 1965 as “personal notes I made on Robert Service in February of 1918.” This appears to be Diefenbaker’s earliest remaining reference to Olive Freeman.

  117 The Sheaf, April 1919

  118 Seven persons received the degree of Bachelor of Laws. They included Emmett Hall, who had articled with Diefenbaker at Lynd and Yule. The convocation program noted that sixty-six former students of the university had been killed, died of wounds, or were missing in action. J. Kelso Hunter to JGD, September 28, 1918; Law Society of Saskatchewan, Law Examinations, nd, 1919; University of Saskatchewan, Eighth Annual Convocation, May 1, 1919, JGDP, I/26, 7308, 7313, 9997-10007; OC 1, 91-92, 96-97; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 24, 26

  Chapter 2 Choosing a Party

  1 OC 1, 96-97; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 26-29

  2 Diefenbaker’s lease on the property commenced on August 1, 1919, for a seven-month term at a nominal rent of one dollar. In 1971 the local Lions’ Club built and furnished a replica of the office building, although on a different site. Michael Stechishin completed his articles with Diefenbaker in 1921 and then practised law in Yorkton. In 1940 he was appointed to a district court judgeship. JGDP, I/26, 8749-50; OC 1, 97-98, 101-02; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 27-33

  3 Wilson, Diefenbaker, 4-5

  4 JGDP, I/26, 6704-25; OC 1, 98-100; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 1-9; Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, August 8, 1919; Wakaw Recorder, August 13 and October 22, 1919. The uncertain or casual spelling of Ukrainian names in Saskatchewan in 1919 was reflected in seven versions of the name of the accused in court documents, letters, and newspaper reports: Chernyski, Charnecki, Czerneski, Charnecky, Chenoski, Cheniski, Chernesky.

  5 This account of an acquittal on his birthday is related by Newman, Nicholson, and Diefenbaker himself. Newman, Renegade, 47-48; Nicholson, Vision, 22; OC 1, 98-100. Apparent confirmation of that date appears in the Diefenbaker Papers on two photocopies of the Wakaw Recorder’s story of the trial, dated in handwriting “Sept 18 1919”; but this is actually the Recorder story of October 29. The formal charge on the trial day is dated October 23, 1919, and other correspondence confirms that the trial occurred in late October. Emmett Hall also notes in his oral history interview for the Diefenbaker Centre that the trial did not occur on Diefenbaker’s birthday. The author and date of the handwritten dating of the story are not clear. See JGDP, I/7/A/135, 6736-37, 6747, 6751-52; XVIII/OH/41 (Acc. 126), May 19, 1986.

  6 The original of Hall’s note is in the Diefenbaker Papers, JGDP, I/7/A/135, 6750; a slightly edited version appears in Wilson, Diefenbaker, 7.

  7 Wilson, Diefenbaker, 8

  8 JGDP, I/8/A/154,155, 8170, 8197-202; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 33-34; OC 1, 101-02

  9 Manager, Bank of Montreal, Wakaw to JGD, June 7, 1920; JGD to manager, June 9, 1920, JGDP, I/8/A/155, 8194-95

  10 JGDP, I/8/A/154, 8170; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 34-37

  11 OC 1, 134-35

  12 Aileen Stobie Baldwin, quoted in Holt, Other, 100; see also 99-100; OC 1, 134.

  13 The Freemans were United Empire Loyalists descended from Mayflower Pilgrims who had emigrated to Massachusetts Bay in 1620. Her grandfather, who was also a Baptist minister, was one of the founders of Acadia University, and her father was an Acadia graduate. See the biographical sketch of Olive by John H. Archer in OC 3, xv-xxiii.) The date when John reestablished contact is not clear. Soon after his election to the House of Commons in 1940 he was corresponding with Olive’s brother Hal, who taught at McMaster University in Hamilton. Hal mentioned Olive, invited John to visit “one or both,” and offered Diefenbaker tuition in French. Diefenbaker commented: “Your offer to coach me in French is very gratifying to me. It has always been my opinion that, in order to make an effective member, one should know the French language to the extent of at least being able to follow the debates, and, when I see you, I will go over this matter with you.” There is no record that anything cam
e of this. Hal and Gertrude Freeman to JGD, nd, 1940; JGD to Hal Freeman, May 4, 1940, JGDP, II/11, 9074-75

  14 Holt, Other, 74-75

  15 Ibid., 103

  16 Holt writes that Beth was buried in “the wedding gown she had made for her marriage to John Diefenbaker. That was her last wish” (ibid., 103-04). Holt’s source for this story was Dorothy Cleveland Little, the daughter of the Newells’ neighbours who had nursed Beth until her death. Emmett Hall, however, rejects the claim “that there was any serious relationship” between Diefenbaker and Newell. He recalled in 1986 that Beth Newell suffered from tuberculosis “as early as the fall of 1918 and was practically confined to her bed.” Mrs Newell, he said, occasionally telephoned him “to provide Beth with some company - this was the extent of JGD’s association with her as well.” JGDP, XVIII/OH/41

  17 In the memoirs, Diefenbaker recounts the story of an auto race from Prince Albert to Saskatoon in which his competitor, an “eccentric Hungarian,” drove off a Saskatchewan river ferry into the river. When the man surfaced above his car and shouted “Damn, hell, what you believing in! Don’t worry, J., I standing on the cushion,” Diefenbaker says he “laughed until the haemorrhaging that I had suffered overseas began again. Back in hospital for a major operation, I had a narrow escape.” He does not date this incident. OC 1, 135-36; Wilson, Diefenbaker, 41